Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age

by Boyne, Walter J.

But on the drawing it was clear. There were wind tunnel models of the aircraft standing on the shelves, and he put them side by side. They were identical—no help.

  Back in Ben’s office he asked, “Ben, how accurate are the wind tunnel models compared to the real aircraft?”

  Annoyed at the interruption, Ben yelled, “How the hell do I know? Go ask the wind tunnel guys.”

  “Wait a minute, Ben; take a look at these drawings. Look at the difference in the nose between the A-12 and the SR-71. But the models are identical.”

  Rich’s eyes lit up. “The damn wind tunnel models didn’t reflect this! I’ve spent months up there with models that were feeding me the wrong data.”

  He grabbed the drawings again, saying, “The difference in the angle of the nose is less than one percent, but that would be enough to affect airflow all along the fuselage and the inboard wing sections and could have a hell of an impact on fuel consumption.”

  Rich’s voice assumed its normal kindly tone. “Vance, could you call down to the flight line and ask them to set up a flight to Moffett Field tonight? I’m going to run home, check on my wife, and grab my getaway bag.”

  He shot out the door and then reappeared, asking, “And could you have somebody carry the models and drawings over to the ops section?”

  Vance smiled and picked up the two models and the associated drawings. He’d take them over himself. If he were twenty years younger, he would have insisted on going along. As it was, he’d made his points, and Ben would credit him for it. That was one thing about the Skunk Works—there was plenty of credit to go around.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  December 31, 1964

  Palos Verdes, California

  Einstein is completely wrong about this time/space continuum thing. He should have noted that time is asymptotic, and as you get older the curve goes straight up. It seems to me that we were all here yesterday, having a big fight about something, everybody angry, and then suddenly everybody was happy. I say all this as if I know what the hell I’m talking about.”

  Vance Shannon was standing in his customary position in front of the fireplace, looking around the room with his usual benevolence. For once the whole damn family was here, and for once everybody was getting along.

  Tom spoke up. “Come on, Dad; don’t ruin it. I made a horse’s ass out of myself last time, and I apologized, so don’t rub it in.”

  Anna spoke up, most unusual for her. “And don’t forget me. Instead of trying to hide behind the cushions, I’m right out here where you can see me.”

  She stood up and made a model’s turn, showing off her new figure, not yet slim but far from too heavy. “You’ve all been wonderful to me, supporting me all this time, and I won’t forget it.”

  In the previous years, Anna had gone to various clinics, trying to kick her twin problems of drinking and overeating. In February, she had gone back to her parish priest, who was running a soup kitchen for alcoholics down on the seedy side of San Diego. He had put her to work, given her a diet and exercise regime to follow, and the change had been almost miraculous.

  “New Year’s Eve is a time to celebrate, and I don’t know any better way than to go over the past year’s business. We’ve had one hell of a year, better than anyone could have expected with the industry in a slump as it is, and I want to thank all of you. I know you’ve all seen the numbers in the draft annual report, but let me just tell you a few things that you might have missed that aren’t in the numbers.”

  He put on his bifocals and peered at his hand-written notes. “First of all, our international business has gone up considerably—it amounts to about thirty percent of our gross income now. That’s just phenomenally important, because it means we can ride out some sinking spells in our own economy if things do well overseas, and vice versa. And I have to thank both Harry and Bob for that; working with the Concorde people and leasing the simulators has done a lot for us.

  “Second, Tom has expanded our business with the executive jet people way beyond Learjet. His idea about setting up a custom interior shop is paying off with big dividends. I don’t think any of the ladies have been out to our new shop at Lambert Field, in St. Louis. You’d be amazed; they bring green Learjets, Sabrejets, Lockheed JetStars, Jet Commanders, in, all stripped inside and primed outside. When they leave, they’re like the Taj Mahal, gorgeous woodwork inside, beautiful paint jobs outside. And the profit margin is incredible. I don’t know how Tom was working his slip stick on this one, but we are making a fortune on every aircraft we customize, and there are no complaints. It’s the damnedest market I’ve ever seen; nothing is too good for our customers, and they don’t even inquire about the prices.

  “Third, we are just going crazy with orders on the avionics side. Mae, we need to find another Bob Rodriquez, so I want you out there looking. Seriously, between the new instruments we’re developing and the simulators we’re building, there doesn’t seem to be any end to our growth.”

  There were pleased murmurs from his family. They all had reasons to be proud of themselves, and that made it easy to be proud of one another.

  “And that brings me to something I always thought I would hate, but which I just cannot avoid. We are going to have to go public, because we are going to have to grow, and we are going to have to get outside talent to man some very important posts.”

  A rustle of excitement swept through the room. Everyone there knew that going public meant a sudden acquisition of substantial sums of money. They had always lived comfortably, even luxuriously by most standards, but now there was the prospect of a totally new level of wealth, something that none of them were used to but all looked forward to.

  “This has taken a lot longer than I expected. It’s been fun to run a family business, to know exactly what was going on all the time in all the departments. But times have changed, and I think our involvement in Vietnam is going to escalate. The United States is buying into the worst possible situation, a ground war in Asia, and the only way we’ll be able to survive is with a tremendous growth in airpower. So we’d have to expand anyway, even if we didn’t want to. Any questions?”

