Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (2 page)

As the Lockheed ground crew busied itself, Shannon took Rodriquez aside.

“Don’t get the wrong impression. These guys are professionals, the best in the field, and they’ve worked together a long time. Kelly has a lot at stake in this airplane, and he absolutely cannot afford to have something go wrong. I’m surprised at his advice—I think Tony is right; he’ll need to land it like a conventional aircraft. But Kelly is a design genius, and maybe he knows something we pilots don’t know.”

Rodriquez nodded toward the airplane, saying, “That thing looks like they took an F-104 fuselage and bolted glider wings to it.”

“Looks like it. But let me tell you the real story—it’s a knockout.”

The clouds were still drifting over the field, freighted with rain and threatening to postpone the first flight for another day. Moving over to his maroon Cadillac Coupe de Ville, Shannon began his story, “By all conventional standards, that airplane should not be there. Kelly had been trying to sell the Air Force on the idea of a long-range reconnaissance plane for a couple of years, but the real impetus came from the Central Intelligence Agency. Now that Russia has the hydrogen bomb, and is building big bombers and maybe even intercontinental missiles, they have to get some hard information. It isn’t coming from anywhere else—Soviet security is virtually airtight.”

Shannon pulled out a briefcase that contained two thermos bottles. “Water or coffee, or both?”

Rodriquez opted for coffee and said quietly, “Don’t stop now.”

Shannon resumed, “The Air Force gave a contract to Bell Aircraft for twenty-eight planes, X-16s, they called them. Two engines, long, thin wing, somewhat the same formula as the Angel here, but bigger and heavier.”

“Didn’t that freeze Lockheed out?”

“It should have, and would have anybody else but Kelly. It didn’t faze him a bit. He went to the Pentagon, sold his idea to some big wheels including Trevor Gardner and General Don Putt, and they went right to the secretary of the Air Force, a nice guy named Harold Talbott. Kelly Johnson promised to furnish twenty planes for twenty-two million, and to fly the first plane in eight months.”

“Jesus, nobody could buy that.”

“Well, that’s what Secretary Talbott thought. He said, ‘How do we know you can deliver?’ And General Putt says, ‘He’s already proved it three times on previous projects’—meaning the XP-80, the P-80A, and the F-104. That did it! Talbott agreed to give Lockheed the contract.”

“What about the Bell contract?” Rodriquez, almost compulsively straightforward, didn’t like what he was hearing.

“They canceled it, and it is sinking Bell; it may put them out of the fixed-wing business. That’s why Kelly is so fired up. His name, his reputation, maybe even his ass is on the line with this airplane. If this doesn’t work, he won’t be able to peddle apples in the Pentagon courtyard.”

There was activity over by the Angel. Tony LeVier, wearing his customary immaculate flight suit, was in the cockpit, with Kelly uneasily leaning from a maintenance stand, still talking a mile a minute.

Three days before, LeVier was making some taxi tests when a wind gust forced the Angel into an inadvertent takeoff. It flew for half a mile with the throttle at idle, then bounced heavily into the ground and spun around, blowing both main tires and setting the brakes on fire. For a breathless moment it seemed that the Angel might go up in flames, but the fire trucks, Johnny-on-the-spot, quickly suppressed the fire.

Remarkably enough, the damage was slight and easily repaired, but the incident made Johnson nervous and put LeVier under the gun. Both men had to prove themselves today.

Despite the lowering clouds and the prospects of a thunderstorm, LeVier applied power at five minutes to four and the Angel shot down the runway into a threatening sky. Climbing out steeply, to keep the airspeed below the gear retraction limits, LeVier called, “It flies like a baby buggy,” to Bob Mayte, the pilot of the T-33 chase plane. Johnson was airborne right behind him, flying chase in a C-47.

LeVier climbed to 12,500 feet and went through a series of gentle basic maneuvers, easing the Angel around the sky with kid gloves. The aircraft handled conventionally enough and LeVier cycled the landing gear and the flaps, then made a few entries to the stall. After about forty minutes he set up an approach for landing, determined, despite his gut feel, to land the aircraft on its main gear, just as Kelly had demanded.

