Love, Death, Chariot of Fire Read online

  He chuckles. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She swings around to hook his arm with her elbow and marches him back towards the castle.

  Supermarine works, Woolston. Friday 22 January 1932, 11 am. After an inconclusive meeting with Joe Smith and two other draughtsmen in the main drawing office, Mitchell sits frowning in his own room as he makes one rough sketch after another in quick succession. He uses a sharpened soft pencil very lightly to lay down the first lines. If they seem to be heading in the right direction, he uses a thicker, even softer pencil to retrace them.

  A few weeks earlier the firm had at last received the long-awaited Specification F.7/30 from the Air Ministry, and it’s preoccupying him. The plane that Supermarine is designing in response sports the title ‘Type 224’.

  The specification calls for a new single-seat day-and-night fighter without even stipulating whether it’s to be a biplane or a monoplane, or entirely metal-skinned. So the spec still accommodates traditional layouts and materials, for reasons Mitchell can’t fathom. Why leave the door open to anachronisms like biplanes and wood-and-canvas construction? For one thing, biplanes reduce the pilot’s field of vision and would handicap him in high-speed combat.

  The plane must achieve a maximum speed of at least 250 mph, and 195 mph in level flight at 15,000 feet, but be able to land at 60 mph or less – the maximum acceptable speed for landing on turf airfields at night. It is to achieve a rapid climb rate, be highly manoeuvrable, carry four machine guns, and provide the pilot with the widest possible field of vision. As ever with production aircraft, it must also offer reasonable ease and economy of manufacture. And as ever with military aircraft, it must be able to operate with minimal maintenance, and not make unrealistic demands on the flying skills of squadron pilots.

  In sum, Specification F.7/30 confronts all its recipients with a host of dilemmas and contradictory demands. The foremost of them – high operational speed but low landing speed – pulls the designer in opposite directions. Not that 250 mph is itself such an ambitious benchmark anymore. In Mitchell’s view, the ministry should be setting its sights higher than that.

  What to do about the four guns? Should two of them fire in the traditional way, through the propeller disc, thus requiring the usual synchronisation gear and slowing the rate of fire – hardly an advantage in high-speed aerial combat? Or should they all fire more rapidly from outside the disc, which means accommodating the whole lot in the wings somehow? Since Supermarine leads the field in rendering wing structures in metal – and is pioneering the construction of whole aircraft in stressed-metal skins – Type 224 ought to house all its guns in the wings.

  The wings call for considerable rethinking and testing in themselves. Mitchell wants to abandon all external buttressing between wings and fuselage, as he did with the S.4. He suspects that none of his competitors will be prepared to follow him in designing an entirely unbraced monoplane. But for a powerful, tightly manoeuvring fighter, he’ll have to build enormous strength into the structure of the wings to avoid flutter, while still accommodating the guns. At the same time he needs to devise the slimmest possible wing profile so as to reduce drag.

  For Mitchell the inherent difficulties of the specification compound the challenge of incorporating innovations that he’s set his heart on. Rolls-Royce is experimenting with an evaporatively cooled engine which would address the cooling problem he’s wrestled with in all his Schneider racers. The new system would allow the coolant to exceed boiling point in its jacket enclosing the engine, but keep it under pressure there, thus not allowing it to turn to steam until it leaves the jacket in unpressurised conduits. The latter would lead the steam to condensers where it would cool back to liquid form. From there it would drain into a collection tank before being pumped back up to a header in front of the engine, and recirculated.

  He’s already designed steam condensers to occupy much of the leading edges of the wings. In fact he’s in the throes of patenting them. He’ll probably cover them with corrugated Duralumin plate to speed up the cooling process, too. Where is the promised engine, though? It already has a name – the Goshawk. But the thing itself is proving difficult to refine to the point where it survives the 100-hour marathon at full bore on the Rolls-Royce test bench in Derby.

