Read Conquerors of the Sky Online
Authors: Thomas Fleming
Conquerors of the Sky (14 page)
Meanwhile, Adrian enjoyed Ponty's companionship. He combined aristocratic Italian good looks with a nonchalance that put men at easeâand if Beryl Suydam was a sampleâwomen found enchanting. His stories of flying in Africaâcrash-landing in the Nile, daring the downdrafts of Mt. Kilimanjaroâsoon had him on everyone's list for dinner parties and country weekends.
On one of these outings, Beryl asked Ponty if he would give her flying lessons. Adrian's sporadic instruction had taught her the basics of flight but she had yet to solo. Ponty was evasive about his “commitments” in Rome. That night he took Adrian aside and asked him if he approved the idea.
“Why not?” he said.
“Learning to fly disturbs the equilibrium of many men,” Ponty said. “I would be uneasy, if I were you, about its effect on a woman.”
Adrian dismissed this warning as offhandedly as he had ignored Geoffrey Tillotson's concern about Beryl's politics. She had moved into his Islington Mews flat. True, she was working for a left-wing publishing house that seemed to specialize in books praising the Soviet Union. She was violently critical of the Conservative government that was ruling England. But Adrian saw this as a continuation of his contest with the ghostly third and avoided arguments by claiming an American should be neutral in British politics.
Within the week, Adrian and Beryl were airborne with Ponty in a biplane called the Lucifer 3 Seater. To Adrian's chagrin, Ponty was soon pronouncing Beryl a born pilot. She had the indefinable instinct that blended human and machine in the air. Adrian on the other hand was constantly trying to think his way through the process. The result was safe but clumsy flying.
Adrian simply did not understand Ponty when he urged him to “let the plane tell you what to do.” The plane was an unthinking collection of struts and wood and metal that would kill him if it got a chance. Beryl had no such apprehension. She borrowed money from her father to buy a de Havilland Moth and was soon flying all over England, ferrying her authors to speaking engagements and participating in air shows, where she rapidly acquired a collection of prizes.
Adrian was not particularly troubled by Beryl's superiority in the airâuntil he began hearing more and more about a writer named Guy Petersham, who had been her late fiance's roommate at Cambridge. He had just published a book about his visit to Russia. She invited him to dinner one night, along with Ponty and one of the half-dozen young Englishwomen who had fallen in love with the prince. Petersham arrived wearing baggy unpressed trousers and a dirty Shetland sweater. Tall, languid, he was totally convinced of his own intellectual brilliance.
For an hour he lectured them on Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin as the prophets of the new age. “I begin to think the entire raison d'etre of the slaughter of the Great War has been the creation of the Soviet Union. The war was the birth pangs of a new world.”
“I've been led to believe America was the new world,” Adrian said.
“Dear fellow,” Petersham said. “You primitive capitalists are positively quaint.”
You are positively asinine, Adrian thought. But he repressed the words. He did not like the excitement in Beryl's eyes.
“Communism looks to me like another name for fascism,” Ponty said. “Both are disguises for the oldest form of government in the worldârule by the sword. I thought it was impossible for an Englishman to admire such a system.”
“My dear prince,” Petersham said. “You're a charming anachronism. If you stay around England long enough we may shoot and stuff you for some museum.”
“Guy wants me to go with him to the Soviet Union on his next trip,” Beryl
said. “He thinks we can get permission to fly all over the country bringing a message of friendship from the British people. Do you think I'm up to it, Ponty?”
said. “He thinks we can get permission to fly all over the country bringing a message of friendship from the British people. Do you think I'm up to it, Ponty?”
“If you fly in the summer, and they provide you with decent maps, yes,” Ponty said.
His grave eyes met Adrian's. Were they saying
I told you so?
After the guests departed, Beryl cleared the table while Adrian poured the last of the wine into a decanter. “You're not really serious about that trip, are you?” he said.
I told you so?
After the guests departed, Beryl cleared the table while Adrian poured the last of the wine into a decanter. “You're not really serious about that trip, are you?” he said.
“It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Adrian. A chance to see a part of the world I care about deeply. And perhaps set some records for overland flight.”
“It's not a part of the world I care about,” Adrian said.
“Perhaps you should. Perhaps you should at least let me explore it and find out if Guy is right about the Soviet Union being the only way to justify the war.”
The third, the large-hearted noble ghost was back. Now his voice was more threatening, more formidable. Beryl Suydam was no longer the wounded woman he had met at Ravenswood. She had acquired a sense of mastery in the air and was prepared to demonstrate it on the ground. But Adrian was no longer the fatherless son, confused by his devious powerful mother. He spoke with a man's voice.
