Untimely Excursions

by Hall, Gerald

  “We are indeed fortunate then that the Australians build such a limited quantity of engines then. Otherwise, no one would be able sell any gas turbine engines at all.”

  “Indeed. But I have a feeling that I am not the only person that you have been talking to about your new vertical-takeoff jet fighter. I had recently visited the Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft shipyards at Kiel and saw some interesting work being conducted there. There were six more Troßschiff under construction there. I also saw the two surviving Dithmarschen-class vessels undergoing major reconstruction there. All of these logistical support vessels were receiving a flight deck that ran virtually the entire length of their hulls.

  I wonder why they are all doing this, Herr Michel?” Wilhelm asked.

  “My sources tell me that is because the Kriegsmarine had looked at all of the supply ships that had been sunk by Amerikaner and Englander U-Boats during the war, especially those lost by the Japanese. If our Troßschiff are going to be able to survive on the open sea, they will have to be able to carry their own aerial forces to scout for enemy ships and especially submarines. One of the lessons that we learned from the war was that our supply vessels could not defend themselves effectively against a warship with the cannons that they had originally been armed with.

  I was told by several naval officers that the Kriegsmarine’s original plan was for the Troßschiff to carry six to eight Focke-Achgelis and Flettner rotary-wing aircraft for scouting and anti-U-Boat patrolling. Those roles were later expanded by the growing use of these aircraft to transfer personnel and materiel from one ship to another, especially using the larger four-rotor Focke-Achgelis aircraft.

  After I pointed out to several senior Kriegsmarine officers how our new fighter-bomber could give the Troßschiff additional defensive and even offensive capabilities, they were very interested. The officers even mentioned how they could perhaps field a dedicated amphibious force like the Amerikaner Marine Corps but with aerial support flown from Troßschiff vessels. The large four-rotor Focke-Achgelis aircraft can carry over twenty troops each, you know. The Flettner helicopters with their twin-intermeshed rotors have been used by the Wehrmacht for spotting and reconnaissance since before the end of the war. If the Troßschiff have their own organic jet fighter support, you can see the possibilities. Certainly, the Kriegsmarine sees it now. We have much more of a market for our design than just the two smaller Flugzeugträger now.” Johann enthusiastically explained.

  “Yes, Herr Michel. That would be a great opportunity for us. With serial production underway for the Kriegsmarine, we could easily expand sales to other navies with smaller Flugzeugträger who want to keep up with their neighbors without being forced to purchase a much larger and more expensive warship. You have done excellent work here, my friend. This will help our company and our nation very much.”

  “Danke, Herr Rupp. Now, we just have to make sure that our new fighter will perform as well as we have promised. Otherwise, the Australians will be the ones selling their aircraft to all of those potential foreign customers instead of us.”

  “We will do everything that we can to fulfill our commitment to you.

  Chapter Fifty-Five:

  Cavill Industries Headquarters

  Derby, Western Australia

  November 29, 1958

  Judith and her two sisters were sitting down in Judith’s office discussing a variety of matters that morning. A table full of snacks and drink containers containing hot coffee had already been picked over by the three young women.

  “Where is James? He is usually here with us at this time.” Beatrice asked.

  “Don’t you remember? He’s up at the space center in Kalumburu beginning his astronaut training. That’s going to keep him busy five days a week for at least the next eight weeks.”

  “James has to be ballsy as hell to be willing to fly onboard a rocket in my humble opinion. But, it will be quite a feather in our caps to have a family member actually fly into space aboard one of our rockets. That will show the confidence that we have in them. Doctor von Braun has to be particularly happy since James will be travelling to the space station aboard a space plane launched atop one of his rockets.”

  “Reckon? Werner is totally stoked about this for sure. On another subject though, have we had any luck recruiting any of the Abos to become astronauts to spend some time aboard the new space station?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. While we have been able to recruit a few of them to become aircraft pilots, there is not a lot of bloody enthusiasm among the aborigines to go up into space just yet. It seems that they would much rather be a digger than to go up where there is no air outside of the station walls. But the Germans are eager as hell to go into space. We already have four of them on the space station now along with six Australians, three Brits and a couple of Americans. Once we get the second ring fully operational, we will be able to more than double the number of people living onboard the station.”

  “By the time that we are done though, everyone and their mum will be wanting to fly into space and spend time aboard one of our facilities off planet. This will especially be the case after James flies up to visit the space station.”

  “Perhaps so. But even if it isn’t quite that popular, there should be far more than enough interest to help finance continued expansion of our space program and the development of interplanetary missions to eventually set up colonies. We already receive hundreds of requests each month from scientists all around the world who want to send satellites aboard our rockets to assist with their scientific research on both this world and the rest of the universe as well.”

