INGRID DOWS - AN ALTERNATE STORY PART 2 - THE JET AGE by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

Hughes Aircraft prototype shop hangar

Glendale Grand Central Airport, Los Angeles

Having gone first to the the Hancock Park mansion which had belonged to Howard Hughes, Senior Special Agent in Charge George Manning had been told there that Ingrid Dows was conducting some aircraft test-flying at the Glendale Grand Central Airport, so had then went there in his chauffeured FBI car. Now, he was waiting by the side of the hangar belonging to the Hughes Aircraft Company for the return of Ingrid Dows in her prototype. Not knowing what kind of prototype it was, Manning was surprised by the level of engine power he soon heard approaching from the East.

Craning his neck to look up at the sky, he suddenly spotted what had to be the strangest looking aircraft he had ever seen. From a distance of a few miles, he could see what looked a bit like a squarish flying pancake with four propellers sticking out of each of its corner.

‘’What the hel is that thing?’’ he asked to himself. The head of Dows’ security force, a tall and muscular woman named Angie Dickinson, answered him then.

‘’That, sir, is the prototype of the Hughes Verti-Wing 100 VSTOL transport aircraft.’

‘’VSTOL?’

‘’Yes! VSTOL means vertical and short takeoff and landing, in essence an aircraft that can perform like a helicopter when taking off and landing. You and your

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driver should either remove your hats or hold on to them, sir: the downwash from the Verti-Wing’s rotors is quite fierce when landing at the vertical.’’

‘’Oh? Alright! JEFF, HOLD ON TO YOUR HAT WHEN THAT PLANE WILL

LAND.’

As the prototype approached the hangar’s tarmac, the noise from its four engines and contra-rotating propellers became quite loud, prompting a question from Manning to Dickinson.

‘’How much power do these engines have, Miss Dickinson?’’

‘’The four Al ison T-700 turboshaft engines each have a rating of 7,000 shaft horsepower at maximum continuous power and can produce up to 7,800 shaft horsepower at maximum intermittent power for a maximum 30 minutes.’’

Manning eyes nearly bulged on hearing those numbers.

‘’Jesus! Why so much power?’’

‘’It takes a lot of power to safely lift at the vertical up to fifty tons, Mister Manning.

On the other hand, that amount of power, allied with the low drag design of our Verti-Wing 100, has made it able to attain top speeds of 550 miles per hour, as fast as our first jet fighters in American service. With a fuel capacity sufficient to give it a range of about 4,000 miles, the Verti-Wing 100 would be able to fly across the Atlantic from New York, without needing a refueling stop, arriving in Paris after less than seven hours of flight and landing there at the vertical.’

Manning was left so stunned by those words that he nearly forgot to hold on to his hat as the prototype started pivoting its four shrouded propellers to the vertical, slowing down for a vertical landing. The rotor downwash soon became quite strong, forcing the two FBI men to bend a bit forward to resist the gale-force wind now sweeping the tarmac as the Verti-Wing 100 landed smoothly at the vertical, its pilots apparently in full control of their machine. Despite its bizarre configuration, Manning had to recognize that its futuristic design had some attractiveness to it. It also was a very compact design for its size and would most probably be able to land and fit on a simple supermarket car parking lot. As the engines were powered down to idle and were then cut off, he was able to be heard again by the tall security officer.

‘’What wil be the main role of this prototype, Miss Dickinson? I suppose that the Air Force would be most interested in it.’

Somehow, that made Angie Dickinson scoff.

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‘’President Truman would have to be kicked out of the White House first for the Air Force to have any hope of getting new budgets which would allow it to acquire new aircraft, Mister Manning. All the girls now working for Air Fifinella and under my security group were forced out of the Air Force despite their shiny service records, all that because of the insane, irresponsible cuts to military budgets ordered by Truman and his ass-licking Secretary of Defense. Right now, Ingrid Dows’ sight is firmly fixed on the civilian continental airliner market. Too few Americans can afford air travel right now, while they have to endure long hours of travel at around half the top speed of our prototype. Our goal is to make commercial air travel affordable and practical for the average American, and not only for the rich businessmen, celebrities and politicians.

The Verti-Wing 100 should be able to realize that dream.’

Manning eyed Angie Dickinson in a new light then: that woman was a lot more than a simple security officer.

‘’You keep saying ‘our prototype’, ‘our goal’, why? Do you have shares in the Hughes Aircraft Company?’’

Angie then looked at him with something akin to faith.

‘’All of us from the Fifinel as share Ingrid Dows’ dreams about the future of aviation in the United States, Mister Manning. Think of us as a big family of war-hardened sisters, if you may.’

Her last words made Manning glance at one of the female security guards posted around the prototype workshop. Apart from being tall and apparently strong for a woman, she wore a sort of molded, leather-covered cuirass and a futuristic-looking helmet and was armed with a carbine, a revolver and a baton-like flashlight. A cargo pocket hooked to her cuirassed contained a small radio, which was connected to her helmet by a thin wire, while a kind of binoculars was hooked to the front of her helmet and was presently folded up above a front lamp. There were also a number of cargo pockets containing spare magazines, a pair of handcuffs and other undefined equipment. Members of the FBI Response Team would probably love to have such equipment.

Returning his attention to the prototype, whose propellers have nearly stopped spinning by now, Manning saw two women wearing pilot outfits exit the plane via a lowered staircase side. He then walked to meet the two women halfway. Recognizing

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Ingrid Dows from the recent media photos of her, Manning shook hands with her while showing her his FBI badge.

‘’Miss Dows, I am Senior Special Agent in Charge George Manning, head of the Los Angeles section of the FBI. I am in charge of the dossier concerning the attempted assassinations against you and I have fresh news to pass on to you on that subject.’

Ingrid nodded her head, then looked at her copilot, whom Manning belatedly recognized as being the famous actress, Katharine Hepburn.

‘’You may return to the workshop now, Katharine. I will stay here to speak with Senior Special Agent Manning.’

With Hepburn walking away, leaving Manning alone on the tarmac with Ingrid, the latter gave the FBI man a slight smile.

‘’We are now alone, with no indiscrete ears close by, Mister Manning. What news are you bringing me today?’’

‘’Good news, mostly. We got a recent break that allowed us to further dismantle the Soviet espionage network around Los Angeles and the rest of California. The Soviet consulate in San Francisco has been ordered to shut down because it was found to be involved in the attempts against you, while we are actively hunting down and arresting the Soviet clandestine agents we unmasked. At the national level, I can tell you that the Soviet ambassador to Washington has been called on the carpet and severely reprimanded and warned about the illegal activities of his country inside the United States. While I can’t promise that the Soviets will stop trying to kill you, their chances of doing so are now highly diminished.’’

‘’Those are definitely good news, Mister Manning. I am presently very busy with various aviation projects and I real y can’t afford to hide away from Soviet assassins.

Will I need to testify against the Soviet agent I shot at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital when he wil go on trial?’’

‘’There wil be no need for that, Miss Dows: that man, who is now crippled for life, has confessed and will soon be sentenced by a judge, then will be stashed away for his own protection. We suspect that Stalin will now want that man dead, to prevent him from giving us information.’

‘’That would certainly be in Stalin’s style, Mister Manning. Anything else?’

‘’Not at this time, Miss Dows. Uh, your prototype is a rather eye-catching aircraft.

Would it be possible for me to visit it?’’

Ingrid grinned and pointed at the lowered staircase in the right side of her prototype.

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‘’It certainly is possible, Mister Manning. If you wil follow me.’’

Walking with her to the staircase and climbing it, Manning then found himself inside the junction of two oval-shaped tunnels large enough to allow two people to circulate inside them while side-by-side. The tunnel running along the right side of the fuselage had numerous windows positioned at intervals along it.

‘’Those tunnels we are in now connect together five pressurized, tube-like cabins meant to contain passengers’ facilities or cargo. Together, those cabins will accommodate in great comfort a total of 102 passengers.’

