Wall Street stocks rose slightly and fell sharply, and Zhang Meng continued to short U.S. stocks, making huge profits from the spread.

There are not a few people who buy the rebound of U.S. stocks, and they think every day: U.S. stocks will definitely recover tomorrow. But tomorrow it will still fall again, so they hope that it will rise the day after tomorrow.

As they continued to look forward to it day by day, they unconsciously lost more and more stocks in their hands, and the hole was gradually forming a bottomless pit, but they were even more reluctant and had to continue to borrow money from the bank to fill the hole.

Zhang Meng's Datang Bank New York branch buys low-priced stocks every day, then continues to short-sell, then sells and cash-out, and then buys lower-priced stocks, and then continues to short-sell and cash out, making huge profits from the price difference.

According to accurate information from the Haines Arms Company, Glenn L. Martin, California's largest aircraft manufacturing company, has been affected by the continuous decline in US stocks, and several major shareholders of the company are now interested in selling their shares.

Since this company was part of Zhang Meng's planned annexation, Haynes immediately called Zhang Meng to remind him.

At this time, the three archipelagos of the Tang Empire had already planned airport projects.

In particular, Zhang Meng knew that in the future Pacific War, the threat from the air would be far greater than that from the sea, so in order to strengthen the national defense force of the Tang Empire, Zhang Meng planned twelve military airfields on the three islands. Among them, two large airports (Datang International Airport in the north and Chang'an Airport in the south) are planned on Tarbes Island, the main island of the Tarbes Islands of the first archipelago, to protect the air security of Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Empire. Next to the main island of Tabu is the second largest island to Ava Island, which Zhang Meng named Daxing Island and planned the Daxing Air Base on it. At the same time, four small and medium-sized airfields are planned on the four small uninhabited islands around the Tarbes Islands, and in the event that the main island airfields are destroyed during the war, the backup airfields will be activated for emergency purposes.

A large military airfield is planned for the main island of the Vava'u archipelago, the second group of islands, located within the Yenching airbase. There are more than 30 uninhabited islands around the Vava'u Islands, and Zhang Meng also chose two flat and hidden islands as backup airports.

On the main island of the third island group, Zhang Meng planned the Jinling Airport, which is located in the Jinling Air Base. Only the main island of Jinling is inhabited in the Hapai Islands, and most of the nearby islands are coral reefs. Due to the very small size, Zhang Meng only chose a slightly larger coral reef to plan an alternate airport.

For the national defense and security of the Tang Empire, the naval and air forces must be taken seriously, so Zhang Meng has begun to hire pilots heavily in Chinese mainland, and he also needs a large aircraft company to fill the gap in the aviation industry of the Tang Empire.

For Zhang Meng, there are only a handful of well-known airlines he knows, and Rock Martin deservedly became one of Zhang Meng's most concerned targets.

At the end of the twenties, there was no Rock-Martin Airlines, but its predecessor was already famous.

The Glenn L. Martin Company is an aircraft company founded by Glenn Luther Martin on August 16, 1912.

In its early days, Martin built military trainers in Santa Ana, California. In 1916, it merged with Wright & Co. to form Wright-Martin Flying Machine Company. But Martin later left and founded a second Glenn L. Martin company on Clive Island, Ohio, on September 10, 1917.

The first successful product of the Martin company was a biplane bomber called MB-1. The U.S. Army ordered the aircraft on January 17, 1918. By 1924, Martin had received an order to design the SC-1 reconnaissance bomber by Curtis, and 404 of these aircraft were eventually produced.

In 1929, Martin & Co. saw a surge in the U.S. stock market as an opportunity to go public to raise funds to expand production. Martin went public and immediately raised $10 million, and he immediately moved the company out of Clive Island to build and expand a new factory in the riverine area northeast of Baltimore, Maryland.

Martin wanted to expand the company, but in September, the U.S. stock market continued to fall, Martin was still a small and medium-sized company, and it was thought that it would not last long to go bankrupt, so its stock was immediately sold off, and Martin's market value evaporated by $10 million in two months.

Zhang Meng knew that if he didn't make a move at this moment, Martin's shares would be bought by Marietta. But if you buy Martin's shares, you will have to lose tens of millions of dollars in the next three years.

Zhang Meng thought about it for a long time, and finally decided to immediately acquire the shares of Martin Company, and could not let Marietta Company get half of Martin's equity, otherwise with the strength of Marietta Company, they would hold on to it until the end and it would be impossible to give up Martin's equity, so Zhang Meng would have no chance.

Still, Zhang Meng chose a way to get the best of both worlds. On the one hand, he ordered Haynes to pay $3 million to buy half of Martin's shares, and on the other hand, he negotiated with Martin alone to persuade Martin to agree to withdraw the company from the stock market.

Martin was also completely deceived by the stock market at this time, and after Haynes's persuasion, Martin also agreed that the stock market is a casino, and the danger of losing nine out of ten bets is too great, and delisting is indeed a safe way.

However, Martin needed a huge amount of money, as he had already signed a contract with the U.S. military to produce W3 seaplanes for the U.S. Navy and B-10 bombers for the Army. At the same time, it also develops and produces the famous Chinese clipper seaplane for Pan Am's San Francisco-Manila route.

