Love, Death, Chariot of Fire Page 6

  On the other hand, this is hardly the time to pose that question.

  ‘I’ll just pop into my office in the next room, write out the cheque and wire my bank to expect it,’ Lucy Houston announces. ‘It will be made out to the Royal Aero Club as the government’s decision requires. Commander, I assume you can accept the cheque and provide me with a receipt on letterhead – one that stipulates the purpose of the donation and your club’s commitment to that purpose?’

  ‘Yes of course, ma’am. This is most generous, to say the least.’

  ‘I’m simply doing my duty, Commander! My staff will serve us a light lunch in the dining room once this brief business is done. After that, my ship’s tender will return you all to Woolston. The cheque should be presented for clearance today. I would like it to be a fait accompli when I wire a communiqué to The Times, the Daily Mail and the BBC later this afternoon. I’d appreciate your doing likewise, Commander. Supermarine and Rolls-Royce may also find themselves in the spotlight tomorrow, but you’ll of course respond to press enquiries as you see fit.’

  As she rises from her regal armchair, she releases a peal of laughter. ‘O to be a fly on the wall in Downing Street tomorrow, what?! But at least I’ll savour reading the papers and listening to the news on the wireless.’

  Chapter 4

  An interview

  Supermarine works, Woolston. Monday 3 June 1931, 10 am. Rain is pattering on the corrugated iron roof over the design office. It brings welcome relief from the uncomfortable conditions summer tends to inflict on the design staff. It even dampens the racket of hammering, grinding and shouting that floats up from the machine shop below.

  Mitchell sits in his office pondering a letter that managed to persuade Vera to pass it on to him rather than deal with it herself. It’s from yet another young hopeful looking for work, this time one Beverley Shenstone, a 24-year-old Canadian. Mitchell has become a magnet for such missives, not least in the present severe economic downturn when most aviation firms are firing rather than hiring staff. Vera usually intercepts them and types the diplomatic negative replies for him to sign before posting. But this one comes with a supportive covering letter from Air Commodore Adrian Chamier, a member of the Vickers (Aviation) board. So Vera has judged it best that Mitchell make up his own mind.

  Chamier’s letter relates how he met Shenstone during a sojourn in the heartland of German gliding, the Wasserkuppe in the Rhön mountains, of all places. Since Shenstone speaks and reads fluent German, Chamier had engaged him as his interpreter for the duration. He did so to help him to understand some advanced developments in aerodynamics being pursued there, as well as the instructions he received as he, Chamier, learned to glide.

  Even more oddly, Shenstone had, at the time, himself been learning to glide at the Wasserkuppe while on leave from a student placement in the Junkers Aviation Works in Dessau. He has won the respect of the designers at both Junkers and the Wasserkuppe, Chamier writes. He knows a lot about aerodynamics, and wing design in particular.

  Mitchell has a soft spot for Canadians. Soon after moving into the house in Russell Place, he got to know a neighbour – Alec Bennett, a Canadian fighter pilot in the war who has now turned his hand to motorcycle racing. Bennett has become one of his few close friends from outside Supermarine and its network.

  His curiosity whetted, Mitchell turns to Shenstone’s curriculum vitae, faint and blurred as it is on four sheets of foolscap paper. Perhaps it’s the third or fourth carbon copy, which suggests that Supermarine hasn’t topped the writer’s list of preferred employers. Shenstone gained his flying licence as a cadet pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and has a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Toronto, where he worked under a Professor John Parkin.

  Mitchell frowns and looks away from the document. Why does the name Parkin sound so familiar? Ah yes, he’s responsible for devising and then upgrading one of the world’s most innovative wind tunnels. A man with a high reputation as an aerodynamicist. He returns his gaze to the CV. Under Parkin’s tutelage Shenstone wrote a thesis on wing design, using calculus as a theoretical tool, and wind tunnels as a practical one.

  His work experience at the Junkers establishment in Dessau as a ‘student’ includes both hands-on fabrication of all-metal aircraft and contributing to the work of the design office, especially in wing design. The Junkers designers seem to have found his input relevant to their own current projects.

