INGRID DOWS - AN ALTERNATE STORY PART 3 - THE SPACE AGE by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 10 – SHOWING OFF

09:11 (Paris Time)

Monday, June 25, 1951 ‘C’

Exposition grounds of the 19th International Air Show

Le Bourget Airport, northeast districts of Paris, France

‘’Look at that big white elephant, Jeanne: it really takes a bunch of British aristocrats to think that only the wealthy and powerful deserve to travel by air. For all its monstruous size, it can carry only a hundred passengers. Nobody will buy that plane, not even the British themselves. Let’s go see what the Americans have to show us.’’ A few paces away from the

French couple commenting in

French about the prototype of

the big Bristol BRABAZON

airliner, four mature men

listened on with growing

frustration and embarrassment.

They waited until the French

couple had walked away before conversing in low voices in English, their British accent quite evident.

‘’You know what’s the worst part about what that Frenchman said about our plane? That he was right: nobody wants to buy the BRABAZON. The specifications formulated for it by the Brabazon Committee, along with its assumptions about the future of air travel, were completely off the mark. ’’

‘’But we made a successful design, Sir Miles!’’ protested Leslie Frise, the man who had been the lead design engineer at the Bristol Aeroplane Company for the BRABAZON. ‘’We did as well as anybody could while following those specifications. You are the one who is not holding your end of the bargain, by refusing to buy my BRABAZON for your BOAC 9. If I would not have followed the specifications set by the

9 BOAC: British Overseas Airline Company. The predecessor to British Airways. Brabazon Committee, then the government would not have funded our development program.’’

Those words made Sir Miles Thomas, the chairman of BOAC, even more angry and he raised the tone of his voice while pointing a finger at the Bristol engineer.

‘’By Jove! This is exactly our biggest problem in Britain: we are too inflexible, too conservative and too unwilling to use our initiative and show some fresh thinking for our own good! As a result, we have here a big whale with a cruising speed of only 250 miles per hour and a carrying capacity of only one hundred passengers, not enough by far to ever be able to break even financially. And some geniuses at the Ministry still suggested that we lower even more the number of seats aboard it, in order to provide its passengers with ‘an adequate level of comfort’. That doesn’t seem to be the problem of the Americans, though.’’

‘’You mean the Hughes Aircraft Company, do you, Sir Miles?’’ said in a caustic tone Sir Cyril Musgrave, the Under-Secretary for Air at the British Ministry of Supplies. ‘’The American aeronautical industry had quite its share of failed projects and lame aircraft designs. The only American aircraft company which is doing fine right now is the Hughes Aircraft Company, along with its affiliated Air Fifinella airline.’’

‘’Then, let’s do like Hughes Aircraft does: let’s use some imagination of our own instead of lamely waiting for a bunch of bureaucrats to tell us what to do! Look at the end result of that nonsense: our aeronautical industry is slowly dying, while my own airline is forced to buy American planes in order to have something worthy to fly British passengers along our routes.’’

‘’But we will soon be able to put in service our own jet airliner, the De Havilland COMET, in about a year, while we will also soon have a good turboprop airliner able to cross the Atlantic, the Bristol BRITANNIA.’’ replied Sir Archibald Russell, another design engineer at Bristol.

‘’Aww, great! We will thus be only two years behind the Hughes AIRBUS and AIRBUS 2, which are now basically stealing all the presently available orders slots for long-range airliners, on top of being able to take off and land vertically, something that makes them even more attractive to dozens of small airlines around the World. So, excuse me if I am not impressed by your arguments. In the meantime, I still need to find decent planes for my company, so that I could give some proper air service to the British public. And I am not talking only about aristocrats, wealthy businessmen and government high-level functionaries.’’

Thomas then started walking away at a quick pace, prompting a shouted question from Cyril Musgrave.

‘’HEY, WERE ARE YOU GOING, SIR MILES?’’

‘’TO THE STAND OF THE HUGHES AIRCRAFT COMPANY, TO SEE IF THEY COULD HELP ME FILL MY NEEDS FOR NEW AIRCRAFT.’’

