Pursuit Chapter 41

Chapter 41

It was NOT a word one would normally expect to provoke such a violent reaction; certainly you wouldn’t expect the mention of it to propel a guest’s drink out of his nose.

“MANGANESE?!” blurted Jack Finlayson, his nostrils becoming a double-barreled water pistol -- or in this case, a cherry-lime rickey pistol.

Katie MacArran quickly passed a handkerchief to the sputtering raccoon, then took one for herself. (She’d been almost directly in the line of fire.)

Damn...she should have remembered. Jack Finlayson was perhaps the world’s foremost expert on aviation fuel. After retiring from the air-race game, he had gone to work for Shell Oil, pioneering in the creation of the first 100-octane av-gas. From there, he’d moved on to Standard Oil of Rhode Island, where one of his assistants had been a big, burly stoat from the UK named Geoff Thistlewaite -- who now served as Katie’s own fuel specialist.

Thus, it had hardly been surprising that the Major’s first question would be an inquiry about the fuel mix Katie was proposing to run in The Little Engine. In response the pinto mare had casually remarked that they were substituting a different metal for lead in the mixture, Finlayson had asked what metal that was, and when Katie had informed him, Old Faithful had erupted, right on time.

Of course, Jack Finlayson would know all about...

“Manganese?!” he sputtered again, almost choking this time. “Good God, you’ll foul the plugs beyond repair.”

“Not necessarily.” Katie responded, mentally pinching herself again, “Geoff ran some tests a couple of months back and found out that manganese only fouls up spark plugs when the engine’s running at low revs. At high revs, when they’re firing more rapidly, the residue doesn’t have time to build up on the contacts -- AND it gives the engine one heckuva boost. So, what we did was install a small ‘take off and landing’ tank on the Little Engine, which we fill with leaded fuel...and then I switch over to the manganese fuel only after I hit full throttle.”

As if the pinto mare had thrown a switch, Jack Finlayson abruptly ceased his fulminations and began looking thoughtful.   Then, very slowly, he shook his head, half impressed, half abashed.

“Damn, that’s clever. I wonder why anyone didn’t think of it before,”

“Probably because most furs think manganese ruins spark-plugs at any speed.” Katie told him, suppressing a grin. “Of course,” she added, “We only plan to use that particular fuel mix on race-day...or if absolutely necessary, in the second qualifying run.”

“Then may I assume you didn’t use it for your flight from the Republic to the Spontoons?”

“You may.” said Katie, with a tight-lipped nod. “And speaking of that, I’ll still need to do the full calculations...but I estimate her average speed at somewhere around 330 mph."

Jack Finlayson let out a low whistle. That was almost 75 mph faster than the highest speeds clocked in either the Bendix or the Schneider. Granted it was more than 100 mph slower than the Macchi Castoldi MC.72's speed-record of 1934... much less the Bugmann and Dross Blitzen’s stunning 1937 dash, but both of those runs had been made over short courses and in straight lines. Katie MacArran had flown almost 400 miles to the islands after dropping from the Republic...and her plane had been running on standard 100 octane and with a very much NON-streamlined Radio Direction Finder ring mounted behind the cockpit.

That was when Hsing arrived with their main course; grilled seabass over savory rice for the Major, grilled eggplant over the same for Katie.

“Still haven’t lost your taste for Chinese I see.” the raccoon remarked, pointing at his meal with a fork, with a tilted smile.

“Well, no I haven’t.” Katie admitted. and then indicated her plate, “Except this isn’t Chinese, it’s Peruvian; chimichurri rice, one of my cook, Mrs. Guarada’s specialties.” She did not mention that Peru, like China had also recently purchased the NA-50 pursuit plane. That in fact, had been how the llama femme had come into her service. They had met while Katie was in Lima, overseeing the delivery.

Peruvian rice or not, Katie still ate with chopsticks, utensils with which she was more than well accustomed. Not long after digging in, she became aware of the dubious look the Major was giving her plate. It didn’t surprise or annoy her in the slightest. The portion in front of her WAS large enough to feed a starving village.

“I only had a very light breakfast before I launched from the Republic, Major,” she said, waving her chopsticks in a dismissive arc. “and that was almost seven hours ago. You know how it is.”

