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

by Walter J. Boyne

  “Absolutely. If you make an eighty-passenger airplane, you’re inviting de Havilland to scale up their plane, to compete. And they’ve a few years’ head start on you.” He waved one of the photos and said, “I’d say this airplane will be flying in a year or less. You don’t have any time to lose.”

  Schairer sat at his desk, his slide rule flying. Once he brightened and smiled at Vance. “A bigger airplane would be better as a tanker, too.” When he had finished jotting down a whole series of numbers, he said, “Let me sleep on this, Vance. It’s just so audacious that I cannot comment now. But I want you to go to Great Britain, and see if you can get a tour of the de Havilland plant. See it with your own eyes, then come back here and report. I want to know if we are right about the size, about de Havilland’s marketing plan, and especially about how much testing they are going to do before they put it in service. This airplane might just be a flying prototype for something bigger—you know they are building two gigantic airplanes over there, the Bristol Brabazon and the Saro Princess, a flying boat, of all things. Maybe de Havilland will just use this as a mail plane, and build a bigger one for hauling passengers. If they do, we might have a chance to be first.”

  “No, George, this is an airliner. They never would have made the fuselage diameter so large, nor would they have stuck these strange square windows in it, if they were just going to fly mail in it. But it’s too small and you’ve got to think big. Mentioning the Bristol Brabazon gives me a point of departure. Stanley Hooker is an old friend, and he’s with Bristol, now. I’d have to be up-front and tell him I was looking for information, but he can probably get me a briefing at de Havilland.”

  “Can you leave in the next few days? If you can get back to me in say three weeks, give or take a week, I’ll have time to prepare for the next board of directors meeting. In the meantime, we should hear something from Harry about the new engines from Pratt. They are the key; I wouldn’t dream of scaling up this project unless I knew we had the engine problem solved.”

  August 2, 1948, Hartford, Connecticut

  Harry liked being treated as visiting royalty. Perry Pratt had been very cordial, telling him, “The first thing you need is background. Pratt & Whitney has a glorious record, but nobody ever thinks about engines; they always think about airframes. You hear all about Thunderbolts and Corsairs and Wildcats and Liberators, but you never hear about the great Pratt & Whitney engines that made them possible. I’m assigning a bright young chap, right out of college, to take you around and show you what’s what.”

  The bright young chap was Harvey Lippincott, and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of not only Pratt & Whitney but any aviation subject. Harvey knew all about Harry’s dad and his exploits and questioned him eagerly about flying the Massey Double Quad. But mostly Harvey lectured as they walked up and down the huge factory aisles. Many of them were idle now, with long rows of expensive machine tools, glistening with oil and obviously cared for tenderly, standing silent. Only in one section of the factory was there work going on, and even that section had none of the clangor and bang of a factory under pressure. Still, it was hard to imagine something as big, powerful, and greasy as an aircraft engine being manufactured in an environment as clinically clean as an operating room.

  Lippincott knew most of the people on the floor, and about every twenty feet he would introduce Harry to someone else. It wasn’t simple schmoozing, either. Harvey knew what they were working on and what they had worked on in the past, and he wove it into a fabric of manufacturing history that dazzled Harry.

  “Pratt & Whitney shipped three hundred and sixty-three thousand, three hundred and nineteen engines during the war, with an equivalent horsepower of six hundred and three million, eight hundred and fourteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-three. They powered fifty-one different kinds of aircraft, including trainers, transports, fighters, and bombers.”

  After what seemed to Harry to be the fiftieth trip down long rows of expensive machinery, Lippincott came to a halt and said, “But all that is in the past. In the next building, I’m going to show you the future, and it is coming on strong.”

  They walked another fifty feet to where a guard was obviously waiting for them. As they approached, he flipped a smart salute and opened the doors that held a big “Keep Out” sign.

  Lippincott steered Harry to an engine test cell where white-coated technicians were swarming over a long, wasp-waisted jet engine.

