Trophy for Eagles

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Trophy for Eagles Page 32

by Boyne, Walter J.


  Bruno tossed the Steinhager down and poured himself another.

  "But it's not all bad. You've been living well over here, and I've been doing well, too, even though Germany was on its arse! Hitler's our Mussolini. He's getting things moving, pumping money into the economy."

  Udet looked up at the huge man looming over him, deciding to turn the tables on him, "If you dislike the Nazis so, why did you agree to work with Goering last year? I'm here to talk business, and I have to know if you are sincere. I know that you are an American citizen, you have an American wife, a big factory, lots of money. It's hard for me to believe you are serious. I'm not sure what I would do in your position."

  I'm very sure what you would do, Hafner thought. He then backed off, relaxing so that his bulk seemed slowly to diminish as a frightened cat finally lets its hair settle down.

  "You said it for me. I'm a German, first and last. I think Hitler will get things into shape in Germany and then bring back the monarchy. We fought for the Kaiser once—we'll fight for him again."

  Udet's voice was determined. He had to be sure that Hafner understood, that he would be dependable. "No, there will never be another Kaiser, there will be no stupid bag of Napoleonic pretenders like those the French tolerate. Hitler will use the aristocracy for as long as he has to, another year perhaps. Then, all of them, princes, nobles, they are all kaput. And after the aristocracy, the Jews."

  Hafner nodded. "That's part of it for me too. The Jews destroyed us in 1918, when they bought up Germany during the inflation." The Steinhager had eroded his reserve. "My family lost everything. I went by my house last year, and do you know who is living there? In my house?"

  Udet noted with approval that Hafner had grown so intense that he'd forgotten himself. Good. A fanatic was easier to manage.

  "A Jewish doctor and his fat wife, an ass like an apple barrel! There was a little hook-nosed yid coming out the gate on a bicycle. Out of my gate!"

  Udet relaxed. The commoner was taking over. He had Hafner. Over time, he would make an ally of him. If not, he could be disposed of. It was important to use him—or at least prevent Goering's using him.

  Steinhager and the memories of his house stirred the old patriotism in Bruno. "What am I supposed to do, crawl back in a Fokker D VII?"

  "No. We want you to stay right where you are."

  "We?"

  "Right—we, Hermann and I and Milch and Kesselring, and yes, even Hitler. We want you to keep doing what you are doing, but keep us informed. You don't have to be a spy and put on a false mustache and steal secrets from safes. Just be a pipeline for technical information—new airfoils, new alloys, trends in what is going on, assessments of strength. We can get most of it out of the magazines, but we want you to be the filter, the judge of what we interpret."

  Hafner was nonplussed. He could do this for a while, but even now Charlotte was asking questions about his trips to Germany. And the Air Corps people were not fools—they could track the source of most ideas that were really supposed to be kept secret. It wasn't what he wanted to hear. The way Goering had sketched it out last year, he would sell his businesses and go back to Germany to live. With his money and a commission, it would be better than during the war. He could perhaps be a lieutenant colonel for starters. And sooner or later, he'd buy up his old house, live like a king, do some decent flying. It was time to bargain.

  "What's in it for me?"

  Udet paused, then told him a long, involved joke about a Fraulein who didn't need anything because she didn't drink, didn't smoke, and had her own pussy. "You don't need any money. You don't need any women. But you do need to be a soldier."

  Hafner felt the hook ease in, secure him. Udet was quite correct. Besides, there was the matter of Charlotte and Rhoades, which severely needed rectification.

  "Germany is ten years behind in the air. Versailles crippled us. We're gaining, but Goering wants you to act as an overseas research laboratory, as we did in Russia at Lipetsk, where we built a factory and trained people. You can use American dollars to experiment, to design airplanes, and get the results to us."

  "No, Ernst, I don't like it. I don't want to be some kind of verdammt spy, pussyfooting around, pretending. Besides, how long do you think I could get away with it? The Air Corps is not stupid—they could smell out any technology I got to you."

