Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (7 page)

Beall nodded approvingly. “That’s the way we have to look at it. Convair is way ahead of us on this one. They’ve been spending development money on an ICBM for years, since 1946. Lots of problems with it, but they are too far ahead of us to compete for the first generation of ICBMs—but there will always be new ones coming down the pike.”

The conversation became general, and it was soon apparent that Schairer had invited the engineers carefully for their specialties.

Finally, he said, “Well, gentlemen, it looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us. We’ve got a lot of experience already with the Bomarc, thanks to Bob Jewett here.”

The Bomarc was a Mach 3.0 surface-to-air missile intended to defend against hostile aircraft. Launched with a rocket booster, it used ramjets for power and had a sophisticated radar homing system. Only three days before, it had completed its first really successful test, but the Air Force was going to buy them in quantity, and it looked as if Canada would, too.

Schairer went on, “We can translate that experience into an organization to explore the production of ICBMs, satellites, and maybe more. Let’s meet here again, a week from today, and let me have your thoughts on how to approach it. But before you go, let’s just toss some ideas out on the table; maybe it will stimulate our thinking.”

Wells started it off, “I’ve always thought Convair was barking up the wrong tree, using liquid propellants for an ICBM. You really cannot waste the time it takes to fuel and erect a rocket using liquid fuels, and they are much too dangerous. We need to think about a solid rocket, one you can store in the ground for years, then fire with a push of the button.”

Jack Steiner, tall, dark haired, and utterly intense, was next. “Well, you can talk about satellites all you want, but what the public will demand is something more Buck Rogers, space planes, rocket ships, and the like. If you can put a satellite in orbit, you could put a man-carrying aircraft in orbit, too, and just let it glide back down when you are ready.”

Schairer raised his hands. “That’s enough for now—Ed and Jack just outlined twenty-five years of work. I’d like everyone to come back next week, same time, same place, prepared to discuss these two ideas, and in the meantime send me a memo on any other ideas you have. And as far as the press goes, the official word is that Boeing congratulates the scientists in the USSR for their achievement, and looks forward to the forthcoming competition in space.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

November 4, 1957

Palos Verdes, California

T
he three Shannons were glued to the television set, watching the grainy photographs of Laika, the dog being carried in orbit by
Sputnik II
. Tom reached down and scratched the head of Poppy, the lovable golden retriever that never left his side when he was home.

“We’d never let them do that to you, Poppy.”

The atmosphere was dour from the weather outside and the news of another Soviet triumph inside. This was the first time the three of them had met together for more than two months. Vance had been flying back and forth between Seattle and Burbank, Harry had been spending most of his time at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and Tom’s time had been divided between Burbank and the Lockheed plant in Marietta, Georgia, where production of the Lockheed C-130 transport was booming.

“How do these guys do it, Dad? They can’t feed their people, they can’t make a decent car, but they’ve completely outstripped us in space.”

“Well, they are smart, no doubt about that, and they are tough; look how they polished off the Germans. But the main thing is that they are focused. They’ve got enough government funding guaranteed over long periods of time. We’ll get there, but it better be soon,’cause they are making laughingstocks of us.”

Harry didn’t comment for a while, then asked, “Where is Bob Rodriquez?”

“Bob’s off back east, in Cambridge, Mass., working with Ed Land on some camera projects. Land is the guy who invented the Polaroid process, you know, and now he is creating some incredible cameras for reconnaissance work.”

The answer satisfied Tom, not so much because he was interested in Rodriquez’s work as because he was content to have him out of the immediate area. Despite all of his father’s explanations, Tom had never accepted the agreement and continued to regard Rodriquez as an outsider. Tom was polite to him and worked well enough with him, but if Bob ever left to take another job, he would be pleased.

Vance Shannon walked over and turned the television set off. “I’ve seen enough about that poor dog and the blasted
Sputnik II.
Harry, I want you to tell me again exactly what Kelly said to you about designing the Learjet.”

Harry recounted the story, emphasizing the need to look at small fighters as a possible platform to launch the new jet.

