Target Manhattan

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. 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 making these investments for tax purposes, as we learned later. They needed losses. They actually couldn’t afford for the company to make a profit. Can you believe that?

Very easily. It’s not unique by any means. Now, from nineteen forty-eight until nineteen fifty-three, your husband and your brother went separate ways, is that correct?

Yes, sir. My husband was with Lockheed. He worked mainly on improvements in the mechanical components of the Constellation. The company was making two jet fighters at the same time-the F-80 and the F-94-but Charles had nothing to do with those. We lived in Burbank, near the plant. In the meantime my brother returned to Alaska and worked for the airline there-in Anchorage and sometimes in Seattle-until the Reds invaded South Korea. He was called up and went to Japan. During the Korean War my husband, in the meantime, left Lockheed and we moved a few blocks to a new apartment in Sherman Oaks. We both went to work for the Knute Special Effects Company. I worked in the office there. In fact, I kept my job there even after Harold and Charles set up their own company to restore airplanes for the movies.

That was ACA-Air Corps Associates?

That’s right. They started the company in nineteen fifty-four. It became one of the most successful aircraft companies in the world.

It lasted some fifteen years?

Mr. Skinner, the company still exists and is still an important company. It was founded by my brother and my husband.

Yes, ma’am. But they were frozen out of it in nineteen sixty-nine?

Yes. They were victimized by greedy businessmen, once again.

Well, as I understand it, there was a dispute about moving into the jet market. Didn’t that have something to do with it?

Yes, sir.

All right, Mrs. Ryterband. I certainly don’t want to open up old wounds of that kind.

I had expected this meeting to be much more painful than you’ve made it, Mr. Skinner. I do appreciate your kindness-you’ve been very gentle.

Well, I’m afraid the painful part is yet to come. Now, at the beginning of nineteen seventy the three of you moved back here to New York-actually to Long Island. Both your husband and your brother joined the staff of Aeroflight Incorporated, a company owned by Samuel Spaulding. Is that substantially correct?

Yes, sir. Sam Spaulding was an old friend of Harold’s from the war days. Quite honestly, he worshiped Harold.

So I understand. But there really wasn’t too much for Mr. Craycroft or Mr. Ryterband to do there, was there? They regarded themselves as superfluous much of the time, I’m told. This must have chafed them, didn’t it?

They kept busy, I can assure you. But it’s true they sometimes felt they’d been shunted onto the sidelines. My husband made several forays outside the company, looking for something more suitable.

I wasn’t aware of that.

Oh, my, yes. We visited Beechcraft, Cessna, Ryan, and the Hiller Company. He even went to Canada to be interviewed by an odd little company in Saskatchewan that is building working replicas of the old Ford Trimotors. Did you know that’s still the most efficient airplane of its kind? For its weight and capacity it’s still a good economical craft. That’s why they’re making them again. Harold and Charles contributed a great deal to the design of that plane, you know-back in the thirties.

Yes, ma’am. But I take it none of these job interviews panned out?

Until just a very few years ago, Mr. Skinner, the aviation industry was still in the hands of the giants. The pioneers. They were old men, but honorable and highly creative. But today there’s a new generation. Money men, businessmen. As they’re fond of saying, the accent is on youth. By nineteen seventy my husband was fifty-eight years of age. To put it bluntly he was too old. Too old! Good Lord, sir, Henry Ford was still active in his seventies!

Yes, ma’am. Now, in June of last year Samuel Spaulding died, and control of Aeroflight passed to your husband and your brother?

In a manner of speaking.

In a manner of speaking? Could you explain what you mean by that?

They weren’t free to operate the company according to their own judgment, Mr. Skinner. If they had been, I’m sure the company wouldn’t have failed. But they had the lawyers breathing down their necks. The executors looking over their shoulders. The stockholders and directors carping at them incessantly-actually filing applications for court orders to inhibit our plans for the company.

