Love, Death, Chariot of Fire

by Winton Higgins

  He’s honour-bound to see the Type 224 project through to its dismal conclusion – that’s the second point Father would make. And who knows? It may yet provide him with an opportunity to try out some technical advances. But the third, overriding point has to be this: start thinking about the project that will succeed where the present one will surely fail.

  Since the Nazi regime came to power in Germany, Bob McLean has been muttering about the urgent need to develop what he calls ‘a killer fighter’ – a description that hardly applies to the Type 224. What would an actual killer fighter look like, then? Images of peregrine, cheetah and jaguar flash through Mitchell’s mind. Beautiful, swift, lethal creatures. Is this the starting point?

  He lifts his gaze from his father’s grave. Eric is looking across at him, waiting to catch his eye. When he does so, he jerks his head in the direction of the waiting cars behind him. Mitchell nods, momentarily returns his gaze to the grave in silent thanks and farewell, and moves off to join his brother.

  Southampton. Monday 26 June 1933, early morning. Reginald Mitchell and his son Gordon drive away from Portswood and head towards London eighty miles away. Mitchell first conceived of the day’s outing as the fulfilment of a paternal duty to ‘spend time’ with his son, but now he’s actually looking forward to their shared adventure – the persistent discomfort in his lower abdomen notwithstanding. Gordon is excited about the trip. So he should be! He’s getting a long drive in the front passenger seat of his father’s posh car. All the way to Hendon aerodrome, to the Society of British Aircraft Constructors’ yearly air show. All sorts of weird and wonderful new aeroplanes will be put through their paces. Including his father’s brand-new amphibian, the Seagull V.

  Eva has prepared a picnic hamper for the travellers. Mitchell has appointed Gordon to the post of Official Navigator and handed him a map case enclosing several road maps and a compass. He can instruct the boy in the finer points of navigation for most of the journey without risk, while the road signs are clear and frequent. But he’ll be relying on his son’s newfound skills when they draw closer to the capital and will need to find their own way around it to Colindale, eight miles to its northwest, where the aerodrome lies.

  ‘Why have you made this seaplane, Dad?’ Gordon wonders in between navigational issues. ‘I thought you’d stopped designing them to work on a fighter plane.’

  ‘Well, the firm needs to sell seaplanes to paying customers. It’s always done that. Otherwise it won’t survive to make fighter planes as well.’

  ‘You keep calling your new plane an “amphibian”. What does that mean? In the photos it just looks like any old flying boat to me.’

  ‘That’s because the photos were taken when it was sitting in the water with its wheels stowed away. But when it’s airborne the pilot can make the wheels fold down and land it like a landplane on an airfield or an aircraft carrier. An animal that lives both on land and in water, like a frog or a crocodile, is called an “amphibian”. So we use the name for planes that do so as well.’

  ‘Why have you put the engine on back to front? Does that mean it pushes the plane along instead of pulling it?’

  ‘That’s right, big boy. A back-to-front engine is called a “pusher”. Just like you’ve worked out for yourself. The normal ones are strictly speaking “tractors”, because they pull the plane through the air as you say. We usually just say “propeller” though. Pushers are handy on small flying boats because they don’t throw up spray on the water, and don’t make so much noise and slipstream turbulence in the air. Besides, they let someone climb out onto the front deck to grab a mooring line after they’ve landed without being chopped to bits by the propeller.’

  ‘These customers of yours, Dad. What can they use the plane for?’

  ‘Just getting around. After that, it depends on who the customers are. Air forces and navies could use it for patrols, reconnaissance, mapping, finding and sinking enemy submarines, and rescue work. It can carry machine guns fore and aft, and bombs or depth charges. A navy can put it on warships and launch it into the air with a catapult.’

  ‘What?! How would they get it back again, then?’

  ‘The plane lands on the water and taxies up alongside the ship, which swings a crane over its side, picks the plane up, and winches it back onto the deck.’

  ‘Golly! Did you think of that, Dad?’

  ‘Well, my friends and I designed it to do that. But we did so because a customer got the idea first and asked for it.’

  ‘It must have been a very good customer for you to do that! Who was it?’

  ‘The Australian navy. And yes, the Australian government has been one of our better customers over the years.’

