The gleaming white Komet was standing on the airstrip being circled by the one hundred and fifty or so visitors, fascinated by the world’s first jet airliner. Standing proud on the aircraft’s tail fin were the painted crossed flags of Britain and Germany. Among the visitors were James Blackstone, Jamie MacLellan and Frank O’Donnell. The Rolls Royce engineers looked a little strained. They had been doing last minute checks into the early hours of the morning.
The Foreign Affairs, Aviation, Defence, Economics and Interior Ministers were there, as well as the British Minister of Aviation and the British Ambassador. Even old Hjalmar Schacht had shown up to witness his country’s latest achievement.
There was an air of expectancy. History was being made today. The first flight of the world’s first jet airliner. The beginning of a new era in public transportation.
At the appointed time the visitors were gently herded away from the aircraft. The test flight crew climbed aboard, conscious of the stares they attracted. The boarding steps were wheeled away, and everything was ready.
The Rolls Royce turbines started to turn. Slowly at first, but they were soon spinning with a powerful roar. The aircraft moved forward. It took several minutes for it to position itself facing the length of the runway. It was cleared for take-off by Focke-Wulf’s own control tower.
The roar of its four jets increased and aircraft was straining to leap forward. The pilot released the brakes. This was what the Komet was waiting for. It moved purposefully forward, all the while accelerating. Three quarters along the runway, exactly opposite where the visitors were positioned, it was airborne.
Most of the guests clapped, some gazed in wonder. The technicians, particularly the Rolls Royce engineers, looked on with relief. The Focke-Wulf executives saw the dollar signs.
Up in the sky the pilot took Komet 1 through a pre-determined unexciting set of manoeuvres. These lasted for only fifteen minutes before he gently brought her back down to land. The first flight of the world’s first jet powered airliner had gone without a hitch!
The Aviation Minister, Kesselring, had spotted James’ and Jamie’s names on the guest list. He sought them out after the demonstration flight was over. He was well aware of the contribution James had made to the success of the Strarflight, and before that, to the Junkers JU52 civil programme. He expected the same effort would be put into the Komet.
Jamie he knew from various diplomatic parties they’d both attended while Jamie had been the US military attaché.
James introduced Kesselring to O’Donnell. They had been speaking for ten minutes when Professor Tank joined them. This was more to O’Donnell’s taste. No need to be diplomatic. He quizzed the Professor on the future for the Komet.
Here it was! Straight from the horse’s mouth. Tank spent ten minutes telling O’Donnell about the development possibilities. He had always had his eye on the future when designing the Komet. He believed the aircraft and its variants could be produced for at least the next fifteen years. During that time it could be stretched and widened to accommodate more passengers or freight as the market demanded. And its performance upgraded. He saw the final passenger version carrying perhaps as many as two hundred and twenty people.
Tank and Kesselring left a very thoughtful three visitors as they went to mingle further.
That night, in the bar of their hotel, James and the two Americans threw all sorts of ideas at each other. One thing they all agreed on. Provided no technical problems were discovered, the Komet was going to be an enormous commercial success. They were going to exploit this!
Admiral Darlan had received the news from de Gaulle that the Vietnamese communist rebels under Ho Chi Min had finally been eliminated. They had been trapped and shot to pieces by combined units of the French and Vietnamese armies, at some obscure place called Dien Bien Phu. Ho Chi Minh himself had chosen an ignominious death to ignominious capture. ‘His choice’, de Gaulle thought in dismissal. The country was now safe from communism. If not from itself!
The instant the communist threat had disappeared, De Gaulle had ordered all French military advisors in the country to return home. The Indochina countries must look after themselves. He was anxious to avoid a request from the country’s ruler for military support of their inefficient government. No way!
After his sound handling of the dismantling of the colonial empire, Admiral Darlan had publicly commended de Gaulle for his skill in that difficult and complicated matter. De Gaulle had hoped that Darlan, who was now sixty six years old, would take this opportunity to nominate him as his successor, or at least make him Deputy President. This had not happened and de Gaulle was seething. He was no less ambitious than he always had been.
A week after he heard of the communist defeat in Viet Nam, Darlan had been informed by the Germans that their intelligence operatives had learned that the French Minister of Colonies, de Gaulle, was plotting. Many of his accomplices had also been named by them. De Gaulle was going to lead a coup to ‘re-establish democracy in France’.
With himself as President, of course!
“Damn all politicians and ambitious Generals,” Darlan said to himself in the privacy of his office. He could perhaps understand de Gaulle to some extent, if France was floundering in a sea of anarchy and social unrest. But the country had never been so peaceful or prosperous. Neither did it have any possible external threats.
The angry Admiral applied his mind to how to deal with this problem.
In the end it was astonishingly simple. Perhaps his years as a politician made him sometimes overlook the obvious.
He simply had de Gaulle arrested for treason! The man was the most unpopular politician in France following his dismantling of the French Empire. And firm proof of his intended coup was in Darlan’s possession, thanks to German intelligence. Let the law take its course!
In the meantime he would abolish the post of Minister for Colonies. France no longer had any.
Today was the first full meeting of the Governing Council since the summer recess, although there had been continuous mini-meetings throughout the summer.
The first to speak, as always, was the Foreign Minister.
“I wish to report on the arms limitation issue. Following a few initial misunderstandings and communication difficulties with the Soviets, armament production inspections have settled down into a set pattern. The Soviet inspectors were granted access to all production facilities throughout the European Alliance. In the beginning they attempted to extend this to include research and military training bases. It was relatively easy to prove that these were not manufacturing points, after which, the Soviets desisted from requesting access. They have officially pronounced themselves satisfied that we are meeting our undertakings.
Alliance inspectors in the Soviet Union in the beginning met with considerable obstructionism and reluctant co-operation. I think it was just ingrained Soviet thinking, and years of conditioning by Stalin’s secret police. Anyway, eventually everything worked out.
The size of both the Soviet and the Alliance inspectorate teams have now been substantially reduced. Each country, through a small team of permanent inspectors, will continue monitoring, and at all times will be able to request inspection of any new site where they believe weapons are being produced.