It was as if he worked to rid himself of the Pineapple Derby demons and the sadness that had stolen his youth. Clarice was always cataloguing the eligible girls that she knew, wondering who would take him from his memories. He missed that Duncan girl dreadfully, she knew, but it had been going on too long; it was time for him to find another woman.
He stood, fidgeting, as Hadley carefully threaded an eight-foot pipe onto the end of the two-foot-long monkey wrench. Grunting like a wart hog, Howard Hughes—why Hadley bothered to call him Charles she never could figure out—took time to fit the carefully padded jaws around the battered Monocoupe's propeller hub nut. He laughed. "Always get a bigger hammer, Bandy," he said.
Roget pulled down on the levered wrench, and there was a satisfying pop as the nut broke loose.
"Those bastards are always devils—but at least they keep the prop on." Hadley wiped his hands and pulled Bandfield into the corner.
"I've got my eye on one hell of a plant in Downey, Bandy. Did you know Charlie Rocheville?"
"No, but I sure loved his airplanes, especially that little midwing two-seater. Called them Emscos, didn't they?"
"Yeah. They're having big tax troubles with the government, and I can pick up the plant for a song."
"Jeez, that would get us out of this garage and into a real factory."
"Yeah. We could build two or three prototypes at a time in that son of a bitch—a bomber, a fighter, maybe a trainer. And there are all kinds of tools for production." Roget bubbled on, telling him how the plant was worth over a million, but they could pick it up for $10,000 in back taxes and about $50,000 in cash. There was $30,000 left from the license deal, and he thought he could get a loan of $20,000 from the bank.
Bandfield knew what he had to do: pick up at least $10,000 or more in prizes in Cleveland.
That afternoon they flew over to Downey in their latest creation, the bright yellow Kitten light plane. They had worked on it off and on for years, and it was their hole card, their backup in case the bomber design was not accepted. After looking at the market pretty carefully, they thought they could sell as many as twenty to thirty Kittens a year, if they could get a good dealer network.
Downey's huge field, isolated way out in the country some twelve miles from Long Beach, was deserted. A modern factory building, assembly bay, machine shop, and administrative section were locked up like so many other plants in Depression-burdened America.
"Breaks your heart, don't it?"
Bandy nodded, pulling himself up on a dusty window ledge to peer inside the assembly bay. There were two long lonely production lines, empty of everything but fixtures and tools. At one end was a forlorn Emsco trimotor, heavy with dust and the inevitable pigeon droppings, tires going flat.
"Does the airplane go with the plant?"
"I think everything goes, just as you see it."
A hot lust for the property suffused Bandy. "Jesus Christ, let's buy it, no matter what it takes. We could do anything with a setup like this. How did they fail? Rocheville is a first-class designer."
"I don't know—the Depression, of course, but I think it was mainly because they were using this as a tax dodge for other businesses. They weren't serious about airplanes."
"We'll be serious."
With one stop for fuel, they flew back to the Roget airstrip, ignoring the gorgeous sere brown of the California landscape, each lost in his own thoughts. When they got down, Hadley said, "This is a whole new ball game, Bandy. You can be the chief test pilot and run the engineering department. I figure we can pick up a lot of skilled out-of-work people from Douglas and Northrop, easy."
"Workers won't be our problem."
An argument had long been brewing. Hadley had been sensitive to Bandfield's depression, and repressed his own naturally combative nature. To compensate, as a means of expression, he had been working furiously on a project of his own, one he intended as a surprise for Bandfield. He sensed the trouble in the air and decided to defuse the situation by showing Bandfield his proposal for a new airplane. Attempting to butter him up, he took Bandy by the elbow and steered him toward the secluded rear section of the hangar. The "back room" was always kept under lock and key, and Bandy had honored Hadley's request not to go in until Roget asked him too. He knew it was supposed to be a treat.