Jack Finlayson, who did know how it was, nodded immediately. Full stomachs and high speed flights were not the best of combinations.

Katie next decided that was as good an opening as any for what she wanted to tell the raccoon next...and this time she made sure that his mouth was empty before opening hers.

“And speaking of which,” she said, keeping her voice as casual as possible, “I didn’t really fly in to the Spontoons from 400 nautical miles out...try 600.”

Finlayson’s fork froze in mid air, and he stared at her with eyes made even wider by the blackness of his mask. A 600 mile flight...nonstop...in a Schneider Cup racer?!

“That’s...unprecedented.” he told her, very slowly.

“Even more unprecedented than you might think, Major.” the pinto mare responded, feeling more than a little pleased with herself, “Listen to this: I made it WITHOUT switching to the float tanks.”

Now the raccoon’s fork dropped into his plate, and his mouth dropped wide open. “My God,” was all he said.

“Mind you,” Katie went on, as indifferently as if she’d been talking about a new set of drapes, “I had the float tanks topped out in case I needed them, but as things ended up, I didn’t.” She took another bite of her lunch, and then added after swallowing, “If I had, though....I think I probably could have made it all the way to Hawaii.”

“Hmmm...well, I’m just glad you didn’t try THAT.” said Finlayson, picking up his fork again, with sour-persimmon expression, “We need you...not another Amelia Earhart.” He was about to tuck into his lunch again, when he abruptly seemed to remember something.

“Hey, wait jusssssssst a minute here, Your Grace.” he said, regarding her through a pair of tightly narrowed eyes. "What happens when your airship arrives, and everyone starts calculating the difference between your flight time and the Republic’s flight time? They’ll know in a second you flew in from a lot further out than you claimed.”

In response to this, Katie MacArran’s eyes also narrowed....only impishly.

“No they won’t. While I was at the tower logging in my flight plan earlier this morning, a radio- message was passed over to me. Said the Republic’s experiencing engine trouble and won’t arrive here ‘till this evening.”

Finlayson almost dropped his fork again, “What? With all due respect, Your Grace...are you nuts? That’ll never work. They’ll triangulate the source of the transmission and...”

“Let them,” said Katie, almost sniggering with delight, “I never said that message actually came from the Republic, Major...but it did come in from where she WOULD have been if I HAD launched from 400 miles out.”

Finlayson stared at her again for second...then his shoulders dropped and began to chuckle wearily, “All right I give up,” he said, spearing another bite of sea-bass, and then looking up again, “But why Your Grace? Why all the secrecy?”

Katie reached for her glass. My, what a lovely day for an alfresco lunch. Pleasantly cool, with just a light breeze off the ocean, which meant the air carried with it the tang of salt, not the film of diesel and gasoline.

“Well,” she said, “You wouldn’t want the Germans or the Japanese to know we came up with pursuit plane prototype that has THAT kind of range would you?”

“No, I suppose not.” said Finlayson, conceding the point, “But honestly, Your Grace...”

“Uh, Major,” said Katie, figuring it might as well be now as ever, “just call me Miss MacArran, ‘kay? I don’t know why, but it always makes me uncomfortable whenever an American addresses me by my title.”

“Okay, Miss MacArran, then.” said the raccoon, beginning to sound nettled. This was only their hundredth meeting and she was only bringing this up NOW? “Look, I know we called for a pursuit plane with plenty of range....but THIS much? Why?”

“Well,” the pinto mare responded, trying her best not to look coy, “How else is this plane gonna serve as an escort for the B-17?”

Finlayson’s eyes flashed and his teeth bared for just a second. Now, he WAS nettled.

“Begging your pardon, Your...Miss MacArran, but the B-17 doesn’t NEED pursuit plane escorts. They don’t call it the Flying Fortress because the name has nice ring to it.”

Katie waved as though batting away a fly.

“Uh-huh...yeah, right. That’s what the Germans were saying about the Heinkel 111 when the first ones arrived in Spain.”

Finlayson’s voice rose by two notches.

“Dammit, you know as well as I do that the He-111 has only half the speed, half the ceiling and half the armament of the B-17, and none of it’s carried in powered-driven...!”

“Shhhh, lower your voice.”

