by Nevil Shute
Marjorie went round and saw Shirley alone at tea-time on the following afternoon. “I know it’s no good trying to kid you and Dr. Scott,” she said candidly. “You think I’ve worked for this, that it’s been all my doing. Well, up to a point, it has.”
Shirley smiled. “I don’t think anyone that Mr. Honey married could expect to be exactly passive in the matter,” she observed. “Any girl would have had to have done most of the work.”
Marjorie nodded. “I think that’s true. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to be terribly happy together.”
“My dear, I know you will,” said Shirley. “I can tell you one thing — he’s an awfully kind man.”
“I know,” the stewardess said softly. “You wouldn’t think it, but he’s brave, too — and just terribly clever.” She turned to Shirley. “I’m not a very clever person,” she said, “and I don’t really understand very much about his work. But I do know this — it’s just about as important as a man’s work can be. I’ve only known him a short time, but in that time I’ve seen him save hundreds of lives — literally hundreds. When you think of what might have happened to the Reindeers if he hadn’t found out this about fatigue ...”
“I know,” said Shirley. It was in her mind to say that I had had a bit to do with it as well, and so had Marjorie herself and Captain Samuelson, but she did not want to be ungracious, or to spoil her pleasure.
“All my life,” the girl said, “ever since Donald got killed, I wanted to be in aviation. That’s why I manœuvred to get this job with the Organisation, to be a stewardess. I love being on aerodromes and seeing aeroplanes. It’s a sort of bug that gets in you, you know.”
Shirley nodded. “I’ve got it, too.”
The stewardess said, “Serving teas and drinks, and asking passengers to fasten safety belts and helping them to do it — that’s one way to work in aviation. It’s all right, if you can’t do anything more important. But then when I met Theo, when he pulled the undercart up out at Gander, I started wondering if that was really the best thing I could do. He’s such a — such a big little man,” she said. “His work is so vastly more important than mine, and he does need someone’s help so very, very much.”
“My dear,” said Shirley softly.
Marjorie said, “I never went to college, and I won’t be able to do much to help him in his work. I don’t think he’d want that, anyway. But I can help him for all that, in all the things he can’t do properly himself. And I can make him young again, I think, and make him enjoy things. If I can do that, he’s bound to do better work even than he does now. And I think that’s a better way to work in aviation than just serving teas and drinks, and telling the passengers when to do up their safety belts ...”
D.R.D. called his second meeting on the Reindeer tail two days later, at 11.30 in the same room in the Ministry of Supply. I killed two birds with one stone, that day, by arranging for the pilot of the Assegai to meet me an hour previously in Ferguson’s room.
His name was Flying-Officer Harper. He was a dark-haired, fresh-faced boy of twenty-one or twenty-two, who adopted the pose that everything was a joke and nothing really mattered, whether being crossed in love or being killed in an Assegai. He came into the room warily, as if walking into a trap.
“Flying-Officer Harper?” I said. “Good morning. My name is Scott, and I’m from Farnborough. We’ve got to start a special investigation into these accidents that you’ve been having with the Assegai, and I asked if you could meet me here to tell me just what happened.” I motioned him to a chair and gave him a cigarette. “Tell me, what happened first of all?”
“Well,” he said, “the wing came off.”
“I know. Any idea why it came off?”
“I suppose it just isn’t strong enough.”
“Tell me just what happened,” I said. “It’s my job to try and make it stronger. First of all, what height were you at?”
“About thirty-five thousand, I should think. Anyway, between thirty and forty thousand.”
“Were you alone, or were there other machines about?”
“There were other machines up at the time, but nobody near me. Nobody else saw what happened.”
“What were you doing? Were you flying level, or diving?”
“I was in a shallow dive, sir.”
“What speed were you going at?”
“I don’t know,” he said evasively. “The air-speed indicator goes all haywire — it was flipping about all over the scale.”
“What was the Machmeter showing?”
“I never look at that,” he said. “It’s no bloody good, that thing. Half the time it’s U/S.”
One has to be patient. I said, “Would you say that you were near the speed of sound?”
He said reluctantly, “I might have been. It’s rather difficult to tell.”
I smiled. “What about the restriction on the speed of the Assegai? The one about not doing more than .90 Mach?”
He laughed cynically. “That’s just a bit of bloody nonsense. Nobody pays any attention to that.”
“You mean, in combat practice you go faster than that in Assegais?”
“Of course. Everybody does. It’s just a lot of nonsense put out by the boffins, that.”
I grinned. “What’s the fastest you have ever been in an Assegai?”
He said proudly, “I got it up to 1.2 on that Machmeter thing. That was in about a thirty-degree dive. I believe you’d get her faster than that if you started at about fifty thousand.”
1.20 Mach is getting on for a thousand miles an hour. “Did you have any trouble getting through the speed of sound?” I asked.
“It’s just like being inside a kettledrum,” he said. “Everything’s sort of hammering at you, very quick, and it gets bloody hot. Then as you go through it all gets smooth again. Then it’s the same as you slow down, and come back through.”
