THE PASSING SCENE Germany protests over maltreatment of ethnic Germans in Po.l∧ Great Britain and France pledge to come to Poland's aid in the event of war; Germany and Soviet Union announce non­aggression pact; The Grapes of Wrath published in the United States; Pan Am begins regularly scheduled flights between the United States and Europe; Igor Sikorsky constructs helicopter. CHAPTER ONE August 27, 1939, Marienehe, Germany The turgid waters of the Warnow River lapped at the stone-covered beach, the gentle gurgling muffled by the dense fog spreading its tendrils deep over the grassy flying field. A thousand yards away five men worked feverishly in the yellow light billowing from the "Special Project" hangar doors, checking the small, almost dainty aircraft .dling a live bomb, they wrestled the plane into a 180-degree .lage pointed out toward the river. Fritz Obermyer sat on the edge of the Fiat Toppolino's tiny running board, his 120 kilograms of muscle and fat tipping the car, suppressing its springs, and sending the glow of its headlights at a cockeyed angle. Obermyer drew deeply on the stub of a cigarette, felt its warmth flare beneath his nose, then carefully dropped it beside him, grinding it into the tarmac with his foot.

He nudged his companion and pointed. "Look at him. When he came here three years ago, a little snot-nosed graduate student from Göttingen, I thought he was crazy." Gerd Müller, short, lean, and wiry, stretched and laughed. "You tried to give him a hard time, Fritz, but he drove you crazy being polite. No matter what you said-or what you wrote on the wall in the latrine-he never lost his temper." As Frontsoldaten, they were accustomed to discomfort and waiting, and the long hours spent at the field meant nothing to them. Obermyer had left the Berlin Institute of Technology to volunteer for the army in August 1914.

Now he was nominally a machinist foreman in the new plant .ity, he had used an artful combination of his engineering .cepted as an aide to Ernst Heinkel himself. Heinkel was at first quite resistant to the idea but over time, as Obermyer's talents became obvious, welcomed his assistance. Heinkel found that he could depend upon Obermyer to know what was happening on the factory floor, in the long rows of drafting tables, and in the local Nazi Party headquarters, usually long before anyone else was aware of it. The information was often invaluable, and within a few months of his employment, Heinkel looked upon Obermyer as an indispensable political divining rod. Müller was an excellent machinist but had been attached to Obermyer-at his insistence-as an assistant. The arrangement suited the plant management, who saw Obermyer and Müller as agitators.

They were glad to have them off the factory floor and worried each time Obermyer came through, acting as if he were the local feudal lord, gathering information and dispensing favors. They, like Heinkel, knew better than to protest. The firm was already at odds with the government, and everyone wanted to avoid any further difficulties with the Nazi Party. When Obermyer suggested that he be attached to the Special Project organization, Heinkel acquiesced- the more sensitive a project was, the more hazardous it was to raise a political issue. Obermyer could intimidate most people with a glance; stone-cold gray eyes gleamed from his cruelly scarred face, and he walked as he had for four years in the trenches, bent over, moving with a menacing hunched step that made it seem as if he was about to leap on his prey. Yet he was also an able humorist, able to prick egos with the .some latrines of the Heinkel Aircraft Works factory. He wasn't always malicious but was usually apt, and the workers waited as eagerly for his latest poem as some of them might wait for the latest joke on the Nazi Party.

He wrote those occasionally, too, just to see who laughed .geant in the Roehlk Freikorps after the war-to his own advantage. And while most Nazis bragged about their low party membership numbers, confirming their early support for Hitler, Obermyer's reputation was built on the decisive action he had taken in 1934 during the "Night of the Long Knives" when Adolf Hitler had squelched a Brownshirt revolution and executed Ernst Roehm. When one of Roehm's none-too-alert bodyguards had attempted to sound the alarm, Obermyer had cut him down with a single slash of his favorite brawling tool, a razor-sharp trench shovel. From that night on he was an icon in the party, a symbol of action and loyalty to the Führer. But .portunist, pure and simple, intent on looking out for his own interests at all times. Müller was an old comrade, a companion in adversity .

er's lives but, more important, saved each other's sanity .ter how short on food or how bad the morale, they each had the other to rely upon. They were inseparable, with .ways to do what he said. Müller had once made a joking threat to some of the Heinkel workers, saying, "Obermyer is the brains and I'm the muscle." Obermyer heard him and interjected, "I'm the brains and he's the stomach." Both men were correct. In July 1918, Müller had watched Obermyer save another life, that of a twenty-year-old new recruit in a sappers' battalion.

