Louis Shalako: Heaven Is Too Far Away, Chapter Twenty-Two. Louis Shalako.

Chapter Twenty-Two

A Long Day

All I knew about Captain Wheatley was that he worked for the Military Aeronautics Directorate, which was an independent branch, and that he could walk into some place like A.V. Roe and order a hundred planes. The order would be met, and ‘the cheque didn’t bounce…’

Never underestimate an old piss-tank like Zavitz. He would drink with other like-minded individuals, in similar places, all within lunch-time walking distance of Whitehall. Drinkers have looser tongues than those who don’t, and they’ll always have just one more. Zavitz was primed with a little cash and the promise of additional funding as required.

It took some doing, but with a little help from friends who shall remain nameless, I finally tracked down Wheatley. I flew out to Farnborough. He was in meeting after meeting. Wheatley was a busy man. He was one step ahead of me all day. I finally caught up with him.

“I’m just going out to dinner.” He mentioned, with a hint of crankiness.

He looked tired, but then so was I. He was nice enough to invite me along. There were two or three other chaps. One slipped away and the others were quiet types, obviously as shagged-out as he was. It was Folland who slipped off, which was a bad break.

I wanted to meet him. He was on the list for sure.

“What’s your idea?” The captain asked after ordering.

“I need machinists, tools, and parts. I plan on building more powerful engines, and making certain modifications to my aircraft.” I told them. “I can make ten, fifteen percent more power without a significant increase in engine failures or maintenance costs.”

“How do you plan to achieve that?” He murmured, sipping a cocktail.

He and his pals eyeballed me skeptically.

“First the engines. We’ll balance and blueprint those engines to the tightest tolerances. This includes making sure the pistons, the rods and pins, all weigh the same.”

“Go on.” He said.

I explained about shot-peening all the surfaces of the rods, the balancing of the crankshaft, roller tappets, bigger inlet and exhaust valves. They listened intently, with the odd quiet question thrown in.

“Chrome nitriding. That’s expensive.” One guy said that. “Highly experimental, even Top Secret.”

“I want to make all the combustion chambers equal in size, to the tenth or even one- hundredth of a cubic centimetre. I want to plane or mill the heads, to increase the compression ratio. I’ll port and polish the heads, modify the intakes and exhaust, put on a bigger carburetor, modify the air intake, and I suppose do a few other little things.”

Bigger valves, heavier springs, new high-lift camshaft, new lifters, a better oiling system, more juice to the sparking plugs. Some of these items were of the ‘wish list’ category, but most were practical. No one had ever applied them systematically, and all at once, to an actual production variant. At least not on our side.

“None of this is unheard of.” He began.

“True. In the manufacturing process, they go for the numbers and completion date. They go for contracts, payments and volume. Cost per unit is the bottom line. I plan to go for performance. They get penalized if they’re late on delivery. It costs them money.”

Wheatley sat there with an odd look on his face.

“We’ll be filtering our fuel, and testing alcohol. I think we could go ten percent alcohol without major carburetor modifications.” I kept going doggedly. “It will run cooler.”

“But you’re running hotter plugs?” One of his friends asked.

“Yep,” I said. “We’re running a little more spark advance as well. We open up the tappet-clearances, but only slightly…”

The way I trailed off was tantalizing.

“What about the airframes?” Wheatley asked.

“Take a look at this sketch.”

I placed it before them.

“This is the trailing edge of the elevator. On our planes it’s rounded off, quite simply. I would prefer this. It takes exactly the same volume of wood, but it sweeps up more on the bottom than it sweeps down from the top, and there is a little flat break at the actual trailing edge. The wings and ailerons, although not the rudder, get the same treatment. The rudder trailing edge is a more straightforward streamlining.”

“What does that do?” Wheatley asked.

“It reduces drag in high-pressure zones.” I explained confidently.

“What do you need from us?” He asked.

His eyes took in my sketches. He lifted a brow.

