Version 2.1
I'm a man
Without a soul,
Honey, yeah
Who lost it
While parading it
In a town full of thieves
Y'see I didn't wanna be with any people I know.
But god knows, I didn't wanna be alone
I thought if I acted like someone else
I'd feel more comfortable with myself
Alex MacCarthy looked into the Hardened Aircraft Shelter, at the four aeroplanes in his collection , and smiled ruefully. He'd owned the P-51D for twelve years, the de Havilland Venom for nine years, and flown it for six, the Hawker Sea Fury for seven years.
The distinctly non-standard Sea Fury FB11, still powered by a Bristol Centaurus, but driving a Rotol six-bladed contra-prop, had been sold to a French airline pilot, the P-51D would be going back home to the US in the autumn as soon as the export license was sorted and the FAA were happy., but the Venom was still unsold , and would be hard to shift. The glossy Yves-Klein-blue jet “Sierra-Sierra” or just “Sara”, built under licence in Switzerland in the 1950s, had cost the least to buy and cost the most to run, but he was loath to part with it.
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/657/21469714130_6723ef50b3_c.jpg)
Hopefully his brief time as a warbird owner and pilot was not quite over, yet. Ah, the smell of burnt Jet A-1. Only the smell of burnt 100LL beat it.
Part of the divorce settlement with his ex-wife Ana had meant the two most valuable warbirds had to go, but Alex hoped he could hang on to the Venom, and the Reims-Cessna Cardinal. The Enstrom 280F Shark helicopter was being collected by its new owner at the weekend, well tomorrow, and would be flown to Sywell.
t least Ana McCarthy wasn't aware of quite how much he had squirrelled away in the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands. Even with the 'tax efficient investments' he paid over £100,000 in tax. He knew a Griffon Spitfire (reduced to only US $1,995,000!), Curtiss P-40E, and a P-51C were on the market. Time for a change.
He checked his emails, replied to some tweets, added some photos to his flickr stream, and tried to watch the results of the General Election. He suspected that Cameron might win properly this time. If the SNP taking most of the seats in Scotland actually happened, Labour would probably lose badly, which was a shame as Milliband was the party leader he disliked the least. Still didn't make him want to donate any more money to the Labour party. He was rather more concerned that PA474 hadn't been badly damaged by that engine fire.
Eight hours later he woke up. He made a mug of Kenya tea, and switched on the laptop, and went to the BBC website. “Unable to connect – Firefox can't establish a connection...” <sigh> fucking mobile broadband! Going to switch ISP soon. He looked at his iPhone 6. No service. He held down the power button, and the phone restarted. No service. “Safari cannot open this page because it could not connect to the internet”.
He checked the control box from the photovoltaic panels on the roof, and the mini wind turbine, still producing power, and still receiving mains electricity too.
He looked out the window.
WHAT THE SERIOUS FUCK!
Bentwater Parks was gone. Much of the old airfield infrastructure had just vanished. Carolyn's HAS where she kept ML407 was gone. He went outside in chilly, misty Suffolk air and something felt very wrong. Whitmore wood had taken over more of the airfield than it used to. Most of the tree weren't conifers either. Silver birch, and Elm by the looks of things.
The F177 was still there, the HAS was still there, the aeroplanes inside were still there and Runway 07/25, all 8,940 ft of it, taxiways and peri track were all still there. His Overfinch Range Rover had gone, but the rental Volkswagen Crafter was still there. What?
McCarthy felt dizzy and nauseous. He sat on on the damp concrete. Some weird shit had happened around these parts but this took the biscuit. The entire biscuit aisle at Tescos.
He didn't feel hungry. He got into the Reims-Cessna F177 and taxied onto the runway. Opened the throttle and took off. He would not usually fly over the Army Air Corps base at RAF Woodbridge, but he suspected the NOTAMs didn't apply in this case, as it wasn't there!
The roads looked different, as did the cars and vehicles on them, which were few and far between.
He flew over Sutton Hoo, and looked down at the digging. Digging? Earthworks? Archaeology? A sliver of ice slid down his spine and lodged in his stomach. The cogs in his brain turned.
A de Havilland DH-9A flew underneath him, a look of absolute wonderment visible on the pilots face. For five minutes the two aeroplanes flew in formation with each other. Private individuals flying ex-military aircraft had a long history, it seemed.
MacCarthy banked the F177 and headed back to Bentwaters. He felt clammy and disorientated.
1939?
Shit.
He landed the F177, and got something to eat. <Maybe it was a waking dream. Hypnopompic state of consciousness, they call it,> he thought.