Finlayson checked himself and fell back in his chair again, eyeing her moodily.

“Let me guess where you got this little idea from, Miss MacArran. It was Colonel Chennault, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Katie admitted over a bite of eggplant, “And no. If you want the truth Major, I was as surprised as anyone by how much range the Little Engine ended up with...and look at it this way: No matter what you intend to use this new pursuit plane for, it can’t hurt, can it?”

“That depends,” said the raccoon, crisply, “on whether or not you compromised in another area in order to achieve it.”

Down went Katie’s chopsticks, and back went her ears.

“Absolutely not!” she neighed, deeply insulted, “Didn’t you hear what I said, Major? We practically stumbled on to it...and even if we hadn’t, the Little Engine was conceived and constructed with one purpose paramount over everything else, she’s built to take home the Schneider-Cup, period.”

Finlayson blinked and his head recoiled as if a wasp had just landed on his plate.

“Take the Schneider...Period?” He said, staring at Katie with hard eyes, “I thought you were building her as...”

“A pursuit-plane prototype.” the pinto mare finished for him. “Yes, you’re right.” She picked up her utensils again, “But you see, the biggest problem I’ve noticed with aircraft builders who try to repeat Reginald Mitchell’s feat is that they keep trying to build Schneider Cup racers that can take off their wing-floats and go straight into combat.” She shook her head, “It doesn’t work like that, Major. They’re planes built for two completely different purposes.”

“What about the Curtiss Hawk?” the raccoon reminded her. The Hawk had been the aircraft he himself had piloted to victory in the Schneider....and also the Army’s front line interceptor at the time.

“The Hawk was a pursuit plane modified as a racer.” Katie reminded him, “not the other way around. Same thing with the Seversky SEV-S2, and the Messerschmitt 109 that won the Circuit of the Alps last year. Look, I won’t deny that we could have built the Little Engine as pursuit plane first and then worked backwards...but what the heck for? You wouldn’t end up with a better aircraft, and it would take a lot longer to produce.”

Finalyson grunted and reached for the pitcher...and Katie went on.

“Everything I’m saying here Major, I learned from Reginald Mitchell. ‘If you want to build a Schneider Cup racer as a pursuit plane prototype’, he told me, ‘you have to build it first to do three things -- win, win, and win. The rest will follow.’”

Again, Finlayson said nothing...just slowly chewed his meal while watching her closely. Katie could almost hear the question forming in his mind. Was she sincere, or had she invoked the name of the Spitfire’s designer merely to stifle him? After several seconds of this, the raccoon appeared to decide ( rightly ) on the first option and nodded in concurrence.

“Tell me about this new two stage supercharger you’re using.” he said, and Katie had to force herself not to tense up. This was one question away from the one she didn’t want to answer...not until the raccoon had seen the improvement in the Little Engine’s performance since they’d gone over to a Merlin.

“We need that because a single stage supercharger isn’t really effective at 250 feet,” she said, “Keep in mind, when the first superchargers were installed on airplanes, it was to increase their ceiling, not their speed....and that’s still their primary function. Oh, and before I forget,” she added, pretending to have just that instant remembered, “Wanna know why the Me-109 doesn’t lose power on sharp turns and dives?” There, that should change the subject.

But this time, Finlayson didn’t goggle at her.

“Because it uses fuel injection instead of air-carburetion.” he said, sounding testy again “You mentioned it in your last report, remember?”

She did now. Damn!

“And speaking of engines...” he started to say, and at that moment another one of the Schneider-Cup racers went roaring past the South Island Head on a high-speed practice run. When Katie saw the aircraft, it was HER turn to gape in astonishment.

The plane was painted a splashy, fire-engine red, with stripes of green, white, and a slightly different shade of crimson emblazoned on it’s vertical stabilizer. Below and behind the cockpit, which was set almost all the way back against the tail-faring, was the emblem of three axes, each one tightly bound within a bundle of rods.

It was quite possibly the most streamlined-looking plane the pinto mare had ever seen, as if the designer had spent endless hours contemplating a darning-needle and then modified it to fly at high speed.

