_Manhood and Maturity_
I served in the Navy four years, until I was twenty-four. I never
achieved my goal of engaging the enemy plane-to-plane over the
Pacific. After winning my wings I was waylaid as a flight instructor
for eighteen months. I very nearly made it. When the war ended, I was
in training in Hawaii with a carrier air group for the invasion of
Japan.
My Navy tour laid the groundwork for the contribution I made to
aviation and the nation years later in a different kind of war. In
the Navy I became a professional, disciplined aviator.
Ironically, I almost flunked at the outset. It happened during my
two months of “elimination” service in Seattle in May and June of
1942. Like many men who already knew how to fly when they entered
the military services, I found my past experience in the air not a
help but a hindrance. A civilian pilot is an individualist. In the
military a pilot is part of a closely meshed precision team. The
adjustment is difficult to make. Civilian pilots learn many “bad
habits.” One day my instructor said: “Crossfield, I don’t think
you’re going to make it.” I did make it. In fact I never got a
“down-check” although there was one close call.
It was a glove that almost did me in. One of our final checks at
Seattle was an emergency landing in a small tree-bordered field. My
airplane was an old N3N or “Yellow Peril” biplane, built in about
1933. While flying near this field one day my instructor gave me the
signal to simulate an engine failure. I throttled back all the way
and aimed for the field, calculating my glide-path, intending to make
a perfect approach and landing.
I miscalculated. We were quite low when I realized I had undershot
the field and would have to open the throttle. My instructor reached
this conclusion about the same instant. He moved his gloved left hand
to the throttle. As I pushed forward a split second before him, his
glove caught and jammed in the throttle bracket. He tried to pull
the throttle back momentarily to disengage the glove. Unaware of
this mishap, all the while I was pushing the throttle hard forward,
wondering what was holding it.
The ground was rushing up fast. I had to land. There was a hole
between the trees that looked large enough to squeeze through. We
grazed over a barbed-wire fence and penetrated the hole. It was too
small. The right wing brushed the top of a tree, making a fearful
racket on the taut dope-covered fabric of the wing. The plane bounced
on the grass strip and rolled out. My instructor crawled out of the
front cockpit, lit a cigarette, and paced about the plane, inspecting
the broken ribs in the wing and the torn fabric. I sat in the cockpit
awaiting the inevitable. Soon, I knew, I would be headed for a ship
as a seaman second class.
I wondered why my instructor was delaying. Then it dawned on me. He
was worried that we had damaged the plane so badly that it would fall
apart in the air.
“As long as we’re here,” he said, “I’ll just stay on the ground and
watch while you make a few precision landings between the markers
over there.” This was the next phase of my test, scheduled to be
carried out at another field. It was true that it would save time to
do these maneuvers at this field. But I had a hunch the real reason
was that the instructor wanted me to take that plane up and test-fly
it--alone.
Very well, I thought, I’ll do it. I got us into this fix. I gunned
the engine and took off. The plane held together and I made the
precision landings without further incident. The instructor climbed
in and we flew back to main base. He gave me an “up-check,” but I
believe I earned it by default--because he was ashamed to report
the glove snafu and because I had tested the airplane for him.
Thereafter, in the way some men respond to error, I was determined
never to repeat that fiasco. In time and with exacting practice,
landings became the strongest point of my flying.
We moved from Seattle to the Naval Air Training Center in Corpus
Christi, Texas--the big league. What a sight! It was the Boeing
plant all over again. The Navy was just gearing for the instruction
of aviators on a mass scale. Thousands of people were pouring into
Corpus Christi each week. Everywhere new outlying flying fields were
being scratched out of the dry, ugly Texas soil. Hangars, maintenance
shops, barracks and officers’ clubs, it seemed, were sprouting all
across the great expanse of Texas. It was semi-organized confusion on
a grand scale. For the next six months, along with the fifteen other
members of my cadet class from Seattle, I lived, studied, and flew
hard while this transformation was taking place. We paid it scant
heed. Our minds were set on learning our profession and going on to
war, to the Pacific, where Naval aviators were desperately needed.
The skies over Texas were black with airplanes flown by young
inexperienced pilots, feeling their oats, frozen in the grip of that
infantile phase all pilots must go through: flat-hatting, or buzzing
the ground. I don’t know how or why all pilots get this disease.
Maybe it’s simple showing-off, or some kind of deep-seated craving
for the sensation of speed, or a reaction to the highly disciplined
military formation flying. It is very dangerous. But a lot of fun.
We had several special flat-hatting tricks calculated to stretch any
pilot’s nerves to the breaking point. First there was wind-milling.
The surface of Texas is a forest of windmill-driven water pumps. We
used to dive at these lazily turning windmills, scream across the
ground, lift the wing as we passed over the tower, and kick the
rudder. When the plane’s slipstream hit the blades of the windmill,
they would turn at tremendous speed, gushing water in a torrent, and
probably grinding up the pump gears.