He got in the VW Crafter. Hopefully I'm dreaming. Maybe it's a nightmare. He drove. The roads were similar but strange, the towns and the oncoming traffic weirder still. Nothing seemed the same. He drove through Hadleigh, Sudbury, Clare and Haverhill, occasionally having to stop and reorient himself, and just take in the surroundings. The roads were called the A1071, A1092 and A604, but they didn't bear any relation to the roads he was used to. If he could get to Saffron Walden, he'd be OK. There was no M11 but he finally got onto the A11 at Audley End, the house itself covered in ivy and looking sorry for it itself. He passed a Pretlove's removals van. Some things don't change.
Finally, Great Chesterford! He turned into Rose Lane with trepidation, fairly expecting to see a house he did not recognise, or a patch of grass, but there it was, his home for the last eighteen months. Easter House which had been built in 2002, bought for £482,000, and rented out to a city worker and his academic wife for £2,500 per calendar month. For eleven years. Nice family. He didn't have the heart to put the rent up. They went back to New York eighteen months ago, and when Ana and he separated, it became his new bolt-hole.
Just one part of a burgeoning property empire.
The 600 quid aluminium and wood model of a Spitfire Mk V was still in the living room window.
He turned the key in the door.
When people come into money, lots of money, they usually buy flash cars made in Italy, yachts, houses in the south of France and the Caribbean. Not so Alex McCarthy. He indulged his passion for aeroplanes. McCarthy had started a record label in 1993, which did not have a distribution deal, and dealt directly with customers via the internet, or out the back of a van. This morphed into one of the earliest online businesses selling band merchandise buying stock from record labels and merchandisers too terrified to do it themselves. Soon his website was stocking and selling merch for Oasis, Blur and Robbie Williams, as well as bands he actually liked and admired, and his own music and related stuff still sold well, with 100% of the net profits going to him.
McCarthy could forsee the records labels wanting the business for themselves, as the margins from selling recorded music shrank, and shrank yet more. His business became a hot property and he held out for the best deal. The business changed hands several times during the dotcom boom, with his slice of the company increasing in value as it decreased in size, to the point when bankers and executives would invite him into a room and give him money just to go away. The final payoff came when Sony-BMG disintegrated in 2008, just months before the financial crisis hit hard, and the housing bubble burst.
He spent some of the money on flying lessons, and before long he had stick time on Cessna Skyhawks, Tiger Moths, Harvards, and was IFR-rated, with experience on helicopters and warbirds. He bought a DHC Chipmunk, then an Aerospatiale Gazelle 341G helicopter. Both had since been sold on. He had planned to buy a Harvard, on which was type rated, and be satisfied with that - but then he saw the P-51D. He bought it, and quickly got type-rated on that, too.
Flying aircraft was not a problem for McCarthy. Instructors called him a natural pilot perhaps, being a musician and DJ might have helped. McCarthy would have given up if he hadn't been any good at it. Buying and flying aeroplanes was an expensive hobby for sure, and there were far less dangerous ways of enjoying yourself.
With his first £5 million McCarthy bought a nice house in Belsize Park, at the same time as the P-51 . The Swiss-made Venom he found lying forlorn at Bournemouth airport. It's civil registration made him laugh, He bought it for £25,000, sold as seen. A $1million restoration in Switzerland and it was airworthy again.
He got married. He invested some money in a husband-and-wife's “social networking” site, whatever that was. In 2008 AOL-Time-Warner bought that company, making his share of the company worth £40million, after tax. He bought the overpriced Sea Fury in the US and some property in London, Kent, Essex, Cambridge, Dubai and South Africa. He had the Fury and overhauled and shipped to Britain, and pilots far better than he displayed it and the P-51D at airshows, while he flew them for his own pleasure. He bid on a two-seat Spitfire Mk IX at an auction in 2009 and some other smug c*** beat his highest bid. Still, P9374 was coming up for auction in July...oh bugger!
No wonder Ana was divorcing him. Rich ugly blokes married to gorgeous foreign birds never works out in the long term. Too many expensive toys. Never again.
“You love those aeroplanes more than me!”
The aeroplanes hoovered up his wealth as effectively as a bad cocaine habit. With the money he'd spent could have bought a Gulfstream G650 new, maybe even two of them.
Regrets?
None.
Not that he didn't have any money left. Ana would keep the house in Belsize Park, his mum her £350,000 house that she rented from him for £10 a month. And he would keep the money from the 204 other properties he owned, plus the income from numerous paper investments he had.
