Curtiss, is coming in this afternoon. I thought that since you
had taken his SC design away from him by underbidding him on the
production order, he might find a certain satisfaction in doing
likewise by you.”
By the time I had finished the sentence, Glenn had disappeared
through the door.
With the carrier program pretty well rounded up, I began to think of
going back to sea duty and general service. If I wasted much more
time in the side shows, some future Selection Board would gladly skip
me over. No use to ask the admiral’s permission; he’d say the job
was but half done and he couldn’t spare me. A personal visit to the
Bureau of Navigation and a request to command another destroyer would
do the trick.
But when, shortly afterward, Admiral Moffett called me into his
office, I found the atmosphere distinctly chilly. On his desk lay
the notice from BUNAV advising him of the intention to detach me and
requesting that he nominate a suitable relief.
“What will it take to keep you here?” the admiral asked.
“A nonflying officer has no place in this game,” I replied, “and I’m
supposed to be too old to learn to fly.”
“The pilot course,” replied the admiral, “takes nine months and I
can’t spare you that long.” I had not intended to ask for flight
training but the admiral assumed that I was putting pressure on him.
“I could send you to Pensacola for two months for training as Naval
Observer,” he went on, “and that might take the curse off shore duty
by making you a part of the aeronautic organization.”
My next remark surprised me; certainly it came from my mouth rather
than my head, though my heart may have been in it. “If I could wangle
a way to complete the pilot’s course in two months,” I inquired,
“would that be acceptable to you?”
The admiral grinned as he held out his hand. “When you arrive at
Pensacola,” he advised, “drop in on Brooks Upham, the Commandant.
He’s a personal friend of mine and might be able to do something for
you.”
Thus quite without prior intent on my part I had talked my way even
deeper into aviation. But at home that evening I did not reveal the
whole scheme to my wife. Having received word of her mother’s serious
illness she had left the day before for an indefinite visit at her
home.
CHAPTER NINE
The Gospel According to Aunt Lucy
Rear Adm. F. Brooks Upham, Commandant of the Naval Air Station,
Pensacola, reached across his flat-topped desk for my formal orders.
Behind him through the window, the sun glinted on the leaves of
ancient live oaks, and filtered through shreds of gently swaying
Spanish moss. The rattle of aircraft engines disturbed the still
morning, a signal that flying was being resumed after the September
hurricane that had seriously damaged this ancient Civil War navy
yard. The admiral welcomed me with a friendly smile.
“I’ve had a note about you from Moffett,” he volunteered. “So,” he
added, “it’s the old story of old dogs and new tricks. Having now
reached the ripe old age of thirty-nine,” he went on, “you’re dead
but won’t lie down. If you ask me, it’s a lot of bunk.”
“The Regulations,” I reminded him, “set twenty-eight as the maximum
age limit for flight training.” The admiral reached for the top
drawer of his antique desk. A warm breeze floated in from across the
Gulf of Mexico. Beyond the signal tower, across the blue harbor,
the white sands of Santa Rosa Island gleamed in the sunlight. Still
farther out glittered the quiet waters of the Gulf.
The commandant handed me a sheet of paper. I recognized it at once as
a few lines of doggerel I had written one wintry December night while
the old seaplane tender and kite-balloon ship _Wright_ had lain in
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We had been working all day on a miserably
cold job of ballasting the _Old Hooker_ and had turned the duty
over to the aviators as a part of their instruction. Then suddenly
someone of them had discovered that none of them had qualified as
yet for their 50 per cent increase for “flight pay” and that unless
they corrected this fault immediately they would lose the allowance.
They had all laid down their tools, both the lighter-than-air and
the heavier-than-air pilots, and had rushed over to the Naval Air
Station at Lakehurst to ride up and down ten times in a kite-balloon
attached to a winch in a warm hangar, leaving the ballasting to the
mercies of the ship’s company, the so-called “thicker-than-mud.” Now
I read the verses.
The lighter-than-air are jolly boys,
Who float on wings of gas,
Like helium or hydrogen
And some hot air, alas!
They float about in kite-balloons
A blimp or even a zep.
And draw their extra fifty per cent,
With promptitude and pep.
The heavier-than-air boys zoom about,
And make a lot of fuss,
In F-5-L’s and NC boats
And other kinds of bus.
