Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age)

by Walter J. Boyne

  Von Braun dropped the phone without even thanking Allen and rushed out of the house, his tie still untied, shoes unlaced, coat slung over his shoulder, heading for the reception and a word with Medaris. On the way, von Braun thought of all the rebuffs he had received since 1954, when he had tried to convince the government to use the Jupiter missile to place a satellite in orbit. Instead, the Navy’s proposed Vanguard launch vehicle was chosen to launch a small satellite, one that was to serve as the United States’ contribution to the International Geophysical Year to be observed in 1957-58. The Vanguard was still not ready, but his Jupiter C rocket had proved itself. With a few modifications, it could place a satellite in orbit.

  His tie tied, shoes laced, and coat safely tucked around his shoulders, von Braun paused outside the austere Redstone Arsenal’s Officers’ Club to gaze upward at the skies now ruled by Soviet hardware, the first man-made satellite ever to orbit Earth. Five minutes later he had the swarthy, mustachioed Medaris bent over a table, sipping a Coca-Cola, listening intently. Von Braun often joked to his wife that he seemed destined to work for men with mustaches, but Medaris was a totally different boss from Hitler. Distinguished-looking, soft-spoken, and a devout Episcopalian, he had literally created the Army Ballistic Missile Agency out of whole cloth. Medaris had induced the sleepy town of Huntsville, with its seventeen-thousand population, to annex the land around Redstone Arsenal and then provide it with the services it needed but the Army would not provide. Medaris had told an unbelieving city council that in ten years Huntsville’s population would exceed one hundred thousand, and now it looked as if he had been conservative in his estimate.

  An imposing figure, Medaris valued von Braun, and recognized all that he had done for the Army’s ballistic missile program. Nonetheless, Medaris was reluctant to let him speak to the next Secretary of Defense without formal preparation and without clearing the talk through the Secretary of the Army. Von Braun was insistent. The two men had arrived at an easy understanding: von Braun was a genius who was to be given a virtual free hand—but ultimately, Medaris was boss.

  “General Medaris, we have no time. If we allow Secretary McElroy to go back to Washington and face an army of reporters with no answers about an American satellite, he will never forgive us.”

  Medaris finally agreed, and the two men sequestered the bewildered, somewhat apprehensive McElroy in a small office away from the ballroom.

  “Tell me again, Dr. von Braun, what the Russians have done.”

  Medaris nodded and von Braun said “Mr. Secretary, the Russians have placed a small satellite into orbit around Earth. This is the first time this has ever been done. We do not yet know for sure the size of the satellite, or what instrumentation it has, but if it is just a bowling ball, it is an incredible achievement. And its implications are frightening.”

  “What are the frightening implications?” McElroy was not skeptical, just bewildered and a bit embarrassed at his own lack of knowledge.

  “Well, if the Soviets can put a satellite into space, it means they have rockets that can power an intercontinental ballistic missile. And that means they can put a nuclear weapon on a U.S. target in thirty minutes. It is an incredible capability.”

  “Do we have a similar capability?”

  “No. We do not have an intercontinental ballistic missile. We can put a satellite in orbit, however, if we modify the Jupiter C with another stage.”

  McElroy stroked his chin, distressed at being forced to make an important decision before he was even sworn in. It was not good form.

  Von Braun was unrelenting. “Mr. Secretary, when you get back to Washington, you’ll find that all hell has broken loose. We can put up a satellite in sixty days—once you give us the go-ahead.”

  Medaris interjected, “Make it ninety days, Wernher.”

  “OK, make it ninety days,” said von Braun.

  McElroy snapped his head up, extended his hand, and said, “Agreed.”

  Von Braun started for the door, but Medaris stopped him. “We’ll start tomorrow, Wernher. Tonight we have a guest.”