  “There, Colonel Shannon, is the future. It is the Pratt & Whitney X-176, a twin-spool turbojet. The military will call it the J57, and in commercial aircraft it will be the JT3. It will produce ten-thousand-shaft horsepower dry, and fifteen thousand with an afterburner. You’ll see thousands of these engines in the next ten years.”

  He handed Harry sound-suppressing earmuffs, put on a pair himself, and nodded to the engineering team, who were crouched behind a huge instrument panel that was in turn shielded by a thick glass window. The X-176 engine started with a low roar, shooting a spear of flame out the rear, where it was channeled upward into a chimney that ran to the roof and beyond. The noise grew rapidly. The engine did not vibrate as piston engines did, but as they pushed the throttle forward, increasing its thrust, there was an imposing sense of immense power, carefully controlled. After a ten-minute run, they slowly eased the engine back to idle and then to cutoff. The silence was deafening.

  Harry was too moved to comment. This was the engine they needed for Boeing’s big bomber. With six or even eight of these, they could create a world-beater that would fly so high and so fast that Soviet interceptors could not counter it.

  For the rest of the day, Lippincott continued to make a believer out of him, taking him through the administrative areas, leaving no stone unturned. He didn’t see Perry Pratt again until the next morning.

  “Well, Colonel, did you learn anything?”

  “I learned that you have a great historian giving tours. Harvey Lippincott is remarkable.”

  “Don’t think I’m boasting, but I’ll have to correct you. Harvey is a typical Pratt & Whitney employee. Somehow we just attract the best, and that accounts for our success.”

  “Forgive me for asking, but are you part of the original Pratt founding fathers of the company?”

  “Absolutely not, no relation, but I have to say the name has helped me a lot here in Hartford. Luke Hobbs will be here in a minute. You saw the X-176.” It was not a question, just a statement.

  “Yes, it was impressive.”

  “Well, I have to tell you that Pratt & Whitney, like every other big wartime manufacturer, has been hit hard by peace. We’ve lost most of our workforce, and we’ve even had to sacrifice some really first-rate managers, just because there isn’t any work for them. It kills me, because I know they’ll be snapped up by rivals.”

  Luke Hobbs walked in. Lippincott had told Harry how Hobbs had saved the company before the war, throwing out some engine designs that were ready for mass production and insisting on the creation of the R-2800, probably the most successful American piston engine design of the war.

  Hobbs came right to the point. “Colonel Shannon, we want to build the X-176 engine, but we cannot do it on faith alone. We have to have a contract that will call for at least one thousand engines before we afford to turn the prototype into an engine fit for service.”

  “You’ve put your finger on the problem, Mr. Hobbs. Boeing will build a big jet bomber that could use your X-176s or J57s or whatever their designation is, but they cannot just gamble on you building the engine. I don’t know how many airplanes SAC will order for Boeing, but I do know that they’ve ordered hundreds of B-47s, and are planning to order more.”

  “Well, we are already working on a turboprop engine for the big Boeing.” The tone in Hobbs’s voice conveyed his displeasure, for the turboprop’s performance continued to be disappointing. Pratt & Whitney regretted that the age of the piston engine was past, and it was entering the jet age uneasily. The turboprop, with the complex dynamics
of huge high-speed propellers and the manifest uncertainty of the gearboxes, was even more distasteful to the firm than the pure jet engine.

  “You might as well stop work. Boeing cannot get the range or the speed with the turboprop.”

  Hobbs did not sigh with relief, but there was a visible relaxation of the intensity of his frown. “How many engines are they planning to use on this jet?”

  Harry did not know, no one did at that moment, but he said, “Eight.”

  Pratt turned to Hobbs and said, “If the Air Force just ordered one hundred of the new bomber, that would mean at least eight hundred engines, plus another two hundred spares, and we’d have our thousand. There’s a foreign market, too; we could license it if the Air Force would let us.”

  Harry said, “There is only one way out of this impasse, and that is for you to take the same kind of risk you took when you killed the R-2150 and started the R-2800.”

  Hobbs smiled for the first time and said to Perry, “You must have given him the Lippincott treatment.”

