Aerospace: No End in Sight

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Ex-accountants Haughton and Kotchian keep a close watch on costs, and Gross is more than content to leave Lockheed's day-to-day operations to them and the company's 46 vice presidents and the presidents of nine quasiautonomous subsidiaries. But there is no question that Courtlandt Gross has the final say on major policy decisions. In a notoriously nervous industry, where a decision made in panic can cost many millions, Gross is known for his imperturbability. Recalls Haughton: "The first time I ever saw him he was in a swivel chair, talking on the phone. Then I heard a commotion, and I saw that he had reared back too far. He was flat on his back on the floor—still talking. I don't think he missed a beat."

In describing his functions, Gross characteristically makes light of his special talents and compares himself unfavorably with his late brother. Says he: "Robert had an instinct for the creative side of the business which I haven't got. I rely entirely on others."

Done with Teddy Bears. Sons of a well-to-do coal-mine manager, the Gross brothers grew up in the Boston suburb of West Newton, where acquaintances still remember that a chauffeur-driven Pierce-Arrow bore the family to the Second Congregational Church every Sunday. Even in their youth, Bob, eight years the older, was an icebreaker; Court happily tagged along. He followed his brother to boarding school, then to fashionable St. George's School near Newport, where his four-year academic average of 91.75 remains a record. Says Classmate James Hutchinson, now a Boston bond broker, recalling the serious-minded boy: "Courty put his teddy bears away a little before the rest of us."

After graduating from Harvard ('27) with a major in English literature, Court trailed Bob, by now a rising junior executive, to the Boston investment-banking house of Lee, Higginson & Co. After the 1929 crash, he again followed his brother—this time into their first venture in aviation, New Haven's Viking Flying Boat Co., which built sport-model seaplanes. But the Depression hardly provided a favorable market for sport planes, and Bob lost heavily. Leaving Court to run the moribund company on his weekends, Bob Gross moved West and, with six associates, bought then bankrupt Lockheed in 1932 for a mere $40,000. Said the judge who permitted the sale: "I hope you know what you're doing." Today Lockheed common stock is worth $710 million, but for a while the judge's skepticism seemed well founded: during its first six months under Bob Gross, Lockheed sold only $23,000 worth of spare parts. While Bob was struggling in California, Court took a small office in Manhattan and, because the company was too poor to pay him a salary, began trying to sell Lockheed planes on commission.

Famous planes they were, even then. Founded in 1916 by two barnstorming brothers, Allan and Malcolm Loughhead (pronounced Lockheed), the company had produced the Winnie Mae, a single-engine Vega in which one-eyed Wiley Post circled the globe, another Vega in which Amelia Earhart set a nonstop cross-country record for women. Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh flew a later Lockheed model, the Sirius, across Bering Strait to Tokyo.