In 1925, just as the depression and the massive inflation were tearing Germany apart, Obermyer had visited his uncle in Geneva, bringing word of Lottie’s death. Otto was impressed by his nephew and offered to bring him into the family business. Obermyer appreciated the offer but refused graciously, suggesting instead that they might someday find a way to work together. Obermyer’s concept of work did not coincide with Otto’s view that sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, was about right.
Obermyer found a way in 1937, when his combined payments from Heinkel, Messerschmitt, Bloch, and Lockheed became too large to conceal in Germany. Uncle Otto maintained several accounts for him and was happy to send one of his trusted assistants to and from Friedrich-shafen to accommodate Obermyer’s growing financial situation. In turn, Obermyer looked after Otto’s interests in Germany as well as he could without making their relationship too obvious.
Obermyer had booked rooms for himself and Müller in the Bayerischer Hof, a small, comfortable hotel on the promenade bordering Lake Constance. The rooms were plain, clean, the furniture from Bismarck’s era, and the quiet employees sophisticated enough to know when to look the other way. Heinkel had booked Obermyer in at the Adlon in Berlin once; it was far more luxurious, but he preferred the simplicity of the Bayerischer Hof, where he could afford to indulge himself in a small suite without exciting comment.
Obermyer liked to walk down to the water’s edge after an early breakfast, smoke a cigar, and contemplate his future. Convinced that Germany was going to lose the war, he wanted to make realistic plans. Some of his confidants talked about escaping to Spain or to Argentina when the time came, but that made no sense to Obermyer. Why go somewhere and find the same sort of corrupt Fascist government and the same stagnant economies? It didn’t make any sense. He wanted to go only to the United States. It would take an enormous amount of preparation to avoid being caught before he left—or after he arrived. He would need a complete change of papers, a new history, perhaps even some cosmetic surgery, but most of all, he would need plenty of money in the bank in the United States.
He was ready to write off his German holdings right now; they would be worthless after the war. The Swiss interests he could maintain, letting Uncle Otto’s firm handle them. In time, Obermyer would just sell everything out and move all his assets to California, which loomed in his mind as a golden land of plenty, filled with big cars, beautiful girls, and great opportunities for his particular brand of crime. It occurred to him that if he was able to save enough money, he might not have to “work” as he had done in the past and instead perhaps just invest in some legitimate business.
During the last war, both zeppelins and aircraft had been constructed in the huge hangars only a few miles from where Obermyer stood, gazing out over the water. The same designer who had created some of the giant seaplanes of the era, Claude Dornier, now operated one of his factories on the same site, turning out bombers and night fighters. The latter were not the object of Obermyer’s interest, however. He needed some apparently secret tidbits to keep both Ernst Heinkel and Willy Messerschmitt happy. It was known generally in the industry that Dornier was working on a super-fast twin-engine fighter, a radical airplane with one engine in the nose and another, a pusher, in the tail. The Heinkel firm had been awarded a subcontract to develop new outer wing panels for the airplane, to improve its high-altitude performance, and this provided an adequate reason for Obermyer’s visit. Yet he had to come back with something from the Dornier factory floor on a new development, a big problem, a future project, or, even better, a personal scandal that would satisfy his patrons’ bottomless thirst for information.
In his first meeting of the morning, Obermyer would talk to Uncle Otto’s representative and transfer both cash and documents for deposit in Switzerland, along with instructions for their further transfer to his accounts in the Bank of America in the United States. He smiled at the thought that the only worthwhile thing Italy had done for the Axis was have an emigrant found an American bank for him to use.
Then at eleven, Ernst Staiger, his local contact in the Nazi hierarchy in the Dornier factory, would drop by, expecting to get a sumptuous lunch and his usual payoff. It always surprised Obermyer how cheaply information could be purchased, if the transaction was couched in old comrade terms over a heavy lunch, well lubricated by alcohol, even from men whose lifework was denouncing traitors. Extracting information would be painless this time, given the contractual connection with Heinkel and Staiger’s partiality for cognac. Obermyer had brought two bottles, one to drink and one to give him. It would be a very inexpensive exchange.