  Shannon went on. “What I need from you is a commitment to build the engine. If you do, I’ll guarantee that the Air Force will buy at least one hundred big bombers from Boeing.”

  Hobbs laughed this time. “No disrespect, Colonel, but you really cannot guarantee it. What does Pete Wharton say?”

  Harry flushed. Hobbs, a veteran of the game, had nailed him, but he pressed on. “And with equal respect, Mr. Hobbs, you’re wrong. I can guarantee it because Pete Wharton told me that I could. There’s not a damn thing that happens in Air Force procurement that Wharton doesn’t call the shots on.”

  Hobbs realized he had almost been insulting to Harry and hastened to apologize. “Again, no offense, Colonel, I didn’t mean to depreciate your guarantee, and I certainly understand your confidence if Wharton is backing you. I’ll tell you what. We have a board meeting coming up a week from today. I’ll propose to the board that we proceed on the X-176, and I believe they will go along with me. You go back to Wright-Patterson and tell Pete Wharton that he sent the right man to do his job for him.”

  Harry did not wait to go back. As soon as he had said good-bye to Pratt and Hobbs and walked to Lippincott’s office to thank him, he drove back to his hotel and phoned Wharton.

  “Pete, I think they are going to move; Hobbs tells me that he is going to the board to get permission to proceed on the X-176.”

  “Going to the board is pro forma. They’ll do what Hobbs asks. That’s great, Harry; I knew you could pull it off. But I want you to promise me that you are not going to tell your dad or Boeing what’s happening. I’ve got a few negotiating irons in the fire with them, and it’s better for the Air Force if they don’t know the good news until those irons are out and cooling.”

  Puzzled, Harry said, “OK, if that’s the way you want it. I’ll just tell Dad that it is still up in the air.” He hated to do it and doubted if he could get away with it, for his father still read him like a book.

  “Attaboy. He’ll understand when the time comes.”

  It turned out that Wharton’s caution was prudent, for the following week, a very dejected Hobbs called him.

  “Pete, this is Luke. I’ve got to renege; I’ve been outmaneuvered. The Pratt & Whitney board has postponed their meeting until September, and I know why. They don’t want to make a decision on the X-176 until the last quarter of the year. There is a possible merger coming up, and they think deciding on the X-176 might affect the deal.”

  The phone was silent and Hobbs asked, “You still there, Pete?”

  “Just thinking, Luke. This might work out best for the Air Force, if you can get me a positive decision by early October. That’s when I’ve asked the Boeing brass to come out and brief on the big turboprop bomber.”

  “OK, Pete. Thanks for being understanding. I’ll get a positive decision by October 15. They have to meet by then, corporate bylaws. If they don’t go along with me, I’ll tell them I’ll quit. I don’t use that ploy very often, but when I have to use it, it works.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  October 22, 1948, Dayton, Ohio

  It was one of those perfect fall days in Ohio, when even downtown Dayton looked bright and cheerful and the Van Cleve Hotel seemed the center of the aerial universe. Boeing people always stayed at the Van Cleve, and this time a six-man team of heavy hitters was in town to brief Pete Wharton on the latest developments—none too cheerful—of the turboprop bomber.

  Ed Wells headed the team, backed up by George Schairer. While the other four men were specialists, they were also talented in many fields. Maynard Pennell and Art Carlsen were weight experts, able to look at a drawing and estimate what the weight of each component was going to be, usually within ounces of the final figure. Holden “Bob” Withington was a wind tunnel specialist—he and Schairer had advocated the huge wind tunnel that now gave Boeing an advantage over every other manufacturer in the industry. Withington was also an expert on drag estimation. Vance Shannon felt privileged to be in their company. All the men were exhausted, having been working hard on other projects before being subjected to the long cross-country trip from Seattle, some coming by train, some by plane.

  The initial meeting was held Friday morning in Wharton’s cluttered office in Area A at Wright-Patterson. The Boeing people arrived early, as always, and set up their briefing materials and a brand-new model of the turboprop bomber. They were not very enthusiastic because they didn’t have much in the way of good news—they had improved the range only slightly, but the takeoff gross weight had gone up again.

