Yes, quite.
You see, they’d called me in because they thought there had to be some simple way to neutralize that bomber. That’s what the Air Force is for—to solve aerial problems. There was one thing they forgot.
What’s that?
We weren’t at war. Look, in wartime you shoot the enemy down and you don’t give a damn where they fall. The Battle of Britain—I hate to think of the number of Luftwaffe Heinkels that got shot down over London by the RAF and crashed into somebody’s house—sometimes with armed bombs aboard. Some of the worst damage of the blitz was done by crashing planes. But in wartime you accept those casualties. You have to. Here, on the other hand, that risk was unacceptable. Because we weren’t at war. Peace is hell, isn’t it?
Ryterband (E. M.)
Mrs. Ryterband, could you give us your full name, please?
My name is Ellen Marie Ryterband.
And your maiden name was Craycroft, is that right?
Yes, that’s correct, sir.
You married Charles Ryterband in March, nineteen forty-four?
In Cincinnati, yes, sir.
Now, your brother, Harold, had been in partnership with Charles Ryterband for some years before your marriage, isn’t that correct?
Yes, sir.
Can you tell us how the two men first met and became partners?
Yes, sir. My husband—Charles, that is; he wasn’t rny husband then, of course—Charles had been working for the Ryan company in San Diego, and in nineteen thirty-eight he took a new job with the Ford company, and they moved him to Michigan, and that’s how he met my brother.
Your brother and Charles Ryterband were both employed by Ford in the manufacture of Trimotor aircraft at the plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Can you tell me the circumstances of the first partnership between Mr. Ryterband and Mr. Craycroft?
Well, Charles and Harold became very friendly right away. They had very similar ideas, you see, about airplanes and engines and that sort of thing. Charles had been working at the Ryan company previously—I think I mentioned that, didn’t I?
Yes, you did.
Ryan was the company that built Lindbergh’s plane, you know. They were a small company, but they were very advanced. Charles always regretted having left them, you know. He had accepted the job offer at Ford because he felt that a larger company would offer greater facilities and opportunities for him to develop his ideas, which were rather revolutionary at the time. But he had a sad reawakening in Dearborn. He found Ford to be very stuffy, not at all interested in experimentation.
And your brother felt the same way?
Oh, my, yes. I remember very vividly the first time I ever met Charles. My brother brought him down to Cincinnati—it was one of the long weekends, Easter weekend.…
This was in nineteen thirty-eight?
Yes, sir, nineteen thirty-eight. My sister Alice and her husband were still living near us in Cincinnati then. And our mother was still alive—she died in December that year. I was looking after her. I was twenty-four years old, and I suppose everyone assumed I’d grow old as a spinster lady. I taught school part time, and Saturday mornings I helped do the cataloguing at the Carnegie Library. But then Charles Ryterband came into my life. It was still the Depression then, you know. We had very little. Mostly we lived on the money Harold sent us. I had the two part-time jobs but I only earned about thirty-five dollars a week. Still, in those days you could make a dollar stretch a long way, couldn’t you?
Mrs. Ryterband, I wonder if we could jump ahead to the subject of the partnership between your brother and your husband-to-be?
I’m sorry, Mr. Skinner. I’m sixty years old and I do tend to ramble on. You’ll have to help keep me on the strait and narrow.
(Laughter) Yes, ma’am.
Well, they had been working together in the designing department at Dearborn. Charles had come to Ford in February, so they had been getting to know each other for about two months then. I’d had three or four letters from Harold, mentioning his new friend. Harold wasn’t a demonstrative person at all, you know, but he did write terribly good letters. Actually they were addressed to our mother, in those days, but of course my sister and I were always expected to read them, too.
Yes. Go on, please.
I’m sorry. To make a long story short, Mr. Skinner, the two of them had agreed very quickly that they were fed up with the restrictions under which they had to work. They had resolved together to quit their jobs at Ford. That was the main reason why Charles traveled down to Cincinnati on the train with my brother that weekend—they wanted to hatch their plans.
And what were those plans?
They wanted to go into business for themselves. They were brimming over with ideas for new airplanes and new engines.
They formed Crayband Motors then. Where did they raise the capital to start their company?
That was Charles’ doing. My brother was a shy man but Charles was very outgoing. He went out to California the very next week on the train, after he had quit his job at Ford. He visited his old friends at Ryan Aviation, and he went to see some of the other manufacturers out there as well. He had some of the drawings that he and my brother had been working on in Dearborn in the evenings and on the weekends. Some of the people he saw in California were very excited by their designs—as well they ought to be. When Charles returned from California he had orders in his pocket for three prototype engines. Then he and Harold were able to go to the bank and raise money on the strength of those commitments.
I see. So they started Crayband with a bank loan.
Yes, sir. They went right to work in Cincinnati. They hired three young men to help them—you could hire people for eight dollars a day then.
