Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age)
Page 35
“Schmidt, what does it look like out there?”
“Can’t see anything but flames, boss; we’d better get out of here.”
“Crew, stand by. I’m going to try to get a little closer to Laos before we bail out, but get ready to go when I call it.”
There was a dead silence as each crew member strapped his parachute tighter and hunched down in his seat, hands hovering near the ejection seat handles.
O’Malley saw another B-52 burning to the left, spiraling down. He flew the plane carefully, watching the instruments, being posted on the fire. Suddenly the controls let go, and he knew it was time to go.
“Eject, eject, eject.”
He fought the airplane, heard Greenberg’s seat go, then saw Schmidt leave in a burst of flame, followed by a gout of debris—maps, lunches, thermos bottles—spewing out the open hatch. O’Malley called “Gunner? Nav? Radar?”
There was no answer and no more time. He pulled his ejection seat handles, the hatch left, and he shot out into the blackness of the Laotian sky.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
February 10, 1973
Palos Verdes, California
Jill was busy arranging the table, putting out not Korbel but Dom Perignon, for this was a real celebration that was the happiest in years. Word had come in two days before that Tom Shannon was in fact alive and well enough to be coming home in a few days. Steve O’Malley, back from his own adventures, was due there any moment, with a personal letter from General Meyer to Vance.
Everyone else—Nancy, Harry and Anna, Bob and Mae, the children, and inevitably nowadays, Warren Bowers—was already in the library, surrounding Vance and continuing to rejoice over the fact of Tom’s delivery from imprisonment. The news had an astounding effect upon Vance, seeming to take twenty years off his age. He was jubilant, a totally different man than he had been only a few weeks before when the news of the peace treaty ending American involvement in the Vietnam War had been announced on television by President Nixon on January 27. Bitter about Tom’s situation still being unknown, Vance had railed at the television set, denouncing Nixon for selling out the South Vietnamese but really hating him for selling out his son.
There followed almost two weeks of frustration and depression until Vance received word from Lieutenant Colonel Steve O’Malley that Tom was alive and, if not well, at least on the way to being well.
The doorbell rang and Harry sprinted to it, clasping O’Malley on the back and bringing him into the library to the cheers of the family. He walked right up to Vance, saluted, and said, “General Meyer wrote this out in his own hand. I don’t know what it says, but when he gave it to me, he told me to congratulate you on your son’s recovery, and that he felt that you deserved to know that the American air forces had performed brilliantly.”
Vance opened the letter with his ancient Swiss Army knife, apologized to the group, and read it silently, tears forming in his eyes. He put it down for a moment to collect himself, then read it aloud:
“It says: ‘Dear Mr. Shannon, my heartiest congratulations on the news that your son, Colonel Thomas Shannon, has been found in a North Vietnamese prison camp and will be repatriated as soon as possible. I understand that he has suffered much during his imprisonment, but is now in good spirits and looking forward, of course, to returning home to his family.
“‘I’m writing you today because I felt your many contributions to the strength of the air forces of the United States deserved special consideration, and because I well remember your visit to my office and your recommendation for the all-out use of airpower against the North Vietnamese.
“‘The Air Force, like all the services, is of course under direct civilian control, and as much as I was inclined to do so, I was unable to follow-up on your instructions. But as you know, the incursions of the North Vietnamese in the fall of 1972 forced the President to conduct Linebacker II, the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, and this effort forced the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table.
“‘I thought you would be interested to know that we executed Operation Linebacker II exactly as you would have wished—and exactly as my predecessor as a SAC commander, General Curtis E. LeMay, would have wished. The USAF made fifteen hundred and ten sorties from December 18 through December 29. Of these, seven hundred and twenty-nine were B-52 attacks on Hanoi and Haiphong. Another two hundred and seventy-seven sorties were flown by Naval and Marine aircraft. The enemy defenses were totally suppressed. By December 29 when the last raid was made, there was virtually no opposition. Although I could not say so officially, it is my belief that if we had persisted in the attack, we would have forced the North Vietnamese to surrender on our terms.
“‘Sadly, we lost fifteen B-52s and six other aircraft in the attacks. The loss rate, however, was very low, only slightly over one percent. We were prepared to accept a higher loss rate, if required, to achieve our objective, which was the total domination of the enemy airspace and breaking the enemy’s will to resist.
