Authors: Walter J. Boyne
"For some reason, Bruno is really holding me back. I don't know
whether he doesn't have confidence in me, or if he thinks it is too
soon after Stephan's death, or what. But all he lets me do is standard
production or maintenance test flights."
Bandfield nodded. "Maybe he just doesn't want anything to happen to you."
"Maybe, although that is awfully altruistic for Bruno. Anyway, will you help me?"
"Anything you want. Just ask."
"I want to have someone build me a cross-country racer, and I want to start shooting for the absolute records. Not the women's record, but the record."
Bandfield glanced around. Was he kidding himself, or was Char
lotte deliberately staying away so they could have some time together? It didn't matter; they were alone.
"What did you have in mind?"
"Well, I can't afford to design something from the ground up. But I thought maybe you could figure out a way to soup up some stock
airplane, a Northrop Gamma, maybe a Lockheed Air Express."
"You're talking thirty or forty grand, just doing that."
"Rats. I was hoping to keep it down to about twenty thousand. I
finally inherited a little money from my father's—my real father's—
family."
"And you want it kept secret, no doubt."
"Has to be. Charlotte and Bruno aren't getting along any too well,
and something like this could really be trouble."
"Well, I'll have to think about it. Do you ever get to the Coast?"
"Not often, but I'll make a point of it."
Charlotte came back, and the two women excused themselves.
Bandy had mixed emotions on the way things had gone. God knew
that Roget Aircraft could use the extra money, and it could be an interesting project. On the other hand he sensed that his real motivation was simply to be with Patty, and he wasn't sure that it was the time for that yet. It had taken him years to get over the
tragedy of Millie's death. Could he expect Patty to forget Stephan so
soon? Or was he being stupid, imagining that she had any but a professional interest in him? Still, she had squeezed his arm. Perhaps if they worked together on a racer, they could find out more about each other, and see if there was any future for them.
His sober assessment didn't inhibit some heady fantasies about
Patty, and these helped Bandfield endure the disappointment of the
anticlimactic flight tests of the two competing bombers. Even before
the company pilots had finished their demonstration routines, it was
clear that the Hafner Skyshark's cleaner fuselage design and one
hundred extra horsepower made it superior on every point—speed,
range, and bomb load—to the Roget entry. The actual judging
would be based on a complicated table that awarded points for
performance, ease of maintenance, price, and other factors. But even the normally optimistic Hadley Roget knew that it was no contest.
When the flight activities were concluded, everything sank in a welter of paperwork. The one area that the Roget airplane excelled in was maintenance. The two years Hadley had spent at Wright Field were apparent in the way he'd planned to make changing the
engines and wheels fast and easy. But both men knew it was not
enough, and they knew Hafner would be quick to adopt similar methods.
They sat in the little saloon next to the Van Cleve, morosely
drinking whiskey with beer chasers, as down as they had ever been.
"You know, Bandy, if that fucking Hafner came in a revolving door after you, he'd go out first. He is some slick customer."
"Yeah. And it's my fault. I insisted on using my design. Jesus,
Hadley, I guess this is it. Even if they buy the prototype, we're about
out of business. I hate to go back and tell the guys they're all out of
work."
"We have no choice, Bandy. I don't see how we can even keep them on board until the official results come out. It's just money down the drain."
Consolation came the next morning, as unexpectedly as a June
freeze. In the hope of seeing Patty again, Bandy had agreed to attend
the briefing on the transport that Hafner was to give the airline
executives in the Van Cleve Hotel. Hadley came along just to show
the flag.
The German had prepared carefully, putting out the news quietly
for days in advance that he was going to make a sensational an
nouncement. The reports that had come out of Dayton, the daily press releases on the performance of the transport, had made their
mark, and not a single major airline executive felt he could afford to
miss the meeting. Each man, anticipating that Hafner was going to announce prices and delivery schedules, had brought along his chief engineer and top accountant.
There was a short sound film showing the Hafner factory and Charlotte flying the transport, along with some obviously fake in
door shots of smiling passengers being ecstatic over their in-flight
lunches. Charlotte and Patty, dressed in identical hostess outfits,
passed out red-velvet-covered brochures that extolled the Skyangel's
virtues.
The audience was filled with old pros, men who'd been promised
the moon by many a manufacturer, but Hafner's presentation had them at fever pitch. Bandfield watched them slide from a glassy-eyed indifference into a febrile, intense mood, itching to buy. As much as he disliked Bruno, he admired how he handled them. The squarehead had just won the bomber competition, and now he was selling transports as if they were Model As.
"I can't quote an exact price, gentlemen, until we know the
quantities involved, but I can tell you that we expect the airplane to
come in for about sixty-five thousand dollars."
A murmur roared through the group. It was an unbelievably low
price for an airplane that made all the Fords and Fokkers totally
obsolete. No passenger would want to fly in a noisy hundred-mile-
per-hour trimotor when he could bask in the luxury of the Hafner airliner. It was not a question of whether they should buy the airplane, but how soon they could get it. Every airline man there—executive, engineer, accountant—was completely sold. The normally tight-lipped Rickenbacker stood up. Out of deference, the others grew quiet.
"Good presentation, Captain Hafner. When can we expect deliv
ery of the airplane?"
Bruno savored the moment. Here was an old enemy, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the American Richthofen, a famous racing driver, a car maker, and now an airline executive, asking him for a favor.