“I'm afraid I take a dim view of your spending three months in a foreign country with another man to explore an idea that I consider absolute trash.”
“Maybe the trash is in your mind, Adrian. You talk about the plane as the symbol of our bright future. But what have you done with it here in England, with the help of your noble friend, Prince Carlo? Captured it for the ruling classes. Imperial Airways. Are you proud of helping to create that? The very name cries out exploitation.”
“The ruling classes have the money. Planes cost a great deal of money. For the time being the rich will be their chief users. But America will change that. Look at the motorcar. Only a few hundred thousand people own one in Europe. In America there are millions of them on the road. The plane will go the same way.”
“Bosh. You're lying to yourself. And to me.”
“I love you. I've never lied to you. I try not to lie to myself.”
Beryl began to weep. “I wish you'd taken me to America. Maybe this wouldn't be happening.”
“I wish you hadn't met Guy Petersham. He's stirred up all the socialist rot in the bottom of your mind.”
“Who told you that?”
“Never mind.”
“It was your beastly boss, Geoffrey Tillotson. That man's a perfect example of what's wrong with this country. My father knew him in school. He was a snob then. The epitome of the ruling class.”
“I disagree, totally,” Adrian said.
“I know what I'm talking about. You don't,” Beryl said.
Adrian felt like a man who had put his plane into a spin and failed to pull
out. Instead of telling Beryl that Geoffrey Tillotson was his father, revealing himself as half-English and asking her to marry him, he was finding Tillotson's name the instrument of separation, desolation, loss. He was an outsider again, the American wog.
out. Instead of telling Beryl that Geoffrey Tillotson was his father, revealing himself as half-English and asking her to marry him, he was finding Tillotson's name the instrument of separation, desolation, loss. He was an outsider again, the American wog.
“You're talking about a man IâI admire. Admire deeply. Can you appreciate that?” Adrian said.
“I'm afraid I can't appreciate any such thing,” Beryl said. “I'm afraid I can no longer appreciate anything you might have to say to me.”
She packed her suitcases and departed. Adrian was certain she would be living with Guy Petersham within a fortnight. For a while he thought of taking a de Havilland Moth up to two thousand feet and pointing its nose toward the earth for a final dive. Ponty tried to soothe his turmoil with worldly advice. “She was charming, beautiful, sensual. But she was not a suitable wife, Adrian. She doesn't have a penny.”
Ponty calmly explained the European view of the sexes. Next year he was going to marry Constance di Burgos, who would soon inherit huge swaths of southern France and Tuscany. She was a mousy woman with stringy hair and a will of iron. But her dowry made her an excellent wife. “The man who looks for love in marriage is naive,” Ponty said. “Love is impermanent. Wealthâespecially wealth in landâis what endures.”
Ponty urged Adrian to investigate land values in California and reconsider his marriage with Amanda Cadwallader. Two thousand acres of orange groves might be the foundation of a comfortable fortune. “But don't teach her to fly,” Ponty added with a grave smile.
One afternoon in the office a week later, Geoffrey Tillotson put his hand on Adrian's shoulder. “You're in the most awful funk, aren't you? Let's have a drink.”
This time they went to the Garrick, smaller, more intimate than the Athenaeum in its Greek cathedral on Pall Mall. “Thought you'd be interested in this,” he said and handed him a publicity release from de Havilland Aircraft. Beryl Suydam had just announced her plan to fly to Moscow in a DH Moth with Eric Petersham as her navigator.
“I knew her father at Cambridge,” Tillotson said. “We were deadly enemies from the first days. Primal antagonism seems to be the only answer. It may go back to the Wars of the Roses. Or the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. The Tillotsons were royalists to a man. At any rate, it's not your fault.”
Adrian said nothing. Tillotson sipped his sherry. “It's a blow, of course. But life is full of blows. Men carry on. Old Samuel Johnson probably put it bestââIt does a man no good to whine.'”
Tillotson ordered another sherry. “It's time you thought about going back to America. You have a wife there. You ought to decide what to do about her.”
Inwardly, Adrian bristled. Was Tillotson speaking as Clarissa's agent here? Or was he telling him it was time to accept another part of a man's task? Adrian's wound was too raw to think clearly about it. But he sensed pain, he saw
sympathy in Geoffrey Tillotson's hooded eyes. He felt a father's love.
sympathy in Geoffrey Tillotson's hooded eyes. He felt a father's love.
