Love, Death, Chariot of Fire

by Winton Higgins

  ‘Where does all this leave Supermarine, Ralph?’

  ‘Stuffy Dowding and the people around him have their hopes set on Supermarine and Hawker to deliver the goods. Rather soon, if I may say so, Mitch.’

  ‘Do you mean that our firm is actually competing with Hawker?’

  ‘Not at all. You both seem to be developing effective fighters with some varying capabilities. We’re hoping that both will live up to their promise. We’ll need the full manufacturing capacity of both firms combined, at very least, to equip all the new fighter squadrons that our expansion scheme demands.’

  ‘”Varying capabilities”. What does that mean?’

  ‘Let’s wait and see when the prototypes actually fly. But it’s no secret that Hawker’s design for a single-seat fighter builds on quite a few tried and tested elements inherited from biplane fighters, while yours seems to represent a leap forward into a whole new era of design.’

  Mitchell looks at his wristwatch. ‘Thanks for putting me in the picture, Ralph. I’d better take you down to the erecting shop now, to show you what you’ve come to see. Beverley Shenstone, our aerodynamicist and wing-design expert, will meet us down there. I’ve arranged for a couple of our senior engineering people to come down a bit later, so you can ask them questions about what’ll be under the skin of the coming prototype.’

  Mitchell leads his guest as they clatter down the flying iron staircase to the works floor. Most of the work stations are temporarily abandoned as he hoped, making conversation possible. As they approach the mock-up he spots Shenstone’s elongated frame bent over and peering along the port wing, his eyes on a level with the tip. His face is set in that look of super-concentration of his; he seems to be checking the angle of twist along the wing which is his proud mathematical achievement. When the two interlopers approach he breaks his concentration, and straightens up to be introduced to the man from the ministry.

  Sorley turns his gaze to the mock-up, and emits a low whistle. He walks slowly around it with eyebrows raised. At one point he crouches down to look underneath. When he reaches a point straight in front of it he takes two steps back while his gaze swings from left to right and back again. He opens his portfolio on the starboard wing, unfolds a large-scale drawing, and steps back again with it in his hands. His eyes flick from the drawing to the mock-up.

  ‘Stunning!’ he exclaims at last. ‘Absolutely stunning! You have to forgive my being lost for words, gentlemen. The crates I flew in the last show looked nothing like this. In fact, they looked like haphazard tangles of canvas, wood and wire in comparison. And even this drawing you sent us a while ago gave me little forewarning of what your plane would look like in the flesh, as it were.’

  He grins at his hosts. ‘I suppose at this point I’m supposed to ask you if you think it’ll fly.’

  Shenstone and Mitchell laugh good-naturedly but don’t deign to give any such assurance.

  ‘Is this exactly how you expect the prototype to look, Mitch?’

  ‘Almost exactly. Rolls-Royce assure us that Fred Meredith’s new ducted cooling system is working well in tests with the engine they’re developing for us, the PV 12, so we’ll need to add a couple of streamlined air scoops inboard under the wings – one for the engine coolant and the other for the oil. Small price to pay for off-loading that damned evaporative-cooling shemozzle!’

  ‘Yes, I heard that the evaporative system was a pain in the backside when your Type 224 underwent trials.’

  Mitchell considers it quite unnecessary to mention the 224. He goes on anyway. ‘The other change will please you, Ralph, if what I’ve heard is correct. Formally we’re still working to a specification that calls for two guns in each wing, so you can see only four gunports on our mock-up here. But I understand that you’ve successfully pressed for eight guns in all new ministry specs to meet the requirements of high-speed aerial skirmishes, and we intend to provide for that.’

  Sorley glances almost protectively at the neat little aircraft. ‘Can you do it without messing up those beautiful wings?’

  ‘Easily,’ Shenstone says. ‘One of the many advantages of these double-elliptical wings is that they don’t start to lose width or structural strength until mid-span from the root – unlike tapered wings with straight edges. So we can accommodate two extra guns between the existing ribs in each wing.’

