The Chursleigh Chronicles Volume 1 - The Planemakers, #1

It's the mid '40s and war in Europe is over. They're beating the swords into ploughshares.. Cutler (too young to go to war) has worked out his wartime days on the Chursleigh Estates, as it fell on hard times. But the Consortium he joined have prospered beyond their wildest dreams and plan to move-on. Great opportunity beckons now hostilities have ended and they've amassed a fair old pile of loot. Cutler is hellbent on keeping his pals together, so they have no need to go cap in hand to the bankers in pursuit of success.
The Chursleigh Estates are all but skint, but Cutler's associates Bellringer & Beccles-Todd have dreamed up a scheme that leaves the Bull's Head consortium as they prefer to be known, with a sizeable chunk of the Chursleigh Estate. It's been a WWII Bomber Station, now released by the War Office The Consortium buy it up, in settlement of the Estate's wartime liabilities as Bellringer's National Provincial Bank kept it afloat.
Beset by outside influences however the consortium proves to be a marriage made in hell and comes apart at the seams. They carve it up and go their separate ways as Cutler & Syd Johnson the Bull's Head Landlord join forces, realising the folly of going it alone, with Beccles-Todd tagging along, while Bellringer chooses independence. But the Shard family fortunes execute a swift about turn, when son and heir Ben Shard, thought to be missing in action, in the Burmese Jungle turns up.
He's survived and sets about sorting out what went on in his absence. It's too late to regain control of the assets, now owned by the Consortium, but nevertheless, there's more ways than one to 'skin a cat'. He plots a re-run and the plot unfolds in a whirlwind of deals and trade-offs as Sir Godfrey Bright of the Bright Aero Company calls him in. He's bidding to be a major player in the postwar world of civil airlinersBright Aeros new Chief Exec sets about the task with vigour,.as opportunity beckons.
Howard Silver of Silver-Dancer Airways St Louis, USA, turns up looking for new aircraft, for his fledgling airline. He's out to build a trans-Atlantic competitor to Pan American and TWA or so the story goes?