But the company failed, didn’t it?
That wasn’t their fault, Mr. Skinner. The only deliveries they were able to make were the two engines for Ryan. We hear so much about shortages today, but we seem to forget what things were like during the Great Depression. They simply couldn’t get delivery of the materials that they needed. The contracts they’d signed were penalty contracts and when they couldn’t—
You mean there were penalties if they didn’t deliver the completed engines on time?
Yes, sir. The payments were reduced if they were late. And after the original prototype contracts expired, they were at the mercy of the open-bidding system. To get a contract to supply engines they had to bid against other designers and manufacturers, and they weren’t willing to cut corners and cheapen their designs for the sake of money.
So they didn’t win any bids, is that it?
That’s what happened. They were making the best engines of their kind anywhere in the world. But the big companies didn’t care about that. All they cared about was shaving pennies.
Crayband folded around the end of nineteen thirty-eight, didn’t it?
Yes, sir. That was when our mother died, too. The two things were a great blow to Harold. He felt he had to get away. You could understand that. He was very sensitive. Most people have no idea what a sensitive man he was.
He joined the Balchen Expedition to Alaska and the North Pole, didn’t he?
Yes, but I don’t think his heart was in it. He quit the job before they left Point Barrow. After that he just sort of bummed around, you know. Working on bush planes, getting jobs wherever he could. He didn’t even write letters to me very often. He was quite at loose ends for a while. I don’t think he cared what happened to him.
But then he opened a workshop in Anchorage, didn’t he?
There was a bush pilot who had started a small air service with several planes and pilots. He had taken a liking to Harold, and of course he had recognized what a brilliant man Harold was with airplanes and engines. He lent Harold the money to open his own maintenance hangar there. His name was Chandler Reeves—a very fine man. He died in the war, flying cargo out into the Aleutians.
Mr. Ryterband joined your brother in that enterprise?
At the beginning of nineteen
forty, yes, sir.
What had Mr. Ryterband been doing in the interim?
He’d had a job with the Martin Company over in Cleveland—they were developing a new bomber over there.
You saw him fairly regularly during that time?
My, yes. You see, Charles’ family was out in California. We were the only family he had in Ohio, my sister and brother-in-law and I. He’d come down to Cincinnati almost every weekend. He’d bought a secondhand Cord roadster and you used to see him cruising down the street hooting his horn every Saturday afternoon, waving to everybody on our street. He was so proud of that car. He loved to tinker with it.
You were still employed as a teacher and librarian in Cincinnati?
Yes, sir. I’d received a full-time teaching position in the grammar school in the fall of nineteen thirty-nine. I was making one hundred and fifteen dollars a month.
Had you and Mr. Ryterband made plans to marry at that time?
Well, don’t think we hadn’t discussed it, Mr. Skinner. But we weren’t officially engaged, or anything like that. We were both people who liked to take our time about things like that and make sure we were doing the right thing. I get so upset by the way young people today have to rush into—
Yes, ma’am. Now, in nineteen forty Charles Ryterband joined your brother in Anchorage.
I’m sorry. Yes, we had a letter from Harold telling us about his new business up there, and he invited Charles to come in with him. Charles jumped at the chance, of course. It was less than a week before he’d left his job at Martin and packed his suitcase and was off to wild Alaska—and in those days it was wild, believe you me. I remember Charles couldn’t bear to part with his Cord roadster. He could have sold it, you know, but he left it in my charge instead. I didn’t drive, of course, but we kept it in my yard and the children from the neighbors used to come over and polish it and keep it shiny clean for the day when Charles would come back for it.
The people there generally liked Mr. Ryterband, did they?
Oh, indeed, yes. Charles had a great deal of charm, you know. My sister used to say to him, “Charlie”—she called him that, I never did—”Charlie,” she’d say, “I swear you could charm the quills off a porcupine.” But I don’t mean to suggest for one minute that he was a slicker or anything like that.
No, ma’am. But he was popular and well-liked. I take it.
He certainly was. I counted myself very fortunate to have a beau like Charles. He was in his late twenties then, of course, and he’d come down the street in his open Cord roadster as dashing as you please. The young people admired him tremendously.
He worked in Anchorage with your brother until the beginning of the war, isn’t that right?
Yes. Then naturally the both of them went charging right off to enlist in the Army, right after Pearl Harbor. In Alaska at that time, of course, they weren’t sure but what the Japanese would invade Anchorage at any moment. It was much closer to Tokyo than any other American city, you know.
But Mr. Ryterband was rejected by the Army.
As a child he’d had rheumatic fever and very bad asthma. That was why his parents had moved to Southern California—for Charles’ health. By the time he grew up he wasn’t sickly at all, of course, he was the healthiest man I 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. Harol
d 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.
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