How did morale hold up? "You've got to remember: we were just coming out of the Depression," Young says. "We learned that morale starts with the stomach. If you've got a job that puts food in your stomach, that's pretty good for morale."

The company culture helped, too. "Helmerich & Payne has always been a company that gives people responsibility and turns them loose," Carl Young says. He should know: he ended up working for Helmerich & Payne more than 49 years, "except for six months of boot camp during the war."

" The top guys, Walt Helmerich and the others, always took a real interest in their men. And the company has always emphasized character — integrity, honesty, fairness. You had a job to do and you were expected to do it. If you did, you could be sure you'd be treated fairly. Working for that kind of company makes a big difference."

Company, Forward

During the war, Helmerich & Payne's drilling rigs stayed busy most of the time, but cash flow was a constant problem. Rates for contract drilling barely covered costs, and shallow drilling simply became too competitive.

In February, 1944, Walt Helmerich decided to accelerate the company's move into deeper drilling, in both contract drilling and exploration activities. Three deep wildcats were successful in the Hull-Silk field in the Texas Panhandle. Several other wells in the 5,000-foot range began producing 300 to 500 barrels per day.

The same year, a new corporate structure was set up. It was called White Eagle Oil Company.

Walt Helmerich was concerned that some financial institutions had grown wary of lending funds to companies that drilled for their own accounts. White Eagle was set up to engage in exploration and production — and Helmerich & Payne, Inc. became a wholly owned subsidiary involved only in contract drilling. This corporate structure, under the White Eagle name, would remain intact until 1959.

In 1945, the last year of World War II, Helmerich & Payne opened negotiations to purchase George Morgan's Cardinal Oil Company, which then had 241 producing wells, an average daily production of 3,000 barrels, and an additional 300 proven locations on 50,000 lease-acres in west Texas.

Helmerich & Payne did not have the funds to buy the entire company, so White,Weld, the investment banker that had been so important to the firm's financial health, stepped in again to help put the deal together.

Brighter Than A Thousand Suns

The war in Europe was over. Hitler's Third Reich had lasted only 12 of its promised 1,000 years.

In the deserts of New Mexico, a crew of scientists worked feverishly to set up a test of a new super-weapon. Two years earlier, they had begun to gather near Santa Fe, arriving one at a time and carrying false drivers' licenses. They were instructed not to meet in public and not to call each other by their professional titles, such as professor or doctor.

The final assembly of the first atomic bomb began on July 12, 1945. Four days later, at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, the countdown reached zero. The decision to use the super-weapon rested on the conclusion that an invasion of Japan could cost millions of lives, American and Japanese. Thus, the end of World War II was marked by two flashed, at Hiroshima dn Nagasaki. Onlookers said the flashes were "brighter than a thousand suns."