It takes a sort of superman
To learn the air’s queer feel—
And draw that extra fifty per cent,
With such consuming zeal.
And then there is another crew,
A silly sort of dud,
It does the heavy dirty work,
The poor old thicker-than-mud.
If one of these guys rams a rock,
Or on a reef gets wrecked,
He never gets his pay increased;
Most likely he’ll be checked.
And so we sail the briny deep,
Two live ones and a dud,
The lighter-than-air, the heavier-than-air—
And the poor old thicker-than-mud.
I glanced up to find a smile on the commandant’s lips.
“I found it in the desk here,” he said, “after I had taken over from
Christy.”
We had visited the _Wright_ in the summer of 1922 after ferrying
some F-5-L’s down from Philadelphia and someone must have lifted the
masterpiece from the bulletin board.
“I had hardly expected to find the author of that among the
candidates for flight training,” Brooks Upham went on, “but since
you are here I’ll do my best for you. My aide, young Jimmy Lowry,
will take you out for a flight check and if he rates you ‘promising
material,’ I’ll see that planes are put at your disposal at any time
you may want them. No need for you to fool around with the regular
schedule for ground school; you know all that. It’s simply a question
of nervous and physical endurance whether you can complete the entire
course in the two months.” He reached for a push button.
“By the way,” he added, “my lady asked me to invite you to dine with
us this evening—seven o’clock—service uniform.”
Within a half hour, Jimmy Lowry and I were down at Squadron Six Beach
warming up an N-9 seaplane. The Consolidated NY’s had gone into
service for land-plane training but the N-9’s still survived for
work on floats. Jimmy, after a few words of instruction, motioned me
into the rear seat and took his instructor’s position in front. Then
signaling to the “boots” to cast us off, he opened the throttle and
taxied out into the stream where he cut the gun and let the little
plane idle up into the wind.
He gave her the gun and as the engine took hold we skittered smoothly
over the surface and into the air to sail out over the landlocked
bay. Below us, the old town of Pensacola nestled among live oaks and
Spanish moss now devastated by the hurricane. While I had taken the
controls now and then, flying as a passenger, I had never presumed to
land or take off and had had no other instruction than the few orders
Jimmy Lowry had given me back there at the Beach. Now he shook the
controls as a signal for me to take over and, as I did so, held both
hands aloft to signal that I had charge.
Jimmy Lowry now put me through all the “checks” in accordance with
what I learned later was a well-established routine. He sent me
flying over the land at an altitude of about fifty feet and, after
we had proceeded too far to permit turning back for a water landing
in case of engine failure, he cut the gun and watched my reaction.
The only thing I could see to do was to land straight ahead into the
palmetto swamp, and this, I learned later, was considered to be good
“reaction in emergency.” Jimmy opened the throttle again before we
tangled with the palm fronds, and then waved me back to Squadron Six
Beach. He said nothing as we walked up the ramp and, at the entrance
to Bachelor Officer Quarters, simply saluted and walked off toward
the commandant’s office. Still in the dark as to my future, I hunted
up my room in “BOQ” and found my baggage already in it. A colored
maid was making up the bed.
She had a wrinkled, light-chocolate old face, framed by kinky white
hair held in a tight knot at the back of her neck. Though she was
said to have been born into slavery, her erect, almost haughty
carriage seemed to deny the story. She turned to bow to me in a
curtsy that was dignified and respectful.
“Mawnin’, sah!” she said. Her soft voice had the resonance of a
singer of Negro spirituals. “Ah’s Aunt Lucy,” she added. “I takes
keer o’ dis room for de gempmens what has it. Ah unpacks yo satchel,
too, if you likes.”
“I’m not sure I’ll stay, Aunt Lucy,” I replied. “We won’t unpack
until I hear from Lieutenant Lowry.” Aunt Lucy bowed her head as
she moved off to dust the window sills. She had that air of quiet
dignity, that sense of being wholly at peace with the world, that
had characterized the old-time darkies I had known as a midshipman
back at little Annapolis. A leader among her people, a deaconess
in the church, no doubt, Aunt Lucy seemed a woman distinguished by
deep religious faith. I had unbelted my sword after leaving the
commandant’s office and, after my check flight, had carried it to BOQ
in my hand. Now as I laid it on the table Aunt Lucy glanced at it and
began humming an old spiritual:
“I’se goin’ to lay down my sword and shield.
