Strange Angel (26 page)

If anyone was more perturbed than Parsons, it was Boushey. After all, in seven days Boushey would be sitting about six feet from twelve such rockets in a plane so fragile that it could be torn apart if all the rockets misfired at once. Although the rocket exhaust nozzles were attached to the motors with shear bolts—designed to break in half under extreme tension and thus relieve pressure in the motor before a catastrophic explosion could take place—this could not prevent rocket shrapnel from hitting and piercing the fuselage.

For the majority of the tests at the Arroyo, the powder had worked just fine. Why was it suddenly exploding? The tests scheduled for the next week could not be delayed, so Parsons furiously analyzed, purified, and retested his fuel mixture, anxiously trying to find out what was at fault. Writing to his parents, Malina summed up the thoughts of all the rocketeers. “The phase of research that was supposed to be solved has been cutting up. At the end of today I felt that nothing short of a miracle would pull it through by the date we are supposed to meet.” On August
6,
the scheduled start of the tests, a miracle had yet to materialize. Nevertheless, the group knew a delay would jeopardize their funding, so it headed to March Field Air Corps Base, the oldest air base in the West. Located in Moreno Valley, sixty-six miles east of Los Angeles, March Field's runways and hangars had been built on the remnants of an old cattle ranch. The original residents of Moreno Valley had moved there in the early 1880s, but after a catastrophic loss of water rights was followed by a severe drought, they had no choice but to leave. The more expensive homes were carried away whole on the trailers of steam-powered tractors, while ingenious thieves relocated those houses that had been left behind to unknown locations. March Field had replaced them and now stood as a lone bastion of human life in the midst of an encroaching desert.

A fresh batch of eighteen JATOs had been made that morning and driven to March Field. The rocketeers marked the runway in fifty-foot intervals in order to measure the takeoff distance of the Ercoupe. Observers on the ground clasped stopwatches with which to measure takeoff time. Initial tests were carried out to measure the performance of the Ercoupe without the JATOs. Then a static test was performed in which the Ercoupe was anchored to the ground with one rocket placed under each wing. The rockets fired perfectly, the flames easily clearing the fuselage of the plane, leaving it undamaged.

By the eighteenth test of the day, the heat was rising and the inevitable had to be faced: It was time to test the JATOs in flight and find out how much extra speed the rockets could offer to the plane. To be on the safe side, the rocketeers installed only one jet unit under each of the two wings. Boushey lifted the tiny silver-and-red plane off the runway and flew to 3,000 feet. Straining their eyes against the desert sun, the rocketeers could barely see the plane as it was swallowed up in the dark midday blue of the sky. Boushey made a couple of passes over the field, then ignited the rockets. Suddenly there was no doubt as to where the plane was. Two brilliant white jet trails appeared in the sky behind it, seemingly attached to the Ercoupe like cords on a kite. The trails increased in length and the rocketeers watched, mouths agape. The sight was, after all, in the days before jet trails became commonplace in the world's skies. All seemed serene until one of the trails abruptly cut off. All eyes anxiously scanned the remaining jet trail, which was now itself dissolving in the wind. Slowly emerging out of the blue, the Ercoupe could be seen hurrying down towards the runway. When the plane touched down, it was clear to all what had happened—one of the rockets had exploded. Fortunately, it had done so near the end of the run, and the safety devices had worked; the shattered apparatus had cleared all parts of the plane and fallen harmlessly to earth. Without further ado, and with some relief, tests were wound up for the day. It appeared the rocketeers had escaped a serious mishap by the skin of their teeth—and thanks to the skillful flying of Boushey.

Returning to Pasadena for the night, Parsons continued tests on the fuel, but two days later he had come no closer to solving the problem of their rockets' volatility. Nevertheless, the rocketeers kept to their strict timetable and reconvened on August 8 at March Field to begin an additional series of grounded tests. Test Number 20 called for another static firing in which the Ercoupe was anchored to ground, though this time the team installed four JATO rockets, two under each wing. Boushey fired the ignition and almost immediately an explosion occurred. The rocketeers could only stand back and watch as the faulty rocket shot sparks and flame out of an increasingly dense haze until finally the Ercoupe was engulfed in smoke. As the motor spluttered to a halt and the light desert wind swept the white shroud away, the airplane revealed was older and more battered than the one that had stood there ten seconds before. The rocket rack had been pulled loose, the wing covering was wrenched out of shape, rivets were scattered about the runway, and the white-hot nozzle of the rocket motor had ripped a ten-inch hole in the tail end of the fuselage. Boushey clambered out, slightly shaken. The team moved in to inspect the damage. “Well at least it isn't a big hole,” piped up one voice. It was met with a chastening silence. Testing was postponed until repairs could be made.