Or he would, had he not been thrust back in time precisely seventy-six years.
Whichever pitiless BASTARD had done this to him may have left all his money and property with his wife, alongside the now worthless £108,000 in 2015 £Sterling, Euros and USD. But bags of farthings, ha'pennies, pennies, thrupenny bits, sixpences, shillings, two bob bit, half crown, 12 ten bob notes, 20 pound notes had been left in a drawer in his kitchen of his Essex home.
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/648/21578668536_d11f06fa35_c.jpg)
Along with a wad of white fivers. Once he'd counted them he realised he had £2025 18s, and Christ alone knows how many pennies.
In the drawer there was: a copy of birth certificate, claiming he was born in Chelmsford in 1900;A US passport in his name, complete with photograph; a telegram saying his father had been killed on the 27th October 1917; rather cruelly a death certificate for his mother, who had apparently died of bacterial pneumonia almost exactly a year later; the title deeds to the land this house stood on and the entirety of the land at Bentwaters.
Whoever had done this was very thorough, and had done this before.
There were also two .45 calibre Glock 21s, and ammunition. One appeared to have a .50 GI barrel. There was also a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard in .380.
McCarthy was reasonably proficient shot, for a civilian at least. He had had some unofficial training by an ex-member of Surrey Police Armed Response Unit in the past, who was now an instructor at Bisley and a aeroplane enthusiast, in what was now laughably known as 'the future'.
He hoped he'd never have to use them
In one of the spare rooms was his book collection. McCarthy hated the idea of ebooks, their evanescence. Cardboard box after cardboard, books ranging in price from £2.81 to £700. Mostly non fiction about aviation, or warfare.
The power supply was erratic, and the gas central heating didn't work at all. No gas. You could have the television and blu-ray player on or the lights, but not both. The washing machine, the tumble dryer or the lights, but not all three. The fridge and freezer still worked. The PVs on the roof here still heated the water and provided some power.
He reset the burglar alarm, and the security lights, and headed back to Bentwaters, hoping to get there before the sun went down.
He searched every inch of Bentwaters for useful, and found the ERF avtur tanker, and the Iveco avgas tanker, and 950 ltr bowser with avgas in it. He also found the Carmichael 6x6 Range Rover crash tender.
He went to park the red Carmichael, in the large hangar he now appeared to own, and found a cornucopia of stuff. The main doors were padlocked, but he walked tried a side door. It opened. He walked inside.
There was one aircraft, and disappointingly it wasn't a Griffon Spitfire. It was a Slepcev Storch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slepcev_Storch), three quarters the size of the wartime Storch, but room for one passenger inside as well as the pilot, and the powered by the same Lycoming O-360 that was in his helicopter, and the Cardinal.
The only warlike things were a massive artillery piece, which revealed itself to be a 155mm Soltam M-68, with ammunition. On a shelf, held up by pieces of wood appeared to be a tank gun complete with mounting. It must have been four and a half metres long. It was a Ordnance QF 77mm Mk II, apparently. <Was that the one fitted in the Comet?> thought McCarthy. There was also two Hispano Mk V 20mm cannon, two aeroplane machine guns, which looked like 12.7 Ho103s, and indeed were.
There were also four 30mm Aden Mk 4 cannon. With electrically-primed ammunition in completely new calibre, a revolver chamber, god only knows how long that would take to get into production. The Hispano V and Ho103s, and the drawings and manuals for them, would get into Air Ministry hands as soon as possible,
An old New Holland combine harvester, a John Deere 2955 tractor, and three cars in tarpaulins, sat next to them. One was unmistakeably a Volkswagen Beetle, another revealed itself to be a post-war Ford V8, which would be a inconspicuous runabout. The other was far from inconspicuous. Ostentatious is the word. It was a Panther de Ville saloon. McCarthy opened the bonnet hoped it had a Jaguar XK6 V6 and not a V12. It did. There was an M38 Jeep, and 5 Bedford RL lorries
On a four-wheel trailer was a contra-rotating Rolls-Royce Griffon – looked like one from a Shackleton. The familiar shape of two Merlin 61s lay behind it and two spare Bristol Centaurus, a Rolls Royce Meteor, a Volvo D6B turbo diesel engine. Beyond those were jet engines. Two DH Ghosts, another that was a museum cutaway, actually a Svenska Flygmotor RM2. There was also a cutaway Junkers Jumo 004.
And that was it.
Or was it?