Still, Mr. Ryterband and Mr. Craycroft had a proxy from Mrs. Spaulding to vote her controlling stock in the company, didn’t they?

Only in theory. Only on paper. Every time they tried to put a policy into practice, the minority stockholders would go into court. Several times they obtained restraining orders to prevent us from making vitally necessary moves while they pressed in court for a declaration that Mrs. Spaulding was legally incompetent. They never succeeded with that perfidy, of course, but their delaying tactics ruined the company. They all blame Harold and Charles for it, but the truth is they’ve only themselves to blame. They were greedy, shortsighted, and vicious.

Nevertheless, the company went bankrupt. A Chapter Eleven was filed in December of last year, isn’t that the case?

There was no choice. The stockholders were stupid people, Mr. Skinner. They knew next to nothing about the aircraft business. They were Wall Street businessmen who had bought the stock over the counter and suddenly began to regard themselves as aviation experts. Their folly was abetted by the New York State courts, which we all know are among the most corrupt and stupid courts in the world.

Was that how Mr. Craycroft and Mr. Ryterband felt about it?

What do you mean?

Did they blame the failure entirely on the judges and the Wall Street investors?

New York City is a pesthole of evil, Mr. Skinner.

Aeroflight was a sound company until the New York businessmen bought into it. Naturally we blamed it on them-the businessmen and their robed henchmen on the judges’ benches.

That’s a bit melodramatic.

The truth sometimes is.

Yes, ma’am, I suppose it is. One could hardly quarrel with that, in the light of what’s happened subsequently.

In Washington.

Yes, and right here in New York. I’m referring to the incident with your brother’s bomber.

I’ve been waiting for us to get to that, Mr. Skinner. I’m completely prepared to discuss it with you. You needn’t wear kid gloves. I want to bring it out in the open-I want to try and make you understand it.

I appreciate how painful it must be for you, Mrs. Ryterband.

Thank you. And I appreciate your gallantry. There’s so little of it in the world anymore. Good manners cost nothing, yet so few people seem to be able to afford them nowadays.

Well, I think we both understand that this isn’t a criminal hearing, Mrs. Ryterband. Nobody is being accused of anything, not formally. Our sole purpose is to ascertain the truth. Therefore, you can see it wouldn’t serve any purpose for me to be ill-mannered.

You’re very modest, Mr. Skinner. But I don’t believe you’re being kind out of ulterior motives. You’re a gentleman at heart. I can always tell.

Well, thank you. But I’m afraid these next questions are going to be painful, no matter how gently I may word them.

You just go ahead and ask them. I’m a strong woman. I come from strong stock.

Very well. Now can you tell me if you had advance knowledge of their plans?

The scheme to get the money, you mean. Yes, they discussed it in my presence. But you must understand they were both dreamers. Particularly my brother Harold. He was always soaring on flights of fancy. I had no way of knowing they would actually put this one into practice. If I had known that in advance, I’m not sure what I’d have done, but I might have informed the authorities. I don’t say I would have, mind you. But I might have. I’ve asked myself what I would have done. But the truth is I just don’t know. I owed them both my loyalty. But, in spite of the provocations that drove them to it, it was unquestionably a terrible act. An immoral act, a criminal act. A terrible thing. But it’s so easy and cheap to evaluate these things in hindsight.

Yes, ma’am. At what point in time did you first hear them discuss this plan?

It must have been January.

Of this year?

Yes, of course.

That was just after the company went on the rocks.

It was just after the company was driven onto the rocks, Mr. Skinner. There’s an important distinction.

I understand. Go on, please.

They were bitter. There’s no denying it. Our whole lifetimes brought to this point-the injustice of it. I’m sure you can see how that could affect anyone. Anyone at all. Much lesser men than Harold or Charles.

They felt betrayed?