Down by de riverside,
Down by de riverside,
Down by de riverside.
I’se goin’ to lay down my sword and shield,
Down by de riverside
I ain’t goin’ to study war no mo’.”
As she drifted out of the door the telephone rang. It was the
commandant. As I reached for the receiver, I could feel a flush
creeping up the back of my neck and knew for the first time just how
much I wanted a favorable report. Well, I’d soon know, now.
“Lowry has passed your check,” Brooks Upham was saying. “He considers
you ‘good pilot material.’ See you for dinner!” I hung up and called
down the corridor to old Aunt Lucy.
“I guess you can unpack the satchel,” I said.
The Uphams were distinctly Old Navy, part of a small coterie of
distinguished senior officers and their wives who had served the
Navy through the lean years, on duty that had either taken them to
distant foreign stations together or forced long separations. They
were men and women who had stood for all that was best in loyalty to
their country, their service, and to one another, and who supported
the fine traditions of the earlier days. Poor in worldly goods, yet
they were rich in experience, having traveled widely and lived close
to the people of foreign lands. Money had meant little to them; they
had found ample compensation in their knowledge of a public service
faithfully performed. Evenings at the commandant’s quarters were to
prove important events in my training as a naval aviator; and old
Aunt Lucy was to leave her mark, too.
For flying was still a hazardous business back in the middle
twenties, and tragedy cast its shadow all too often over the little
station at Pensacola. Perhaps it was this that focused people’s
thoughts on things far removed from “pounds per horsepower.” After
dinner that evening, the commandant and his lady sat with me around
the fire that provided the only warmth against the evening chill,
and discussed books they had just finished reading.
The commandant had been deep in a treatise on nuclear theory as
discussed in a book called _The New Knowledge_. It had been written
in a popular and entertaining vein by a scientific author whose name
I don’t now recall and, besides setting forth clearly the new idea
as to the structure of the atom and a theory of electronics, it had
developed an absorbing spiritual theme. The author, recognizing the
resemblance between the laws controlling the actions of electrons
within the atom and those that controlled the astronomy of the
universe, had emphasized his own conviction that no conflict existed
between religion and science. On the contrary, the more a scientific
mind studied the revelations concerning the physical world, the
stronger became his convictions as to the existence of an infinite
God.
The commandant’s lady fingered a book she had just finished but
seemed to hesitate about opening a discussion of it.
“If you are like the rest of the students,” she smiled, “you’ll have
your nose buried so deeply in that precious _Flight Manual_, that
you’ll have no time for anything else.”
The commandant was rather proud of that _Flight Manual_. It was
the book of instruction for the flight-training course that had
been evolved out of long experience with many students. It had been
compiled by one of his instructors, Lt. Barrett Studley, who was also
writing a book on the subject. Every detail was so well covered in it
that it had become a veritable “student’s bible.” No matter how often
he read it and reread it or practiced the maneuvers described in it,
every new reading revealed something there he had not previously
absorbed. Even the instructors boned the manual—and found new
inspiration in doing so.
As Mrs. Upham talked, the commandant stirred the fire until it burned
brightly, shining on his wife’s serene features.
“My book,” she said, “bears on the same theme as the one developed by
_The New Knowledge_ but approaches it from a wholly different point
of view.”
She went on to point out that its author, whose name I have
forgotten along with the title of the book, had been a successful
minister—at least one might judge him so by usual standards. He had
managed a large New York congregation, kept the church in repair, and
collected substantial sums of money for worthy causes. But after his
retirement he had reached the conclusion that his ministry had been a
complete failure. Lacking faith in religion, because he had not been
able to reconcile the Christian Gospel with his reasoned analysis of
it, he had failed in his spiritual leadership.
Deep concern over this had caused him to restudy the Gospels and
especially the history of their composition; and he had concluded
that in the interim between the death of the Apostles and the
compilation of the Gospels, numerous additions might have been made
and certain beliefs carried over from earlier faiths might have been
interlarded into the basic concept of the Christian idea. He had
therefore set about to delete from the Gospels, as recorded, all
the inconsistencies with the Gospel as he thought it must have been
preached, and had emerged with a kernel so dazzling and completely
credible to the rational mind that he had become convinced that it
must have been divinely inspired.
