Roaring Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (9 page)

Dotting the field like little black crosses were dozens of the single-engine Bf 108 liaison planes and Bf 109 fighters, parked indiscriminately and surrounded by the usual impedimenta of fire extinguishers, refueling trucks, and toolboxes. As at all airfields, most of the aircraft were sitting idle, some with cowlings off, some on jacks, all awaiting maintenance. A few were being prepared for flight and others had maintenance crews scrambling over them. But for most of the people at the plant, all eyes were fastened on a single airplane, the third prototype of the new jet fighter, the Messerschmitt Me 262 V3. Carrying the factory markings PC + UC and powered by two equally brand-new Junkers jet engines, the aircraft had a
pugnacious, shark-like look as it sat on its tail wheel, its nose pointed in the air as if it were sniffing the breeze prior to its first flight.

All across Germany, but nowhere more than in the Luftwaffe and the aviation industry, tension was rife. The effects of the Royal Air Force’s unbelievable one-thousand-plane raid on Cologne on May 30/31 were still being felt. Göring had at first refused to believe the reports, telling Hitler that only seventy planes had bombed and that forty of these had been shot down. But Hitler had called Joseph Grohé, the Nazi
Gauleiter
of Cologne, and learned the stupefying truth—474 dead, 5,000 injured, 3,300 homes destroyed. Furious, Hitler had called Göring in for a private audience. The Führer’s conversation with Göring was not recorded, but an endless round of stories circulating had it that the
Reichsmarschall
emerged from Hitler’s office so shaken that he did not acknowledge any salutes, almost ran to his waiting Mercedes, and was whisked off to his country estate, Carin-hall, to recuperate. Some said there were tears in his eyes; others spoke mirthfully of the indignities his enormous behind must have suffered.

Feelings were running high at the Messerschmitt plant as well. Professor Dr. Wilhelm Emil Messerschmitt’s management style was unusual in authoritarian Germany. He was a businessman as well as an engineer and knew that performance, quality, production, and profit were all part of one equation. He believed in establishing a joint committee of engineers and manufacturing experts for each project, with less emphasis on who was the boss than on arriving at consensual agreements that made both production and profit sense. Well-known for his ability to delegate authority and responsibility, his project officers prided themselves on being able to make decisions on their own without consulting him. At the same time, he was detail oriented, still reviewing every final drawing personally, one at a time, just as he had done from the early
days, when they made small sport planes. From the workers’ points of view, Messerschmitt’s best characteristic, his saving grace, was his generosity. They knew if they did their work well, if their products were profitable, he would reward them with a sizable bonus, sometimes more than their annual salary. It was a practice that promoted loyalty and efficiency.

Messerschmitt was totally intoxicated with his jet fighter, even though he initially had delayed its introduction, preferring to concentrate on increasing the quantity production of his Bf 109 fighter. The man-hours required to build the 109 had steadily declined, and every order generated extraordinary profits. Yet he knew the 262 was the fighter of tomorrow, the airplane that would give the Luftwaffe ascendancy over its enemies—and Messerschmitt ascendancy within the Luftwaffe.

The forty-four-year-old entrepreneur had followed the 262 from the start, watching as it changed from having its engines buried in the non-swept wings to the current swept-wing version with the two jet engines mounted in pods beneath the wings.

Messerschmitt sat talking with his favorite test pilot, Flight Captain Fritz Wendel. Only three years before, Wendel had set the world’s speed record in a specially designed Messerschmitt Bf 209, flying the suicidal little airplane at 755 kilometers per hour. Older, more experienced pilots had refused to fly the Bf 209, on the basis that it was too dangerous with its high wing loading and unusual surface evaporation cooling system. Wendel himself had crashed in the second version of the 209 before setting the record.

Crashes were part of a test pilot’s life, and Wendel, a cheerful optimist, already had a close brush with death in the 262 prototype. In April 1941, before any jet engines were ready to be mounted, he had flown the aircraft with a 700-horsepower piston engine in its nose, driving a conventional propeller. The plane was drastically underpowered
but flew well enough. Then, this March 25, he had test flown it with the piston engine still operating and two BMW jet engines installed on the wings. Both jet engines had failed just after takeoff, turning from some thrust into pure drag in an instant. Only the pounding piston engine and Wendel’s skill kept the airplane in the air long enough for him to fly around the circuit at less than 70 meters altitude to make an emergency landing.

