Authors: Walter J. Boyne
The bad side was that Bandy flatly refused to engage in any more
races like the Pineapple Derby, nor would he permit aircraft to be
sold for risky long-distance flights. Lockheed and Bellanca had no
such compunctions, and as a result, they were sewing up the
market. Wiley Post's backers had wanted to buy a Rocket, but they
knew Bandy wouldn't sell it because he thought the round-the-world flight they proposed was too risky, so they had turned to Lockheed, and Post had made history with the Vega.
And only in the last two years, when things had grown desperate
at Roget Aircraft, with no orders, no money, and few prospects, had
Bandy been willing to fly in military competitions. Even so, the
only reason he'd made the last-ditch swing through South America
was that it was Roget Aircraft's only chance to survive. Flying against competent pilots—many of them old friends—in well-engineered aircraft didn't bother him as much, because he felt the risks were known by the people involved.
The rationale was inconsistent with his personal behavior. Band
field was taking greater and greater risks, and doing it with increas
ing frequency. He wouldn't let anyone else do any of the dangerous tests, the nine-G dives, the spin tests, the things that test pilots like
Bill McAvoy, Jimmy Collins, and others charged thousands of dollars to do. Sometimes, Hadley thought, Bandy wanted to die, to force an airplane beyond its limits and his, to be able to rejoin Millie, or to be beyond thinking about her.
The South American trip hadn't helped business much. They'd
lost to Curtiss in Chile and to Boeing in Bolivia, and were bucking Hafner in Peru. It was their last shot; if they didn't win there, Roget
Aircraft would probably close its doors.
Caldwell was looking at him, wondering where Roget's mind was. When Roget resumed he said, "Anyway, I got to know her in the last year. I think the only thing that keeps her and Bruno together is the way he lets her run the business and do the demonstration flying."
Caldwell said, "Yeah, I hear that if you can get her into the club
after a show and slip a few bourbons and branch waters into her, she
lets her hair down about Hafner. He's a strange bird. Never stopped
being a German ace, if you know what I mean."
Hadley nodded. "The Hafners and Grover Loening are the only people I know who made money in the stock-market crash. They sold out in August 1929, then bought back gradually after the market had gone to pot."
They were quiet, smiling comfortably at each other, knowing that
at last it was time to get down to cases. Hadley spoke. "How many A-11s has the Air Corps bought now?"
"Forty-six, and maybe we'll buy another twelve in the next year's
appropriation, for attrition."
Roget pursed his lips and whistled, thinking what even twelve, let
alone fifty-eight, airplanes would have meant to Roget Aircraft. He
thought about teaching Clarice to fly, had an image of her with an unbuttoned blouse, and laughed to himself. She'd scare more people off than she'd attract, God bless, her.
"The A-11 was designed by Armand Bineau. The smartest thing
Charlotte's done was to hire Bineau as chief engineer."
"You know, I always thought he was a Frenchman! But he was
one of the raft of Russkies that Sikorsky brought over after the
revolution."
Caldwell nodded. "French name, of course, but he's a Russian through and through, a courtly old bastard, always dressed up as if he were expecting the Czar to drop in for tea."
"Yeah, I've heard Charlotte say that's one reason he gets along with Hafner, who's a bit of a snob. He got used to bumping around with royalty when he was an ace during the war."
A demonic siren sounded outside, a rising oh-my-God shriek that made the end of the world seem an anticlimax. Both men ran to the
window. They could see a fire truck and an ambulance racing toward a towering column of smoke from the fire area where old cars and airplanes were kept for the firemen to practice on.
"I wish they wouldn't blow that goddam thing; it always makes me
think somebody's gone in, even when I know it's just a drill,"
Caldwell said. "Anyway, Bineau could go anywhere in the industry,
or he could set up his own factory, so Hafner treats him with kid
gloves."
They were avoiding the issue. With the wing rejected, there was
no reason for Roget to stay at Wright Field. He could never stagnate
in the bureaucracy, designing by committee. Caldwell knew he would leave, and decided to face the issue squarely.
"What are you going to do, Hadley? You own the rights to the wing. The Army turned it down, so it's yours to use. That was the deal."
"Charlotte Hafner made an offer for it when they rejected it last
year. She'll give me fifty thousand dollars for the design rights, and
six grand a year for my services. Not bad for a shade-tree mechanic."
"Some mechanic. You going to take it?"
"Not if Bandy sells a few airplanes. If he doesn't, then I'll have to.
Simple as that."
He and Bandy had only a handshake agreement, more than
satisfactory to both men. Bandfield had taken over the factory—it
wasn't much more than a converted garage—and Roget got full
rights to the wing design. Now they would just mix everything back
up again. Bandfield always knew Roget would be coming back—he
had just never expected him to be bringing fifty grand with him.
"What's he doing now?"
"He's down in South America, trying to sell a few Rapiers."
Roget knew what a bitter-thin hope this was, more of the self-
delusion that had nursed an industry since the war. After the Armistice, everyone expected airplanes to flood the skies the way Ford had flooded the countryside with Model Ts. But the demand, civil or military, had never materialized. Lindbergh's flight had touched off an aberrational boom of optimism that had launched
dozens of companies like Roget's. Most were already gone, victims
of poor sales and undercapitalization, the promising prototypes
crashed or scrapped. And even many of the well-financed, well-
managed larger firms had gone under. Dayton-Wright, besides having the services of Orville Wright himself, had built four thousand airplanes during the war—and probably less than a hundred afterward before it folded.