  “We will still need to be very selective about who flies up to our space station. We need to send the best people that we can to the space station to put it together and to operate its systems. Heaven help us though if we send someone up there who wants to destroy what are building. I’m still uneasy about the Germans on the station. You can’t be absolutely sure where their loyalties are. ”

  “I agree. If anyone is going to be loyal to our goals, it will be the aborigines who we have been working with and living among all of our lives. You know how they felt about our father and what he was doing. We just have to find more who are daring enough to get aboard a rocket and fly into space. It’s just that the thought of leaving this world is pretty terrifying to many of them.”

  “Speaking of leaving this world, the next Sea Dragon launch is going to be very monumental. It will be delivering seven interface modules at once that we will use to link the next habitat ring with the station’s central core. That will pave the way for the third ring.”

  “We are working a very aggressive schedule, Sarah. Getting the second habitat ring fitted out at the same time that we are installing the third central core module and its interface modules is pushing the people on the station pretty hard.” Judith noted.

  “I know. We have had little choice now that the Americans have contracted with us to support a future landing on the lunar surface. We need to have the space station fully operational to be able to effectively provide the Americans with a viable rescue option in case that they have a problem.” Sarah replied.

  “I still think that we should go ahead and put people on the moon first. We could easily develop a lander with return capacity just by pulling up the necessary technical documentation from the data base.” Beatrice interjected.

  “We should still stick with our original plan though. We will learn what the Americans have developed this way and can adapt our own concepts appear closer to their technological levels when we send our own people to the moon along with the facilities for them to live there for an extended period of time.

  In any event, the second habitat ring will be fully ready to occupy in just three more weeks. I’ve already got a space plane launch scheduled to send six more personnel to the station to supplement the existing crew and allow a couple of the people up there now to come back home for a break. It would make me feel a lot more comfortable if the
people that we were replacing were the Germans though.” Judith said.

  “One of them is, Gerhard Klein. The other person coming back is our only woman at the station, Sally Holloway. She’s pretty eager to get back to Brisbane to see her husband and children.” Beatrice replied.

  “I can’t exactly blame Sally for wanting to get back home then. We are trying to keep people up there no more than ninety days at a time until we get a much better understanding of the health issues of living in space. We do have another woman going up as part of the crew on the next rocket. I think that Julie Caldwell is single though.” Sarah said.

  “She’s a doctor, isn’t she?” Beatrice asked.

  “Yes, she is. Julie is pretty stoked to do research for us on long term life in micro-gravity. She was a recent graduate of the University of Sydney’s medical school. But she’s a local Sheila from the Derby area. Her dad actually works in our shipyards.” Judith explained.

  “Well, I suppose that we could definitely trust her up there then.” Beatrice replied with a chuckle.

  “I know that James does. I think that he might have even dated her before.” Sarah said.

  “I guess that he has always had the hots for older women, hasn’t he?” Beatrice laughed.

  “I would imagine that he wants to keep on her good side then. James is training very hard to be ready to fly up in time to christen the third habitat ring.” Judith replied with a smile.

  “The Sea Dragon launch to send the third habitat ring up won’t be scheduled for at least a few more weeks. We are still fabricating the habitat ring segments and reconditioning a Sea Dragon for that mission. Then the habitat ring will have to be mated up with the station core’s interface modules before James makes his flight up.” Beatrice noted.

  That process shouldn’t take too long though, especially with the extra personnel going up there on the next space plane launch. We’ve also learned a lot of lessons about working in space since we launched the first modules for the space station.” Judith explained.

  “Sweet! I know that James wouldn’t want to do a lot of the dirty work when he gets up to the space station. He will have enough to do installing our latest ‘black boxes’ into the space station before he is due to come back home.” Beatrice remarked.

  “Hopefully, we can get all of our black boxes in place soon. The Americans want to lease space aboard our space station for scientific experiments. They are offering enough cash to keep our operations going for ten years to come. But, I would not want too many people poking around our advanced systems. I’m sure that they are very interested in what we are doing up there. That makes launching the second space station all the more important. We can use one for international operations while the other station can be focused on our own special missions. Judith noted.

  After a few more minutes, the conversation turned to more terrestrial matters.

  “Did you hear the latest news out of Junkers? They have recently test-flown a new vertical takeoff and landing fighter. They are already trying to sell it to the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe first. But I am sure that Junkers is also hoping to export this new design to other nations as well.” Sarah asked.

  “Is this the design that we had heard about several months ago from some of our friends in Germany?” Judith asked.

  “Yes, it is. It is a most unusual design, I have to admit. Our people out there say that it looks like it is almost all wing, but not in the same way as the Gotha flying wings. The engineers at Junkers are also using dedicated lift engines in addition to vectoring the thrust of the main jet engine.” Sarah explained.

  “That’s still not going to be nearly as efficient as our tandem fan design. They’ve also had a few crashes already of their prototypes, I believe.” Beatrice interjected.