Now they were faced with a new problem. The piston engine had long been removed, replaced by the armament installation, and two of the new Junkers Jumo 004B engines were installed in the under-wing pods. Wendel had attempted to make the first all-jet-powered takeoff in the Me 262 the hour before. The jet had built up its acceleration, but at eight hundred meters down the runway Wendel cut the power and taxied back in to a perplexed Dr. Messerschmitt.

“Sir, there is just no elevator authority. The jet exhaust strikes the ground and blankets the elevator; it never takes effect. I cannot bring the nose down. I could have run it all the way to Poland and it wouldn’t have lifted off.”

“Well, we knew all along that we should have had a tricycle landing gear. Heinkel did that in his fighter; we should have accepted the delay and installed it.”

Wendel said nothing; both men knew that it had been Messerschmitt himself who had vetoed installation of the tricycle gear in the prototypes, fearing the progress of the Heinkel fighter and not wanting to delay his own program.

“I have a suggestion, sir, but it is risky. It could easily wreck the aircraft.”

Messerschmitt nodded impatiently. “Go ahead; tell me.”

“If I waited until I had about one hundred and eighty kilometers on the dial, and tapped the brakes, it would tip the nose over, and perhaps let the elevators bite. Once they take hold, the airplane will fly; I know it will.”

“If you tap the brakes too hard you’ll stand on your nose, and I’ll have lost a plane and a good test pilot.”

Wendel did not reply. After two minutes of intense concentration, weighing the risks of a crash against the risks of further delays, Messerschmitt said, “Go ahead. But go lightly on the brakes—just the barest tap.”

The ground crew, engineers from the plant, and photographers were all ready when Wendel taxied out for the second time, the hot exhaust from the jets burning a trail in the grass, blowing back stones and chunks of the tarmac. Finally he wheeled on the runway, slowly advanced the throttles, and the Me 262 raced ahead.

Crouched in the cockpit, Wendel again noted with pleasure the lack of torque and the relative quiet, compared to a piston engine plane. As the airspeed indicator passed 180, he tapped the brakes lightly. The nose tipped over, he felt the elevators take hold, and seconds later he was airborne, climbing swiftly, delighting in the sheer raw power the jets were delivering, oblivious to the roaring crowd below as the arrow-shaped fighter made a turn to the left.

He flew for twelve tension-filled minutes before dropping the 262 down smoothly on the runway. The cheering onlookers suddenly froze as flames exploded from both engines, trailing the airplane as it slowed down. The flames, apparently just pooled fuel that ignited when the aircraft assumed its normal tail-down position, went out as Wendel taxied in to accept Messerschmitt’s congratulations—and to think about his bonus.

October 15, 1942, Wright Field, Ohio

Vance Shannon was forty-eight years old today and felt eighty-four. He sat in the end seat of the third row of the tiny briefing room, afraid that the gnawing fear in his stomach might force him to leave during this highly classified
briefing, one that Harry was scheduled to give. To walk out on his son, that was unthinkable.

So were Vance’s thoughts on his son Tom. The last news had been from Mike Delaroy, his squadron commander, saying that Tom had been shot down just west of Guadalcanal and was missing. There was some hope that he might have survived—several of Delaroy’s pilots had made it back after being shot down. In the meantime Delaroy emphasized that Tom had been a first-rate fighter pilot, an ace with six confirmed victories, and that the Navy was still searching the area whenever it was possible to do so.

Now Vance regretted not telling the boys about Madeline. He had met her three years before, in Paris, where she was working for the American embassy. He was in France, negotiating the sale of Baltimore bombers for the Martin Company, and she had acted as a translator in the many endless meetings. She was French, young, Catholic, beautiful, and talented, fluent not only in English but also in Russian and German. It had taken all his courage to ask her out to dinner, where he found out that she was only twenty-eight, that she lived alone, and that she was determined to go to America.