  Impatience flooded von Braun’s face, but he understood and flashed the smile that would soon become famous.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  October 5, 1957

  Seattle, Washington

  A depressed and weary group of Boeing engineers sat staring at the television set, brought into the conference room to show them the firestorm of interest that the beep-beep-beep of the Sputnik had generated around the world. Daphne Perry, George Schairer’s new secretary, came in pushing a cart laden with coffee and rolls. Usually she had something bright and saucy to say, but this Saturday morning she sensed the deep emotion of the room and moved quietly to serve the men.

  Schairer was not sitting at his usual position, deferring to the chief engineer, Wellwood Beall, but had called the meeting and was running it with his customary crisp efficiency. As always, Schairer was wearing a well-fit off-the-rack suit and white shirt, but today his tie was undone, his sparse hair in disarray, and his glasses smudged. Around the table, showing similar signs of fatigue, sat eleven of Boeing’s finest engineers and Vance Shannon. All were equally dismayed by the Soviet triumph.

  “Talk about getting caught with your pants down. It is incredible that they could have pulled this off with so little warning.”

  Ed Wells, older, shorter, and with considerably more hair than Schairer, nodded in agreement. “There were some hints. The Soviets had said that they had intended to put a small satellite into orbit soon. But the problem is that we just don’t have any worthwhile intelligence sources in Russia. We keep getting fed garbage, and I don’t think that even our newest sources could have picked this out.”

  Shannon, a longtime intimate of both Schairer and Wells—he didn’t know Beall as well—had been a consultant to Boeing for more than thirty years. He picked up his ears at Wells’s comment, assuming that he was referring to the covert U-2 flights over the Soviet Union. It surprised Shannon. A few, a very few, people were aware of the U-2 and its capabilities, and none of them ever talked about it in an open forum like this.

  Wells went on, “Well, they’ve got a new term for it—‘humint,’ short for ‘human intelligence.’ We must have a few people on the ground over there, but they are not giving us much help.”

  Shannon was relieved and troubled at the same time. He was glad that Wells had not slipped up and talked about the U-2 in front of his engineers, many of whom had no knowledge of the program. But the reference to human intelligence—jargon for “spying”—made him squirm, reminding him of what had happened with Madeline eight years earlier.

  Beall turned wearily to Shannon and said, “Vance, what does it mean to you? Is this as big a threat as some of the newspapers are making it out to be?”

  Shannon waited for a moment before speaking, deliberately taking a swallow of coffee.

  “Well, it shows they have rockets big enough to use intercontinental missiles to deliver a nuclear warhead. It doesn’t show how many they have or how reliable they are, but it is a definite threat. But I also think it is the biggest and best thing that ever happened to the American aviation industry.”

  Almost as a man, the Boeing engineers straightened up in their chairs and stared at him, waiting for him to go on. Shannon did, saying, “President Eisenhower cannot take this lying down, and the American people won’t let him. You can expect to see funding for experiments with satellites and missiles to explode, pardon the pun. There will be a requirement for us to get our own satellites into the air as soon as possible. It will have an impact on aircraft production, too. The Strategic Air Command will be built up. General LeMay will want to have his own fleet of ICBMs—that’s what they call the long-range missiles—as soon as we have any.”

  Beall nodded approvingly. “That’s the way we have to look at it. Convair is way ahead of us on this one. They’ve been spending development money on an ICBM for years, since 1946. Lots of problems with it, but they are too far ahea
d of us to compete for the first generation of ICBMs—but there will always be new ones coming down the pike.”

  The conversation became general, and it was soon apparent that Schairer had invited the engineers carefully for their specialties.

  Finally, he said, “Well, gentlemen, it looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us. We’ve got a lot of experience already with the Bomarc, thanks to Bob Jewett here.”

  The Bomarc was a Mach 3.0 surface-to-air missile intended to defend against hostile aircraft. Launched with a rocket booster, it used ramjets for power and had a sophisticated radar homing system. Only three days before, it had completed its first really successful test, but the Air Force was going to buy them in quantity, and it looked as if Canada would, too.

  Schairer went on, “We can translate that experience into an organization to explore the production of ICBMs, satellites, and maybe more. Let’s meet here again, a week from today, and let me have your thoughts on how to approach it. But before you go, let’s just toss some ideas out on the table; maybe it will stimulate our thinking.”