  “When is all this going to happen, Dad?”

  “Son, I’m putting it in the hands of our old financial adviser, Cliff Boyd. He’s moved up in the world, and he knows the ropes for a company going public. He tells me that it will take about six months of due diligence, and then about three months of promotion effort, so he’s talking September 1965.”

  Vance looked at the women and smiled. “It will mean a totally new board of directors, and I suspect that not all of us will remain on it. We’ll need to reach out to industry and get some heavy hitters to be on the board, to support the initial offering of stock. But we’ll all be substantial stockholders, of course, and you can all come to the annual meetings and complain about our leadership.”

  He stepped down from the raised hearth and headed for the bar, where Jill had a very weak Jack Daniel’s and water waiting for him.

  She reached out and put her hand on his cheek. “This was so much better than last year. Thank God Tom came to his senses, and got over this business about Bob breaking into the family.”

  “Honey, there was no way he could disapprove of Bob’s performance. The man has simply been a dynamo, taking us into fields we need to be in but didn’t have the talent for. Tom finally accepted his good fortune.”

  There was no evidence of past animosity as Tom, Harry, and Bob gathered around the table in the kitchen, talking business as they always did.

  “What happened with the sonic boom tests you were helping the FAA run, Tom?”

  In February, the FAA had launched Bongo Mark 2, an operation that used Convair B-58 bombers and Lockheed F-104 fighters to make supersonic speed runs to test the effect of the sound barrier, using Oklahoma City as the main target.

  “It was pretty comprehensive. They made more than twelve hundred supersonic runs, and when they polled the public, they found that seventy-three percent
of the people didn’t object—but this meant that twenty-seven percent did. The tests were so regular that one woman said she used the sonic boom to wake her up instead of an alarm clock. There was not much real damage, some broken windows and cracked plaster, but there were more than eight thousand complaints and more than five thousand claims for damages. So it pretty well spells the end of supersonic airline operation over land areas in the U.S.”

  Tom chimed in, “If we prohibit transports operating at supersonic speeds over land here, every other nation will follow suit. The governments will be afraid their people will think they are indifferent.”

  And Harry said, “Not in the Soviet Union. The distances there are so vast that an SST makes more sense, and they don’t give a damn about public complaints.”

  “How are they coming along?”

  “I understand that they are doing very well, and are determined to beat the Concorde into the air. But they’ve got some technical problems, and they have the gall to write us and ask for advice. One of their problems is tires—they cannot get the right rubber composition for tires that will be landing as fast and as heavy as their SST does.”

  “What about engines?”

  “The usual approach: pure power, and damn the operating costs.”

  “Anybody had a look at a model or a drawing?”

  “Not yet, but the Tupolev people are hinting at an unveiling at the next Paris Air Show.”

  Vance walked by the door to the kitchen, en route to his bedroom, his Jack Daniel’s still not tasted. A quick scan of the room made him swell with pleasure. All three were talking animatedly. It was evident that Tom’s animosity toward Bob had evaporated, and Bob showed no signs of resentment, as a lesser man might have. And there was Harry, big, strong Harry, always the tower of strength. God, Anna had put him through hell, and he had stayed with her the whole time. If she stayed on the wagon, if she took care of herself, it would be a fine thing for Harry, a real tribute.

  They were good boys. Tom had something on his mind, he could tell, but seemed at peace with himself, so that was OK. The three of them could handle the incorporation, and then it was time for Vance to retire, maybe restore an old airplane or his favorite car, a 1937 Cord. Maybe.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  January 6, 1965

  Meudon, outside Paris, France

  Edged with ivy, the lovely old stone building was located near the fields where Alberto Santos-Dumont, Louis Blériot, and other early aviation pioneers had flown. In its early years at the turn of the nineteenth century, it was the École Nationale Aérostatique, the world’s first school for training balloonists. Balloons and airships were built there, a few setting records, more going up in a ball of hydrogen flame.

  Military ballooning waxed and waned over the years, but Meudon remained the linchpin of French aviation research. Now the compound at 91 Boulevard Pereire housed the Musée de l’Air, a collection of great French aircraft that began with those of Clement Ader and went on to include warplanes and record setters. They were scattered around an interior so cavernous that it had once allowed balloons to be built and tested. The aircraft, some world famous, others utterly anonymous, were propped above cases lined with equipment and models or suspended from the ceiling on rusting cable. A half century of dust had turned them all into a uniform gray, their once-bright insignias vainly peeking through.

  Madeline Behar had chosen the meeting site deliberately. Her Soviet contacts—two Russians and an East German—had complained that restaurants and bars were too easily compromised and wanted to meet some place where they were certain not to be recognized. The museum pleased her, and she hoped it might spark some reaction from them as a symbol of their countries’ long and troubled relations. During the 1870 Franco-Prussian War it had served again as a balloon factory. The French Air Force pressed it into service during both world wars. But most of all, she chose it because Marcel Dassault contributed heavily to the upkeep of the museum, especially with the limited restoration work that was done. He headed the firm that served as cover for her intelligence work, and his influence made it easy for her to gain access for a private meeting.

