Slide Rule

by Nevil Shute

  By that time war had broken out between Italy and Abyssinia, and Mussolini’s army was invading the country of the Emperor Haile Selassie and driving back his coloured primitive army towards the capital, Addis Ababa. I told Jack Norman that I was fitting no bomb racks, that I was selling a civil aeroplane to be delivered on our aerodrome at Portsmouth to his company, a British concern. He then asked if I would provide certain lugs under the wings to which they could attach anything they liked, and I agreed to do this.

  The next thing was that Jack Norman asked if the pilot for the Viceroy might fly our demonstration Envoy for an hour or two with our test pilot Colman at his side, to familiarise himself with the type. This was a very reasonable request, to which I agreed at once. Jack Norman then said that there was some difficulty about the pilot because he hadn’t got a passport. He was a stateless citizen. He was German by birth and his name was, shall we say, Ernst Schrader. Mr. Schrader had been a pilot of the German airline Luft Hansa and one day had spoken disrespectfully of Adolf Hitler in a beer tavern. Next day his sister had rung him up at the aerodrome in a great panic, to tell him that the Gestapo had been at the house looking for him. Mr. Schrader was about to leave to pilot a machine of the airline to Amsterdam and he made no delay; at Amsterdam he resigned from the Luft Hansa. He was now in Holland with very little chance of getting a German passport. Would we send the demonstration Envoy to Amsterdam for him to fly it there?

  I said we wouldn’t.

  Presently they produced Mr. Schrader at Portsmouth aerodrome to fly the Envoy, which he did remarkably well; he was clearly a very fine pilot and a most experienced man. He was spirited away immediately the flight was over, and I had no chance of conversation with him. Colman, however, came into my office directly the party had departed. He had been in Berlin on our business a few weeks before, and there he had met one of the most famous German pilots of the day, whom I shall call Weiss. He was convinced that this man was Weiss.

  It seemed to be about time for a show-down with Jack Norman, and I told him that I would go no further in selling him this aeroplane unless I was taken into his confidence, and perhaps not then. After consultation with his principals I was let in to the secret. The army of Haile Selassie had no hope of standing up against the Italian invaders of their country unless modern arms and equipment could reach them. The Emperor had the pitiful sum of £16,000 to spend on modern aircraft with which to defend his country. With this he was buying our Viceroy for £5,000 and the remainder was to be spent on three fighters, Gloster Gladiators I think, to shoot down the Italian planes that were harrassing his troops. All four machines would, of course, be flown by soldiers of fortune from Europe. The job of the Viceroy was to bomb the Italian oil storage tanks at Massawa and so halt their mechanised advance. The Viceroy was a good deal faster than any aircraft the Italians had in Abyssinia, and this mission was well within the capabilities of the machine. It was, however, vital to maintain complete secrecy, because if the Italians were to get to know about the Viceroy they would move a squadron of first-class fighters from Italy to defend Massawa, with the result that the Viceroy would almost certainly be shot down.

  At that time military operations in Abyssinia were held up by the rainy season; there was time for the machine to reach Addis Ababa and perform its mission before hostilities could commence again. The Emperor had a little more money to spend and Jack Norman was buying bombs and small arms for him, which were to be shipped in some way to Abyssinia, perhaps through French or British Somaliland. Fuel for the aircraft also had to be provided. Jack Norman visited Finland and bought the bombs and bomb racks there, and also bought a quantity of sub-machine guns to equip the primitive army of the Emperor. I think the Viceroy was to transport most of this stuff to Addis Ababa at some stage in the journey, and in order to evade the notice of the Italians the Viceroy was to fly from England to Abyssinia by night, refuelling once at some secret landing ground in the Mediterranean area.

  Accordingly Jack Norman rang me up one day and asked if the pilot might have some further night-flying practice on our demonstration Envoy. This was reasonable in view of the great hazards of the work that lay before him and I agreed, stipulating of course that Colman must be with him. Jack Norman then said, a little coyly, that the pilot had changed his name.

  “I bet he has,” I said. “What’s he changed it to? Weiss?”

  “Oh no,” he said hurriedly. “He’s nothing to do with Weiss.” He then explained that the pilot was now an Abyssinian subject and was provided with an Abyssinian passport, so that everything was all regular. In Abyssinia it is usual to put the family name first, so that he had changed his name from Ernst Schrader to Schrader Ernst.

  “That’s all right by me,” I said. “Schrader or Weiss or Ernst, you produce him here and he can do a couple of hours night-flying with Colman.”

  He came and did a couple of hours landing practice by night in the light of a flare path, and was whisked away immediately in a fast car in real cloak and dagger style. Next morning at ten o’clock a plain clothes officer of the C.I.D. was in my office, wanting to know all about an alien pilot who had been flying one of our aeroplanes over Portsmouth dockyard by night.

  There was nothing to do but to tell him the whole thing; by that time I had reason to believe that the Foreign Office knew all about the venture, and were friendly to it. The C.I.D. man went away and troubled us no more, and I was left wondering who had talked and whether the talk was getting to Italian ears. At that time there was great feeling in England against Italy and in favour of the Emperor. I do not think that any obstacle was put forward to impede Jack Norman’s activities by any official body.