“It makes sense. The manufacturer would have done a lot of the wind tunnel work, the stress analysis, and so on. It would be overbuilt, to take more g’s than an executive jet would require, but if it’s light enough, that wouldn’t be much of a problem, might even be a plus. Did he mention any types specifically?”

“Yes, he mentioned that the Swiss were working on a fighter of their own, and of course, there are Saab and Dassault to consider.”

Harry regretted it the instant he said “Dassault,” which was one of the firms that had been given information Madeline had stolen from Vance. It didn’t bother him, as he laughed and said, “Well, maybe we have a contact there—Madeline might still be working for them.”

He turned to Tom and asked, “How is your project in Marietta coming?”

Tom had been hired to dispose of the surplus tools and fixtures that Lockheed had used when it was building the Boeing B-47 under license. It was a pretty boring job, but it was cheaper for Lockheed to have him handle it than to devote someone from their own workforce, shorthanded now as C-130 and JetStar production began to increase.

“It’s in pretty good shape. I’ll be winding it up in a couple of weeks.”

“OK, you’ve been hitting it pretty hard. Why don’t you take Nancy and V.R. and make a little tour through Europe—hit some of the foreign plants making smaller fighter jets or trainers. There’s Folland, in England, and you mentioned Saab and Dassault, and there’s Fiat in Italy. Probably some more, if you get out your
Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft
and see what’s cooking. We can set up an itinerary; we know people in most of the plants, or if not, we know people who know people. You won’t tell them what you are doing, let them think you are looking in order to recommend a trainer for some foreign government or something.”

“I don’t know, Dad. Harry’s been working hard, too; this doesn’t seem fair.”

“Go for it, Tom—Nancy deserves it. Anna and I are planning a trip to Hawaii later in the year, so don’t feel bad.”

Vance looked on his sons with pride. They were finally growing up, becoming more friends and less rivals. It was about time, but he wished he could tell if it was maturity or the Rodriquez factor that made it so.

CHAPTER NINE

December 18, 1957

Venice, California

A
t sixty, Fritz Obermyer did not get as excited as he did in his youth, but today was different, with an old friend long thought to be dead suddenly calling him out of the blue. The hair had stood up on the back of his neck as he heard the familiar guttural voice of Gerd Müller, his comrade in the trenches of World War I, his friend and bodyguard during the interwar years, and his close companion until the very last day of World War II.

Müller, sounding conspiratorial as usual, had talked only for a few minutes, long enough to arrange to meet that night but not nearly long enough to explain what had happened to him in the twelve years since they had been split up on a Berlin street, trying to avoid capture by the Russians.

Obermyer spent the rest of the day in his apartment. There were absolutely no similarities, but Obermyer always felt as at home in Venice, California, as he had at his favorite hotel, the Bayerischer Hof, in Friedrichschafen. The air, scenery, people, and food were all vastly different, but both gave him the same strange dual sense of anonymity and belonging. He had leased a small second-floor apartment, two blocks from the beach and almost ten miles from his office in his booming Volkswagen dealership. There the pressure was great, even though he had good people working for him. He was just too set in his ways to delegate much decision-making power. He let his best used-car salesmen decide on the value of the trade-ins, but other than that, he approved every deal that was made. He even watched the receipts from the maintenance department. That was one little secret Volkswagen kept from the public. The purchase price and operating costs were relatively low, but maintenance costs were higher than American customers were used to and generated a good percentage of his total profits.

Despite his urge to see Müller, Obermyer was glad to have time to clean up some paperwork relating to his new business colleagues in San Diego. Six months before, he had gone down for the grand opening of Capestro Motors. Capestro and Shannon had done it correctly, buying their land far out on El Cajon Boulevard and putting in more money than the parent firm required to make sure they had a top location, plenty of space, easy access from downtown, and a huge maintenance bay, half again as large as prescribed by Volkswagen.

It was the first pure Volkswagen dealership in the area. A few VWs had been sold by other dealers, whose lines usually included Hillman and Jaguar. But Shannon and Capestro had done things right again by announcing they were going to specialize, and they had already captured most of the repair business for VWs already in the area.

