Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age) by Walter J. Boyne

Author:Walter J. Boyne
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2006-12-26T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

August 1, 1964

Wichita, Kansas

Tom Shannon had missed the party the night before, and from the debris around the pool—empty glasses, tattered napkins, the top of a woman’s swimming suit—it looked like it had been a good one to miss. He walked through the lobby of the Diamond Inn to take a short morning walk and pulled up short. At the top of the motel’s flagpole was a pair of men’s white underwear, huge shorts that must have been at least an Extra Large. On the shorts was painted, in red letters, “FAA CERTIFICATION.”

Shannon turned around and headed back into the restaurant—there were a few Lear employees there and he had to get the story behind the shorts on the flagpole. To his amazement, Bill Lear himself was there, eating an enormous breakfast. As Tom came in, Lear stood up, yelling, “Get over here, Tom; you missed the damnedest party of your lifetime! You know the FAA certified the Learjet yesterday, ten months after the first flight!”

“I saw the news on the flagpole outside.”

Lear laughed again. “Yeah, I was skinny-dipping and some smart-ass stole my shorts. I’m going to leave them up there as long as the motel lets me. You know Aero Commander is months away from certifying their jet; this was a big deal, worth lots more than a pair of shorts!”

Tom sat down and ordered as Lear boomed out greetings to each of his employees as they began filtering in for breakfast, many of them looking the worse for wear.

“Goddammit, Tom, you’d never believe it, but a crash saved us! We’d never have made it if the FAA test pilot hadn’t fucked up and crashed old number one on takeoff!”

The month before, the FAA pilot, Don Keubler, and the Learjet test pilot, Jim Kirkpatrick, had been testing the Learjet’s single-engine performance. After one landing, Keubler forgot to retract the wing spoilers. He took off but couldn’t control it and crash-landed in a field off the end of the runway. He did a good job of setting it down, and he and Kirkpatrick evacuated the airplane without any problem. But the landing had broken some fuel lines, and the prototype Learjet burst into flames.

“That goddamn insurance money for the prototype was the only thing that kept us in business, Tom; we were flat on our ass; we’d never have been able to get this airplane certified without the dough we got for it. I’m going to build that into future test programs; we’re going to crash and burn one every once in a while, just for cash flow.”

Tom laughed with him—Lear had every right to be cocky, to be on top of the world. The FAA had no rules for certifying a small jet weighing less than 12,500 pounds, and so Bill Lear had to fight the agency every step of the way, proving his point time after time.

“You outfoxed the FAA! Good for you!”

“They just got exhausted and gave in.”

“Well, just seeing the airplane at the Reading Air Show should have been enough.

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