  The other big innovation Mitchell would love to introduce is a retractable undercarriage. Wheels and their supporting struts create drag – just like floats on seaplanes, albeit to a lesser extent. Conservative designers claim to have solved the problem by encasing the wheel struts in streamlined fairing – or ‘trousers’ in the trade vernacular. And sometimes even adding ‘spats’ to cover the tops of the wheels. Mitchell can see a short-term advantage in draining coolant from the condensers in the wings into collection tanks in trouser legs ready to be pumped back up to the header. In the longer term, though, an effective fighter will need to eliminate undercarriage drag altogether. In the United States, he’s read, Boeing and Lockheed have recently flown experimental aircraft with fully retractable landing gear. But so far their systems weigh too much and aren’t reliable. It’s probably too early to factor a retractable undercarriage into the Type 224.

  Vera Cross knocks before entering Mitchell’s office, a card and accompanying envelope in her hand. She comes up to his desk and looks down at him. He doesn’t look up. When he’s absorbed in his sketching like this, he has difficulty withdrawing from it.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, RJ, but there’s something in today’s mail that you’ll need to handle yourself.’

  ‘Really? What could that be?’

  ‘A summons.’

  ‘Oh God, I know what that’s about. The flash new yellow Rolls that Sir Henry and his merry men have foisted onto me. It can’t even hold itself to the speed limit. So I keep attracting the unwelcome attention of the constabulary.’

  ‘It’s not about that. It’s from the King.’

  He returns his attention to his work. ‘They’re always from the King, Vera – you know that! “On His Majesty’s Service” is the standard giveaway printed on the envelopes. Can’t you just send the usual cheque please?’

  ‘Not this time. It comes from Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You might remember you got a mention in the New Year’s Honours List, RJ. Something about becoming a Commander of the British Empire? Well, you’re summoned to the palace to pick up the gong on 23 February.’

  ‘This is the twentieth century, Vera. Politely decline the invitation and ask the King’s secretary or whoever to put the damn thing in the mail.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that. This isn’t an invitation – it’s a command to present yourself in your own proper person at an investiture. You can’t refuse.’

  He looks up at her sharply, and sees she’s grinning from ear to ear. He drops his pencil, leans back in his chair, drags himself into the moment, and manages a grin too. ‘I take it from the expression on your face that there’s more to come.’

  ‘Certainly is. Our Sovereign Lord is a stickler when it comes to the dress code at court. You’ll have to wear something called “levée dress”.’

  ‘And what, pray, is that? Do I have to dress up like Hamlet or something?’

  ‘Pretty much. They’ve had the kindness to spell it out here on a separate sheet that came in the envelope. “Black evening dress coat; black or white evening dress waistcoat; breeches of plain black of evening dress material or stockinet, with three small black cloth or silver buttons, and black buckles at the knee; black silk hose; plain court shoes with bows and no buckles; white evening dress tie; and white gloves”.’

  ‘What complete and utter twaddle! It’s absolutely unthinkable!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, RJ. Could make a snappy work uniform for all you chaps employed here at Supermarine.’

  She waits for his guffaw before joining in.

  Chapter 6

  A nadir

  Church of England chapel, Longton Cemetery, Stoke-on-Trent.
Tuesday 23 May 1933, 10 am. Reginald Mitchell is transfixed by the flower-bedecked coffin of his father resting on its bier in front of him as he sits in the front pew. Beside him sits his eldest sister Hilda, who – with his younger sister Doris – flank and comfort their mother, Elizabeth. His brothers Eric and Billy are sitting on his other side. He senses the presence of Flo and their twelve-year-old son Gordon on the pew behind him, where the in-laws and grandchildren have been placed.

  The Angel of Death seems to have become a recurring presence in his life. Not three weeks ago Mitchell was present in St Andrew’s – the parish church in Alwalton, Cambridgeshire – for the funeral of his friend and colleague, Sir Henry Royce. He’d just turned seventy, and so was only two years older than Herbert Mitchell. Reginald Mitchell feels crushed by both these losses. Of older men who have stood so close to him, guiding and helping him. Who have had so much to do with fostering his own mastery in his chosen vocation. He has no sense of how to respond to these losses, or even to articulate his grief.

