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

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Having arrived from Washington half an hour earlier on an Air Fifinella jet-propelled AIRBUS 2 flight, Navy Secretary Chester Nimitz and his Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Louis Denfeld, were greeted by a young receptionist at the visitors’

counter of the Hughes Aircraft hangar housing the Hughes prototype workshop. Since Nimitz had arranged in advance by telephone his meeting with Ingrid Dows, the receptionist immediately had one of the two female security guards present to escort the two Navy men to the prototype workshop. As they followed the security guard, Denfeld couldn’t help whisper a remark to Nimitz.

‘’Have you noticed that we saw only female employees up to now, Chester?’’

‘’I have! However, that was to be expected, as Air Fifinel a employs female veterans and as Hughes Enterprises is headed by a trio of women.’

‘’Yeah! Talk about feminists in power.’

Nimitz threw a side look at Denfeld but didn’t reply to his last remark. Overall, the U.S.

Navy was stil very much a man’s world, with very conservative, not to say downright sexist views about women, so Denfeld’s attitude was nothing new to him. He himself, as a long-serving Navy officer, had a conservative outlook but World War 2 had shown him the value of the service of women, both in and out of combat. Right now, they were about to meet one of those women, who happened to have a war record anyone could only envy.

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Both Nimitz and Denfeld’s eyes popped wide open when they were introduced into the noisy and very active prototype workshop and were able to look at the prototype of the XB-12 SKYBOLT, which appeared to be nearly complete.

‘’My God, Louis: look at that thing!’

Denfeld nodded his head while admiring the long, slender fuselage, with its two big air intakes and two pairs of large wings, one swept back and the other swept forward, with their tips connected to a pair of long and slender fuel tanks.

‘’It sure looks the part of a supersonic bomber, Chester. Too bad that it won’t fit on our carriers.’

‘’Well, we are here precisely to see if Dows could possibly design for us a supersonic bomber which would fit on our carriers. Aah, I see her: she’s near the tail section.’’

They continue following the female security guard until they could shake hands with Ingrid Dows, who wore a blue work coverall sporting the logo of the Hughes Aircraft Company.

‘’Good morning, gentlemen, and welcome to Glendale. So, what do you think of my XB-12?’’

‘’That it looks truly magnificent, Miss Dows.’ answered Nimitz. ‘’As we were just discussing, it is a shame that it can’t fit aboard our aircraft carriers.’

‘’Indeed! I had time to think a bit about that subject since you called yesterday to announce your visit to Glendale. Did you want that hypothetical bomber to fulfill only the strategic, nuclear role, or did you wish for an aircraft that could also fulfill long-range, non-nuclear strikes, like my B-12?’’

‘’Having a dual role bomber would definitely be a more efficient and economical use of the limited space aboard our carriers, Miss Dows.’

‘’Talking of nuclear strike and of space aboard a carrier, you do realize that the size of our present atomic bombs will make it nearly impossible to carry them internally on a fighter-bomber sized aircraft. Our present MARK 3

and MARK 4 fission bombs are about eleven feet long and nearly five feet in diameter. To have a bomber with an internal bomb bay able to accommodate such a big egg would mean that the said bomber would never fit on a carrier and would also be too heavy for your catapults.

Either you will have to wait until we produce nuclear bombs of more manageable

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dimensions, or you will pursue another solution than a carrier-based bomber. Please follow me to my design office, where I drew a few sketches yesterday on possible alternatives of interest to you.’

Thanking and dismissing first her security guard, Ingrid then led her two visitors towards a door on one side of the workshop which turned out to open on a lobby with two lifts and one staircase. The trio then used one of the lifts to go up by two levels, where they stepped out in a long hallway lined up with doors. There was also a security desk near the elevators, where an armed female security guard stood watch, prompting a question from Louis Denfeld.

‘’The security at your design and workshop center seems quite tight, Miss Dows.’

‘’And it has to be, Admiral. A lot of people, and not only the Soviet and the British, would love to steal some of the technological secrets we developed here.’

