The Port of Long Beach, located about 30 kilometers south of Los Angeles, is the largest city in the Los Angeles Region outside of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Before World War II, the Port of Long Beach was the home port of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, and during World War II, as the Pacific Fleet moved to Hawaii, Long Beach gradually developed into a world-famous heavy civilian port city.

In the 80s, there were more than 20 post-Panamax quay cranes used to load and unload giant freighters in the port, and before the economic rise of the Republic, the Port of Long Beach never fell into the top eight in the world in terms of annual container throughput.

McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft Manufacturing Company's production facility in Long Beach is located on the banks of the St. Gabriel River not far from the docks.

Standing in front of the semi-curved glass window of his office, Armstrong watched the silhouette of a sailboat passing by on the St. Gabriel River outside the factory for a long time, and in the distance, the occasional whining of freighter whistles could be heard at the docks of the Port of Long Beach, and flocks of small black-headed seagulls endemic to the west coast of the Pacific Ocean soared over the harbor.

Armstrong raised his hand to lower the blinds, and the rattling sound was particularly clear in the office.

Turning around, Armstrong spoke, "Yue, are you sure that China Ning led those Grumman pets into the Chinese Navy?"

"Mr. Armstrong, you know, the rules of business operation in that country are completely different from those of the United States, although there is no exact document or heavyweight to confirm this information, but there is indeed a close relationship between the Eastern Pacific Company responsible for the introduction of the F14 fighter jet and Ning, and my connections in the Republic have tacitly acquiesced to this. Yue Kunbo replied.

Picking up the text sent by Yue Kunbo, Armstrong read it again. said: "Although it is impossible for Congress to export F15 fighter jets to non-ally countries, who can say for sure what will happen in the future, at least the news from that country for most of the past six months indicates that the ancient country is approaching the standard of allies of the United States." ”

"The stupid liars of St. Louis will never know that the distance between friends and rivals is thinner than paper. Armstrong said angrily.

Listening to Armstrong's words, Yue Kunbo bowed his head and remained silent.

Since McDonald bought Douglas in 1967 for $68 million, there has been a murmur between the two companies, and apart from the fact that the company is nominally collectively known as the McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft Manufacturing Company, there is no indication within the group that McDonnell Douglas should be a company.

McDonald is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, and Douglas' corporate headquarters is in Long Beach, although MacDonald had capitalized on Douglas' cash flow control mistakes. In one fell swoop, it acquired the leader in the global civil aircraft market at that time. However, until McDonnell Douglas was acquired by Boeing, the two companies never really integrated together.

Douglas has always been obsessed with McDonald's exploitation, and he also dismisses MacDonald's much smaller business than his own, and as a result, McDonnell Douglas has fallen into never-ending internal friction. The merged McDonnell Douglas is similar to some of the parts of the Republic. One yamen, two teams. McDonnell Douglas is a single company with two sets of management, one from McDonald and one from Douglas.

Years of infighting have left McDonnell Douglas in a very bad relationship between the two management teams, and Douglas's top management has long referred to McDonald's top management as a St. Louis liar. Yue Kunbo was also transferred to Long Beach from St. Louis seven years ago, and he is well aware of the general entanglement within the company.

"Although this NATO Tiger Meeting was held in the name of the Air Force, and the Navy was behind it, but the scammers in St. Louis were short-sighted, and after the Nansha conflict, they thought that Grumman's kitten had really won the military aircraft market of that country, and they actually completely gave up contact with the Chinese military, but they never thought that once that country became an ally, could those saltwater chickens really meet the needs of the Chinese Air Force?" Armstrong complained.

As a competitor of Grumman Aerospace, Yue Kunbo knew very well that in addition to dealing with the situation in Nansha, there was also an important reason for the Republic to purchase F14 fighters to deal with the backfire bomber group of the Soviet Air Force.

Even if the situation changes in the future, Congress allows F15 fighter jets to be exported to China, and whether the Chinese military can choose F15 fighter jets is also a between, but in the face of the complaints of President Douglas and the major shareholder of McDonnell Douglas Group, Yue Kunbo can only smile bitterly.