"Well, Captain Rickenbacker, gentlemen, we thought you would
like the Skyangel. We feel it will revolutionize the air transportation
system here and abroad. Naturally, we plan to equip our own Federated Airlines with the first sixty planes, and then we'll be offering others the first deliveries in the spring of 1935."
There was a stunned silence. Hafner was obviously trying to establish a stranglehold on the market. In two years, Federated would have established itself as the dominant airline.
A cataract of invective broke over Bruno, washing him to the back
of the podium in a defensive posture, totally unprepared for the intensity of the reaction. Rickenbacker, normally very gentlemanly in the presence of women, lost control and yelled, "You Kraut son
of a bitch, go fuck yourself." He strode from the room, bald head
bouncing, lips tightly set, his people following him in a cluster. Allied Airlines' gigantic Ted Mahew, so big that he towered over
both Rickenbacker and Hafner, had to be forcibly restrained from
hitting Bruno.
"You arrogant bastard! You invited us down here to see the airplane, knowing you weren't going to have any for sale for two years. This is outrageous."
Hafner scurried around, apologizing and explaining, but it was too late. With a despairing look at Charlotte, he watched the airline people stalk from the room.
Bandfield's old friend from Western Airways, Corliss Moseley,
signaled to him. The crowd had left in angry, tight little groups, and he and Moseley followed a still-boiling Mahew back to his room.
Roget came after them with Mahew's staff from Allied Airlines.
Over the course of an hour, and half a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, Mahew calmed down. "What's the old saying, don't
get mad, get even? Let's get even. Hadley, can you deliver me a
prototype airliner with better performance than the Skyangel, at least eighteen seats, two hundred miles per hour cruise, by the end of the year?"
Hadley shot a quick glance to Bandy, who bobbed his head in agreement. "May we caucus for a few minutes? I'm sure we can do it, but I want to give you a best estimate."
The few minutes dragged into an hour and a half as Bandy and Roget sat making gross calculations of weight, drag, and material lead times.
"Can't be done, Bandy. We'd need a full year, at least, and then it would be close."
"We can't say that. Let's compromise, say two hundred and
seventy days. If we get them excited, get them on board the design,
they'll give us an extension. I hate to promise something we can't deliver, but I'm not leaving Dayton without a contract for something."
The old crafty-codger look came into Hadley's eyes. "A prototype
in two hundred and seventy days, eh? Let's shoot for it. Lots of overtime, get the engine and propeller people on board early, subcontract a lot of things—landing gear to Cleveland Pneumatic, instrument panel to Bendix." Roget's face was ecstatic. "We can do it, by God, we can do it!"
Back out with Mahew, Roget once again assumed the diplomat's
role.
"Jim, we can give you the airplane you want, one clearly superior
to the Hafner job, in two hundred and seventy days. Figure three months for flight test and production setup, and we'll be able to deliver the first ten airplanes by August 1934, with ten per month after that for whoever wants them."
"Hadley, I want you to stick it to Hafner, bad. He's been running wild for a long time now, and it's time to stop him. If you deliver,
Roget Aircraft has a rosy future, believe me."
Bandy and Hadley spoke simultaneously. "We'll deliver!"
"It's my turn to caucus, now," Mahew said, waving the two of them out of the room. They stood in the hallway, not talking, but filled with excitement. Hadley was walking up and down, ten steps in one direction, ten back, and Bandfield was standing tracing the
intricate designs in the hall runner with his toe. Both men knew that
this could be the big break, the benchmark design that would save Roget Aircraft.
Mahew stuck his head out in the hall and motioned them inside.
"Just to show you how serious we are, I'll guarantee you an order
for sixty for Allied Airlines, with deliveries spread out over three years. But one other thing. This has to be shared with the other airlines. I want the first ten positions on your line, but after that, make sure that the others get a chance. Understand me?"
"Understand. Are you willing to put up any development money?"
Mahew's natural business caution intervened, and he hesitated
before saying, "Let's say a million for openers, and you let me know
what you need. I'm going out to the industry for the money, but I'll get it. I'll confirm all this in writing. Better make the airplane a trimotor. The pilots are used to them."
Hadley and Roget went to their room, to work all night, big silver carafes of rotten hotel coffee propping their eyes open. They argued
and laughed alternately, and by seven the next morning, both
groggy, they shook Mahew's hand again and presented him with two
sketches. One was for a trimotor, the other for a twin-engine transport.
"Let us work out the specs, Ted, and we'll send you a final
recommendation. A twin-engine plane means fewer engines to buy,
fewer spares, better visibility."
Both men saw the irony in their return journey home on a
railroad train. They had just pulled off the biggest airplane deal in
their life, and would have plenty of time to reflect on it as the train
chugged toward their Chicago transfer point. Four Roses whiskey
swirled over ice cubes in the big cut-glass tumblers in the club car as
they began to fill in the details of the design possibilities as if they
were dots to connect in a puzzle. Dead tired from the tension of the week, both men dozed intermittently, dreams punctuated by the clatter of the rails. The pleasure of winning the impromptu design competition for the new transport evaporated as Bandfield thought about the future.
"Hadley, I'd like to see Bruno's face when he finds out about this."
"Forget about Bruno. Just think about his airplane. I want to have
our transport's design parameters laid out by the time we get back to
L.A. No mooning about—let's get cracking. It's a damn good thing the racer is finished and I can work full-time on this."