Whether Berlin loses composure or not doesn’t matter.
Switzerland... is a place that must be visited. After all, Germany needs...
They wanted that tungsten ore.
Of course, the price wasn’t cheap either—Pierre quoted a high price of $20,000!
Although the price was steep, he guaranteed delivery: a promise to supply 5,000 tons of tungsten ore within a month.
"Are you sure you can deliver the tungsten ore to Switzerland within a month?"
Facing Berlin’s skepticism, Pierre just shrugged and replied,
"Don’t be too confident in your army. After all, today’s Germany is no longer the Germany of four years ago!"
The current Third Reich was already on its last legs; no one could stop its downfall.
Thinking of its collapse, Pierre couldn’t help but feel a little regret. He had crossed over to this world more than a year ago and had just managed to establish this connection, only for the Third Reich to be on the verge of destruction.
In truth, he didn’t care much about the Third Reich. Compared to it, he preferred gold. But now, it was a little too late.
At most, his dealings with the Third Reich could only last a few more months.
It was just a one-off business deal!
No, he still had to urge his uncle-in-law to organize the supply as quickly as possible, so that they could make at least one more deal with the Germans before Germany’s total defeat.
After all, such opportunities were rare!
In the end, Pierre didn’t forget to remind Berlin to help him search for technical personnel. The Third Reich’s gold was important, but even more important were its technical experts—they were truly priceless treasures.
Although outstanding technicians from Germany and Italy were very important, cultivating his own technical staff was even more crucial. To that end, right after acquiring several Italian companies, he carefully selected two hundred employees to immediately fly to Italy. They would receive training at several companies, including Alfa Romeo and Savoia-Marchetti.
However, for them, the biggest hurdle was language. Like their other colleagues, upon arriving in Italy, Zhang Tingpeng’s first task was to learn Italian. Even though most engineers at Savoia-Marchetti spoke English, not knowing Italian would obviously hinder their studies.
Although this wasn’t exactly studying abroad, Zhang Tingpeng was still very excited. After all, getting the chance to intern at an aircraft manufacturing company was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
"Zhang, look, this is the SM.95 designed by our company. As of now, it’s one of the best four-engine planes in the world. It’s not inferior to the Douglas DC-4, just a bit slower..."
Battista took out a model and said with some regret.
"It uses four Alfa Romeo 128rc.18 engines, has a wingspan of 34.28 meters and a length of 24.77 meters, and can carry 12,800 kilograms of cargo or 44 passengers. It can even fly to New York. When it successfully completed its test flight two years ago, Mussolini even wanted to use it to bomb America..."
Looking at the model in the engineer’s hand, Zhang Tingpeng asked curiously,
"Mr. Battista, why haven’t I seen it in the hangar?"
"We built two, but both were taken by the Germans..."
Battista shrugged helplessly and continued,
"But it’s not a big deal—the blueprints are still here, and so are the engineers. Soon, we’ll build it again, maybe in North Borneo..."
Zhang Tingpeng asked in surprise,
"Where is that?" ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ ɴovᴇl(F)ɪre.ɴet
Battista glanced at the young man beside him and said,
"Aren’t you from there? In the future, we’ll all be working there. After all, our boss is the chairman of the North Borneo Company. Do you know? He owns a territory of 75,000 square kilometers—three times the size of Sicily. He’s like a king there, and all of us work for him!"
The North Borneo Company?
Although a bit confused, Zhang Tingpeng soon put these thoughts aside. Like his classmates and colleagues, he spent his days following the engineers, learning about aircraft design and manufacturing in English, and his evenings in language classes studying Italian.
For them, learning was the most important thing.
Shortly after Zhang Tingpeng and the others arrived in Italy, the North Borneo Company reached technical cooperation agreements with more than a dozen American companies, including Boeing, Ford, and Westinghouse. These companies would help train technical personnel for the North Borneo Company.
The main reason these major American companies were willing to sign agreements with the North Borneo Company—besides the prospect of postwar reconstruction orders in Borneo—was that Truman had put in a word for them. Naturally, these big companies were happy to do Truman a favor, especially since their companies were often subject to investigations by the Truman Committee. Whether they wanted to or not, they had to return the favor.
After the agreements were signed, in addition to 300 students who would study in the US, Pierre transferred another 600 team members from the technical group to train at American companies. They all set off for the US from Tunisia, traveling on Savoia-Marchetti SM.75 aircraft. Although these three-engine transport planes were developed before the war and looked outdated, their long range allowed them to fly directly from North Africa to New York.
As for the SM.75s they flew on, all were acquired from the Italian military—or rather, the former military, since the Italians had long since laid down their arms. Over a thousand planes were left to rust at airports, so Pierre spent a few tens of thousands of dollars to buy up this batch of transports, further expanding the North Borneo Aviation Company. As for pilots, naturally...
Those Unemployed Italian Pilots
However, while employing Italian pilots, Pierre also established a pilot training program within the airline to train new pilots. Naturally, these pilots were selected from among the expeditionary force members, and even on the ships, there were expeditionary force personnel serving as interns.
It was precisely because they had people that everything became possible.
After quickly reallocating manpower, the 5,000-strong team shrank by more than 20% in just one month.
In the eyes of Zhao Xiyong and others, Pierre’s actions seemed somewhat "off-task," but they had no authority to intervene. After all, those expeditionary force members were no longer soldiers, but employees of the North Borneo Company. The only thing that gave them some relief was that the weapons search was going smoothly, the repairs in Tunisia were progressing rapidly, and supplies like firearms and ammunition were being shipped directly from Marseille back to the homeland.
Just as the first group bound for America boarded planes and set off, the second group took a merchant ship, passed through the Suez Canal, and soon arrived in Marseille. The number of expeditionary force members finally broke into five digits, reaching ten thousand...