Raising Grumman

TO THE MEN who built airplanes on the production floor, they were known as Red Mike and The Bullfrog.

They seemed unlikely partners: Red Mike was almost crippled by shyness -- ``a very timid person,'' remembers one longtime employee. The Bullfrog, meanwhile, had a genius for making friends, and ``would have made the greatest politician in the world,'' according to the same worker. Red Mike wanted to run a small, family-size company; his partner always looked for ways to grow.

Though they didn't share the same vision, they somehow managed to create an aviation company that played a crucial role in winning World War II in the Pacific, put men on the moon, and helped shape the face and economy of Long Island for more than 50 years. During much of that half-century and more, their company -- Grumman -- was the Island's largest employer.

Leroy Grumman was Red Mike, so called because he had red-blond hair. Leon A. (Jake) Swirbul was called The Bullfrog for no reason that any of his colleagues could recall. Long Island had shaped both of them, and Grumman's industrial saga played out here because it was the place that they knew and liked best.

Grumman, the man, was born Jan. 4, 1895, in Huntington, into an old family that had Connecticut antecedents. He graduated second in his class at Huntington High School and went on to attain a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University in 1916.

Swirbul was born three years after Grumman, on March 18, 1898, in Manhattan's Yorkville section, but his family moved to Long Island when he was a child. He grew up in Sag Harbor and graduated from Pierson High School there. He, too, went to Cornell, where war found him in 1917. Swirbul left school to enlist in the Marine Corps.

Grumman, meanwhile, joined the Naval Reserve and found himself in a course in airplane inspection for pilot trainees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He took advanced flight training in Pensacola, Fla., was commissioned an ensign, received a certificate identifying him as Naval Aviator No. 1216, and became a flight instructor. Later, the Navy again sent Grumman to MIT, this time to study the brand-new discipline of aeronautical engineering.

By this time, any observer could imagine the men each of these boys would become. Raymond P. Applegate, who taught Grumman to fly, recalled several years ago that the young pilot ``was very, very reticent. Most of the guys, after they [learned to] fly, they became tougher than hell. Grumman didn't.

Swirbul was a good athlete -- he played basketball well enough to earn money at it as a young man -- and a cheerful, outgoing companion. Yet there was a secrecy about him that almost matched Grumman's shyness. Swirbul did not and would not speak much about himself.

Grumman and Swirbul met in 1924 at Loening Aeronautical Engineering Co. in New York City, one of the many small aircraft firms that sprang up after World War I. Loening, which had been established by two brothers, Grover and A.P. Loening, was more successful than most. In 1919, when the firm landed a contract to build 50 monoplanes for the government, the Navy sent Grumman to oversee construction. He so impressed the Loenings that they hired him. Jake Swirbul, who had worked in aircraft shops after the war, became a civilian inspector for the Air Corps. This work brought him to Loening in 1924.

In 1929, the Loenings sold out to Keystone Aircraft, which announced it would close Loening's Manhattan factory and move all operations to Bristol, Pa. Grumman, Swirbul and Bill Schwendler, a Loening engineer, flew down to look at Bristol. None liked what he saw. Swirbul wanted to work for himself. Grumman, Schwendler recalled, ``liked Long Island. He liked boats.'' Schwendler and others connected to Grumman were interviewed in 1971 for a company history.

Just who proposed that they quit and set up a new company is lost in the mists of time. But the agreement was quick and firm; Grumman mortgaged his house and Swirbul's mother borrowed $6,000 to set up Grumman Aeronautical Engineering Co. Schwendler joined them, along with two other men who would form part of the company's inner circle of management for the next 50 years: Ed Poor, who had handled Loening's business affairs, and E. Clinton Towl, a 24-year-old who had just quit Wall Street. Grumman, who held more shares than any other investor, was honored in the company name.

On Dec. 15, 1929, Towl traveled to Baldwin to look over the headquarters that Swirbul had found. It was a small building that faced south to the Long Island Rail Road tracks near Grand Avenue. Once the Cox-Klemin Aircraft Co. factory, it was by this time an abandoned auto showroom-garage.

``It was pretty run down,'' Towl said. ``The windows were broken, skylights were broken, there was about four feet of oak leaves on the floor . . . And I thought, `Dear God, what have I put my money into now?''' Grumman came into official being on Jan. 2, 1930, with $64,325 capital. Grumman, who put in $16,875, and Swirbul, who contributed $8,125, were the biggest shareholders. It was precisely the wrong time to go into business, of course. The stock market had crashed weeks before and the nation -- and much of the rest of the world -- was sliding into the Great Depression.

At first, all the company had -- except for the considerable engineering abilities of Grumman and Schwendler, and the business savvy of Swirbul -- was a contract to repair damaged Loening amphibians. But this work was only ``a means of keeping the front door open,'' Towl said. The real hope was to get contracts to produce aircraft for the Navy. The company had been nudged in this direction by a Navy admiral of Grumman's acquaintance who hinted that anyone who came up with a good retractable set of landing wheels for Navy amphibians might make a fortune.

While Leroy Grumman worked on the retractable wheels, the company, which had hired some former Loening mechanics, paid the bills by using its metal-working skills to produce aluminum truck bodies. In time, Grumman received a contract to build pontoons for the Navy -- then another contract, to build two prototype fighter planes. The XFF-I was a stubby two-seater biplane, with a fat fuselage designed to accommodate its retractable landing gear -- a first in military aviation.

Despite its bulk, it was very fast for its time. It flew 198 mph in level flight; a competing Boeing fighter could only achieve 178 mph. Grumman got $75,000 for the two prototypes -- enough to yield a profit -- and a contract for 37 additional planes. A further order for more planes followed, and Grumman was off the ground.

There were hard times in those early years, to be sure. The company once ran out of money and had to send its workers home, payless, for a week. Grumman could only afford to insure its planes for the hour in which they underwent their flight tests. Money was so tight that Grumman and Swirbul would pick up scrap metal from roadsides for use in the shop. But the peculiar mix of Grumman's and Swirbul's talents quickly began to shape an unusual and successful company that ``sang with harmony,'' one of its engineers said. The harmony didn't always emanate from the company's founders, a kind of Odd Couple of aeronautics. They shared an office, of necessity at first in their cramped Baldwin building, but by choice later on as the company expanded and moved to bigger quarters -- to Valley Stream in 1931, Farmingdale in 1932 and finally Bethpage in 1937.

They faced each other across matching desks, under an ever-growing fleet of model Grumman airplanes. The two men often didn't agree, and passersby in the corridor sometimes heard loud and harsh words exchanged. But there was one inflexible rule: Neither Grumman nor Swirbul would leave the office until an argument had been resolved. The decision that emerged by the end of each day was always unanimous.

``It was a gentlemen's agreement between themselves,'' Towl said. ``When they started the company they had enough sense, I guess, to realize that two men were not going to get along as smooth as silk on every question that came up.''