As Sir Miles Thomas was approaching the American section of the airshow’s ground displays, he noticed at once that the majority of the visitors seemed to be gathering in that area, with the biggest portion being around the stands and planes of the Hughes Aircraft company, something that made him roll his eyes.

‘’It figures! Well, time to swallow my British pride, I guess.’’ The Hughes Aircraft display was actually quite large and well furnished, with a B-12 supersonic bomber parked next to a F-9 supersonic fighter-bomber, an AIRBUS turboprop VTOL transport, an AIRBUS 2 VTOL turbofan jet transport and a CH-4 medium transport helicopter. Curiously enough, a surprising portion of the crowd of visitors to the stand seemed to want to visit first a large tent set next to the B-12. Intrigued by that, Sir Miles also entered the tent, having to play a bit with his elbows to get in. What he saw inside actually truly baffled and surprised him. Sitting on a large table was a scale model of one of the strangest, yet visually attractive jet aircraft he had ever seen. His eyes opened even wider when he got near a presentation board fixed to the table and was able to read it.

‘’A supersonic jetliner?! My God! How did Dows manage to design such an incredible thing?’’

‘’By using my imagination and the knowledge brought from the future by my adoptive mother, Sir Miles.’’ suddenly said a female voice next to him, on his right, making him jerk with surprise. Twisting his neck around, he then saw the smiling face of Ingrid Dows, whom he had met before many times a year ago in the process of buying a batch of AIRBUS 2 jet airliners for his BOAC.

‘’Oh! You scared me a bit, Miss Dows.’’

‘’Sorry about that, Sir Miles. So, the scale model of my future PEGASUS is interesting you?’’

‘’It certainly does, Miss Dows. You did use your patented diamond box wing design for it, right?’’

‘’Correct. However, since it will be meant to be a very-long range supersonic airliner optimized for a cruising speed of Mach 1.9, I used a thin, low aspect ratio wing, in order to keep supersonic drag to a minimum. Also, I decided that trying to make it a VTOL transport as well would have been too complicated and costly in terms of needed engine power.’’

‘’A reasonable conclusion, I would say. By ‘long-range’, what do you imply, actually?’’

‘’Well, we are still building our first prototype of the PEGASUS, so everything about its performance would still be mostly speculation but I have calculated that it should be able to cover at least 12,000 kilometers, or 7,300 miles, while supercruising at Mach 1.9.’’

Miles’ mouth then opened as wide as his eyes on hearing that and it took him seconds before he could speak.

‘’Seven thousand-three hundred miles at Mach 1.9? How could that even be possible?’’

‘’By using engines which are both very powerful, in order to pass the transonic drag bump and get to Mach 1.9, where that bump has mostly flattened out, and also extremely economical in fuel. Still, that means that my PEGASUS will need something close to 200 tons of fuel in order to achieve that kind of performance while crossing the Pacific from end to end.’’

‘’Miss, you are either a magician or a witch.’’ said Miles, making Ingrid smile in amusement.

‘’I do personally prefer the qualification of ‘genius’, Sir Miles, although my own engineers do call me from time to time ‘Crazy Ingrid’.’’

‘’I could see why they would call you that way, Miss Dows. And what would be the projected carrying capacity of your PEGASUS, if I may ask?’’

‘’We are still playing with various possible internal arrangements but we are aiming at a minimum capacity of 200 seats, and I am not talking about cattle-class type seats. Sir Miles, I know that you are having problems finding planes which could truly satisfy the needs for your BOAC to provide an efficient and reasonably speedy air transportation network able to link together all the far corners of the British Empire. You certainly won’t be able to do that with that big whale of BRABAZON.’’

‘’Don’t I know that, miss!’’ said Miles while rolling his eyes. ‘’I just had a heated argument with a Supply Ministry official and two Bristol engineers about the BRABAZON being basically unusable as an economically-viable airliner. On the other hand, your PEGASUS would be perfect for my company. When do you expect it to enter commercial service, miss?’’

‘’Hell, its prototype is not even built yet, Sir Miles, so any estimate I would give you now would be a WAG, a Wild Ass Guess.’’

‘’Humor me, Miss Dows.’’