  ‘I’ve never met an Australian. What are they like?’

  ‘You’ll probably meet one today – you can see for yourself. But be warned: this one’s a decorated war hero. So don’t go picking a fight with him, big boy!’

  Gordon giggles, then changes tack once more. ‘Who’ll be flying the plane today?’

  ‘All these questions! It’ll be Major Summers, the chief test pilot at Vickers. You’ve met him at our place.’

  Gordon laughs. ‘Oh yes, I remember him. But you and Mum and your friends didn’t call him “Major Summers”. You all called him “Mutt”!’

  ‘That’s his nickname. But you’ll call him “Major” or “sir”.’

  ‘All right, Dad. But how did he get such a silly nickname?’

  Mitchell sighs, but can’t resist the indiscretion. ‘Test pilots have a dangerous job, which can make them a bit superstitious. Early on Major Summers found a way to ward off bad luck, or so the story goes. He’d pee on the rear wheel or skid of any plane he’s about to take up for the first time. Like a dog marking its territory, so that’s where the “Mutt” comes in. He’s been doing the job for a long time now without any accidents, so it obviously works. Anyway, they say that’s how he got his nickname.’

  Gordon squeals with laughter. ‘You mean, he’s going to pee on the plane today in front of all those people there?!’

  ‘No, big boy. Fortunately he took it up for the first time five days ago.’

  Mitchell gets directions to the Supermarine enclosure from the official checking passes at the entrance to the aerodrome. They pass behind the main parking area, the one with the public sitting and standing spaces in front of it. Some people are sitting on the roofs of their cars to get a better view of the airfield, where a few planes are already manoeuvring on the turf or running their engines while mechanics tinker with them. Two planes are already airborne and making low passes over the field.

  He noses the Rolls into the firm’s enclosure and cuts the motor twenty yards from where the little Seagull is standing. He and his son contemplate it through the windscreen in silence. It’s no beauty, but few biplane flying boats are. The egg-shaped nacelle holding the engine is itself suspended by diagonal struts between the widely spaced upper and lower wings. As if a giant spider has laid her egg sac in the middle of her web. The small stabiliser floats hang down from the lower wings near the tips. Such details aside, the stressed all-metal hull has an elegant upward sweep to it. It exudes a cheeky confidence. As well it might – it’s engineered to withstand the rough handling of the catapult and the winch, and a six-foot swell on the water.

  One of the airborne craft, a small biplane, is heading back towards the airfield and performs a barrel roll over the heads of the cheering crowd. Gordon leaps out of the car.

  ‘I’ll be over at the fence, Dad! The fun’s getting started!’

  Mitchell watches him join around thirty other people – special guests of the firm – sitting or standing against the fence closest to the airfield. He himself alights and heads towards the hut where he knows he’ll find Summers.

  After a few minutes the two men leave the hut for the gate leading onto the field. Gordon comes running at the sight of the test pilot in his flying suit, leather helmet in hand. Summers is in his late twenties, thickset
but darkly handsome in his boyish way. His slight swagger betrays a sense of the glamour of his profession.

  ‘You remember Major Summers, don’t you, Gordon?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely. How do you do, Major,’ the boy says, holding out his hand.

  Summers takes it. ‘Glad to meet you again, Gordon. Wonderful that you’ve come to watch me put your dad’s new little wonder through her paces. Do you want to come and see her up close before the show?’

  Unnecessary question. The trio approach the plane. Gordon is invited to sit in the pilot’s seat in the enclosed cabin while the two men carefully check the external linkages and rigging of the plane, and the fuel and oil levels. Summers then replaces Gordon in the cockpit and runs through his controls and instrument checks while the boy watches his every move through the open hatch.

  A man hurries out of the Supermarine administration hut and comes up to the hatch. Mitchell gestures to Gordon to make way for him.

  ‘When the plane that’s up there now lands, the field is yours, Major,’ he says.

  ‘Best start her up, then,’ Summers says. ‘Enjoy the show, Gordon!’ he calls as he buckles on his harness.

  Mitchell leads his son back towards the gate, but they stop halfway and gaze back at the plane. They hear Summers yell ‘Clear propeller!’ and slam the hatch shut just before the starter motor whines and the blades of the propeller begin to swing round. The engine coughs, belches white smoke, roars into life.

