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

by Walter J. Boyne

  Vance, who also loved the salsa but had to watch his intake nowadays, had made a mental laundry list of the things he needed to talk to his boys about, either passing along information or prodding them for the tidbits that never went into their official company reports.

  “Let me bring you up-to-date on the TSR.2. The blasted British government has done it again. Stan Hooker—and you know how tight he is with a shilling—has been calling me on the phone regularly. I think spouting off to me keeps him from having a heart attack.”

  Vance went on to tell the sad story. On April 6, the British Labour government had terminated the TSR.2 program despite strong protests from the British Aircraft Company—some ten thousand workers had mobilized and marched in the streets of London, but to no avail. Then for weeks afterward Hooker burned up the telephone line with reports on the mendacity of the government in ordering completed TSR.2s to be taken to the firing range at Shoeburyness to be used as gun targets. All parts for airframes were scrapped; tooling was destroyed; even the wooden mock-up was dragged out of storage and burned. The avid government agents destroyed photographs, models, and all test reports to make sure that no succeeding government could revive the project.

  Harry spoke up. “It’s just like the Avro Arrow fiasco!”

  Tom added, “Well, to look on the bright side, they say they are going to buy General Dynamics’s F-111 aircraft as a replacement. Their Defense Minister, Donald Healey, claims that the F-111 will be less expensive and delivered more quickly than the TSR.2. Man, are they in for a shock!”

  Rodriquez, who always had his eye on the bottom line, said, “It’s a big mistake on their part. They could have recouped most or maybe all their research cost on export sales. Vance told us early on that the TSR.2 was far more capable than the F-111 was projected to be. It could have generated a fortune in sales to other governments.”

  Tom chimed in, “If the F-111 is as bad as I think it is going to be, the United States might even have bought some TSR.2s.”

  All four men were conscious of how fragile the aircraft industry had become. Killing the TSR.2 did not affect just the British Aircraft Company building it—it would disturb the engine manufacturers, the component builders. A ripple effect would reach out, and for the ten thousand BAC people who lost their jobs another thirty thousand workers in other industries would be affected.

  “What’s happening with the F-111, Tom?”

  “Not much good. The whole thing has been screwed up from the start by McNamara and his insistence on the TFX.”

  Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara was trying to manage the defense department as he had managed Ford, using quantitative techniques that reduced everything to dollars and cents. He advocated the TFX as a single aircraft that would serve the Air Force and Navy with minor modifications, just as Ford, Mercury, and Edsel had shared components. The idea, of course, was commonality. If the same basic airplane was produced for both services, there theoretically would be larger production runs, with the resulting economies.”

  Tom went on, “The Navy is having nothing but problems with the F-111B, which they never wanted in the first place. I’m sure they will cancel it pretty soon. It’s just too damn heavy and too high-drag. It was crazy to think it could ever operate off a carrier.”

  Vance nodded. “Did you know that General Dynamics actually invited Kelly Johnson out to review the high-drag problem? He took one look at it and said it was the way the engine inlets were mounted, close to the fuselage and under the wing. He got a big kick out of it because he knew there was nothing much they could do to solve the problem. He likes nothing better than seeing his competitors stewing in their own juice.”

  Vance turned to Harry. “What’s up with Boeing, Harry? Are they still pushing a swing wing for their SST?”

  “Yeah, but their heart isn’t in it. If they could find some face-saving way to switch over to a delta wing, like Lockheed is using, they would. But right now, they are toughing it out, insisting the swing wing is the way to go. But I know damn well if they win the contract, they’ll switch to a delta in nothing flat.”

  “What do they think about the Concorde?”

  “Well, first of all, they know it’s a Mach 2.0 aircraft, so they discount it. But they hate the thought that both BAC and Aérospatiale are already building the prototypes and all Boeing has is a mock-up. It’s a beauty, but it’s mostly plywood.”

  “And the Russkies? How are they doing?”

