Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [91]
‘We get the message,’ the Doctor said distractedly. He had wandered over to the exposed flank of the plane and was toying with his abacus. Despite the Doctor’s indifference, Chris had a hunch that he was on to something and was interested in what Steinmann had to say.
‘It usually takes six months to draw up the exact specification for a large aircraft like this. We send out the requirements to the various aviation companies for competitive tender. The companies work out whether they can build the plane, how long it would take if they did, and they tell us what the unit cost would be. Nine or ten months later, the Luftwaffe decide which company has put in the best bid.’
There was a new sound, a clack coming from the inspection platform. Chris saw the Doctor up there, opening up his briefcase. The Doctor retrieved large sheaves of paper from it: blueprints. He struggled with them for a moment, trying to unfold them. Steinmann was still speaking. ‘Then comes the hard part: the prototype. It took over two and a half years to build Hugin and her sister Munin, here. A whole host of problems had to be solved, from perfecting the revolutionary new jet engine to working out the exact positioning of the controls.’ The Nazi’s voice receded as he stepped over to the Doctor. The little man had his arms wide, trying to stop the blueprints escaping from his grasp. He had even managed to tie a knot in one of the sheets. Steinmann helped to straighten out the papers. The Doctor examined them intently for a moment. Steinmann frowned, and tried to turn the plans the right way up. In the resulting struggle, a couple of the blueprints escaped, drifting down from the platform to the oily hangar floor. Steinmann gave up; instead he turned his attention back to Chris, and grasped the safety railing like a vicar at a pulpit. The sermon continued.
‘Then we begin the air trials: our top pilots test the plane for its handling, performance and suitability. The trials of this magnificent plane were completed at the end of February. Air trials take about sixteen months. Then, normally, production begins on a squadron of aircraft and they are tested in action.
We see how easy it will be to construct and operate the planes. Typically, this takes another two years, perhaps two and a half. Then, the Luftwaffe decide how many planes they actually need. Another year.’
Chris had been doing some mental arithmetic.
Steinmann was now so far away that he felt he had to shout.
‘That’s about eight years in total. The British have by far the best radar technology in the world. They are — what? — two or three years ahead of the Germans. But not even the British network is that good. The Chain Home network is still being set up. You can’t possibly have started building this radar-invisible plane eight years ago
— there wasn’t any radar back then!’
‘In wartime, the need is more urgent so we cut corners.
We don’t ask the aircraft companies what they want to build, we tell them. We build two prototypes: a simple measure that halves the trial period. This particular aircraft is a special case, it will —’
‘What’s that doing there?’ the Doctor grumbled, interrupting. Steinmann just smiled, and bent over to see what had caught the Doctor’s eye. ‘Heat sink,’ he whispered.
The Doctor looked up at the Nazi officer for a moment, bemused, then checked his plans. Apparently satisfied, he returned to his investigations.
Steinmann continued. ‘Munin is a special case, and it will never be mass-produced. At a unit cost of three million Reichsmarks, we couldn’t afford to. Not that we need many. I have calculated that five of these planes would be enough for the British invasion. They could wipe out every radar station, every airstrip and every major bridge in the south of England before the British even knew we were in the air.’
‘It still doesn’t add up,’ objected Chris, who had