‘’Uh, if everything goes as planned, and that is a big ‘if’ when it concerns aircraft design, it could possibly make its first flight within two years. Then, since it would be a completely new concept, it would need to be very thoroughly tested before it could be approved for production and win its commercial flying certification. I would say that this would take a minimum of about four years before starting to produce my PEGASUS in quantity. Again, that is the most optimistic calendar I can promise right now. Can you wait that long, Sir Miles?’’

‘’Well, I don’t have much choice but to wait, miss: I do understand how long it takes to design and build a new aircraft. Our bloody Bristol BRABAZON is a good example of that. Uh, I know that Hughes Aircraft plants are presently working at full capacity in order to clear the huge backlogs of orders you already have from both the American government and from other airlines around the World but, if I could get an extra twenty of your marvelous AIRBUS 2 within a reasonable delivery date, that would help me a lot, miss.’’

‘’Twenty more AIRBUS 2s... I could possibly start accommodating you within about sixteen months, Sir Miles: I recently started using three shifts on my assembly lines, in order to clear the backlogs in my aircraft orders book and, particularly, to fill the urgent needs of the United States Air Force for my B-12 bomber and F-9 fighter. If, for some reasons like an airline bankruptcy, some orders are cancelled, I will then slip in your own order.’’

‘’That would be great, Miss Dows. Thank you for your comprehension.’’ Ingrid was silent for a short moment before looking at Miles with an inquisitive expression.

‘’Sir Miles, maybe you could explain to me something that has been mystifying me for a while already. As you know, I have relied a lot on the knowledge from the future brought from the year 2012 by Nancy Laplante in order to inspire my aircraft designs. Your government got access to that same ‘Hourglass’ information and data months earlier than me, yet I have seen precious few examples of that future information reflected in the designs of British aircraft since the end of the war in Europe. Why?’’ Embarrassment clearly was reflected on Miles’ face as he thought over his answer.

‘’The why is simple, Miss Dows: that ‘Hourglass’ information has been kept under tight wraps by my government and has not been disseminated among our aircraft designers, except in the case of purely military projects. My government is afraid that any larger release of information would result in it being stolen by Soviet spies. We unfortunately have a sad history of falling victim to Soviet spying, as was the case with the infamous ‘Cambridge Five’ Soviet spy network, which was dismantled only thanks to the warnings given to us by Nancy Laplante in 1940.’’

‘’That I can partly understand, Sir Miles. I have myself had some mix-up with Soviet agents in Los Angeles. Still, that is not enough to excuse the present sorry state of the British aircraft industry. Talking of sorry state, has the De Havilland company seen the future data concerning its new COMET jetliner?’’ The confused look that appeared on Miles’ face on hearing her question then alarmed Ingrid.

‘’Don’t tell me that your stupid government did not warn De Havilland about the series of catastrophic accidents which afflicted the first variants of the COMET in Nancy’s timeline, Sir Miles?’’

‘’Accidents? What kind of accidents?’’

‘’I am talking about the first COMETs to enter service in Nancy’s history ending up disintegrating in flight due to explosive decompression caused by metal fatigue. Those accidents killed hundreds of persons and nearly caused the death of De Havilland as an aircraft manufacturer.’’

Miles visibly paled on hearing that.

‘’My God! I never heard about that, nor did any of our officials broach that subject. The Under-Secretary for Air of the Ministry of Supply, Sir Cyril Musgrave, is here at Le Bourget this morning. I must go warn him about this right away.’’

‘’Then, lead me to him, Sir Miles: I will want to sink myself that information into his thick head.’’

‘’Right! Follow me, miss.’’

With Ingrid following closely behind him, Sir Miles started walking quickly towards the exposition stand of the Bristol BRABAZON and was soon able to spot and approach Sir Cyril Musgrave and the two Bristol engineers close to him. The three British men stiffened and watched with suspicion Ingrid as Miles stopped in front of Musgrave and spoke to him in a sober tone.

‘’Sir Cyril, Miss Dows here has just warned me about something you should absolutely hear. Have you any knowledge of some ‘Hourglass’ information telling the story of our COMET jetliner suffering fatal accidents early on due to metal fatigue?’’ Ingrid didn’t like at all Musgrave’s reaction, which was to look at her with renewed suspicion.