Tillotson began talking about their favorite topic, planes. With the formation of Imperial Airways, British commercial aviation was at a dead end. Imperial would buy only a few planes in the next decade. The other European airlines, secure in their state subsidies, would do no better. The sport-plane market was limited to the rich. The military market was hopeless. Grappling with massive unemployment, the British government had no money for weaponry of any sort. Parliament had actually forbidden the RAF to buy warplanes. There was only one place where the plane could multiply: America. He wanted Adrian to be there from the very beginning.
“You have an expression for it, from one of the generals in your Civil War. Get there first with the most?”
“I think it was firstest with the mostest. He was from Tennessee.”
“Ah, yes. At any rateâI'll send you the mostest. I'm sure you'll put it to good useâfor both of us.”
“I'll try.”
“Good-o.” He slapped Adrian's knee. “There'll be other women. No reason for more than the normal regrets.”
Adrian wanted to agree. But in his mind Beryl Suydam flew into a vast icy steppe of bitterness. Never again would Adrian think of the plane as a mystical machine that blended love and optimism into a future aglow with happiness. But he retained a wary faith in its ability to make him a man of substance.
In the cockpit of his World War I Jenny, Frank Buchanan climbed into an overcast California sky that was a mirror of his mood. The year 1926 was drawing to a dismal close. He was still a movie stunt flyer, part of Buzz McCall's circus, crashing planes instead of building them. Admiral Richard Byrd had just flown over the North Pole. Americans applauded but they remained more interested in cars, bathtub gin, and the ever-rising stock market.
Frank was on his way to San Diego to see an Arizona rancher who might be interested in backing an aircraft company. Buzz was to join him if the man talked real money. Five thousand feet above Orange County the Jenny's motor sputtered and quit. Once, twice, three times, he tried to restart the ancient engine, while the crate began losing altitude. Below him he could see nothing but miles of orange groves and the winding Santa Ana River. He chose the river as preferable to a collision with an orange tree at forty miles an hour.
Keeping his nose up, he pancaked in the center of the river. Unfortunately, the Santa Ana was one of those California rivers Mark Twain said he fell into
and came out dusty. The Jenny's wheels dug into the mud and the plane flipped. The impact simultaneously snapped Frank's safety belt and his forehead smashed against the windshield, knocking him cold.
and came out dusty. The Jenny's wheels dug into the mud and the plane flipped. The impact simultaneously snapped Frank's safety belt and his forehead smashed against the windshield, knocking him cold.
The next thing he heard was a voice saying: “Put him down here.”
Two solemn Mexicans deposited him on the grass. He was drenched in muddy water. Otherwise his situation was totally unreal. The air was thick with the scent of orange blossoms. A young woman with the kindest, saddest eyes he had ever seen was bending over him. Her auburn hair fell in thick ringlets down both sides of her rather long, narrow face. She was wearing a dark green riding outfit with a derby and a slit skirt.
“Are you badly hurt?” she asked.
“I may be dead. I can't think of any other reason for this heavenly vision.”
She blushed. “I was riding along the riverbank and saw you crash. I'm Amanda Van Ness.”
“Frank Buchanan.”
When he tried to stand up, Frank discovered he had also bashed his knee against the instrument panel. The Mexicans helped him to Amanda's horse and she led him like a wounded knight down a broad green swath through the orange groves to Casa Felicidad, a turreted Victorian house made of white sandstone. A blond, impatient young man, who turned out to be Amanda's older brother, Gordon Cadwallader, called a doctor with a German accent who diagnosed a slight concussion and a badly bruised but not otherwise damaged knee.
For a week Frank recuperated between clean sheets, on a mattress stuffed with feathers. When he was not sketching planes, he talked with Amanda Van Ness. He soon learned she was separated from her husband, who lived in New York. Gradually, Frank picked up other details that explained the sadness in her eyesâher father's death in the war, her mother's breakdown. Her mother was confined to a sanatorium run by the German doctor. Her brother ran the family's orange grovesâand Amanda. She intimated that she hated him and was often lonely.
She was different from Sammy, from the other women Frank had met and occasionally bedded. Her willowy body was not immediately erotic. She seemed barely conscious of her sexual identity. But beneath her sadness was an idealism Frank had never encountered before.
Brooding on her father's death, Amanda had become profoundly interested in world peace. She corresponded with peace advocates around the United States and the world. She was surprised and pleased to discover that Frank shared her detestation of war. “My brother says that proves I'm a fool,” she said.
“When it comes to war, most people are fools,” Frank said.
She wanted to found a peace colony at Casa Felicidad and import famous philosophers and religious thinkers to hold seminars on the folly of war. She read the numerous books that were appearing, ridiculing the idea that the World War was a crusade for democracy. She could recite statistics proving the arms
and munitions makers had gotten rich on the blood of the soldiers on both sides.
and munitions makers had gotten rich on the blood of the soldiers on both sides.
