The Fly Boys Page 20

  Gold thought about his exchange with Erica just before he’d left. He wished that he felt as confident about selling his new bomber as he’d pretended.

  Gold rapped the Caddy’s walnut dashboard. Knock on wood the deal making today goes as smoothly as the negotiations went concerning the BroadSword….

  For the past few years GAT research and design had been advancing on two separate fronts. The first front concerned the development of a jet fighter.

  Back in 1945, the grateful United States government had kept to its part of the bargain in exchange for Gold’s having rescued Heiner Froehlig and his six aeronautical wunder-kinder from the Russians. Directly after the Germans had been reunited stateside with their families who had been brought out of the Allied-held sectors of Berlin, they’d been hidden away in a top-secret compound at Muroc Air Base in the Mojave Desert about seventy miles northeast of Los Angeles.

  Once settled, the Germans were instructed to cooperate with GAT in its USAF-authorized and -funded preliminary research for a jet fighter. Gold’s chief engineer, Teddy Quinn, and a hand-picked team practically moved in with the Germans to expedite the work. Gold held down the fort at GAT, and began the laborious process of translating from German into English the wealth of microfilmed research data concerning the aerodynamics of high-speed flight that Froehlig had brought with him out of the Berlin Air Ministry.

  For the next sixteen months the American-German team worked on Gold’s original swept-wing design: essentially the concept that Gold had conceived while watching his wife swimming in their pool back in ‘43. A swept-wing model, dubbed the Experimental-Pursuit (XP) 90, was built. Wind tunnel tests proved that the swept-wing concept was fast. Unfortunately, the new concept created an equally new and frustrating problem. The tests revealed that swept wings were unstable at low speeds; an airplane so equipped would have a totally unacceptable tendency to stall.

  Froehlig’s people were familiar with the problem, and had previously warned the Americans about it. They had encountered the low-speed instability phenomenon during their R&D on the legendary World War II Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter. The Germans had, in fact, abandoned their hopes for a fully swept-wing Me 262 because they could find no workable solution to the problem.

  Things were looking bleak at GAT the winter of 1946. The Air Force had placed large orders for Lockheed’s P-80 Shooting Star, and the Navy was going with Grumman’s proposed Panther jet fighter bomber. Because neither plane was a swept-wing design, there was a lot of self-doubt at GAT, a lot of talk of abandoning what looked like yet another dead-end concept.

  Gold, however, was adamant that swept wing was the way to go. While the German-American team collectively tore out its hair, Gold spent his days administrating at GAT, his evenings locked in his study at home, translating Froehlig’s smuggled documents. It was while he was translating an almost overlooked appendix to some research on the Me 262 that he came across a hastily scrawled sketch for a slat, or movable surface, that could be set into a swept wing’s leading edge. The sketch had a brief, scribbled notation suggesting that when the plane was moving at low speeds, the slat would open to give more lift to the wing. As speed picked up, the slat would retract.

  The drawing was unsigned. Neither Froehlig nor any of the other Germans recognized it. It was little more than a doodle in a margin, but something about it appealed to Gold. It was just the kind of quick sketch that he’d used to make back when he was a young man and a blank sheet of drafting paper had seemed a glorious challenge, not fraught with peril and the threat of failure.

  The Germans warned Gold that the Me 262’s wings had been equipped with a version of this leading-edge slat, and the results had been mixed. They were doubtful that the slat concept would lead to anything, but Gold had a hunch. He ordered that time and money be expended on the idea.

  And so GAT had picked up where the Germans had left off. A German may have conceived the idea, but it took good old American know-how to turn the concept’s potential into reality. Teddy Quinn and his band of crew-cut, slide-rule-wielding sorcerer’s apprentices captured the dream on graph paper. GAT’s production line built a working sample.

  By New Year’s Day 1947, a new XP-90 model equipped with leading-edge wing slats proved itself a winner in wind tunnel tests, thanks in part to a kid on the production line who earned himself a bonus and a big promotion by suggesting a new approach to dive brakes. Instead of trying to fit them onto the already overburdened wings, the kid came up with the bright idea of doors which could be fanned out from the lower side of the jet’s rear fuselage. The brakes seemed to work perfectly on the model, promising to afford the XP-90 the ability to stop on the proverbial dime.

