Atomic Fusion

Financier Floyd Odium, boss of Atlas Corp., is famed for buying shaky companies, restoring them with sound management, and selling them at a handsome profit. This week he did it again. He sold Atlas Corp.'s control of Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corp. to General Dynamics Corp. for $8,700,000 in cash plus $910,000 in stock, more than double what Atlas paid in 1947. With that, he got ready for new "special situations," said breezily: "I've got them flying around my shoulders."

Nimbly, Odium had shifted some burdensome problems on to the broad shoulders of General Dynamics' President John Jay Hopkins, who had courage to take on Convair. Only eight months ago its B60 bomber, on which it had pinned its biggest hopes for multimillion Government orders, had been turned down by the Air Force in favor of Boeing's B-52 (TIME, Aug. 4). But Hopkins was making a calculated gamble on a longer-range future. Convair has the Government contract to develop an aircraft driven by atomic propulsion. Since Hopkins' own company already has the Navy's contract to build its two atomic submarines, the merger, in effect, made Hopkins the "Mr. Atom" of U.S. industry.

Moreover, Hopkins has other promising irons in the fire. Another General Dynamics subsidiary, Canadair, has the exclusive contract for building F-86 jet fighters in its Canada plant for the R.C.A.F. Since Canada has no excess-profits tax, this contract has proved so lucrative that Canadair alone contributed 70% of General Dynamics' gross of $134,500,000 last year (net: $4,900,000). Thus, Jay Hopkins, a man few know, has become boss of a major North American armament complex.

Closed Lips. Hopkins, who is 59 and looks scarcely 49, is little known because he guards his own affairs almost as closely as the AEC guards his submarines. California-born, lawyer-trained (Harvard Law '21), he learned about corporations in the top-drawer Wall Street law firm now called Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He learned about finance as assistant to Secretaries of the Treasury Ogden L. Mills and William H. Woodin. In 1933 he came to New York to help run an investment trust (Mayflower Associates Inc.), in 1937 became a director of Connecticut's famed old Electric Boat Co.

From its founding in 1897, Electric Boat had been a feast-or-famine company. In World War I, it saw fantastic expansion, built 124 subs for the Allies, but for the next 13 years got not one Government order. In World War II, it whipped out 82 submarines, and ended the war with $5,600,000 cash in reserves. Hopkins sought bargains to even out the submarine business, grabbed up Canadair in 1947 from the Canadian government for $8,000,000, half its cost. In 1949 he got the Canadian license for North American's F-86s, gave Canadair its biggest growth ever. Last year Hopkins created General Dynamics for his two companies.

Wide Plans. With Convair, Hopkins' immediate prospects are not quite so rosy. The loss of the B60 contract was a grave shock to ex-Boss Odlum. But Convair still has a backlog of more than $1 billion in orders for its military planes and its pressurized Convair 340 transport. Last year it netted $10,400,000, close to its World War II peak ($12,300,000). With Convair in the fold, Hopkins hopes to make General Dynamics both general, dynamic, and radioactive.

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