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

by Walter J. Boyne

  July 25, 1992

  Edwards Air Force Base, California

  It was clear, dry, and only ninety degrees, comfortable weather for Edwards in the summer, but both men were hot and sweaty in their flight gear. Sprawling under the wing of their McDonnell Douglas F-15E, they watched the efficient fuel service and waited for the obligatory visit from the base commander.

  “Unusual that he’s late—something must be up. Hope nobody’s in trouble.”

  Steve O’Malley went on. “I told them I didn’t want any honors or any fuss; this is a private visit, just you, me, and a few guys from flight test. They know we’ve got to get back to D.C. as soon as possible.”

  V. R. nodded. In the past few months he had begun to experience again the contentment that a fast cross-country flight formerly gave him, when the airplane doesn’t break, when the weather is good, and, most of all, when you are flying away from the current problem. Trouble was that this time there was a problem on both ends. On April 25, a Lockheed YF-22A had crashed, and the media had picked up sensational film footage that showed the fighter sliding, wheels up, along the runway, flames and sparks shooting out. The aircraft was flown by Lockheed’s chief test pilot, Tom Morgenfeld, an old friend of Shannon’s from the F-117A program. Fortunately Tom wasn’t injured nor was the plane totally destroyed. It would never fly again, but it could serve in some ground testing.

  The crash set off all the antimilitary critics, who immediately claimed that the YF-22A was—as always—“a billion-dollar boondoggle” and had to be canceled or the nation was lost. The same uninformed critics immediately began blaming the pilot, the hardware, the software, all without any basis in fact.

  O’Malley and Shannon were there to get the first solid analysis of the accident from professionals, and that would have been enough work for either one. The problem was that they had flown from the scene of another, even more controversial crash. Just five days before, a Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey had crashed into the Potomac, during a demonstration at Quantico Marine Air Base. The V-22 was a technological gamble, combining the forward speed of a turboprop transport with the vertical lift and descent capability of a helicopter. Instead of a conventional helicopter rotor, it featured a tilting wing, which moved to rotate the huge propellers from forward flight to vertical flight as needed. The concept had been around for thirty years, and tested for most of them. Now it looked like it was moving into the realm of the practical.

  Everyone wanted a weapon with this capability, especially the Marines, who were dependent upon high maintenance—and dangerous—twenty-year-old helicopters for their vertical lift. But the Osprey was expensive, and had a troubled history, with one crash in 1990. No one had been hurt then, but it made the program’s future precarious. Its critics called it the “Killer chopper-plane,” a nickname that made O’Malley grind his teeth.

  Then, on July 21, the fourth prototype crashed at Quantico Marine Air Base. Its backers had set up a special ceremony to demonstrate the V-22 and a large number of congressmen and government officials, most of them already for the program but with some opponents, included. There was also a huge media turnout—anything having to do with the controversial V-22 was news.

  Overloaded with the hubris that often surrounds new prototypes, the Osprey was supposed to make a high-speed pass across the field, low and hot as if it were a jet fighter, then pull up and make a vertical landing in the helicopter mode. Instead, with everyone watching, the right engine of the V-22 burst into flames, and it dropped five hundred feet into the Potomac River. Tragically, all seven Marines aboard were killed.

  O’Malley had originally been a backer of the aircraft and had seen to it that the funds needed to acquire fifty CV-22s were in the Air Force budget. But in recent months he had become doubtful about the ultimate success of the program, and was in a difficult position. If he declared himself against the program now, it might well kill it, and he knew the Marines were totally committed to obtaining it. Yet if he continued to support it, when he had legitimate doubts, he would be doing both the Air Force and the Marines a disservice. Cost estimates had risen from thirty-five million to an incredible eighty million per airplane. The investigation into the V-22 crash was just getting under way when he was called to Edwards to hear the findings on the YF-22 crash.

  As they waited beneath the wing, Shannon said, “It’s strange about aircraft numbers. The B-47, C-47, and P-47 were all great aircraft. There’s never been a great aircraft carrying 22 as a number.”

  He looked up, saw the look on O’Malley’s face, and went on. “Until now. The F-22 is going to be a great fighter, and maybe so will the CV-22 be a great transport, or helicopter, whatever it is.”

  “For Christ’s sake, V. R., don’t make a dumb statement like that in front of anybody else. I know what you mean, but things are so tough in both programs now that it would only take a stupid idea like that to kill them.”

  An hour later they were in a classified briefing room, their sweat congealing under the frigid air-conditioning, watching a long series of videos recording the F-22 accident and listening to a clinical analysis of the probable causes.

  O’Malley knew the stakes were high. The aircraft had been under development since 1981. At the moment there were almost twenty billion dollars invested in the program. Before it was completed and some six hundred fighters delivered, there would be many billions more.

  If it went well it would be worth it. The production F-22 was already superior to every fighter in the world by orders of magnitude. It was stealthy, maneuverable, and able to cruise supersonically without using afterburners. Best of all, its electronic suite dominated the air battle, able to kill enemy aircraft before they knew the F-22 was there. But the program was proceeding slowly. The briefing officer, an intense young lieutenant colonel named Gordon Raynor, called for a ten-minute break and O’Malley leaned over to Shannon.