‘’The British?’ asked Nimitz, surprised. ‘’I thought that you had to deal only with Soviet spies.’’

‘’Oh, the Soviets are not the only ones jealous of my aircraft designs, Mister Secretary. The British also regard our technical advancements in aeronautics as a challenge to their own aeronautical industry. While it was not publicized, a British spy was caught trying to enter my design office at night, some three months ago. He was arrested by my guards and then handed over to the FBI, which kept the whole incident very discrete, for political reasons.’

‘’Wow! You real y are a woman many love to hate, Miss Dows.’ said Denfeld, making Ingrid smile.

‘’Indeed, Admiral! Quite a few American aircraft manufacturers and politicians also don’t like me much because I am grabbing an important portion of the air travel market in the United States with my AIRBUS and AIRBUS 2 transports.’

‘’Politicians? Are you talking about those which are lobbied by other aircraft manufacturing companies?’’

‘’Those, plus others who resent my anti-segregation stance, Admiral. I am not a very popular woman around the state legislatures in the South of the country. The local KKK chapters over there even burned me in effigy because I ‘dared’ giving equal employment opportunities to Blacks. More recently, I had a bunch of local racists criticize the fact that I adopted a young Vietnamese girl, who they consider as a ‘colored person’.’’

Nimitz nodded his head at that.

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‘’And your spirit of social and racial egalitarianism is to be commended, Miss Dows, even though many in Washington are calling you a socialist, or even a communist.’

‘’I know and I simply ignore those ignorant bigots, Mister Secretary.’

‘’By the way, I had a chance to talk recently with some of the Navy veterans you hired to maintain the decommissioned carriers you bought and then turned into floating helicopter bases for your Air Fifinella. The fact that you hired many veterans who were poor or even homeless and then provided them with individual apartments refitted from old crew quarters on those repurposed carriers especially touched me. Some of them even praised you as being some sort of modern-day saint.’

That brought a most sober look on Ingrid’s face and she replied to Nimitz in a subdued tone of voice.

‘’I am not a saint, Mister Secretary, just a woman who believes in simple decency and compassion.’

Arriving at a double door with large smoky windows on them, Ingrid pushed it open and led her two visitors into a large industrial drafting room lined on both sides with drafting tables.

‘’My design drafting room, where I spend quite a lot of my time, gentlemen. Let’s go to that easel in one corner, which supports a large drawing pad.’’

Once the trio stopped in front of that easel, Ingrid flipped over a couple of pages of the drawing pad, ending up with a sheet covered with a few hand-drawn sketches.

‘’These sketches are the product of some of the thinking I did after you cal ed me yesterday. When I tried to imagine a carrier-based aircraft able to carry internally a MARK 4 fission bomb, I quickly came to the conclusion that such an aircraft would be way too big to be operated from a carrier. I then pursued another solution our Navy could and should pursue in order to be able to assist our Air Force in delivering nuclear warheads to our enemies: submarine-launched, nuclear-tipped missiles.’’

‘’Submarine-launched missiles? But no such things exist right now, Miss Dows.’

objected Louis Denfeld, making Ingrid smile slightly.

‘’I know, but I also know from Hourglass Files that they wil represent the true future of the U.S. Navy’s nuclear strike deterrence. The British, who launched nuclear-tipped short range ballistic missiles from a battleship in 1944 and destroyed both Tokyo and Osaka, have started to show the way in this. However, the range of their missiles is

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only a few hundred miles, while the use of a battleship as a launch platform makes it very vulnerable to airstrikes. What is needed is a much longer-ranged ballistic missile with acceptable precision and a submarine able to carry and launch such missiles. I happen to know that the Navy is already working on developing nuclear reactors meant to provide electrical power to ships and submarines. A nuclear-powered submarine would be the perfect mean to carry such missiles to within range of enemy territory. At the worst, a diesel-electric submarine could do the trick but it would not be the ideal solution, in my humble opinion. Here are some rough sketches I drew when trying to imagine such a bal istic missile and a submarine to carry it.’