For no one man nor group of men could possibly have conceived a faith
so wholly consistent and so inspiring as had Jesus Christ himself.
The very idea of individual dignity had brought men conviction that
they were not meant to be slaves but responsible children of God.
With that conviction, human liberty was born. And human liberty was
not just a pleasant material situation but the world’s most vital,
dynamic, and constructive spiritual force. To cast off the rule of
tyrants men must only be governed by God.
As the commandant’s lady finished her review, she handed her book
over to me.
“Since we’ve been on duty down here,” she said simply, “we’ve come
to sense the semireligious fervor with which the lads approach their
flying. The hazards seem but to lift up their spirits, for while
physically the airplane is mechanical, yet the art of flying has
the flavor of high destiny.” She paused and glanced quickly at her
husband as if for support.
“We haven’t succeeded in crystallizing the idea,” said the admiral,
“but even as professional military people we keep groping for the
philosophical import of this new device. The thing is potentially
so destructive that unless we find some way, through the spirit, to
adapt it to constructive uses, it will surely destroy us.”
For a while we three sat silent before the fire. Brooks Upham had
expressed the unease that lies heavy on the hearts of military men;
they dislike the business of destruction.
When, next morning, I arrived at Squadron Six Beach, my instructor
was waiting for me with orders to disregard the routine and feed the
subject to me just as fast as I could take it. I had, however, been
assigned to Class Twenty-six—youngsters, for the most part, two to
three years out of Annapolis. Included in the class, however, were
a handful of seniors like “Baldy” Pownall, “Woody” Thomas, Harry
Bogusch, and Freddie Kauffman. For Admiral Moffett, having felt
the need of a little seasoning in the aeronautic organization, had
accepted applications from a selected group of more experienced line
officers. Among them were former submarine officers who, thinking
that duty a little too hazardous to health, had transferred to the
comparative safety of flying.
And thus began a most delightful experience. For the first time in
many moons, my responsibilities were reduced to the lowest possible
terms. All I now had to do was to maneuver a nice little airplane,
one that seemed to sense my intentions and even anticipate them,
and to execute turns, glides, and landings smoothly and competently
and—to my surprise—without dunking me in the drink. The pullings
and haulings of BUAERO, the plot and counterplot of politics, now
faded into the limbo. And in their places came the thrill of facing
hazards—and overcoming them. Raised as I had been in an era when
men had not asked extra compensation for extra hazard in the line
of duty, I held a secret hunch that a man should be glad to pay
something extra for the privilege of enjoying such a happy and
uncomplicated routine. Naturally I did not voice this mutiny to my
instructors.
With my solo safely behind me, I moved ahead with renewed confidence
and from that day forward averaged nearly five hours solo almost
every working day, passing one check after the other and moving
steadily along on schedule. Meanwhile an unexpected influence had
entered into my training, insinuating itself in a delicate sort of
way; it was old Aunt Lucy.
It had started one sunny morning when, standing in front of the
mirror to tie my black four-in-hand tie, I had, in sheer exuberance,
burst out singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Aunt Lucy, who seemed
to be forever dusting the furniture when I was in the room, and who
was always fingering my dress sword, as if fascinated by it, now
interrupted my music.
“Oh, no sah!” she protested. “Not dataway! Not dataway!”
And then with one foot tapping and her gay turbaned old head bobbing
to the rhythm, Aunt Lucy proceeded to swing that old chariot so low
it got dizzy. The song ended, she cackled and waddled off down the
corridor, but in response to my vociferous applause she was soon back
again, dustcloth in hand, flicking specks off the battered furniture
of the bare room.
From that moment, Lucy took my Bible instruction in hand and carried
it out through a series of Negro spirituals, with a technique that
would have impressed Lt. Barrett Studley, the author of the _Flight
Manual_. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace vied
with Joshua, as he fit de Battle uv Jericho, to bring me up to
date on “de ole time religion.” Then one Sunday morning old Aunt
Lucy invited me to witness a baptizin’ in a nearby bayou where a
white-robed, black-faced preacherman, knee deep on a convenient
sand bar, ducked his shouting converts. Next morning I noticed her
flitting around my sword, where it stood in the corner, and heard her
humming the second verse of the first song she had sung to me.