I stared at him. It had never been contemplated that ordinary squadron pilots would do that. “Have you done that often?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Half a dozen times,” he said. “It’s rather fun.”
“Does everybody do this?” I asked.
“Of course they do,” he said. “Wingco hands out a raspberry if he hears anyone talking about it. But everybody does it.”
R.A.F. discipline was no concern of mine; my job was simply to do what I could to see that aircraft were built strong enough to be safe in the way that they were used. I said, “Let’s say that you got out of control when flying at Mach .90 and inadvertently approached the speed of sound. I suppose it was around that region that this accident happened?”
He grinned. “That’s right. I got out of control.”
“Well now, what happened?”
“She stuck in it,” he said. “In the kettledrum, I mean. I suppose I wasn’t going fast enough to go through. I think you’ve got to make it quick or not at all. I tried to get out of it by slowing down, but the stick was jammed or something, and everything you touched was vibrating like one of those electric shocking coils, you know. Everything was getting bloody hot to touch, and I thought, ‘Oh, Momma!!’” He laughed. “Well, then I looked at the port wing, and there was a sort of line of light right from the root to the tip, right along the leading edge, and then there was a bloody great bang and the whole wing was gone — just like that. Well, then I pulled the blind down over my face and the seat ejected all right, and there I was sitting in the air with bits of metal all around me. So I pulled the chute and came down normally.” He paused. “I can’t think of anything else.”
He had had a most miraculous escape. I thought about it for a minute, and then said, “This line of light along the leading edge. What did it look like?”
“It looked sort of incandescent,” he replied. “Like the crack of light you see at a furnace door.”
I could not make head or tail of that. “Do you remember how it ran?” I asked. “I’ve got an Assegai wing down at Farnborough. If you came
down there, could you mark that wing with a pencil to show exactly where you saw the crack of light? Or don’t you remember well enough for that?”
He said, “Oh yes, I could do that. I know just how it went.”
Well that was something to start from; at any rate we had a description of the symptoms, if the cause of the disease was quite obscure. I talked to Harper for some time, but he could add little more. He treated it as rather a joke, regardless of the fact that his Assegai had cost the taxpayer about twenty thousand pounds. He was taking his girl friend to see Lovely Lady at the Hippodrome that evening, so I fixed for him to come to Farnborough next day and draw his line upon my Assegai wing.
I went on down to D.R.D.’s meeting, in the same conference room as the previous one. I had had the bits of spar that I had brought from Labrador sent up from Farnborough and placed at the end of the table, in case there should be any argument about it from the diehards. As each member came in for the meeting he made for these bits of structure and examined them. E. P. Prendergast pulled out a pocket magnifying glass and examined the fractures for a long time, grunting sourly when anybody spoke to him; he was in no genial mood that day. Carnegie and Sir David Moon examined the parts gloomily, talking in low tones. Group-Captain Fisher came in just before the meeting opened, red-faced and irritable: he did not examine the parts because he had seen them the afternoon before.
D.R.D. opened the meeting by saying that the representative of the R.A.E. had brought back certain parts from the Reindeer accident in Labrador, some of which were on the table. Technical opinion was unanimous that they indicated a fatigue fracture of the front spar flanges of the port tailplane. He would ask Dr. Scott to outline his investigation to the meeting.
“There’s not much to say,” I remarked. “When we reached the scene of the accident we discovered that the spar fractures at the fuselage had been removed for examination by the Russian burial party who had come to exhume the body of their Ambassador.” There were incredulous smiles and raised eyebrows round the table. D.R.D. nodded shortly. “It therefore became necessary to locate the tailplane itself. We found this thirty-seven miles east-north-east of the scene of the accident — that is, back along the course to Goose. These fractures on the table, there, were cut from the tailplane as it lay. There was, of course, no means of bringing the whole unit down to the coast for shipment. I think that’s all about it. I’m sorry not to have both parts of the fracture to show you, but I understand that political difficulties have prevented that.”
D.R.D. said, “I’m afraid that is so.” Then he turned to the Inspector of Accidents. “I don’t know if you have had an opportunity to consider the matter, Group-Captain?”
The old man raised his head. “Not yet,” he said definitely. “I have not received any report of this investigation from Ottawa, and until I do so the matter must remain sub judice, so far as I am concerned.” He was so ill advised as to go on, clutching at a straw, “I understand that the wreckage from which these parts were cut was found thirty-seven miles from the main crash. That seems to me to be a very long way away. It is at least possible that these parts do not belong to the Reindeer at all, but to some other accident. I think that point wants some investigation.”
With that, I think, the bowler hat descended firmly on his head. Prendergast stuck out his great jowl and said, “What on earth do you mean?”
D.R.D. interposed hastily, “The identification of these pieces is clearly part of the procedure, Mr. Prendergast.”
The designer grunted offensively. “I should have thought that was hardly necessary, since I am present at this meeting. I am not accustomed to wasting my time investigating casual bits of aircraft junk. These are all portions of the front and rear spar structures of the Reindeer tailplane.”