  “It is true that the Germans have had some problems with their design. But it is probably still going to be a lot easier to engineer than our approach even if it is not as refined as our two design concepts. They are certainly using a more brute force approach than we are. It will probably work. But they will have to compromise range and payload in addition to accepting a significantly higher attrition rate.” Sarah continued.

  “I wonder who else might buy the Junkers design? They’ve been out of the combat aircraft business ever since the end of the war.” Beatrice asked.

  “Who knows? They are probably are going to try to sell their fighters to the same people that we want to market our vertical takeoff fighters to. There are at least four navies who need something to operate off of their aircraft carriers to replace their old propeller-driven aircraft. The blokes at Junkers might not have built any combat fighters in the past decade, but they still have some damned good engineers. I wouldn’t underestimate their accomplishment here, if I were you. Their Jumo engine division still makes most of Germany’s jet engines too.” Judith noted.

  “Fortunately, their Jumos are still not as good as our engines.” Sarah confidently replied.

  “True, but our production engines are not as superior as we could theoretically make them. We still have to show considerable restraint in what the world sees of our technology. But with the combination of our engine technology and reasonably advanced airframe and avionics technologies, we will still field an aircraft that would be a far better purchase for our customers than anything else out there. But we also choose who we will sell to. This helps us promote the nations who will work to keep the peace as versus nations who are perennially aggressive or oppressive.” Judith explained

  “The refit of our two large support ships will give us excellent platforms to test our new vertical takeoff fighter. That is why Shinshu Maru and Hayasui are both undergoing refits between Sea Dragon launches right now. Several of the new additions to those ships are tailored specifically to assist with the operation of our new fighter.” Sarah said.

  “Is that why we have the new extension to each ship’s forward flight deck sloped upward? I thought that we were doing that to reduce the amount of water coming over the flight deck during bad weather.” Beatrice asked.

  “That is the official story that we have given to the press. But the real reason is to provide a ski jump ramp to increase the amount of payload that our new fighters can carry during a short takeoff role from a light aircraft carrier’s deck. Father’s data base showed that several navies used this feature to significantly increase the fuel and munitions that fixed-wing aircraft designed for vertical takeoff and landing could be launched with.” Judith noted.

  “Do you think that we can convince the Australian Navy to accept our bid to add a flight deck and ski jump ramp for the four fleet supply ships that we have built for them?” Beatrice asked.

  “If our prototype fighter performs to our expectations, it will be an easy matter to demonstrate the advantages of using the ski-jump ramp technology. Adding another four flight decks that can be used by helicopters, tilt-wing transports and high-performance jet aircraft to the Australian Navy will greatly enhance its capability.

  I don’t think that it will be very difficult to convince the Admirals, and especially politicians in Parliament, once we get the first prototypes in the air and demonstrating their capabilities. Once we get the first sales at home, the export sales will follow quickly enough. The Australian Navy has already started deploying some of our Hummingbird multi-purpose tilt-wing transports. All we have to do is demonstrate the performance improvements from launching them from a ski-jump ramp too.” Sarah confidently replied.

  “I’m sure that you are right. I also was not surprised that the Germans also began to add flight decks to their fleet support ships. We already know that the Germans have been rapidly expanding their use of rotary-wing aircraft by their military.

  It will only be a matter of time before they begin to operate this new vertical takeoff jet fighter from their smaller flight decks. This could even include the decks of their fleet support ships. That could easily add a major new dimension to German capabilities in the North Atlantic.�
� Beatrice noted.

  “The Kriegsmarine is going scary enough even without the Germans adding more naval aviation platforms. They have already taken a page from our work with the Royal Navy’s cruisers and have been converting their Hippers into guided missile cruisers also, complete with anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles. We don’t have the exact details yet, but it would imagine that they will have a similar capability to the British ships except for having heavier guns. Then I suppose that it is very fortunate that we have several unblinking eyes in the sky already watching down over those oceans just in case.” Judith replied with a smile.

  “Hopefully, the Germans are not aware of just how sharp our vision is with our orbiting cameras. Otherwise, they could take measures to prevent us from seeing their most sensitive activities from above. After all, a satellite’s orbit is very easy to predict, even in this time.” Beatrice pointed out.

  “Then we will just have to make sure that the Germans or anyone else never finds out what we are capable of then, won’t we?” Judith then responded.

  “I agree. Otherwise, they might hit us where it would hurt the most, like attacking one of our space rocket launches. We definitely wouldn’t want that, especially with our baby brother on board one of those rockets. It’s bad enough that someone has already tried to sabotage one of our Sea Dragon launches before.” Beatrice noted.

  “At least, it appears that our improved security measures at the rocket construction sites have prevented any more such incidents. It has also meant that our Abo friends have been given many more jobs as a result. We know that we can trust them not to deliberately sabotage our rockets because of the honor debt that they feel that they owe to our family.” Judith explained.