“Engines, parts, machinists, machine time, a truck, a big one, tires, tubes, wheels, linen and dope, the list is endless.” I sighed. “Machine guns, ammunition, riggers. Hell, you name it, I fuckin’ need it.”

I took a deep breath.

“I need a lot of good people, in various specializations. Don’t take me for an expert. I had help with some of these ideas.” I added. “But I understand the theories and the terminology. I may not be as…competent as it sounds at first glance.”

Chuckles from Wheatley and the others. What’s that about?

“For example, I know that in porting and polishing a head, when doing the intakes and exhaust ports, you have to keep a uniform thickness. You have to make sure that there are no thin spots, which causes uneven cylinder-head heating and consequent cracking.”

They looked at each other, quick glances around the table, furtive like. Hmn. Wonder what crisis they’ve been working on?

“I want to experiment with high-altitude engine tuning.” I concluded. “Simple drag and weight reductions, with a little extra power and torque. With increased engine power, we can use a bigger, more efficient propeller. I want to be able to change the reduction gears more quickly, try bigger props. Experiment in general.”

“Give me your name.” He requested.

Whitehall.

I wrote it down for him, plus another name where he could ask about my credentials.

His eyebrows rose.

“Him?” He asked.

“Yep.” I replied.

“Jolly good.” He said with a smile. “How’s your steak? Would you like another?”

“Best thing I’ve had in weeks.” I admitted. “But I doubt if I could jam it in.”

“Maybe you should put that on your list, too.” He suggested.

“I’m afraid to ask for too much,” I explained sheepishly.

Wheatley and his pals grinned.

“Oh, you have it all wrong. In this business you learn to ask for three times what you actually need.” Joked Wheatley.

“In that case, triple everything, including cooks. And some steaks, and some scotch. A few dozen cases would do for a start.”

They all grinned at that one. Well, I guess the man knows his way around. I began to feel better about things, once I got a meal into me. It was a very long day.

***

Phantoms of the night haunted my dreams.

I woke up in a real mess. The last dream was a doozie.

Bathed in sweat, the covers showed that I must have been thrashing around a lot. The dream was a bad one. Nothing but machine guns, and burning, spinning aircraft. A big dogfight, where I was the only one. The sheer darkness of the dream was disturbing.

It was like the engagement happened at night.

There must have been hundreds, thousands of enemy machines. Faceless monsters, not men in planes, but creatures, phantoms of darkness, with gnashing jaws and fiery eyes.

Turning, pulling, kicking at the rudder pedals, left, right, up, down. Pull, kick, pull.

There was always someone on my tail. My neck hurt from bending it against the pillows. I must have shot down thirty of them, but they kept coming. They never stopped harrying me. The blankets were soaking wet, like after a fever breaks. I couldn’t get back to sleep in them.

Picking out one blanket in particular that seemed a little drier than the rest, I got out of the bedroom, the scene of so much insanity. I sat in a chair, and looked at the walls. I listened to the noises outside my window. In came the sounds of a major city at night. Whistles, faint voices, horses slowly clop-clopped through the alleys and byways. The very air in the room was clammy. Fog crept in through the window, but I just sat there. The fog explained the stains on the white and pink floral wallpaper, though.

God, where the hell do I stand? My personal life is trash. I feared that my abilities, fine for what I was doing before, would fail me at some crucial moment. I needed to focus on what’s important. My mouth tasted like crap.

All I could do was to sit and think it out.

Henri Farre.

***

War’s frenetic pace had forced aviation through a growth pattern like a hothouse tomato. The speed of this change in an industrial world has never been matched. Virtually every possibility in the development of air power had been, or would be tried.

Every crazy fucking idea would be tried. I knew that. Everyone should know that, but too many didn’t seem to get it. And they had all the power.

In the beginning, no one knew a damned thing. I mean it. We had to learn the hard way. Men died every fucking day, because they didn’t know how to do their job.