D.R.D. said, “Well, that settles that. It seems that this first machine had flown 1,393 hours up to the time of the accident, and these samples clearly show that the cause of the disaster was a fatigue failure of the nature postulated by the investigation undertaken by the R.A.E. We now have to consider what action we must take.” He turned to me. “Dr. Scott?”
“I have not changed my views,” I said. “Action must be taken by some other body. But I think that some modification to the present design of the tail structure is clearly necessary, and until that has been carried out, no Reindeer should fly more than 720 hours. That’s my opinion.”
Carnegie said, “Based on Mr. Honey’s work and on this evidence?”
“That’s right,” I replied. “Some rather unfortunate things were said about Mr. Honey at our last meeting. I should like to point out that he’s the only one among the lot of us who has been consistently right all through. If he hadn’t damaged that second Reindeer at Gander, you’d have had another accident, beyond all doubt.”
There was a glum silence. It was broken by Carnegie, who said, “That aircraft might as well stay at Gander, if we can’t use it. In fact, I suppose it will have to. I suppose I may take it that that one, which has flown something over 1,440 hours, is grounded from now on.”
D.R.D. said, “That is an executive decision, to be taken as a result of this meeting. But I think it’s very likely.”
Sir David Moon said, “Mr. Chairman, the news that we have heard this morning is bad news for us, as you can suppose. It entails laying up our fleet of Reindeer aircraft for a major modification, probably for a matter of months, if our past experience is any guide. That means, this country must cease to operate a Transatlantic service, unless we care to do so by reverting to the obsolete and uneconomic types that we lately discarded. And in fact, there are too few of those now available to enable us to maintain our services. That is a very heavy blow to us, and to this country.” He was speaking quietly and seriously. “We do not question its necessity, but we ask for a hand in framing what restrictions on the Reindeer are deemed necessary, with a view to making the optimum use of the aircraft.”
I was not paying much attention; I was thinking of the Assegai. The Reindeer was over, so far as I was personally concerned; what happened now was for others to decide. The Assegai was vital and urgent. It had never been intended that the Assegai should be flown in the trans-sonic region, but the young men were doing it, and doing it every day. It had already killed two of them. It might well be impossible to prevent the fighter pilots from getting the most out of their machine; they were not of the temperament to submit to restrictions based on safety. Either the Assegai must be taken away from them, or it must be strengthened, and strengthened quickly, to withstand the forces that they put on it. What those forces were was very little known. It was a complete mystery to me, at that time, why one thin line along the leading edge should have become incandescent. And till we found the answer to that one, the Assegai would go on killing the young men.
I came back to the meeting with a start. D.R.D. was saying, “The first thing is to find out what modifications are necessary.” He glanced down the table at the designer. “Perhaps Mr. Prendergast can give us some indication of what will be involved?”
Prendergast reached for his attaché case, pulled out a white print, and opened it upon the table. “I have given this matter a good deal of attention, personally,” he said ponderously. “Clearly, there is no alternative to increasing the mass of the spar flanges at the root and for several feet out from the root, and it is desirable that the elastic modulus of the spar flange should be increased as well. I propose to insert a steel channel section, nesting into the existing duralumin flange.” And he went on to talk about families of nesting sections, one of his structural fetishes, and fitted bolts in reamed holes prepared on the spar drilling jig. He showed us his drawing.
Carnegie asked gloomily, “What’s the delivery of these special steel sections?”
“Enough for two machines will be available on Thursday next,” the designer said. “The remainder will follow on after that as required.”
We stared at him incredulously. Carnegie asked, “Do you mean to say t
hat we can get these special steel sections without any delay at all?”
“I am not accustomed to having my word doubted, Mr. Carnegie,” said the designer haughtily. “I have been thirty-seven years in this industry, and I hope I know what I am talking about. I have chosen this particular solution, one of several, because it seemed to offer certain production advantages, though at a small cost in extra weight. We already have the necessary dies, prepared as part of our policy of laying by the dies required for all our nesting sections.” He glared down the table at the Treasury official. “And I may say, in passing, that we experience continual and increasing difficulty in obtaining payment for dies which are not immediately required for our contracts. If it were not for our foresight and prudence in preparing these dies in the face of all the obstructions thrown in our path by the officials of this Ministry, I should not be able to assist you in this way.” The Treasury official made a note upon his pad. E. P. Prendergast swelled himself out like a frog. “The great company which I have the honour to represent,” he said, “has placed the full facilities of its Sheffield steel plant behind this matter, with overriding priority, in anticipation of our requirements. I see no reason to suppose that we shall be held up for materials.”
D.R.D. remarked, “Well, I’m sure we all feel that that is very satisfactory, Mr. Prendergast. Have you been able to prepare any estimate of the time that the modification is likely to take?”
“I have.” The designer pulled a paper from his case. “In the first place, I have assumed that you will give me verbal authority to commence work now — this morning — upon the preparation of the necessary parts, which are, in fact, already in hand.” The man from the Treasury frowned, and then laughed. “I also assume that you sanction night-shift work upon this contract, and overtime excepting Sundays. Am I correct?”