‘’I have heard no such thing, Sir Miles. Are you sure that Miss Dows was not simply trying to delay our COMET program?’’

A furious Ingrid then didn’t let Miles answer that and stepped forward to get nearly nose to nose with Musgrave.

‘’You didn’t hear about that because you really don’t know or because your stupid paper-pushers at the Ministry of Defense didn’t bother warning you about that? If De Havilland is not warned about this, then a number of your first COMETs to enter service will then crash early on due to an undetected metal fatigue problem, killing hundreds of people.’’

‘’I have heard no such thing, miss. I am sure that the engineers at De Havilland will not have led such a weakness in their aircraft pass by them.’’ The haughty expression Musgrave adopted and his arrogant tone only infuriated Ingrid more.

‘’You are sure? Why don’t you check on that before letting hundreds of people die because of your incompetence and negligence? Your government has ‘Hourglass’ information that could prevent such tragedies, the same information I have used from the start to inspire my own aircraft designs . Go ask...no, demand to see the ‘Hourglass’ files concerning the history of British aviation in Nancy’s history. As for me, for you to think that I could lie about that information only in order to impede your jetliner program is both stupid and insulting. I don’t need to lie in order to leave your aircraft industry in my dust, Sir Cyril. My only reason to tell you this is to prevent the death of hundreds of innocents. If you end up doing nothing about this and by not informing De Havilland about this structural fault, then these deaths will be on you!’’

The two Bristol engineers in the group seemed on their part to take her warning much more seriously, with Sir Archibald Russell throwing a dubious look at Musgrave.

‘’Sir Cyril, it won’t cost you much to go ask questions about this at the Hourglass Section in London. I would thus strongly counsel you to take her warning seriously. If you don’t, then I myself will go tell my colleagues at De Havilland about this and will counsel them to go consult those ‘Hourglass’ files. Miss Dows is in my opinion a decent and honest person, on top of being a top aircraft designer.’’

‘’You may be ready to believe her but I don’t! Don’t you see that she has a big stake in preventing our COMET from competing against her planes?’’ Musgrave then walked away, furious, leaving an angry Ingrid with the three other British men. Archibald Russell watched Musgrave go, then gave an apologetic look to Ingrid.

‘’Forget about him, Miss Dows. I will myself investigate about this and will inform the head designers at De Havilland about checking out that ‘Hourglass’ information, whether Sir Cyril likes it or not.’’

‘’Thank you, Sir Archibald. I will sleep much better tonight, knowing that you will act on my warning. Well, I better go back now to my exposition stand: my visitors are asking a lot of questions about my projected future supersonic jetliner.’’

‘’A supersonic jetliner?!’’ exclaimed Russell. ‘’Can I come with you to see it?’’

‘’Of course! I have no secrets to hide. Well, nearly no secrets, to be more exact.’’

08:52 (Paris Time)

Thursday, June 28, 1951 ‘C’

Office of the American Defense Attaché

United States embassy, Paris

Brigadier General George Carson got up from his chair and saluted Ingrid as soon as she walked inside his office, acknowledging both her superior rank and her three Medals of Honor.

‘’Welcome to Paris and thank you for visiting me, General Dows: it is a true honor to receive you in my office. So, what brings you here, General?’’ Ingrid returned his salute before stepping forward to shake his hand.

‘’Thank you, General Carson. The reason I came to see you is to get some information about the present internal situation in Germany. I haven’t set foot in Germany since it signed an armistice with us in 1944 and I was planning to go to Berlin, to visit the graves of my family there, so came to get some counsels from you about how safe Germany is for American citizens and especially American servicepersons like me.’’

‘’Hum, a judicious question, I must say, General. Since most of the countries surrounding Germany don’t want anything to do with it, due to their persistent grudge about the Nazis invading them in 1940, few non-Germans have visited Germany in the last few years. However, we do have a functioning embassy in Berlin and my colleague there regularly sends me reports on the situation inside the country. But don’t you want to sit first before we discuss his reports in depth, General? Would you like some coffee, or tea?’’

‘’Thanks but no! I already had two cups of espresso coffee this morning at my hotel. Let’s just sit and talk.’’

‘’Right!’’

Once both of them were sitting in easy chairs facing each other, Carson started speaking in a slow, deliberate tone.