  Wells started it off, “I’ve always thought Convair was barking up the wrong tree, using liquid propellants for an ICBM. You really cannot waste the time it takes to fuel and erect a rocket using liquid fuels, and they are much too dangerous. We need to think about a solid rocket, one you can store in the ground for years, then fire with a push of the button.”

  Jack Steiner, tall, dark haired, and utterly intense, was next. “Well, you can talk about satellites all you want, but what the public will demand is something more Buck Rogers, space planes, rocket ships, and the like. If you can put a satellite in orbit, you could put a man-carrying aircraft in orbit, too, and just let it glide back down when you are ready.”

  Schairer raised his hands. “That’s enough for now—Ed and Jack just outlined twenty-five years of work. I’d like everyone to come back next week, same time, same place, prepared to discuss these two ideas, and in the meantime send me a memo on any other ideas you have. And as far as the press goes, the official word is that Boeing congratulates the scientists in the USSR for their achievement, and looks forward to the forthcoming competition in space.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  November 4, 1957

  Palos Verdes, California

  The three Shannons were glued to the television set, watching the grainy photographs of Laika, the dog being carried in orbit by Sputnik II. Tom reached down and scratched the head of Poppy, the lovable golden retriever that never left his side when he was home.

  “We’d never let them do that to you, Poppy.”

  The atmosphere was dour from the weather outside and the news of another Soviet triumph inside. This was the first time the three of them had met together for more than two months. Vance had been flying back and forth between Seattle and Burbank, Harry had been spending most of his time at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and Tom’s time had been divided between Burbank and the Lockheed plant in Marietta, Georgia, where production of the Lockheed C-130 transport was booming.

  “How do these guys do it, Dad? They can’t feed their people, they can’t make a decent car, but they’ve completely outstripped us in space.”

  “Well, they are smart, no doubt about that, and they are tough; look how they polished off the Germans. But the main thing is that they are focused. They’ve got enough government funding guaranteed over long periods of time. We’ll get there, but it better be soon,’cause they are making laughingstocks of us.”

  Harry didn’t comment for a while, then asked, “Where is Bob Rodriquez?”

  “Bob’s off back east, in Cambridge, Mass., working with Ed Land on some camera projects. Land is the guy who invented the Polaroid process, you know, and now he is creating some incredible cameras for reconnaissance work.”

  The answer satisfied Tom, not so much because he was interested in Rodriquez’s work as because he was content to have him out of the immediate area. Despite all of his father’s explanations, Tom had never accepted the agreement and continued to regard Rodriquez as an outsider. Tom was polite to him and worked well enough with him, but if Bob ever left to take another job, he would be pleased.

  Vance Shannon walked over and turned the television set off. “I’ve seen enough about that poor dog and the blasted Sputnik II. Harry, I want you to tell me again exactly what Kelly said to you about designing the Learjet.”

  Harry recounted the story, emphasizing the need to look at small fighters as a possible platform to launch the new jet.

  “It makes sense. The manufacturer would have done a lot of the wind tunnel work, the stress analysis, and so on. It would be overbuilt, to take more g’s than an executive jet would require, but if it’s light enough, that wouldn’t be much of a problem, might even be a plus. Did he mention any types specifically?”

  “Yes, he mentioned that the Swiss were working on a fighter of their own, and of course, there are Saab and Dassault to consider.”

  Harry regretted it the instant he said “Dassault,” which was one of the firms that had been given information Madeline had stolen from Vance. It didn’t bother him, as he laughed and said, “Well, maybe we have a contact there—Madeline might still be working for them.”

  He turned to Tom and asked, “How is your project in Marietta coming?”

  Tom had been hired to dispose of the surplus tools and fixtures that Lockheed had used when it was building the Boeing B-47 under license. It was a pretty boring job, but it was cheaper for Lockheed to have him handle it than to devote someone from their own workforce, shorthanded now as C-130 and JetStar production began to increase.

