Stephen Morris (9 page)

Stenning had got a job in the spring on one of the air lines. This concern, while chiefly occupied with maintaining a regular service to Paris, had been one of the first to see the possibilities of a special charter business in aeroplanes. That is, it bought up a number of old war machines and converted them into fast three-passenger machines. With these, assisted by a suitable campaign of advertisement, they were working up quite a successful little business which – a notable fact in aviation – paid its way from the very start, without being eligible for a subsidy. The work was very varied. A passenger for a transatlantic liner, having missed the boat-train for
Southampton, would fly to catch the boat at Cherbourg. A cinema firm, upon some disaster in Central Europe, would fly there and have the films showing in London thirty-six hours after the unhappy event. An American business man, having just three weeks to spend in Europe, would make a little tour to Paris, Brussels, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Milan and Marseilles, arriving back with a day or two to spare, having transacted business in each town. By the summer, about half a dozen machines and pilots were employed. The chief pilot was Malcolm Riley; Stenning flew usually on the Paris route.

But British aviation was in low repute abroad at this time. It was admitted by those best competent to judge that the British air lines to the Continent were the safest, the best organised, and the most efficient of any. Such a testimonial was entirely gratuitous, for the British industry was far too much occupied with its struggle for existence to have any concern for what the outside world might think about it, too hard up even to make known its own efficiency. In the war British aircraft were the best in the world. They were so still, but they were never seen outside England.

A British aeronautical exhibition was held in 1920, and was such a fiasco financially that it was unlikely that another one would be held for several years. Each year, the French taxpayer, by means of the subsidy, paid for a wonderful display of imitative French machines in the Paris Salon; a display made the more impressive by the rigid exclusion of certain foreign machines. Little use for the British to advertise themselves in their own technical papers; little more use for those papers patriotically to issue special catalogues of British progress printed in three languages at the time of the Paris Salon. The machines themselves were the only really cogent argument to support the alleged superiority of British design – and
there was not the money to send the machines abroad to be exhibited.

This was the position at the time of the Brussels Exhibition in the autumn of 1921. The affair was said to be the idea of the most noble pilot in the history of aviation, and was to be a great thing for aviation all over the world. It was to be primarily a representative display of the world’s commercial aeroplanes in a great hall in the centre of the city; coupled with this there was to be a race similar in nature to the famous Gordon Bennett Cup, recently won outright by France. This was a speed contest pure and simple, to be held on Brussels aerodrome in the presence of the Royalty of two nations. As prizes in the contest there were a large gold cup, a considerable sum of money, and the probability of certain foreign army contracts.

It seemed as if this exhibition would be well supported by the manufacturers of the world. The statistics were briefly as follows. Seventeen French machines would be present, six German, five Dutch, five Belgian, three Swiss, two Italian, and two British. For the race the entries were not numerous; they consisted of four French, two Dutch, one Belgian and one Italian. There was no British entry.

Indeed, there was no British machine capable of competing in such a race with any chance of success, where speeds of two hundred miles an hour were expected to be realised. It was out of the question to build a suitable machine and send it across; there was no firm which, in its then condition, could regard such a procedure as anything but a rash and unjustifiable speculation. True, it seemed a pity that Britain should not be represented. It simply could not be done.

That was the view of the manufacturers. There were, however, people in England who held a different opinion. There was, in fact, a machine in the country
which, if it could not fly at two hundred miles an hour, could show a clean pair of heels to any aeroplane hitherto built in England. This was the Jenkinson Laverock, fitted with one of the earliest editions of that phenomenally light and powerful engine, the Blundell Stoat. The Laverock had been the last effort of the Jenkinson Aviation and Manufacturing Company Limited before the crash came, and the machine, with all others built or building, had fallen into the hands of the Official Receiver. This gentleman, pressed to allow the machine to compete in the annual Aerial Derby for which it had been built, flatly refused to allow it to be flown. As it stood it was worth a thousand pounds or so from some visionary purchaser; in a crashed condition it would not be worth that number of pence. The Laverock had been flown once or twice in considerable secrecy; nobody seemed to know of what speed it was capable. It had been intended as the basis for a fighting scout, and had been transformed into a racing machine by the simple expedient of removing all exterior projections and cutting down the wing surface drastically. It was known to be very fast.

It is hard to say what it was that brought home so deeply the necessity of entering a machine for this race to the little band of gentlemen who clubbed together to buy the Laverock. Only one, apparently, had been intimately connected with aviation in the war. Of the others, one had made a fortune out of munitions, one or two had had sons in the Flying Corps, and one or two were nobody in particular, business men, Government officials, members of the same club as Baynes, their enthusiastic leader. In some remote, inarticulate way all were convinced that if they bought this machine and entered it for the Brussels race, they would have done something worth doing, something that they would look back to in after years with a queer glow of sentimental
pleasure. It was a good thing to do; it would help things on a bit. Baynes, even, seemed to have persuaded himself that the reputation of the country was in their hands. Certainly, if they didn’t do it, nobody else would.

They harboured no illusions. None of them expected the machine to win, unless by accident. The real reason for sending it over was to display the neatness of its design, the great beauty of its lines. In its detail design and general finish and appearance, it was, perhaps, the prettiest little machine ever built in England. It might not be very fast but … they’d show these people we could still build an aeroplane.

It was Rawdon whom they first consulted on the subject, before incurring any expenditure. Baynes, who had been a major in the Flying Corps during the war, had come into contact with Rawdon once or twice; it seemed natural for them to turn to him for advice upon their project. He heard them to the end in his little office on the aerodrome, sitting on a table, swinging his legs. Their story finished, he considered for a little.

