"That's only the tip of the iceberg," Miller said, showing the way to the door. "C'mon, I'll give you a tour."
He led Austin outside and continued his narrative as they walked past a row of identical buildings, all with low roofs and big sliding doors. "Paul Garber was a plane nut, which was fortunate for us. When he was just a kid he saw Orville Wright fly the world's first military aircraft. Later he worked for the Smithsonian and was instrumental in creating the National Air Museum. The Air Force and Navy had collected examples of the planes that won World War II and some of the enemy planes they beat. They wanted to get rid of them. Garber did an aerial survey and found twenty-one acres owned by the federal government out here in the sticks. There are thirty-two buildings at the center." They stopped in front of one of the larger structures. "This is Building Ten, the workshop where we do the restorations."
"I saw some of your work on the live Web cam."
"You might have spotted me. I just came from there. I worked for years as a project manager for Boeing in Seattle, but I'm originally from Virginia, and when I had a chance to come to the center I jumped at it. At any given time we've got several projects going. We've been finishing up a Hawker Hurricane restoration. It's been a little delayed because of a parts problem. We're restoring the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that carried the A-bomb over Hiroshima. There's a nifty little biplane called Pitt's special 'Little Stinker' that's getting its fabric skin
painted. It's not just planes. We've had a Russian air-to-surface missile, plane engines, even the spaceship model they used in that movie Close Encounters. We can stop in for a look on the way back." "I'd like that. Sounds like an eclectic collection."
"Oh, it is. We've got aircraft from all over the world that we're getting ready for exhibition. Three buildings are devoted to exhibition restoration alone. This is a high-class club. The artifacts have to have a story behind them to qualify for a makeover. Something historical or technological, or maybe they're the last of their kind. Here, this is what you're interested in."
They entered a building laid out like a warehouse. High metal shelves ran from one end to the other. Stacked neatly on the shelves were hundreds of taped cardboard boxes of all sizes. "Storage is our third most important function, along with restoration and preservation," Miller explained. "We've got more than one hundred and fifty aircraft and tons of other artifacts spread throughout the complex. This is mostly parts in here."
Consulting a computer printout on a clipboard, he walked down one of the aisles with Austin trailing.
"How do you find what you're looking for?" Austin asked with bewilderment.
Miller chuckled. "It's not as bad as you might think. Every important part from every plane in the world has something stamped on it. We've got complete records of serial numbers, registration numbers, or letter codes. Here, this is what we're looking for."
Using a pocket knife, he slit the sealing tape on a cardboard box. After reaching inside, he pulled out a metal cylinder about two feet long. Austin thought it was the part he had sent from California, but it was too shiny, and its surface was free of dents and nicks.
"This is identical to the artifact you sent us." He extracted Austin's cylinder from the box. "We matched the two objects through their serial numbers. This first is from a plane that was
decommissioned and taken apart, which is why it's in such good condition."
He handed the cylinder to Austin, who hefted it. Like the other, it was lightweight aluminum and weighed only a few pounds.
"What was this used for?"
"It was a water- and airtight storage container. This one is pristine because the plane never went into active service. We examined the interior of yours, but the seawater leaked in through the hole and contaminated the residue of what, if anything, was inside. We can tell you what aircraft these things came from."
"Anything would be a help."
Miller nodded. "You've heard of the Northrop flying wings?"
"Sure, I've seen pictures of them. They were the original delta-winged aircraft."
"Jack Northrop was way ahead of his time. Take a look at the stealth bomber and fighter, and you'll know he was onto some thing."
"What does the flying wing have to do with these cylinders?"
"They both come from flying wings. Where'd you get this, if you don't mind my asking?"
"It was found in the water off the coast of Baja California."
"Hmmm. That makes the mystery of our phantom plane even deeper."
"Phantom?"
Miller lay the cylinders side-by-side on the shelf. "Our artifact comes from a plane that was junked after the war. With the numbers on this thing we can trace its history right back to the assembly line." He tapped the battered artifact with his finger "The numerical designation on this part doesn't match up to any plane we have record of. It came from a plane that didn't exist."
"How could that be? A mistake?"
"Possible, but not likely. Taking a long shot, I'd say that the government ordered up a plane, but maybe it didn't want any one to know about it."
"Could you be more specific about the type of plane?"
Miller carefully replaced both cylinders in the box and re taped it. "Let's go for a walk."
Building 20 was crammed with aircraft, bombs, and plane parts. They stopped in front of an odd-shaped single-passenger plane with a broad swept-back wing. Two propellers faced back ward from the trailing edge.
"This is the Nl-M, Jack Northrop's first project. He wanted to prove a flying wing could fly without all the drag-producing surfaces like engine housings and tail sections."
Austin walked around the plane. "Looks like an overgrown boomerang."
"Northrop called it the Jeep. He built it in 1940 basically as a flying mockup. It had some real problems during the tests, but it performed well enough for Northrop to talk the Air Force into building the B-35 bomber."
"Interesting, but what does this have to do with the cylinder?"
"Northrop used this model to talk General Hap Arnold into funding bigger wings, right up to bomber size. After the war they converted a couple of big propeller-powered B-35 wings to jet power and called them the B-49 series. The plane broke every speed and distance record on the books. It had eight jet engines that gave it a cruising speed of four hundred miles per hour at forty thousand feet. Even after one crashed during a test flight, the Air Force ordered thirty with various airframes. The pilots liked the plane. They said it handled more like a fighter than a big bomber. Then in 1949, only months after making its big order, the Air Force canceled the flying wing program in favor of B-36, even though that was an inferior plane. A six-engine wing survived and was broken up. It was the plane our cylinder comes from. Yours came from another bomber"
"The plane that doesn't exist."
Miller nodded. "A lot of crazy stuff went on after Germany surrendered. The cold war was getting revved up. People were seeing commies under their beds. All sorts of secret stuff going
on. The government got even worse after the Russians developed the bomb. My guess is that they built your plane with a mission in mind and didn't tell anyone about it." "What kind of mission?" "I don't know, but I'd hazard a guess." "Hazard for all it's worth, my friend."
Miller laughed. "The Northrop bomber was the original stealth plane. Radar was still comparatively primitive back then, and it had a hard time picking up the slim silhouette. In 1948 they took a wing out into the Pacific and flew back to the main land at five hundred miles per hour on a direct line toward the Coastal Command radar at Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. The plane wasn't detected by radar until it was overhead."
"A characteristic like that would come in handy if you wanted to get in and out of hostile territory."