Authors: Nevil Shute
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 three 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.
There was a large, empty space in the rear fuselage of the machine, behind the great petrol tank. Ulm decided to transfer the navigator from the front to the rear of the tank and to put the wireless with him, as he was also to be the wireless operator In that position we were able to
provide a big chart table with proper facilities for navigation, while there was now ample room for Ulm and the pilot ahead of the tank. We provided a speaking tube past the tank from Ulm to his navigator. This new arrangement was obviously better in all ways except one. Ulm was the captain of the aircraft, and he could not now see the charts or calculations for himself, or touch the wireless. However, he was the purchaser and that was the arrangement that he wanted.
His crew joined him to take delivery of the machine. Both were, of course, Australians and we were surprised to hear that the navigator had little previous experience of navigating in the air; he was a ship’s officer. Perhaps at that time it was not easy to find experienced air navigators in Australia, for that was a new technique and Australia is a small country. However, that was nothing to do with us. Ulm test flew his aeroplane and was satisfied with it. It was then dismantled to be shipped across the Atlantic. It was erected in the United States and flown across the continent to Oakland airport near San Francisco, from which the Pacific flight was to commence.
They took off from Oakland late in the evening, timing their departure so that they would arrive at Honolulu an hour after dawn. The purpose of this was that if they failed to find the islands they would have all the hours of daylight in which to look for them, until their fuel ran out.
And that is what happened. They failed to find the islands, and were heard calling Honolulu on their wireless for five hours after they should have landed. Radio was less developed in those days, and though Honolulu made every effort to help them their signals were too weak through distance for the airport to get a bearing on them; there was no means of telling them which way to fly for a safe landing. All through the forenoon the distressing calls went on as Ulm made visual searches for the islands in
every direction, till at last the final message came that fuel was exhausted and they were going down into the sea. No trace of men or the machine was ever found.
Our own analysis of this disaster was based on the position of the navigator. Ulm was the experienced man in air navigation over the ocean, but Ulm could not himself examine either charts or radio log in the air. It seemed to us that the probable course of events was that the machine had had a strong tail wind during the night which the navigator had not appreciated or allowed for, and had over-flown Honolulu before dawn and had gone on to the west of the islands. When they started looking for the islands they were probably far beyond them, and going further away each minute. Their own radio direction finder might have given them a clue during the hours of darkness, and it seems possible that at some stage they got on to a reciprocal bearing without realising what had happened. In short, there was clearly a mistake in navigation which Ulm might well have found if he could have taken control, but with the seating arrangements as they were this was impossible. When the navigator got bushed Ulm could not get at him to steady him or to take over. So they died.
IN JANUARY 1935 Airspeed Ltd signed an agreement with Fokker and his company by which we took the manufacturing licence for the Douglas D.C.2 and a number of Fokker types; Mr. Fokker was to be consultant to the company for seven years. In connection with this we made another public issue of shares for about another £100,000. This issue was oversubscribed, though not so much as the first one; the City were justifiably wary of a company that came back for more capital before showing profits made upon the first lot.
In Newcastle Mr. Fokker failed to pull the rabbit out of the hat for the shipbuilders, as we had failed before. There would at that time have been no particular technical difficulty in building great flying boats in their shipyards, though more suitable locations for building flying boats could be imagined. The trouble was to find anybody to consider placing an order for boats built in such circumstances; it took a little time for the shipbuilders to appreciate that their great name earned in shipping did not automatically induce Imperial Airways to place orders for flying boats with them. Another difficulty concerned money; conversion of the shipyards to the new type of manufacture would absorb a vast amount of capital which nobody seemed very willing to produce. The negotiations to build flying boats upon the Tyne dragged on for a year or so, and finally expired as increasing Admiralty orders for ships under the rearmament programme made it clear
that every shipyard would be fully occupied in its original function.
In the spring of 1935 I spent about three weeks in Athens. The Greek Government wanted to buy fighter aircraft, and the Fokker D.17 suited them well; this was a single-seater rather like a Hawker Fury, but built with wooden wings. The Greeks had to place their aircraft orders in Great Britain, however, for currency reasons, and the proposal was that Airspeed should build these Fokker fighters for Greece. It was a reasonable proposal and might have come off, but it would have taken a better man than I to close the deal. I spent three weeks in Athens with a representative of the Fokker company who was well accustomed to methods of business in the Balkan states; those who want to find out what those methods were may read my novel
Ruined City
. In the end, I don’t think the Greeks ordered anything at all. After three weeks I came to the conclusion that I was wasting my time, and came home.
At home, however, orders for Envoys were beginning to come in from reputable concerns who had real money with which to pay for their machines. We sold the manufacturing licence for the Envoy to Mitsubishi, the airline of Japan, with an order for two machines; three months later they came back and ordered four more Envoys making six machines in all. The Japanese were curious little men very active with Leica cameras; when we offered them entertainment at the weekend they usually chose to go and see the Victory, Admiral Nelson’s old flagship laid up in the middle of Portsmouth dockyard. One of them got drunk one night, and told us a lot about his hatred for Britain and the coming war, which we passed on to the proper quarter.
Two Envoys followed for the Czechoslovak State Air Line and three for North Eastern Airways, an internal airline
operating through Britain in which Lord Grimthorpe had an interest. A number of hire purchase orders for less substantial companies were in hand also, some of which came back to us and ultimately found their way to Spain. With these orders in hand and with the increased production that they indicated the company was gradually getting on to a firm basis, though it was still working at a loss.
A very unpleasant part of the duties of a managing director came upon me at this time, due to the growth of the company. In some cases the earliest members of the staff, sometimes considerable shareholders, were proving inadequate in the larger job. In the York days one of the earliest supporters of the company had been appointed Secretary, though he had no qualifications in accountancy. This was all right while the total of the employees did not exceed fifty; he put up a brave show as the numbers rose, but even before we became a public company he had to be replaced by a man with qualifications and put on other, less important work. In turn, in 1937 this second Secretary was to prove incapable of handling the accountancy of what was by that time a great company, and had to be replaced by yet another, higher grade of man.
In the summer of 1935 this process had to touch Tom Laing, our first and best employee and a supporter of the company to the limit of his finances. Tom Laing simply did not know what went on in a works making aeroplanes on the production line; he was a first-class man in the shop, but the technical knowledge required by a works manager employing four hundred men just wasn’t there. Tom was the first to admit it and to recommend that we look for someone out of one of the big companies, under whom he would serve loyally as an assistant. We did this and got a first-class man from Avro. Tom Laing worked under him and they became great friends; when in the war a great shadow factory for Airspeed was put up by the Air
Ministry at Christchurch Tom Laing became works manager of that and remained so till his death. But it was not always so easy.
I think this is the most miserable part of being the managing director of a growing company. One by one I had to replace our earliest supporters as the job grew too big for them, as the company grew to a size when it could afford properly qualified staff, till in the end the same cup came to me and I was myself replaced. It is a process which is inevitable in a growing business and which takes much of the fun out of it, so that after a few years of sacking one’s old friends one grows to feel that success may not be such a good thing after all, that possibly there may be other, less sorry ways of earning a living in this world. When success ultimately came to Airspeed, I was ready to leave the company, having come to the conclusion that I didn’t much like my job.