by Max Hennessy
The Courtney Entry
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Part 1: The Challenge
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part 2: Trial – and Error
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part 3: The Flight
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
The Flying Ace Thrillers
Copyright
Part 1: The Challenge
Chapter 1
The Sikorsky had seemed a magnificent machine, and years ahead of its time. A huge biplane, its lower wing had been well above the heads of its crew as they had clambered into their seats. Its upper wing had been supported by enormous struts and had towered over three times the height of a tall man.
To Ira Penaluna, as he stared at the picture that was being indicated to him in a thick glossy magazine held out from among the pile of assorted luggage alongside him, the harsh mid-west voice of its owner, a cheerful Nebraskan describing the machine from first-hand knowledge of it, drove into his consciousness with the mercilessness of a mechanical pick.
‘That’s just how she was, son,’ the Nebraskan was saying in slow tones heavily larded with drama, as he jabbed a finger at the folded pages. ‘She sure looked good. All metal. Windows down both sides. I guess she was the most beautiful bit of machinery I ever saw. I looked inside her, too. Lots of us did. At Roosevelt Field. She had a fifteen-foot-long cabin furnished like a parlour, and they’d got some interior decorator guy to give it a colour scheme of red, gold and silver. Mahogany finish, too, and panels of Spanish leather. Looked like something out of a millionaire’s vacation house.’
Ira stared at the illustration again. Originally built for two great engines, a third had been added to the huge Sikorsky to give it extra lift, and the result was a picture of concentrated power as the bunched cylinders crowded round the cockpit in circles of stabbing exhausts. Clearly its pilot, René Fonck, had been satisfied because it was he who had advocated the extra thrust. And he was a man who knew his subject. A thirty-four-year-old Frenchman, he was one of the most famous pilots of the recent war against Germany, a man whose precision flying and attention to detail were well known, a man credited with destroying perhaps 127 German aeroplanes.
‘Smart guy, he was,’ the Nebraskan said, manoeuvring the stump of a wet cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. ‘Pudgy, though, and kinda little. Dressed in leather leggings and a blue uniform. He talked about what they were going to do when they got to Paris, and some guy gave him a box of French croissants. A symbol of American–French unity, they said.’
The Nebraskan was a cheerful pale-eyed man wearing a stiff collar that sawed at his ears, and on the back of his head a hard straw hat with a patterned band. He was an ardent supporter of President Coolidge and prosperity, his business was real estate, and he believed firmly in money and security, and as the subject that was occupying his attention just at that moment concerned none of them, he was out of his depth, confused and very puzzled by the failure of what should have been a good American product.
‘They called her the New York–Paris,’ he said. ‘Mayor Walker was at the christening ceremony. They broke a bottle of soda pop or sump’n over her. They couldn’t have champagne because of Prohibition, I guess.’
Ira turned the crumpled pages of the magazine slowly, studying the photogravure illustrations with a shrewd eye. The Nebraskan watched him, still puzzled.
‘They say she cost over a hundred thousand dollars,’ he said, as though that alone ought to have guaranteed success. ‘The most goddam expensive aeroplane ever built.’
Though he didn’t say so, Ira, knew the story as well as the man from Nebraska. He’d read the reports – more carefully than his companion ever had, and with better reason. But he had other things to think of just then than the crash of the big Sikorsky at the beginning of its attempt to fly the Atlantic the previous September. The time would come when he would study the reports again, but, for the moment, he was more concerned with what he saw about him from the station entrance in this soft Southern city of Charleston.
Newly arrived in the United States, he had decided, fascinated, that there were more motor cars about than he’d ever seen in his life before. And what motor cars! In New York, which he’d left the previous night, there’d been Chevrolets, Franklins, Fords, and a dozen other makes he’d never even heard of; sedans, limousines, roadsters, coupés; all high and heavy and all equipped with vast yellow headlights like glowing eyes; all clattering and roaring and backfiring so that the streets between the steel, brick and concrete skyscrapers were blue with smoke and acrid with the smell of burnt petrol.
When Ira had last been in England the motoring craze had hardly caught on. Here in America it had long since swept across the country like a prairie fire, and on a young man almost exactly the age of the century it had had a remarkably exhilarating effect.
The voice of the Nebraskan broke in on his thoughts. ‘Handpicked, that crew was,’ he said, persisting in his theme and jabbing a broad finger at the portraits that accompanied the picture of the Sikorsky. ‘Co-pilot was an American naval officer. The radioman was a Frenchman, and the mechanic was a Russian immigrant. They say he was one of the best friends of the designer himself. And no guy’s going to send his best friend up in something he don’t believe in.’
Ira gazed at the pictures under the broad finger again. He was an even-tempered young man but by this time he was beginning to grow a little tired of the Nebraskan’s tirade. He had seated himself next to Ira in the club car in New York and had struck up a conversation from which Ira had been trying on and off ever since to extricate himself. He had started on the theme of aviation in Richmond and, knowing nothing of Ira’s professional and private interest in aviation, had been repeating it ever since and still showed no sign of coming to a stop.