  “It’s in pretty good shape. I’ll be winding it up in a couple of weeks.”

  “OK, you’ve been hitting it pretty hard. Why don’t you take Nancy and V.R. and make a little tour through Europe—hit some of the foreign plants making smaller fighter jets or trainers. There’s Folland, in England, and you mentioned Saab and Dassault, and there’s Fiat in Italy. Probably some more, if you get out your Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft and see what’s cooking. We can set up an itinerary; we know people in most of the plants, or if not, we know people who know people. You won’t tell them what you are doing, let them think you are looking in order to recommend a trainer for some foreign government or something.”

  “I don’t know, Dad. Harry’s been working hard, too; this doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Go for it, Tom—Nancy deserves it. Anna and I are planning a trip to Hawaii later in the year, so don’t feel bad.”

  Vance looked on his sons with pride. They were finally growing up, becoming more friends and less rivals. It was about time, but he wished he could tell if it was maturity or the Rodriquez factor that made it so.

  CHAPTER NINE

  December 18, 1957

  Venice, California

  At sixty, Fritz Obermyer did not get as excited as he did in his youth, but today was different, with an old friend long thought to be dead suddenly calling him out of the blue. The hair had stood up on the back of his neck as he heard the familiar guttural voice of Gerd Müller, his comrade in the trenches of World War I, his friend and bodyguard during the interwar years, and his close companion until the very last day of World War II.

  Müller, sounding conspiratorial as usual, had talked only for a few minutes, long enough to arrange to meet that night but not nearly long enough to explain what had happened to him in the twelve years since they had been split up on a Berlin street, trying to avoid capture by the Russians.

  Obermyer spent the rest of the day in his apartment. There were absolutely no similarities, but Obermyer always felt as at home in Venice, California, as he had at his favorite hotel, the Bayerischer Hof, in Friedrichschafen. The air, scenery, people, and food were all vastly different, but both gave him the same strange dual sense of anonymity and belonging. He had leased a small second-floor apartment, two blocks from the beach and almost ten miles from his office in his booming Volkswagen dealership. There the pressur
e was great, even though he had good people working for him. He was just too set in his ways to delegate much decision-making power. He let his best used-car salesmen decide on the value of the trade-ins, but other than that, he approved every deal that was made. He even watched the receipts from the maintenance department. That was one little secret Volkswagen kept from the public. The purchase price and operating costs were relatively low, but maintenance costs were higher than American customers were used to and generated a good percentage of his total profits.

  Despite his urge to see Müller, Obermyer was glad to have time to clean up some paperwork relating to his new business colleagues in San Diego. Six months before, he had gone down for the grand opening of Capestro Motors. Capestro and Shannon had done it correctly, buying their land far out on El Cajon Boulevard and putting in more money than the parent firm required to make sure they had a top location, plenty of space, easy access from downtown, and a huge maintenance bay, half again as large as prescribed by Volkswagen.

  It was the first pure Volkswagen dealership in the area. A few VWs had been sold by other dealers, whose lines usually included Hillman and Jaguar. But Shannon and Capestro had done things right again by announcing they were going to specialize, and they had already captured most of the repair business for VWs already in the area.

  In their early negotiations, Obermyer had not told them about the profits to be made from the higher maintenance costs—it would have alarmed them, as they were both painfully honest men. Now they were finding out for themselves and had to be pleased by the development.

  The bigger maintenance bay was probably Shannon’s influence, he thought. He has had a lot of operational experience with aircraft, and it carries over to cars. And he probably learned a lot from Mademoiselle Behar.

  Obermyer flipped through the thick dossier in front of him. In it virtually every event in Vance Shannon’s life was recorded, from being an ace in World War I, through test-flying in the years between the wars, to the great success his firm enjoyed during World War II and afterward. It covered details of his family life, the death of his first wife, Margaret, his long affair with Madeline Behar, and his current apparently happy marriage to the former Jill Abernathy.