  Madeline’s Russian was far more fluent than Gerd Müller’s and much more stylish than that of either Sergei Pavlov, the official head of Aeroflot’s Paris office, or the hulking Sergei Fabiew, who might as well have had “KGB” tattooed on his forehead.

  She paused near a SPAD XIII, still in its original fabric with its squadron’s stork emblem emblazoned on the fuselage. From above, a suspended Fokker D VII seemed to be fixed forever in a diving attack on its old enemy, the SPAD.

  “Do you remember these planes from World War I?”

  Müller nodded quietly, pointing up to the Fokker, saying, “Our best fighter. It came too late, but it was good.”

  Madeline spoke confidently, quietly, as with an old friend. “I’ve often wondered why the Germans did not seize this collection during the occupation. They could have made a case that the scrap metal was needed.”

  Müller bristled. “We were not always ruthless. The world remembers only Hitler now, and the slaughtering of the Jews, but the ordinary German had a regard for culture.”

  Fabiew stared at Müller, obviously displeased by the tenor of the conversation. He did not say a word, but his look was enough to galvanize the East German.

  “This seems to be a secure area, unless you are having us watched.”

  The museum was cluttered with airplanes, and a hundred agents could have been hidden behind them, the exhibit cases, the engines, or the piles of anonymous parts.

  “You are too suspicious. If I wanted us to be watched, I’d have insisted on going back to the hotel bar. We are alone. The museum is only open by appointment, and the director assured me that there would be no other visitors. He has no staff to speak of, and all of the museum work is conducted in the shops outside. We are alone.”

  “Then what do you have?”

  Madeline pressed an ordinary brown envelope into his hand.

  “This contains a sample of tires that are being tested for the Concorde. They are made from the same material, but are smaller of course. They are testing the special tires on a Vatour.”

  She paused, her memory going back to Vance. He had brought the design specifications for a lighter version of the B-47 home from Boeing to work on over a weekend. She had copied them and sent them back to her patron in French intelligence, who had passed them on to the manufacturer, Sud Ouest. The specifications led directly to the Vatour, which had done well in battle.

  She resumed, “They load the Vatour up beyond its maximum landing weight, and then land at high speeds and brake very hard. The tires burn their way into the runway, leaving big clouds of smoke behind. My mechanic scraped this material from the runway where they land.”

  “What is it made of?”

  “The tire compound itself? I have no idea. That’s a closely held secret. But it’s not as complex as an atomic bomb! Your scientists will be able to analyze it, and duplicate the formula. There must be four or five ounces of material there. Don’t ask me to get more. It was very risky sending a man out to get this. I had to tell the tower that we were looking for parts that had fallen off the Vatour. They let my man go out there because they didn’t want any foreign-object damage to the next plane to land.”

  “How do you know this is from the Vatour? It might come from any airplane.”

  “Open the envelope, and look at it. You’ll see red and green fibers. They were put in the test tires on the Vatour to monitor wear. No other airplane has tires like that.”

  Pavlov poked through the mound of shredded, burned rubber dubiously, shrugged his shoulders, and handed the envelope to Fabiew, who did exactly the same thing. They nodded to Müller, who suddenly smiled, saying, “This is fine; thank you very much. And I’ll have payment for you within a few weeks.”

  Madeline feigned anger. “What? A few weeks? And in francs or dollars this time, or don’t bother; it will be
the last business we do. I’m putting my job at risk every time I deal with you, and you are always late with the money.”

  The Russians turned and started to walk out. Müller grabbed Pavlov by the arm and turned to Madeline again. “What about taking us around and showing us the rest of the airplanes?”

  “Do you think I am a tour guide? It’s time for you and your friends to go. Who knows when somebody might come in? I don’t want to explain what I’m doing here with you.”

  The four walked rapidly to the double entrance door. She pushed it open for them, Müller bowed, and they went to their parked Citroën.

  She watched them through a window next to the door.

  “Müller would have a Citroën. He always tries to be more like Jean Gabin than Jean Gabin.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  July 4, 1965

  Palos Verdes, California

  Sunday was a perfect California day for a backyard picnic, the sun warm enough to encourage shorts and halters for the ladies, the breeze cool enough to keep everybody comfortable. Anna was so pleased with her new figure that she joked about the little bundle of fat that still lapped over the top of her shorts—it was nothing compared to a year ago, and she was determined to shed it with exercise and an even more stringent diet.

  It was the first time in months that everyone was home. It hadn’t been planned this way, but it worked out perfectly, for there was a lot of catching up to do. The men of the family—Vance, Tom, Harry, and Bob—took bottles of Budweiser and sat down at the big kitchen table, moved onto the porch for the occasion. Jill turned out her usually dazzling platter of sandwiches—thin-sliced roast beef, pastrami, ham and cheese, and, for Vance, turkey breast on rye, no mayonnaise. An array of condiments surrounded the sandwiches—sliced onion, dill pickles, mustard, catsup, Worcestershire sauce, and even, for Bob, some salsa from the market in Old Town.