Vance had never been a smooth talker with women. He had the engineer’s problem of being factual and direct. He felt awkward in courting a woman, and his compliments were usually delivered with painful obviousness. Yet it was different with Madeline. It was a cliché to say that they communicated without talking, but he soon saw that she focused her attention ferociously on him and seemed to anticipate what he would say. She was far too tactful to finish his sentences or to prompt him, but he felt she understood him as no woman, not even his beloved Margaret, had been able to do. It made decision making easy with Madeline, from which restaurant to choose to which dish to order.

Quite improbably they began an affair, which had now
reached the point where Vance felt that they must marry, despite the war and their difference in ages. Madeline had gone to the American embassy in London just before France fell and within weeks was assigned to work with the emerging Free French organization. Vance’s work with jet engines brought him to Great Britain many times, and each time they found that the previous separation only enhanced their feelings for each other.

After all his years in the business, Vance had many chits out with friends. Ordinarily he never asked for a favor, feeling it might compromise his business dealings, particularly when he was negotiating for the government. But he wanted Madeline in the United States, and he knew that her language abilities would be invaluable to Consolidated. At first he contemplated going directly to Reuben Fleet, Consolidated’s leader, with the request, then thought better of it and simply forwarded her curriculum vitae to the firm’s personnel office, with a letter asking that she be considered for a position. Consolidated had replied by return mail, and Madeline had accepted a job as a parts chaser. But within weeks she had been promoted to a job where her language skills counted, working in “The Rock,” the seven-story concrete-block building where Consolidated’s headquarters was located. Only the top floor had windows, and Madeline often came home complaining of headaches from the fluorescent lights that dominated the drawing rooms. As busy as she was, she went tonight school to learn Spanish, adding another language to her repertoire.

All of this—his romance, bringing a woman to the United States, almost asking for a favor from a client—would probably not be approved by his sons, who were only four years younger than their putative stepmother. It was a recipe for trouble, and Vance knew it—and didn’t care. Still, until they learned Tom’s fate, Vance was going to keep the affair to himself.

The news that Tom was missing had hit Harry hard,
for his concern for his brother’s welfare was heightened by the fact that he himself had seen no combat. After a very brief tour in England as a liaison officer with the Eagle Squadron, Harry had been pulled off to lead a mission to the Soviet Union to demonstrate how to use and maintain the Curtiss P-40s supplied by the Lend-Lease program. Then, against his violent protests, he was called back to Wright Field to head the fighter division of the Advanced Projects Branch, working directly under the legendary Ben Kelsey.

Two officers, a brigadier general and a colonel, smiled pleasantly as they eased past Vance, carefully sitting down four seats away to keep their conversation private. They apparently knew who he was, although he didn’t recognize them, both very young, neither man much over thirty. Two years ago, Vance knew every senior officer in the Air Corps. Now he was elated if he found a familiar face.

The room was rapidly filling up, and the air was already going bad with cigarette smoke. The building had once housed the Air Corps Museum. He recalled the big, airy structure and calculated that he sat about where the big Fokker C-2 transport the
Bird of Paradise,
the first plane to fly from the West Coast to Hawaii, had been placed. It was gone now, burned in a huge bonfire that destroyed the relics of twenty years, and the building was now cut up into a rabbit warren of tiny offices and conference rooms. Vance closed his eyes, said another prayer for Tom, then returned to searching the smoke-filled room for people he knew. A few old friends came over and spoke to him, and he nodded to others as they filed in to their seats. It was evident that this was a select group, engineers in the main but also the commanders of Wright Field’s aircraft and engine divisions.

Harry had told Vance at breakfast what the briefing was to be—a brief survey of the war, followed by a review of what was known of jet engine development around the
world. The purpose was to evaluate the situation, determine how critically important a jet fighter was, and decide on how to remedy the disappointing performance of the Bell XP-59. America’s first jet had flown on October 1, demonstrating a very modest performance that fell short of that of the latest piston engine fighters. General Arnold was bitterly disappointed, and although he blamed himself for assigning the task to Bell, in typical fashion he ladled his anger out on everyone in the program, demanding a quick fix to match the bad news coming in from Germany.