In the early stages of the war a mission assigned, sort of meant a new need identified.

Trenchard was into the strategic bombing thing. Smith-Barry was trying to codify a training scheme. The late Oswald Boelcke had his alleged, ‘dicta,’ (there were a couple of jokes that went around about him.) Billy Bishop taught fighter tactics at Narborough, my buddy Hallam at Felixstowe was working on his legendary ‘spider web’ patrol systems, and those big experimental flying boats with that Commander Porte guy.

I was trying to shoot down the Red Baron. What an ambitious little fucker.

You ever met Hallam? Nice guy. No one even had the slightest clue, of how to patrol the North Sea in 1914. That’s because fleet maneuvers don’t last very long and rarely take into account secret enemy weapons, or surprise tactics and strategies. The submarine was an unknown quantity before the war. The Navy didn’t know what to do with either submarines or airplanes.

Hallam had an idea. Someone listened to him. Then he was given a job to do.

Aerial warfare was so revolutionary, that it threw out all the old ideas of so-called, ‘gentlemen,’ conducting warfare with so-called, ‘rules.’

This change in attitude didn’t happen overnight. Once all the lessons began to sink in, the more aware began to experiment. There will always be leaders in the world of ideas, just as in politics and other human endeavors.

War is a crucible for ideas.

It was time to try out my idea.

The famous No. 56 squadron was actually set up to shoot down the Red Baron.

The best fighter pilots were collected into one squadron in frank imitation of the so-called circuses the Germans had roving the front. But then our higher command didn’t use them properly. It didn’t make sense sometimes. Anyone could see that.

The Germans were always faced with a numerical inferiority. This forced them to adapt quickly to new tactical situations. And they had an excellent forward observation system.

Their circuses were used defensively.

They had balloons, aircraft, spies, ground observers, linked by wire to headquarters.

They didn’t have to do the ‘barrage patrol.’ They could just sit and wait for the phone to ring. Their spies had ways to communicate. Maybe carrier pigeons, or probably, in my own opinion anyway, it might be possible to have a concealed telegraphic cable right through the middle of no-mans land. Or under a river or something. This would be in addition to the usual well-known diplomatic sources of data which the enemy would employ. If I knew I was going to start a war, the first thing I would do is to set up a proper information-gathering network in enemy territory. I mean, seriously.

Both sides dug tunnels and planted bombs beneath enemy lines. Why not keep going, and run a telegraph cable? The Brass were probably idiots on both sides, but the Germans just seemed very competent sometimes.

You could say I didn’t trust them.

In the air, they adopted a defensive strategy. We had to go to them. The Germans learned a lot about us by doing this. We had our rigid offensive policy, and it didn’t take too long for them to figure that out.

If they knew where we were, they could save gas. Their men could fly fewer hours.

They didn’t even have to build as many planes as us.

Interestingly enough, when they did catch up to us, they had learned some very effective means to deal with us. My thought was, they had obviously studied us. So why not study them? Let’s take them apart and see what makes them tick.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to talk to some Fritzie officer? If he would talk?

A #fritzie officer.

See if we can arrange that. We must have one in prison somewhere.

That’s when sleep came again, and the dreams. Have you ever woken up at six in the morning with a gut-wrenching jab of adrenalin? There was a story about a young girl who got up out of bed, ran screaming down the hallway, fell out a window, and when she hit the ground they say she was still asleep, and still running.

Grumbling, that’s my stomach. When was the last time I ate? I needed coffee, and cigarettes, and lots of hot water. Lots of aches and pains this morning. One occasionally wonders if morphine, cocaine, heroin, opium, hashish, laudanum, or whatever would help. Oh, yeah, lots of guys use various drugs or combinations of drugs to combat the pain of their wounds. The trouble is, it comes at a very high price. When you fly you need to be in good physical health. Psychological health, too. A lot of men took to the booze, but when the stress diminished, most of us cleaned ourselves up. But not all of us.