Frank Buchanan agreed with everything she said. “We have a lot in common. Everyone thinks I'm a fool too. I design planes that will never fly.”
“Show me some of them.”
He took out some of his sketches. Amanda instantly grasped the thrust of Frank's visionâtoward simplicity, clean lines, a stark modern beauty. Although she knew nothing about aerodynamics, her enthusiasm stirred Frank enormously.
“These planes are going to fly,” Amanda said. “I can see them flying now in my mind.”
“I'm afraid that's the only place they'll fly,” Frank said. “I have no money.”
“I'll get you money,” Amanda said. “My brother is always looking for businesses to invest in. He hates growing oranges.”
Alas, Gordon Cadwallader declined to entrust his money to a wandering movie stunt flier with no track record in the business side of the aircraft world. At the end of the week, Amanda had to confess she had failed to persuade her brother to risk a cent on Frank's planes.
They were sitting on Casa Felicidad's side porch, breathing air fragrant with orange blossoms. The flowering trees sighed in the warm wind. “I can't tell you how much I appreciate yourâyour concern,” Frank said.
For a thunderous moment, Frank realized he could have said “love.” He sensed Amanda Van Ness loved him in a lost despairing way that she could not admit. “Can I see you again?” Frank said.
“There's no point to it,” Amanda said. “IâI can only wish you wellâ”
Her brother Gordon stamped up the steps to announce the Mexican orange pickers had hauled Frank's plane out of the river and deposited the sodden wreck on the back lawn. Frank had apparently recovered from his injuries. Would he come upstairs for a final examination by the doctor?
In the bedroom, the examination consisted of flexing his knee. “My bill is five hundred dollars. Can you pay me before you go?” the doctor said in his heavy German accent.
“No,” Frank said.
“We may have to confiscate the plane and sell it for junk,” Gordon Cadwallader said. “Unless you can repair it and fly yourself out of here in the next two days. In that case, I'll take care of the doctor's bill.”
“You can't get rid of me that easily. I'm in love with Amanda. I think she's in love with me.”
“I know she is. But I advise youâI urge youâto forget it.”
Gordon let the doctor explain it. “Amanda has to lead a quiet life. Nervous disorders are rampant in her mother's family. Bad genes. She came very close to breaking down when she returned from England.”
“I don't see what harm an occasional visit can do.”
“If you had a steady job, there might be some point to it,” Gordon said.
Frank put his Jenny back together with some help from the orange pickers, one of whom drove the Cadwallader truck and was a pretty good mechanic. While Amanda watched mournfully, the truck towed the Jenny to an open field and Frank took off. He swooped low over the house and released a stream of fluttering paperâwatercolors of some of his planes, which he had stayed up half the night completing.
Frank flew to Clover Field in Santa Monica and telephoned Buzz McCall to tell him he was through with stunt flying. He hitched a ride to an abandoned film studio where a man named Donald Douglas was building planes. He showed the bluff, florid-faced Scotsman his sketchbook. Douglas snorted and shoved it aside. “Not a damn one of them will ever fly,” he said. “But we could use some fresh ideas. We're building float planes for the Navy and having a hell of a time with the wings. If we make them too thick, the plane has too much drag. If we go for thinness, we can't put bombs on them.”
Frank came back in a day with a wing that was a foot longer and half the weight of the one Douglas had been using. By redistributing the center of gravity, it could handle 250-pound bombs with no problems. Douglas put him on the payroll at twenty dollars a week. He himself was only taking home twenty-two dollars.
Frank's ability to design wings spread through California's small aviation community. In San Diego, a man named Claude Ryan was putting together a monoplane rugged enough to carry the U.S. mail. He borrowed Frank to solve another weight problem. Ryan was easier to work for than the gruff, dictatorial Douglas, but Ryan's idea of a plane made Frank recoil. It was all squares and rectangles, like a packing case with wings. Nevertheless, a Buchanan-redesigned wing won Ryan a contract to build mail planes.
A few months later, in the spring of 1927, Frank got another call from Ryan Aircraft. The company had been taken over by a young man named Mahoney and they needed help on another wing. Frank cranked up his Jenny and flew to San Diego, where the plane maker introduced him to an exâmail pilot named Charles A. Lindbergh. He was as slim and boyish as the night they parted on the Yellowstone five years ago. “Lindy's going for the New York to Paris prize. He wants to use one of our planes but he's got some load problems,” Mahoney said.