  ‘That’s reassuring,’ Sorley says. ‘But as you probably know, we might soon want to replace four of the eight guns with two cannon. Just as soon as we can develop a cannon that doesn’t jam and has a high enough rate of fire. Will you be able to modify the wings to carry them too?’

  Shenstone shrugs. ‘Same answer, Ralph. The cannon barrels will stick out from the leading edges, of course, which’ll look a bit untidy. But won’t add appreciably to drag. Either way, the plane’s firepower will be formidable.’

  Mitchell takes advantage of the natural pause in the conversation. ‘The engineers will be down here any minute, Ralph. They can field any structural queries you might have. In the meantime you can ask Bev here anything you like about the plane’s aerodynamics, and exactly how we arrived at the solutions we’ve baked into this design. When you’re all finished, just get someone to direct you back to my office before you go. There’ll be a cup of tea waiting for you. In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me…’

  ‘Of course. I’ll see you in a little while.’

  Around 11.30 there’s a knock on the door of Mitchell’s office, which then opens to admit Sorley before Mitchell has time to respond.

  ‘Do come in, Ralph,’ he says, after the event. By which time Sorley has sunk unbidden into the visitor’s chair across the desk and is reaching for his pipe. He seems to imagine he’s on staff here, Mitchell thinks, but doesn’t really mind. Vera comes in soon after and places tea and biscuits before them.

  ‘Two things have deeply impressed me here this morning, Mitch. The first was no surprise – the mock-up itself. Though the depth of my admiration is indeed a surprise. The other is the expert team you’ve built up around this Type 300 project. I get the impression that each member of it has contributed something vital and understands the plane inside out.’

  ‘Very perceptive of you. That team means everything to me. No-one’s continued participation in this work is guaranteed. And as you made clear earlier, the significance of the work itself can hardly be exaggerated. So it must go on, through all subsequent stages of the plane’s development in future years. Come what may.’

  ‘I find all this confusing. I always imagined that designers were lone geniuses, and all your team members point to you and assure me that that’s precisely what you are. But here you are, telling me an entirely different story.’

  ‘If you want to meet a lone genius of a designer, seek an audience with Sidney Camm over at Hawker’s.’

  Sorley hoots with laughter. ‘For once I’m one step ahead of you, Mitch. I’ve already gone to see him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Team geniuses seem to have a distinct advantage over lone ones, including the advantage you mention – durability. Better outcomes, too.’

  ‘ “Better outcomes”?’

  ‘You’re pressing me to be indiscreet, Mitch! All right, between you and me, Camm’s plane will be a very useful weapon. Requires only existing workforce skills to make, thus relatively easy to manufacture in quantity. Easy to service and repair, too, for the same reason. And it’ll have the measure of just about anything the Germans are likely to throw at us. We’ll be very thankful to have it. But that creation of yours downstairs is something else again. Assuming no big technical issues arise when it’s flight-tested, it’ll become our exterminating angel. Visiting the wrath of God on the enemy!’

  Not much can make Mitchell blush, but Squadron Leader Sorley has just managed to. And rendered him speechless.

  ‘Which raises a burning question for me. What would be wrong with the ministry putting in a production order for the Type 300 in the near future, before the prototype is t
ested? I’ve every confidence that any design shortcomings will prove minor and easy to correct. We just don’t know how much time we have to produce an aircraft like that in sufficient numbers, and train both air- and ground-crew to fly and work with it.’

  Now Sorley has managed to shock him. He makes an effort to give a measured reply. ‘My dear Ralph, no aeroplane is fully designed until the test pilots have had their say. They’re an integral part of our design team, and they can’t get down to work at all until a prototype is ready to take to the air. Their words after multiple test flights are like gold to us. We must adjust a design to eliminate any shortcomings the prototype reveals in flight. Before we’ll let you air force types anywhere near it.’