  Wharton swept into the room with his usual good humor, apologized for being late, and said, “Gentlemen, thanks for coming, and for setting up early. But here is the big news. The turboprop bomber is canceled. Pratt & Whitney is going to commit its new jet engine, the X-176, to full-scale production. I got word from Luke Hobbs yesterday. What I’d like you to do is go back to the Van Cleve and develop a proposal for a turbojet bomber that can use an engine with these specifications.” He handed out the engine specification sheets to the stunned Boeing personnel.

  Wells spoke up. “Pete, are you sure about this? If so, it’s the best news we’ve had in weeks.”

  “If you think you are happy, you ought to have heard Luke Hobbs.”

  The Boeing engineers wore out room service at the Van Cleve for the next seventy-two hours, working in a frenzy of activity, pooling their accumulated knowledge on a long series of previous projects to create the preliminary drawings and specifications for an eight-jet bomber. All that they had learned from designing, building, and flying the B-47 was poured into the new aircraft. They kept Vance Shannon as a gofer for essentials such as drawing paper, drafting tools, and coffee when he wasn’t standing by the telephone to act as intermediary with a variety of Boeing teams in Seattle. There, like a kicked-over anthill, Boeing engineers and executives, dressed in weekend clothes and forgoing the normal suit-and-tie atmosphere, worked round-the-clock to furnish figures to back up the Dayton team’s estimates.

  Vance would relay questions from the Van Cleve back to every area of the Boeing plant, then get the resulting answers back to the team. In the process he was amazed at the depth of Boeing engineering; virtually nothing came up that had not been discussed before, and almost everything had been tested to some degree. The Seattle people would listen, promise to call back, and usually within thirty minutes have the required data, dug out of an existing file.

  On Monday morning, October 25, the bleary-eyed team reassembled in Wharton’s office with a thirty-three-page proposal for the Boeing Model 464-49-0. The small packet included an inboard profile, a three-view drawing, all the drag polars, and the weight estimates. The aircraft was huge, with four thousand square feet of wing area, a design gross weight of 330,000 pounds, a high speed of 572 mph, and a range of 8,000 miles with a 10,000-pound bomb load. There had never been anything like it before in the history of aviation.

  Ed Wells did the three-view drawings and then helped
Schairer and Shannon build a large balsa model of the airplane, painted silver and mounted on a stand so that Wharton could take it back to the Pentagon.

  Wharton put the model on his desk, then pawed through the proposal, asking questions but clearly delighted with what he saw.

  “This is it, gentlemen. I repeat, the turboprop is officially canceled. I’ll go to Pentagon this afternoon, and I’ll shepherd this baby through all the congressional hoops. This is exactly what the new head of the Strategic Air Command wants, and he has wanted it since he ran research and development. You can look to building a lot of them.”

  When the meeting broke up and the fatigued Boeing people went back to their rooms to get a little rest, the first person Vance Shannon called was his son Harry.

  “Harry, you rascal, how long have you known about what Pete Wharton was planning?”

  There was a pause. “I’m sorry, Dad. Pete specifically asked me not to tell you after my trip up to Hartford. He said he had some negotiating irons in the fire.”

  “Son, you did the right thing and I’m proud of you. I can’t talk about this on the phone, but Boeing and the Air Force and I guess Pratt & Whitney are going to be mighty happy about what happened this weekend. Talk to you more when I get back to Seattle.”

  December 31, 1948, Palos Verdes, California

  Vance and Madeline had long since stopped going out on New Year’s Eve, even though they were invited to half a dozen parties all over the state. She was in the kitchen, cleaning up after their simple one-pot dinner. It was chilly for California, and Vance sat in front of his desk, a fire in the fireplace to his left. The desktop was absolutely clean except for a pad of yellow paper, a small ruler, and a few sharpened pencils. Normally the desk was crowded, littered with books, papers, drawings, and the occasional bit of leftover lunch. Tonight it was cleaned off for what had become an annual ritual, an accounting of the way the year had gone, both for his business and for his family. He knew before he made the first entry that the results would be mixed.