Betrayed, angry, bitter, exhausted. There are so many words to describe it. But none really expresses how they felt-how the three of us felt, really. I worked in the office at Aeroflight myself, you know. I was a member of the team right alongside them, shoulder-to-shoulder with them. I’d seen it through with them. They’d been such gentle beings all their lives, can you understand that? And here time and time again the callous petty criminals of this world had destroyed all the things we’d worked for. Not our personal fortunes or possessions-we didn’t care about those. But out of their unfeeling greed the businessmen had literally broken Harold and Charles. In his way Harold, particularly, was a very proud man. You must understand that.

Proud of his engineering talents, you mean?

Proud of himself, as an important pioneer in the field of endeavor which he championed.

I see.

Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Skinner. Harold didn’t want to lord it over anyone. He had no interest in usurping power over people. I sometimes thought that was his biggest mistake. He always complained that people in authority were incompetent to administer. But Harold never took the time to exercise authority himself, even when he had it. That was his primary weakness, I believe. By default he had made it possible-made it easy for the businessmen to destroy his life. But that certainly doesn’t absolve them from any responsibility for having destroyed him. He may have made himself vulnerable-but they were the ones who exploited his vulnerability.

Go on, please.

Time after time our dreams had been crushed by men with money. Men to whom money and power were synonymous. Harold and Charles wanted very little, really. All they wanted was the freedom to work. Inevitably, it seemed, that freedomlvas denied them. By incompetent superiors at first. That taught them they had to have their own company-their own workshop in which they could develop their own inventions without interference from bosses. But unless you’re very rich, you can’t establish your own company without outside investment capital. And as soon as you solicit capital, you have to contend with ignorant greedy investors.

Stockholders.

Exactly. No matter what we did, we were at the mercy of men with money. And men with money are men who will ruin you every time, without an ounce of feeling.

Well, that depends on whether they think you’re doing a profitable job for them with their money, doesn’t it? In any case, I gather what you’re saying is that your brother and Mr. Ryterband began to feel that they could obtain the freedom to work only by amassing a considerable fortune of their own, so that they wouldn’t be at the mercy of outside investors?

You put it very well, Mr. Skinner. That was exactly what they had in mind. They wanted money, because after all their experiences they had learned that in this world there is no other freedom. Not if you’re dedicated to a kind of work that requires expensive machinery.

So they decided to steal the money.

It wasn’t an out-and-out decision, Mr. Skinner. They dreamed aloud. To me that was all it was, until after it actually happened. I had no idea they would actually do it.

Weren’t you aware of the reconversion work your brother was doing on that old bomber? The work must have taken them months, if it was only the two of them.

You can believe this or not, as you please, Mr. Skinner, but not only was I completely unaware of it-my husband was equally unaware of it. Harold rebuilt that bomber completely by himself, with his own two hands. It was his secret until the very end.

Are you sure your husband didn’t know about it? Couldn ‘t he have been keeping it from you?

I’m quite sure. My husband never kept things from me.

I see. Then in fact Mr. Ryterband wasn’t let in on the plan until the last minute?

We were all let in on the plan very early, Mr. Skinner. But it wasn’t a plan then, don’t you see? It was a dream. A fantasy. It was as if they were composing the scenario for a movie. We played at it as if it were a game. “Wouldn’t it be fitting if we could get the money from the businessmen? They owe it to us.” It was that sort of thing, do you see?

Like children hatching diabolical plots against grownups whom they don’t like. The sort of plots that are worked out in great detail, but which everyone knows will never be acted upon.

Yes. You do understand. I knew you would. Don’t you see, children’s fantasies are like that-they can afford to be cruel because it’s all only imaginary. I know I for one indulged avidly in the fantasy. We would sit around gleefully imagining the consternation of those fat men in New York, pouring their perspiration out while a bomber circled overhead threatening to destroy them at any moment, and powerless to do anything about it at all! It sounds such a terrible confession to make, but can you believe we all sat around and laughed, just thinking about the expressions on their faces?

Yes, I can see that. It was a game of make-believe.