‘She did all right in her trial flights,’ he said. ‘With a light load, I guess, though. I saw her myself once. I was always in New York. All silver, she was. Like a goddam great bird. They say Sikorsky lavished every care on her.’
Though he didn’t know it, in Ira’s suitcase alongside his feet was a report on exactly what he was telling Ira now, a report, moreover, that was far more technically perfect and covered far more than anything the Nebraskan could know. Ira had already read it so many times he knew it off by heart. With favourable weather and a French machine already lifted from Paris to Persia, a distance of 3,229 miles, the Sikorsky’s chances of flying the Atlantic had seemed extremely good.
‘They said it couldn’t fail,’ the Nebraskan continued. ‘They’d got the best pilot and Sikorsky had even built a kind of auxiliary detachable undercarriage under the tail. To support the weight, they told me. He did everything a guy could do.’
Except one thing, Ira thought, with an expert’s knowledge of what could be done. Except one thing.
The Sikorsky’s three great Gnome-Rhône engines had been warmed up in the early dawn light, and the vast machine, loaded with nearly 2,400 gallons of petrol, had been shoved off by straining mechanics to go lumbering slowly down the ru
nway, watched all the way by the huge crowd of spectators who had turned up to see it take off.
‘I was in New York on business,’ the Nebraskan went on. ‘I thought I’d go see ’em off. I didn’t know nothin’ about aeroplanes, and I still don’t, but I guess half the crowd who were watching didn’t either. I could see right there and then, though, that something had gone wrong.’
And so should Fonck have done, Ira thought with a cold professional detachment. It shouldn’t have been too hard.
He had been unable to get the tail off the ground and, roaring over the unlevelled service roads that crossed its path, the great machine had begun to bounce, lurching awkwardly like some runaway juggernaut under the shifting weight of the enormous cargo of fuel.
Then the auxiliary landing gear built to support the tail against the tremendous overload was seen to be shedding parts in a terrifying manner. A wheel broke away, bouncing high into the air, and the machine began to yaw. Then, as the auxiliary gear was hastily jettisoned by the co-pilot in an attempt to regain control, the tail dropped with a crash and another piece of undercarriage was flung up to damage the rudder. The cloud of dust that rose had half-obscured the machine.
The cheers of the tense crowd had long since died to anxious murmurs and as a watching pilot near the designer cried, ‘Lift her, for God’s sake, lift her!’ in an agonised voice, a woman began to scream hysterically, the sound cutting across the howl of the great engines.
‘But it didn’t stop,’ the Nebraskan said in bewildered tones. ‘It didn’t stop. It just kept right on going.’
Although the chances of a take-off had long since faded, the thundering juggernaut had continued to pound down the airfield and, without even lifting its wheels from the grass and still trailing a vast cloud of dust, it had swooped into a twenty-foot-deep hollow at the end of the runway and vanished.
The Nebraskan searched Ira’s face for signs of horror. He seemed startled not to find any. ‘Guys began to run,’ he said in shocked tones. ‘And automobiles began to pull out of the crowd. I guess some of ’em drove faster than they’d ever done before. I got a lift with one of them. But, hell, long before we reached the dip there was a thud and a “whoosh” of gasoline going up, and a goddam great column of red flame and black smoke went up into the air. Straight up. Like it was an oil tank caught fire. When I arrived two guys had gotten clear. One of ’em was Fonck. The other was the co-pilot. Fonck said something to me, but I couldn’t say anything back. I was still getting my breath back, and I guess we were all shocked some. But not as much as those two guys. They looked like some guy had socked ’em between the eyes. The radioman and the mechanic were still in there. They’d been staring at a funeral pyre.’
* * *
As Ira handed back the magazine with its grim story of the previous autumn’s disaster, he looked round at the chubby-faced American who had come to meet him at the station and was now juggling with the throttle control of a heavy open tourer by the kerb. The American was engrossed in his task and Ira’s gaze went beyond him to the skinny young man in tweed jacket, military breeches and laced-up ankle-boots who had travelled with him and was now staring round him in awe at the busy street. He was hoping that one or the other of them would rescue him from the Nebraskan, but they were both absorbed in what they were doing, and the voice of the Nebraskan came again, troubled and still overlaid with the memory of the shock.
‘I was there, son,’ he was saying heavily as he folded the magazine and slipped it under his arm. ‘I saw it happen. I saw it fall apart.’ His voice rose. ‘I saw it burst into flames! I saw those two guys die!’
A cab appeared and he jerked his cigar from his mouth and waved it urgently at the driver. He was too late, however, and as someone else reached it first he turned again to Ira.
‘They were going to fly to France,’ he said. ‘France, for God’s sake, son! France!’
Ira didn’t answer. France was almost 4,000 miles away and out of his thoughts just then, while the United States was a living pulsating thing that transferred its vitality to its visitors as no other country he’d ever visited before had done. In his short life he’d seen quite a few – Europe, Russia, India, Africa and China – and he knew what he was talking about, and he wished, as he’d been wishing for some time now, that the talkative Nebraskan would leave him alone with his impressions and go about his business.