  Harry was on the spot. Boeing had permitted him to respond to a BAC request to do some clandestine work, slipping the Russians disinformation. Incredibly, the covert activity had brought him face-to-face with Madeline Behar, looking strangely sad and unwell.

  For an instant he was back in Paris, shaking Madeline’s cool hand. Strangely, he was most affected by her voice, the rich French accent,

  “Hello, Harry. How is your father, and how is Tom?”

  “We’re all fine, Madeline. And you?”

  “I’ve had some rough spots recently—some minor health problems—but for the most part I am fine. And how are the women of the family?”

  Harry had told her that his father had married Jill and Tom had married Nancy, and she laughed.

  “It doesn’t surprise me about your father and Jill, but I had not planned for Nancy and Tom. My last plans for Tom had not worked so well.”

  “Well, it worked well for me and Anna.”

  Vance’s voice broke through his reminiscence, “What the hell is wrong with you, Harry? I’m just asking about the Russians and their Tupolev.”

  “Sorry, Dad. My mind wandered.”

  There was no way in the world he could ever let his dad know about his meeting Madeline. He had no idea how Vance might react. He was happy with Jill now; there was no point in raising the ghost of Madeline—it might well break his heart. Harry finished his bottle of beer in one long gurgling gulp before answering.

  “The Russians are cutting metal, too. I understand Tupolev has orders to get his SST in the air before the British and the French—a matter of prestige. Khrushchev has ordered that it fly in 1968. They had a great model of it at the Paris Air Show, claiming a Mach 2.3 cruise and a four-thousand-mile range. It looks so much like the Concorde that they are calling it the Concordski as a joke.”

  Vance smiled, saying, “People always believe that if any two airplanes look alike, it means that one designer stole the idea from another. Everybody said that the designs of the Japanese Zero and the German Focke-Wulf FW 190 had been stolen from the Hughes racer. The truth was that faced with similar design problems, the designers came up with similar solutions. No doubt that’s how it was with the two SST projects.”

  Harry cautiously went on, “Well, Dad, in this case, it’s the truth. The KGB, and some people from the East German secret police, the Stasi, they call it, actually got Concorde blueprints and technical data. They pretended to be working for Aeroflot, and found some Communist sympathizers at the factory in Toulouse. French intelligence arrested a guy named Pavlov, supposed to be the head of the Paris Aeroflot office, caught him with drawings of the Concorde’s brakes, gear, and airframe. Caught his East German colleague, too. They tried to do the same thing in England, trying to learn about the engines, but the Brits were on to them.”

  Vance said, “Stan Hooker would kick their ass if they tried to steal secrets from him!”

  They laughed and Harry went on, glad to change the subject, “The big surprise for Boeing is their uptick in B-52 maintenance and modification. They are reaping a totally unexpected fortune out of the Vietnam War. SAC has deployed B-52s to Andersen, to use in South Vietnam, mainly. Can you imagine that, the big nuclear long rifle is going to work as an iron bomb dropper. They’ve got a modification going on with the B-52Ds, called Big Belly. They’ll be able to drop more than a hundred bombs, all five hundred pounders, in a single salvo from one bomber. Imagine what a formation of them will do!”

  Bob whistled, then said, “This Vietnam thing is
a cancer that won’t go away until we get serious. It is going to drain our life’s blood to fight a ground war over there. I can’t imagine what McNamara is thinking of.”

  The same man who had forced the TFX on the Navy and the Air Force had insisted on building up the Army to fight a ground war in Vietnam.

  Tom laughed. “You got to remember, he’s the man who gave us the Edsel.”

  Harry went on, “Boeing was really upset that Lockheed won the big Air Force transport competition. They swear they had the best design, but they think Lockheed might have won because the C-141 is working so well. And they swear that Lockheed has better lobbyists in Washington and more powerful people in the Congress.”

  “More powerful than Scoop Jackson? That’s hard to believe!”

