Onward and Upward

by Tony Wilson

Chapter 21

  ---Just before Christmas---

  Even as I stuffed yet another mouthful of stuffing down my throat I knew that if this was not a hoax I would need a list, whenever we made preparations to go away Sheila always had to have her lists, and for our larger adventures she even had a list of the various lists that were in use, so I gradually got used to them and now I was starting one of my own. I knew that this find would be destined for the front pages of most national and international papers so I had to think carefully before it was made public. I could just imagine a hoard of souvenir hunters converging on the hangar and prizing off bits of the aircraft with a screwdriver, causing irreparable damage to its surrounding area, so what I wanted, what I really really wanted – was a news blackout until I had everything tucked safely away in a controllable area. My Hunters were using X and Y hangars, so how about Zulu hangar, it was the largest of all my hangars, in its heyday it had been an aircraft storage facility, but now it was empty, and it would be perfect; so over the Christmas break David and Topsy purloined it.

  Topsy had a smidging of ‘historic’ aircraft experience, he had once sat in the cockpit of a Spitfire, but he had become a Royal Navy Air Mechanic after it had joined the jet age with a vengeance, all front, and most second line aircraft had jet propulsion, although the Gannets did still have propellers, so I needed someone ‘on board’ that knew about that era.

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  As he grew up Michael Leigh was not one for charging around shooting Indians or Germans, he was quite content to build his Kiel craft Spitfire or assemble his Airfix Me 109, he didn’t mind what aircraft type it was, just as long as it had a propeller (or 2, or 3, or 4) on it. On leaving Technical College he only sent out one request for employment, he wanted an apprenticeship at the local aircraft maintenance and restoration company at nearby Duckford Aerodrome, and he was successful, and although he had to learn all the latest maintenance techniques, all he really wanted to do was to apply them to the aircraft in the restoration division. He had been with the company for fifteen years when it decided to specialise in corporate jet maintenance and put its small restoration division up for sale.

  Michael persuaded his Bank Manager that it was a sound gamble, sorry investment, and so overnight he went from deputy Manager of airframe restoration to Boss, and it turned out that the Bank Manager had a shrewd eye for business as over the years his company grew, gaining a reputation second to none in the restoration business, so it was no surprise that on Christmas Eve, before I had even seen my aircraft or even met Aaron, I was standing beside him in front of one of his Companies hangars, waiting for David and Topsy to arrive. The complex was of course closed for the holiday period but Maria had successfully conveyed to him that it might not be just a ‘flight of fancy’ on my part for wanting to ‘as a matter of urgency’ have a conducted tour by the CEO, and he did the tour bit to perfection. An hour later, after he had explained the on-going work on an ex Spanish Air Force Hispano Buchon (basically a Messerschmitt Bf109G with a Rolls Royce Merlin engine) I asked him if he had ever worked on any other German WW2 era aircraft, in particular Fw 190’s or Stuka’s. He explained that they had just done some work on a ‘new build’ Fw 190 but had never worked on a Stuka, ‘why?’

  I had decided as we walked around that I could work with this man and so David, right on cue, removed the three grainy photographs from his briefcase and handed them to me, and I placed them down on a nearby bench. Three hours later David, Topsy and Michael lifted off in my G450 and headed towards El Campo, Michael with his unopened Christmas presents in his suitcase.

  ----Back to the future present----

  Michael was the first one down the ramp of that first fixed wing aircraft to land at the airfield in almost seventy years, and niftily side stepping Topsy and his wheels he made a bee line for the hangar, it took them two days to get him out again.

  The second Herci-bird to arrive delivered special ground handling equipment, egg boxes, padded poles, loads of plastic boxes with locks on, and Marcus – he now had another title ‘keeper of the keys’. There were too many things that could go ‘missing’ around the hangar and stores so Michael suggested that everything should be transported securely to Zulu hangar, but it would be a mammoth logistical task to record and pack everything so it was ‘Marcus – grab your sandals and a biro’, but why did I need egg boxes? These boxes weren’t for eggs, they were for aircraft wings and other delicate parts, and were very heavy long thin boxes, divided internally up into squares. They were well padded on the top, and equally well padded poles could be slid into any of the squares, one either side of say a wing, supporting it in the upright position. As each wing would require two boxes and four poles I would need an awful lot of boxes, so along with them came a fork lift truck, Marcus would soon be transport co-ordinator as well. As that second Hercules lifted off in a cloud of sand, transporting a reluctant Michael back to Mi Casa for a change of undies I looked around the site. A small tented city was starting to form to the side of the hangar, and there were an awful lot of people ‘sworn to secrecy’ starting to appear, including some bomb disposal experts, it was really about time for me to extract my digit and get to work before they all died of boredom, so it was into Twinkle, back to (up until now) a very redundant Lady S, and then up anchor and we all sailed merrily up the coast. We passed Casablanca and turned smartly into the mouth of the River Bou Regreg where Rabat, the Capital of Morocco was situated, but not too far, apparently there was a silt problem, and the first person to come up the ladder was Saïd, one of Vicente’s partners. Saïd was born in Morocco, but at the age of twelve his parents had taken him from Rabat to Spain, where he quickly picked up Spanish and had no trouble moving into further education, eventually qualifying as an Abagado (solicitor). Vicente had spotted a rising star, so Saïd was now back in Rabat negotiating, on my behalf, the removal of the ‘not really very valuable’ antiquities, and aparantly I had an appointment with the Minister of ‘Antiquities and all things old’ the following morning.