Oh, my, exactly, yes! You do see-you really do.

Yes, ma’am. I think so. Now, how did this scheme take shape, do you recall? I mean, how did the details develop in your minds?

I’m afraid it’s rather confused in my memory. You don’t hatch a make-believe fantasy full-blown. It grows, rather like a pearl-layer by layer. Detail by detail.

There must have been a kernel. An idea that triggered it.

Well, it must have been the idea-Harold’s idea-that there ought to be a way to get our money by using our own old airplanes. The very airplanes the businessmen had sneered at, as obsolete and useless. It was the attraction of that irony, I think.

And perhaps the idea of proving that a thirty-year-old Flying Fortress wasn’t quite as “useless” as the world thought?

Yes. That’s it.

I think I have a general picture of the origins of the scheme, Mrs. Ryterband. I wonder if we could shift our discussion to some concrete details. There are questions to which we still don’t have answers, and maybe you can help us there.

I’ll be happy to try.

Thank you. One thing that’s troubled us is the bombs your brother had in the airplane. They were real bombs, of course. But the question is, where did he get them?

He bought them. From the Air Force.

Openly?

My, yes. At one of the surplus auctions. Several years ago, actually. Of course he didn’t buy them originally to use them as bombs.

I beg your pardon. What else could they be used for?

Why, scrap metal of course. The Air Force certainly isn’t about to sell real bombs to civilians.

I’m sorry. I’m confused.

The bombs were five-hundred-pound bomb casings, Mr. Skinner. The explosives had been removed, of course. They were simply empty casings. The Air Force sold them for scrap metal. Harold and Charles were always buying scrap metal, by the ton. Those old bomb casings were a good deal less expensive than new steel from a factory.

I’m beginning to clear it up in my mind, Mrs. Ryterband, but I still don’t understand how he obtained the explosives that he put in the bomb casings. I assume that’s what he did?

For anyone who works in industry explosives aren’t that difficult to obtain, Mr. Skinner. I have no idea exactly where or when Harold bought the explosives he packed into these particular bombs. But it should be possible for you to find out. I’m sure he bought it on the open market somewhere and made up a story about demolishing buildings or blasting out a new runway. He was known in the industry. No one would think twice about selling explosives to Harold. Now, as for the detonating devices and the other mechanical parts of the bombs, I’m sure he built those himself, either from the original specifications or from designs of his own. Such work would have been child’s play to Harold.

Yes, I’ve come to understand that much. Now there’s one further question I’d like to put to you. We know, of course, that they must have worked out a highly ingenious escape plan. I think it’s obvious, however, that we still don’t know exactly what that plan consisted of. I’m hoping that this part of the plan was discussed in your presence, as part of the make-believe you all participated in. Was it?

Well, of course. That was crucial to the game, wasn’t it? I mean, there was no point making a plan to steal all that money if you couldn’t get away with it afterward.

Yes, ma’am. Could you tell me the details of that plan?

You don’t have to lean forward so intensely, Mr. Skinner. I never mutter. Do you find it hard to hear me?

Not at all.

That’s better. Now you just sit back in that comfortable chair and I’ll tell you about the escape plan. It really was quite a marvelous scheme. We all contributed to it. I was very happy that my own ideas fitted in so well.

Which ideas were those?

Well, the idea of the window, of course, and the boat.

Perhaps you’d better describe it from the beginning.

Well, now. Let me think. The first problem was to pick a day that would give us the best weather for it.

Partial clouds?

That and the probability of low mist over Long Island Sound. In any case we decided that of course we’d have to wait for a day when those conditions applied.

Isn’t it the case, however, that your husband made an appointment with Mr. Maitland, the banker, two days beforehand?

My husband didn’t make that appointment, Mr. Skinner.

Then who did?

My brother, I’m sure. I don’t know who else could have. But Charles didn’t even know about the scheme until the very morning they put it into effect.