The building still hummed with electricity. There was a trap door, with a tractor parked over it, which McCarthy started, moved and stopped
He lifted it. Stairs leading down. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Thirty two steps curving down. He came to a door. You had turn a wheel and hold down a handle to open it. He walked inside. A strip-light flickered on. An air vent and thick cables ran across the ceiling.A panel of lights caught his eye.
Main Lighting OFF
Refrigeration: ON
Ventilation: ON
Generator: OFF
APU:OFF
He switched the main lights on. Wow. Crates. He prised the lid off – ammunition. It looked like 7.62x39, but wasn't quite. 9x19, .45 ACP and .50GI. Fridges buzzed. Cans of soup, minced beef, curry sauce with early 21st century use by dates.
He opened one of the fridges. Drugs. Prescription drugs. Anti-biotics. Lots of -ins and -oles, plus Enalapril, Propranolol, Mefloquine. Warfarin, Hydrocortisone, Digoxyin, Erythromycin, Diclofenac, Prednisolone, Hydrocodone to name but ten.
He opened one of the cupboards.
There was key on the inside, and much more besides.
There was a KRISS Vector .45 SMG, a Mossberg 500SGA pump shotgun, and what looked like a Kalashnikov, but was actually a Czech vz.58. In fact there were five of them, and five EM-2 rifles, all in British .270. There was also five Carl-Gustav M/45 and five Sterling L2A3 sub-machine guns, both firearms that McCarthy had fired before, and ten Czech CZ.75 pistols, all in 9x19mm.
"The best of the Wonder Nines" thought McCarthy
But that was not all. There were three heavy cast metal RPG-7 85mm hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers, , and two much lighter machined Airtronic RPG-7s, and most importantly, there were 50 PG-7 HEAT rounds.
There was an R-POA Shmel, rocket-propelled flame thrower.
<No need for the PIAT, then! Every German tank is toast>
“Well, if I start a Home Guard unit, we won't be short of weapons” said McCarthy to himself. "If I can't these into production and use I might as well use them on myself!"
He drove into Woodbridge in the Volkswagen Crafter. [Does it take leaded fuel? God only knows]. He sync'd up the iPhone to the stereo, and played the first three tracks of a Shpongle on the drive down. It calmed him down.
He bought eggs, bread, as much bacon as the butcher would sell him, and a copy of the Daily Mirror, and The Times. Even in a grey T shirt and chinos he felt horribly conspicuous. He went in the post office to post a letter to
Mr Roy Fedden
President, Royal Aeronautical Society
4 Hamilton Place
London W1
with photographs of the Bristol Centaurus fitted in the Sea Fury, and a letter requesting they meet.
The Times newspaper were all backwards, classified adverts first, then sport (Grimsby Town and Brentford were in the top flight of English football, and Everton were about to win the league, so this must be an alternate universe), then the news. The King (George VI, thank fuck) and Queen were going on a tour of Canada. How lovely. The 1939 Worlds Fair had opened in New York.
Hitler still ran Germany, Stalin still ran Russia, no overt signs of them attempting to cuddle up to each other as yet. The papers were reeling still from the German renunciation of the Anglo-German Naval Treaty, and the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact The editorial of the Times railed against Chamberlain's stance on Poland, effectively saying “We should not needlessly threaten Herr Hitler in a game of brinkmanship we cannot win”
Who's this 'we'? When a Tory paper slags off a Tory leader you know they are doomed.
All so very predictable.
If this was a dream, it was stunningly vivid. He slumped into a slough of despond, enlivened only by a picture of Winston S Churchill. Thank heavens.
It was a small story in a column called “Cassandra” in the Mirror, that made his blood run cold, and sit with his head in hands.
Former cabinet minister Winston S Churchill
is back in London to promote his latest novel,
“The Gathering Storm”, the follow up to the
best-selling “While England Slept”.
Not that the Wellesian fantasy needs any
promotion, that is. Known for his trenchant
opinions, the current Government will be
relieved to know he plans to return to his
home in New York on the Queen Mary
in August
OH FUCK.
Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
My grubby halo, a vapour trail in the empty air,
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night
May 15th, 1939.
It had taken several days to get the Sea Fury ready. Bristol had sent some mechanics to help, but McCarthy had to do all the engine checks himself. A TR9 HF radio had been installed in place of the high-tech but useless VHF set and the Canadian roundel had been turned into a normal RAF red/white/blue one, but the RAF had expressed little interest, beyond sending the Air Member for Development and Production, Air Marshal Wilfrid Freeman, and the Director-General of Research & Development Air Vice Marshal Arthur Tedder.