  ‘But hang on, Mitch…’

  ‘Sorry, there’s no way round that. Besides, as soon as we receive a production order for a new plane, we have to re-jig and re-tool our works to fill the production run called for – an expensive and time-consuming business. Especially given what you’ve already implied: we’ll need to develop new skills in our workforce for this plane. As will the air force itself, like you say. If we needed to modify the plane in the light of test flights of the prototype, we’d have to repeat the process – as well as fix the planes we’d already built. I appreciate the urgency you point to, but you know the old saying – “More haste, less speed!”’

  Sorley looks crestfallen. ‘All right, Mitch. What you say makes sense. I trust you’ll appreciate the urgency in building the prototype, though.’

  ‘Of course I do. But we won’t be cutting any corners. We’ll build it meticulously. When that plane takes off for the first time, I need to have complete confidence in it. Confidence that I’m not putting the pilot in harm’s way.’

  Sorley rises to take his leave. Mitchell asks Vera to ring for a taxi to return his guest to the railway station. The two men shake hands warmly and welcome further contacts between them.

  As Mitchell listens to Sorley’s footsteps retreating down the iron stairs, he falls to brooding over the sense of German menace that the man from the ministry has re-awakened in him. It’s only a short step from that disquiet to brooding over his own chances of lasting the distance.

  Chapter 12

  A fortieth

  North Stafford Hotel, Stoke-on-Trent. Monday 20 May 1935, 7 pm. Dressed in his best suit, Reginald Mitchell brings the Rolls to a gentle halt at the entrance to the imposing hotel. His widowed mother, Elizabeth, is sitting beside him. Flo and Gordon are occupying the back seat.

  ‘Why don’t you let us all out here, darling, and then park the car,’ Flo says. ‘Take your time – have a smoke in the square. We might want to arrange a few things with the rest of the family before you come in.’

  She and Gordon alight and come to the front passenger door to help Elizabeth step down from the running board of the high car. Elizabeth is turning seventy this year, and has a bad hip. She walks with a cane, which lends her an air of slight decrepitude that becomes her matriarchal status.

  Mitchell does what he’s told. It’s a fine, clear evening. The air is mild and still. In recent years he’s usually come back to Stoke only for Christmas when the days are short. But now, so close to the summer solstice, the twilight shows little sign of fading. It illuminates the delicate light green of the London plane trees’ spring foliage around the edges of Winton Square in front of the hotel.

  He lights his pipe and strolls into the square bounded by Stoke’s grand railway station on the opposite side to the hotel, and the handsome residences along the other two sides. All in the same neo-Jacobean architectural style wrought in red brick. In the pause between trains there are few people about. The sweet scent of mown grass hangs in the air. The aroma of spring for townsfolk.

  The square marks the centre of his childhood Stoke. The symbolic centre of the Potteries. And geographically speaking, the middle of his England. It brings together his two careers – locomotive mechanic, then designer. The square and all the buildings enclosing it represent, by common consent, a railway company’s one and only contribution to urban design in the whole country. It’s the work of the North Staffordshire Railway in the middle of the last century.

  Looking down at him from a plinth in middle of the square is a bronze statue of yet another designer: Josiah Wedgwood, the great eighteenth-century hero of the Potteries, here depicted in his elegant period rig. As a boy Mitchell would look up into that face and feel its interrogating gaze on him. ‘Why are you frittering away your time in that coach-house of yours, boy, making models of silly heavier-than-air machines?’ it seemed to say. ‘Instead of striving to make your mark as I did?’

  Now as he looks up into Wedgwood’s face, he can see that his gaze in fact rests on the pot he’s holding in his left hand, not on any feckless youth who might approach his plinth. Anyway, Mitchell feels he may at last be able to provide a satisfactory answer to the question. He can make his peace with Josiah Wedgwood. Beside his better-known achievements, the man campaigned against slavery and grand-sired Charles Darwin. A role model, a credit to his country.

  Mitchell settles on a bench close to the statue. Today he turns forty, and the family is gathering in the hotel to celebrate him. He’s still alive, and so far apparently cancer-free. Though he mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the odds are still stacked against him. He felt the need to celebrate this milestone with his family, not least his mother, here in his childhood surroundings. He didn’t know how many more birthdays would be granted him.

