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Erie, Pa.,
Friday, June 14, 1940.
"Whitey" upset our tank applecart very badly today and I feel he made a bad mistake. He took the stand that we should not make a pilot tank ourselves but only should collaborate with someone else, our contribution to be the electric transmission only. His major argument was that we might be forced to build tanks complete as a result of building a pilot - also that the problem was a serious one and we shouldn't stick our neck out and tie up our engineers on it. So he started a dicker via Chicago Office with the Whiting Corp. to collaborate with them - but unfortunately the dicker came to naught when Whiting said they felt fully capable of designing a mechanical transmission. Baldwin of course would go in with [[circled, underlined "W"]] if they went electrical. Alco told Whitey yesterday they had turned the job down entirely, not being interested in a developmental project like this. I argued with Whitey futilely on it - my argument was that he was tossing away a precious chance to get electric drive across for these tanks and hence was risking the loss of a potential business that might be enormous. Also we, who might develop a remarkably successful transmission are turning down an opportunity to really serve the Army in this crisis. But Whitey was adamant and finally phoned Horn to go tell Gillespie we would collaborate with anyone on electric transmission but would [[underlined]] not [[/underlined]] build the whole tank. As I expected, Horn balked because of Emmet's commitment - said he thought Emmet had authority - but Whitey told him to go ahead and tell Gillespie anyhow.