Hadley's grin grew as he led him back through the assorted Roget promises of the past. He threaded his way between the Rascal racer, still not complete but almost there, and the shattered remains of the flying wing that had promised so much. It was a long-range airplane Hadley had lovingly built, mostly wing with twin rudders set out on tail booms; he had bailed out of it when he encountered violent wing flutter on a test flight. The yellow ceiling lights cast dancing shadows on the bitter endings of so many promising starts. Only the familiar, intoxicating smell of oil, dope, and gasoline was comforting.
He followed Hadley into the darkened room.
"Okay," the older man said, and turned on the overhead lights.
In the center of the immaculate floor was a full-size drawing of a jet-black racer, a bigger edition of the Rascal. A mock-up of the right wing, supported by a sawhorse, extended from the drawing. The cowling was huge—Hadley intended it to enclose a Wasp Senior radial engine. The retractable landing gear was designed to pull up into the fuselage, just as on the Navy's Grumman fighters. The mocked-up wing was short and thick. The tiny cockpit was faired into the rudder coaming with a bulbous sliding canopy, just big enough for his head.
"Jesus, it looks like a cross between a Wedell-Williams and a Gee Bee, the best features of both."
"That's not all, Bandy. Watch."
Hadley ran power cables to a plug on the side of the cardboard fuselage.
"Look at this!" The older man threw a switch, and an electric motor moaned behind the fuselage drawing. The wing quivered, elongating, the black tip extending out for another six feet. At the point of farthest extension, there was a one-foot strip painted gleaming white for emphasis.
"Holy Christ, what is this? A variable wingspan?"
"Yeah, it gives you twelve feet more wingspan, and you'll have inboard flaps and outboard slots, too."
Roget extolled the plane's features. The landing gear and flaps were electrically driven, like the wing.
"This should give us maybe three-ten, three twenty-five miles an hour. You land with the wings extended too, of course. Keeps landing speeds down in the seventy-mile-an-hour range."
A transcendent tinkerer's joy suffused Hadley's face. "I'm—we're—calling this one the Roget Rambler, cause she's really going to ramble. Don't worry about the strength, either, Bandy. I've got this figured out so that it can't be overstressed, no matter what speed you're going when you retract or extend the wings, and they'll always work together."
Bandfield didn't say anything. He walked around the mock-up airplane, checking the extension mechanism. Hadley looked like a grandfather giving out Christmas toys to the family.
"What do you think? We could fly it with the wings extended in the Bendix, retracted in the Thompson. In the Bendix you could even pull the wings in bit by bit as you burned off fuel, and pick up your speed as you went."
Bandfield was silent. The airplane looked wonderful, and he was going to have to be negative about it. Hadley simply had to start being more businesslike.
"It looks great, but I've got to talk to you. Let's see if Clarice will give us some coffee."
Hadley was taken aback, puzzled and hurt. The Rambler was easily the best thing he'd ever done, and Bandy was reacting strangely.
In the kitchen, they sat around the oilcloth-covered table. On the side was a tablet on which Hadley did his sketches and Clarice tried to scratch out the numbers that would somehow stretch her budget. Bandy guessed that she hadn't seen a dime of the license fee; it wouldn't occur to Hadley to spend money on anything but airplanes. Even groceries came after parts at the Rogers'.
"What's the matter, Bandy, don't you like the airplane?"
&nbs
p; The younger man spooned sugar into his coffee, turning the eddies of the condensed Pet Milk from rich cream to light brown. He stared at the trademark, wide-eyed concentric cows trailing off into some bovine infinity in the center of the can. He wished there were somewhere he could go to get away from the problem at hand.
"I'm not going to talk about the airplane, per se. But I don't know any way to say this except straight out. Times are changing. I'm not talking about the Depression, or Roosevelt, or maybe repealing Prohibition. I'm talking about aviation. And I've got to tell you something unpleasant. You're just not being serious enough about your airplanes."
Hadley snapped to a scorpion stance, back arched, ready to pounce, all the old aggressiveness at the ready. His voice raised in indignation.