“‘I’m writing to you in gratitude for your son’s service, for his valiant resistance during his imprisonment, and also in gratitude for the manifold contributions you have made to airpower personally.
“‘With respect and admiration,
“‘John C. Meyer, General, USAF.’”
Vance’s voice shook slightly as he turned to O’Malley. “Steve, it was good of General Meyer to take time to write this, and good of you to bring it. I understand that you were shot down on the third day of the operation?”
“Yes, but we made it to Laos, and were picked up within a few hours. No one was badly injured—a couple of sprains, that’s all.”
Vance turned to Warren Bowers, saying, “Warren, here’s the man you should write your next book about. Colonel O’Malley has been both a fighter pilot and a bomber pilot, and he sort of epitomizes the new age of flying.”
Bowers, diffident as usual, said he would be pleased, but O’Malley laughed and said, “Warren, if you’ve only written one book about Vance Shannon, you have your work cut out for you. I’ve been studying the Shannon family for years, and between Vance, Harry, and Tom, they are the world of aviation in one family.”
Vance jumped in. “And don’t forget our partner, Bob Rodriquez, who did the initial work on the smart bombs.”
Rodriquez had been hanging back, as usual, conscious that this was a family gathering but filled with emotion that Mae, young Bob, and he were so completely accepted. Diffident as usual, he said, very softly, “Warren, Colonel O’Malley is right; you’ve got another two or three books in the Shannon family alone. Think about what is coming along, the F-15 and the F-16, the B-1, lots more stuff, and maybe in another ten years or so a supersonic airliner. When they all are operational, the Shannons will already be working on the next generation, and I’ll be proud to be helping.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THIS IS THE story of the fantastically swift rise of jet aviation from a military curiosity to a system of civil and military aircraft that has revolutionized the world.
All of the events pertaining to the advance of jet aviation in this trilogy of novels are real—production decisions, rollouts, cancellations, first flights, records set, crashes, everything. These incredible accomplishments are properly credited to the people who made them possible, for example, Sir Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain for the invention of the jet engine, Kelly Johnson for the creation of the U-2, Bill Allen and Juan Trippe for initiating the Boeing 747, Andrei and Alexei Tupolev for creating the Tu-144 supersonic transport, and so on through the years.
But these giants would be the first to recognize that the projects attributed to them are the work of a vast system of people—engineers, pilots, mechanics, sales personnel, accountants, and so on. It is, of course, impossible to recognize all of the participants in real time in a novel. Instead, a fictional family, the Shannons, and their associates have been created to provide continuity and insight and to substitute for all of the thousands of important people who
cannot be recognized individually.
Thus Vance Shannon, the patriarch of the Shannon family, finds his way around the world of jet aviation, acting as a facilitator, a lubricant, a pressure pump, for telling the story of the momentous rise of jet aviation from the first successful jet airplanes in 1939 to the hypersonic scramjets of the future. The Shannons are on-scene for most of the major events or create relationships with those who are.
In some instances, real events have been compressed in time and space so that they can be related as fiction in the form of the actions of the Shannon family. In all cases, however, there has been no alteration to the effect of the events on the development of jet aviation.
WALTER J. BOYNE
Ashburn, Virginia,
November 28, 2004
FORGE BOOKS BY WALTER J. BOYNE
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Today’s Best Military Writing (editor)
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
SUPERSONIC THUNDER: A NOVEL OF THE JET AGE
Copyright © 2006 by Walter J. Boyne
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
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Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429988193
First eBook Edition : February 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boyne, Walter J. 1929-
Supersonic thunder : a novel of the jet age / Walter J. Boyne.—1st hardcover ed. p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN-13: 978-0-765-30844-3
ISBN-10: 0-765-30844-4
1. Johnson, Clarence L.—Fiction. 2. LeVier, Tony, 1913-1998—Fiction. 3. Aeronautical engineers—Fiction. 4. Test pilots—Fiction. 5. Jet planes—Fiction. 6. Aircraft Industry—Fiction. 7. Inventors—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.0937S87 2006
813’.54—dc22
2006030409
First Edition: January 2007