  “You know what worries me? It’s the software. We are ten years into the program now, and there are already millions of lines of code; in another ten years there will be even more millions. How can we integrate them all? How can we foresee all the glitches? Sometimes I wish we’d never gone to computers, and simply stuck to rods and pulleys and round dial instruments.”

  Shannon knew this was just talk. O’Malley had been the leading proponent of fly-by-wire aircraft, but there was something in what he said. With hardware, you had certain definable parameters that could be measured and tested. With software it was different, there were indefinable problems lurking within any system, and these multiplied themselves at the inevitable interfaces. In older aircraft, the relationship of components could be portrayed as a pyramid tree of alternatives. In software architecture, the pyramid trees became huge interlocking forests, with interlocked branches and roots that were only dimly hinted at—and some were never seen until it was too late. The big problem was that assumptions made early might be perfectly correct—at that instant in time. Ten years later, other totally unforeseen events rendered the assumptions wrong—and caused software glitches.

  O’Malley went on. “Ten to one, they will call the F-22 accident ‘pilot error’ when all the votes are in.” He hesitated for a moment and said, “At least no one will be able to say that about the Osprey accident, not the way that sucker was burning.”

  O’Malley’s brow furrowed and he sat back in his chair. He had backed both programs with all the power and influence he had in the Pentagon and with Congress and now both were in jeopardy. He wasn’t concerned about his reputation—he’d retire soon, and he had more than enough money so that he would never need to work if he didn’t want to. But he worried about having helped sell the country two bills of goods, two weapons systems that promised too much and, of course, cost way too much.

  “You know, V. R., it was easier in your granddaddy’s day and in your dad’s day as well. Everyone knew the ground rules, the new fighters appeared like clockwork every two years or so, and you could design, build, test, and get them in op
erational service in maybe five years. Now you can spend a career on a design, spend thirty years preparing something, and have it fizzle out.”

  It was unlike O’Malley to be pessimistic. He always saw how lemons could be turned into daiquiris, especially when everyone else agreed that he was totally wrong.

  Raynor came back in, gently called the room to order, and said, “I’m going to pass out a complete package that gives you all of the mathematical analysis behind our conclusions. But I want to give a simple summary, one that can be used with the public, if you like, and one that doesn’t depend upon any formulae.”

  With that he signaled to the projectionist and a slide appeared on the suspended movie screen saying:

  1. The accident was caused by pilot induced oscillation (PIO).

  2. A PIO exists when the airplane attitude, angular rate, normal acceleration, or other quantity derived from these states is approximately 180 degrees out of phase with the pilot’s control inputs.

  O’Malley erupted, screaming, “Goddammit, you are blaming the pilot for this, and you don’t know for sure if he caused it! Of course it’s PIO; we’ve had PIO since Orville and Wilbur flew at Kitty Hawk; we had it on the first taxi hop of the F-16. But that doesn’t explain why a top pilot like Tom Morgenfeld would induce it on the YF-22!”

  Raynor was visibly distressed.

  “General O’Malley, I’m not blaming the pilot. When you go into the equations you’ll see that PIO was inevitable, given the weight, speed, and center of gravity of the airplane. The parameters were such that the software dictated the PIO.”

  “Then why call it PIO? Call it SWIO, software induced oscillation.”

  Raynor said, softly, “General, I think you know the answer to that far better than I do. The public will understand if a pilot makes a mistake flying a brand-new, super-hot fighter. It won’t understand if there is a mistake in ten years and twenty million lines of code of software, with all that it implies.”

  Raynor’s reply was on the mark, and O’Malley sat down, a sickly smile on his face, saying, “Colonel, you get an A plus for this. I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m sure Tom Morgenfeld understands as well.”

  “He’s on board with the findings, General O’Malley.”

  All during their long trip back to Washington, O’Malley mentally berated himself for overreacting to Raynor’s conclusions. They had done exactly the right thing. They were locked into a Frankenstein monster of a software program, and there was no way out except to test it until it was right, no matter how long it took, or how costly it was.

  Shannon understood O’Malley’s dilemma. On the trip out, they talked almost continually on the intercom, catching up on Air Force and family business. Now, going back, he was glad that O’Malley was preoccupied. It gave him a chance to think about his own future. He had at last begun to reconcile himself to Ginny’s loss. He didn’t plan to begin dating again. That just wasn’t possible for the time being. But at last he was shedding the black dog of depression that had hung about his neck, and he could concentrate on his job, being O’Malley’s go-to guy for special projects.

  It was an ideal assignment. O’Malley, no longer allowed to fly solo because of his rank, kept him on call for missions like this. He got to fly all he wanted, and could even deal himself into Red Flag once a year, so he could stay up to speed on his combat flying. And that was his goal in life. He might be getting over Ginny’s loss, but he would never get over his hatred of the fanatic Muslims who killed her and all the others. When he flew in Red Flag, no matter who the opponent really was—Air Force, Navy, aggressor squadron, whatever—in Shannon’s mind there was a Muslim in the cockpit, and his goal was to kill him.