“Looks like a more streamlined Skua” snorted Freeman, when he saw the so-called 'Sea Fury'
The Royal Navy had sent the Fifth Sea Lord, and Chief of Naval Air Services, Admiral Sir Alexander Ramsay to watch the test. He was pleased to see the word NAVY painted in large letters on the side. Bristol had wanted to paint over it, but McCarthy insisted it would disturb the airflow.
Fedden, despite his importance as the President of the Royal Aeronautical Society, had been unable to obtain, a civil registration, but the manufacturers code MC-1 had been assigned to it by the Society of British Aeroplane Constructors. The Terrain Avoidance Warning System still worked, without satellite data, and McCarthy set the warning signal to sound at from ground warning him he was too low, or to high.
The FAI/ Royal Aero Club course for the record had to be flown at 300 feet above sea level, and altitude higher than McCarthy was used to displaying at, but still too low to easily recover from should anything go wrong The FAI men had been setting up their theodolites, oscillographs and chronometers at Filton. They were the same team that had measured the 'Me109R' (Me209) record-breaking flight at Augsburg-Kaufbeuren in April, and the 'He112U' (He100 V8) flight at Oranienburg in March.
The were a number of Italians and Germans among them.
Bristol had allowed the press in and Gaumont-Pathe to film the flight, fearing no-one would believe the English had taken the record if McCarthy succeeded. God only knows what they would have done if McCarthy had crashed and burned in full view of the British media. For the purposes of publicity,
Finally the aeroplane was filled with the minimum necessary 130-octane fuel, and McCarthy took off. He climbed, tested the water-methanol injector. He wasn't going to take the manifold pressure above 52 inches of mercury, or the RPM above 3000, record or no record.
The radio crackled. "Ready, Monkey-Charlie 1, over?"
"Monkey-Charlie 1, ready, over. <Call me fucking monkey, would you. What was wrong with Mike?"
"Four passes between the pylons, then we'll see if the chaps got the results, over."
McCarthy pushed the nose down, and opened the throttles. SHHHHHEEEEEEYIIIIITTT!
The Sea Fury entered the circuit with the needle nudging 500 mph on the Air Speed indicator. McCarthy passed the first pylon 410 knots. 759 km/h This was the fastest he'd ever gone in her. Formula One had nothing on this. Sweat formed on his neck, eyebrows, and arms, and the heat and roar of the engine was intense. He pulled up, and opened the engine shutters, and the needles on the RPM gauge and Engine Temperature gauges flicked out of the red zone
Again.
290ft. The TAWS blipped. He ignored it. He closed the engine shutters, and he increased the Manifold pressure to 52 hg/in. Wartime power. He passed the last pylon at 419 knots. The ADI sprayed into the combustion chambers automatically
Again.
He increased the manifold pressure to 60hg/in. He kept the engine shutters open. 409 knots. He pulled up instinctively. He was breathless, the G-forces were pushing much of the air out his lungs, despite the flight suit he wearing, like the ones they flew in at Reno.
Again.
McCarthy covered the throat mic. "FUCKBASTERDFUCK!WhyamIdoingthis?<Deep BreathDeepBreathDeep Breath>
300ft. He closed the engine shutters. Oil pressure and engine temperature needles were in the red, and would not leave. He injected the nitrous oxide into the supercharger. Don't kill me, sweetie.
First pylon passed at 423 knots. Everything redlined.
He climbed out. The engine started to sound normal again. Everything was in the red, still.
<That's it. No more.> The heat in the cockpit was intolerable.
"Perfect, Monkey-Charlie One, over"
"I'm coming in <deep breath> NOW. BEFORE<deep breath> This Fucking Thing <deep breath> Explodes! Out."
McCarthy lined up on the runway, and lowered the undercarriage. It was a grass field so the landing was soft. The tailwheel touched down. What did that song say?
Welcome's waiting, We're anticipating
You'll be celebrating, when you're down, and braking
If he could see any fire trucks, he would have taxied towards them. He instinctively pulled the wing folding lever, as though this was an airshow. Well, probably needs a new engine, but that still works. <Well you don't get that at Flying Legends. I want a round of applause at least>, he thought.
He got one. He clambered out of the cockpit. A man shouted in his ear. He didn't hear a thing, the blood was still pumping in his ears.
"WHHHAAAAAAT!"
"767.928 Kilometers per hour. You beat the Hun aeroplane by twelve kilometres per hour!" Four hundred and seventy seven miles per hour!
For McCarthy, everything hurt.
