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The Engineers Shove Off
When the move began, the engineering department at Chance Vought numbered about 1,000. Of these, about 525 were invited to go to Texas. This constituted more than 1/3 of the total number to be transferred in the entire plant. For the engineers, moving was a more difficult proposition than it had been for most Chance Vought departments. Large as it is, engineering works as a closely integrated team, and cannot operate at its maximum effectiveness when separated. The work of the structures and design sections, for example, are so interdependent upon one another that the separation of the two sections cripples both. It was impossible to transfer the department as a unit because of the large number of engineers to go. Paul S. Baker, the engineering manager, decided that, as far as possible, he would transfer the engineering department by projects. All persons, for example, who were working on the guided missile project, were transferred at the same time. And then, the group working on the F4U-5N Corsair would be transferred as a group. At the time of the move, however, the efforts of virtually the entire engineering department were being concentrated on the F7U, which was scheduled to be completed at the end of 1948. Personnel and equipment moves, therefore, had to be planned to get a large portion of manufacturing and other personnel moved during the months prior to December. That would leave the engineering department intact to work out its problem and then concentrate its move into as short a period as possible, taking into consideration the limitations that had been set down by the housing availability in Dallas. The engineering move, therefore, took place during the four-month period from November through March. Work had just begun on the new engineering building when the engineers began to arrive. They were temporarily housed on the third floor of the existing office building, and, in reality, had to undergo two moves: the move from Stratford, and later, the move into their own office building in Dallas.
Along with the engineers came their equipment; delicate and massive testing instruments, ovens and metallurgical and chemical laboratory fixtures. The Chance Vought engineers also were using the Navy’s huge altitude chamber, which weighed 200,000 pounds and was two stories high. This chamber, with its refrigerating unit and compressors, was vital to the engineers in their work of testing hydraulic systems. So the Navy studied the possibility of moving the huge structure, determining at length to ship it to Dallas by seatrain, as the Erie press had been shipped, under the direction of the York Corporation, builders of the altitude chamber.
All in all, the engineering department had 2 million pounds of equipment, including it’s office furniture and files. Great jigs were disassembled into a seemingly disorderly pile of girders. But each piece was carefully inventoried and catalogued for re-assembly in Dallas. Such huge machines as a 20-ton tensile test instrument were among the department’s laboratory equipment. Once such equipment had been set up, it had to be re-calibrated, because a 1,687 mile journey never without a few jolts which threw delicate measuring equipment temporarily out of whack,
Baker, the engineering manager, in order to keep a line of supervision for his department in both Stratford and Dallas, assigned Al Sibilla, assistant chief of aerodynamics to be the engineering officer in charge at Dallas during the first weeks of the engineering department’s transfer. When Sibilla’s section had moved to Dallas, E. J. Mailloux, assistant chief engineer, took over the job of supervising the engineers at Dallas. In addition, Baker assigned Bob Mahaffey, the first engineer to move to Dallas, to handle all departmental moving details in Texas, and Claude Benner did the same job at the Stratford end. So that no small job in the transfer would be overlooked, a person in each unit of the engineering department was assigned to handle move details in his group.
An important phase of the engineering department’s move was the transfer of the flight test section. Heretofore, that group had operated at scattered localities where runways could accommodate jet planes. The engineers looked forward to the time when flight test activities could be carried on adjacent to the plant. For much of their work was closely related with these tests. By January, enough of the engineers were in Dallas that they needed the XF7Us in Dallas.  The XF7Us were sensational new experimental twin jet planes on which Chance Vought had been working since 1946. The first of the planes had successfully completed it’s initial flight tests for the Navy in November 1948 and it’s spectacular flight characteristics had drawn gasps from the spectators on display at that time. The Navy had announced that it was potentially faster than any other current operational airplane. Predictions had been made from many sources that the “Cutlass”, as the new plane was designated, gave promise of being, as it’s forerunner the Corsair had been, a plane that could long remain at the top of it’s class and would be in production in the Dallas plant for many years to come.
The first production model of the F7U was to come off the line in 1950. Tooling was already under way. Engineers were eager to have the experimental planes in Dallas so that they could catch up the loose ends remaining in the steps that preceded assembly-line production. Therefore, arrangements were made to bring the planes to Texas. Equipment and personnel were stationed at each point of landing on the plane’s schedule to check the planes. Arrangements had to be made for a testing ground in Texas. The runways at Hensley Field had not yet been lengthened, so Chance Vought obtained the use of a Consolidated-Vultee runway at Carswell Field, in nearby Fort Worth, until the runway at the field adjoining the plant was ready. The two planes arrived in Dallas on January 20, 1949. One landed at Carswell Field to undergo further flight testing, principally for carrier landing tests. The second plane went into the Chance Vought plant for the installation of slats and afterburners.
The arrival of the new craft in Dallas at the mid-point of the move proved to be a stimulus to both the transferees and the Dallas workers. The planes aroused their enthusiasm. The workers were eager to bring the move to a successful conclusion so that they could devote all of their energies to the production of the new tailless craft with its giant fins and swept-back wings with control surfaces, which served as combination ailerons and elevators. When the plane was put on display for the employees in the final assembly bay, a Texas press operator expressed the feeling of most workers. He said, “I can hardly wait to get to work on it.” An old New Englander standing by remarked that he’d worked on Vought planes for decades but I’ve never seen such excitement over any plane. As for myself, I’m excited too.” So the new Cutlass played an important role in the move, that of giving all the employees in the Dallas plant an added enthusiasm for the job ahead. This brought the work of winding up the move to a peak efficiency.
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