Exactly at ten there was a knock on the door. Obermyer opened it to find a stunning brunette tipping the uniformed attendant who had escorted her to his room.
Uncharacteristically speechless and mindlessly worrying that Müller, just a door away, would somehow intrude, Obermyer waved her in. She moved easily, walking to the table to deposit a large leather briefcase, then turned to shatter him with a smile. Even in her hat and loden overcoat, she radiated beauty.
“My name is Gertrude, and Uncle Otto told me to wish you a very happy forty-first birthday!” With her right hand she removed her hat, slinging it to the table; with her left, she dropped her overcoat, standing before him stark naked except for her high heels, stockings, and extraordinarily fancy garters. She was breathtaking, holding herself so that her breasts were lifted, smiling as innocently as a choir girl.
Obermyer was stunned; Otto was right, it was his birthday, but what was he thinking of? Their relations had always been perfectly correct; there had never ever before been any suggestion of this sort of earthy good humor. But Gertrude was beautiful and time was precious. He swept her up and carried her to the bed, wishing that he had never made an appointment with Staiger and hoping against hope that Müller would sleep in.
• THE PASSING SCENE •
German advance stalls in Russian winter after 750,000 casualties; the United States loans $1 billion to the Soviet Union; National Academy of Sciences recommends immediate construction of an atom bomb; Allied shipping losses continue to rise; German raider Atlantis sunk; Leningrad under siege.
CHAPTER FOUR
December 8, 1941, La Jolla, California
Vance Shannon sat alone in his library, the radio on, the newspapers discarded on the floor. His usual loneliness and sense of Margaret’s passing was gone, submerged in his anger over the news from Pearl Harbor, the anger visible in the reddening of the scar across his forehead, a souvenir of an early crash. Talking to himself, he asked, “How could they have sucker punched us like this? Didn’t we have any reconnaissance aircraft? How could they get that close to Pearl Harbor and not be seen?”
As usual, he was thinking about Tom, on his way to the Pacific with his Marine squadron. He’ll be in the thick of it, soon, he thought. Vance was very familiar with the Grumman Wildcat Tom was flying, and he went to his files to see what he had on the Mitsubishi Zero that had been a major force in the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.
He pulled out a folder, knowing there would not be much. In an adjacent file, he had six full file folders on the Messerschmitt Bf 109; the Zero’s folder had only half a dozen items in it, mostly culled from popular sources. A former Air Corps officer whom he had met on one or two occasions, Claire Chennault, had issued a warning about the capabilities of the Zero, but these had been discounted. Vance himself had not taken them seriously at the time—it was impossible that a carrier-based fighter could outperform land-based fighters, just in the nature of things. Carrier fighters had to be stronger to take the shock of landings, and that meant weight that detracted from performance. Now it looked like he and everyone else were wrong.
Well, some isolationist congressman, a corn-belt isolationist who had voted against Lend-Lease, had said it best; “Now we have to lick the hell out of them.” And that was true. Japan would have to be defeated and Germany, too; there was no way out now.
One item in Vance’s fo
lder shocked him. It was an American air attaché’s report on Japanese selection and training of pilots. If what he said was true—and Vance believed it was; it was written in very thoughtful terms—the Japanese were far more selective about their pilots and far more demanding in their training. Listening to Tom talk about Pensacola or Harry about Randolph Field, Vance would never have believed it. But now the Japanese pilots, and their planes, seemed incredibly formidable.
Still speaking aloud, though there was no one in the house, he said, “We have lots of catching up to do. Let’s just hope we do it before something happens to Tom or Harry.”
As his anger built over the surprise attack, he was awash in emotions. He thought about calling Hap Arnold and asking for a commission and a combat assignment. For a moment his imagination ran away with him and he was in France again, flying his SPAD XIII in his last dogfight, remembering how he had stitched the fabric with bullet holes, working from the tail right up through the cockpit and into the fuel tank. The enemy Fokker D VII had lurched forward, the pilot dead, the spin intensifying as flames ate away the fabric on the left wings. Then Vance considered the reality: a desk at Wright Field or in the Pentagon, no flying, no combat, no engineering, just endless paperwork. He could do more good by staying out.