  Why is death invariably shocking, even when it’s so predictable, as in Henry’s and his own father’s cases? He knows the words that will soon be pronounced in the service: ‘The days of our age are threescore years and ten.’ An almost exact prediction for these two men. And vanity it is to strive for more years, as the passage will run on to point out: ‘Though men may be so strong, that they come to fourscore years; yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.’

  Now just shy of thirty-eight years himself, he’s passed the halfway mark. Lately he’s been suffering periodic abdominal spasms, ones which will surely pass. Nonetheless they remind him that his body, too, will fail soon enough.

  Mitchell has no interest in religion, and entertains scepticism about its beliefs. But just as he did when he attended the funerals for Sam Kinkead and Jerry Brinton, he feels deep gratitude for the way the church takes charge of these moments, enlarging them into a wider narrative, and so softening them. The local vicar, John Simmons, has provided his mother with much solace, and will soon summon forth words, music and dignified solemnity to ease the mourning process. Not just for the deceased’s large family, but for the many people crammed into the chapel. Herbert Mitchell was a man of substance – first as a headmaster here in Longton, then for thirty years at the helm of a prestigious local printing firm, and a senior Freemason. His death reverberates throughout the whole community.

  In his priestly regalia, Simmons approaches the widow, to console her and see that she’s steadied for the service. He quietly greets the other members of the family in the front row, before stepping up into the chancel towards the coffin, and turning to face the congregation.

  ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,’ Simmons intones. ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.’

  And so the poetry rolls on, with its resonant words and its reassuring, emphatic rhythms. On cue Eric goes up to the lectern and reads aloud 1 Corinthians 13 verses 1-13. ‘And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’ Backed by the organ, the congregation sings Abide with me with fervour. Death thus finds its due proportion in a firmament otherwise suffused with love and community, continuity and remembrance – one over which it holds no dominion.

  Mitchell rests in this assurance and lets his mind wander into memories of his father. It flicks rapidly through episodes from his childhood, even ones when he’d resented his father’s orders and severity. For the first time, perhaps, it all makes sense. Is he as good a father to Gordon? he wonders.

  He also remembers the times he went to his father with his youthful dilemmas, and how Herbert had worked through them with him, demonstrating how a grown man takes careful responsibility for his life – often a process demanding conspicuous courage. These memories stir up a need to access that paternal voice once more.

  Hitler seized power in Germany four months ago, and a month after that ushered in a ruthless dictatorship which menaces the rest of Europe. If the fiends attack this island, they must first come by air. As Mitchell and his team design tomorrow’s fighter plane to meet this threat, he finds himself staggering under the weight of his new responsibility. The plane on his drawing-board back in Woolston, the Type 224, is just not good enough. In fact it’s a clumsy embarrassment. But his firm is locked into a government contract to keep developing it. Work is about to begin on the prototype. A chill runs through his body.

  Simmons calls on him as the eldest son to deliver the eulogy. He feels sufficiently braced by the order of service and the good people there to do so without stuttering. Flo has helped him with it, and typed it for him. Together they’d left nothing to chance – forgotten nobody and no aspect of his father’s life that needed to be recalled at this moment.

  The time comes for the three sons of the deceased, together with three other male relatives, to hoist the heavy coffin onto their shoulders.

  The chapel bell commences its mournful tolling. Simmons leads the pallbearers in a slow procession along the aisle towards the front door. Mitchell recognises many of the people standing in their pews from his childhood and youth. The eyes turned to watch the procession are moist, some downcast, some running with tears. As the pallbearers approach the door, he hears shuffling feet – the congregation is falling in behind them. The troubled times they’re all facing seem to intensify their togetherness.