  “Well, that’s Boeing’s story and they are sticking to it. But they are trying to make lemonade out of the lemon—they are converting their design work so that it applies to a big civilian transport, one that will meet Juan Trippe’s demands for a huge airliner.”

  A reflective quiet spread over the table. Decisions on big contracts had a tremendous effect on Aerospace Consultants—Aerocon, as Rodriquez called it. If Boeing had won the design competition for the Air Force transport, there would be lots of work for Aerospace Consultants, because so much new ground would have to be plowed. Lockheed’s winning meant that Aerocon probably wouldn’t get much play, because the new aircraft would be based on the well-proven C-141.

  Rodriquez said, “Maybe there is a bright spot. Aerocon is already making C-141 simulators for the Air Force. It won’t take us much effort to update the basic design so that they can serve as C-5 simulators, too. And if Boeing brought out an airliner as big as the C-5, it would certainly need new simulators, too.”

  Vance asked him, “How are you coming on the idea of establishing our own simulator facility and renting it out to the smaller airlines?”

  “We’ll have one in Colorado Springs by the first of the year. We will have to run it twenty-four hours a day to accommodate the demand. The little outfits have been making do with stationary simulators, not much better than the old Link trainers. They are chomping at the bit to get at our simulators.”

  Vance watched Tom, saw the customary mixture of anger and distaste in his face. He’d managed to get along with Bob for a while, but the success of the simulator company seemed to infuriate Tom. It didn’t make any sense, but there it was. Time to change the subject.

  “Tom, how is the McDonnell F-4 working out for the Air Force?”

  Tom turned to him, the relief obvious in his expression. “Man, you would think they had invented the airplane all over again. They are really bringing it into the inventory fast. They already have squadrons over in Vietnam, with more on the way. It’s amazing, given that they were refusing to even look at the airplane when it came out. Of course, McDonnell is a wonderful outfit, they have the best tech reps in the world, and they are over in Thailand and Vietnam, working to make these airplanes airworthy one hundred percent of the time.”

  “What is its safety record? Seems like a lot of airplane for anybody to handle.”

  Tom nodded his head slowly. This was a good opening. “I can give you the firsthand scoop on that. Harry, you remember that young cadet, Steve O’Malley, that we met at the Air Force Academy?”

  “Yeah, your fan, he called himself. What about him?”

  “He promised to stay in touch, and he has, with a vengeance, calls me every two weeks. He graduated from flying school last year, and went through the fighter training school at Nellis. They kept him as an instructor, which means he must have been a pretty good pilot. Anyway, he tells me that they are losing a few of them. The F-4 suffers from adverse yaw—in hard turns, you cannot roll it with ailerons; you have to center the stick and boot it around with the rudder. If you don’t watch your airspeed in a turn, the aircraft will depart, go into a wild stall, and maybe you’ll lose ten or fifteen thousand feet before you recover. And some of the guys have not recovered.”

  Vance grunted, “Hell, all airplanes will do the old stall spin! They’ve been doing it since Orville and Wilbur.”

  “Not like this, Dad. It’s not a simple stall; the damn thing goes wildly out of control, gyrating around the sky, even bangs you around the cockpit. And it is inhibiting in combat—if the battle slows down, the adverse yaw gets worse. It’s tough. But they have Jerry Gentry down at Edwards doing spin tests on the airplane, and he says you have to work it hard to get into a spin-stall situation. Gentry says that if you keep the airplane trimmed out and maintain your airspeed, it won’t happen. But too many young pilots let their airspeed go, the airplane departs, and they fight it all the way down trying to recover. Then they wind up too low to eject. It only takes a few seconds to get from stall to smash.”

  There was a general silence and Tom surveyed the room. This was as good a time as any. “There are some other problems surfacing as well—the engines smoke, so the MiGs can see them miles away, and the climate is hell on the electronics, turns the damn potting to mush. But I’ll be in a better position to tell you all about this in a few months. I’m going to get a reserve assignment as an F-4 pilot, then apply to be brought to active duty. With any luck, I’ll probably be in Vietnam before Christmas.”

