Document Type: Presentation (Industry). Purpose: Informational. Authority: Author Expertise.

Scope: 22nd Wings Club General Harold R. Harris "Sight" Lecture, presented on May 16, 1985 at the Wings Club, New York City by Gerhard Neumann, a WW II engine mechanic in the American Volunteer Group and later U.S. Army Air Forces. He was a key player in the development of the jet engine. He retired as Vice President of General Electric, overseeing their jet engine business.

Contents (from the Introduction): "I have heard and read with interest, the "SIGHT" lectures by my predecessors. I was particularly impressed by the words of a good friend of mine, Willis Hawkins, who spoke here in 1983, and I would like to remind you of something he said in his introduction. He said, "that by the end of the 1980's we will have retired almost the entire generation of people most responsible for what the industry has done for the nation and the world, and that we — many of us who have lived in the aerospace world through its thick and thin periods - think that we have learned a great deal from this experience, and yet we are rarely offered an opportunity to share these lessons with the new generation." And that indeed is sadly true. Somehow we don't seem to get the word through to the two generations which have followed us since we started out.

I'd like to deliver this lecture from the clear perspective of a "dirty fingernail mechanic." At the same time, I'd like to tell you something about my experiences in World War Il with the original Flying Tigers - which was a very small group - of the Chinese Air Force in 1941/42. Then, I was with the United States Army Air Corps until one year before the end of the war when I switched over to the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. As you know, that was the intelligence organization of the military and I could be helpful to them because I had learned to speak Chinese by that time. So I am going to talk about some of the things that happened, and what we did, in aviation. But I want to look back to explore the reasons behind a viewpoint I developed that is reflected in my book Herman the German."