Lining up on final approach, LeVier closed the throttle and checked with the chase plane to confirm that his gear was down. He slipped in twenty degrees of flaps, but the airplane was so low-drag that it kept on flying as if nothing had happened. Shrugging his shoulders, LeVier extended the fuselage speed brakes, and the nose dropped slightly enough to force him to apply a little back pressure to maintain the correct airspeed.

LeVier brought it in over the end of the runway and greased it in at about seventy knots, touching down on the main wheels, just as Kelly ordered. The aircraft immediately began to bounce down the runway in great leaps that both LeVier and Kelly knew would be fatal if sustained. LeVier advanced power, and the Angel leaped skyward, its high power-to-weight ratio sending it up so fast that it seemed sure to stall. LeVier brought it around for another approach, listening to a constant stream of advice from an agitated Kelly Johnson.

Rodriquez nudged Shannon in the ribs with his elbow, saying, “Look, he’s trying the main gear again.”

Once again LeVier put the Angel down perfectly on the main gear, and once again the Angel bounded back in the air, forcing LeVier to make another circuit.

Inside the cramped cockpit, LeVier checked the setting sun and the thunderstorm-ringed horizon and knew he had to get the airplane on the ground on this attempt. He contemplated making a wheels-up landing but decided against it. The absolute requirement for saving weight had left the Angel with a frail structure, and a wheels-up landing would probably destroy it.

Murmuring to himself, “OK Kelly, this time we’ll do it my way,” he set up the third approach. He came down finally at ninety knots, then bled the speed off, raising the Angel’s nose just above the horizon and looking at some buildings far down the runway to keep his depth perception accurate.

Crossing the runway threshold at seventy-five knots, he kept flying the airplane until he touched down, main gear and tail wheel simultaneously, at about sixty-five knots. On each side, cars bearing men with steady hands raced out to meet him, one man on each side ready to insert the outrigger gears into the wingtip. LeVier shut the engine down, popped his canopy, and began formulating the “I told you sos” for Johnson.

Shannon and Rodriquez watched with amusement as LeVier began jawing at Kelly as soon as he arrived. They were too far away to hear, but they knew the subject was how to land the Angel.

As they watched the two men, alternately shaking hands and shaking fists at each other, laughing and walking around, their arms around each other’s shoulders, obviously delighted with themselves, with the Angel, with everything, Rodriquez asked, “Do you think it can do what it’s supposed to do?”

“You mean fly unescorted over Russia and take photographs?”

“Yes—and, more important, bring them back.”

“Sure, at least for a couple of years. It will take the Russians time to get an interceptor that can climb to where this baby will fly—it has to be designed for over sixty thousand feet, don’t you think?” Shannon had been heavily involved in the tricky cockpit layout of the Angel, but secrecy was so tight that he was still unaware of the aircraft’s potential performance. Kelly ruled with an iron hand, and if there was something you didn’t need to know, he made sure that you didn’t know it.

“Yes, and it may be that they won’t be able to track it on their radar at that height. The cameras they are planning to use are fantastic—maybe they will let us see just how far ahead of us those blasted Commies are.”

The thunderstorms had finally reached Groom Lake, and they bolted into Shannon’s car just as the deluge hit. Rodriquez, a car guy, paused to run his hand over the subdued fins of the Cadillac. As he slid behind the wheel, Shannon asked, “Bob, what do you think we just witnessed?”

“Vance, it’s a new era in reconnaissance, that’s for sure, if the blasted thing holds together in turbulent weather. It’s built very lightly and it is going to be very demanding on the pilots. But more than anything else it’s just a first step in the right direction.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, if this works, there’ll have to be a follow-on airplane in a few years, depending upon how the Soviets react. Lockheed won’t be able to refine this design much—it seems to be at the absolute limits in terms of structure. And it’s not going to be nearly fast enough. So I suspect Kelly and the boys already have some drawings of something a lot bigger, stronger, faster, and maybe harder to see.”

Vance listened approvingly. “You mean like camouflage?”

“In a way, but far more refined than just using paint schemes. They tried a lighting system during the war that would make a plane invisible, and it worked, too, under precise conditions. But it didn’t work for radar, of course. That’s the big thing. The Germans were way ahead on that. They were using radar-absorbent material on their periscopes and snorkels, and they had one airplane that flew, the Gotha Go 229, that would have been virtually invisible to radar.”