The price for living is death. Most people don’t know that. They look in the mirror and ask themselves, ‘Why did God give me such a funny-looking nose?’

‘So you could smell things with it, you twit.’

Imagine God’s big voice coming down from above.

You have to learn to focus on what’s vital. I had a job to do and men depending on me.

And I take pains to ensure that my boys get their fair share of fun by sending them off from time to time for recreation. I’ve never ordered myself to go on leave. Never thought of it before. I think I have the power. I never thought to ask.

I watched myself as I shaved and did a quick assessment. Is this man cracking up?

It’s hard to say. As his commanding officer, perhaps it would be wise to monitor the situation for a while. I could still look myself in the eye, though.

That’s always a good sign.

***

Buttonholing Winston was my next priority.

Being holed up in a hotel isn’t too good if you’re used to fresh air and sunshine. For a couple of days I laid a long time in bed, took nice afternoon naps, and had someone to feed me good grub.

Oddly enough, I didn’t even really want to go out. I wanted to think.

I had pencils, paper, a rental typewriter, meals sent in, and once again I had to thrash out a bunch of ideas. Ideas that would be needed Monday morning. My goal was to use what precious little time I had left to teach my men to shoot. The training program taught them to fly. I would teach them how to fight as a team. Would Billy Bishop take a few of my boys on for several days and help me out?

It would take a big load off.

We were learning to specialize. In some ways my specialty was in learning—or teaching.

I made some notes and got dressed, read the paper, drinking coffee and smoking. I decided to make a visit to someone, which I had been putting off for some time. I made two or three quick calls, but only got one answer. It was the most vitally important one, though.

The desk man waved genially as I left the hotel. The doorman called a cab, the driver proffered a friendly greeting. Strangers and their attitude can be very important to a lonely man.

I once told a girl serving in a coffee shop, “It’s nice to see a friendly face once in a while.”

A perfect stranger, she knew what I meant.

“Take me to the Houses of Parliament.” I told the driver. “I’m going to make some sauce.”

He took a quick look in the mirror and shut up.

I planned on bagging Winnie as he walked down the front steps. It was more effective than making an appointment and waiting for hours in an office, only to have it cancelled at the last minute because he was running late.

Guys like that always run late.

Guys like that don’t know the value of time.

I never could handle that kind of frustration.

Someone once said, “You are the most assertive bastard in the whole wide world.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, perfectly conscious that I have at the very least, a fairly normal set of fears and phobias.

“Because you keep tweaking old Winnie’s nose, and I don’t fathom how you keep on getting away with it.”

Time to tweak Winston’s nose again. You get away with it by doing it, incidentally.

Winnie was right where my confidential source said he would be. I pounced on him from out of the sun.

“Tucker.” He grumbled. “Jolly good to see you again.”

Like hell it was.

“Mister Churchill, I have a bone to pick with you.” I began in no uncertain terms.

He looked askance. Gulping a little, he waited.

“Can we talk somewhere?” I asked him real quick, and kept on going up the steps.

Winnie came huffing and puffing back up the steps again, with that little fruit Thomas prancing along. He was Winnie’s ‘fag.’ Not in the sense of ‘a musical gentleman,’ but Winnie didn’t have time to be running out for cigars. We grabbed an anteroom. They have them scattered up and down the halls. Thomas stood guard to make sure we weren’t overheard. There were definitely press types about, but they had sense enough to know when they were ‘on,’ and ‘not on.’

I was the one with no manners.

“It’s good to see you. How are you coming along?” He chaffed, putting his hand on my arm and giving it a good squeeze. “How’s that girl of yours, or are you on to the next one yet?”

“Sure, Winnie. I bet you wish you were young again.”

His face began to glow a little pink.

“Not putting on any pounds are we?” He expostulated, just like he always talked.

“I need a few things.” I said.

