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Summing Up
Although it was apparent as early as the halfway point in the move that the gigantic undertaking was going off successfully, with many phases of the transfer ahead of schedule, Beisel constantly reminded all concerned with the move that they could not rest on their oars. Even toward the very end of the move, when there was but a handful of persons and a few freight cars left to come, Beisel did not relax his diligence over the final details. In March 1949, he requested that those who had assisted him in administering the move “carefully review the work still to be done in which you may have an interest and assure yourself that there are no loose ends dragging, that some necessary detail has not been overlooked, that we have not forgotten in the rush of other things, some part of the move already planned, or that we have not overlooked tail-end adjustments or requirements which, like tail-end shortages, might throw us for a serious loss.”
At the Stratford end of the line, Detweiler was likewise keeping a watchful eye on the wind-up proceedings. His work of coordinating the move as originally scheduled by the industrial engineering department had gone off smoothly. That phase of the transfer had been followed by a critical period, around the beginning of 1949, when production in the Stratford plant, with its diminishing personnel and facilities, was the key to the success of the move. For it determined the pace of production in Dallas. Once the production problem was licked, Detweiler was confronted with a third problem, for which he had no pattern. This was the clearance of the Stratford plant. Chance Vought’s 52 building units had to be turned over to the Navy in good repair on June 30, 1949, and Detweiler followed up on each of the 52 as the activities had stopped in each of them and they had been cleared of equipment. As each was cleared, Detweiler called in Navy inspectors to determine whether any restorative work must be done on that particular building to meet the Navy’s acceptance. When the condition of the building was declared acceptable to the Navy, maintenance men performed the final rites of shutting off heat and lights and padlocking the buildings. Only once, as sections of the huge Chance Vought plant was vacated, shut-off and locked, did a slip-up occur in the clearance proceedings. Maintenance men, given the go-ahead to put the finishing touches on the engineering building, applied hasps and padlocks to the doors of the supposedly empty structure. Three persistent engineers remained inside. But with the mechanical ingenuity typical of their profession, the three last men worked their way out, and maintenance men returned to the building to secure the escape hatch.
Detweiler had worked constantly on the problem of disposal of the Stratford plant. Initial problems in this disposal centered around the question of whether the national security clause, requiring the lessee to agree to vacate within 120 days in case of an emergency, would be imposed. It was determined, toward the end of the move, that the clause was not applicable, and the field, therefore was widened to potential occupants of the Stratford plant. By the gradual checking off of inspections and details of the clearance, Detweiler had ascertained, several weeks in advance, that the Chance Vought plant, as cleared out, would meet the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics specifications. The facility could be turned over to them as arranged on June 30 with no tag ends of equipment left to be moved out or rehabilitation work to be done. On June 30, 1949, the official end of the move, Chance Vought was relieved of its obligation to maintain the plant. That duty went to the Federal Works Agency, to whom the Navy had transferred the plant for disposal. The Federal Works Agency took over several former Vought maintenance men to care for the plant.
With these details out of the way, only one small hangover operation remained in Stratford, which could not be terminated by June 30. Vought had leased a 5,000 square foot office for this activity, a subcontracting unit composed of about 30 purchasing men, engineers and shipping and receiving personnel. Vought had long depended upon eastern subcontractors to help out with certain airplane parts. While dependence upon subcontractors was to be reduced to a minimum in the new Texas plant with its improved and expanded facilities, that independence could not be achieved until the end of 1949. So a fragment of Chance Vought remained in Connecticut until the end of that year.
In Dallas, while most of the sections of the plant were still expanding in men and equipment toward the end of the move, others, after a final survey of their usefulness, were curtailed. The downtown office and reception center for transferees, for example, closed on April 15, 1949, when only a few men were left to transfer from the east, and the bulk of the Texas hiring had been done. Housing personnel, too, were absorbed into other jobs and moving coordinators in the various sections took the final survey of their groups’ transfers and went back to their usual pursuits. Through the last weeks of the move, a meticulous inventory was taken by each section of the jobs yet to be done, and a constant vigilance was maintained over the last odds and ends of material to be shipped and alterations to be made to the new plant. In the final analysis, everyone had a job to do. If a worker did not have a task directly connected with moving in the new equipment, he indirectly contributed to the successful conclusion of the move. Some helped new workers learn their jobs and others got into the spirit of making things come out right simply by doing well and quickly their own jobs on the production line, so that manufacturing schedules set out at the beginning of the move could be met.
A new Texas foreman, at the end of the move, remarked that he had worked with several aircraft-manufacturing firms in jobs of setting up new plants and none had gone off so smoothly as the Vought move. “Looking over the workers here,” he commented, “I’d say it was due to a spirit of teamwork. There’s a feeling that we’re all interested in getting a hard job done, and it’s fun to see it come out right.” The same feeling was reflected by the comments of other supervisors. Ray Tipple, chief industrial engineer, commented at the end of the move, “The spirit of cooperation and helpfulness of both supervisors who were transferred from Stratford and the new engineers who were hired at Dallas, has brought many compliments from numerous people whose burden was made just a little less heavy by this all-out effort on the part of out industrial engineers to assist wherever possible in keeping the move on schedule.”
When Paul S. Baker, engineering manager, was asked to whom the credit went for the job of moving the huge engineering department, he said: “We feel that no one person or section can be individually commended for performing his or its part of the move unusually well. All persons in the engineering department have done an excellent job.”
George Shaw, chief of planning and scheduling, remarked that his section had gotten its job finished a month earlier than anticipated. “Everyone did the job that was expected of him,” he commented, “thereby enabling our work to proceed with the least possible interruption and delay.” There were many other sections that were able to report that the enthusiasm of their workers for the job had enabled them to beat the schedule. The accounting department speeded up its activities because it found that the Dallas organization learned so easily that they were able to absorb a greater workload earlier than had been anticipated.
George Franko, quality control manager, said his personnel had done an outstanding job in establishing the department’s activities on the pre-planned schedule and, he added, “from the manner in which the work has been progressing, it appears that this department will be able to operate more efficiently than in Connecticut.”
Russ Clark, chief of experimental, said that all of his people had cooperated beyond expectations, particularly in the setting up of flight test operations at Carswell Field in the middle of the move period, and for their work on the modification of the XF7U-1s for revised slats and afterburner power plants while the move was still in progress.
Rex Beisel, general manager, summed it all up in a “well done” to the entire organization: “We have virtually completed the greatest move in the industrial history of the United States without a major hitch in our original schedule and forecasts and it didn’t just happen by chance. We started planning for the move a good two years before the first ‘green light’ was given by the Navy. We knew that the move was good for Vought and everybody pitched in. All possible angles were explored. Each person’s intelligence was focused on the problems of the move, and out of this cooperative determination to make the move a success, matched by the magnificent cooperation of the Dallas community, came the worthwhile ideas that made industrial history. In all phases of the move – planning, transfer of equipment and personnel, and adjustment to meet working and living conditions, the ‘Flying V’ team demonstrated for all time that with clear thinking, air-tight planning, enthusiasm and cooperation, all things are possible. It is with deep sincerity that I say: ‘To all hands, well done.’”
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