  During his two years in Germany he has also kept up his flying hours by piloting various kinds of powered aircraft, not just gliders, and has apparently mastered the intricacies of technical German language as well.

  Both Chamier’s letter and Shenstone’s CV raise pressing questions in Mitchell’s mind. Why Germany? Given the prohibitions on serious aircraft development there in the Versailles Treaty, ones relaxed only in 1926, the country hardly rates as a competitor to the British aviation industry in the way Italy, America and France do. For that matter, what was Chamier himself doing in Germany – a distinguished fifty-year-old veteran of air combat in the war suddenly deciding to learn to glide in the bosom of the former enemy? What had German aviation and gliding have to teach either of these men?

  Shenstone’s application also reminds Mitchell of the drastic change that the engineering profession as a whole is undergoing. When he came to Supermarine, an engineer was a jumped-up mechanic, a graduate of the shop floor. His good personal and professional relationships with men like Henry Royce, Ernie Hives, and even Bob McLean spring in large part from their common origins in the production process itself. But now fledgling engineers emerge from academic incubators. Mitchell knows full well that they often come with essential skills that an industry like aviation will need to deploy if it’s to mature and leave its hit-or-miss amateurishness behind. Even if the temptation to dismiss academic learning can sometimes feel overwhelming. Mitchell has already recruited some members of the new breed to his design office, and they haven’t disappointed him.

  The phone on his desk rings. ‘Mr Shenstone, your 10.30 appointment, is here, RJ.’

  ‘Thanks, Vera. Show him in.’

  A moment later she appears at the door with a remarkably tall and thin young man. His suit, which seems to discomfort him, shows damp patches from the rain. He has added an obsessively trimmed moustache to complement his lank black hair, as if trying to pass himself off as a man of greater years and authority. Mitchell suppresses his irritation with it, stands up, and extends his hand.

  ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Mr Shenstone,’ he says as they shake hands. ‘Do take a seat.’ He gestures towards the chair across the desk from him.

  ‘Well, thank you for agreeing to see me, sir,’ Shenstone replies as he folds himself onto the proffered chair. Vera shuts the door on them.

  ‘Did you come down to Southampton alone?’ Mitchell asks.

  ‘No, sir, I came down with my wife, Helen. We both love canoeing and sailing small boats, and she wanted to see the area in case I’m successful in finding a position here.’

  Mitchell smiles. ‘I row and sail a small boat myself. You can’t do much better than this area for such pastimes. But why aren’t you seeking out opportunities in your own country, or the United States?’

  ‘My mentors – Professor Parkin at Toronto University, and Wing Commander Stedman of the RCAF – assure me that there are none in either country. The Depression is crippling the aviation industry in North America. They advise me to stay in Europe.’

  ‘Even though your qualifications must be quite rare over there? There can’t be too many Canadians with a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering.’

  ‘I’m the only one so far, sir. But their advice stands.’

  ‘I see. But what drew you to Germany?’

  ‘I’m keenly interested in seaplanes, and also believe that only all-metal monoplanes have a promising future. Dr Claudius Dornier sounded like my kind of designer, so I applied for a position at the Dornier works.’


  Mitchell recalls the ongoing saga of the Dornier Do.X flying boat. An all-metal monoplane for sure. But a leviathan with six pairs of tandem engines nestling in a row of nacelles above the huge wing. An aeroplane intended to carry as many passengers as a Zeppelin across the Atlantic, and in as much luxury. It remains an unloved monument to Germanic grandiosity, but could no doubt still excite a newly-hatched aeronautical engineer on the other side of the ocean in question.

  ‘But you didn’t end up with Dornier.’

  ‘No sir. They turned me down. So I applied to Junkers. They also specialise in all-metal monoplanes. I reckoned I could learn as much from Hugo Junkers as from Claudius Dornier anyway. He’s pioneering some really interesting ideas in wing design.’

  ‘But surely a British subject like you can’t simply present himself to a German aviation firm just like that? We’re still not popular over there, I thought. Didn’t you have to get someone to pull strings for you?’