July 18, 1942, Leipheim, Germany
A cata log of Messerschmitt products carpeted the undulating, hill-bounded flying field outside the plant, with the preposterous Me 321 gliders looming over everything, their enormous 180-foot wings dwarfing their towplanes, the twin-engine Me 110s. More than one hundred had been built in anticipation of invading Great Britain; now they were assigned the more mundane task of supplying the hard-pressed German Army in Russia. A few of the newer Me 323s were also on the line, really just strengthened Me 321 gliders, each equipped with six captured French Gnome-Rhone engines to help it lumber through the air.
Dotting the field like little black crosses were dozens of the single-engine Bf 108 liaison planes and Bf 109 fighters, parked indiscriminately and surrounded by the usual impedimenta of fire extinguishers, refueling trucks, and toolboxes. As at all airfields, most of the aircraft were sitting idle, some with cowlings off, some on jacks, all awaiting maintenance. A few were being prepared for flight and others had maintenance crews scrambling over them. But for most of the people at the plant, all eyes were fastened on a single airplane, the third prototype of the new jet fighter, the Messerschmitt Me 262 V3. Carrying the factory markings PC + UC and powered by two equally brand-new Junkers jet engines, the aircraft had a pugnacious, shark-like look as it sat on its tail wheel, its nose pointed in the air as if it were sniffing the breeze prior to its first flight.
All across Germany, but nowhere more than in the Luftwaffe and the aviation industry, tension was rife. The effects of the Royal Air Force’s unbelievable one-thousand-plane raid on Cologne on May 30/31 were still being felt. Göring had at first refused to believe the reports, telling Hitler that only seventy planes had bombed and that forty of these had been shot down. But Hitler had called Joseph Grohé, the Nazi Gauleiter of Cologne, and learned the stupefying truth—474 dead, 5,000 injured, 3,300 homes destroyed. Furious, Hitler had called Göring in for a private audience. The Führer’s conversation with Göring was not recorded, but an endless round of stories circulating had it that the Reichsmarschall emerged from Hitler’s office so shaken that he did not acknowledge any salutes, almost ran to his waiting Mercedes, and was whisked off to his country estate, Carin-hall, to recuperate. Some said there were tears in his eyes; others spoke mirthfully of the indignities his enormous behind must have suffered.
Feelings were running high at the Messerschmitt plant as well. Professor Dr. Wilhelm Emil Messerschmitt’s management style was unusual in authoritarian Germany. He was a businessman as well as an engineer and knew that performance, quality, production, and profit were all part of one equation. He believed in establishing a joint committee of engineers and manufacturing experts for each project, with less emphasis on who was the boss than on arriving at consensual agreements that made both production and profit sense. Well-known for his ability to delegate authority and responsibility, his project officers prided themselves on being able to make decisions on their own without consulting him. At the same time, he was detail oriented, still reviewing every final drawing personally, one at a time, just as he had done from the early days, when they made small sport planes. From the workers’ points of view, Messerschmitt’s best characteristic, his saving grace, was his generosity. They knew if they did their work well, if their products were profitable, he would reward them with a sizable bonus, sometimes more than their annual salary. It was a practice that promoted loyalty and efficiency.
Messerschmitt was totally intoxicated with his jet fighter, even though he initially had delayed its introduction, preferring to concentrate on increasing the quantity production of his Bf 109 fighter. The man-hours required to build the 109 had steadily declined, and every order generated extraordinary profits. Yet he knew the 262 was the fighter of tomorrow, the airplane that would give the Luftwaffe ascendancy over its enemies—and Messerschmitt ascendancy within the Luftwaffe.
The forty-four-year-old entrepreneur had followed the 262 from the start, watching as it changed from having its engines buried in the non-swept wings to the current swept-wing version with the two jet engines mounted in pods beneath the wings.