"What do you mean? Just because you've got an engineering degree doesn't give you the right to talk like that. There's not another airplane in the United States that's more advanced."
"No, you're exactly right. And we haven't even flown the Rascal, and you're already dreaming about something else. And we've got the bomber to do!"
He stopped to take control of his voice. "Hadley, these aren't model airplanes, these are hot, untried, full-sized ships, and we've got to start spending the necessary time to develop them. You can't make them and then throw them away like a toothbrush."
"That's what everybody else is doing, Bandy. You don't see the same airplanes every year at Cleveland, do you?"
"Yeah, you do, the winners mostly. Jimmy Wedell started out with a tiny little airplane with a Chevrolet engine, and he's developed it into the hottest thing around. It's not a killer like the Gee Bees."
Unconsciously, they had squared off, moving so that the table was no longer between them, assuming a crouch, arms positioned for protection, hands beginning to curl into fists. Bandfield sensed it and blushed; he would rather put his arm in a prop than strike Hadley.
"And it takes time to work the bugs out. Airplanes are different now, more power, more stress. You can't just play with them anymore."
Hadley didn't say anything. Bandy was glad Clarice had left the room.
Bandfield's voice changed to a kindly, pleading tone. "Think about it. When you learned to fly, when you started building airplanes, everything was the same. Wood spars, wood ribs, wood-and-wire fuselages. No stress analysis. You'd just eyeball it, then maybe make a part a little bigger if you didn't think it was strong enough. Then they started using steel tubing, with maybe aluminum ribs if you were fancy. That's where you still are, and that's all over. Metal airplanes with retractable landing gear are going to be what everybody needs. And you can't build them the way you can wood-and-rag ships, with a handful of men in a tiny shop."
Hadley responded, "That's why I want the Emsco plant, dumb-ass!
More confident, Bandy retorted sharply, "Yeah, and that's why I'm talking like this to you. You want the plant, but you're still wedded to your old ideas. The physical plant is only half of it, maybe less than that, only ten percent. The first thing you have to have is a philosophy about building quality. You've got that now, no question. The second thing is a concept. What kind of airplanes are you going to build, how many, and who are you going to sell them to? That's what you've never worried about in the past."
Hadley's jaw was twitching, a sure sign that an explosion was coming. He wanted to crush Bandy with a remark, but the best he could do was "Says you!"
Bandfield continued, "Nobody else has worried about it either, much, for some reason. We've been floundering around building airplanes for the fun of it, always assuming somebody would buy it if it was a good airplane. The fact that no market ever materialized didn't bother anyone."
Hadley sat, eyes cast down, his hands bending the blade of a table knife back and forth.
"Out of probably a thousand would-be plane builders, only four or five have succeeded—Douglas, Boeing, Curtiss, Martin, a few more. The rest folded, some of them famous names. The Wright brothers themselves couldn't make it. Look at the rest—Loening, Dayton-Wright, Travelair—all gone because they couldn't compete. "
It was the right tack. As tough as times had been for Roget Aircraft, they had been bad elsewhere, too. Bandfield knew that failing never really bothered Hadley if he felt the cause was external events. If it was the fault of the airplane—as in the case of the flying wing—he was miserable.
"The reason the big guys succeeded was that they had an idea and followed it. Douglas built quality transports, big airplanes, around-the-world jobs. Boeing built fighters. Curtiss was a giant, did some of both, and Martin and Grumman tried to stick to the needs of the Navy. If we want to succeed in a big way, to really do something for aviation, then we've got to do the same thing. Target what we want to do, hire the right people, and then stick to it."
The knife blade snapped, and Roget threw the pieces against the wall.
"What the hell do you think I had in mind?"
Bandfield sensed he was near the point of no return, and let a friendlier tone enter his voice.