  Shenstone stirs uncomfortably. ‘Well, actually, yes. Wing Commander Stedman is a friend of the British air attaché in Berlin, Group Captain Christie, who was able to persuade Junkers to take me.’

  Mitchell wonders whether there isn’t more to Shenstone’s work experience in Germany than meets the eye – including this young man’s own eye – given the involvement of senior air force officers and the British embassy.

  ‘And what sort of work did Junkers get you to do?’

  ‘They gave me the option of just observing what was going on, but I said I wanted to work. They tested me by sending me to the sheet-metal department. They had me panel-beating, and cutting and riveting Duralumin plate. I got quite good at it, especially using corrugated plate – a Junkers specialty. Learned how to render drawings into precise metal shapes. But then they brought me into the design department and involved me in wing design, then evaluating airframes.’

  ‘They were working on civilian planes only, I take it? To comply with the remaining restrictions on German aviation in the Versailles Treaty?’

  ‘Not really, sir. They were working on military planes, too. However clandestinely, most aviation companies in Germany are treating Versailles as a dead letter these days. Just before I got to Dessau they took up the swept-wing, four-engined G.38 for its first flight. God, what a monster – it looks like a bat with oversized wings! It has a wing span of nearly 150 feet! Could be used either for military or civilian purposes. The same goes for some much smaller planes in the workshop.’

  The reference to military planes jolts Mitchell’s mind back to the conversation on Lucy Houston’s yacht. The speculation about future air warfare. He wants to probe Shenstone further on that topic. But this is a job interview, not an interrogation – he’ll have to come back to the subject discreetly.

  ‘ “Swept-wing”, eh? I’ve read somewhere that Junkers are developing ideas around delta wings, and even all-wing aircraft with no fuselages or tail sections. Flying triangles, you might say. Did you have any involvement in these developments while you worked at Junkers?’

  ‘Yes sir, I did.’

  ‘How did they involve you in wing design, then?’

  ‘They were interested in how one could use mathematical techniques – calculus – to work out the aerodynamic effects of contrasting wing shapes and sizes at various speeds. Especially lift distribution and the way air would flow over and under delta wings.’

  Shenstone laughs nervously, perhaps to deflate any perceived pretentiousness in his answer. ‘You see, sir, I never go anywhere without my copy of Phillips’s textbook, Differential Calculus, in my luggage. It was my secret weapon in Germany.’

  ‘Was it this interest that led you to take time off from Junkers to work at the Wasserkuppe? What is the Wasserkuppe anyway? My vague impression is that it’s the highest point in a chain of low mountains. One that hosts a cross between a boy scouts’ summer camp and an amateur gliding club.’

  Shenstone smiles. ‘Well, that’s how it started out straight after the war, sir. But the gatherings there have always had a nationalistic flavour as well. They’ve been a gesture of defiance against the Allies’ prohibition of powered aviation in Germany. A lot of those rules were lifted five years ago. But oddly enough, gliding has gone on to acquire cult status in recent years. The Wasserkuppe is now the spiritual home of a nationalistic mass movement. Deutschland über alles and all that. Germans are to become “a nation of flyers”, the story goes. They see aviation as the pinnacle of modern achievement.’

  He pauses. ‘Nowadays there’s also a very interesting research establishment on the Wasserkuppe, Ursinius Haus, set among all the tents. It has a long suit in wing design, of course. Especially its founder, Alexander Lippisch. I went there, not just to learn to glide, but to work with him for a while.’

  ‘Lippisch!’ Mitchell says. ‘Yes, his fame has even reached Southampton here. But – at the risk of sounding naïve – may I ask what gliding can teach someone who designs only powered aeroplanes?’

  Shenstone’s face registers momentary shock at the question. ‘Well, sir, I guess one learns about aerodynamics in a pure form when one is building and flying gliders. For instance, Lippisch is developing tailless delta-winged gliders. Once they’re fully viable, he and his colleagues want to add an engine. Or a number of engines. And end up with a very fast plane with optimal aerodynamics.’

  ‘I see. And Lippisch welcomed you on board especially because of your theoretical and mathematical understanding of aerodynamics?’