Ingrid then flipped in succession a few pages of the drawing pad while explaining what her concepts were and how they could work. Nimitz, fascinated by the sketches and the explanations given by Ingrid, nodded his head.

‘’Hell, you do have an incredible power of imagination when it comes to design work, Miss Dows. I didn’t know that you knew this much about ships in general.’

A malicious smile then came to Ingrid’s lips.

‘’I was a Norse boat builder during one of my past incarnations, in the Ninth Century. I also happened in this life to have used aircraft carriers to execute a few rather unorthodox air strikes during the last war. I strongly believe in interservice cooperation in war and my imagination is not limited to aircraft design, Mister Secretary: I delve into many other military and technological domains. Now, I do have a question for you about your fleet carriers.’

‘’Shoot!’

‘’Once they enter service with a fleet, either the Pacific Fleet or the Atlantic Fleet, how often do your fleet carriers need to transit the Panama Canal in order to go from one ocean to the other during their service career?’’

‘’Uh, that is actual y quite infrequent, miss: once assigned to a particular fleet, our carriers tend to serve most if not all of their useful lives with that fleet. The most common reason for our carriers to transit the Panama Canal would be to go have a refit or extensive repairs at a specialized shipyard. Even then, we do have major shipyards on both coasts, so the need for such transits is quite limited. Overall, I would say that our fleet carriers may need to transit the Panama Canal no more than three to four times during their active careers, especially when we are at peace, with no need to quickly reinforce one of our fleets.’

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‘’Then, why voluntarily limit the design effectiveness of our carriers by designing them to be compatible with the Panama Canal locks, Mister Secretary? Nancy told me that, in her time in early 21st Century, none of our fleet carriers could fit through the Panama Canal, yet they were not considered deficient because of that. In fact, their sheer size made them more efficient as aircraft carriers.’’

Ingrid’s question and argument clearly took Nimitz and Denfeld short, with the CNO then asking a question in response.

‘’Er, why are you asking us that question, Miss Dows? Do you plan on trying your hand at designing aircraft carriers?’’

‘’Goodness no, Admiral! I already have my plate full designing aircraft and missiles. I asked that because I can see a clear way to make our future aircraft carrier a lot better and more efficient at operating aircraft at sea.’

‘’And how would you propose that we achieve that, Miss Dows?’’ asked Nimitz.

In response, Ingrid flipped the pages of her large drawing pad on the easel, to show to him and Denfeld what looked like a number of odd-looking ship hull shapes.

‘’By using multi-hull designs, Mister Secretary. Mind you, since the U.S. Navy will be about as conservative in the 21st Century as it is today, it still will be stuck with single-hull carrier designs, although it was starting to adopt, slowly, multi-hull designs for other classes of ships. If you forgo the need for them to fit through the Panama Canal locks, then our future fleet carriers could be a lot wider, thus having a vastly wider flight deck and aircraft hangar. The only realistic requirement would then be to be able to transit the Suez Canal, which is the main route to transit between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. However, the Suez Canal is much larger than the Panama Canal, so you would need to design quite a monster of a ship to make it incompatible with the Suez Canal.’

‘’But a wider carrier would mean a huge increase in ship displacement, thus an even bigger increase in construction cost, miss.’ objected Denfeld, making Ingrid shake her head.

‘’Not if you use a multi-hull design, Admiral. By using either a catamaran, a trimaran or a SWATH19 design, you could end up with a very wide flight deck and aircraft hangar on a ship of similar tonnage ton a conventional carrier design of the same length.

If we use a trimaran hull design, like the one I drew here, you would end up with a 19 SWATH: Small Water Area Twin Hull. A particular kind of twin-hull ship with cylindrical submerged hulls supporting an upper platform situated above water.