When they were alone, Lindbergh told Frank he was far from happy with the Ryan plane but it was the best he could get for the ten thousand dollars his backers in St. Louis were ready to risk. Anyway, Lindbergh pointed out in his practical Swedish way, the prize was only 25,000 dollars and it made no sense to spend it all on the plane. When Lindbergh revealed he planned to carry an extra 300 gallons of gas in special cockpit tanks, raising his total weight to 5,200 pounds, Frank urged him to forget the whole idea. Four men had already died trying to cross the Atlantic.
Lindbergh calmly convinced Frank he knew what he was doing. He was betting on the reliability of the air-cooled radial motors that had replaced the water-cooled engines of the World War. The rest was fuel management and
navigation, which he planned to handle himself, saving the weight of a navigator.
navigation, which he planned to handle himself, saving the weight of a navigator.
Frank went to work and in a week of concentrated effort redesigned the wing for the N-X-211, as it was called in the Ryan factory before Lindy christened it the
Spirit of St. Louis.
He created a series of interior metal angles, easily formed on ordinary shop tools, that solved Lindbergh's lift problem with several hundred pounds to spare. Lindbergh was at his elbow constantly, asking questions, making suggestions, checking Frank's computation of the plane's ratio of lift to drag, the crucial factor in every design. Lindy had obviously learned a lot about planes since his stunt-flying days.
Spirit of St. Louis.
He created a series of interior metal angles, easily formed on ordinary shop tools, that solved Lindbergh's lift problem with several hundred pounds to spare. Lindbergh was at his elbow constantly, asking questions, making suggestions, checking Frank's computation of the plane's ratio of lift to drag, the crucial factor in every design. Lindy had obviously learned a lot about planes since his stunt-flying days.
At the end of April 1927, they rolled the completed plane out of the hangar and Lindbergh took it up for her first flight. She performed well in spite of her ugly shape, bounding from the runway in 165 feet. Frank stayed for the more important load tests at San Diego's Dutch Flats airport. Lindbergh cautiously added fifty gallons of fuel for each test, until they reached the maximum load of 300 gallons. This time it took the
Spirit of St. Louis
1,026 feet to get off the ground, but the wing did the job. Frank wished Lindy luck and headed back to Los Angeles to resume his toils for Donald Douglas.
Spirit of St. Louis
1,026 feet to get off the ground, but the wing did the job. Frank wished Lindy luck and headed back to Los Angeles to resume his toils for Donald Douglas.
The next day he landed in the grassy field behind the Cadwallader orange groves. He had become a regular weekend visitor, ignoring scowls from brother Gordon. Amanda welcomed him eagerly. “You look tired,” she said as they drank iced tea on the porch.
“I didn't get much sleep this week,” Frank said. “I had to design a new wing for a fellow named Lindbergh who's going to fly the Atlantic.”
“Can he do it?” Amanda asked.
“I wouldn't be surprised,” Frank said. “He's got it figured out to the last ounce of gas and pound of lift.”
“If he succeeds, maybe you could take some of the credit and raise enough money to start your own company.”
This had never occurred to Frank. Neither he nor anyone else in California considered Lindbergh's projected flight a significant event. Pilots were setting long-distance records all the time. Lieutenant Jimmy Doolittle had flown across the country in a single day in 1922. Two army planes had flown around the world in 1924. Two other army fliers were planning a flight from Oakland to Honolulu sometime in June.
“Look at this.” Gordon Cadwallader strode onto the porch and threw a copy of the
Los Angeles Times
on the tea table. A streamer headline announced Lindbergh was halfway across the Atlantic and had an excellent chance of reaching Paris. Amanda read the story and gasped: “He's flying alone?”
Los Angeles Times
on the tea table. A streamer headline announced Lindbergh was halfway across the Atlantic and had an excellent chance of reaching Paris. Amanda read the story and gasped: “He's flying alone?”
Reading over her shoulder, Frank nodded: “All he has to do is keep himself awake.”
“Now I know you can raise the money,” Amanda said.
She told her brother that Frank had designed the Spirit of St. Louis's wing. Gordon Cadwallader sat down and struggled to put a friendly expression on his usually sour face. “I've been studying the stocks of plane companies,” Gordon
said. “Compared to the rest of the market, they're all incredibly low. If someone like Lindbergh changed the way people think about planes, they could become the hottest investment in sight. If you agree to share the management with good businessmen, maybe we could start a company.”
said. “Compared to the rest of the market, they're all incredibly low. If someone like Lindbergh changed the way people think about planes, they could become the hottest investment in sight. If you agree to share the management with good businessmen, maybe we could start a company.”
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