‘’One hundred and two passengers?’’ nearly shouted Manning. ‘’But the Lockheed CONSTELLATION, the largest airliner presently in service, can carry at the most 68 passengers while being roughly the size of your prototype. How did you manage that?’’

‘’I wil show you how. Just follow me to the forward passenger cabin.’’

Walking down the lateral communications tube, Ingrid then stopped at a wide side door closed off by a curtain, which she then pulled open, revealing the inside of a long and wide tube lined on both sides by seats, with one row of seats facing the opposite row.

‘’Gee! I never saw an airline cabin configured like this one, Miss Dows. It is certainly a most unusual one. However, those seats don’t have windows.’

‘’Oh, they do: they are just not in their usual place. Please enter this cabin and take a few steps inside, Mister Manning.’

Doing so, the FBI man nearly at once realized what she had meant. The floor of the cabin, made of a sort of transparent rigid plastic plate, in turn allowed people to look down through the belly of the aircraft via a triple row of much smaller transparent oval windows. At Ingrid’s invitation, he sat down in one of the well-padded seats, which he found very comfortable, and looked down through the transparent floor. In his sitting position, he found out that one of the triple rows of belly windows was perfectly lined to give him a view of the tarmac the aircraft was on.

‘’Wow! This compares very well with the limited view the windows on the CONSTELLATION gave me when traveling to and from Washington.’

‘’You also have this to add to your view of the outside, Mister Manning.’’ said Ingrid while pivoting down a sort of thin plate fixed to the overhead storage bin above Manning’s seat. That thin plate then revealed itself to look furiously like a projection

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screen. Ingrid then pointed at a miniature camera positioned over and behind the backrest of Manning’s seat.

‘’What you see here is a small video camera coupled to a small individual projection screen. Using this, a passenger on my Verti-Wing 100 can select either a frontal, side or down view, or can watch a selected film, using a pair of earphones stored in the left armrest of your seat. The right armrest of your seat contains a dining tray that would allow you to hold a plate of food and a glass. Let me show you.’

Ingrid then took hold of a small hook in the front of the right armrest and pulled it, making a large tablet pivot out and up from its storage compartment, then twisted it to a horizontal position. That tablet had molded contours around it meant to prevent objects from rolling off it, plus had a cup holder depression on its left forward corner. Manning nodded his head, suitable impressed.

‘’My God! I would certainly love to travel in this airplane, Miss Dows. Uh, what about those curtains and walls on both sides of my seat?’’

‘’They are meant to provide privacy to the passengers. If you wish to see and speak with the adjacent passenger, like in the case of a married couple or of a parent with child, you then simply pull open your side curtain. Then, your traveling companion will have to pull open its own curtain before he or she can see you. This system of double curtains is meant to prevent a nosy passenger from annoying or disturbing another passenger. If a passenger pulls open both curtains of a pair without the consent of the other passenger, then our cabin attendant will advise that nosey passenger not to do it, on pain of being barred from further travel on Air Fifinella if that passenger refuses to obey the directives of our cabin attendant. Finally, you can recline your seat in order to sleep, using this large button on the front of your left side armrest.’

Manning, wanting to see how far his seat could recline, pressed that button and quickly found himself in a semi-sitting position, while his legs were supported by a padded cushion which pivoted up from its position under the front of his seat.

‘’Miss, I am in love with your aircraft. You should make a killing on the commercial airliner market with it.’

‘’I just may, Mister Manning, but my main goal is to open air travel to the American public. Up to recently, I flew only in wars but I now want to see airplanes to be used in peacetime.’’

‘’Are you planning to produce military transport variants of this aircraft, Miss Dows? The Air Force would certainly be interested in it.’

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‘’Yes, it would, but it would first need to have a President with a clearer vision of airpower than simply having a fleet of atomic bomb-carrying bombers. Even if the Air Force asks for a military transport variant, my priority will still be to build civilian airliners.

Different, faster aircraft would anyway be better suited for military use than this Verti-Wing 100.’’

‘’What if someone copies your design and starts selling them?’’

‘’Then, they wil end up with a big lawsuit on their hands, a lawsuit that they would then lose. The very particular design concept of my Verti-Wing is patented into my name, with an exclusivity clause to it. Anyone wanting to use my Verti-Wing concept would first have to obtain my consent, then would have to pay me a patent royalty for every aircraft they would build.’’

‘’And what if that company is a foreign one, like a British or French one?’

‘’Then, I wil have the right to ask that the U.S. Civilian Aviation Board ban those planes from American airspace. That should discourage any attempt at plagiarism.’

‘’You certainly have thought all this trough, Miss Dows. Wel , I must now return to my office: this spying business is taking a lot of my time lately.’

Getting up from his seat, he then shook hands with Ingrid, who proved to have a very strong grip for a woman.

‘’Well, I can only wish you good luck with your aircraft projects, Miss Dows.

Thank you again for allowing me to visit your aircraft.’

‘’It was my pleasure, Mister Manning.’

Ingrid then led the FBI man out of her aircraft and accompanied him to his waiting staff car. She mentally wished for him to be right about this diminished Soviet threat to her as she waved goodbye to him. She just had too many projects in mind to be able to afford to waste time by having to hide behind a wall of personal security.

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CHAPTER 18 – A NEW PRESIDENT

14:11 (New York Time)

Wednesday, November 03, 1948 ‘C’

Governor’s official residence, Albany

State of New York, U.S.A.

Thomas Dewey, while truly happy to have won the presidential elections against Harry Truman, knew that he could not afford to be complacent, as his winning margin had been way too thin to his taste. It had also been similar close-calls with the results of the elections for the House of Representatives and for the Senate. In fact, Truman’s loss could be partly attributed to the votes he had lost to the States Rights Party of Strom Thurmond, which had split the Democratic votes around the Southern States.

The Republican Party now held the Presidency and both chambers of the Congress but the Democrats were certainly going to fight tooth and nail to keep his new presidency in check and scrutinize his policies and law bills. Also, while now being the President Elect, Truman still would be the official President of the United States for the next two months, until Dewey could be sworn in in January. Dewey’s most important job during those two months waiting on the sidelines was going to form his executive cabinet and decide the details of his policies as President of the country. On that question of policies, Truman had lost a lot of popular support due to his negligent, not to say irresponsible handling of the armed forces, which had caused many famous generals and admirals to quit in disgust as Truman’s cuts to the military budgets had gutted over a third of the American military machine, and this as Japan had still not surrendered officially, even though the Japanese people were now said to be slowly starving and dying from the radiations caused by the two British atomic bombs which had destroyed Tokyo and Osaka. On that subject, Dewey knew little more than the American public, as the information about atomic weapons were highly classified and restricted in their diffusion. Hopefully, now that Truman had officially lost the elections, the Pentagon would now be ready to brief him on that matter.

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The main members of his electoral team, including his Vice-President Elect, Earl

Warren, started to arrive during the next half hour at his gubernatorial residence, to attend a post-election meeting where many very important things were going to be discussed, starting with choosing his executive cabinet members. With his wife Frances helping his personal steward to serve fresh coffee around the conference table of his governor’s office, Dewey chatted with his team members about particular results of the elections, like the Congressional seats which had been won or lost to the Democrats.

After about one hour spent on those preliminaries, they then jumped into the business of cabinet-making. That proved relatively non-contentious at first, as he and Earl Warren had already discussed together in detail about the various appointments with implications on the national economy and social programs. However, national defense proved a bit trickier, as they all realized that Truman’s disastrous defense budget policies had played a big part in the Democrats’ defeat. On that, Dewey had looked at Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had been the Army Chief of Staff until last June, when he and other general officers had resigned in protest to Truman’s defense cuts. The new President had already named Eisenhower as his Secretary of Defense, in replacement of the despised Louis Johnson, with Eisenhower having accepted his nomination to that position.

‘’Well, Ike, now that you will be at the head of our armed forces, who would you like to see nominated as our next Department Secretaries for the Army, Navy and Air Force?’