Turning left as it passed over the harbor entrance, the interloper revealed a pair of high-set, oval wings that might have been a plagiarized version of the Spitfire’s...and if Katie hadn’t seen another version of this plane almost ten years previously, she would not have been greatly surprised to learn that the Italians had done just that.

But the most amazing thing about the aircraft was that the builders appeared to have abandoned work on it when it was nearing completion completed. It had struts for wing-floats all right...but no wing-floats, only a pair of tiny fins, jutting out from the lower end of each of them.

What it did have was a second propellor, mounted just below the tail faring...

...a BOAT propellor.

“If I weren’t seeing this with my own eyes.” said Katie, turning back to her guest, and shaking her head, “I wouldn’t have believed it, with a gun to my head. The Italians did it; they got the Piaggio-Pegna PC.7 to fly.”

“Actually, it’s the PC.9.” said the raccoon, correcting her, “Improved version, as you can see for yourself. But may I assume you’re familiar with the original?”

“Oh hell yeah.” said Katie, reaching for her glass again, “I was on the Supermarine S.6 team back in ‘29, remember? We all thought the PC.7 was a flying joke...or a NON-flying joke, since the Italians never did get the fool thing airborne.” She took a long sip of her drink, then angled her head at the rapidly shrinking airplane. “Damn, but I’d love to know how the heck they made it work.”

“Variable pitch propellor,” Finlayson answered at once, “I mean the tail-screw, not the flight prop, and also an improved gearing system that allows the pilot to change over a lot more quickly than before...and something called a supercavitating hydrofoil. Other than that, except for a newer engine, an enclosed cockpit, and a three bladed forward propellor, it’s pretty much the same aircraft the Italians tried to run back in 1929.”

Katie took another bite of her lunch, watching her guest closely, “Been doing your homework I see. Any thing you can tell me about the PC-9's performance?” The PC-7 had theoretically been able to fly at almost 450 mph.

Finlayson chuckled, “Fantastic plane, by all accounts. Handles great...until it hits 300 mph. Then it’s ‘like flying a greased pig’, according to at least one pilot’s report that I read. And it never did make that 450 mark the Italians were all predicting.”

Katie also snickered, but then she said, “Well, even so, I wouldn’t count the PC-9 out just yet. Not with Francesco Agello at the stick.” Agello had been the pilot who set the 440 mph speed record in the Macchi-Castoldi MC.72

Finlayson looked away for a second and began to chew his lip.

“What?” said Katie, noting the change, and when the raccoon turned towards her again, it was with a solemn, slightly apprehensive expression on his face..

“Ahhhh...I’d hoped you already knew about this, but Agello’s not going to be flying for the Italian Schneider team after all. There’s been a last minute change and the new Italian race pilot is Captain Enzo Murmi of the Reggia Aero...I know, I KNOW!” he told her quickly, raising his paws like King Canute, attempting to hold the tide back , “And I feel the same way that you do, Miss MacArran. If it were up to me, Enzo Murmi wouldn’t be allowed to attend the Schneider as a spectator, much less a competitor.”

On the surface of it, Enzo Murmi, the leopard who had led the poison-gas attack on the Abyssinian fortress-town of Desula, was a most unlikely choice as a Schneider Cup entrant. Though his flight record was both long and notable, he was a bomber, not a pursuit-plane pilot. In fact, up until now, he had never flown a race-plane in his life. Furthermore, he was the very antithesis of the dashing air-race pilot, the rakish daredevil with the impish grin and the low-key, ‘aw-shucks’ mannerisms.

Not hardly, as Katie would have put it; Enzo Murmi was a thug and a blowhard; a hulking brute of low intellect who boasted loudly and frequently that he hadn’t read a newspaper since he was 14...and who liked to settle even the most trivial arguments with his claws. He would have been a natural, playing the dim-witted enforcer in a Jimmy Stagney gangster movie...but only if it was a silent feature, since he also supposedly owned a vocabulary that could make a stevedore blush.

But if Capitano Murmi’s qualifications as both a race-pilot and a sporting fur were questionable, his credentials as a Fascist were absolutely impeccable. The big leopard had once served as bodyguard to Mussolini’s favorite son, Bruno...and he reportedly treated the Duce with an absolutely slavish deference. It was said that if the Italian dictator ever order Capitano Murmi to go jump off a cliff, the big cat’s only question would be, “How quickly must I hit the bottom?”