  GAT had gone as far as it could go with models. It was time to build a full-scale prototype. Gold took his test data to the Air Force, which was impressed and authorized the necessary funding to build three airplanes.

  GAT’s labs and assembly lines went to work around the clock. As always, the prototypes were built around a power plant supplied by the San Diego–based engine-producing firm of Rogers & Simpson. It was an improved version of the nose air intake jet engine that had powered the XP-4, GAT’s early, ill-fated first attempt at a jet fighter. Gold had always believed that the problems with the XP-4 had been due to its aeronautical design, not its reliable R&S engine.

  The prototypes rolled off the assembly lines in May 1947. On May 12 at Muroc, GAT’s senior test pilot took the first prototype up for the first time.

  Gold and Erica had been there, squinting up into the blazing California sun, nervously watching along with a hundred skeptical pairs of eyes from Air Force Procurement as the XP-90 soared over the dried-up lake beds and Joshua trees of the desert.

  The XP-90 flew for an hour. For Gold it had been a nerve-racking ordeal. Erica had held his hand, keeping him calm by amusing him with memories of how it had been back on that day in November 1926 when she had flown the first ever GAT airplane prototype, the open-cockpit G-1 Yellowjacket mail plane. She reminded him how she had flown that test flight in order to convince the purchasing agents from the post office that the G-1 was so good that “even a woman” could fly it. The stunt had worked. The post office had bought hundreds of G-ls. It was that bonanza influx of revenue which became the financial bedrock on which Gold had built his company.

  Now, as the Caddy crept along with the rest of the traffic past the industrial complexes and tract housing developments of Burbank, Gold’s mind skipped across the decades from the Yellowjacket’s test flight to that sunlit morning on May 12, 1947, when he’d listened to the XP-90’s banshee howl and watched it streak like a silver arrow across the pale blue desert sky.

  How bittersweet to remember Erica in her oversized shearling flying suit. How triumphantly she had waved to Gold from the Yellowjacket’s open cockpit.

  Those days are long gone, Gold thought as he joined the back end of a line of cars waiting for a traffic light to change. The complexity of the XP-90’s instrument panel stood in mute witness to the fact that the time had long since passed since either Gold or his wife had the technical expertise to pilot the planes his company built.

  A blaring horn snapped Gold out of his reveries. The traffic light had changed. The guy behind him in a dark green Studebaker stuck his head out the window and yelled, “Move it, mac!” Gold put the Caddy in gear and stepped on the gas.

  For three months the XP-90 prototypes were flown by military test pilots, all of whom gave the airplane glowing evaluations. Convinced, the Air Force ordered an initial fifty. Gold dubbed his fighter the BroadSword, due to its stubby, snub-nosed configuration and, hopefully, in anticipation of its battle prowess.

  Meanwhile, Rogers & Simpson made further assembly line modifications on the engines they were shipping to GAT. The new engine had almost twice as much thrust as the power plant used in the XP prototype, giving the BroadSword a top speed approaching seven hundred miles per hour.

  The first batch of production line BroadSwords
had been delivered to the Air Force in June. The airplanes had been redesignated as F-90s to comply with the Air Force’s new regulation replacing P for “pursuit” with F for “fighter.”

  Since then, the Air Force had ordered two hundred more BroadSwords. That was just the first of many such orders, Gold knew, and when the international climate was right, he was certain that the United States would license the sale of the BroadSword to friendly governments all over the world.

  Gold had felt it in his bones from the day Teddy Quinn had unscrolled the initial blueprints for the XP-90: the airplane was a winner.

  Gold had been right when he’d told his disheartened design team not to fret over the fact that the United States military had placed large orders for fighters with GAT’s competitors. The old rule he’d learned through a lifetime spent in this business still held. It was not important to be first, but to be the best.

  That same rule was guiding Gold concerning GAT’s second front: the endeavor to enter the market with a viable commercial jet airliner.