"You're one of the brightest engineers in the world—I'd never be able to hold a candle to you—but you're still playing around with airplanes as if they were model kits. I've got a race in Cleveland coming up, and you've forgotten about the Rascal. You've spent your time designing a brand-new airplane with brand-new bugs. You should have been thinking about how to improve the Rascal. Shit, I haven't had a chance to fly it yet."
The older man was obviously crushed, but Bandfield was relentless. "Airplanes need to be cultivated, to grow. You just want to build 'em, fly 'em, and forget 'em, just like your old joke about sorority girls. What we need to do is improve the Rascal, put a canopy and retractable gear on it maybe, bring it along. Then we can build the Rambler over the next year or two, get it running right. I've seen too many crashes from people rushing things."
They were silent. In the background, Bandy could hear the scratchy Atwater Kent radio pouring out "Night and Day." What he was talking about was as different from Roget's thinking as night was from day.
"Look, you know I think Bruno Hafner is the biggest prick in the business. But he's got enough sense to stay out of Bineau's way, and Charlotte does the same. They run a professional factory. I've got the greatest respect for Bineau, even though I don't think he's in your league as an engineer. But he does his development work systematically."
Hadley was sourly defensive. "Yeah, and he's got all of Bruno's dough behind him." He got up and rustled through the icebox, pulling out two Baby Ruth candy bars. He tossed one to Bandy and tore the wrapper off the other with his teeth. Bandfield peeled the wrapper back. The damp of the icebox had changed the chocolate to an unappetizing moldy white. He ate it anyway, afraid to give offense.
"Sure he does—he could afford to screw around the way you do, but he doesn't. He's got more sense," he went on. "Hadley, you know it's not the money. I'll fly the race, and if I win, I'll give you all the money, no strings attached. But if you want me to be a part of the plant, we've got to operate differently. If you want me in the new company, I'll put up the dough, but I'll be the test pilot and the president, and we'll do things my way."
He paused, realizing he had to sink the harpoon deeper if he was to keep Hadley's attention.
"On the way in I walked past your flying wing. That was a damn good airplane, radical, but with a lot of promise. You cracked it up by pushing it. You could have tested it for six months and solved the flutter problem. But you pushed ahead, and had to bail out when the tail came off. No more airplane! All the work down the drain. It could have been a winner, but the wreckage is gathering dust in the hangar."
He gulped and continued, "From now on you have to—we have to—stop acting like it's still 1920. There's no point in taking over a million-dollar factory and building the same kind of airplanes that you did here. And I hope you're thinking all-metal, because the time for tube and fabric is over. You know that, Hadley."
There was an edge to Roget's voice. "It's gone for fig
hters and bombers, but it'll be around a long time in light planes and trainers, and so will wood." He was silent for a moment, then tried to sound conciliatory. "Bandy, I hear you, but I'm not sure I agree entirely. I've spent twenty years doing things my way. It's tough to start new methods now."
"Let's get it all on the table. If you do get the new factory, and you really want me to work with you, there will have to be a lot of changes."
Roget nodded cautiously.
"You won't be doing many of the things you used to do. There will be almost no hands-on work for you at all. You are past that. You'll be supervising a team of engineers and a team of production people, making sure they draw what you invent. And you'll be seeing that they build it right."
Roget's expression was blank, and Bandy's voice took on a pleading note.
"Otherwise, there's no point in investing your time and effort. We've got to use your talent as a lever to move a dozen people to do what we can't do alone."
The older man looked sullenly at the table.
"Face up to it. Unless we get a work force, accountants, a material manager, a floor manager, specialists, what can we do with a big plant like Emsco?"
"Bandy, I want the plant to build a bomber with the fifty-five-foot wing. We could get some big contracts, if not from the Air Corps, maybe from South America or something."
"You are already thinking wrong. Unless you get it from the Air Corps, it's not worth doing. You set the highest standards in the world for craftsmanship, then turn around and lower your sights on sales. It's all wrong."
Trophy for Eagles Page 24