Eisenhower, well-known for his diplomatic talents and abilities to gain consensus, thought for a moment before answering Dewey.

‘’Well, one person I wil definitely not nominate as Secretary of the Army is Omar Bradley. He may be a competent general and administrator but he simply was too much of a Yes-Man for Truman’s military budget cuts, going as far as publicly supporting those cuts. The same goes for Marshall: he could have been a lot more assertive in opposing those budget cuts and forces reductions but bowed a bit too easily to Truman’s policies, for which he was rewarded by an appointment to Secretary of State. And, please, do not mention Douglas MacArthur: I don’t need his kind of ego at the Pentagon. Let him stay in the Philippines, where he is doing a decent job.’

There was a concert of laughs and chuckles at that barb aimed at the Commander of the Pacific Theatre of Operations.

‘’So, who would you have in mind as Secretary of the Army, Ike?’

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‘’I would go with Lawton Collins, Mister President: he is a well-experienced combat commander and a good organizer and he knows in depth how the Army works.’

‘’Then, I wil ask him if he would accept that position. What about the Navy and the Air Force?’

‘’The choice for Navy Secretary is evident to me, sir: Admiral Nimitz, who clashed with Truman in order to protect the Navy from the most egregious cuts ordered by Louis Johnson. Nimitz is a great leader and knows intimately the workings of the Navy. As for the Air Force, forget Hoyt Vandenberg. He was part of the old Bomber Mafia and resisted changing our bomber tactics in Europe despite our catastrophic losses over Germany and even thought that our bomber force could win the war all by itself. It took a twenty-year-old girl to show him how wrong he was.’’

Dewey, who had not been particularly intimate to what was happening on the frontlines of the war, other than what he read in newspaper articles, raised an eyebrow at that.

‘’Oh? How so? Who was that young military genius, Ike?’’

‘’The same girl who won you many extra votes by blasting Truman’s defense policies when she testified in front of a Senate committee last August: Major General Ingrid Dows, who had resigned in protest against Truman’s defense cuts. Before you dismiss her importance, please consider that many things about her are not known from the public.’

Eisenhower then spent a few minutes telling to Dewey and his team what he knew about Ingrid, including the fact that she remembered 7,000 years-worth of past reincarnations and the fact that Ingrid had planned and executed both decapitation strikes against the Japanese and the Germans. At the end of it, Dewey slowly shook his head in disbelief.

‘’Wow! The way you talk about her, I would say that you would like her to become our Secretary of the Air Force.’’

‘’I would!’’ replied at once Eisenhower, his tone enthusiastic. ‘’However, she won’t accept that post: she is presently busy designing new aircraft at the Hughes Aircraft Company. Besides, she probably has zero interest in a political job: that girl was born to fly. However, I would strongly counsel you to do as F.D.R. did. While she was studying for an engineering degree at the M.I.T., Roosevelt kept her in the loop in terms of classified war developments and listened to her advice, even if it clashed with the opinions or ideas of her military superiors. Unfortunately, Truman was too obtuse about military affairs to listen to her and he dropped her as an occasional presidential advisor.

Please don’t do that same mistake, Mister President.’’

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‘’Alright, I will keep her in mind, Ike.’’

09:29 (Washington Time)

Sunday, November 07, 1948 ‘C’

The Oval Office, The White House

Washington, D.C.

President Harry Truman had gone down

to the Oval Office this Sunday morning in

order to finish reading a rather long

briefing document about commercial

exchanges with other countries. He

however got a call by intercom from his executive secretary as he was sitting in the presidential chair and reading.

‘’Mister President, Secretary Johnson and General Bradley are here to see you about a most urgent subject.’

Now wondering what new brick would fall on his head, Truman pressed the ‘speak’

button of his intercom box.

‘’Let them in, Miss Pratt.’

Truman then put away the document he had been reading and got up to greet his Secretary of Defense and the Chief of the Joint Staffs when they entered the Oval Office, already dreading what they were going to tell him.

‘’Good morning, gentlemen! What brings you here on this Sunday morning?’’

‘’Bad news from the Pacific, Mister President.’ answered Johnson. ‘’I will let General Bradley brief you on what the Pentagon learned this early morning. General...’

‘’Mister President,’ started to say the tall and lean five-star general, ‘’The Communist Chinese and the Soviets are on the move in Korea and around Northern Japan. As you know already, Japanese Army troops are still occupying the Korean Peninsula but are very weak in terms of ammunition, fuel and heavy equipment.

Apparently, the Communist Chinese Red Army has decided to exploit those weaknesses and have started entering Korea in big numbers, pushing the Japanese southward.

Radio traffic intercepts and a few reconnaissance flights over Korea by our long-range aircraft based in the Philippines show us that the Japanese are being rolled over very quickly. As for the Soviets and Japan, one of our destroyers patrolling near the La

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Pérouse Strait, which separates the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido from the Soviet-held Sakhalin Island, in the Northern Pacific, was chased away by Soviet warships after stumbling on what appeared to be a large-scale amphibious landing operation on the northern coast of Hokkaido. The Soviets even fired warning shots in order to chase our destroyer away.’

Truman, who was no military strategist, nearly shrugged his shoulders at that.

‘’If I remember well, we don’t have a single American soldier in Korea or in Japan, so what is the potential impact of this on us? Why should we care if the Chinese and Soviets are actually eliminating more Japanese Army remnants there?’’

Omar Bradley was nearly tempted to chide Truman for his questions but managed to stay polite and diplomatic.

‘’Because both Korea and the Hokkaido Island are lands not contaminated by radiations from the two atomic missiles the British used on Japan four years ago, Mister President. They thus represent precious jumping boards into the Pacific for the Communist Chinese and the Soviets. Once they will control Korea and Hokkaido, they will then be able to build military bases situated much closer to our own bases in the Pacific. The Sea of Japan would then become a Communist lake, Mister President.’

That last sentence from Bradley did get Truman’s full attention, who had always advocated a hard line against Communist expansion.

‘’So, what do we have that we could use to stop and turn back both the Chinese and the Soviets, gentlemen?’’

‘’Very little at the moment, Mister President.’ answered Bradley, making Truman frown as the general went on. ‘’Our sole carrier group patrolling in the Western Pacific is presently in the South China Sea and would need over three days to get closer to Korea, or four days to get near Hokkaido. In terms of air assets, our nearest ones are in the Philippines, where they are still helping the Filipino Army to hunt down and destroy the remnants of the Japanese Army still fighting and hiding in the jungles of the Philippines.

Our only other airbases within range of Japan and Korea for our strategic bombers are in Alaska.’’

‘’Then, what about dropping one atomic bomb on that Soviet amphibious force landing troops in Northern Hokkaido? Since neither the Communist Chinese nor the Soviets have yet the atom bomb, that should persuade them to turn tail and withdraw, no? We would of course give them fair warning, so that they could have the opportunity to withdraw before we would need to drop our bomb.’’

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Both Johnson and Bradley hesitated for a moment before Bradley cautioned Truman.

‘’This could well start a full-scale war between us and the Soviets, Mister President. While we believe that the Soviets stil don’t have the atomic bomb, they could have developed a working bomb and tested it, and this while hiding that fact from us.

This is quite a risky bet, Mister President.’

‘’And what are the chances that the Soviets would have built and tested in secret an atomic bomb without us learning about it, General Bradley?’’ asked Truman, obviously skeptical.

‘’Uh, not very high but we can’t be certain about that, Mister President.’

That was when Louis Johson spoke in turn.

‘’Mister President, starting a war with the Soviet Union, and this while you are due to pass the Presidency to Thomas Dewey in two months, could raise a storm in the Congress. While the Soviets cannot realistically touch our own territory in retaliation, our allies and our own troops are facing large Soviet forces across the borders with Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.’

‘’Then, we could dissuade the Soviets in Europe with a second atomic bomb. If we won’t use our atomic arsenal when needed to stop an invading enemy, then what would be their usefulness, gentlemen? General Bradley, I want plans to be drafted for such contingencies if we are pushed into using our atomic bombs on the Soviets.’