  Back in the erecting shop in Woolston work has just started on the airframe of the Type 300 prototype. It will be a slow and exacting process that will continue to make heavy demands on him. But at least it has begun, and is drawing his key colleagues into ever greater intimacy with his creation.

  A flight of swallows flits past overhead, drawing his attention up to the cobalt blue of the twilight sky. Could the latest German bombers reach the industrial Midlands here from occupied bases on the other side of the Channel, to sully this sky? Probably. Would his ‘exterminating angel’ be able to fell them before they reached their targets? That may depend on how long he himself survives.

  Gordon comes bounding up to him. ‘Come on, Dad! We’re all waiting for you.’

  His son leads him by the hand through the foyer and into a spacious private dining room. Chandeliers hang over a large table, formally set, complete with place cards. Twelve fine mahogany chairs surround it. A knot of his closest relations is standing just in from the door. Apart from those who arrived with him, his sisters Hilda and Doris are there, as are his brothers, Eric and Billy. As well as the sisters- and brothers-in-law. They greet him with a hearty cheer, hugs and backslaps. Their gift-wrapped presents form a pile on a side table in one corner of the room. A framed photograph of Herbert, his late father, stands on the sideboard. One way or another, the full complement of the Mitchells of Stoke has foregathered.

  Two champagne bottles pop in quick succession. Hands reach out for the full glasses. ‘Many happy returns, Reg!’ the cry goes up, followed by a momentary silence as the company drinks the toast. For half an hour thereafter the guests circulate, making initial contact in snatches of conversation and exclamations. Then happy confusion takes over as they bump into each other in their search for their places at the table.

  Elizabeth takes her place at its head. Mitchell claims his on her left, Eric on her right. Jovial banter accompanies the breaking of the bread rolls, the passing of the butter, and the swaying sideways in turn to allow the waiters to place bowls of asparagus soup in front of each guest in turn.

  The waiters withdraw. Elizabeth herself has laid down the seating order in advance, Mitchell guesses, so she can quiz her usually absent son. She has relinquished her maternal role successively as her children have entered adulthood and married. But the matriarchal role has simply replaced it.

  ‘How is your health, Reg?’ she asks. ‘I want you to be straightforward with me.’

  ‘So far so good. I’m almost ha
lfway through the danger period. But it’s still in the lap of the gods, of course. In the meantime I’m able to live a virtually full life.’

  ‘And if the cancer returns? What can they do then?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m afraid, Ma. I seem to remember telling you that. They probably can’t operate again, and there’s no cure. So fingers crossed.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous that the best medical men in the country can’t do a darned thing except wait and see. Especially when your work is so important for all of us. Are you sure you’ve got the best men looking after you?’

  ‘Yes I’m sure, Ma. Both Dr Picken – ‘Pick’ as Flo and I call him – and Mr Gabriel keep abreast of the latest research and care for me like true friends. If there’s a way through this, they’ll find it.’

  ‘Must be very distressing for you. And for Flo and Gordon. For me too, I might add. But I want you to keep me informed.’

  ‘You’ll be among the first to know if things change, Ma. Now tell me how you are, really.’

  Elizabeth shrugs. ‘The hip is a right bugger. But apart from that, I’m in good health, Reg.’

  ‘Well worn but worn well, as the saying goes!’ Eric concludes in a jolly tone of voice, as if wanting to lay this line of inquiry to rest. Perhaps he doesn’t want to see the festive mood of the occasion punctured, and his mother and brother feeding each other’s anxious natures.

  It wasn’t until Mitchell had grown up that he noticed the characteristically worried undertone in his mother’s voice, and the wariness that coloured her choices and actions. She planted that seed in him as she brought him up. It flowers every time he watches one of his prototypes being flown for the first time, or one of his racers being pushed to its limits in a race.

  ‘But apart from your basically good health, how are things going for you, Ma?’ he asks.

  ‘I can’t complain, dear. Like just about every other family in the country, we’ve had our ups and downs in the Depression. We’re all struggling a bit up here in Stoke, so I’m glad you and Flo seem to have remained afloat so well down south.’