  Tom’s combat record and his status as an ace gave him plenty of clout, and the Shannon name gave him access to the top four-stars. Few other people could have worked their reentry on to active duty as he had.

  There was a dead silence before Vance asked, “And what does Nancy say about this?”

  “She understands, Dad, and I hope you do, too.”

  Vance was furious. “Dammit, Tom, you are leaving her and V.R. in the lurch, and us, too! Who the hell is going to take your place here? And what the hell are you going to do over there? You are forty-seven years old! You’ll be flying with kids half your age. When are you leaving?”

  “You’ll find someone to take my place easily enough, Dad. This is something I have to do. Nancy understands, and I think you will, too, as soon as you think about it. You know me; you know how I feel about flying in combat. I won’t be leaving right away and I’ll have to go through a complete F-4C checkout. Maybe I won’t cut the mustard anymore.”

  Despite his anger, Vance did understand, and so did Harry and Bob. They recognized the phenomenon, a compulsion for combat. There was something about air combat that insinuated itself into some people’s psyches and made them yearn for it as an addict yearned for a fix. There were other elements, of course—patriotism, the fear of getting older, and more. But the main thing was the need to be in combat, to put your life on the line against an enemy of unknown capability and prevail. Bob was a veteran combat pilot, too, he’d shot down twelve MiGs in Korea, and that was enough for him; he never wanted to go back to the Air Force or back in combat. But he understood Tom’s need.

  Vance was relentless. “Tom, believe me, I understand only too well why you want to go. What I don’t understand is why you don’t have the brains and the discipline to control your desires. It is irresponsible. I wish you had talked to me about this.”

  Tom stood up and put his arms around his father, kissed him on the forehead. “And if I had done that, you would have talked me out of going. You still run this family and this company with an iron hand, Dad, even though you keep it pretty well gloved. I didn’t tell you because I was determined to go—but knew you could talk me out of it.”

  Vance shook his head and turned to Harry and Bob. “I guess you both knew about this, and just kept me in the dark.”

  Tom broke in, “No, Dad, neither one knew, unless Nancy told them, and I’m sure she wouldn’t do that. I had to keep it quiet until I went through the physical and got all the paperwork cleared up. If things hadn’t worked out, I wouldn’t have said anything, wouldn’t have let you know that I’m still such a half-wit.”

  “Well, Tom, you’ve done well in two other wars. You’ll do well in this one. Just don’t get the ace syndrome
going. You don’t have to shoot down any more airplanes; you just have to bring yourself home.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  July 5, 1965

  Palos Verdes, California

  Tom’s bombshell had taken a lot out of Vance. Jill was happy when he decided to get up late and spend the morning at the umbrella-shaded table that had been a fixture on their rear porch for years. He had boxes of paperwork with him, a calculator, and he’d worked steadily all morning. Finally at eleven o’clock he had called to her, “I’m going in to have lunch with Lou Capestro. Come out here for a second, honey.”

  When she sat down he pushed a sheet of paper to her. It showed that his interest in the Volkswagen dealership had grown to more than three-quarters of a million dollars.

  “Volkswagen is doing just what Fritz Obermyer said it was going to do. It’s taking off. They sold more than three hundred thousand cars in the United States last year, and we sure sold our share.”

  “Wow, I had no idea you had this kind of money!”

  “It’s our money, Jill. And I’m thinking about selling out, and just using it for us to indulge ourselves, you know, do some first-class traveling.”

  “Who are you trying to kid? The last thing in the world you want to do is travel. I’ve slipped a dozen brochures in your mail over the years, and the first thing you do is toss them in the garbage can. And I don’t want to go if you don’t want to go. What fun would that be?”

  “Well, you be thinking of some way you want to spend the money, and I don’t mean just buying stuff for the kids. I want you to figure out how you want to spend it. That’s the only way I’ll get any fun out of it.”