Whatever else Enzo Murmi might do, he would never try to upstage his master.

And that, as far as the Duce was concerned, trumped all other considerations. There could be only one famous Italian aviator...and that was Benito Mussolini himself. As no less a close associate than General Italo Balbo had once observed, “Any time Il Duce sees too much light shining on the rest of us, he turns the light off.”

These days, when Katie considered the state of Italian aviation, she invariably conjured up one of those cartoons where a small fish gets eaten by a bigger fish, who gets eaten by an even bigger fish; Italo Balbo had tried to destroy Umberto Nobile’s career, and had ended up having HIS career wrecked by the Duce.

It had all started, she knew, in 1933. That was the year General Balbo had led a flotilla of Savoia-Marchetti S.55 seaplanes on a grand flight from Rome to the Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago. (It was an exploit Katie knew well; one of the planes in that flotilla had been piloted by the father and daughter team of Giuseppe and Sofia Casadonte.)

That flight had been a stunning triumph for General Balbo; it should have been the capstone to his career. In New York, he had been feted with a ticker-tape parade and invited to address a rally at Madison Square Garden. In Washington, he had lunched with President Roosevelt. In the dictionary, the word ‘Balbo’ had become synonymous with any large formation of aircraft.

And in Rome, three months after his triumphant return flight, Italo Balbo had been packed off into ignominious quasi-exile as Governor-General of Libya. Nobody stole Benito Mussolini’s thunder...nobody.

“Are you going to be all right, knowing Murmi’s flying for Italy?” Major Finlayson asked, and then braced himself slightly as though expecting a tirade. None came. Katie MacArran understood it was a question that had needed to be asked.

“I can handle it, Major.” she told the raccoon, “And in case you’re wondering, so can Rabaissu. Though, I will give you fair warning. Murmi can call my bodyguard every name under the sun, even taunt him about Desula, and Rabaissu won’t so much as twitch his tail. But if that lowlife leopard ever takes a swipe at ME, and from what I hear he’s just dumb enough to try it, Raibassu will be all over him in a heartbeat.” And pausing for effect, she added, “And I won’t try to stop him.”

“Neither will I, if I’m there.” said the raccoon at once. Like his host, Jack Finlayson was also an adherent to the old prospector’s dictum that you should never start a fight...but always finish one.   He forked up the last bite of his meal and then pushed the plate away. After catching up with him a moment later Katie did the same. Almost immediately, Hsing was there to clear away the dishes and replace them with slivers of cool-green Key Lime pie.

The two of them waited until the Chinese pony had entered the house again, before they resumed their discussion.

“So is there anything you can tell me about my German opponent?” asked Katie.

“Only one thing that you don’t already know.” said Major Finlayson, “And it won’t be of any practical value, I’m afraid. The German Mystery Plane is named Die Walküre.”

“The Valkyrie.” said Katie, eyeing him sardonically over a forkful of her dessert. “Wanna make a bet on WHICH particular piece of music will be playing when the Luftwaffe finally unveils her?”

“No bet.” said Finlayson, grinning back, and then Katie’s expression turned purposeful again.

“But what I meant was, can you tell me anything about Ilse Klentsch?   I know all about her exploits...read everything I could get my hooves on about her. But I’ve never actually seen her in competition. You have.”

“What about the ‘35 Circuit of the Alps?” the raccoon started to say, but then quickly corrected himself, “Wait, that’s right. She was forced out at the beginning...I forgot. All right, well one thing I can tell you is that this is one ruthless pilot. If she sees any sort of chance to knock an opponent out of a race, she’ll move first and worry about what the judges say later. She’s tough too. At the Air-Meet in Berlin last year, I saw her do an outside Immelman that was tight enough to use as a clothespin...and then go straight up into a vertical climb. And I don’t think I need to tell you that’s something you DON’T try if you’re even a little disoriented. But the two most important things I learned about her were a couple items I heard about rather than saw. First of all...well, forgive me for being circumspect, but it did you know Flugkapitan Klenstch has a reputation for being a lucky flier? Yep...she’s been in literally dozens of crack-ups, not surprising for a test pilot, and she’s walked away from every single one of them with nothing worse than a minor sprain. Around the German Air Ministry they call her Die Zauberwolf, 'the magic wolf'. But it’s not because Ilse Klenstch has someone up there watching over her that she’s a lupine salamander. It comes from the fact that she’s got nerves you could use for bridge cables; she can stay cool even in the worst of circumstances. Try to crowd her during a race and she’ll just look at you.”