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relatively thin but wide and mostly hollow rectangular steel box, which would form both the flight deck and the aircraft hangar. Then, using three parallel long and thin hulls with a total width of no more than that of a single hull of the same displacement, you could drop that rectangular steel box on top of these three hulls and obtain a carrier with both greatly improved aviation capability and greater overall stability in bad sea conditions. In fact, that wider flight deck could even be made to support two parallel but separate runways, which would allow it to both retrieve and launch aircraft at the same time and in a safe manner. You could also have the outer hulls inclined inward from the vertical, in tumblehome fashion, to greatly reduce its radar return signature.’’

Nimitz, like Denfeld, eyed with growing interest the sketch Ingrid was referring to.

‘’My God! Your design could effectively make for a more powerful aircraft carrier design, miss. Are there known drawbacks to this multi-hull design concept?’’

‘’None that I know off, Mister Secretary. Such a multi-hull carrier, with a displacement similar to a conventional single hull carrier, would be both more stable in heavy seas, be faster due to finer hull lines and have a vastly increased capacity in aircraft. Also, the space between the hulls could serve to vent the exhaust gases from vertically-launched missiles housed inside the hangar box structure.’

‘’Vertically-launched missiles?’ nearly exclaimed Louis Denfeld. ‘’ Do such things exist?’’

‘’Not yet but soon, Admiral. They existed in Nancy’s time and had in fact become the main armament of U.S. Navy warships in the 21st Century. Here is a closely guarded secret I have been keeping: Hughes Enterprises has very discretely opened a missile design and production facility nearby, in Canuga Park, where my AIM-1 BOLT and ASM-1 MJOLNIR missiles are now being produced and where more new missile types are being designed. Vertical launch missiles are part of those new projects.’

‘’Uh, could I have a pen and a notepad to note all this down, Miss Dows?’’ asked Chester Nimitz, who was getting a lot more than he had expected from this visit. In response, Ingrid quickly got a large notepad and a pen from a nearby drafting table and gave them to the Navy Secretary, then basically repeated for his benefit all the technical design information she had already told to him and Denfeld. She then ripped off the easel’s paper pad the pages of sketches concerning her ballistic missile submarine concept and her ideas about multi-hull ship designs, folding them to pocket-sized dimensions and giving them with a smile to Nimitz.

‘’Here you are, Mister Secretary.’’

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‘’Miss, I don’t know how to thank you for all this. What about your F-9 fighter?

Would you be able to make it fit aboard our carriers?’’

‘’I believe so, Mister Secretary: I wil need to simply add an arresting hook to it and make its radar nose section fold on hinges, so that the plane could then fit on your aircraft elevators.’

Nimitz couldn’t help stare at her with unmitigated admiration.

‘’Miss Dows, you are a true genius.’’

That made Ingrid chuckle in amusement before she spoke again.

‘’You know what, Mister Secretary? Hedy Lamarr, my partner in Hughes Enterprises along with Katharine Hepburn, has always passed as the genius in our group, which she is. One day, Hedy challenged me to take an I.Q. test, to see how I could end up with so many ideas. We were both stunned...and amused, when the tests revealed that I have an I.Q. slightly higher than hers, with a confirmed result of 151 for me, versus her I.Q. of 149. I thus can be considered as a genuine genius-level person.’

‘’Wow!’ could only say Nimitz in response. He then shook hands with her again while grinning.

‘’Miss Dows, thank you for receiving us and helping us like this. Hopefully, I will soon be able to approach you with a Navy design contract for a carrier-based variant of your F-9 fighter. And again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you did for those Navy veterans now working for Air Fifinel a.’’

‘’That was my pleasure, Mister Secretary. Have a nice return trip to Washington, you and Admiral Denfeld.’’

‘’Actual y, we were planning to go visit and inspect some of the Navy installations around Los Angeles and San Francisco before returning to Washington. We may take that opportunity to also visit the Navy veterans working on the USS RANGER and USS

SARATOGA.’

‘’An excel ent idea, Mister Secretary. Know that, thanks to its size, the USS

SARATOGA, on top of serving as a floating base for my Air Fifinella and of housing a Navy museum section, has as well a hotel for passengers in transit. Some of our AIRBUS and AIRBUS 2 also use it as a West Coast terminal for flights going to the big cities on the East Coast. You could thus end your West Coast visit in San Francisco and stay overnight on the SARATOGA before flying back to Washington the next day.’