‘’Er, yes, Mister President! I wil get my staff to work on this right away.’

As Johnson and Bradley walked out of the Oval Office, a frustrated Truman returned to sit behind his desk to continue his reading: had Stalin gone mad, to make such a risky dice throw in the Pacific?

Luckily for Truman, the news that the Communist Chinese and the Soviets were in the process of grabbing Korea and Hokkaido Island inflamed the already strong anti-communist sentiments in the United States when it became public knowledge a week later. As like Truman did, most Americans then saw the use of the atomic bomb as a legitimate and safe way to repel those Communist invasions, not to save the Japanese people of Hokkaido from Soviet occupation but to prevent the Communists from gaining control of that portion of the Pacific. That sentiment, which was akin to a sort of religious crusade and was fueled by misplaced overconfidence in the superiority of American arms, pushed many in the Congress to clamor for action against those communist moves in Korea and Hokkaido.

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11:07 (New York Time)

Saturday, November 20, 1948 ‘C’

Gubernatorial residence, Albany, New York

Thomas Dewey, having asked his foreign affairs and defense cabinet nominees to come to Albany for an important meeting in which the Chinese and Soviet moves would be discussed, was still waiting for his Vice-President Elect, Earl Warren, who was supposed to arrive by plane from California in time for lunch, when the senior Secret Service agent in charge of his protection detail came to see him in the main lounge, where Dewey was discussing with his future cabinet members.

‘’Mister President, my agents on watch outside the mansion have signaled something bizarre. A car has parked in view of the mansion over an hour ago and, when the two occupants were approached by an agent who asked them why they were there, they identified themselves as officials from the Civilian Aeronautics Board and of the NACA13. They told my agents that they came to witness a record-breaking flight due from California.’’

‘’A flight from California, due here at my residence?’’ said Dewey, mystified. ‘’I do expect to see Vice-President Warren arrive in Albany by air before lunch but, as you can see by yourself, I don’t exactly have an airfield runway in my front yard. I am actually expecting more like seeing Warren to land here in one of the Air Fifinella helicopters after being picked up at Albany Airport. That’s not what I would call a record-breaking flight, Senior Agent Russel.’

‘’True, Mister President. Stil , I just reinforced our external security perimeter, just in case. Whatever shows up, we wil make sure that it is safe for you.’

‘’Good move! Thanks for warning me.’

As the Secret Service agent walked out of the lounge, Dewey smiled to his guests.

‘’Well, it looks like Earl Warren wil arrive here in style. I used a few times in the recent past the Air Fifinella helicopter service linking Albany with New York and Washington and I must say that I loved the experience and the flight service. The Air Fifinella girls wear such a sexy uniform. However, a record-breaking flight? I real y don’t get it.’

13 NACA: National Aeronautics Civilian Administration. The precursor of the NASA.

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George Kenney, the designated Secretary of the Air Force in Dewey’s cabinet, then was apparently struck by a thought.

‘’Wait! This smells like a typical Ingrid Dows move, Mister President. I know that she has been testing and certifying for commercial service a new type of high-speed, medium-range airliner. If this plane is coming from California, then maybe she is going to try making a new record for a transcontinental flight between the West and East Coasts. As you know, no commercial flight can link non-stop both coasts at this time.

Only military bombers have made such non-stop flights.’

‘’You are probably right, George. If that’s the case, I would have...’

The noise of an approaching plane with powerful engines then cut Dewey off, making him and his cabinet members nearly run out of the lounge and outside, to the wide front lawn, hoping to watch that plane fly overhead. What they actual y saw made Dewey’s jaw open wide with surprise: the strangest plane he had ever seen was now approaching slowly while descending towards the front lawn, its landing wheels deployed and with its four propellers pointed upward. The plane was painted royal blue and gold and wore the logo of the Air Fifinella airline. With the local neighbors and passersby quickly gathering in view of the front lawn while staying outside of the security perimeter of the gubernatorial residence, the plane landed smoothly on the grass of the lawn, with its engines then powering down and finally shutting down. A door then opened on the forward left side of the machine, which was profiled like the section of a wing, while an access staircase pivoted out of its recess and lowered to the ground. Dewey, like his cabinet members, grinned when Earl Warren appeared in the frame of the access door and started coming down the deployed stairs while happily waving at Dewey.

‘’My God! Ingrid did it! She just flew the first non-stop commercial flight between both coasts.’ exclaimed George Kenney. ‘’This is going to be one hel of a publicity coup for her new plane and her Air Fifinella airline. I wonder how fast she managed to fly to here.’’

‘’Well, let’s go greet Earl, gentlemen.’ said Dewey, who then walked to the foot of the deployed staircase, arriving there as Earl Warren set foot on the grass. Both men then exchanged a handshake as more people emerged from the plane. The first six were Secret Service men assigned to Warren’s protection detail, while the eight men and women following behind them carried cameras and had to be press reporters or photographers.

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‘’I see that you came in style, Earl. So, how fast was your flight from the West Coast?’’

‘’You will have to ask Ingrid Dows about the actual average and top speeds of my flight but I can tell you that I took off from Los Angeles exactly four hours and fifty minutes ago by my watch.’’

‘’FOUR HOURS AND FIFTY MINUTES TO FLY NON-STOP FROM LOS

ANGELES TO ALBANY?’’ exclaimed Dewey, overwhelmed. ‘’And how comfortable was your flight?’’

‘’Very comfortable, Mister President.’ answered Warren with a big smile. ‘’The seats were wide and well padded; the food was great and the stewardesses even greater. This plane is going to take the commercial air travel market by storm.’

‘’I’d say! I definitely will have to visit that plane later on but, in the meantime, let’s install yourself here for your stay. Aah, I now see Ingrid Dows at the top of the stairs.

Let’s step a few feet away from the the staircase, to let the other passengers set foot on the lawn. I real y want to talk to that incredible girl.’

With three stewards running out of the mansion to help carry the luggage of Warren and his Secret Service agents and to guide them to the guestrooms of the mansion, Dewey greeted Ingrid with a handshake once she was down at the foot of the stairs.

‘’Congratulation for your record-breaking flight, Miss Dows. At what kind of speed did you fly?’’

‘’My average speed for this flight, from vertical takeoff to vertical landing, was 512

miles per hour over a distance of 2,453 miles, while my actual cruise speed was 520

miles per hour, Mister President.’

‘’And would you have the range to cross the Atlantic with that plane, Ingrid?’

‘’I could, Mister President, but I would then have to initially take off in short takeoff mode, in order to carry enough fuel to cross the Atlantic. The Hughes Verti-Wing 100, which wil be named the ‘Hughes Airbus’ once in commercial service, could cover the 3,627 miles between New York and Paris in about seven hours and twenty minutes, depending on the high-altitude winds, while carrying up to 102 passengers at a speed of 500 miles per hour. Aah, I now see the gentlemen from the C.A.B. and NACA coming towards me. If you will let me speak to them, Mister President, I am going to officially claim this record.’’

‘’Please, go right ahead, Miss Dows. After lunch, I would like to get your advice on this new crisis in the Northern Pacific.’

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‘’I wil be happy to do so, Mister President.’

As Ingrid went to see the aeronautical administrations representatives, the eight reporters and photographers who had flown in with Warren were given access to telephones, in order for them to report their record-breaking flight to their respective news room. Once his new guests had been accommodated in his mansion, Dewey took the time to tour the Hughes Verti-Wing 100 with Ingrid and his cabinet members. What he saw made him look at Ingrid with unmitigated admiration.

‘’Miss Dows, you designed a true aeronautical marvel with this. You are also going to open wide long-distance air travel to the American public at large. This will have a huge impact on our national economy, something that will certainly benefit positively my administration. For one thing, I will certainly want at least two of those planes to be part of the presidential transport squadron.’