‘You really think of buying it?’ he inquired. ‘Well, I should think you’d get it for a lot under a thousand if you went about it the right way. It’s no earthly good to anybody else.’

‘I dare say we should,’ said Baynes. ‘What we want to do now is to arrive at some estimate of what the whole lot is going to cost us. As far as I can see, the machine would be about the least part.’

They discussed the details for a little.

‘Anyway,’ said Rawdon at last, ‘you needn’t consider the cost of getting the machine in order, or garaging it. It’s in fair condition, I suppose; we can manage the erecting of it up here. I’d like to look after that part of the business, if you’ll let me in on it.’

The deputation was properly embarrassed. ‘That’s extremely good of you,’ said Baynes.

‘Only too glad to have the work in the shops,’ said Rawdon. ‘Now, what about getting it there? That’s going to cost some money, you know.’

Baynes explained to his colleagues. ‘It would have to be dismantled and crated, shipped to the aerodrome, and re-erected over there. It means we shall have to take over a staff of mechanics with us.’

‘Unless, of course, you flew it over from here,’ said Rawdon.

Baynes glanced at him doubtfully. ‘It’s a very fast machine,’ he said. ‘There’d be a lot of risk in that, surely?’

Rawdon rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know what it really does, what speed it lands at. Oh yes, it wouldn’t be a very nice job. It’s been done before with fast machines, you know.’ He paused a little. ‘It rather depends on what sort of a pilot you get for it.’

‘It seems to me,’ said one of the deputation, ‘that if we’re going to do this at all, we’d better do it properly and stand the extra expense of sending it by land.’

‘I think so, too,’ said Baynes.

‘It’s safest, certainly,’ agreed Rawdon. ‘You’ll have to look sharp about it though. How long is it before the race?’

‘Seventeen days,’ said Baynes. ‘There’s no time to waste, but we can do it all right. About the pilot – Graham flew it before, I believe. We’d better get him again.’

‘He’s in Japan,’ said Rawdon.

The other mentioned one or two pilots.

‘The man I should choose, I think,’ said the designer reflectively, ‘would be a chap called Riley – Malcolm Riley. You remember him? Test pilot for Pilling-Henries at the end of the war. He did very well on their fast scouts – very well indeed. He’s at Croydon now, I think.’

‘You think he’d take it on?’

‘I don’t see why not. Anyway, I’d rather offer it to him than any of those other chaps, with Graham out of the way.’

Baynes got up. ‘I’ll see this chap Riley,’ he said, ‘and see if he can take it on. There’s nobody better, you think?’

‘I don’t think so.’

So Riley was summoned to Baynes’s club, and listened attentively while the scheme was expounded to him. When it was finished, he considered for a little.

‘Well, I should be very glad to take it on,’ he said at last. ‘As you know, I’ve never flown in a race before, but I don’t think I should let you down that way. By the way, how are you getting it there? Are you proposing to fly it out?’

The other shook his head. ‘We discussed that with Captain Rawdon, and decided that the risk of damaging the machine was too great. No, it’s going by sea.’

Riley nodded. ‘That’s the best way, of course. I saw it in the air once – lands at about eighty-five.’

‘I believe so,’ said Baynes. ‘Well, we’ll get the purchase through as soon as we can and get it up to Rawdon’s place. I’ll let you know when it gets there. And now, Captain Riley, we’d better put things on a business footing at once. Can you let me know – in a day or two – what your fee will be? For the test flights and the race combined.’

Riley glanced at him quickly. Then, ‘This is an entirely private venture, as I understand it? It’s financed by yourself and some other gentlemen?’

‘That is so.’

‘I should like my expenses,’ said Riley, ‘– hotel bills and that sort of thing. And fifteen per cent of any prize money.’

There was a moment’s pause. ‘There won’t be any
prize money,’ said Baynes quietly. ‘The Laverock hasn’t got a chance – unless by accident. You know that as well as I do. We’re only putting it in for propaganda.’

‘I guessed as much,’ said Riley.

‘I don’t think we can let you do that, really,’ said the other uneasily.

‘It’s a damn good advertisement for me as a pilot,’ said Riley simply. ‘I’d much rather have it that way. If it were a firm employing me it would be different.’

‘Right you are then,’ said Baynes. They stood up. ‘I’ll get the machine up to Rawdon’s as soon as I can and let you know when it gets there. And I say, one thing more. I went round to one or two firms this morning to see if it was possible to insure it. They’d none of them touch it.’

Riley smiled. ‘I don’t suppose they would,’ he said.

Morris had finished his paper on the three-ply fuselages working on an adaptation of the Principle of Least Work. It was not a bad paper at all; he had gone into the subject rather deeply mathematically and had arrived at certain definite results. He realised it was quite useless to leave his results in the form of differential equations, and had managed to evolve a set of relatively simple formulae which could be adapted to give the stresses accurately in most of the cases arising in aircraft work. When it was finished, he showed it to Rawdon.

The designer examined it in private; he was no mathematician, and hated to display the fact. Moreover, he knew well enough why Morris had shown it to him; he wanted more pay, and he’d only been in the firm a little over six months. It was absurd. But the paper undoubtedly was a sound one; he fingered it pensively. Most of it he did not fully understand; he knew the
method and saw that the general lines upon which Morris had worked were likely to lead to a correct solution. He drew a little blunt stump of pencil from his waistcoat pocket, and pulled a writing-pad towards him. Taking the first bay of the rear fuselage of the F.S.I., their empirical calculations had given … he pulled a loose-leaf ledger down from the shelf in front of him. That was it.