‘’Hell, that sounds like a great idea, miss! We wil certainly do that. Thank you again for receiving us.’

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‘’My pleasure, sir. Let me accompany you back to the reception.’

Some ten minutes later, Ingrid waved goodbye to Nimitz and Denfeld as they left aboard their chauffeured Navy staff car. Ingrid watched them roll away until the staff car was only a small dot in the distance, then returned inside: she still had plenty of work to do, both in the prototype workshop and in her design office. However, she wasn’t going to work overtime, like she did in the recent past: she was due to pick up at five little Hien from the daycare center attached to the prototype workshop and which greeted the small children of the company’s employees.

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CHAPTER 25 – SCRAMBLE!

08:43 (Washington Time)

Thursday, December 29, 1949 ‘C’

Pilots ready room, McGuire Air Force Base

New Jersey, U.S.A.

‘’Alright, men: let’s cut the gripping and listen up! I know that we are only three days away from New Year and that you would prefer to be spending the holidays with your families, instead of being here. I get that! I also have a family I would like to be with right now but duty comes first, holidays or not.’

Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Cosgrove waited until al of his squadron’s fighter pilots had sit down and shut up before continuing.

‘’The reason you are here is that a snap surprise air defense exercise has been called by Air Defense Command, in order to test the defenses of our national airspace against a surprise attack by Soviet bombers trying to drop nuclear bombs on our main East Coast cities, including Washington. As the historic attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941

showed, we can’t expect enemy attacks to occur only at our convenience, when we are fully ready and on alert. We can count ourselves lucky to have even received this late, vague warning. In real life, we possibly would be all at home, celebrating the New Year, while Soviet bombers penetrated our airspace and nuked half a dozen of our biggest cities.’’

With his pilots now fully listening to him, Cosgrove continued on.

‘’What I got as a fictitious scenario for this air defense exercise is that high-level intelligence got word that the Soviet Air Force was planning to launch a surprise attack against our East Coast. That ‘special intelligence’ does not specify on what exact date to expect that attack, nor does it say from where those Soviet bombers will come from.

The only precision we have is that those Soviet bombers are of a brand-new type and are possibly supersonic. In reality, one of our experimental bombers will play the role of a Soviet bomber and will do everything to evade our defenses and penetrate our airspace, in order to get to overfly our main cities. If that bomber manages to overfly our cities or our main bases without having been intercepted, then we wil have failed.’

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‘’What wil be considered a successful intercept, sir?’’ asked one of the pilots, making Cosgrove nod his head at the relevance of the question.

‘’To claim a successful intercept, you will have to approach that bomber within gun or rocket range and film it with your gun camera. All of your planes except two will have empty cannons and rocket pods, so that you don’t get to shoot down one of our planes by mistake. The two planes kept fully armed will stay on the ground as a safety measure, to be ready to react to a real attack by Soviet bombers. Unless our intercept air controller adds the word ‘Noduff’ to his order to scramble, then consider that order to be part of the exercise scenario. However, if you hear a ‘Noduff’ scramble order, then our two armed fighters will react and take off, ready to shoot down any surprise real Soviet intruder. Any questions?’’

‘’Yes, sir! How long will that air defense exercise go on, sir?’’

‘’For as long as the ADC20 commander will deem it necessary to judge the effectiveness of our defenses. If this means spending New Year’s day here, on standby, then tough! Until further notice, we will have one flight on five-minute scramble alert, starting with Blue Flight. Flights will be rotated every four hours. Make sure that your planes are fully fueled and checked out before going to wait and relax. You are now dismissed!’’

As his fighter pilots got up from their seats and dispersed, Cosgrove’s deputy, Major George White, came to see him and spoke to him in a near whisper.

‘’Do you think that our SABRE fighters will be fast enough to catch this experimental bomber model, sir?’’