  Udet, his head nodding yes as it always did, said, "You don't have to do it for long. We'll have to come out in the open with the Luftwaffe next year or the year after. By then we'll have the new airplanes on the line. You can come back then and run an aircraft factory."

  "No! I'll be a technical adviser, but I want a Geschwader to command. If there's going to be any combat, I want to be in on it."

  "Ja, Bruno, I know what you mean. But let me tell you something. Like Hitler or not, he's a smart bastard, too smart to start a fight with America. He was a Frontsoldat, he knows what it's like. He's going to demand that the Rhineland be reoccupied, get the African colonies back, get an agreement with Poland for a corridor."

  Having disposed of Europe, Udet drank. "But the main thing is Russia. He hates the Reds as much as he hates the Jews, says they are the same thing. So you won't be doing anything to be ashamed of in America. You'll be helping it, really."

  Bruno sat back. It wouldn't matter. The old loyalties came first. Russia. There would be a hunting ground! They could shoot airplanes as the English shoot grouse, spend all day potting and then lay them up in rows at night. He pounded his knee.

  Udet's voice was becoming increasingly military, crisper, more demanding.

  "We'll start with Curtiss." An order, not an offer.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'll get you a private demonstration, let you fly one of the Curtiss dive bombers. You can put a five-hundred-pound bomb in a pickle barrel dive bombing. As I said, it's better than artillery, cheaper, more flexible, faster. You'll see."

  Udet's hands sent his pen flying.

  Hafner blurted out his real thoughts. "Jawohl, but it's not the answer, Ernst. You need big bombers for England. You couldn't fly the Hawk across the Channel and then back with a bomb load."

  Udet handed Hafner the sheet of paper. It showed Hafner, huge, his nose an eagle's beak, straddling the fuselage of a diving Curtiss Hawk as a cowboy straddles a horse. There were crosses on the fuselage and a huge swastika on the rudder. He had even remembered Hafner's personal insignia from the war, a winged sword. Bullets were pouring in a stream from the nose of the Hawk and a bomb was being slung from its belly. Down below was a target, a circle of concentric rings. In the center was a word in tiny print. It was "Boredom."

  Hafner nodded his head. "Good, Ernst. You know your subject."

  He folded the drawing and put it in a breast pocket. "But you don't know your bombers! You should be building big airplanes, with four engines, and maybe four-thousand-pound bomb loads. That's what I'm going to do next, though nobody knows it."

  Udet shook his head slightly, mild as always in his disagreement. He preferred to charm his way out of arguments.

  "You sound like our purist, Colonel Wever! Big bombers are expensive. We don't want to fight England, or France for that matter. We just want dive bombers to fly along with our tanks, to break through in Russia. No more trenches! And if France and England just leave us alone—and Hitler is sure they will—we can settle matters in the east."

  His voice was slurred. "You and I, Bruno, we will be the new Junkers, the new ruling caste. We'll have the estates, the forests. You'll see."

  Hafner sat back. That would be decent. An estate in the country. Maybe he would be von Hafner after all! It had amused him when Dusty Rhoades used to call him "Baron." Maybe Rhoades wasn't so far off at that.

  The two men got to their feet, Udet stumbling a bit. Hafner put a $5 bill on the table and winked at the fat waitress.

  She had been pleased and surprised to have two real Germans drinking in her restaurant until she glanced at their plates. Neither man had eaten much.
She palmed the fiver and then shook the Steinhager bottle. It was empty, and it comforted her. Maybe they were old war comrades who just wanted to drink.

  ***

  Chapter 8

  Downey, California/July 17, 1933

  Ted Mahew's blessed out-of-the-blue order for the new transport was a lifeline to solvency. The order meant the bank would talk to them and that they could offer people meaningful jobs instead of part-time work.

  They had decided to call the airplane the RC-3, to take advantage of the publicity Douglas had already gained on its competing DC-1. The new contract meant that they had to triple their production-line employment immediately, and double their engineering staff. From the instant their first small help-wanted advertisement was phoned in, before it ever appeared in the paper, they were deluged with applicants.