‘’First off, I would say that the German people in general shows little to no hostility these days against American citizens. However, American servicemen, like in the case of the marines guarding the embassy in Berlin, do attract some occasional unfriendly looks from Germans, especially when those Germans are ex-members of the Nazi Party or of the SS Corps. In your specific case, I would be doubly careful, since you were the person most responsible for forcing Germany to sign an armistice in 1944. Also, the fact that you were previously a German citizen will paint you as a traitor in the eyes of many Germans. If you would still want to visit Germany, then I would caution you to watch your back while there.’’

‘’I see!’’ said Ingrid, who had more or less expected those words. ‘’What about the present German political leaders?’’

‘’They could be characterized as moderate socialists mainly bent on rebuilding Germany’s economy and on improving the living conditions of their citizens. Their present leader is Chancelor Konrad Adenauer, a moderate politician with no love for the Nazis.’’

‘’And what about the ex-Nazi officials and the members of the SS Corps?’’

‘’You could say that both the ex-Nazi Party officials and the soldiers and officers of the SS Corps have mostly melted away in the woodworks and are keeping quiet...for the moment. We do get from time-to-time reports about secret meetings of ex-SS men but those are deemed to be more like comradeship reunions rather than as some conspiracy meetings.’’

Ingrid made a pinched smile on hearing that but didn’t comment on it.

‘’Will I need to get a visa before entering Germany?’’

‘’I would definitely counsel you to do so, General. There is a functional German embassy here in Paris, on Avenue Foch, but it stays most discrete, for obvious reasons.’’

‘’And in what state are the German armed forces these days? How powerful are they, General Carson?’’

‘’Compared to the heydays of Nazi Germany, they are now quite feeble but what is left of them is mostly concentrated along their eastern borders, in order to defend against any potential Soviet invasion. Since 1945, they have built quite a strong defensive line along the borders with Poland and Czechoslovakia. As for the German Air Force, which still calls itself the Luftwaffe, it possesses only fighters and transport aircraft and no bombers, with most of them being old propeller-driven models, like the Fw-190 and the Me-109. However, the number of 88mm anti-aircraft guns posted along their eastern border is enough to scare about anybody. If the Soviets ever attacked and managed to get to the German border, they would then encounter a wall of 88mm shells, with those shells equipped with proximity fuses.’’

‘’Ouch! That could ruin the days of even jet fighters like the Mig-15. Well, that answers most of my questions about Germany that I had. I will now go visit the German embassy, in order to get a visa there.’’

‘’Then let me show you on my map of Paris where the German embassy is, General.’’

‘’You are too kind, General Carson.’’

The reception she got forty minutes later at the small building housing the German embassy, while not frosty, was not a warm one either, with the German diplomatic personnel there greeting her politely but also with some reserve, the moment they realized who she was. The receptionist who first talked with Ingrid then referred her to the immigration consul and had an embassy guard escort her to the office of the consul. Ingrid was somewhat surprised on seeing that the German consul was actually a woman in her forties. That woman noticed her reaction and made a thin smile then.

‘’Surprised to see a German woman being something else than a simple secretary or a home maker, General Dows, or should I call you ‘Miss Weiss’?’’

‘’I am actually surprised, Madam Steinbrunner: women in positions of authority were a rarity in 1940. And please call me ‘Miss Dows’: I am widowed and am proud of my late husband’s name.’’

‘’Indeed! However, many things have changed as a result of the war. For one thing, the staggering losses in German men we suffered during the war have forced the government to rely more on women to fill the gaps in the nation ’s administration. We after all had over four million of our younger men either killed or taken prisoner by the Soviets, who then sent them to die from overwork and starvation in their Siberian gulags. Talking of the Soviets, your bombing of the Kremlin and the killing of Stalin did bring you some positive points from the perspective of the German citizens.’’

‘’But...’’ said Ingrid, detecting an undertone in the consul’s voice.

‘’But you are still considered by many in Germany as a traitor who killed Germans in combat while fighting for the Americans.’’ Ingrid frowned at that but kept her tone polite, albeit firm.