‘’I frankly don’t know, George, as I was told nothing about its actual performances.

Hopefully,

our

High

Command will keep the parameters of this

air defense exercise realistic: asking us to intercept a supersonic aircraft flying at high

altitude and at night would be both futile

and useless in terms of what we could learn

from it. After all, our F-86 SABRE jets can’t go faster than Mach 1.05 when going all out

in a dive. This business could definitely get quite hairy, George.’

20 ADC: Air Defense Command. A component of the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s.

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08:02 (New York Time)

Saturday, December 31, 1949 ‘C’

Montauk Air Warning Station # 3 (Lashup Site L-10) Long Island, New York State

One of the two radar operators on duty in the truck van of their AN/TPS-1

surveillance radar was sipping on his cup of coffee when a new blip appeared on his radar screen, immediately attracting his attention and making him put down his cup of coffee.

‘’Hey, Jeff, I have a new blip which just appeared from the East. It is some 194

miles away and flying high but it is very fast, just under the speed of sound.’

‘’Shit!’ replied his partner. ‘’This must be the experimental bomber which is supposed to play the role of a Soviet bomber for this damn air defense exercise. Any chance that it could be a commercial flight, Dick?’’

His friend and comrade scoffed at that last question.

‘’A commercial aircraft, flying at close to 650 miles per hour? Good luck with that! You better ring this to our air division command center.’

As Jeff was picking up the receiver of his telephone, his comrade suddenly swore to himself.

‘’Fuck! That guy just dove down under our radar line of sight: I lost contact with it. He must be our bad guy alright.’

08:03 (New York Time)

Cockpit of the Hughes XB-12 bomber prototype

Flying at 6,000 meters and approaching the American East Coast

‘’Well, we played fair up to now, General, but it is time to start playing dirty and see what our beast is capable of.’

‘’Agreed, Ingrid.’ replied Lieutenant General Curtiss LeMay, the commander of the Strategic Air Command, or SAC, who had been invited by Ingrid to fly with her on this test mission. ‘’Let’s dive down to the carpet and accelerate past Mach 1.’

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Ingrid, who occupied the pilot’s seat, while LeMay occupied the copilot’s seat, pushed her controls forward, making her XB-12 enter a steep dive which also made it break through the sound barrier. LeMay, who had shown a huge interest in the XB-12 and was hoping to see it soon enter service with his SAC, carefully monitored how the prototype was behaving in the transonic and supersonic domain during this mission, as very little to date had been known for certain about supersonic flight...until the advent of the Hughes XF-9 and XB-12, that is. Ingrid ended up recovering from her dive and started to fly level once at a mere fifty meters above the waves of the Atlantic, then pushed her engine throttles to maximum dry thrust, accelerating to the XB-12’s supercruise speed at sea level of 726 miles per hour, or Mach 1.1. Even though he was a very experienced combat flyer, Curtiss Lemay couldn’t help tense up as he watched the nearby waves pass by at very high speed: only the best pilots could fly this fast and low without eventually making a mistake and crash into the sea or ground. However, Ingrid Dows was again proving to him that she was one of the best, if not the best, in this business.

Hedy Lamarr, who was sitting at the electronic warfare officer’s station, then spoke up.

‘’I am starting to intercept radio communications between the Montauk Air Warning Station and the surrounding air bases housing fighter squadrons, Ingrid.’

‘’Jam them!’ was Ingrid’s immediate response. ‘’Jam as well the radar in Montauk. Give the Air Defense Command a taste of what they could experience in reality.’

‘’On it!’

At the McGuire Air Force Base, the four F-86 SABRE jet fighters on tarmac alert had just been told to scramble, with the flight leader speaking by radio to the air intercept control officer, when his radio headset suddenly filled with a strong growling noise. The young captain slapped the side of his canopy in frustration, understanding too well what was happening.