‘’Then, be advised that I am already working on a jet-powered variant of my Verti-Wing 100 which will be even faster, with a target cruising speed of over 630 miles per hour. It could do the same trip as this plane has just done, but in three hours and fifty minutes. It could also fly from New York to Paris in five hours and forty minutes.’’

‘’My God! And what about the cost of the tickets, both for this plane and its jet variant? Wil the average American be able to afford such air travel?’’

‘’That wil depend on you, Mister President. Presently, the Civilian Aeronautics Board still regulates the cost of air travel, irrespective of the actual true costs incurred by airlines, and this in order to protect the airlines from going bankrupt and guaranteeing them some profits. It also controls the distribution and opening of air routes, something that is quite a straight-jacket for airline companies. I would thus like to see air travel deregulated, ideally by reining in the C.A.B. bureaucracy, to allow all Americans to be able to afford air travel, and not only the rich and well-to-do. Right now, I would be obliged to charge about the same prices per ticket that other airlines charge for traveling on vastly inferior and slower models of planes. The C.A.B. should be made to take that stranglehold off if you want to see the American public profit from affordable air travel.’

‘’Hum, you have a serious point there, Miss Dows. I will definitely deal with this in the months to come. Now, apart from this Verti-Wing 100, do you have other outstanding aircraft projects in your books?’’

‘’I certainly do, Mister President.’ replied Ingrid, becoming quite serious. ‘’Due to the massive budget cuts imposed on our military forces, military aircraft development

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programs have been quite slow lately, despite the theoretical knowledge we presently have, due mostly to the dim prospects for aircraft manufacturers to get any sizeable contracts for new military planes. Right now, our only jet fighter, the Lockheed P-80

SHOOTING STAR, is barely starting to enter service and is already outdated, its project having been started in 1942. As for bombers, we still have a collection of propeller-driven planes in service with the Air Force, the fastest and best of them being the Hughes A-11B. I firmly intend to design on my own, without government support and without waiting for a contract offer, both a supersonic jet fighter and a supersonic jet bomber. The reasons for me to want to do this by myself are two-fold: first, I believe that design-by-committee is a recipe to produce inferior compromise designs and that one mind with the right thinking can do way better than a group of designers. Second, I have little confidence in the present Air Force leadership in producing a truly worthy or realistic set of aircraft requirements, Mister President. I worked with most of those Air Force generals in the past and too many of them are still stuck with either outdated concepts or with wildly goofy dreams and ideas. I have seen the future through the teachings of my adoptive mother from the year 2012 and I firmly believe that I can do much better than all those old crusty generals.’

‘’I believe so as well, Miss Dows. I wil direct General Kenney, who is my designated Air Force Secretary, to support you to the fullest, within the confines of Pentagon military acquisition rules.’

‘’That wil be much appreciated, Mister President.’

‘’Good! Let’s go inside now: lunch is about to be served. Then, you wil be part of my cabinet discussion about this new crisis concerning Korea and Japan.’

‘’I will gladly help you with my advice, Mister President. Unfortunately, Truman is still President and still could do what he wants during the next six weeks. I am afraid that his bunch of incompetent ass-lickers at the Pentagon could give him some very bad advice and drag our country into an unnecessary war.’

‘’That he could!’’ recognized Dewey in a discouraged tone.

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CHAPTER 19 – TRUMAN’S LAST MISSTEP

02:35 (Hawaii Time)

Monday, November 22, 1948 ‘C’

Hickam Air Force Base, Pearl Harbor

Oahu, Hawaii

Lieutenant General Curtiss LeMay was quite thoughtful as he walked to his Hughes B-11N, a variant of the A-11 designed to deliver nuclear bombs and which constituted at the moment the most capable and long-ranged nuclear bomber of his Strategic Air Command. However, even with its 6,400-mile range, the B-11N would be at the limit of its combat radius on this mission to the island of Hokkaido. Since this would be the first time that the United States and its Strategic Air Command, or S.A.C. in short, would drop an atomic bomb in combat, LeMay had decided to fly the mission

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himself, in view of its importance. Even though he was going to accomplish that mission, LeMay still had strong doubts about its wisdom, since this could well trigger an all-out war with the Soviet Union, despite the contrary belief by President Truman that such a nuclear strike would deter Stalin from retaliating by invading Western Europe.

Stopping under his aircraft, LeMay looked up at its opened bomb bay, which contained one Mark 4 fission bomb, and spoke to his navigator/bombardier, Captain George Cutler, who was also qualified as a nuclear weapons specialist.

‘’So, how is our little baby, George?’

‘’It is ready to go, sir. I just checked it out thoroughly and she will be ready to be dropped once armed near our objective. It is set for an airburst at an altitude of 600 feet, which will maximize its blast and heat effects on the Soviet invasion fleet. It is set to its maximum yield of 31 kilotons.’’

‘’Good! Those Reds should feel it. Alright, time to go!’’

Using the belly ladder and trap giving access to the cockpit area of their B-11N, LeMay and his three crewmembers climbed aboard and strapped themselves to their seats, with their tail gunner crawling down the pressurized tube connecting the cockpit section with his tail turret armed with twin 20mm cannons. LeMay didn’t anticipate that Sergeant Peter Raskins would need to fire his guns on this mission, as his B-11N was much faster than any Soviet fighter known to be in service right now. In fact, the only thing that preoccupied him a bit was the anti-aircraft guns of the Soviet fleet. However, he should be safe from those by flying at his maximum altitude, close to the limit Soviet shells could reach. With a ground crew on standby near his plane, LeMay then started one by one his two piston engines. With everything looking fine, he taxied to the main runway, where he got the permission from the control tower to take off.

‘’Here we go, guys: the first atomic strike mission of our Command.’’ he said in his intercom before pushing his engine throttles all the way forward. Despite its close to five-ton payload, the B-11N took off with authority and in less than 700 yards, pleasing LeMay, who truly liked that plane model. As he climbed and retracted his landing gear and flaps, he turned towards the Northwest and Hokkaido Island, in the Northern Pacific.

After six long hours of flying over the Pacific, much of it on autopilot, LeMay told his three aviators to go to combat alert and to monitor for radio and radar activity as they

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started seeing the coast of Hokkaido in the far distance. At first, his radio/electronic warfare officer, Captain Richard Murray, signaled detecting only radar and radio emissions from the American flotilla watching the Soviet invasion fleet from a distance.

Murray’s tone of voice then changed as Cape Shiretoko, on the East Coast of Hokkaido, came within 36 miles.

‘’Sir, I have a possible Soviet surveillance radar signal coming from the direction of Shibetsu, next to the Gulf of Abashiri, where the Soviet invasion fleet is at anchor.’

‘’So, they wil know that we are coming: the good that will do to them. Alright, we will now climb to our maximum service ceiling in order to get out of anti-aircraft fire reach and to gain extra time to speed away before our little petard explodes.’’

Pulling on his control column, LeMay made his B-11N climb to the altitude of 12,000

meters, the highest it could reach while loaded down with its atomic bomb. He was leveling at that altitude when Murray, who also was monitoring their own radar, shouted a warning.

‘’SIR, I HAVE FOUR FAST CONTACTS APPROACHING FROM THE

NORTHWEST!’’

‘’How fast are they, Murray?’’ asked LeMay, not too worried by that. Murray’s answer quickly made him reevaluate his own situation.

‘’They are too fast to be propeller-driven fighters, sir: they make at least 550

miles per hour, sir.’

‘’Are you sure? The Soviets don’t have jet fighters, at least not yet.’

‘’Well, they must have now, sir. They are coming from out two o’clock and are now about 23 miles from us and closing fast.’

LeMay was left indecisive for a moment but his aggressive nature then took over his doubts.

‘’They may be fast but they may not have a high enough service ceiling to reach us, especially after we will have dropped our bomb. George, start lining us up with that Soviet fleet. Dick, try to jam that Soviet radar: it may be directing those fighters towards us. Raskins, keep an eye out for enemy fighters. Shoot at them as soon as they will come within range.’