If it is delisted, the more than $10 million of funds that have evaporated will not be recovered, Martin will not be able to perform the contract, and the liquidated damages will be as high as $10 million.

Haines immediately consulted Zhang Meng, who agreed to inject another $10 million into Martin's company, but asked Martin to transfer the other half of his equity to Zhang Meng.

After many rounds of repeated negotiations and bargaining, Martin finally agreed to Zhang Meng's conditions when he saw that the U.S. stock market had no hope of rebounding and that it would be more dangerous to drag it on. In return, Zhang Meng agreed that Martin would continue to serve as the company's general manager, and the company's staff and treatment would remain unchanged. However, Martin is required not to change jobs and start a new business within 20 years, and the final interpretation right belongs to Zhang Meng, and the only thing Martin can do for this overlord clause is to put up his middle finger.

Damn the right of final interpretation!

In this way, Martin Company fell into the hands of Zhang Meng. And Zhang Meng also renamed it Raptor Airlines.

To Zhang's surprise, two employees of Raptor Airlines, McDonald and Bell, were still at work.

Zhang Meng knows very well the power of these two guys, MacDonald is a graduate of MIT, the future founder of MacDonald Aircraft Company. In 1928, MacDonald left Martin for a time and founded McDonald & Collaborators in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He wanted to build a personal airplane for family use, but as soon as he invested all his money, he encountered a continuous decline in US stocks, which bankrupted his plan, and his company's stock was turned into waste paper overnight and forced to go out of business. And he cheekily returned to Martin.

Because of MacDonald's outstanding talent, Martin re-accepted him, but in order to prevent him from changing jobs again, Martin signed a ten-year contract with him, and he was not allowed to change jobs for ten years, otherwise he would pay $10 million in liquidated damages.

But Zhang Meng knows this MacDonald, in history, he just left Martin again after the expiration of the ten-year contract, and established the MacDonald Aircraft Company by himself, and has made great achievements in the field of jet aircraft, the representative F2H, F3H Devil, F-101, F4 Ghost and other jet fighters, which have become the sharp weapons of the US Navy.

And Zhang Meng attaches the most importance to naval aviation, knowing that it is a sharp weapon for future maritime supremacy, so he attaches more importance to MacDonald.

To this end, Zhang Meng revised the contracts of Martin and McDonald. knew that this guy would leave in ten years, so in order to keep him, Zhang Meng directly signed a thirty-year overlord clause with him.

Macdonald hated Zhang Meng to death, but he owed a lot of debt to the bank, and finally had to bow to Zhang Meng and agree to his overlord terms.

However, Zhang Meng also had to soothe MacDonald's wounded heart, and Zhang Meng appointed him as one of the chief aircraft designers of Raptor Airlines, and at the same time awarded him the title of academician of the National Science Laboratory of the Tang Empire, so that he could enjoy double the preferential treatment.

And the other chief aircraft designer is Bell. This is also a super bull, the originator of the future helicopter field.

At this time, Bell was planning to leave Raptor Airlines to work at the Unified Aircraft in Buffalo, New York, when Zhang Meng suddenly appointed him as one of the chief aircraft engineers, and gave him the same preferential treatment as MacDonald, and promised him that he could go to the National Science Laboratory of the Tang Empire to develop his favorite flying machine without financial restrictions.

Bell was immediately attracted by this treatment, he didn't care about the title and salary, he just wanted to realize his dream and develop his own design of the aircraft instead of co-researching with others, so he chose to change jobs. However, thinking that he had to start from scratch to jump to the Uni-President Aircraft Company, he might not be able to have the privilege of freely developing the aircraft, since Zhang Meng allowed him to develop freely in the National Science Laboratory of the Tang Empire without financial restrictions, he immediately canceled the contract with the Uni-President Aircraft Company and stayed at Raptor Airlines.

However, if Bell wants to develop his own flying machine, he has to go to the Tang Empire. Fortunately, he personally didn't care where he worked, so he immediately applied to go to the Tang Empire.

It's just that Zhang Meng's national science and technology laboratory has not yet been built, so he just asked Bell to be Tesla's assistant and assist Tesla in building the national science and technology laboratory. And Bell admired Tesla's name for a long time, and was even more happy to learn that he was working with him.

After Zhang Meng calmed down the two best employees, he immediately gave Martin a task. He knew that Martin had successfully developed famous bombers during World War II, including the B-26 Predator bomber, the A-22 Maryland bomber, and the B-57 Canberra night bomber, so he immediately began to develop the bomber project.

Zhang Meng agreed that the R&D site would be temporarily held at the U.S. headquarters of Raptor Airlines, but after the completion of the National Science and Technology Laboratory of the Datang Empire, the R&D site would definitely be moved back to the Datang Empire.

At the same time, Zhang Meng also used the strength of the Raptor Airlines itself to quickly produce and introduce a number of training aircraft, fighters, seaplanes, etc. to be shipped to the Datang Empire, and at the same time transferred a group of professionals from within the company, and recruited some pilot instructors under the company's signboard to go to the Datang Empire together, and they will conduct professional training for the newly established air force units of the Datang Empire.