  Simmons leads the procession a short distance down the grassy slope past the old headstones, towards the freshly dug grave. Rain clouds hang over the scene, and the turf is wet from spring showers. The pallbearers lay the coffin over the straps straddling the mouth of the grave, and step back. Flo and Gordon press in close to Mitchell. Right beside them, Hilda and Doris stand beside their mother, holding her hands. Simmons waits silently at the head of the grave while the family and the rest of the congregation assemble around it.

  After all the funerals in recent years, Mitchell knows the words Simmons is about to pronounce off by heart. About the shortness of life, and its misery. About man fleeing as it were a shadow and never continuing in one stay. ‘In the midst of life we are in death.’

  The pallbearers unfasten the straps holding the coffin and slowly let them slip through their hands until it comes to rest at the bottom of the grave, while Simmons pronounces the earth-to-earth verse. Mitchell takes his turn throwing earth onto the lid of his father’s coffin. The damp spring soil smells paradoxically sweet and fecund.

  The service over, the family members take it in turns to thank Simmons. He will rejoin them afterwards over sandwiches and tea at Talbot House, his parents’ home in Mollart Street in nearby Hanley. Mourners – some of whom Mitchell has known all his life – approach him, Flo and Gordon to offer their personal condolences. There’s a new deference in their manner towards him. He worries that they’ve placed him on some sort of pedestal after all the publicity around the Schneider victories and his recent CBE. Even more daunting is the thought that they may be looking to him to forge the weapon that will save them from the fascist menace that now hangs over them.

  It starts to drizzle again. The mourners begin to disperse. But he doesn’t want to leave his father just yet, and stands his ground. Flo places an umbrella in his hand, which she squeezes.

  ‘Take your time, Reg. We’ll wait for you in the car.’

  His brother Eric, also sheltering under an umbrella, stands on the opposite side of the grave looking down into it. He’ll replace their father at the head of the family printing business. They’re the only ones left around the open grave now – two sons with unfinished business with their father.

  Silently Mitchell outlines his predicament, as if his father were receiving his words telepathically. This line of thought is inappropriate, given the circumstances. He knows that. Family members have commented on the way his thoughts tend to sheer off into work-related puzzles when he’s mixing with
them. He can’t help it. Even on the present solemn occasion, his father would grudgingly understand.

  He and his colleagues – and their contacts in the ministry – all started out with such high hopes and good intentions when they initiated the Type 224 project. It would be an all-metal cantilevered monoplane – a sleek craft with a powerful Rolls-Royce Goshawk engine generating zero radiator drag because it was to be evaporatively cooled. But the problems began with the ministry’s specification. In particular with its demand for a low landing speed that couldn’t be reconciled with the required high operating speed.

  Sod’s Law has taken over from there. Whatever could go wrong has done so. To assuage the ministry for a calculated landing speed a notch higher than the one specified, he’s widened the track of the landing wheels to facilitate night landings, thus increasing the span, area and thickness of the cranked wings. The baggier trouser legs over the struts will also house a machine gun each, so he won’t have to put more than one gun in each wing. The raised open cockpit offers good pilot vision, but it looks like a smallpox crater. Four months ago Mitchell sketched the plane as it might appear front-on, and it resembled an overfed barnyard duck. He and his team then set about redrawing it completely. They didn’t manage to make it any more appealing. Yet the ministry still wants the prototype built.

  Mitchell hardly needs a ghostly voice from the grave in front of him to know what his father would say. First, acknowledge your own contribution to the mess, and learn from it! The ministry – sensing the heightened threat from the Continent – went out of its way to encourage the country’s foremost aviation designers to think creatively, and tried to draft the specification of the new fighter plane to leave them plenty of room to do just that. He must take responsibility for staring himself blind at the specification, becoming obsessed with particular features it seemed to require, and thus losing sight of the overall concept of the plane he’s set out to create. He’s strayed from the process that conjured forth the Schneider winners.