‘’Aye, sir!’

He soon was able to see what they were dealing with a minute later, when he spotted four fast dots approaching from his two o’clock low and climbing towards him.

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Those were jet aircraft alright! They also were of a model totally unknown to him or to American military intelligence.

‘’George, those Reds are about to get to us. Are you close to bomb dropping time?’

‘’Negative, sir! I wil need another two minutes before we get to the vertical of that Soviet fleet.’

LeMay was about to say something in reply when the nose of the lead enemy fighter lit up with gun flashes. None of the shells from that first burst hit the B-11N but the sight of tracers zipping past his aircraft convinced the boss of the Strategic Air Command that he was now in a bad posture.

‘’Shit! We wil never be able to reach our drop point before these bastards can pepper us full of holes. Hopefully, those things will be about to get ‘Bingo Fuel’14 soon.

Fuck it! We are pressing on!’

The next few seconds then proved him wrong, with the lead fighter zooming past him at a speed of about 600 miles per hour and then performing a tight turn in order to get back on his tail. From what LeMay was able to see of it, it was shaped like an elongated barrel, with a round nose air intake, a highly swept pair of wings and a pair of swept stabilizers mounted on its tail rudder. He also saw the large red stars painted on the wings. The impact of at least two cannon shells hitting the right wing of his B-11N, along with the noise of Raskins’s cannons opening fire against the fighter approaching from the rear, then decided LeMay to abandon his bombing run. He thus shouted to his navigator/bombardier as he performed a tight turn to the right, to head back towards the Southeast.

‘’George, cancel the bomb drop! Secure the bomb arming mechanism! We are getting out of Dodge15!’

Just after he had said that, his aircraft was shaken by more hits, while his tail gunner shrieked with pain for half a second before falling silent.

‘’Raskins! RASKINS! RESPOND!’

Not hearing a response and with his instruments panel lighting up with red lights indicating systems failures, his next shout was to his electronic warfare officer.

14 Bingo Fuel: Common pilot expression that meant that one aircraft is getting low on fuel and must return to its base at once.

15 Getting out of Dodge: A popular American expression meaning ‘we are getting out of here’.

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‘’MURRAY, CALL OUR FLEET AND TELL US THAT WE ARE UNDER FIRE

FROM SOVIET JET FIGHTERS AND WILL HAVE TO EJECT SOON.’

‘’ON IT, SIR!’

LeMay then pushed his engines to emergency war power, accelerating his B-11N to a speed of 540 miles per hour. That, however, proved to be insufficient, as more shells hit his plane, putting his left engine on firing. In desperation, he pushed his wounded plane into a dive while heading towards the nearest American ship, a destroyer, he could see.

His poor B-11N then started to shake violently, making him understand that he was about out of time.

‘’TO ALL: EJECT! EJECT! EJECT!’’

LeMay waited until his two surviving crewmembers had ejected out before activating his own ejection seat. Thankfully, it worked as designed and he soon found himself floating down under his parachute. Looking anxiously around him, he was relieved to see two more parachutes floating down towards the sea. As for the four enemy jet fighters, they were now withdrawing towards Hokkaido Island, probably becoming low on fuel. Curtiss LeMay then swore violently to himself, furious. He had just lost his plane and his tail gunner, along with one of the only 64 atomic bombs in the American arsenal, while the enemy had just proved to have what his own Air Force intelligence had told him the Soviets didn’t have: jet fighters. What else did the Soviets have that the American Air Force didn’t know about?

10:24 (Washington Time)

Tuesday, November 23, 1948 ‘C’

The Oval Office, The White House

Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

Thomas Dewey was utterly furious as he charged into the Oval Office, ignoring the attempts by Truman’s executive secretary to verbally stop him. The Secret Service agents guarding that door knew better than block access to the Oval Office to the one who would become the President in only six weeks. Alerted a bit late via intercom by his secretary, Harry Truman was still getting up from his chair when Dewey pointed an angry finger at him from across his desk.

‘’HAVE YOU GONE MAD OR ARE YOU JUST STUPID, TRUMAN? YOU

POSSIBLY GET OUR COUNTRY IN A WAR WITH THE SOVIET UNION, AND THIS

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ONLY WEEKS BEFORE MY INAUGURATION! DO YOU REALLY WANT TO GET

IMPEACHED BY THE CONGRESS THIS LATE IN YOUR MANDATE?’’

‘’But the Soviets are invading Hokkaido Island, while the Communist Chinese are sweeping down the Korean Peninsula. We can’t let those Commies do as they like around the Western Pacific.’

‘’WHO CARES! WE DON’T HAVE A SINGLE AMERICAN CITIZEN IN THOSE

PLACES AND ZERO TRADE WITH THEM. DON’T YOU THINK THAT WE LOST

ENOUGH MEN IN THE LAST WAR, TO THEN POSSIBLY START A NEW ONE LIKE

THIS, ESPECIALLY AFTER THE WAY YOU EMASCULATED OUR ARMED FORCES

THROUGH YOUR IRRESPONSIBLE CUTS TO OUR MILITARY BUDGETS?’’

‘’HEY, CAREFUL! I AM STILL THE PRESIDENT, DEWEY!’

‘’NOT FOR LONG, IF I HAVE MY WAY ABOUT THIS. I SPOKE WITH BOTH

THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE AND WITH THE LEADER OF THE SENATE AND

THEY HAVE AGREED WITH ME TO START AN IMPEACHMENT PROCEDURE

AGAINST YOU.’

‘’An impeachment procedure? On what charge?’

‘’ON EXCEEDING YOUR EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY BY COMMITTING AN ACT

OF WAR AGAINST ANOTHER NATION WITHOUT OBTAINING FIRST THE

APPROVAL OF THE CONGRESS, THAT’S WHAT’S THE CHARGE WILL BE. AND

YOU COMMITTED THAT ACT OF WAR WITH NO LESS THAN A NUCLEAR-ARMED

BOMBER, YOU TWIT! THE SOVIETS JUST SHOWED US THAT THEY HAD JET

FIGHTERS IN SERVICE. WHAT ELSE DO THEY HAVE THAT WE DON’T KNOW

ABOUT? WHAT IF THEY ALREADY HAVE THE ATOMIC BOMB AND DIDN’T TELL

US ABOUT IT? THEY WOULD NOW HAVE A JUSTIFICATION TO ATTACK US IN A SIMILAR FASHION.’

Dewey finally calmed down enough to lower his voice to a normal level, but still stared hard at Truman.

‘’You will now abandon any idea about attacking the Soviets or the Communist Chinese and will keep quiet until my inauguration in January. I will be the one who decides if we go to war or not and for what reasons. Just pray in the meantime that you don’t lose your present seat before that.’

Thomas Dewey then walked out of the Oval Office, leaving behind a shaken Truman, who had to sit down heavily, his legs now shaky.

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CHAPTER 20 – INGRID’S NAVY

09:59 (California Time)

Wednesday, November 24, 1948 ‘C’

Hughes Enterprises head offices, 7000 Romaine Street Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Ingrid shook her head in disgust as she put down the newspaper article in which Truman’s blunder with the Soviets was exposed, with plenty of members of Congress vowing to impeach him for it.

‘’What an idiot! And an irresponsible idiot at that! Trying to drop an atomic bomb on a Soviet fleet in the Pacific is simply an invitation to Stalin to launch his army in an invasion of Western Europe, where our forces have only slight chances of being able to stop the Soviets. Truman must be getting baptized with all kinds of names around the capitals of Europe. The only good thing out of all this is that we now know that the Soviets have put a jet fighter of their own in active service, while we are presently stuck with low-performance models like the P-80 and the F2H BANSHEE, both of which are barely starting to enter active service and are slower than the Soviet jet fighter. I bet that our B-11N encountered Mig-15 jet fighters, which were due in History to be the first Soviet jet fighters to enter widespread service. Now, instead of the usual ‘Home for Christmas’ wish, we may just get a ‘at war by Christmas’ instead.’