Messerschmitt sat talking with his favorite test pilot, Flight Captain Fritz Wendel. Only three years before, Wendel had set the world’s speed record in a specially designed Messerschmitt Bf 209, flying the suicidal little airplane at 755 kilometers per hour. Older, more experienced pilots had refused to fly the Bf 209, on the basis that it was too dangerous with its high wing loading and unusual surface evaporation cooling system. Wendel himself had crashed in the second version of the 209 before setting the record.
Crashes were part of a test pilot’s life, and Wendel, a cheerful optimist, already had a close brush with death in the 262 prototype. In April 1941, before any jet engines were ready to be mounted, he had flown the aircraft with a 700-horsepower piston engine in its nose, driving a conventional propeller. The plane was drastically underpowered but flew well enough. Then, this March 25, he had test flown it with the piston engine still operating and two BMW jet engines installed on the wings. Both jet engines had failed just after takeoff, turning from some thrust into pure drag in an instant. Only the pounding piston engine and Wendel’s skill kept the airplane in the air long enough for him to fly around the circuit at less than 70 meters altitude to make an emergency landing.
Now they were faced with a new problem. The piston engine had long been removed, replaced by the armament installation, and two of the new Junkers Jumo 004B engines were installed in the under-wing pods. Wendel had attempted to make the first all-jet-powered takeoff in the Me 262 the hour before. The jet had built up its acceleration, but at eight hundred meters down the runway Wendel cut the power and taxied back in to a perplexed Dr. Messerschmitt.
“Sir, there is just no elevator authority. The jet exhaust strikes the ground and blankets the elevator; it never takes effect. I cannot bring the nose down. I could have run it all the way to Poland and it wouldn’t have lifted off.”
“Well, we knew all along that we should have had a tricycle landing gear. Heinkel did that in his fighter; we should have accepted the delay and installed it.”
Wendel said nothing; both men knew that it had been Messerschmitt himself who had vetoed installation of the tricycle gear in the prototypes, fearing the progress of the Heinkel fighter and not wanting to delay his own program.
“I have a suggestion, sir, but it is risky. It could easily wreck the aircraft.”
Messerschmitt nodded impatiently. “Go ahead; tell me.”
“If I waited until I had about one hundred and eighty kilometers on the dial, and tapped the brakes, it would tip the nose over, and perhaps let the elevators bite. Once they take hold, the airplane will fly; I know it wi
ll.”
“If you tap the brakes too hard you’ll stand on your nose, and I’ll have lost a plane and a good test pilot.”
Wendel did not reply. After two minutes of intense concentration, weighing the risks of a crash against the risks of further delays, Messerschmitt said, “Go ahead. But go lightly on the brakes—just the barest tap.”
The ground crew, engineers from the plant, and photographers were all ready when Wendel taxied out for the second time, the hot exhaust from the jets burning a trail in the grass, blowing back stones and chunks of the tarmac. Finally he wheeled on the runway, slowly advanced the throttles, and the Me 262 raced ahead.
Crouched in the cockpit, Wendel again noted with pleasure the lack of torque and the relative quiet, compared to a piston engine plane. As the airspeed indicator passed 180, he tapped the brakes lightly. The nose tipped over, he felt the elevators take hold, and seconds later he was airborne, climbing swiftly, delighting in the sheer raw power the jets were delivering, oblivious to the roaring crowd below as the arrow-shaped fighter made a turn to the left.
He flew for twelve tension-filled minutes before dropping the 262 down smoothly on the runway. The cheering onlookers suddenly froze as flames exploded from both engines, trailing the airplane as it slowed down. The flames, apparently just pooled fuel that ignited when the aircraft assumed its normal tail-down position, went out as Wendel taxied in to accept Messerschmitt’s congratulations—and to think about his bonus.
October 15, 1942, Wright Field, Ohio
Vance Shannon was forty-eight years old today and felt eighty-four. He sat in the end seat of the third row of the tiny briefing room, afraid that the gnawing fear in his stomach might force him to leave during this highly classified briefing, one that Harry was scheduled to give. To walk out on his son, that was unthinkable.
Roaring Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age) Page 6