How can you be sure of that?

Because I slept in the same room with Charles that night. In the same bed. If he’d known they were actually going to do this thing that day, don’t you think I’d have known it? Don’t you think at least he’d have been nervous?

He wasn’t nervous at all?

We’d all been a little nervous for months. We were upset by our-our plight, there’s no other word for it, really. But Charles was no more upset or nervous that night than at any other time in the preceding several months. We both slept very well, thank you. In the morning-about half past six-the phone rang, and it was Harold calling from the factory. He wanted to talk to Charles. I put Charles on the line, and I got off. Charles talked to Harold briefly and then told me he had to go out-Harold wanted to see him over at the plant. Charles left the house at about a quarter to seven, and that was the last time I saw him.

Did he seem particularly agitated when he went out?

No. I’m sure Harold didn’t spring it on him until he arrived at the factory. You see, Harold would have done it that way. He’d have known that Charles wouldn’t have gone along with it if he’d had time to think it over. He must have presented it to Charles as a fait accompli. Told him, “You have an appointment at ten o’clock with the banker, Maitland. You’ll have to get right in the car and go.”

And your husband would have gone? Just like that?

Well, we’d been discussing the plan every day for months. We’d rehearsed it in our talks, endlessly. The only thing we didn’t know was that it was real. That Harold had actually rebuilt the bomber and armed it with bombs.

Can we get back to the escape plan, please?

Certainly. We’d worked out the timing very carefully, taking everything into account. Everything. The plane was a B-17C, the long-range model, it could stay airborne at low speeds for up to eleven hours without running out of fuel. It would take off at ten o’clock precisely and arrive over Manhattan within the half hour. There was fuel enough to keep it in the air until nine o’clock that night.

The deadline given by your husband was three o’clock.

That was for the payment of the money. The deadline for the bombs was ten minutes past five.

That gave us a good margin of fuel-nearly four hours.

Go on, please.

Well, around three o’clock Charles would signal Harold by radio that the money had been delivered to his car. Then Charles would drive away with the money while Harold continued to circle over the city to give Charles time to get away with the money.

We know that much. Where did he plan to get away to?

The route was very carefully planned. Charles would cross the Williamsburg Bridge and take the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the Long Island Expressway and then drive east on Long Island to Route One Oh One, where he would turn south into the Williston Park area and allow himself thirty minutes to lose his pursuit. We assumed he would be followed, you see, in spite of our instructions, and we had studied methods of “shaking a tail,” as they call it. Naturally we realized there was no way to elude the pursuit permanently on the highways, but all we really needed was a few minutes’ invisibility. For Charles, that is. We’d done a good bit of reading-detective novels, mainly. Some of them are quite ingenious, you know. I’ve been addicted to Rex Stout and John D. MacDonald for many years. I was able to find passages in their books which gave us excellent techniques for escaping pursuit by the police or anyone else.

Remarkable.

How’s that?

Nothing, Mrs. Ryterband. Do go on.

Having eluded the police, Charles was to drive his car into a certain two-car garage. Naturally we hadn’t actually gone to Williston Park to select such a garage, but I have to assume that my brother actually did so at some point, without telling us. That morning he must have given Charles the address of the garage. There are a good number of householders in those areas who have garages but don’t have cars of their own, and who therefore rent out their garages to people who want to secure their own cars off the street. We’d talked about renting one of those garages.

So we can assume that’s what Mr. Craycroft actually did.

I’m sure you can, yes. In any case there was to be a second car waiting in that garage. There were to be watertight duffel bags in the second car. As soon as Charles arrived in the garage, he was to transfer the money out of whatever containers it was in, and repack the money into the waterproof bags. This was partly to protect the money, but it was also because we’d read about cases-kidnapping and that sort of crimes-where the police had actually hidden small transmitters in the suitcases that contained the ransom money, so that they could follow the suitcases by radio direction finders.

You’d thought of everything, then.