"Yue, your information is very good, very timely. Armstrong tapped the materials on the table.

The information that Yue Kunbo handed over to Armstrong analyzed in detail the relationship between the deregistered East Pacific Company, Ning Lei, Qi Lianshan, Liu Wenyue, the Federal Republic of Germany's Yuanjia, COMAC, and the newly established CMB Aerospace in the Federal Republic of Germany, and also carefully assessed the prospects of CMB Aerospace's CM75 regional airliner.

At the end of the analysis, McDonnell Douglas approached McDonnell Douglas to further expand McDonnell Douglas' partnerships in China.

Before cooperating with Wusong, McDonnell Douglas had budgeted that once China was successfully included in the McDonnell Douglas parts supply chain, McDonnell Douglas would reduce the production cost of McDonnell Douglas aircraft by 20%.

It is not an exaggeration to say that this is one of the lifesavers for McDonnell Douglas Group, which has been in trouble since the 80s.

In order for this life-saving straw to work quickly, McDonnell Douglas dispatched more than 1,000 engineers from the United States to Shanghai when cooperating with Wusong Aircraft Factory to assemble the first MD82.

In later generations, the Wusong Aircraft Factory widely publicized its success in assembling the McDonnell Douglas 82 at one time, and when the global aviation community was shocked, it did not mention the truth if there was no cover-up, and the intelligence and diligence of the Chinese people were beyond doubt, but the Wusong Aircraft Factory has always said that the achievements are almost known by their own families, and this method of using political means to cover up the conscience of science and technology is really cold.

When the MD82 passenger aircraft technology entered China, there were millions of copies of the design data and research and development data of the MD82 passenger aircraft, and the Wusong factory was only interested in the means of production, and countless precious scientific research materials such as the test flight situation, flight test results, test flight improvements, and design improvements of the MD82 passenger aircraft were thrown into the warehouse and no one cared about them.

A few years later, the so-called McDonnell Douglas suppressed the Yun-10 that was hyped up by the Wusong Aircraft Factory, and this factor cannot be said to be absent at all, but it is more likely that some people found an excuse to cover up their incompetence and the competition for funds for the Republic's large aircraft at that time.

In 86 years, the first McDonnell Douglas 82 passenger plane rolled off the assembly line in Wusong, the Republic of China Wusong can be said to be born at an untimely time, according to the original estimate of McDonnell Douglas, Wusong's production line to produce 40 McDonnell Douglas 82 passenger aircraft to reach the break-even point, and the subsequent passenger aircraft production is profit.

However, since the mid-80s, due to the wrong market positioning, McDonnell Douglas has been losing ground in the global civil airliner market, and the republic's nascent large aircraft industry has gone straight into the abyss, and the MD82 just produced by the Republic has lagged behind the mainstream technology of international civil aviation.

At that time, the Republic of China's civil aviation, which had already been marketized, refused to accept the high-priced McDonnell Douglas, and as a result, after countless lawsuits between the yamen, the ambitions of the Wusong factory were completely bankrupt, and McDonnell Douglas's plan to greatly reduce production costs with the help of the Republic's labor advantage was also dashed.

Yue Kunbo brought up the old matter again this time, and continued to build yì McDonnell Douglas and jumped into the same river, in addition to being optimistic about the execution of COMAC, McDonnell Douglas is the main reason.

If the McDonnell Douglas civil airliner division in the early 80s was described as a decline, the McDonnell Douglas in the late 80s and early 90s can already be described as a dying slump.

In a short period of five or six years, the market share of McDonnell Douglas passenger aircraft has fallen from 25% to less than 10%, if it were not for the McDonald Company, which is responsible for the research and development and production of military aircraft, the F15 fighter is invincible in the global arms market, and Douglas, who is responsible for the production and research and development of civil airliners, would have gone bankrupt countless times.

McDonnell Douglas has only two ways to save itself, one is to develop new products, and the other is to reduce production costs, and there is no other way. (To be continued......)