  The outpouring made Bandy feel like Midas. He had known that California was a pool of talent, but he had had no idea that he could choose from the very best talents—engineers, stress analysts, engine men, production-line workers. It was hard not to hire them all, but he kept it down to a minimum, phasing them in over time, so that they were needed badly before they came on board. He got his greatest pleasure from sending wires to the good people he'd worked with in the past and offering them big salaries and bigger responsibilities, a surefire approach.

  The small crew of veterans who had started with Roget Aircraft at Downey were nervous at first, but then welcomed the newcomers when they recognized their talent. The joy of having in hand a contract that promised work for at least two years and maybe more sent morale sky-high, and long hours meant nothing. A few of the older men, transferring from other industries, were interested in forming a union, and were amazed when Bandfield was sympathetic to the idea, his father's old politics surfacing. He had watched many other factories live off the substance of their workers, devouring their overtime, only to dismiss them all summarily when a contract went sour. Roget Aircraft was going to be different. Hadley wasn't convinced that it was a good idea, but Bandy gave the new union every encouragement.

  The factory had a sharpened sense of vibrancy and discipline as parts came down the tributary aisles to join other parts in the general march to the main assembly line. The staccato banging of the riveters, the shrill rise and fall of the drill presses, the continual reciprocal movement of the lathes all had new tempos and new meanings. Bandy felt a kinship with a symphony orchestra conductor, who played no instrument but made everything happen.

  Another plus was that Howard Hughes was drifting away more and more. He had asked early on to help in designing the cockpit layout, and he'd done well, seeing to it that the instruments were grouped sensibly for two-pilot use. The problem was that he became too proprietary, too insistent on having the final word. To get some relief, Bandy had sent him on a survey trip, to check out what was wrong with the current fleet of airliners that they might be able to fix in the RC-3.

  Still traveling incognito as Charles Howard, Hughes came back bubbling with ideas. Mahew's airlines operated both Ford and Hafner trimotors, and Bandy had asked Hughes to make the thirty-six-hour trip from Chicago to Los Angeles on the Allied line, just to see if he could get any ideas.

  "Bandy, I learned as much on the train trip out as on the flight back. On the trip out I learned that I like to eat and drink and sleep in comfort. On the trip back I learned I didn't like the noise, the heat, the cold, or the rubber chicken."

  Even Hadley, pretty fed up with Hughes for some time now, seemed amused.

  "You know what they give you when you get on the trimotor? A kit that has cotton to stuff in your ears/smelling salts, and a paper bag to throw up in! Damn near needed it, too. It was so hot on the ground in Chicago that a woman fainted, passed out right in the aisle. Then between Denver and Salt Lake it got so cold my hand stuck to the metal chair edge."

  Hughes ruffled through the drawings and glanced out the window at the floor.

  "Listen, you get out there and tell those guys that we're not just building an airplane, we're going to build comfort and stick wings on it. We want heaters that heat and seats that don't blister your ass and insulation to cut the noise down. The Ford is bad, but the Hafner trimotor is worse. I was sitting in the second seat, on the leg from Salt Lake to Sacramento, and the propellers felt like they were driving lag bolts into my eardrums."

  With a "mission accomplished" nod, Hughes left, bounding out to his latest hobby, a huge Doble steamcar. He was talking about setting up a company to build the steamers and running General Motors and Ford out of business, right after he finished setting some records in the new racer he'd conceived. Hughes had learned all he could from Bandfield and Roget, and he wouldn't be with them long. He had sketched out what he thought a racer should look like, and he served notice that he'd be calling on them for help when the time came. Even though he'd become an enormous pain in the ass, he'd get whatever he asked for, having saved Roget Aircraft's bacon more than once.

  They spent the afternoon going over the production schedule, marking up the existing drawings to make the conversion from bomber prototype to transport as easy as possible. There wasn't a massive amount of rework, but Bandy thought it worthwhile to call Mahew and warn him that Roget Aircraft might be asking for a two-week extension for delivery of the first plane.

  The call to Chicago went- through surprisingly fast—too fast—as it turned out.

  "Not a goddam day, Bandfield!" Mahew's explosive temper was

  legendary, and Bandy pulled "the earpiece away to protect his hearing.