My, yes. Don’t forget we’d been indulging ourselves with this game for months.

Yes, of course. Well, go on, if you don’t mind.

Yes. Leaving the original suitcases-empty of course-in the original “getaway car,” and transferring the money itself into duffel bags in the second car, Charles would then drive north on Route One Oh One to Port Washington, where the plan called for a rented fishing boat to be waiting at a particular\ dock. Again of course we hadn’t actually rented any boat or tied it up at any real dock. But again we’ve got to assume Harold did these things in secret.

Yes. I see.

The boat had to meet certain requirements. It had to have both sailing masts and fairly powerful engines. To increase its possible range of operation, you see. It didn’t have to be particularly fast, because we weren’t expecting to have to outrun anyone in it, but it did have to be seaworthy in terms of the open ocean, and it had to be fairly small and simple to operate because Harold was never interested in sailing, and that would leave most of the operation of the boat up to Charles and myself. Charles became an accomplished sailor, of course, during his days in Alaska and on the California coast. Until last year, in fact, we had our own twenty-four-footer on Long Island, but we were forced to sell it.

I see. This boat was to have been rented and tied up at a dock in Hempstead Harbor, was it? And Mr. Ryterband would take the money aboard the boat?

Yes. According to our plan it would then be nearly five o’clock, allowing for the time taken by traffic en route and the time used in evading pursuit and changing cars. So Charles would actually be on board the boat at some time between four thirty and four fifty. He would cast off and make for Long Island Sound under engine power, and as soon as he was out of Hempstead Harbor, he would put up sail if the wind was with him. Otherwise he’d use engine power; there wouldn’t be time for tacking against the wind.

I see. Were you supposed to be on board with him?

According to the make-believe plan, yes, I was. As it actually turned out I didn’t even know they were putting the plan into action, so of course I had no idea there was a real boat, let alone that I should be there aboard it. I believe I know what actually happened in their minds, however.

Yes?

It was a perilous voyage they had in mind. I believe Harold intended from the beginning to leave me behind until they had reached their final destination. Then, I think, he hoped that he and Charles would be able to get a secret message to me, and that I would be able to join them.

All right. Let’s leave that subject for the moment and get back to their escape plan. You’ve placed Mr. Ryterband, with the money, aboard this boat in Long Island Sound. Now, what is Mr. Craycroft’s part in it? How do the two men make a rendezvous?

We had worked out the exact compass coordinates on the charts. At five ten-a bit more than two hours after the money was paid-Harold would discontinue circling over Manhattan Island. He would cross the East River above the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges as if he were going to make another circuit in his pattern, but once over Brooklyn he would continue to fly east and then northeast across the heavily populated areas of Long Island.

The idea being that there would be no point along his route where he could be shot down without risking the destruction of a populated area?

Yes. Exactly.

And then?

You have to understand that we’d made certain assumptions about the way the authorities would react to all this. If we were wrong, of course, it didn’t matter, but if we were right we had to be prepared for their countermeasures.

Can you explain that a bit more, please?

We expected the Air Force or the Navy to have armed planes in the air, ready to shoot Harold down at the first opportunity. If they didn’t put up such planes, of course, it simply made our scheme easier to carry out. But we had to assume they would have planes up.

I see.

That was why we’d decided that the key to the plan was to pick a day when there would be clouds over, Long Island Sound. And a degree of mist on the water.

Go on, please.

Flying eastward-northeastward-across Long Island, Harold would seek these clouds. He had an unlimited number of places to go into the clouds-he could do that at any point where the clouds overhung both the shore and the waters of the sound. The point was he had to leave land behind at a point where he wasn’t visible.

What about radar? Pursuit planes would be tracking on radar, wouldn’t they?

That was what the window was for.

You mentioned a window before. I confess it baffles me.