In their early negotiations, Obermyer had not told them about the profits to be made from the higher maintenance costs—it would have alarmed them, as they were both painfully honest men. Now they were finding out for themselves and had to be pleased by the development.

The bigger maintenance bay was probably Shannon’s influence,
he thought.
He has had a lot of operational experience with aircraft, and it carries over to cars. And he probably learned a lot from Mademoiselle Behar.

Obermyer flipped through the thick dossier in front of him. In it virtually every event in Vance Shannon’s life was recorded, from being an ace in World War I, through test-flying in the years between the wars, to the great success his firm enjoyed during World War II and afterward. It covered details of his family life, the death of his first wife, Margaret, his long affair with Madeline Behar, and his current apparently happy marriage to the former Jill Abernathy.

What impressed Obermyer most was Shannon’s list of gold-plated clients. Obermyer knew about Lockheed, Convair, and Boeing, of course, but Shannon was also in demand from Douglas, Martin, McDonnell, Pratt & Whitney, General Electric, and a host of others. Remarkable! It was a good thing he had two sons to help him.

Obermyer paused for a moment to reflect on his own state. He would have liked to have had a family, to have sons of his own, but his life had always been too perilous, too uncertain. Instead he had contented himself with strictly professional relations with expensive women who were never in short supply. There were some advantages to this—he was his own man, could make his own decisions—but nonetheless, in reading Shannon’s folder he felt a pang of envy.

The dossier even contained copies of recent flight physicals that showed that despite his sixty-three years, Vance was still in good physical condition. Obermyer noted that Vance was still flying his own airplane, a war-surplus Beech C-45. Although not a pilot himself, Obermyer had been around aviation long enough to know that the C-45 was a demanding aircraft and that Shannon must therefore be quite proficient.

There was a similar, but much thinner, dossier on Lou Capestro. His health was not as good as Shannon’s—he was overweight and there was a history of heart trouble. Obermyer made an entry in the little logbook that he always carried, writing: “Insist that they get big insurance policies with the firm beneficiary.”

Financially, Capestro was not quite as well off as Shannon was—his sons were apparently a bit of a drain on his resources—but was very comfortable, easily able to afford the investment in the car dealership, and more than able to sustain it during the early months when the earnings would still be low.

The two men had put in seventy-five thousand dollars, forty thousand dollars from Capestro and the rest from Shannon. Obermyer knew from experience that they would need to invest another one hundred thousand dollars each over the next year. After that the business should become increasingly profitable—if the sales projections held up. He was sure that they would. Then the two might be ripe to take on a Porsche dealership, just as he was going to do.

The ease of obtaining personal information in the United States never ceased to amaze Obermyer, who had once prospered by providing such data. Under the Nazis, it was impossible to have access to such information unless one was, as he had been, an operative of the state. Here in California, there was a private investigator on virtually every corner and for a minimum investment one could, quite discreetly, obtain all the information needed on anyone.

The same was true of the aviation industry. Publications like
Aviation Week
generated an incredible amount of detailed information every week. If the articles were analyzed and one did some snooping around, one could easily guess what might be going on in projects that were still veiled in secrecy.

Unable to concentrate, Obermyer returned to thinking about this morning’s phone call from Gerd Müller. He had arranged to meet him that night in the only German restaurant he knew of in Los Angeles, the Hofbrau Haus.

After Gerd had disappeared, Obermyer had tried to reach him but failed. There were rumors that Gerd had been killed by Russian soldiers and it was not improbable, so Obermyer had presumed him dead, along with so many others. In those days, death was not only more likely for people on the Eastern Front; it was also preferable. The separation had been quite a blow, as the two men had saved each other’s lives more than once in the First World War and had fought together in the Roehlk Friekorps afterward. After Hitler had taken over in 1933, both men had been prominent in local Nazi politics, with Gerd serving as a bodyguard to Obermyer. In return, Obermyer obtained a good-paying job for Gerd at the Heinkel company and shared with him some of the income he made from providing insider information to aviation firms.