  "You people got a sweetheart contract because I was pissed off at Hafner and you were handy. Now my board of directors is all over my ass because I didn't compete it with Douglas or Boeing or somebody. I've been saying you. could do the job, and you goddam well better. If you don't, I'll get fired and Allied will tear up the contract."

  There was a pause as Bandy tried to think of a graceful way to close.

  Mahew roared again. "Another thing. We've hired Lindbergh as a consultant. He's going to be/checking over the design, and the board insists that your airplane have the capability to take off with a full load from the highest airport on our route with one engine out. You might want to consider a trimotor again."

  Bandfield took a pencil and-drew a mustache on the smiling calendar girl drinking a Coke on the wall near his desk.

  "That's one hell of a change in the contract, Mr. Mahew. We'd

  want to negotiate some money and some schedule differences for

  that."

  "Negotiate hell! Take it or Leave it. It would take one phone call to Douglas to get them started. The DC-1 they're building for TWA will do most of what I want. Any questions?"

  Bandy said no, gently returning the phone to the table.

  "Back to the drawing board. Mahew wants an engine-out capability with a full load from Denver."

  "Holy shit, Bandy. I'm not sure it's possible."

  "Let's see that slide rule smoke, Hadley. I'll call Hartford to see where Hamilton Standard is with their new propellers."

  Late that afternoon, they pushed the papers back. With split flaps and the new controllable-pitch Hamilton Standard props, they could just do it.

  Bandfield's mind was churning. He'd decided that they had better figure on three shifts a day to gain some time while Hadley designed the flaps. The wing modification alone would take three weeks just for the flaps. If worst came to worst, they could extend the wingspan another ten feet or so to lower the wing loading.

  The worst effect was the complete demolition of the budget. They had planned to be breaking even by the tenth production aircraft. Now they wouldn't make a dime until they sold forty airplanes.

  Forty airplanes. The most Roget had ever built of one kind before was the five Rockets, one of which had become the company plane because they'd never been able to sell it. Spread out over the years, that was hardly a roaring production rate. Forty airplanes!

  *

  Farmingdale, Long Island
/July 17, 1933

  Bruno Hafner motioned Murray to sit down while he continued his business discussion with an associate.

  "You fucking guinea! I paid you a thousand dollars to burn that warehouse."

  Tony Bonaventure squirmed. "It was impossible, Bruno. For Christ's sake, ask Murray! There were people all around, and the goddam cops were having some sort of a meeting in the building next door. You ought to be glad I saw what was going on."

  "Do it tonight. That place is filled with obsolete parts that will never sell, and I've got to get rid of them. There's lots of thinner and paint there, and a lot of fabric. It'll burn like a torch once you light it off."

  Bonaventure left, glad to have gotten off so lightly, and Murray cleared his throat to speak.

  Hafner interrupted him. "What can I say, Murray? Nobody's got balls anymore."

  Murray was no more comfortable with the new Bruno, the airline executive, than he'd been with the old Bruno, the gunrunner. He knew better than anyone how fast his moods could shift, how fine the line between the conservative businessman and the killer. Today, after an almost eight-year association, Murray still sat on the edge of his seat, sweat staining his collar.

  "I hear that Rhoades is going to the Coast to work for Hughes."

  "He is. Howard wants him to do most of the procurement for his racer. He actually expected me to go! All he ever did for me was let me risk my neck in a movie he was making. At least he's cut out the crap about calling himself Charles Howard. He never fooled anybody, not in this country, anyway."

  Murray tried not to look pleased at Rhoades's departure; Dusty had gotten too comfortable in his relationship with Charlotte, and it bothered Murray very much. Bruno, smile fixed and eyes burning, sat as still as a hawk on the hunt watching Murray. Bruno speculated whether in his long devotion Murray had ever gotten even a quick tumble from Charlotte. No, probably not.

  Bruno went to the bar and gestured with the bottle. "Sometimes I wish it was like the old days, when we were just pushing rifles and machine guns, before we got into planes and airlines and all the rest. You've done a good job with the arms sales, Murray."

 

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