‘’I renounced my German citizenship after the Gestapo tortured to death my adoptive mother, Nancy Laplante. I have since considered myself as an American and still do, Madam Steinbrunner.’’

‘’And I personally understand your reasons, Miss Dows. I myself had no love for the Gestapo and was in fact for a time on their list of suspected leftists to be watched. Thankfully, the Gestapo, like the SS Corps, is no more and has been replaced after the armistice by a purely civilian federal police force with no political connections.’’

‘’And what happened then to those ex-Gestapo members?’’

‘’They were either arrested for their crimes, in the case of the worst members, or forced to retire and recycle themselves into other lines of occupations...if they were not killed by your bombings on Berlin and on Gestapo centers around Europe in 1944.’’

‘’And the members of the SS Corps?’’

‘’The members of the SS Totemkopf, who guarded the concentration camps in Germany and Poland, were all summarily executed by the German paratroopers and regular army soldiers who liberated those concentration camps and freed the inmates, and this after those soldiers discovered mass graves full of dead men, women and children first reduced to living skeletons by the guards. As for the Waffen SS, they were forcibly disarmed and disbanded, although some SS units resisted their disarming and had to be eliminated by regular army troops and by Luftwaffe soldiers. That process actually proved to be quite a bloody and chaotic one but we now have only regular army troops defending Germany from any possible Soviet invasion. So, here we are, a de-nazified country trying to earn our place back in Europe as a democratic, peaceful country. Unfortunately, bad memories are long-lived and we are still mostly treated like pariahs by the countries around us. So, Miss Dows, why do you want to visit Germany?’’

‘’I simply wanted to go visit the grave of my family in Berlin, Madam Steinbrunner. My whole extended family was killed in the first British bombing of Berlin in 1940. I escaped death simply because I was sent out to buy more wine for the family party we were holding at the time. When I returned to my house and saw that it had been reduced to a burning pile of rubble, I then decided to join the Luftwaffe as a female auxiliary, in order to help defend Germany against more air bombardment. I was planning as well to bring my adopted daughter, who is now nine-year-old, along on that trip, so that she could see my family ’s grave with me.’’ Erika Steinbrunner’s facial expression noticeably softened on hearing Ingrid’s explanation and she nodded her head once before speaking again.

‘’I can understand your reasons to want to visit Berlin and I sympathize with you but I would strongly advise you not to enter Germany at this time, especially if you go with your young daughter. The risks are high that some people in Germany will be angered by your visit and may attack you out of old resentment against you. Also, we know how important you are for the American government and we would not want to antagonize it if anything happened to you during your visit to Germany.’’ Ingrid was silent for a moment as she mentally processed the warning given to her by Erika Steinbrunner. She actually found her reasons to warn her most plausible and relevant. That her trip would possibly endanger Hien and not only herself was also weighing heavily in the balance.

‘’Then, I will withdraw my request for visas for me and my daughter, Madam Steinbrunner, even though it deeply hurts me that I can’t even visit my family’s tomb.’’

‘’I am sorry about that, Miss Dows, truly, but the only way I see for you to visit your family’s tomb would be to provide you with a government escort. Even then, your safety could not be completely ensured and you could still face at least some hostile attitudes against you. I personally wouldn’t want to expose a young girl to that.’’ Ingrid sighed heavily, then got up from her chair and shook hands with the consul.

‘’Then, I won’t waste more of your time with my request, Madam Consul. Thank you for having been totally frank with me.’’

‘’And thank you for your comprehension, Miss Dows. Maybe, in a few more years, Germany will become more welcoming to you.’’

‘’Then, I may try again in some future, Madam Steinbrunner. Thank you again for receiving me.’’

Ingrid then walked out of the consul’s office and made her way to the entrance of the embassy. Once outside, she took a deep breath to settle down and wash away her disappointment, then went back to her car, which she had brought to Paris in the cargo hold of her AIRBUS 2 presently being exposed at Le Bourget. Poor Hien, who was staying with the Truongs at their restaurant near her hotel during daytime, was going to be disappointed about not being able to visit Berlin. However, Ingrid would never consciously risk her life for any reason. Getting in her Hughes SPRINT, which had been making many heads turn in Paris, she started her engine, then started to roll, heading back to Le Bourget.