“I see,” said Katie, making a mental note, and trying to recall the story of the first time Ilse Klenstch had set a new sailplane altitude record.

It had happened shortly after the she-wolf had begun her glider instruction under the famous German pilot, Ernst Rohrbeck. One fine afternoon in the spring of 1932, while Ilse had been out doing some shopping, she had bumped into her mentor on the street...and then quickly discovered that it was no chance encounter; the Weimaraner had, in fact, been looking all over for her.

“Herr Storrs,” he’d said, referring to the president of Ilse’s soaring club, “Has come down with a distemper and the new Gronau Baby glider has just arrived today at the field. You must come with me right now, Fraulein Klentsch. Nein, you do not have time to change. Hurry, they are all waiting.”

No sooner had Ilse Klentsch lifted off in the club’s new top-of-the line sail-plane, than she had found herself trapped in an unusually strong updraft. She’d climbed from 2000 to 6000 ft in a matter of moments and the next thing she knew the sky had gone from cerulean to leaden and the glider was being pelted with rain...then hailstones.

And she was still climbing. At 9800 feet the instruments froze and so did the controls...and so, almost, did Ilse Klentsch, who was still dressed in her warm-weather frock and had only finished shedding out her winter coat the week before.

Then, all at once, the glider had burst into brilliant sunlight...with the earth below rather than above. The winds had flipped it upside down and Ilse hadn’t even realized it. Taking the controls in a firm grip, the she-wolf had righted the sail plane and eventually brought it to perfect landing in a field several miles from her starting point. According to a farmer who had witnessed the touch down, when the Ilse had stepped from the cockpit of the glider, she had been, “all smiles and waves, as calm and steady as if she were alighting from a taxicab.”

And that, Katie reflected was where Ilse Klentsch had it over her. Unbeknownst to all but a trusted few, the pinto mare had never completely recovered from her crash in the New Guinea jungle...or the terrible ordeal that had followed. Any prang, even the most minor one, inevitably took her back to that terrible experience. At such times, her composure was every bit the equal of Ilse’s...until she was back on the ground. Then she would be seized by an overwhelming desire to tear herself from the cockpit and run as far away from the plane as possible...and God help the poor mechanic who happened to be close by, especially if the plane had gone down due to a mechanical problem. She would tear into the hapless crew-member with an unbridled fury, accusing him of every form of negligence and incompetence known to furkind. (Curiously, none of them ever quit on her...even though she never apologized afterwards.)

“You said you learned two things,” she said to her lunch guest, “what’s the other one?”

“It has to do with HOW Ilse Klentsch got to be one of the Reich’s top test pilots in the first place.” Finlayson answered, looking very sober, “She can supposedly take one look at any airplane and know what it’s capabilities are.   Whether or not that’s true, she HAS flown practically every plane in the Luftwaffe kennel...and more than a few foreign ones, to boot. She’s got more experience with more different kinds of aircraft than almost any other aviator I know, male or female, present company included. And that includes her having piloted Professor Heinkel’s new experimental jet plane and the Focke-Wulf...Hmmm, what was that thing called again? Oh, yes, the heli-copter.”

Katie listened, but she wasn’t concerned. This was one area where SHE held the upper hoof. No matter how good Ilse Klentsch might be at assessing a plane’s strong and weak points, she had never actually designed and built an aircraft herself.

“Anything you can tell me about the other planes and/or pilots in the race?” she asked, taking another bite of her pie.

Finlayson smiled, “As a matter of fact, yes, I’m glad you asked me. Let’s start with the two Japanese entries.”

The Japanese Naval entry was the Kawanishi N1R Kurofune, or 'Black Wind'.   Built of a new, lightweight aluminum alloy, it’s design was said to have been heavily influenced by the Hughes H-1 racer, a fact which Katie found highly amusing, since ‘heavily influenced by’ in Imperial Japanese Navy parlance was often a euphemism for ‘stolen from.’