Back at the Arroyo, Parsons finally realized what was happening to his fuel. Out of all the tests at March Field, those conducted with JATOs that had just been pressed into their chambers—JATOs that were fresh—worked perfectly. However, those motors made more than twenty-four hours before the test had exploded. Parsons could see the problem now. If left to sit, the powder in his fuel would contract in the cold of the night and expand in the warmth of the day. This would cause long fissures and cracks to appear in it. The result was that rather than burning evenly and slowly, the fuel ignited in an instant, flame spreading rapidly through the gaps and spaces. Pressure inside the motor would increase rapidly and the rocket would be turned into little more than a bomb. If Parsons wanted his rockets to work, he would have to press the powder into the chamber just before the test.

His breakthrough came just in time, for never was success more important than on the next day, August 12. The experiment the armed forces were most eager to view was scheduled to take place: a takeoff aided by rocket power. Parsons, Forman, and the mechanic Fred Miller worked through the night, preparing eighteen fresh JATOs for use. The loading of the motor with the “goop,” one inch at a time under pressure, was painfully laborious, each rocket taking forty-five minutes to fill. Only adrenalin kept them awake. As the sun rose, they loaded a truck with the canisters and raced over to March Field. Every minute was crucial. The longer the delay in getting to March Field, the more likely it became that their tests would fail. As soon as they arrived, Parsons crawled underneath the plane and attached the rockets to its wings in a matter of minutes. A brave Homer Boushey seated himself in the cockpit.

A Super-8 film made of the tests gives a particularly vivid impression of that day. Scratched and jumpy, the color film captures the thin layer of ashen morning mist that lies across the scrub-covered, flat desert ground. The saw-bladed Sierra Madres rise up in the distance. The metallic Ercoupe glints in the morning sun. The film cuts to Parsons, who stands near the plane along with the rest of the Suicide Squad. He is looking intently at the Ercoupe, snatching smoke from his cigarette. In fact, all the team are smoking and talking, talking away their fears, exhaling their worries in fitful plumes of white smoke. The massive quantities of explosives at the test site does not seem to have curbed any of the team's desire to light up. Parsons looks young, or rather his body does. He is still only twenty-six years old, and hunching forward in his short sleeve shirt, his posture is decidedly adolescent. His face ages him, though. His eyes have a knowing look; his jaw is stretched by a smirk; the razor-thin moustache he has grown lends him a mischievous Mephistophelean air.

There is some good-humored posing for the camera, much laughter at unheard jokes. Clark Millikan, head of the GALCIT wind tunnel, whose initial skepticism about rocketry has by now been replaced by an opportunistic enthusiasm, stoops down as if in conversation with the mechanics. He is intent on showing himself to be in the thick of things. In another shot, an official Caltech photographer is taking a picture of Kármán, in black suit and crumpled white fedora, writing equations on the wing of the Ercoupe. Malina, Summerfield, and Boushey are leaning over Kármán's shoulder, as is Clark Millikan. What the film revealingly shows and what the resulting photo—one of the best known of the tests—has left out is Parsons rushing to get into the picture. Upon arriving at the plane, he leans on the wing to Millikan's right, hand on chin, in an exaggerated pose of studiousness. Perhaps because of his lack of reverence, perhaps because he was not officially affiliated with Caltech, or perhaps because he just didn't get there before the shutter closed, in this public relations photo, which is reprinted frequently in many of the staple textbooks on rocketry, Parsons has been cropped from view.

The Super-8 camera captures some twenty to thirty people watching the tests—friends, air force observers, Caltech students. Most prominent among them stands the white-bearded William F. Durand, chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), editor of the first encyclopedia of aeronautics, the grand old man of United States flight, and an old acquaintance of Kármán. The film jumps and the Ercoupe is suddenly seen speeding down the runway. All four rockets have been ignited and a vast plume of smoke follows the tiny aircraft. The plane is hurled into the air as if from a slingshot, the rockets still firing and smoke still billowing. It climbs sharply at a near fifty-degree angle before the rockets cut out and Boushey levels the plane off, circling the airfield and landing. The film jumps again to the long-limbed Boushey bounding out of the plane, grinning broadly. “None of us had ever seen a plane climb at such a steep angle,” commented Kármán. It was the first American airplane ever to fly with rocket power.