  After so much effort it was a pity that this bold venture failed. It proved impossible to get the supplies of bombs and fuel to Abyssinia in time; hostilities broke out again in January and by the end of April the Emperor had been defeated; on May 2nd he went on board a British warship and was conveyed to England while the Italians occupied his country. The Viceroy never left our works. So far as I can remember, it was finished and paid for but resting in our works till it was time for it to fly to Abyssinia, for they did not want it to be seen on public aerodromes. I think it was left in our hands to be sold on behalf of the Emperor, who went in to exile in England and lived at Cheltenham.

  It was sold again quite soon. An air race was announced from London to Johannesburg in October 1936, and two well known British pilots, Max Findlay and Ken Waller, secured finance to take part in this race and came to us and bought the Viceroy. They made a strong team, for the machine was very fast and capable of carrying a crew of four including a radio operator. They were regarded as very likely winners of the race. In July 1936, however, the civil war in Spain broke out, and an agent of some continental nationality came to them and wanted to buy the Viceroy. They told him that the machine was not for sale.

  Between friends, he said, everything could be arranged.

  They said, they weren’t interested in his friendship. They weren’t selling.

  He said, that was no way to talk, between friends. He knew how much they had paid Airspeed for it. They had paid five thousand five hundred pounds.

  They said, that was nothing to do with him. They were going to fly the Viceroy in the Johannesburg race and win the first prize. The machine was not for sale. Now, would he please go away and stop wasting their time.

  He said that the first prize in the race was four thousand pounds. Four thousand and five thousand five hundred made nine thousand five hundred pounds, so they would not have to fly at all and would save the cost of the petrol. He would give them the cheque right away.

  They took it, cashed it and saw that it was good, and handed over the Viceroy, which left for France without delay and was never seen again. Ken Waller and Max Findlay got into a Moth and came down to us to order another machine if we could get it ready for them in time for the race. We managed to complete a Cheetah engined Envoy with long range tanks for them in time, which had a
very similar performance to the Viceroy, so that when they took off in the race they had already won the first prize.

  They met disaster, however, at Abercorn, a high altitude aerodrome in the middle of Africa. The strip was slightly uphill; they had the choice of taking off at maximum load either uphill against the wind or downhill down wind. Local residents advised them to wait an hour or two till the wind dropped, as it would, and take off down hill, but the exigencies of the race prevented that. They got off the ground but failed to clear the trees beyond the strip and crashed, Max Findlay and the radio operator being killed.

  All this stemmed from events that happened in the autumn months of the year 1934, immediately after the first public issue of shares. In the formation of the new company Hewitt had been asked to retire from the Board to make room for the new directors; this was a very great loss to the company, for Hewitt was not only an expert on commercial law but also had a wide experience of the growing pains of young companies and so had a full understanding of our difficulties. The two directors of Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson appointed to our Board were elderly men, experienced in running a great and powerful inherited shipbuilding concern successfully, with little previous experience of such an industry as ours. I think that they had entered into the manufacture of aircraft without a full realisation of the difficulties of an industry so different from their own; quantity production was unknown to them and in selling they had always operated under the umbrella of a great and famous name established a hundred years before by their forefathers. They had expected, I think, to see the construction of large all metal flying boats commence in their shipyards almost immediately, and when they found that many years of gradual development must pass before that result could be achieved they tended to lose interest. The third new director was a young and energetic man, Mr. George Wigham Richardson, not at that time a director of the shipbuilding company that bore his name but managing director of the friendly intermediary company in the City to which I have referred. Richardson at that time knew little about aviation but he was hardworking in the interests of the company and very capable of learning; he quickly became a great strength on the Board.

  Soon after the public issue the record shows that we were already considering the design of a new and commercial aeroplane, considerably larger than the Envoy, capable of carrying two pilots and twelve to fourteen passengers. With the swift development of airlines larger aircraft were demanded every year by the operators; however inconvenient to our business this might be it seemed necessary to follow the demand. Another factor in these difficult problems concerned the employment of the drawing office; unless we had a big and competent design staff we could hardly hope to secure Air Ministry orders for aircraft of our own design. To keep an adequate design staff we had to give them something to do, however inexpedient it might be for us to launch a new commercial aeroplane before we had recovered the development and design costs on the Courier and the Envoy. Accordingly we were considering the layout of a new machine, a high wing twin engined monoplane largely to be built in metal.

  In the autumn of 1934 the Douglas D.C.2 appeared in Europe. This was a very advanced American commercial aeroplane seating about eighteen passengers. It made a great name for itself with an outstanding flight in the race from England to Australia, and began to sell in quantities to major airlines all over Europe. The manufacturing and selling licences for this machine in Europe had been acquired by the Dutch firm colloquially known as Fokker, and Mr. Fokker had been very active in selling Douglases in many countries.

