Claude's Climb

Back in 1927, T. (for Tubal) Claude Ryan got a telegram that seemed to ask the impossible: Could he build a plane that was capable of flying nonstop from New York to Paris? Ryan, a happy-go-lucky ex-barnstormer and head of a tiny airplane plant in San Diego, casually wired back that he could. A few days later, a lanky pilot named Charles A. Lindbergh walked into his hangar, offered him $15,000 if he could do the job in 60 days. Two months later, the Spirit of St. Louis was completed.

Lindbergh's flight, and the publicity for Ryan's plane, should have established Ryan in aviation for life. But he missed out. After a scrap with his partner, he sold his interest in the company (which later folded).

Fireballs. Ryan, who had started flying at the age of 20 and had run one of the first commercial airlines (between San Diego and Los Angeles), then started a moneymaking school for transport pilots. In the depths of the Depression, he started building planes again. His low-winged, metal Sport Trainers took acrobatic and speed prizes all over the world, and brought in enough orders to keep his company busy. In 1939, Ryan Aeronautical Co. landed its first U.S. Army contract to build training planes.

During World War II, Ryan built 1,600 PTs for the Army and a few score Navy Fireballs, the nation's first combination jet and reciprocating engine fighters. His sales soared to $55.5 million, and his training school taught 11,000 Air Corps cadets how to fly. But at war's end, Ryan, like other planemakers, went into a dive. He slashed his work force from 8,500 to 850; to keep them busy, he started making a streamlined casket which he called the "Grecian Urn." It just about buried Ryan; in 1947 the company lost $127,660.

He pulled himself out by a deal with North American Aviation which had sunk $8,000,000 into making the Navion, a small private plane. Ryan bought the Navion project, hauled off the tools, parts, blueprints, etc. in a caravan of trucks. His small plant enabled him to keep down costs and, by upping the Navion's price, he was soon making money selling between 350 and 500 a year (the Army alone bought 250 Navions, now uses them as "flying staff cars" in Korea).

On Target. Last week Ryan got his biggest order in seven years--a $25 million contract from Boeing for fuselage sections, floor beams and cargo doors for the huge C97 transport. Now, with $70 million in defense orders on his books and 3,600 employees on the payroll, Ryan thinks he is finally flying smoothly again. The Navion has been temporarily shelved, and Ryan now produces components for every big U.S. airframe maker. He is pioneering in the new field of ceramic-coated parts for jet engines and is developing a complicated pilotless jet target plane.

Last year the company netted $402,000 or $1.02 a share on its $22 million sales. This year, with the costs of expansion largely past, it should do better.

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