  The dawning of the jet age had turned the airlines jittery. They were all behaving like horny virgins: impatient to spread their legs, but at the same time reluctant, afraid of the possible consequences of risking their money and reputations on unproven jet designs that might prove costly to maintain and dangerous to fly.

  Gold had to give credit to Stoat-Black. The British firm had from the very first been aware of the airline industry’s timid mind-set. Hugh Luddy, SB’s chief engineer, had taken even longer on research and design than the two years he’d projected when the bearded Scot had first told Gold about the SB-100 Starstreak jetliner back in ‘44. Today, Stoat-Black’s painstaking testing program was the talk of the industry. The Starstreak, not even scheduled to begin rolling off the production lines until 1950, was benefiting from advance promotion as the most efficient and fail-safe airplane —jet or piston powered—in aviation history.

  The European airlines had been convinced, and had lined up to place their advance orders for the Starstreak, provided, of course, that the jetliner lived up to its advance billing. So far, the American airlines had resisted, adopting a wait-and-see attitude, but Stoat-Black was indifferent to the cool reception on this side of the Atlantic. Once the production lines were tooled, it was going to take the company several years just to fill its European back orders.

  As a matter of fact, Hugh Luddy had recently contacted Gold to gloatingly suggest that GAT might want to make a bid on a subcontract to manufacture the Starstreak for the American market. Left unsaid in the exchange had been Luddy’s clear opinion that Gold had been a fool not to come into the project as an equal partner when he’d had the chance.

  It’s not about being the first, but being the best, Gold reminded himself. But on some days, the rule was harder to believe than on others.

  The BroadSword’s success was a tremendous load off Gold’s mind, but if GAT was to remain an industry leader, it needed to reestablish its mastery in the commercial aviation field. GAT had long ago grown too fat to thrive on military business alone.

  There was still time for GAT to compete with Stoat-Black, at least for the American market. A lot would depend on Gold’s luncheon meeting with the boys in blue from Air Force Procurement.

  As the BroadSword’s costly and lengthy genesis had proven, the time had passed when even a company as enormously wealthy as GAT could afford to bankroll its own R&D. The postwar costs of sheparding a new airplane from the drafting table to the prototype had vastly increased. Jets required pioneering research on metallurgy, more complex electronics, and advanced noise supression. It all cost big, big money.

  The BroadSword had taken three years, and had cost over six million dollars to bring into existence. GAT—keeping in mind its duty to its stockholders—could never have gambled so much on a single roll of the dice without mitigating its risk by receiving advance USAF funding. At present cost levels, the expense of developing a single airplane could bankrupt a company if that airplane turned out to be unsuccessful.

  Stoat-Black, for example, had spent almost ten million dollars on the Starstreak, and SB’s own cost projections were predicting that the total would be closer to fifteen million before the first SB-100 rolled off the assembly lines almost a decade after the project’s beginning. Stoat-Black could never have made the commitment without being bankrolled by the British government, which had also promised a bailout should the project end up a failure.

  Unfortunately, things weren’t so cushy here in America, where commercial aviation ventures were expected to be bankrolled by private investment. Traditionally, the airlines had been the commercial aviation industry’s bankers, but these days the airlines were arguing that it cost too much and took too long to develop a new airplane. They could no longer be expected to wait so many years for a return on such a huge investment, especially since they were now operating on increasingly thin profit margins.

  The Air Force had no such money worries. It was receiving close to five billion a year in appropriations, more than either the Army or the Navy. The hitch was that the Air Force would only bankroll military aviation projects.

  About a year ago Gold had come up with what he hoped was a strategy around that hitch. The idea had come to him while contemplating the success of his MT-37 military cargo transports. Those big prop-driven beasts of burden had evolved from GAT’s largest commercial liner, the Monarch GC-10.

  Why not reverse the evolutionary process? Gold had wondered. Why not go from an Air Force funded military project (say, a multi–jet engined bomber), to a commercial airliner?

  Accordingly, fourteen months ago, once the BroadSword prototypes were in the hands of the Air Force test pilots, and the lion’s share of R&D work on the project was done, Gold had put Teddy Quinn and his crack team to work on coming up with a long-range jet bomber. At the same time he contacted Rogers & Simpson, and had them begin R&D on a new turbojet engine powerful enough in tandem to power such a bomber.