  ‘Well, he taught me a lot more than I taught him. But basically, yes: our interest in these aspects converged.’

  Mitchell stares at his young interlocutor, then picks up the phone on his desk. ‘Vera, could you kindly fetch the layout drawings for the Type 179 flying boat? Yes, that’s right: “the Giant”. You’ll find them in Alf Faddy’s office.’

  He puts the phone down. ‘Mr Shenstone, we have a provisional government contract to build a six-engined monoplane flying boat – two paired engines in tandem, pushers and pullers, and two independent engines outboard from them. All housed in nacelles above the wings. I would value your opinion on the design of the wings.’

  Shenstone looks even more shocked. ‘I couldn’t give a considered opinion, sir. I’d need to spend several hours making calculations…’

  ‘I understand that, Mr Shenstone. But I would appreciate your first impression of our wing design.’

  Vera comes in with the rolled-up plans. Mitchell rises from his chair, and she helps him spread them over the papers already occupying his desk top. They place paperweights over each corner to hold the plans flat. Vera leaves them again. Mitchell steps back from his desk, gesturing to Shenstone to stand up and approach it.

  ‘Be my guest, Mr Shenstone.’

  The gangling young man lets his eyes sweep slowly over the plans as a whole before he bends over them, focusing in on the details one by one. His expression changes to one of utter concentration. Mitchell recognises himself in it. That ability to focus in on details without losing a sense of the whole. For five minutes they remain silent. Finally Shenstone straightens up, and looks straight at Mitchell across the desk.

  ‘Overall it seems to be a very good design. But the wings are too thick. They should taper more, too. That way you’d reduce drag significantly without compromising lift, structural strength, and aerodynamic performance in general.’

  It’s Mitchell’s turn to be taken aback. Shenstone is talking to him as an equal, a colleague – no longer a job-seeker. He covers his confusion by looking back at the plans with some care. He studies the wings afresh, now seeing them through the eyes of this young colonial whippersnapper.

  The bugger’s right, of course. He’ll need to revisit those bloody wings! The ministry keeps asking for modifications, and that’s complicated the design process. This project has distracted him from his work on the S.6B time and time again. The flying-boat design no longer retains the lean smooth lines of the original drawings.

  He does
n’t need to admit that right now. The main thing is: he’s made up his mind about this applicant. He can go on to satisfy his own curiosity, hopefully without betraying his decision.

  ‘They’re interesting observations, Mr Shenstone,’ he says as he rolls up the drawings and stands them against the shelves behind him. ‘Do take a seat again. If we could change tack: I can’t quite understand why the Germans gave you such free reign in two of their cutting-edge establishments when there seems to be so much aggressive nationalistic foment going on over there at the moment.’

  ‘They’ve been treated as pariahs since the war, sir. They want to be respected again. There’s no point in pulling rabbits – like tailless aircraft – out of the hat if no-one is watching and applauding. I wasn’t the only foreign student working at Junkers or at Ursinius Haus on the Wasserkuppe. In some situations I had to pass myself off as an American to duck the anti-British prejudice, that’s true. But part of my usefulness to them lay simply in being impressed, and saying so.

  ‘There’s more to it than that, though. Here in the English-speaking world, aviation is about pragmatic technical development to boost sales and exports. It’s an industry like any other. But for the likes of Hugo Junkers, Claudius Dornier, Alexander Lippisch and others in Germany, it’s more like a religious vocation. Aeroplanes express the modern Promethean spirit. People like this are idealists; they see themselves as advancing all of mankind. They’re above nationalism in a way, so they welcome fellow seekers from abroad.’

  Mitchell feels a wave of sympathy for these sentiments.

  ‘While you were over there, did you send your impressions back to your colleagues in Canada?’

  ‘Yes. I was in regular correspondence the whole time with Professor Parkin in particular. A few months ago, towards the end of my stay in Germany, we met up in Berlin. Through some happy coincidence he came to Germany for a holiday. Group Captain Christie arranged for a car and a driver to take us on visits to quite a few aviation firms and research institutes.’