They were in a just conquered French village behind the line of German advance. The young soldier was engaged in loading mortar shells from an abandoned truck into a horse-drawn sled when Obermyer had grabbed him by the neck and tossed him into a shell hole and fallen on him. In the next instant four 105mm artillery shells landed, one detonating the mortar shells and blowing the truck, horse, and sled to atoms. The old soldier in Obermyer had heard the inbound whistle, judged the accuracy of the artillery, and acted accordingly. The young recruit, Willy Messerschmitt, was profoundly grateful. By 1937, Obermyer had worked for Heinkel for three years when he contrived a meeting with Messerschmitt, a rising star in German aviation. Obermyer reminded him of their first meeting, suggesting that Messerschmitt might like to have a man inside the Heinkel plant to "keep an eye on things." As grateful as Messerschmitt was to Obermyer for saving his life, he was repelled by the suggestion.

Yet things were difficult for him. The State Secretary for Air, Erhard Milch, hated him, for he had lost a close .ger transports had crashed because of a manufacturing defect. The feud continued over the years and Milch had repeatedly denied him contracts. At the time of their meeting, Heinkel and Messerschmitt were engaged in a bitter competition to build the Luftwaffe's next fighter, and, given Milch's attitude toward him, Messerschmitt knew that he needed all the help he could get. They made a verbal agreement, never yet breached, that Obermyer would supply important inside information on Heinkel projects directly to Messerschmitt himself, in return for a sizable monthly cash stipend. So far it had worked well, particularly in the fighter competition. Messerschmitt valued Obermyer's carefully collected estimates on the man-hours required to build the Heinkel 112, for these were far higher than Messerschmitt's Bf 109 required.

Messerschmitt used the figures with devastating results in his proposal and believed that they had done much to win the competition for him, even though his aircraft was both faster and more maneuverable. Obermyer had long since found that being disliked in a position of relative power had its advantages. No one ever objected when he proposed that he attend a conference, even those held in other European countries-they were glad to have him away from the factory. Because of his .though an international air show was almost as satis­factory. Two or three times a year, depending upon the business climate, he would travel to conferences where he met representatives of companies in other countries. Almost invariably, he would find among them someone .tact was the firm of Marcel Bloch, which built handsome fighters for France and needed information on the gear retraction system Heinkel had used in the high-speed He 70 "Blitz.

" He preferred to be paid in English sterling but would accept good information in exchange, as long as he believed he could sell it elsewhere. Now Müller and Obermyer watched as the twenty­seven-year-old physics specialist von Ohain bounded around the little He 178, peering like a mother hen over the shoulders of the men preparing it for flight. Coatless, .tally absorbed in the last-minute adjustments to the engine he had created from his imagination and three years of hard work. He had seen his dream move from his ideal of a noiseless, part-less engine to a ferocious whirling com­bination of heat, sound, and thrust, more than four hun­dred kilograms of it. Von Ohain moved like a shadow to Max Hahn, the bril­liant mechanic who transformed von Ohain's ideas into the complex assembly of sheet metal and steel castings that formed the primitive jet engine, more than seven me­ters long, nestling inside the aircraft's fuselage. "He took my joking well." Obermyer looked at von Ohain's tall, slender figure with approval.

"If Warsitz can keep from crashing this crate, young Hans will be a rich man someday." Müller picked up a stick and began knocking mud from his boots. He and most of the Special Project team had spent the two previous days tramping up and down the field, tamping down high spots and filling in shallow de­pressions, to make sure there were no problems on takeoff. "Better save that stick for the birds, Ge.