"Right. Where's the champagne? Taittinger Brut NV!"
"Sir Stanley White, William Verdon Smith, Henry White-Smith, this is the hero of the hour, Mr McCarthy...
"Marvellous, you're a godsend. I'll have the Krug. I'm sweating like a cunt. So, you're here to serve the drinks are you?"
"We own the company that manufactured your engine”
“Well, that'll look good on year adverts. Just don't tell everyone about the hundreds of modifications that I had to pay for to get it to do what it it just did.
"Look, you've have a drink and calm your nerves, and we'll start again"
"Ah, lovely!" said McCarthy, gulping the Krug.
<Oh God>, thought White. <I knew we should have persuaded Captain Uwins to fly it>
"I've spent nearly two million dollars on it, so you could say that"
White's' jaw dropped. So did Fedden's
"Dollars? It's American? Who are you? Howard Hughes in disguise?"
"Airframe is 100% British, engine is 100% US, but it had to restored in the US because thats where the talent is, unless you count the lovely people at Weald Aviation Services. Electrical starter, at least that was from a Bristol Hercules. Two stage supercharger, anti-detonant injector, nitrous oxide injector, negative G-valve for the oil tank, electronic fuel meter, contra-prop, powered control surfaces. All that shit. It's a one-off. Nothing in the world like it. Think that it's good? You ain't seen nothing yet!
<Oh God>, thought Fedden. "I'll be back in moment. Don't go anywhere. DON'T TALK TO ANYONE!"
"Jawohl, MEIN FÜHRER!" McCarthy raised his right arm.
"Hello, I'm Sir Stanley White, This is the man of the hour, Mr Alec [sic] McCarthy"
<Applause, cheers>
"Hello, and thank you!"
"Mr McCarthy will take questions from the press, but please be gentle with him as he is rather fragile. Yes sir."
"Gladstone Murray, the Express. Mr McCarthy congratulations, I take that you are a civilian pilot? How long have flying for?
"About fifteen years*. I started to fly when I was twenty-one^" <Just don't ask me when I got my Private Pilots Licence. Please>
"So you didn't fly in the Great War"
"No*. Too young.*"
<New questioner>"Mr McCarthy, there seems to be some doubt over the name of the aircraft you flew?"
"McCarthy M-1*. However it was designed to my particular specifications^, and fitted with an in America but the aero engines over there are bit tepid, so I had to come to the UK for some Bristol sleeve valve action*."
"American?"
"Yes, civil aviation seems to be much more advanced there, than here. I like to think of the aeroplane as representing the highest technical aspirations of the English-speaking peoples."
<Smattering of applause>
"Reg Dempster, Aeroplane Magazine. Could you give our readers some indication of the performance of the aircraft engine type, horsepower etc"
“Well, it has top speed of 477 miles an hour <audience laughs> A cruising speed of 340 miles and hour, a stall speed of 90 mph with flaps and gear down. Service ceiling 34,000 feet, but you can get it to go to 42,000 feet if you are careful, 4000ft per minute rate of climb…
“I think that's enough for now Mr Mac...” said Sir Stanley
“I'm trying to sell it to the Air Ministry, or the Admiralty. I paid for all of it, after all. I need the money...<audience laughs>
“Major Stewart, Morning Post. Will you be attempting any more records?”
“Not with this aircraft, no”
“What did you think of the aeroplane that flew over London ten days ago?”
“This aeroplane stands a better chance of catching whatever it was, than anything the RAF currently have.”
* denotes truth.
^ denotes blatant lies, or economy with the truth.
~
On June 8th, 1939, Flugkapitän Fritz Wendel took off in Me209V1 D-INJR from Augsburg-Haunstetten to attempt to reclaim the world air speed record for the glory of the Großdeutsches Reich.
He did. 768.019 kilometres per hour. A whole 0.091 of a kilometre per hour faster than McCarthy's "M-1"
For Messerschmidt, Udet, Goering and Goebbels, this was insufficient.
On June 24th, 1939, Wendel took off in D-INJR again, to reclaim the world air speed record, by a more convincing margin, for the greater glory of the Großdeutsches Reich.
With the FAI watching, who insisted that the attempt be flown at 300 feet, not 450 feet as previously.
At 763 kilometres per hour the Daimler-Benz DB 601ARJ seized [caused by a coolant systems failure] - and it smashed into the ground. Wendel was killed instantly.
For nothing. More accurately, 0.091 of nothing.
McCarthy's record would stand until he chose to break it himself, which he did, two days later.
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