The Embattled Farmer

No U.S. Navy planes had prouder records in World War II than those made by Grumman Aircraft--the Wildcat and Hellcat fighters and the Avenger torpedo bomber. After the Battle of Savo Island, James Forrestal, then Under Secretary of the Navy, declared flatly: "Grumman saved Guadalcanal." In the Battle of the Marianas, which pilots called "the turkey shoot," they downed 360 Japanese planes in a single day, the record bag of the war.

Grumman not only turned out rugged planes that, riddled with holes, brought pilots safely home, but it turned them out fast. Its production boss was brusque and burly Leon ("Jake") Swirbul. Under his prodding, the Grumman plant, amid the potato fields of Long Island, N.Y., had more the atmosphere of the front line than of a factory. It turned out more than 17,000 aircraft for the Navy, in March 1945 produced 658, a record for a single month. As executive vice president, Swirbul shared a small, unpretentious office with President Leroy ("Roy") Grumman. Working in shirtsleeves, Jake and Roy eschewed the usual trappings of executive life, called themselves "the embattled farmers," and always kept their office door open to all employees.

What the Navy Needed. When the U.S. entered the war, a Navy officer called on Swirbul to tell him the plant would have to expand. Swirbul pulled out his blueprints. "We are," he said. The Navy man offered him help on getting steel priorities. Replied Swirbul: "I've got steel." He had bought up the scrap when Manhattan's Second Avenue El was razed.

Swirbul liked to exhibit Navy aces to the workers, and while doing so pick up tips on how to make better fighting planes. Lieut. Commander Edward ("Butch") O'Hare (five Japanese bombers shot down and another crippled in a single engagement) visited the plant, talked of the need for a bigger, faster, more heavily armed fighter. Swirbul listened attentively. Within seven months the F6F Hellcat was rolling off the production line, the first U.S. fighter designed after Pearl Harbor to get into action.

Swirbul was constantly thinking up schemes to raise morale and lower absenteeism. He set up a "green truck" service to cruise the parking lot and change flat tires. Later, when Grumman Aircraft employed 8,000 women, many of them housewives, the green trucks would run errands for them, check to see if the windows were down in their homes and the iron turned off. He built baseball diamonds, organized a band to play for dancing at lunchtime. To promote a company spirit, Swirbul set up a bonus system based not on individual performance, but on the plant's total output. Grumman employees--from janitor to junior executives--collected bonuses that ranged as high as 30% of their annual salaries.

Victory Cutbacks. After V-J Day, when the big cutbacks came, Swirbul was forced to lay off the entire working force of 25,500. He hired back a nucleus of 3,500. Although Grumman Aircraft's sales dropped from $236,846,861 in 1945 to only $37,615,540 the next year, the company--unlike most of the rest of the industry--made a profit.

After Swirbul moved up to the presidency in 1946, the company diversified into boats, missiles and space engineering. But Swirbul's main business remained aircraft--90% for the military. Grumman's gross last year was $288,978,628--second only to the peak year of 1944.

The hard pace took its toll on Jake Swirbul. Last week, at 62, weakened by cancer and stricken with pneumonia, he died. When Board Chairman Roy Grumman announced the news over the plant public-address system, there were workers on the assembly line who wept.

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