“Window” is a word used by air people to describe strips of aluminum foil which are dropped from an airplane to confuse radar. I have no idea what the derivation of the word is. But in any case our plan called for bundles of foil to be secured in the spare bomb racks of the airplane so that they could be released by my brother the moment he flew into the concealment of clouds above Long Island Sound. This wouldn’t prevent them from following him, of course, but it would prevent them from getting an accurate enough fix on him to shoot him down immediately. All he needed was a few minutes. In any case we assumed by this point that the pursuit wouldn’t be eager to shoot him down. Their objective would be simply to follow him, see where he landed the plane, and then arrest him on the ground. Once he’d flown away from the populated areas he was no longer a threat to them, you see? So we assumed they wouldn’t shoot him-just track him.

I don’t see how that helped your plans to get away.

Well, we were perfectly willing to have them follow the Flying Fortress. That was a diversion, you see.

A diversion?

That was why we needed the cloud cover. As soon as he was concealed inside a bank of cloud above the waters of the sound, Harold was to drop an inflatable emergency raft out of the plane, and then he was to jump out of the airplane and parachute into the water. The strips of window would confuse the radar of pursuing planes, and they wouldn’t know he had jumped out of the plane. Naturally they would think he was still flying it. The plane would be set on automatic pilot, and would continue to fly a northeasterly course out over the Atlantic Ocean until ultimately it would run out of fuel and crash in the ocean. That wouldn’t happen until more than three hours later, of course, which gave us at least three hours before any suspicions could be raised.

Remarkable.

Yes, it was really very ingenious, I think. Harold would parachute into the water, climb into the rubber life raft and paddle to the rendezvous on the middle of the sound, where he would meet our fishing boat and climb aboard. We hoped to have a ground mist to at least partly conceal this part of the plan, but it wasn’t absolutely essential; the only vital part of the weather requirement was that he had to bail out in clouds, so that he couldn’t be seen when he left the airplane.

The boat would then take them where?

By stages down the coast to Florida and then ultimately to Mexico, where we understood it was possible to obtain new false papers for a price.

And then?

To South Africa, where we intended to set ourselves up in the aircraft business under new names.

It was an incredible plan, Mrs. Ryterband. There’s one detail that puzzles me just a little. If Mr. Craycroft phoned the bank on Monday, how did he know the weather conditions on Wednesday would be suitable?

I can only imagine that he had studied the extended forecast, which as I recall called for partly cloudy conditions throughout most of that week. If the weather had not obliged-if there’d been an important change by Wednesday morning-I’m sure he’d simply have called the bank, canceled the appointment and waited for another opportunity.

Was the Merchants Trust Bank a particular target for any special reason?

No. Any of the major banks would have done as well. We chose the Merchants Trust mainly because it wasn’t too far from the lower East Side Highway, which meant that Charles wouldn’t have far to drive before he could get across the bridge into Brooklyn and away on the expressway.

Did it occur to any of you how bulky five million dollars in cash would be?

We worked it out very carefully, Mr. Skinner. Assuming there would be a random selection of bills in denominations from one hundred dollars down to ten dollars, we calculated a total of approximately thirty-five thousand bank notes. They would be used bills-we specified that. We actually went to the bank and cashed a check for two hundred dollars and changed it into one-dollar bills. Then we weighed the two hundred bills on a postal scale. It was almost exactly eight ounces-half a pound. I’m not sure our scale was exactly accurate-it was quite old-but at least it gave us a working figure. Four hundred bills to the pound. That meant the total would weigh about ninety pounds. Not more than one hundred pounds, in any case. Wrapped in banded stacks of five hundred bills each-about two inches thick, each stack-we calculated seventy stacks. You could fit it all into one large suitcase or two ordinary suitcases. Charles was always a big man, powerful in build-he never went to fat. It was no great effort for him to carry two fifty-pound suitcases, one in either hand. We even tried it, with suitcases filled with books from my library shelves.

Extraordinary.

You needn’t be so surprised, Mr. Skinner. We thought of everything. Everything.