Another trick was the rare sport of playing leapfrog with
automobiles. We would spot a lone car driving on a long, straight
Texas road. Then we would ghost down and land behind him. We would
clip along, waving at the awestruck kids in the back seat, their
noses pressed against the rear window. We’d gun the engine and hop
over the moving car, taxiing on down the road at high speed. I saw
one pilot do this to a moving van. When the plane’s slipstream hit
the broad side of the van it knocked the truck into a ditch.
Then there was the railroading. What better sport than to fly down
a railroad track at night, directly toward an oncoming train, and
at the last second turn on the plane’s landing lights and pull up
steeply, all the while enjoying the vision of the engineer grinding
his brakes into steel filings, wondering what he was about to smash
into.
Bridges, of course, held the greatest fascination to the youthful,
inexperienced pilot. There was a bridge up near Smithville on the
Colorado River that loomed as my greatest flat-hatting challenge.
It was tricky because there was a little turn involved just before
passing under the bridge. Flying below the river banks, the drafts
and winds were confusing and I had to take care that the plane didn’t
drift into one of the bridge foundations. I made several tries before
I finally plunged under. As it turned out, there was plenty of
room--fully twenty feet clearance between the bottom of the bridge
and the water. My dream was to loop around that bridge, but for some
reason I never did. No guts, I guess, or maybe I had a little sense,
at that.
These were rare diversionary moments in a rigid schedule of work
and study. Mostly we flew in formation under strict observation. We
advanced steadily in our profession, on the ground and in the air,
learning about engines and propellers, navigation, night flying,
bombing, gunnery, and the niceties of being a Naval officer. I
learned one special discipline. On the night before a special
check-flight, I would mentally fly the complete trip from take-off
to landing, going through every motion of the controls and relating
the movement of the plane to the geography. At Edwards many years
later I was still able to commit a complicated experimental airplane
flight to memory the night before flight. This left my mind free to
concentrate not so much on flying but on gathering the aeronautical
data we sought.
In December, 1942, one year after Pearl Harbor, we graduated as
ensigns and full-fledged pilots. I had just turned twenty-one. Of
the twenty-five men who were commissioned that day twenty-three got
orders to the fleet. Two drew orders to remain at Corpus Christi as
flight instructors. I was one of the two. At the time it seemed the
blackest day of my life. I partially offset my deep disappointment
by thinking that I had been selected for the job because I was an
outstanding pilot. But I am sure they just picked my name out of a
hat. I came to this conclusion when I saw what poor pilots some of
the instructors were.
For six weeks I attended a school to learn how to be an instructor
in advanced bombing and gunnery, then I was assigned to Kingsville
Naval Air Station--a desolate outlying field. There I soon learned
that instructors are not the infallible monarchs I had considered
them when I was a cadet. Instructors are men like all other men,
full of imperfections, contradictions, and uncertainties. Most of us
were very young--twenty-one or twenty-two. We lived in dirty BOQs,
engaged in seemingly endless cycles of new students, parties, poker
games, graduation, new students, parties, poker games, graduation,
new students, and so on. The pace we kept would defy all aero-medical
studies on pilot fatigue--especially my own. I slept hardly at all. I
flew probably four and sometimes six flights a day, with occasional
time off during brief periods of bad weather. I never missed an
assigned flight.
The second stage of infantilism in an airplane comes when the pilot
learns aerial acrobatics and can be sure of a captive audience. As
instructors we had such an audience in our students. One sure way
to get a rise was to make a series of barrel rolls around a tight
formation of student airplanes. This was one of my specialties until
one of the new instructors, a former student of mine, tried to
imitate it. Evidently he had not first practiced the maneuver behind
the student formation. He miscalculated and smashed into a student
plane, killing himself, the student, and another student in the
rear seat. After that, I was far more conservative in the air when
students were around.
I don’t mean to overdramatize this incident. Death is the handmaiden
of the pilot. Sometimes it comes by accident, sometimes by an act of
God. Over the years I have tried to become calloused about death.
This attitude began at Corpus. Twelve out of the sixteen members of
my original class at Seattle were eventually killed in airplanes.
Hundreds of students, many of whom I knew well, passed through Corpus
to a quick death in the Pacific. Eleven men in my training squadron
were killed at Corpus. Indeed, come to think of it, three-quarters of
all the pilots I ever knew are now dead.