  Aaron eased a highly polished Twinkle, complete with its real gold stripes down the sides (they appreciated little touches like that), onto the front lawn of the Ministry, and Saïd and I were escorted inside to meet the Kings close relative. Saïd had been doing sterling work negotiating the terms of the transfer of the ‘not really very valuable – but we might as well take them off your hands whilst we are here’ antiquities for a few days, but now they had reached the ‘delicate’ stage of the proceeding - money had been mentioned. Although no representative of the Minister had actually visited the site they instinctively knew (despite what Saïd said) the value of such a find, so as negotiations progressed (from Dirham, through Euros and onto US Dollars) it was time for a personal appearance, and after the usual preliminaries we all sat around a beautiful table, and scared to death to blink, just in case it cost me a small fortune. The Minister had in front of him a formidable looking form, at least twenty pages thick, and despite all the negotiations so far only the front page had been filled it, my name, address, telephone number and bank details, and he sat facing me with a stony face, it was time for me to pull something astounding out of the bag, so I reached into the bag and removed a booklet and a form, and with an equally stony face I slid the booklet, entitled ‘how to open your very own numbered bank account in Switzerland’, and a completed application form in front of him.

  He glanced contemptuously down at them (he already had two), and then slid a very small piece of paper of his own over to me, which had a very large number written on it.

  I glanced down at it, and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  ‘Right’ he said, and signed the last page of the said formidable form. ‘If you wouldn’t mind filling the rest of it in for me at your leisure I would be much obliged. I just hate form filling’, and passed it over to me, I hope Aaron hadn’t switched the engines off yet.

  In the time that it took Aaron to fly me to the Airport, to reconnect me with my Gulfs
tream, the first Hercules had already lifted off from El Campo.

  When all the aircraft and artefacts were safely in Zulu hangar I started to relax, but Michael then got out his list and started to get busy. Early on in our negotiations we had agreed that all restoration work on the actual airframes (with the exception of one Storch) would be done at El Campo, it made sense, I had the security and space (as well as the money to get the best specialists in), and at the top of the said list was ‘have everything checked by the experts’ so anyone with an ‘antiques or vintage aircraft’ related job description descended on El Campo, there were experts not only interested in the aircraft but also the flying clothing, technical books, the weaponry and just about everything else that had been flown over; there was even someone over the moon over Herr von Beneckendorf’s desk, what a sad life some people have, although not all boxes with locks on went to the hangar. R.H.I.P. (rank has its privileges) – two boxes, one full of aviator’s sunglasses and the other with aircrew chronometers (watches to the uninitiated) inside found their way into my safe, they would make ideal thank you presents for Aaron, David, Pierre, Topsy, Marcus and Michael when the time came, plus me and a few honoured visitors.

  Second on his list was to let all the aviation magazines have a heyday, although under the watchful eye of my new curator (AKA Marcus).

  Third was to set up a ‘production line’ to try and make all the aircraft airworthy, even ones that were earmarked for aircraft museums, and to round up a team of specialist engineers to supervise the ‘volunteers’ that were coming out of the woodwork. Almost all restoration schemes rely heavily on enthusiastic amateurs, and requests to help ‘at their own expense’ were flowing in, so Michael and I devised a cunning plan. Each aircraft would have a number of proven amateurs assigned to it, and as it approached the beginning of its restoration they would be flown out, accommodated and fed by yours truly, until their aircraft had successfully test flown, then they would be flown home again (perhaps after being strip searched), that way as many serious enthusiasts as possible would be able to experience the pleasure of a successful restoration, yet another job for my accommodation officer (AKA Marcus) – one day I will have to sit down and write him a proper job description, I had inherited him along with El Campo and he sort of just ‘did things’ for everyone.

  There was no rush to start the restorations so ‘the week after Easter’ was pencilled in, although Michael estimated that if everything went according to plan the whole project would take a year to eighteen months, give or take, which led to item number four, but before that I first had to fend off a load of my new best friends.

  As I may have occasionally mentioned before, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so my freebee lunches started to come home to roost. I started to have visits from some of my new ‘Best Friends Forever’ that were ‘just going to be in the area, so could we pop in for a quick decco’, and one of the first was a World class collector of vintage aircraft, only he kept them all to himself, so after I had given him the conducted tour of Zulu, he gave me his shopping list, ‘I’ll have one of those (a Ju 87), two of those (Fw 190’s), 6 of those (flying suites) etc’, but when I pointed out to him that I would only be ‘loaning’ them to people, organisations or museums that would be flying or exhibiting them to the wider general public, not to private collectors, he did what he usually did in those stiuations, he offered me ‘silly money’. When I politely refused he doubled it, and it was only after I pointed out to him that I was not interested in his Dollars, ‘after all I have a lot more than you do’ he got the message and stormed off; I guess there will be no more free lunches from that neck of the woods.

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