“It’s being flown by Lieutenant Minoru Shobi, IJN.” Finlayson was saying. Word is he got the job for consistently refusing to stay in formation. Kept insisting on jumping out ahead of his comrades and being the first one to attack the enemy.”

Katie snuffled in disgust. “Hmmmm. We used to have a word for that kind of pilot when I was in Spain and China, Major. It’s called dead.”

Jack Finlayson didn’t laugh, only smirked.

“Which should give you some idea about how good Lt. Shobi is, Miss MacArran...if he’s still among the living after all the times he’s done that. As for the Kurofune, it’s fast and maneuverable, but it’s anything but rugged. Kawanishi made a few too many sacrifices, trying to lighten the load with that plane...and it shows every time the Kurofune tries to duel it out around the pylons.

Katie nodded, and jotted that down in her mental notebook. Yes, it was possible to build a winning race plane using that method. The little Folkerts Jupiter, which had thundered to an upset victory in the previous year’s Thompson Trophy was prime example. But then, the following December, during the All American Air Maneuvers race in Miami, the Jupiter had crashed at the scatter pylon killing it’s pilot instantly. Next to cramming too much engine into too little airframe, as had been done with the Gee Bee, the most dangerous way to build an air-racer, was to sacrifice everything for the sake of weight.

“Mind you, the last report we had about the Kurofune came in almost six months ago,” the raccoon was adding, “And I seriously doubt that Kawanishi has just been ignoring that problem all this time.” Katie nodded and nickered in melancholy agreement. There was no nation more dedicated to improving the design of it’s aircraft than Japan, not even Nazi Germany. The previous year, even as the deadly new Mitsubishi A5-M ‘Claude’ pursuit plane was making it’s battlefield debut in China, a new and better successor, the A6-M ‘Zero’ was already on the drawing board.

“What about the Japanese Army entry?” Katie asked, and Finlayson responded with a long, low chuckle.

“That’s probably the only plane in the field you can write off, Miss MacArran. It’s nothing more than a Nakajima Ki-43 pursuit-plane prototype with wing-floats added on. Apparently some hothead in the Japanese Army’s high command thought it would dishonorable for the Japanese Navy to have a plane entered in the Schneider-Cup while the Army sits it out. So the IJA literally threw an aircraft together for the race.

Katie snickered back and the raccoon added, “And that’s not all, Miss MacArran. It seems the Japanese Army pilot, Lieutenant Ikki Nakamoto and Lieutenant Minoru Shobi come from samurai families that were bitter rivals before the Meiji restoration; they hate each other with a passion.”

“Yeah.” said Katie, nodding, “I heard about the Japanese Navy guys demanding a new hangar after they found out theirs was too close for comfort to the Army’s.”

“Really?” said Finlayson, “I didn’t know about that...but I can’t say I’m surprised. From what I hear Lt. Nakamoto and Lt. Shobi are the rule, not the exception. Most of the higher ups in the Japanese Army and Navy hail from rival samurai clans, and they loathe one another so much, it’s almost absurd, the lengths they’ll go to just for spite. If the Japanese Army orders an aircraft part built with clockwise screws, the Japanese Navy will specify that the same component be built with counterclockwise screws...just to make sure that they won’t be interchangeable.”

Katie would have taken another forkful of her dessert just then, but at the moment, she was feeling too disgusted.   Christmas...how the HELL had the Japanese ever managed to build such an effective military machine with that kind of discord in the ranks?

“Anyway,” Finlayson was saying, “let’s move on. Would I be wrong in assuming that you’re already familiar with the British entry, Napier-Heston Type 6S?”

“You wouldn’t,” said Katie, adding as an afterthought, “Helluva plane if they ever get the bugs worked out.”

Jack Finlayson took another bite of his pie. From the look on his face, it was obviously his opinion as well. “What do you think, Miss MarArran? Think the Type-6 will ever live up to it’s potential?” The British racer supposedly had a top end of 480 mph.

Katie reached back and pulled at her mane.