  October 1, 1993

  Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia

  THEY WERE EARLY, as always, and sat in V. R.’s rental car, a Hyundai of all things, awaiting the ceremony. Jimmy Doolittle, one of America’s greatest and most popular aviators, had passed away on September 27 at age ninety-six. Now he was going to be interred next to his beloved wife, Jo, in Arlington. She had preceded him in death by five years that Jimmy had found to be so very lonely.

  The large crowd was informally falling into small groups, each one representing the era from which they first knew Jimmy. The largest and most impressive were the Doolittle Raiders, the now-grizzled veterans who had flown with him as young men on his history-making April 18, 1942, bombing raid on Tokyo. Other groups, even smaller, with older men, most in wheelchairs, represented Jimmy’s racing days, when he had booted the red-hot Gee Bee racer around the pylons to win the Thompson Trophy. Still other groups were made up of those who had known him in industry, or served with him in the Eighth Air Force. But a surprising number were young people who could only have known him by reputation.

  O’Malley pointed to them, neatly dressed, standing quietly, and said, “I’m glad to see the younger people here. You know Jimmy’s death received a lot of media coverage, but it was nothing compared to the news space they devoted to Jerry Garcia, when he died. It makes me angry—here is Doolittle, a hero who had served his nation brilliantly in combat, a scientist who had insisted on the United States having hundred-octane gas during World War II, a leader in the industry, a racing hero. And here was Garcia, a musician, famous, but a doper, and his death got ten times the coverage. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Shannon smiled. There was no way that O’Malley was going to understand the “Deadheads.” But there was truth in what he was saying. Doolittle’s contributions had been so tremendous for the nation, and while Jerry Garcia was a talented, personable guitarist, he was in no sense a hero.

  For the past year, the swift pace of events had separated the two old friends for months at a time, and there was much to catch up on. Both had seen too many funerals at Arlington, and Shannon checked his watch to be sure they would have time to walk to the little chapel where those closest to Doolittle would make their farewell remarks.

  “We’ve got a few minutes. What’s the latest on the V-22?”

  Frowning, O’Malley said, “It’s tough. They’ve figured out the crash was due to hydraulic lines fracturing and causing the fire, and they are in the process of completely revising the hydraulic system. It will cost millions, of course, but they have this super-high-pressure system and they need to be sure that the lines don’t fatigue. But that’s the least of the problems in my mind.”

  “Oh-oh. That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not. You’re an engineer, and I know you’ll understand this, but I’m not sure there’s any way to get this across to the public in a palatable way. We’ve got to be able to sell the idea that we solve the problem—and we can, it will just take time—but I’m afraid there will be a knee-jerk reaction that this is the final straw, and the program will be canceled.”

  “You haven’t said what it is.”

  “I know it, dammit, V. R., just wait a minute. It’s tough to formulate without a blackboard and some drawings. But here it is, and it is a fundamental problem in all tilt-rotor designs. As the V-22 descends vertically, its wing is tilted up so that the propellers act as helicopter rotors. Each wing pushes the airflow away from half of its respective rotor. The faster it descends, the greater the vacuum, resulting in less lift. They’re calling this the ‘vortex ring state.’ If one rotor loses more lift, because of the way the pilot maneuvers the V-22, it can flip the aircraft over. It can happen so suddenly that there’s no recovery, and no way for the crew to escape.”

  “Any hope to control it, General?” V. R. still called Steve “General” even in informal situations like this.

  “Sure, we’ll beat it if we can keep the program alive long enough, and get enough money to sustain it. But it is dicey, especially since there’s another computer software glitch.”

  “Software’s going to kill us!”

  “It’s like the old pre-women’s lib joke about wives, you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.”

  O’Malley saw
a veil of pain flit across Shannon’s face and realized he had goofed.

  “Sorry, V. R. Bad analogy.” He hurried on. “As with any system, the V-22’s complex computer software sometimes goes down. There’s a backup computer that takes over in 2.5 seconds. That’s quick enough in a fixed-wing aircraft, but it’s fatal in the V-22 where you absolutely have to keep the rotors in synch. If you don’t, it can flip over in an instant. We’ve got to get the backup online in a second or less, or we’re in trouble.”

  Both men were silent. The Osprey was a lot more survivable than conventional helicopters because it was more difficult to detect or engage. It was much faster, and had five times the range of the older helicopters. The Marines liked it because the V-22 could pick a route that would give the landing party surprise and protect it against antiaircraft fire, whereas the shorter-range helicopters sometimes had to go right through a high-threat area. But unless these flaws were fixed, it would never see production.

  “How did we get in this position, General? We’ve got two world-beating weapons systems, and it’s taking forever and the U.S. mint to get them to the troops.”

  “Sometimes I think we’re not doing what Jim Webb always told NASA, ‘Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.’ We’ve got a lot of hobby shoppers, advocates always wanting to improve things. Maybe the procurement system’s just too big, too complex now.”