  ‘Chocks away!’ Summers bellows over the racket as the previous exhibit touches down on the turf. The Supermarine attendant drags them aside by the lanyard attached to them. The Seagull begins to trundle across the turf to its starting position. Father and son return to the enclosure.

  Summers shows off the plane’s ability to climb into the air after a very short run. Equally pleasing is the grace with which the wheels then swing out and tuck up under the lower wings, to disappear into their bays. This plane is Mitchell’s first with a retractable undercarriage.

  The Seagull climbs for a mile or so beyond the aerodrome perimeter before tilting over onto its starboard wingtips and executing a tight turn to head back. In level flight its top speed is 135 mph, but Summers appears to get much more than that out of it in a shallow dive that levels out over the crowd. He performs three more passes over the aerodrome, each time climbing higher before the turn, and coming in lower. He has the crowd half-cheering and half-screaming at the sight of something that looks for all the world like a conventional flying boat hurtling just feet above solid ground.

  The plane then spirals up to an altitude that Mitchell reckons to be around 1500 feet. It twists around and dives steeply back to earth, its engine howling. Suddenly the nose lifts and the plane flips over on its back, kicking up its floats like the heels of a can-can dancer.

  ‘My God, he’s looping the bloody thing!’ Mitchell hears himself exclaim. Has anyone ever looped a flying boat before?

  The Seagull pulls off the manoeuvre in fine style, with no sign of stalling at the apex. The crowd is besotted. Summers makes two more low passes over the aerodrome as if taking bows for his daredevil stunt. The wheels fold down on his third descent, and he demonstrates the plane’s ability to land smoothly and come to rest after using just fifty yards of turf. It then taxis back towards the Supermarine enclosure.

  Mitchell and Gordon are about to go out to meet it when a tall man, dressed in slacks, blazer and chequered flat cap, detaches himself from the little knot of guests and comes over to them. He appears to be around the same age as Mitchell.

  ‘I understand you’re Mr Reginald Mitchell, the Seagull’s designer,’ the stranger says in an Antipodean accent.

  ‘And I’m assuming you’re Wing Commander Lawrence Wackett, representing the air attaché at Australia House. I heard you might be coming.’

  The man grins and stretches out his hand. ‘“Larry”.’

  ‘“Reg”,’ Mitchell says, taking it. ‘And this is my son, Gordon.’

  Wackett shakes the boy’s hand with a ‘Very pleased to meet you, Master Gordon,’ before turning back to Mitchell. ‘I must congratulate you on your new aircraft, Reg. Such a hardy, versatile machine! My colleagues and I have already pored over the drawings, specs, and reports from the catapult tests. But nothing beats a live performance, eh? Especially one that includes that last manoeuvre.’

  ‘So, do you think your government might be interested in buying one or two of them, Larry?’

  Wackett throws back his head and laughs. ‘“One or two”! My dear Reg, ours is a big country. We’ll be needing two dozen, more like it. We have long and happy experience of your flying boats, and you seem to have excelled yourself with this new one. So we don’t need to shilly-shally. If we put in our order soon, I trust we can get in first. Before your slow-footed air ministry places its own order and gums up the works.’

  Mitchell glances down at his son, whose eyes are wide with amazement and pride. He hopes Gordon will remember this day. It sounds like it will also keep the wolf from Supermarine’s door, too.

  The rooms of Mr William Gabriel, FRCS, Harley Street, London. Friday 11 August 1933, 3 pm. Reginald Mitchell sits facing the eminent surgeon’s desk in one of the two visitors’ chairs, while the man himself can be heard washing his hands in the basin behind his patient. His nurse sits at a small desk in a corner typing up her handwritten notes taken during the examination just concluded. Gabriel muttered incomprehensible Latin anatomical terms as he rummaged in and around Mitchell’s backside, but the nurse seems to have made sense of his words which she scribbled down and can now reproduce in typescript.