The rocketeers were jubilant. For the next test they strapped six JATOs to the Ercoupe and measured the takeoff distance and takeoff time. The results exceeded their highest expectations. Both had been reduced by nearly 50 percent, with the takeoff distance falling from 580 feet to 300 feet and the takeoff time decreasing from 13.1 seconds to 7.5 seconds. The plane's speed, measured at the airplane's maximum ceiling height of 11,400 feet, jumped from 62 to 97 miles per hour, an increase of 56 percent. The effects were exactly what the armed forces had been looking for. These rockets could be attached to heavily laden bombers, allowing them to take off from short, makeshift jungle airstrips. Airplanes which could never before have built up enough speed to take off from the shortened runway of an aircraft carrier would now be able to do so easily.

Over the next two weeks, more tests took place. When Clark Millikan piloted his own plane, a red Porterfield, alongside the Ercoupe to act as an experimental control, he was left in the JATO-powered aircraft's wake. Over the next two weeks, 152 JATOs would be used in 62 tests without any serious explosions, largely thanks to the early-morning delivery dashes to the airfield by an exhausted and bleary-eyed Parsons.

Most of the planned tests had been completed when Kármán, who had a showman's eye for publicity, suggested that the plane try taking off without using its propeller, as a purely rocket-powered aircraft. The propeller was removed and safety posters that read, “Be alert! Don't get hurt!” were pasted over the large gap that now let wind into the cockpit.

The rocketeers attached twelve rockets to the plane so that it now resembled a giant firework. Boushey fired the rockets from a standing start—first six, then another six—but the plane failed to reach takeoff speed under their thrust alone. Ever game, he suggested that a truck tow him to about twenty miles per hour before he fired the rockets. Once again the silent film pays dumb witness to an astonishing sight. Boushey grips a rope through the open cockpit window of the Ercoupe with his left hand. The sun glints off the watch he is still wearing on his wrist. The other end of the rope is tied to the back of a truck that is driving down the runway. The plane, its nose swathed in the safety posters, trundles along behind it, gathering speed, up to the point, as Boushey said, “somewhat below that wherein the arm-bone would have been pulled out of the shoulder socket.” Letting go of the rope and pulling his arm back into the cockpit, he flicks the ignition on all twelve rockets at once. The plane leaps into the air with a roar, shooting high on a bridge of smoke. Then, as the rockets cut out, it plunges back down and slams into the runway, hard but safe. A bruised Boushey clambers a little more tentatively out of the cockpit than before. That would be all for now.

The first flight of an airplane powered solely by rockets had been brief, but it was a signal of things to come. That year the NAS not only renewed the grant to the rocketeers but increased it to $125,000. There would be no more Buck Rogers jokes. Boushey, for his part, went back to rejoin his squadron, where he could be heard shaking his head and muttering about “those birds who got me to fly an airplane without a prop.”

 

Amidst the chorus of celebration sounded a few dissonant notes. Ever since the military had stepped in as the Suicide Squad's main benefactor, levels of security had soared and a restrictive air of secrecy had overtaken the project. When Frank Malina wrote to his parents about the Ercoupe tests, he could only hint obliquely as to the rocketeers' work: “We have had success this week with our rocket project that exceeded even our highest expectation. Wish I could tell you more. We have had a taste of what we have been striving for the past three years.” The classified nature of their project raised even more pernicious problems. At an aerodynamics department party, Frank Malina was happily talking of the recent success that had transformed him from a graduate student with a harebrained idea to a serious pioneer in the field when he found himself confronted by Clark Millikan, his old bête noire. With undisguised glee, Millikan informed Malina that he had been told that Malina, Sidney Weinbaum, and two or three other members of the squad belonged to the Communist Party. The FBI had apparently provided Caltech with this information following their security checks into the rocketeers. Indeed, Parsons' name had come up, too, and he had been questioned by the FBI about the Communist group's activities. Being a member of the Communist Party was not illegal at the time, but considering the sensitive military work that the project had become involved in, it was not comforting news to Malina to hear that the FBI knew of it. If any of the rocketeers lost their security clearance, their ability to stay at the forefront of their field would be jeopardized.