Recently, John has been traveling frequently between Washington and Los Angeles for work. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 infoJohn has long been accustomed to flying for more than ten hours. This time, however, he and Fleet did not choose a civilian airline or a military business jet, but flew to San Diego overnight on Fleet's luxury private jet.

Fleet's private jet was converted from a Douglas DC-3 and housed bedrooms, offices, meeting rooms, a restaurant and a small bar. If you add a meeting room and a bathroom, it's not much different from the luxury private jets of later generations.

In other words, FedEx also has a DC-2 business jet, but its internal space is too small, and the internal facilities are a little better than that of civil airlines, so it can't be compared with Fleet's. Leaning comfortably on the bed and enjoying the brandy, John wanted to get himself a private jet like this.

But he quickly dismissed the idea. It's not a question of whether you can afford it, or whether it's wasteful, it's not a matter of waste, the key is that you don't have land to buy it. It's not like he's not seen Douglas DC-3 in demand. Place an order now, honestly line up, and wait until he gets the plane to get the 1943 year.

He is not like Fleet, who has been a good "friend" of David Davis, Douglas's partner at the beginning of the business, for decades, and can make others stuff themselves. In fact, if John uses his brain, he can get it in advance if he finds some connections, the key is that he feels that he can't owe a favor for this kind of thing. Let's wait for Hughes Aircraft to develop its own passenger aircraft in the future.

John had thought that Fleet would talk to him on the plane about something, and how appropriate it would be to talk about a "deal" high in the sky, in a secret room. Unexpectedly, Friet just chatted with him during dinner, and went back to the bedroom to rest after dinner.

The next morning, the plane landed directly at the internal airfield of the United Aircraft Company in San Diego. United Aircraft Corporation has only recently moved here from Buffalo, and all of the facilities are new. It was evident that Fleet was ambitious, and the entire plant was larger than Hughes Aircraft's new plant in Inglewood.

As an aside, in recent years, a number of new aircraft factories have been built around Los Angeles. The aviation industry has become the backbone industry of Los Angeles after oil and shipbuilding. Dozens of aircraft manufacturing companies from Douglas, Lockheed, Northrop, United, North America, and Hughes are gathered here, and it is said that even Boeing, which is far away in Seattle, is tempted to move the company from the "Rain City" where it rains half the time every year to the sunny "City of Angels."

Later, a Seattle farmer named Dai Simon was upset when he heard rumors that Boeing was planning to move south. So he sold 30 acres of his farm to Boeing for $1, allowing them to build the world's largest factory at the time, thus keeping the company. $1 to buy 30 acres of land, this kind of good thing John can't touch.

After a short break, Fleet drove himself and showed John around his company. No way, the factory is so big that a walking tour can exhaust John to death. Didn't you see those little guys who delivered letters and newspapers wearing roller skates and shuttled back and forth in the work area?

After visiting the assembly shop, test bench, and laboratory all the way to the design and development department, Fleet led John into a conference room. John knew that the main topic was coming.

Fritt's mouth startled John. Fleet offered to work with Hughes Aircraft. To what extent he intends to have a cross-share swap between United Aircraft Corporation and Hughes Aircraft Company. It's the rhythm of being a family.

John had already expected that United Aircraft would want to cooperate with Hughes Aircraft. After all, both have a common adversary - the powerful Boeing. In the field of bombers, Boeing is a mountain in front of them. Historically, the B-17 "Flying Fortress" and B-29 "Super Flying Fortress" during World War II were too tigery. The D-2 bomber was at best a little stronger than the B-17, and no matter how confident John was, he didn't think it could compete with the B-29.

But what does cross-swap mean? The United Aircraft Corporation has just received a large order of $22 million from the Navy, so it will not be embarrassed to this extent. Historically, in the bomber wars of the 40s, Boeing relied on the B-17 and B-29 to make a lot of fame, but the B-24 "Liberator" and B-36 "Peacemaker" of the United Aircraft were at least not far behind.

Especially when a B-29 bombed Japan crash-landed in Haishengwei, for the Soviet Union the B-29 was completely lost. In order to ensure technological superiority, the United States attaches great importance to the B-36, which has a longer range and more bomb load. Before the advent of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, the B-36 dominated the game as Uncle Sam's first-generation "nuclear stick" for many years.

John is well aware that in the next 20 years, in the field of bombers, the United aircraft will not be weaker than Boeing, far stronger than the Hughes aircraft, which has weak research and development capabilities. He just took advantage of the temporary advantage of the D-2 bomber to snatch a bite to eat from Fleet's mouth. As long as the United Aircraft makes a force, it will be able to regain its advantage in a few years, and there is no need to exchange shares with Hughes, isn't this a ready-made gold and John for a stone?

Could it be that Fleet wants to play the "Trojan Horse"? Take a stake in Hughes Aircraft first, and then find a chance to kick John out? This is not impossible, the current market value of United Aircraft is much higher than that of Hughes Aircraft, and if there is a cross-share swap, Fleet estimates that as long as he takes out 15% of the shares of United Aircraft, he can surpass John and Hughes and become the largest shareholder of Hughes Aircraft Company.

However, the majority of Hughes' shares were in the hands of John and Hughes. Fritt's way of getting around the two of them if he wanted to actually stay on Hughes's plane. Could it be that there is a deal between Fleet and Hughes that does not work? John didn't believe Hughes would betray him, but he knew that anything could happen in the face of profit.

John habitually thought too much about it. Historically, he remembered, United Aircraft later merged with AVCO's Voltier Aircraft Company to form Convair. And this company is again under the umbrella of General Dynamics. Hughes recently bought TWA from General Motors, and there's something wrong with that.

John was a little confused about the relationship between Hughes and GM. It stands to reason that the Hughes family started by engaging in oil extraction equipment and is very close to the Rockefeller family. Why did they suddenly have such a good relationship with the General Motors, but behind them are the Morgan and DuPont families.

The more he thought about it, the more confused John became, and he did not dare to rush to answer Fleet's proposal, which he put on hold on the grounds that it needed to be discussed with the other shareholders of the company. Correspondingly, he proposed to start with some small-scale cooperation between the two companies to cultivate a tacit understanding. For example, the joint development of a new generation of long-range bombers, John is still very covetous of the technical team of the United Aircraft.