“Anything. Always glad to help. Let me know what I can do for you, my boy,” he vowed.

His eyes glittered in sardonic humor. It would be wise not to mis-underestimate this man.

“I made a list,” I told him.

“Give it here, Tucker. Don’t be shy.” He grunted, and Thomas grinned.

“I need the name of every military intelligence officer on the western front and his phone number. I need enough authority to commandeer trains, trucks, fuel stocks, pilots, aircraft. I need to push Bishop around a little. I need more guns and ammo. I need a biography on every major German officer of any note. That means the fliers, mostly.”

“What do you need from Bishop?” He asked.

Billy Bishop. 72 kills as I recall...

“I want him to train a couple of my guys to shoot and fly at the same time.”

He smiled.

“Done.” Said Churchill, who to be honest was in his early to mid-thirties.

You could look it up if you thought it was important.

Winston could be a fuddy-duddy sometimes. He still tended to think of the good of the Empire, when we really needed to win the war first. And as a Canadian, who really gives a shit? I got a perspective too, you know.

All that ‘King and Empire’ stuff was just pure bullshit and he knew it.

Just mindless propaganda, in my view. Propaganda has no integrity, nor any internal logic to violate.

“I want to interrogate a German flieger, a high-ranking one.” I added.

I handed him my paper presentation.

“Maybe we could make you a lieutenant-colonel.” He mused.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass how you do it. What I need is to dog my targets all over the Front, to move as fast as them, to have information available when I need it, and the ability to move my units around very quickly in a changing tactical environment. Oh, yeah, and no fucking bullshit from you.”

“That’s a pretty long speech for you, William.” He joked. “You should take up politics.”

I smiled in spite of myself. This man always put me in a foul mood, but demagogues always do.

“I’ll spare you that pain.” I quipped tersely, and even Thomas giggled involuntarily.

“You should come out to the house once in a blue moon.” Winnie invited. “Maybe we could find you another girl.”

“That is exactly the kind of network I want, Winnie.” I went on, ignoring the blatant abuse of despotic power. “If you expect me to get anything done, you’ll give me the resources. Money talks and bullshit walks. For example, I need to interrogate a couple of fucking high-ranking German fliers, if you have any fucking laying around.”

That’s the second time I had to ask.

“Done.” He quickly agreed, tipping a nod to Thomas.

“Without timely help, resources, men and machines, this fucking mission isn’t worth a pinch of fucking coon-shit.” I told him with some heat, which wasn’t too difficult to fake with Winnie.

“Do you mind if I use that in a speech someday?” He blinked.

“Not at all, my friend.” I replied with a sweet smile.

Time to be on my way.

“You obviously need all the help you can get.”

I could see thoughts go through his head.

“So do you, sir,” I said.

“You never quit.” He agreed with a small sigh. “You’ll get the best I can do, and as you know I have friends in high places.”

“Know thyself.” I quipped, and then decided it would be a good time to take my leave of the gentleman.

“You and I are like two peas in a pod, Tucker.” He called after me.

Winnie wasn’t exactly stupid, you know.

He once said, ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.’

That’s halfway intelligent. I spun on my heel.

“You are a self-made man who worships his own creator, and I am very, very fucking busy,” I noted, turning to go finally.

‘You’re my fuckin’ best buddy,’ I remember thinking. I could hear him talking to Thomas as I strode away.

“Damn that man.”

Thomas’s reply was muffled, then Winnie spoke.

“I’ll never forget the sound of that plane, ripping past my bedroom at five God-awful a.m.”

“Unbelievable,” Thomas said a little wistfully.

Maybe Thomas would like to join up and learn to fly. I wouldn’t run errands for the Pope.

And I guess this is a kind of errand.

END

Disclaimer: the author has flown an R/C model of the Taube of about 4 3/4 lbs. and an O.S. .40 banger engine. The elevator crank broke one day and all one can do is throttle back in the hopes of saving the components...