Shannon knew all about the Go 229, had even supervised the packing of its prototype, a Horten design, for its return to the United States. He commented, “The Mosquito was almost invisible to the Germans.”

“Yes, for a while, but it still had the propellers and the big Merlin engines up front. Why couldn’t Lockheed make an airplane that was covered with radar-absorbent material? For that matter, why couldn’t you use radar-absorbent material for some of the structure, say the skin?”

Rodriquez was getting wound up; he dove into his briefcase and brought out a drawing pad and began making sketches. “They could shape it to deflect signals, just like they shape armor on ships or tanks to deflect shells. They could—”

Vance tapped him on the shoulder. “Slow down, Bob, one airplane at a time. We’ve had ours for today, the Angel. Say, are you a drinker? And can you arm wrestle?”

Rodriquez looked blankly at him. “I don’t drink much, a beer once in a while. And I guess I can arm wrestle, depends upon who it is.”

“Well, tonight plan on doing a lot of both. Kelly always throws a big shindig after a successful flight like this, and he’ll take it amiss if you don’t keep up with him—or try to. And don’t feel bad if he beats you arm wrestling—he will; he wins every time; nobody ever beats him.”

CHAPTER TWO

December 18, 1955

Palos Verdes, California

T
he sons almost never disagreed with their father, not so much out of filial respect but rather because Vance Shannon was usually correct in his arguments. This was different, however. Six months before, the elder Shannon had promoted a relatively new man, Bob Rodriquez, to be a partner in the firm. Six days before, Vance Shannon had finally told his sons about it. Tom and Harry were furious, as much at the delay in learning about something so important as the fact that Vance had not consulted them about it in the first place. Too angry to discuss it at the time, they knew instinctively that they needed time to cool off and arranged today’s meeting to discuss it. Not that they were any cooler today.

Tom, the more volatile of the twins, waved his arms around as he paced the polished Mexican tile floor of their dad’s library/home office.

“It just doesn’t make sense, Harry! Bob’s a good guy, but what does he bring to the party?” The question was rhetorical. In these sessions, Tom did most of the talking, while the more reflective Harry listened and thought before responding.

The twins were thirty-seven years old and had oddly varied but equally successful flying careers. Tom had graduated from Annapolis, become an ace flying Wildcats early in World War II, then volunteered for test work, flying captured enemy fighters at Eglin Army Air Field. Harry was a West Pointer whose Air Corps career had taken him immediately into flight test work—having Vance Shannon for a father was a big help—and then into heavy bombers. Both men saw service in the Korean War, with Tom, having transferred to the Air Force, adding to his score while flying F-86 Sabres in MiG Alley. For family reasons, both men had resigned from promising careers in the Air Force. They regretted it and they missed flying high-performance aircraft, but it was a sad necessity for both of them. Both stayed in the Air Force Reserve, but it was not the same.

“It beats me, Tom. He’s never done anything like this before.”

“Bullshit! What about Madeline and all the problems she caused? It was the same goddamn thing; he rammed her down our throats just like he’s ramming Gonzalez, Rodriguez, whatever his wetback name is.”

Harry shook his head. It was true that their marital careers were not as successful as their martial careers, but it wasn’t entirely Madeline’s fault. In 1947, Madeline Behar, their father’s mistress, had arranged a party for them. As a friendly joke she had fixed them up with another set of twins, the Capestro sisters, Marie and Anna, as blind dates. Madeline’s joke backfired when Tom and Marie fell immediately in love, as did Harry and Anna. Madeline masterminded a wonderful wedding for the two sets of twins, and that was the beginning of the end of the happy part of the story. Within a few months, both marriages began to unravel. Marie had serious mental problems manifested in her increasingly fanatical devotion to her Catholic religion, and her marriage to Tom, never consummated, was annulled. Anna tended in the opposite direction, drinking heavily and giving ample reason for Harry to suspect that she might not be faithful. Both men felt they had contributed to the problem by being away on duty so much. There was no help for Marie, but Anna was gradually brought around to a functioning state through Alcoholics Anonymous—and Harry’s persistent, dutiful care.