The Nebraskan had no such intentions, however. He’d got his teeth well into his subject now and he was determined to make sure that Ira was aware of his views.
‘It just can’t be done,’ he said. ‘Flying the Atlantic? New York to Paris non-stop? It’s a great idea, but, gee whiz, who’s going to do it?’
‘Alcock and Brown did it,’ Ira said mildly. ‘Eight years ago.’
The Nebraskan gazed round him for another cab and shook his head. ‘Newfoundland to Ireland, son,’ he pointed out gently. ‘One thousand nine hundred miles. Not four thousand. And they crashed.’
‘They landed in a bog,’ Ira said.
The Nebraskan was waving now at every wheeled vehicle that appeared in the station entrance and Ira began to hope he’d been forgotten.
The air about him was warm, quite different from the crispness of New York, and it was possible already, without going beyond the station, to sense something of the difference between the Northern and Southern States of this great new land. Here there was none of the brashness or the uncomplicated drive of the North that was symbolised in the tall buildings that shouldered the stars, and the girders, stark against the sky, which showed where new ones were still going up. Yet, despite the change and already aware of the vast complicated differences of America, Ira felt he’d never been so much alive before and he wanted to savour the experience.
But the man alongside him continued to interrupt his mood. He seemed determined to make his point before they parted company.
‘They’ll never build an aeroplane to fly that distance, son,’ he insisted. ‘Not in one hop. The future of air travel’s with airships.’
Ira said nothing. Airship disasters had become far too predictable for prophecies of that sort. And from what he’d seen of aviation in America in the short time he’d been there public interest was certainly not lacking, whatever official policy might be. His first sight of the new continent, in fact, had been the manoeuvres of a small yellow biplane which met his ship far out of reach of the Californian coast and had circled and dipped and done delirious half-rolls in the clear blue sky above the masts, to the amazed delight of the passengers crowding the rails. From then on he’d seen aircraft everywhere – none of them new or original in design, to be sure, because some blank spot in the official mind seemed to have kept America behind Europe, but enthusiasm was nevertheless implicit in the gay colours of the Orioles, Wacos, Swallows and Jennies and the dozen and one other kinds of machine he’d seen, which at least gave the impression that there were a great many eager young men trying to wrest a living from building them.
A cab drew up alongside at last and the Nebraskan began to thrust his luggage aboard.
‘It’s just a stunt,’ he said. ‘To get folks talking about aeroplanes. So they can peddle some of that old wartime junk the government had to get rid of.’
‘It’s just that everybody wants excitement,’ he ended, his head through the window as the cab began to draw away, ‘everybody’s gone excitement crazy.’
He finally disappeared with his nasal mid-western voice and his cheerful lacklustre theories which were the firm beliefs of everybody who flew aeroplanes from the depths of club armchairs. Men like him would never be converted by the acrid odour of acetate and nitrate dope or the smell of hot oil. Staring round at the approaching cabs, their horns barking as though they were some new kind of animal, Ira hardly noticed his departure.
Only three and a half short weeks before, he had been in the walled cities of Hunan and Kiangsi in China, and looking on the swiftly flowing stream of the Yangtze-Kiang; and he still found it har
d to believe. Stepping into the daily life of the United States was like stepping into a different century. China had only just made the first hesitant move forward into the twentieth century and its cities were still dark unlit medieval villages, but his first impression of the United States had been one of light – glaring gaudy light that covered the hillsides and islands of the Pacific coast. San Francisco Bay had glowed with spectacular electrical displays, the city blocks glittering with a myriad points of gold. Even the station, by the standards of every other country he knew, looked as though it had been built to house an emperor, and the luxuriously appointed Pullman cars in which he had travelled across the continent had made him realise just how far ahead of the Old World the New World was in ideas, style, simple know-how and what the recently departed man from Nebraska had chosen to call ‘git-up-and-go’.
‘There’s a lot wrong with this country of ours, I guess,’ he had announced with sombre foreboding. ‘Girls with skirts above their knees and bobbed hair and painted faces. Bootleggers. Politicians you can’t trust.’ His eyes had brightened suddenly. ‘But there’s one thing that ain’t wrong, son,’ he had added, ‘and that’s business. Business is booming because we’ve begun to realise it’s not less dignified to make money than to be in any of the other professions. You can even take a course on it at college these days.’
For all his narrow views, the Nebraskan had hit on a substantial truth, because the consciousness of prosperity seemed to have taken hold of this vast new nation and shaken it into a remarkable state of alertness and impatience. Even the newspapers Ira had read in the train had had the same blaring excitement the streets displayed, as they screamed the latest scandal and disaster at the tops of their voices – ‘LAWYER’S LOVE-NEST EXPOSED – STUNT FLIER CRASHES INTO CROWD’. Yet from the middle of all the violence that was implicit in the foot-deep headlines, middle-class solidity shone like a beacon from the pinched Vermont face of President Coolidge who seemed to direct an acid gaze on the nation he led, as though he disapproved of everything it did.