Hedy Lamarr, who was sitting at another of the three work desks of their so-called

‘Triumvirate Head Office’, made a face at her words.

‘’Well, Truman may be in deep shit right now, but we do have problems of our own, Ingrid. We have enthusiastic orders piling in fast and furious from airline companies wanting to buy your Verti-Wing 100 ‘AIRBUS’, but we presently have problems finding adequate locations in city downtown areas around the country to open more heliports and expand our Air Fifinella network. Downtown real estate is so expensive and rare these days, something that is aggravated by the exigencies of not flying too close to densely populated areas because of noise regulations.’’

Katharine Hepburn, who was in charge of running Air Fifinella with Ingrid, then proposed something in reply to Hedy.

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‘’Maybe we could have river barges built to act as floating landing pads, something that would allow our helicopters to approach over water instead of over residential areas. That would also cut a lot the risk of collisions and crashes in urban areas.’

While Ingrid gave Katharine an interested look, Hedy suddenly nearly jumped out of her chair while shouting.

‘’KATHARINE, YOU ARE A GENIUS!’

‘’Me, a genius? You are supposed to be the genius here, remember?’’

‘’Uh, what are you thinking, Hedy?’’ asked Ingrid, a bit mystified.

‘’Something in the general line of Katharine’s suggestion of using barges, but much better.’

Before Hedy could explain herself, Ingrid’s phone rang, making her pick up the receiver.

‘’Ingrid Dows speaking!... Oh, good day, Mister Secretary! What can I do for you this morning?... I certainly could come to the Pentagon, sir. Would tomorrow morning do? Then, I wil be at your office by ten o’clock, Washington time. See you then, Mister Secretary.’

Ingrid put down her receiver and looked at her two partners, her expression most serious.

‘’Stuart Symington, the Secretary of the Air Force, wants to see me, along with other reputed aircraft designers, in his office at the Pentagon tomorrow morning at ten.

He didn’t want to say more on the phone, due to the sensitivity of the subject he had in mind, but I can bet right now that the Air Force is in panic mode after this encounter with Soviet jet fighters near Hokkaido. Symington must realize that we are now in a situation of clear inferiority in terms of air superiority against the Soviets. It looks like I will most probably have to accelerate my development program for a supersonic jet fighter aircraft.’

‘’Good! Then I wil go with you and wil take Katharine with me.’’ said Hedy, making both of her friends raise an eyebrow.

‘’Why do you want to accompany me to Washington, Hedy?’’

‘’But, to go pay a visit to Secretary of the Navy John Sullivan, of course!’’

Ingrid, like Katharine, could only scratch her head at that declaration by Hedy Lamarr.

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09:52 (Washington Time)

Thursday, November 25, 1948 ‘C’

Office of the Secretary of the Air Force

The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia

Ingrid was still wondering what Hedy was up to as she was introduced into Stuart Symington’s office by his secretary. Hedy had apparently confided to Katharine what her secret project was about and both had chuckled together about it while leaving Ingrid in the dark during their trip to Washington in the Verti-Wing 100 prototype, which was by now fully certified for commercial service by the Civilian Aeronautics Board. Both Hedy and Katharine were now on their way to the office of the Secretary of the Navy, John Sullivan, which was situated in another section of the Pentagon, for a meeting they had arranged by telephone yesterday.

Once inside Symington’s office, Ingrid saw that the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Hoyt Vandenberg, was present, along with seven men in civilian suits. While she was not too thrilled to see Vandenberg, with whom she had clashed over four years ago in London concerning the 8th Air Force’s strategic bombing tactics, she was impressed when she recognized those seven civilians: they represented the best aircraft designers in the United States, starting with Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson, who had designed her beloved P-38 fighter and the P-80, the first American jet fighter to enter Air Force service. Stuart Symington, a man Ingrid had not met before, then came to shake hands with her while smiling.

‘’Thank you for coming, Miss Dows, or should I call you ‘General Dows’?’’

‘’ Miss Dows’ or ‘Ingrid’ wil do, Mister Secretary. I resigned my commission four years ago.’

‘’A damn shame that was, Miss Dows. If you will now join us around my coffee table, we are now waiting only for Mister David Lewis, from McDonnell, before we could start this meeting.’’

Thanking Symington, Ingrid then took place on a sofa, snuggling close to Kelly Johnson, who gave her a big smile.

‘’Nice to see you again after all those years, Ingrid. You certainly made a splash with your Los Angeles to Albany flight five days ago, even though you sank some of our expected sales for our CONSTELLATION airliner with that record-breaking flight.’

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‘’Hey, aviation has progressed mostly because of competition, Kelly, although I prefer that competition to be a friendly one.’’

‘’Agreed! So, do you have more ground-breaking ideas in that pretty head of yours?’’

‘’I always have ground-breaking ideas in my head, Kelly. I live outside of the box, remember?’’

‘’Oh, I do! I do!’

The head designer of McDonnell Aircraft then entered the office, to be invited by Symington to go sit down with the others before Symington himself sat down and looked around at Ingrid and the eight other aircraft designers, his expression most serious.

‘’Lady and gentlemen, I have asked you to come here this morning because of what happened off Hokkaido three days ago. That encounter with a previously unknown Soviet jet fighter model was a brutal shock to us and amply demonstrated that we needed to counter that new Soviet jet fighter...fast! It also demonstrated to us that our present propeller-driven bombers are now unsuited for the role of nuclear long-range strike, due to insufficient speed and range capabilities. The Hughes B-11N is still a very capable plane but it, like our other present bombers, just can’t stand against a jet fighter.

I shiver at the thought of what would have happened if we had accepted the B-36 into service. As you claimed yourself in front of Congress, Miss Dows, the B-36 would have been like minced meat if facing that Soviet Jet fighter.’

‘’The Mig-15 would make minced meat of any propeller-driven bomber, Mister Secretary.’ replied Ingrid, making Symington sit back in his sofa.

‘’The Mig-15? You knew about that new Soviet fighter?’’

Ingrid sighed in some frustration at that new demonstration that too few people in Washington had consulted the Hourglass Files brought from the future by Nancy Laplante in 1940.

‘’No, I didn’t know that the Soviets had put that fighter in service yet, Mister Secretary. However, the fact that the Mig-15 was going to enter service as the first mass-produced Soviet jet fighter is well documented by the Hourglass Files held here in the Pentagon. Those files will also give you the general characteristics and performances of the Mig-15, with probably small variants in data from our present situation in this timeline.’

She then made an apologetic smile to the men around her.

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‘’Sorry if I speak like some kind of alien here, gentlemen. My adoptive mother, Nancy Laplante, told me years ago, before her death, that she suspected that her involuntary travel to the past from the year 2012 had split history into two different timelines: hers, which is the original History and which I call ‘Timeline A’, and ours, which I call ‘Timeline B’, and which split away and started to rewrite itself from what Nancy knew in 2012. As shocking as this may be to all of you, you and I are mere copies of our original persons from the historical timeline.’

The men around her exchanged shocked looks before Symington asked her a question in a hesitant voice.

‘’And your...other self, would you know what was supposed to happen to her after 1940 in that, uh, original timeline?’’

Ingrid then had to lie as she answered him: she knew about Ingrid ‘A’ and ‘B’, who were now field agents of the Time Patrol, but the mere existence of the Time Patrol was something that she simply could not even allude to.

‘’I myself wondered about that many times, Mister Secretary. In 1940, Ingrid Weiss ‘A’ was a simple German Luftwaffe female auxiliary serving in France during the early phase of World War 2. What could have happened to her is simple conjecture but my bet would be that she would have eventually died during one of the Allied mass air bombings against Germany, or when the Soviet Army overran the eastern half of Germany. At best, she could have survived the war but would then have found herself as a teenager with little meaningful future in a devastated Germany.’