But a brave front was the industry keynote. "Everything's shut
down while Bandy's in South America. We've got a racer about half finished, and a little trainer, just something to knock around in. We
call it the Kitten."
There was a wistful pause. "There might be some money in one or the other."
Caldwell reflected on his own situation. An Army major's pay was not much compared to that of an engineer working for a prosperous aircraft company. With the budget cuts, the promotion picture had just about dried up—demotions were in fact more of a general promise, despite the fact that ranks had been stagnant for
years. But at least in the Air Corps the work and the pay were a lot
steadier, for few of the companies made money consistently.
His real inducement was that he could be of genuine service at Wright Field, trying to make sure that the small amounts of money available went to the best companies for the best airplanes. It was nerve-racking, though; business was so bad that any company that
lost a contract went right to its Congressman. Caldwell spent a good
20 percent of his time justifying his decisions on an engineering
basis, when all any Congressman wanted to talk was home-district
economics. In a way, the Depression made it easier—people were
out of work everywhere, so they couldn't say he was discriminating
against any one district.
"Being here will help you, Hadley. There's a lot of precedent. Most of the big names in the industry got started here—Donald Douglas, Reuben Fleet, Virginius Clark; Don Berlin. Next time I see you, you'll be flying in something you want to sell me and I'll probably buy it."
Roget's tone was rueful. "Sometimes I think that's the only way to
do it—to get on the inside. Did I get on the inside?"
Caldwell laughed. "Yeah, you're on the inside, Hadley, with your crummy jokes and your sour puss! Sometimes we get complaints about 'insiders,' but the fact is, unless you've spent some time here, it's hard to know what the Air Corps needs."
He picked up a straightedge and balanced it on a fingertip, trying
to frame the words so that they wouldn't be defensive. "I've never
seen anybody take any kickbacks, or anything like that. The con
tracting system is pretty straight."
"Well, I think we'll stick to the civilian market—what there is of it—for a while, anyway. We sure as hell haven't made any money with the military."
"No money on the civil side, Hadley, you know that. How many
companies have gone in and out of business in the last five years? A
hundred? Two hundred? Some of them made some pretty good airplanes, too."
He was echoing Hadley's own sentiments.
Caldwell got excited, his arms swinging, words rushing. "Why not try a military trainer? You could come up with something modern, a low-wing monoplane maybe."
Suddenly embarrassed, as if he'd said too much, the major
straightened his tie, picking at the yellow sheen of egg yolk from
yesterday's breakfast.
"Maybe, but I want to talk to Bandy first."
"Well, I feel I've failed you and the Army, Hadley. There should
have been some way for me to sell your idea, and keep you working
here." He hesitated and then said, "You aren't going to peddle it abroad, are you?"
There was real concern in his voice. U.S. airpower was falling
behind Europe's, particularly France's and Italy's. Even Germany
was secretly rearming, building "civil" airplanes that could easily be
converted to wartime use.
"Nah, I couldn't do that. And it's not your fault, Henry. The
Army's still spending more on fodder for cavalry horses than it is on airplanes. You are working wonders with the money you get, given
the crazy procurement system. Someday it will be appreciated."
They chatted for a while, and Caldwell left, now obviously depressed.
Most of the other desks in the spartan bay of offices were new, their varnished oak finish gleaming bright yellow under the suspended incandescent lights. Always different, Hadley had scrounged a battered rolltop from the supply office. He rustled
through the pigeonholes, looking for letters he had to answer before he went back to California. He didn't have much of a filing system, but he knew where everything was. At the bottom of the stack was
the year-old unanswered letter from Charlotte, God bless her. Next
to it was one from Bandy telling about his troubles trying to sell the
Rapier in South America. The damn airplane would hardly get off the ground at La Paz—too little wing area, too much weight. He'd write them both, to see if Charlotte was still interested, and to tell Bandy to come back and get started on a new project.
*
Ancon, Peru/March 14, 1932
The dingy beige stucco walls swallowed the hundred-degree tem
perature in order to feed it back slowly later. There was no breeze
from the beach, and the corrosive March heat ladled broad-brush
strokes of sweat under the arms and down the backs of the brown
Peruvian uniforms.
"Don't drink that, Bandy—Hafner's pouring his drinks out the
window, I saw him." The bad water, poor food, and endless wenching of the trip had thinned "Charles Howard's" lanky frame out even
further. Bandfield had finally gained some understanding on this South American tour of Howard Hughes's insistence on going
incognito. If he had gone under his own name, he would have been met by newspaper men and women trying to get into films at every
stop. As Charles Howard, an unknown mechanic, Hughes got to pursue the local belles at every stop. With his dark good looks and the tremendous sense of humor his anonymity fostered, he cut a
swath with everyone from serving girls to officers' wives, enjoying a
freedom that was becoming increasingly impossible for him in the States.
Bandfield was always pleased and surprised at the way Hughes
threw himself into his role; he was Charles Howard, day and night, and no matter what had to be done, from carrying bags to repairing
the airplane, he would do it. They had had a bit of trouble with the
names on the way down; Hughes, preoccupied with the scenery and
the women, wasn't responding when Bandfield called him Charles.
They had arrived at a compromise on the name business—
Bandfield would address him as Howard, as if he were using his last
name only. The passport and the introductions were always in the
name Charles Howard, but they both felt comfortable with the mild
subterfuge.