Graham headed for the door and was halfway there when Donovan realized he hadn’t gotten into the second thing Roosevelt had brought up at dinner.
While Donovan held Alex Graham in very high regard, it was also true that their personalities clashed, almost always because Graham was one of the very few people in the world who was not afraid to tell Donovan no and then was uncowed when this inevitably triggered Donovan’s temper.
And it just happened again. He told me no, and I became annoyed to the point where not only didn’t we have the friendly cup of coffee I set up but, also, I forgot I promised FDR I would have Graham implement his latest friendly suggestion for the OSS.
“Hold it a second, will you, Alex?” Donovan called.
Graham turned.
“There’s something else,” Donovan said. He waved at the couch and the coffee service. “Have you time for a cup of coffee?”
Graham recognized the olive branch.
“Thank you. I’d love one.”
He walked to the couch and sat down. Donovan walked to the coffee table carrying a cigar humidor, offered a cigar to Graham, lit it for him, and then poured the coffee.
“Why does this little bird on my shoulder keep whispering, ‘Beware of Irishmen bearing gifts’?” Graham said.
“Because you have a cynical streak in your character,” Donovan said.
“True,” Graham said.
“FDR had dinner with Hap Arnold night before last,” Donovan began. “During which Arnold told him how well aircraft production is going.”
General Henry H. Arnold was commanding general, Army Air Forces.
Graham nodded and waited for Donovan to go on.
“Arnold apparently got carried away and said something about almost being at the point where we have more airplanes than we need.”
“That’s hard to accept,” Graham said. “From what I hear, there have been awful losses in Europe.”
“It seems Arnold wasn’t talking about bombers and fighters,” Donovan said. “What has apparently happened, Alex, was that cost-plus contracts were apparently let for all kinds of aircraft, not only fighters and bombers and the larger transports. The aircraft industry rose to the challenge and went on an around-the-clock, no-weekends-off production schedule and has churned out, for example, large numbers of aircraft—the models in question here are Lockheed’s Lodestar and Constellation—”
“You mean that Queen Mary-size wooden airplane Howard Hughes is building?”
“No. I don’t know what they call that wooden airplane, but that’s not it. You know what the Lodestar is, of course?”
“Uh-huh. What’s the Constellation?”
“Another of Hughes’s designs. Great big, four-engine, forty-odd-passenger airplane. It has three tails. It can fly across the Atlantic. Or to Hawaii.”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
“Well, neither airplane fits comfortably into the Army Air Force. The Lodestar carries only fourteen people and the door isn’t large enough to conveniently drop parachutists. The Douglas DC-3—the C-47—carries twenty-one people and the door is big enough for paratroopers. The Constellation is really a better airplane than the DC-4—it cruises at better than three hundred miles an hour; the DC-4 only goes a little better than two hundred—but the decision was made early on to go with the DC-4 as the standard, and that Lockheed should produce the P-38 fighter instead of more Constellations.” He paused and looked at Graham. “You see where I’m going, Alex?”
“No. I don’t think this is just polite conversation over coffee, but I don’t know where it’s leading.”
“The President remembered we sent a Lodestar down to Argentina,” Donovan said.
“That was a mistake. I suggested that Roosevelt send a Staggerwing Beechcraft down there to replace the one Frade lost—his father’s airplane— when he was shot down leading one of our submarines—the Devil Fish—to the Reine de la Mer. The President agreed, and told the Air Force to come up with one. They couldn’t find one, so they sent the next best thing, a twin-engine, fourteen-passenger airliner, to replace a single-engine six-seater.”
“The commander in chief expressed a desire which has the force and effect of law. What were they going to tell him? ‘Sorry’?”
“Where’s this leading, Bill?” Graham said suspiciously.
“The commander in chief, after being informed by the commanding general of the Army Air Forces that he had more Lockheed Lodestars and Constellations than he really needed, wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea for the OSS to use some of those airplanes to set up its own airline down there, under that stalwart Marine Aviator Cletus Frade.”