Her description left the men around her looking soberly at her as they fully understood what kind of woman she was now. She thus tried to warm up the atmosphere a bit by turning their attention to something else.

‘’Well, enough about me and my timeline counterpart. Tell us why you called us here this morning, Mister Secretary.’

‘’Er, right! I asked you, our top aircraft designers in the United States, to come here to present you with a challenge, a pressing challenge. The Air Force needs a new, more performing jet fighter...quickly! The fate of General LeMay’s B-11N also showed that we need as urgently a new bomber, a jet bomber able to fly faster than the speed of sound. I realize that those are two mighty demanding requests, which is one reason you are so many here around this table: we will need all of your expertise and creative thinking in order to create those two new types of jet aircraft. In order to help you in that task, the Air Force is ready to provide you with development contract money and will

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also open our wind tunnel testing facilities in Dayton, Ohio, to you in order to allow you to test the models you will come up with. That is, if you accept to take up those two challenges, lady and gentlemen. However, in view of the pressing new threat facing us, you will need to work fast, because I will call you back here in four months to examine your preliminary design proposals. I will then cut the competition down to the two best proposals for a new fighter and two best proposals for a new bomber. Since time will be short, keep your proposals as simple and direct as possible.’’

‘’The old K.I.S.S. principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid!’’ said Ingrid, making Symington smile to her.

‘’Exactly, Miss Dows! No gold-platting, just pure performance and safe flying characteristics.’’

Ingrid then decided to clarify something right away.

‘’Mister Secretary, what sunk and will still sink many aircraft projects is the matter of engines: if they underperform compared to what was promised about them, then the best aircraft design will be doomed. Before I left the Air Force, I pushed with General Kenney a program for developing advanced jet engines, based on the engine designs described in the Hourglass Files brought from the future by Nancy Laplante.

Unfortunately, I was told that Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson cut his support to that research program two years ago, as part of his mandated budgetary cuts ordered by President Truman. My own Verti-Wing 100 used one of those new technology engines, a turboshaft engine by Allison with a maximum intermittent power rating of 7,800 shaft horsepower. What about the other projects, which pertained to various models of turbofan engines? If we want to design worthwhile new aircraft, then we will need to be able to use those new technology engines, sir.’

‘’You are quite correct about that, Miss Dows. Fortunately for us now, Pratt & Whitney, General Electric, Allison and Avco-Lycoming all continued with those projects despite not getting more funds from the Air Force. I will now distribute to each of you copies of technical reports on those projects, with specifications, overall dimensions, power ratings, specific fuel consumption and stage of advancement of each project. You wil thus be able to base your design proposals around those new engine programs.’

Ingrid and the men around her eagerly took the files Symington distributed around the coffee table with the help of General Vandenberg. Symington then distributed copies of two more files.

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‘’Here is the list of requirements the Air Force is expecting for our proposed jet fighter program and for our proposed jet bomber program. Those lists were kept simple and to the point, so as to not put you in a design straight jacket. Please look at those program requirements now, then tell me if you are willing and able to take on those chal enges.’’

The next couple of minutes was spent in silence as Ingrid and the other aircraft designers read through the lists of requirements. Ingrid then surprised the men around her by speaking first in a confident tone.

‘’Hughes Aircraft is ready to take on both this jet fighter program and this jet bomber program, Mister Secretary.’

‘’Uh, are you sure, Miss Dows? This would mean that you would be taking on two very chal enging jobs simultaneously.’

‘’I know, Mister Secretary. However, I had already been working on equivalent projects on my own time, on top of tinkering around new civilian aircraft designs, and would only need to finalize those base designs and marry them to new jet engines. Both of my projects will be supersonic and will use much of the advanced technologies described in the Hourglass Files, the way we used them to develop our night vision devices for our World War 2 aircraft. I would thus strongly counsel that you open those Hourglass Files to all the other designers, in order to give them a good start for their work.’

The men around the table looked at her as if she was some sort of a witch, with Symington then nodding his head in approval.

‘’I whol y agree with you on this, Miss Dows. I will thus have all of you cleared to view our archived Hourglass Files from the future. Any other questions or remarks, lady and gentlemen?’’

‘’Yes!’’ said Kelly Johnson, from Lockheed. ‘’What kind of production run wil the winners of these two programs be looking at, Mister Secretary?’’

‘’In the case of our proposed new jet fighters: thousands! For our new strategic bombers, we will need at least a few hundreds of them. We are thus talking about big money here, lady and gentlemen. Yes, Miss Dows?’’

‘’If we are to produce this many new planes, then I propose that the winning designers be able to have part of the production made under license by the other

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companies represented here this morning, so that our forces be able to reequip themselves quickly, Mister Secretary.’

‘’Again, an excellent idea, Miss Dows.’ said a happy Symington, who then noted down who was willing to take on which of the projects interested them.

‘’Well, I believe that I can now let you go, so that you could jump into your work.

Thank you for coming, lady and gentlemen.’

Everyone then got up and exchanged handshakes before leaving Symington alone in his office with General Vandenberg.

‘’Well, Hoyt, I must say that this young girl truly impressed me, even though I already knew about her reputation and achievements.’

‘’To be frank, sir, we were not in very good terms in the past but if would be impossible for me to deny her accomplishments now.’

Once out of Symington’s office, Ingrid started walking towards the section of the Pentagon housing the offices of the Navy. With the Pentagon being such a huge building, it took her a good twelve minutes to arrive at the suite occupied by Navy Secretary John Sullivan. She was about to ask Sullivan’s secretary about Hedy and Katharine when her two friends and partners came out of Sullivan’s office, all smiles and appearing very satisfied with themselves. Ingrid looked at Hedy with a smirk and asked her a question.

‘’So, what was the business you wanted to talk about with Secretary Sullivan, Hedy?’’

‘’We just concluded a deal with him about acquiring eight decommissioned aircraft carriers, which the Navy was about to send to the scrapyard.’

‘’WHAAAT?’’ exclaimed Ingrid, stunned.

‘’And the best part is that we got them for

mere bread crumbs: one dollar for each of

them16, in exchange for a promise by us to use them partly as museum ships, on top of turning them into floating heliports, and for promising to employ ex-Navy men in order to The USS KITTY HAWK leaving for a Texas shipbreaking run and maintain them while we will yard in 2022, after being sold for one cent.

16 The U.S. Navy actually sold in 2022 to a Texas shipbreaking yard two fleet carriers, the USS

KITTY HAWK and the USS JOHN F. KENNEDY, for one cent each.

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use them as bases for the Air Fifinel a.’’

Ingrid actually needed a few seconds before she could speak again.

‘’I can’t believe it! And which aircraft carriers did you manage to acquire for us, Hedy?’’

The ex-actress looked negligently at her fingernails while answering Ingrid.

‘’Oh, just two fleet carriers, the USS SARATOGA and the USS ENTERPRISE, plus one smaller fleet carrier, the USS RANGER, and five light carriers and escort carriers: the USS SANGAMON, USS SUWANNEE, USS CHENANGO, USS SANTEE

and the USS BATAAN. The SARATOGA will go to San Francisco, the ENTERPRISE to New York, the RANGER to Los Angeles, the BATAAN to Seattle, the SANGAMON to Miami, the SUWANNEE to Boston, while the two last ones, the SANTEE and the CHENANGO, will go to the Great Lakes and will be moored in Chicago and Detroit, respectively. Once they will be modified for our usage, they will provide us with excellent bases of operations for both our helicopters and our incoming fleet of Verti-Wing 100

airliners. They may also attract more business to us as museum ships. Imagine someone in France taking off in one of our Verti-Wing 100 airliner and then landing on the famous World War 2 aircraft carrier USS ENTERPRISE, moored at a Manhattan pier. We could even refit parts of those carriers into hotels for our passengers in transit.’

Ingrid could only shake her head at that, still having problems believing this.

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CHAPTER 21 – EXIT TRUMAN!

12:06 (Washington Time)

Thursday, January 20, 1949 ‘C’

East Portico of the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.