  As Teddy liked to put it, the R&D on this baby took place in Oz.

  The engineering department ransacked the GAT cupboards, putting together the wings, tail, fuselage, and landing gear from various aircraft in the GC and MT series in order to come up with a frame from which to hang Rogers & Simpson’s “hypothetical” half-dozen turbojet engines. The completed blueprint for the proposed heavy intercontinental bomber was titled GAT Multi-Jet Bomber Number One.

  In April of this year Gold began his hard sell of the GAT/MJB-1 to the Air Force. There were others in the race. GAT was in competition for Air Force dollars with such proven winners in the bomber-building business as Convair, Boeing, and, of course, Amalgamated-Landis, whose controversial prop-driven B-45 intercontinental was now scheduled to begin flying in 1950.

  For the last few months, trying to get some feedback from the Air Force had been like pulling teeth, but a couple of weeks ago Air Force Procurement had contacted Gold. An evaluation team was making a trip to California. Would Gold care to have lunch?

  He’d subsequently made some phone calls to his contacts in the military and in Washington. They’d been able to confirm that a decison on the GAT/MJB had been reached, but not what that decision was.

  Now, as Gold steered the Caddy onto the access road to the plant, he tried not to brood. Are the Air Force officials here to authorize appropriations or to ax the GAT/MJB?

  The lunch was called for one o’clock, Gold comforted himself as the Caddy rolled past the uniformed security guards on duty at GAT’s front gates.

  Gold would know the fate of his bomber in just a few hours.

  (Two)

  The Top Hat Grill

  Los Angeles

  It was a little after one o’clock when Gold pulled up in front of the Top Hat on Wilshire Boulevard near the Ambassador Hotel. He turned his Caddy over to the parking valet and went inside. The girl behind the counter in the cloakroom took his hat. Gold paused to shake hands with the tuxedoed maître d’ who stood guard at the entrance
to the dining room.

  “A pleasure to see you, Mr. G,” the maître d’ smiled. “Your guests are already seated.” He gestured expansively. “They’re in the corner booth, just as you asked.”

  “Thanks, Victor.” Gold’s discreetly folded ten spot disappeared in the man’s palm.

  “Enjoy your lunch, Mr. G—”

  I hope I do, Gold thought as he made his way into the dining room. I hope I do.

  His guests saw him coming and waved. Gold had known both men for years. Howard Simon was a brigadier general in his fifties. He had a thick shock of snow-white hair and bright blue eyes. Howie was a blunt man. Sometimes his childlike, painful honesty could wound, but Gold liked him a lot. The other Air Force officer, William Burnett, was a lieutenant colonel in his late thirties, but his thinning auburn hair and wispy mustache made him seem older. Billy Burnett had a fussy style about him; he went strictly by the book and liked to pinch pennies. They’d probably had Billy Burnett in mind when they’d coined that bit about not being able to see the forest for the trees. For all of that, Gold thought Billy was okay; just occasionally something of a fuddy-duddy pain in the ass.

  Gold thought that both men looked odd out of uniform. Gold’s prior dealings with them had always taken place at the Air Force’s R&D center at Patterson Air Base, just outside of Dayton, Ohio. This was the first time Simon and Burnett had come out west. They were probably wearing civvies in hopes of blending in with the crowd here at the Top Hat.

  No such luck, Gold thought to himself, stifling a smile. Their pasty complexions, dark blue suits, white shirts, and muted ties gave them away amid all the California chic like a pair of starlings trying to crash a parakeets’ convention.

  The Top Hat Grill was a favorite L.A. watering hole of the rich and famous. The place regularly showed up in the gossip columns. The dining room was a mix of formality and casualness. The staff all wore tuxes, and Gold could only wish that his airplanes might someday soar as high as the prices on the menu. Meanwhile, the tables and chairs crowded into the room’s center and the red leather booths along the walls were straight out of a corner malt shop. The dining room’s walls were covered with autographed photos of movie stars. One wall, nicknamed the “milk bar,” was plastered with photos of Hollywood starlets in their most risqué cheesecake poses.