  I forget who first raised the proposal that we should take a manufacturing licence for Douglas and Fokker aircrart; I doubt if it came from either Tiltman or myself. There was much to be said for and against the proposal. It would provide us with the design and manufacturing licence for a highly successful aeroplane of the size that the market demanded, thus obviating lengthy and expensive development work upon a new design, for the days were rapidly passing when a new type aircraft could go straight to operations, as the Ferry had done. It would provide a short cut for us into all metal construction. To take these licences we should have to get in more capital from the public, and this in itself was good in view of the rapidly increasing capital requirements of the industry.

  On the other hand, it meant the closest technical association with Mr. Fokker, an alien, and his alien company. We would not be able to conceal from them the projects upon which we were working, and this might have a serious effect on the orders that we hoped to get from the Air Ministry. With rearmament already in sight, though proceeding at a languid pace, it would be disastrous if the association with Fokker should prevent orders for service aircraft being placed with us. Tiltman was greatly concerned about this aspect of the matter, and rightly so, for he conducted most of the negotiations with the Air Ministry, since the prospect of orders for service aircraft was inextricably involved with the qualities of the designs that we could offer.

  For myself, I was for the association with Fokker. It meant a further increase in the capital of the company without which we might well have to cut down the strength of the drawing office; if that became necessary it might be more detrimental to our chance of Air Ministry orders than the presence of Mr. Fokker. Given the money, I was convinced that our technical qualities would drive Airspeed through to success; without adequate capital we could do nothing. Though we might never build a Douglas or a Fokker aeroplane, and in fact we did not, I was still in favour of taking this manufacturing licence. Not least was the consideration in my mind that Fokker was a man that the shipbuilders would listen to and whose judgment they would respect, and he was a man who knew the aircraft industry, who had himself built up a small company from the beginning. I knew that he would find little to complain of in the conduct of the business and would understand our problems.

  In fact, it was the shipbuilders who controlled our company who really decided this matter. They were puzzled and concerned about the unpredictable and unprofitable business that they had got themselves mixed up in, which seemed to be running upon principles that they considered totally unsound. Within a very few months they had lost confidence in our management, and they welcomed as an adviser to the Board Mr. Fokker, who had made money and a great name in the aircraft industry. Perhaps they thought that Mr. Fokker could put the whole thing right and cause great flying boats to be laid down in their shipyards in a very short time. In any case, throughout the late autumn and winter of 1934 negotiations with Fokker went on mostly in the hands of Richardson and myself, in Amsterdam, in Newcastle, in London, and in St. Moritz.

  Fokker at that time, I think, was already a sick man; he was to die in 1939 at the early age of forty-nine. When we first met him he was forty-four but he was no longer fit to fly an aeroplane, nor had he done so for a number of years. I found him to be genial, shrewd, and helpful to us; he was critical of some parts of our organisation as was to be expected, but on the whole he approved what we had done. He was a difficult man to deal with, for he had no settled home but travelled constantly; his domestic life was irregular. Matrimonial conventionality is an asset in business in this way; if a man has a settled home you do at least know where you can get hold of him upon the telephone. With Fokker, even in Amsterdam you never knew where he was living; he travelled incessantly and frequently his very efficient legal adviser and secretary could not tell us where he was. He worked at all hours and in strange places; business was frequently commenced in the half light of an empty restaurant at three o’clock in the afternoon, when Fokker would order lunch for us from resentful waiters and himself consume nothing but a glass of milk. I do not think that such a man is ever himself very efficient, but Fokker was a good chooser of men and had gathered around himself a most efficient staff of Dutchmen and ex-Germans.

  In October 1934 we took an order from C. P. Ulm for a Lynx engined Envoy. Ulm was a very well known Australian pilot who had been an associate of Kingsford Smith on a number of long distance flights in a t
hree engined Fokker machine; he had parted from Kingsford Smith and was now engaged upon a venture to initiate an airline across the Pacific from San Francisco to Sydney. He intended to operate this service with Douglas D.C.3 machines, but initially he had secured a little capital with which to make a series of demonstration flights in one of our Envoys. I think his intention was to fly the Envoy several times along the route carrying a token load of mail, and then to float a public company for capital with which to buy the Douglases and start the airline. Already we were talking of Fokker and the Douglas licence, so this order was interesting to us in several ways.

  Ulm cabled his order from Australia. He wanted the longest possible range when carrying a crew of three, for the distance from San Francisco to Honolulu is about 2,200 nautical miles. I forget what tankage we were able to put into the Envoy but it probably gave him a range of about 3,000 nautical miles at about 170 m.p.h. To achieve this it was necessary to build a very large petrol tank in the fuselage filling the cabin section entirely, and this tank, of course, had to be located on the centre of gravity of the machine. The room that was left in the machine forward of this tank was certainly cramped for three men with wireless and navigating gear but it was possible; the navigator had to work upon a folding chart table and there was little elbow room.

  There was some urgency about the delivery of the machine; Ulm was an energetic man, usually in a hurry. The construction of the machine was well advanced when he arrived in our works. He at once declared against the seating arrangement that we had prepared; the men were too much on top of each other in his view, with the result that nobody would be able to do his work properly.