“I’se goin’ to try on my long white robe,
Down by the riverside; down by the riverside; down by the
riverside.
I’se goin’ to try on my long white robe,
Down by de riverside—
I ain’t a goin’ t’ study wah no moh!”
Of an original class of some thirty students, only about twenty
survived the rigorous course. The others either lacked the natural
coordination essential to instinctive flying or failed on that
other important requirement “correct reaction in emergency.” The
first could be acquired by early athletic instruction, but the
second seemed to be innate in some, wholly lacking in others. It
was the unpleasant duty of the check instructor to detect the lack
of that attribute before it could produce fatal results. But to men
who had natural aptitude in the basic requirements, flying had an
extraordinary appeal. There was all the intense satisfaction to be
experienced through skill in any art, such as the smooth stroking of
a tennis ball, the rhythmic swing of a golf club, or the exquisitely
precise casting of a feathered salmon fly—all these were experienced
by the student pilot, but with the added thrill that a mistake
invited disaster.
During the month of November I graduated from the seaplane beach
and moved over into landplanes. My classmates, following the more
leisurely normal course, remained behind. In landplanes, we used the
new Consolidate NY’s and, while they had few of the pleasant flying
qualities of the little N-9’s, they didn’t kill students in crack-ups.
Finally came November 30, 1926, and with it my final check. “Dixie”
Ketcham, my check instructor, put me through the paces and then
waved me back toward Old Corry Field. I was sitting there calmly
enjoying the scenery below, but with one eye, as always, roving about
in search of a place to land in case of engine failure, when the
engine stopped. Below me lay a tiny cow pasture, the spot in which,
no doubt, I was supposed to land. But it was so tiny I felt certain
that Dixie would open the throttle again after I had demonstrated the
required approach technique. And so I settled down to the “normal
approach”: a left turn to get downwind, a glide over the tops of the
jack pine, a slip to lose altitude, a sunfish to kill extra speed,
stick-back to break the glide—but the throttle didn’t open and we
went on in a nice landing.
As we reached the end of the run, just short of the edge of the
field—we had no brakes then, nor did we use flaps—Dixie waved a hand
as the signal to go home.
“If you can get into a pasture like that,” he said, “you can get in
anywhere!”
Back at my quarters in BOQ I walked on air. Aunt Lucy with her
everlasting dustcloth fiddled around the gilt sword knot of the class
of 1871 prize sword. And as she dusted it, she hummed the final verse
of the spiritual she had sung so often for me.
“I’se goin’ to lay down my burden—
Down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the
riverside.
I’se goin’ to lay down my burden,
Down by the riverside.
I ain’t a goin’ to study wah no moh!”
Tossing my helmet and goggles onto the bed and reaching for
my suitcase, I began packing my duffel for the return trip to
Washington. Aunt Lucy was folding my best blue blouse with its shiny
three stripes and, best of all, my new gold wings pinned on its
breast. Under her breath she kept humming.
“I ain’t a goin’ to study wah no mo!” I stopped to look at her.
“Aunt Lucy,” I demanded, “is it by accident or design that you keep
singing that song at me?” Aunt Lucy chuckled.
“Well, sah,” she replied in her deep contralto, “ah thought maybe now
you done learned to fly like de angels, you might like to think a
little about peace.”
“Why,” I retorted, “that’s just what a navy is for—to keep peace.”
“Yassah, yassah,” Aunt Lucy persisted, fingering the gold pin on my
best blouse, “but it jes’ seem to Aunt Lucy dat, now de Lord done gib
yo’ wings, maybe yo’ might find better use for dem dan jes fightin’.”
* * * * *
The telephone jingled. Western Union had a wire for me. My wife was
thrilled by the news of my gold wings; she had left for Washington to
reopen the apartment.
CHAPTER TEN
The Take-off
Back in Washington, the admiral welcomed me with a grin and promptly
assigned me a new job as Chief of the Airplane Design Section.
This was a naval constructor’s stronghold, and even though we line
officers had pretty well dominated design down in the Engine Section,
I could have been made to feel like a blacksmith in a glassworks, had
it not been for my new wings and my postgraduate engineering course
under Dr. Lucke. But by now the vision he had foreseen had begun
to come to pass: the “professors” and the “practical men” had got
together in the person of the engineer, and the world was already on
fire with new developments.