The first Skymaster arrived with neatly numbered parts on wooden pallets, and subsequent planes arrived daily for two weeks. The man who’d overseen the dismantling of the equipment also arrived in Berlin and went straight to work with James and a handful of German mechanics.
The big brass had initially opposed using Germans for such a responsible task, but there simply weren’t enough Americans who could do the job. All the skilled men were needed in airplane maintenance, a field the bosses wanted to contract out even less.
Victor inspected the work a few times a day, impressed at the fast progress and confident that with the new dredger, steam roller, crane, and wheeled loader the Tegel airport would be finished by December, which was two months out. When he saw that James’ team didn’t n
