ever knew-never sick a day in his life. But of course he still had scars in him from the rheumatic fever and the Army wouldn’t accept him. Later on of course, in the last years of the war, they were accepting anybody who could walk into the recruiting office under his own power, but by that time Charles was doing very vital war work even though he was a civilian, and both he and the draft board felt the same way-that he was far more useful where he was than he’d have been in a uniform. Charles wasn’t a coward, Mr. Skinner, but he was a sensible man and he knew that foolish masculine pride wasn’t as important as doing your best in the job for which you’re best suited.
Yes, ma’am. Now, in nineteen forty-two Mr. Cray croft went off into the Army, but Mr. Ryterband remained in Anchorage and continued to operate their partnership.
That’s correct. Actually by about the middle of nineteen forty-two the company had become what I called a quasi-military organization. Charles wasn’t in the Army of course, but he was providing all manner of maintenance and invention services for the Air Corps units that were stationed in Alaska. We tend to forget there was a very hard-fought campaign that was waged up there during the war, under appalling conditions. The Japanese had invaded North American soil there, you know, and it was up to our men to throw them back into the sea. And I daresay Yes, quite. Mrs. Ryterband, you understand that the reason for my questions is to try to develop a picture of your brother and your husband-try to compose a sort of psychological portrait which may help us to understand how they came to do the things they did here in New York. Naturally this has to be rather painful for you, and we’re all deeply grateful that you agreed to give us your voluntary testimony in this matter. Now, I’d like to keep moving right ahead, if you don’t mind, and perhaps we could skip over some of the time periods. Your brother served in the Army Air Corps during the war, and I gather you didn’t see much of him…
Well, I saw him in nineteen forty-three, of course.
After the end of the campaign in the Aleutians?
Yes. He was transferred to an air base in Nebraska to train army air mechanics-the ground crews.
You still resided in Cincinnati then?
Yes, sir. My sister had gone to work in a war plant, but I was still teaching. We still had to educate our young people, you know, war or no war.
Do you think any important changes had taken place in your brother’s personality as a result of his experiences in the war in Alaska?
Well, I’d have to think… Yes, I think you could say he’d become more impatient.
In what ways?
Well, you’d have to have known him, really. You’d have to understand the way he was.
That’s what I’m trying to do, Mrs. Ryterband, and perhaps with your help we’ll be able to get closer to it.
Harold was always kind. He was thoughtful toward my sister and me. But he wasn’t the sort of man who ever brought little gifts for you or remembered your birthday. My goodness, he rarely remembered his own birthday. Things like that were of very little importance to him-none at all, in fact. My brother wasn’t given to ceremony. And he didn’t-oh, dear, it’s very difficult to explain just what I mean…
Take your time, Mrs. Ryterband.
Yes, sir, I’m trying my best.
You said he’d become impatient.
With people. He’d always been indifferent to people. Not unkind, you know. Not rude to them. But Harold wasn’t what you could call a social animal. I’d have to admit he was a single-minded man-very wrapped up in his work.
Obsessed with it, would you say?
To a point, yes. But not in a cruel way. I remember more than once in the shop in Cincinnati there’d be one of the young men they’d hired, one of the junior mechanics, who’d make some mistake, and Harold never got snappish with them. He wasn’t impatient with ignorance, you see. He’d explain very carefully to the young man what his mistake was, and why it was a mistake, and how it should have been done, and why. Harold would have made a marvelous shop teacher, I always thought.
Then what was the nature of this “impatience with people”?
I think after he’d been in the Army awhile he developed a great dislike of the men in authority. The brass hats. He resented being placed under the command of people who didn’t know half as much as he knew about airplanes.
That’s hardly an unusual situation in the military.
It isn’t unusual anywhere in life, Mr. Skinner. Harold had experienced similar frustrations when he’d worked at Ford. That was why he’d quit his job there. But during the war it was different, you see. He was trapped. He couldn’t very well quit his job, could he? And he didn’t want to turn his back on the boys who were flying his airplanes. Harold was as dedicated to wiping out tyranny as any American was, in the war. That was why he became so resentful-so impatient. Because we were at war, and he felt that the men in power were fools who were wasting many lives.
By “the men in power” do you mean his immediate superiors or the men who made the important strategic decisions?
His immediate superiors. No, Harold wasn’t an armchair strategist. He didn’t think in those terms, you see. He was a man who’d been given a job to do. What made him angry was that his superiors prevented him from doing that job.
Because of their stupidity.
Yes. I believe Harold developed an abiding hatred of authority during that time. He began to regard it as axiomatic that men in authority were incompetent.
I daresay if you used that as a guiding principle, you’d be right more often than wrong.
Yes, sir. Because men in positions of authority are usually men who have devoted their lives to the skills they need to acquire authority, rather than the skills of administration and technical competence.
That’s a rather keen observation, Mrs. Ryterband.
It was one of the things Harold used to say.
Then your brother did devote thought to things other than mechanics?
Well, he wasn’t a machine. He had a mind. A good mind. There were things he took very little interest in- politics, religion, social things-but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t aware of them.
Yes, ma’am. Now, your brother developed a large reputation during the latter part of the war in Europe, and after the war he and Mr. Ryterband set up a lightplane factory, isn’t that right?
It was in California. We moved to Palo Alto in November of nineteen forty-five. Charles and I had been married just a year.
What had your husband been doing, professionally, during that year?
Well, you see, the war effort had petered out in Alaska by the end of nineteen forty-three, and there wasn’t sufficient work to keep the company going in Anchorage. Charles had closed down the facility in the middle of nineteen forty-four and returned to Ohio. He was a very loyal American and he’d decided that he ought to offer his services to one of the aircraft companies for the duration of the war. He secured an important position with Northrop in Hawthorne, California. That was how we came to be in California-we moved out there right after the wedding. He worked mainly on the P-61 fighter, the Black Widow. But right after the war-in fact it was before the war actually ended-Northrop was given a government contract to develop the F-89, the Scorpion. It was the first all-weather jet fighter. It used Allison jet engines, and my husband was not interested in those, so we left Hawthorne in November and joined my brother up in Palo Alto.
It strikes me as a bit odd that both your husband and Mr. Craycroft had such an abiding dislike of jet-powered planes. Most scientists and engineers are avidly devoted to the idea of progress, and the advent of the jet certainly would have to be called progress, wouldn’t it?
It was rather like a religion with them, Mr. Skinner. As if they were Jews and a Christian missionary had tried to sell them on a new religion. I don’t think I can explain it more clearly than that.
I see. Well, in any case this lightplane factory in Palo Alto…
Alpine Aircraft Company.
Yes. It produced highly advanced planes, but it was out of business by the beginning of nineteen forty-eight. How did that happen?
We were victimized by exploitive businessmen. The men who invested the capital to build the company were
