Roaring Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age by Walter J. Boyne Read Free Book Online

coming from their engines; as they passed, Tom pulled up sharply, then rolled back down on the P-40’s tail. Harry dove steeply and at 300 mph jerked his P-40 into a sharp turn that Tom promptly matched. Harry rolled on his back and dove again.
    Horror-stricken, Tom pulled back on his power, levelingoff and banking sharply to watch as Harry’s P-40 plunged toward the Pacific. Yelling, “Pull out; pull out,” he pounded the canopy with his fist.
    Inside the P-40, Harry trying desperately to do just that, with the throttle back, his feet on the control panel, both hands pulling back on the stick, the huge blue ocean racing up to engulf him, the altimeter unwinding, he counted the seconds he had to live as the nose slowly began to creep forward toward the horizon. With the g-forces slamming his body back into his seat, Harry struggled, hooking the stick back in the crook of his right arm and rolling in full-up elevator trim. As the nose came toward level, he blacked out, his vision collapsing inward, his hands falling from the stick, the excess speed now working on the elevator trim to hurl the plane skyward.
    Above, Tom’s scream of rage turned gradually into a prayer of hope as the black triangle of the P-40’s tail slowly transformed into a pointed nose, and then the wings and fuselage, flattening out, started a climb. He dove toward the P-40 as Harry’s consciousness returned first and then his vision, followed by a sense of overwhelming relief at his sheer good luck. If the dive had lasted another ten seconds, he would have been forty fathoms deep right now.
    The two fighters leveled out in loose formation, Harry trying to regain composure. Tom rolled his Wildcat around the P-40 in a loose arc, checking it for damage. They closed again, both opening their canopies. Tom shook his head while a white-faced Harry grinned, happy to be alive and knowing that his brother would never let him live this down. To try a split S in a P-40 at low altitude. It was suicidal.
    Tom flew in a shallow bank to a heading that would lead Harry roughly to Hamilton Field, located a few miles north of San Francisco. Harry shook his head, pointed straight back to the coastline; he had had enough of over-ocean flying and would find his way up the coast.
    That night, Harry called the bar at the Officers Club at San Diego Naval Air Station, where, as he suspected, Tom was holding forth on his death-defying morning combat. Over the din of the bar, they exchanged some small talk, with Harry signing off. “You know, right now Dad’s Lecture twenty-nine makes a lot of sense. You take care of yourself, and don’t bust your ass doing something as stupid as I did.”
    Tom’s answer sounded flippant but was sincere: “I won’t if you won’t.”

 
    • THE PASSING SCENE •
    Italians repelled in invasion of Greece; Germany conquers Balkans, Greece, Crete; HMS Hood and Bismarck sunk; Germany invades Soviet Union; back-and-forth fighting in North Africa; Churchill and Roosevelt sign Atlantic Charter; plutonium discovered; Lou Gehrig dies.

CHAPTER THREE

     
    August 3, 1941, Ladywood, United Kingdom
    “Young Whittle there is very even tempered. Always angry.”
    It was the wrong thing to say to Stanley Hooker, whose genius with supercharger designs had improved the performance of the Hurricane and the Spitfire to the point that they could win the Battle of Britain. Hooker imperiously drew himself up to his full six-foot, two-inch height, his mouth compressed into a hard slit. Visibly restraining himself, he speared the hapless Ministry of Aircraft Production bureaucrat with eyes crackling fire.
    “So might you be if you had seen a stupid government sit on a war-winning invention for almost a decade, then proceed to rob you at gunpoint of the value of your brainchild.”
    Hooker spun on his heel and strode toward the deep blue Rolls-Royce Phantom II waiting by the hangar doors. Slipping inside the Rolls, still fuming, he waved off the proffered