Roaring Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age by Boyne Walter J

Author:Boyne, Walter J. [Boyne, Walter J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780765347466
Google: tWkxmQEACAAJ
Amazon: B003DYGOF0
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2007-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

• THE PASSING SCENE •

The Last Days of Hitler published; Gandhi assassinated; Princess Elizabeth marries Duke of Edinburgh; Communists take over Czechoslovakia; Israel comes into existence; Soviet Union blockades Berlin.

CHAPTER EIGHT

January 10, 1948, Inglewood, California

The only reason Vance hated to work on Saturdays was because it distressed Madeline, who liked him to be at home, doing the endless puttering required of their new house in the Malaga Cove section of Palos Verdes. She was amazingly inconsistent, behaving exactly like a wife in every way but the second-most fundamental: she would not get married. She stoutly refused to have her name on the mortgage papers, as if it were some sort of American stigma to be formally designated as a home owner. Vance had long since given up trying to understand her, knowing that he was lucky to have her and hoping to hold on to her for a few years more.

Normally he wouldn’t have gone in, but the problems with the North American XP-86 were severe and the first two orders for P-86As were due to start being delivered to the eager young pilots in the Air Force during the summer. The biggest trouble was the General Electric J47 engine, which was not putting out its required thrust and was failing at faster intervals than specified. Then the three-thousand-pound-per-square-inch hydraulic system was giving trouble—the nose gear would just fold up on the ramp without any warning, and there were also problems with the aileron system. Vance knew he was getting old because he distrusted a powered aileron instinctively, even as a backup, although intellectually he knew it was the only solution at jet aircraft speeds.

He had done his bit for the XP-86 three years before, sending word from Germany to use a thirty-five-degree swept wing. North American had acted on his input and changed the fairly sedate straight wing design they were working on into a tiger of an airplane. Then he had kept his hand in from time to time on special projects after its first flight on October 1, 1947, with George “Wheaties” Welch at the controls.

Welch, who had gotten a Curtiss P-40 off the ground when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, was rumored to have taken the XP-86 supersonic soon after the first flight. The story was that the Air Force suppressed the news because it wanted the honor of breaking the sound barrier to go to its expensive new experimental rocket plane, the Bell XS-1. Chuck Yeager had duly exceeded Mach 1 on October 14, and although the flight was classified, industry insiders were aware of it. Welch, a good and trusted friend, never told Shannon personally that he broke the sound barrier, so Shannon was inclined to discount the rumors.

Now Dutch Kindelberger, North American’s president, impatient with the progress at General Electric, had tasked him and a special so-called tiger team to come up with a solution to the engine problems. He excused himself with the task of increasing the thrust—he felt this would be solved with the later version of the engine that was due off the production line shortly.

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