“Not with that plywood frame and those fabric-covered ailerons, it won’t Major. And not until Napier’s engine plant finally gets it on the ball with quality control. If Henry...uh, excuse me..if Harry Hopkins had seen anything as sloppy as what goes on in there while he was on that tour you told me about, he would have burst a blood vessel.”

Katie wanted to slap herself. Damn, she had come THAT close to bringing up Henry Royce...who of course, had been the driving force behind the Rolls-Royce Merlin, the engine that she most definitely wanted to avoid talking about at the moment.

Fortunately her guest didn’t catch the slip. He only sniggered again.

“Actually, he did Miss MacArran. We both did. Remind me to tell you about what we saw at the Brewster Aircraft Works one of these days.”

“No need,” said Katie, sniggering right back, “I’ve already seen it for myself...and you’re absolutely right.” Phew, that was a close one.

“Do you know the pilot, by any chance?” Finlayson asked.

“No,” said Katie, “But I know OF him   Squadron Leader Harry A.A. Forlani...'the reluctant champion'.”

“Mmm-hmmm.” said the Major, nodding. Harry Forlani, a tortoiseshell cat had gotten that nickname because he was an incredibly skilled race pilot...who just happened to detest air racing.

Or rather, the publicity that came with it. After finishing strong second in the previous Schneider, he had reportedly pretended to choke on a hairball after debarking from the cockpit, in order to avoid talking to reporters. Given the choice, he would never have raced at all...but being as he was an RAF officer, on active duty, he didn’t HAVE any choice in the matter. Willing or unwilling, Squadron Leader Forlani was reportedly the finest competitor ever to come out of the British air-racing school at Felixstowe. And anyone who doubted this needed only to be reminded that Lady Pamela Fenwick had not once but twice before given him her blessing to fly for Britain in the Schneider...this in spite of the fact of his decidedly UN-British surname

Which, by the way, also meant that the tortoiseshell cat was the most experienced Schneider-Cup pilot in the race; if the British Team could just hold their plane together and somehow keep the engine running, they would be a serious force to contend with.

“Now as to the Dutch entry,” Jack Finlayson was saying, “the Fokker RD-1, it was fursonally designed and built by none other than Anton Fokker himself.   That’s another name I’m sure you know.”

Oh, yes...Katie MacArran certainly knew that name; she had never forgotten her uncle’s letter from the Western Front, describing his encounter with a Fokker DVII.. Nor was she unfamiliar with the cargo planes Tony Fokker had been building since the Armistice. During her sojourn in New Guinea, they had been Battling Ray Parer’s aircraft of choice.

Opponent or not, she was greatly looking forward to meeting one of the legends of aircraft design.

“It’s not a plane to ignore.” Finalyson was telling her, “A little underpowered, but it supposedly handles like a dream.”

“No surprise there.” said Katie, nodding. Ease of control was a hallmark of all Fokker aircraft. “Who’s the pilot?”

“Someone else whose name might be familiar to you, Jan Van Der Linden. Remember him?”

“Sure do.” the pinto mare answered at once. Van Der Linden had been one of co-pilots of the plane that had scored a stunning second place finish in the MacRobertson England to Australia race back in 1934...and he had done so at the controls of a lowly DC-2 airliner. Katie knew that particular mink, all right. She should, she had finished right behind him in that race.

And that, she remembered now, had also been the last time she and Battling Ray Parer had ever seen each other. Where was that Brumby these days, she wondered. Had he ever gotten over her? From the start, there had never really been a chance of their staying together.

And after what had happened with the air-pirates, there had absolutely been no such possibility.

next

Aircraft References:

Piaggio-Pegna PC-7 ( Earlier version of the PC-9)
http://oldbeacon.com/plans/resource4/piaggio-pegna_pc7.htm

Savoia-Marchetti S.55
http://avia.russian.ee/air/italy/savoia_s-55.html

Kawanish N1K Kyofu ( Later development of the N1R )
http://combinedfleet.com/ijna/n1k.htm

Nakajima Ki-43
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakajima_Ki-43

Napier-Heston Type 5. ( Landplane variant of the Type 6.)
http://oldbeacon.com/plans/resource4/napier-heston_racer.htm

Fokker D.XXI ( Earlier variant of the Fokker RD.1 )
http://www.fighter-planes.com/info/d21.htm