  The examination was excruciating. He’s still smarting from the outrage perpetrated on his arse. Far worse is what it portends. On the Monday he went to see Dr Picken, their family doctor in Portswood, about his continuing bowel discomforts. It was just a precaution, before he took the family off on its annual summer holiday in Devon. The good doctor would not commit himself to a diagnosis, but what he found unsettled him, and he arranged the earliest possible consultation with Mr Gabriel – ‘the best man in the business’ – for Mitchell.

  The nurse finishes her typing and lays her work on the surgeon’s desk. The washing noise ceases, and Gabriel is presumably drying his hands equally assiduously. He comes around to his own side of his desk and glances down at the typed pages while still standing and rolling down his shirtsleeves. He’s a wan, ascetic-looking man of indeterminate age with thinning hair and an apparently fixed worried frown. Mitchell wonders if he ever leaves the building.

  ‘I understand your wife is sitting in the waiting room, Mr Mitchell.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s entirely up to you, but I suggest we ask her to step in. She should be part of the conversation.’

  Mitchell hesitates. He doesn’t want Flo mixed up in this sordid business. But how could he keep her out of it, if it’s as bad as it seems? More to the point, he needs her support. Desperately. He nods his assent. Gabriel glances at the nurse, who hurries out to the waiting room. She returns with Flo, who is looking pale and frightened. Gabriel greets her courteously, introduces himself, and invites her to sit beside her husband. He sinks into his own chair, elbows on the desk top. The nurse leaves the room.

  Gabriel looks down at the typed pages again, then looks up at Mitchell and Flo. ‘I’m afraid I’m the bearer of very bad tidings, Mr and Mrs Mitchell. I’ve spoken to Picken on the phone, and he assures me that you’re both resilient and intelligent people. So I’d be doing you a disservice if I were less than frank with you.’

  He pauses. Mitchell feels as if he’s been turned to stone. Petrified! Flo is starting to tremble.

  ‘Mr Mitchell, you have cancer of the rectum which has spread to the lower end of your colon. I strongly recommend the immediate surgical removal of both. This operation would leave you with a colostomy – an opening in the lower abdominal wall through which faeces and wind can pass. The faeces would be caught in cotton-wool pads that you’
ll need to keep attached to your abdomen by a special belt. That would be a permanent arrangement, I’m afraid.’

  Flo gasps, and begins to sob. Mitchell takes her hand.

  ‘I’d rather be dead!’ he blurts out. ‘There must be an alternative! What if I refuse this operation?’

  ‘You’d probably be dead within nine months at the latest, and the last months would be very painful indeed. Your cancer is well advanced, Mr Mitchell.’

  ‘But I will survive if I have this operation – is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘You’ll extend your lifespan considerably through this operation. But in the longer term – given the stage of your cancer’s development now – your chances of avoiding a future recurrence are…not good. If it recurs, we probably wouldn’t be able to do much for you, unfortunately.’

  ‘“Not good” – what does that mean? Can you put a figure on it, for Christ’s sake?’

  Gabriel sighs. ‘There are no statistics. I could only make an informed guess based on my own clinical experience.’

  ‘Please do so!’

  ‘Very well. I put your chances of surviving the next five years at somewhere between twenty and twenty-five per cent.’

  Flo screams, struggles to breathe, begins to wail. Mitchell is too thunderstruck to clarify his own wild emotional swings. He struggles to his feet, draws Flo up on to hers, and holds her tight. She buries her face in his shoulder. She grips him, almost in anger, as she sobs. He feels a stab of guilt for having visited this calamity on her. Life with an invalid, followed by early widowhood, despite her having married a man so much younger than herself.

  Still holding her, Mitchell turns to the surgeon. ‘“In the midst of life we are in death”, then!’ he hisses at him.

  Gabriel looks startled at the liturgical quote. ‘That’s profoundly true for all of us, Mr Mitchell.’

  Flo gradually loosens her grip on him and sinks back in her chair. Mitchell does likewise. She seems to be withdrawing into a state of shock. Suspended animation. His thoughts whirl around in total disorder. Yes, he’d rather be dead. Rather be dead than endure this very moment, let alone what awaits him if he’s a good boy, does what he’s told, accepts the daily horror of the colostomy, and a lingering death when the cancer returns. Immediate death looks like a good option. The whole edifice of his future life has just crumbled anyway. No ‘threescore years and ten’ for him!