‘’SHIT! THEY ARE JAMMING US! NOW, WE WON’T KNOW WHAT HEADING

TO TAKE TO INTERCEPT THAT INTRUDER. ALL BLUE FOX CALLSIGNS, FROM

BLUE FOX LEADER: WE WILL TAKE OFF AND THEN WILL HEAD EASTWARD TO

TRY TO FIND THAT INTRUDER AND INTERCEPT IT.’

Releasing his brakes and pushing his engine throttle forward, the flight leader made his jet fighter roll out of the alert tarmac’s surface and headed towards the nearby extremity of the main runway. Once on the runway, he briefly lined up his plane and did a last

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instruments check before pushing his turbojet engine to maximum power and accelerating down the runway. A minute later, he and his three wingmen had assembled in two pairs and turned towards the East. They were in the process of climbing towards an altitude of 3,000 meters when the flight leader saw with a shock a big, futuristic-looking aircraft zoom past him from the opposite direction, flying extremely low and fast.

‘’HOLY SHIT! HE JUST CROSSED PATH UNDER US! TURN AROUND!

TURN AROUND!’

Performing as tight a turn as he could endure, the flight leader still saw his vision blur as he experienced some 6 Gs of centrifugal force. However, by the time he completed his half turn, the intruder was already a mere dark dot on the horizon. The flight leader then bitterly realized that the intruder was much faster than him and his wingmen and that he had next to no hope of catching up with it. Stil , he didn’t give up and pushed his engine to maximum power, accelerating towards his top speed of Mach 0.93 as he spoke on the radio...or rather attempted to. His voice was however drowned by the noise from the electronic jamming covering his frequency.

‘’Jesus! This beast is the Devil personified!’

Glancing at their tail warning radar, Charles Yeager, who occupied the radar and weapons officer’s seat, then reported by intercom to Ingrid.

‘’Those four F-86 fighters are still trying to pursue us but we easily outpace them, Ingrid.’’

‘’Meaning that Soviet Mig-15s would also be left behind by us. Let’s see if we wil encounter more opposition before we get to New York.’

‘’I doubt that we wil , Ingrid.’ said Curtiss LeMay. The Air Defense Command was established only a couple of years earlier and still has very few assets, either fighters or radars, under its control. A lot of its present fighter assets are actually World War 2-era propeller-driven aircraft. I am afraid that if, somehow, Soviet bombers would approach our coasts, then they may well succeed in penetrating our airspace.’’

Ingrid made a grimace at that, not liking this one bit.

‘’All thanks to Harry Truman and his stupid, irresponsible military budget cuts.

Something will have to be done about our continental air defenses, and quickly. We should get to New York in a couple of minutes. Hedy, contact the ENTERPRISE

Fifinella heliport and warn them that we are about to arrive, so that it could pause the

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landings and takeoffs there. Chuck, keep an eye for any commercial aircraft around La Guardia and Idlewild21 airports, so that we don’t possibly cause a collision.’

‘’On it, Ingrid!’

‘’To all, hang on: it could be a shaky ride while we fly supersonic at low level. I am lowering our wingtips now to improve our longitudinal stability and increase our wings loading.’

Activating a lever, Ingrid made the pair of monobloc ailerons constituting the wing tips pivot down by sixty degrees. LeMay nodded his head in satisfaction when the shaking from turbulences became much more subdued.

‘’This is working real y well. Normally we should be shaken around like a sack of marbles. Did any bomber in your mother’s future use such a system of wingtip drooping?’’

‘’Quite a few actually, General. However, one such prototype crashed after an escorting jet fighter was caught in its turbulence wake and collided with it. Let’s hope that our fighter pilots will not try to follow us from too close and thus get killed. I would never pardon myself for that.’

‘’That would be tragic but, unfortunately, it would be part of the risks of the trade.’’

‘’Sad but true. Keep sharp and hang on, people: I’m going to go real y low now, in order to evade the radars around this region.’

‘’You mean that we are not already flying low?’’ asked in a facetious tone Hedy Lamarr, making Ingrid chuckle.

‘’Not by my standards, Hedy.’

08:11 (New York Time)