There was a camaraderie among the instructors, and a sharp sense
of competition. Teaching bombing and gunnery week in and week out
eventually turned us into pros. One reason was that we shot and
bombed far more than anyone else, including pilots in combat. When a
new class reported in, we instructors began with a “demonstration”
of bombing and gunnery, each with a student in the back seat of the
plane. For us this was a moment of high drama. Instructor was pitted
against instructor. We laid huge money bets for high score. In our
eagerness to win we very nearly drove our planes into the ground or
into the target sleeves. It must have been quite an indoctrination
for the students. Some of them resigned after the demonstration
flight.
We felt pretty good about our gunnery records until “Bogie” Hoffmann,
a senior Navy pilot, came up from DeLand, Florida. A mustang from
the famed Fighting 2 off the Lexington, Hoffmann, with Captain John
(“Jimmy”) Thach, had developed a new gunnery technique. It was
astounding in its simplicity and it greatly improved our scores.
Alongside Hoffmann we instructors, supposedly the pros, felt like
amateurs. I made every effort to hitch a ride in the back seat of
Hoffmann’s plane when he made a demonstration. I strove to imitate
him. The results were gratifying. From that point on, I met few men
in the Navy who could seriously challenge me in aerial gunnery, but
I could never touch Hoffmann’s shooting.
Flying over Corpus shepherding my flocks amid the hundreds of planes
milling about, both in daylight and at night, and with a near-crisis
every ten minutes, I learned the value of stern discipline in the
air. Too often in times of trouble I witnessed tragedies which could
have been averted had the participants remained at least outwardly
cool. Too many times I heard people shouting conflicting advice--and
orders--into radio circuits. I saw then the advantage of my father’s
detached, emotionless attitude. I deliberately emulated it, striving
never to raise my voice but to take positive command in times of
emergency and do what I thought was right. Some people--those who
knew only this calculated glacial exterior--thought I was a cold
fish. No matter. The technique paid off.
One day, for example, I was leading a group of my students on a “tail
chase”--a sort of follow-the-leader of aerial acrobatics, including
loops, rolls, Cuban Eights, chandelles--the works. Somehow one of the
pilots fell out of place and the prop of his plane chewed into the
tail of the plane in front of him. The first word I had of impending
catastrophe was a blast on the radio:
“Jones. Land immediately. Your tail is chopped off.”
The first thought of inexperienced aviators who get into trouble is
to get back to earth quickly. They get down low only to find out the
plane is no good and it is too late to bail out. The proper course is
to keep all possible altitude until someone can find out how badly
the airplane is damaged. I broke in on the radio circuit, my voice
deliberately held low:
“Jones. Remain at your present altitude until we check your airplane.”
Jones started to argue back.
“Shut up,” I said calmly.
I moved in and took a look at his plane. Quite a bit of the tail was
missing.
“Head for base,” I ordered.
I flew alongside, coaching him through gentle maneuvers to feel out
the plane. One of these showed that if he slowed to ordinary landing
speed, the plane would not fly. If he had followed the first advice
on the radio, he would have been killed.
“Okay,” I said. “You land that plane about ten or fifteen knots above
normal speed.”
Just then someone else broke in and radioed the base tower:
“We’ve got a crash coming in! Emergency! Emergency!”
This yelling only served to rattle the pilot of the stricken plane.
Holding back my rage, I spoke on the radio:
“Defer the emergency. We don’t need any special equipment. Jones,
remember to land fast.”
The pilot landed the plane, saving his own life and a piece of
expensive government equipment. Experiences like these drove home
the lesson never to permit foolish, though well-meant, interference
to supplant a pilot’s responsibility in the air. The lesson is
documented by a long roll of dead pilots.
As the months rolled on the flying was hard, endless, and gratifying.
Life in the BOQ at night was soft, endless, and boring. Night after
night we gathered in one room or another and drank until the bottle
was empty, hangar-flying and telling endless, untrue sea stories.
I tried correspondence courses to pass the time, but the insidious
magnetism of that fun-loving bunch of troops shot down that effort.
It did not take keen observation to see this was not doing some of
us any good. In a few it was reflected by poor flying which made
me wonder about my own flying. Here I would not compromise in the
slightest--this nonsense had to stop. I had to get off that circus
wagon.
I was engaged to a twenty-two-year-old girl from Seattle named Alice
Knoph, a beautiful blonde who worked as a long-distance telephone
operator. I met Alice on a double date back in the days when I worked
at the Boeing plant. She was a vivacious Nordic type with a talent
for singing, and she quickly became the delight of my life. She was
engaged to a friend of mine, a picture I was determined to change. On
our first date I told Alice I would marry her some day. She laughed,
but six months later she was wearing my ring. Very sensibly we
decided not to marry until the war was over.
But one day in April, 1943, I called Alice on the telephone and
asked her to come down to Corpus Christi and marry me. The call cost
$56.00, but this and the money I sent her for train fare was the
best investment I ever made. Her sudden answer to my call for help
naturally dismayed her family. But in the end they became reconciled.
Alice lost her luggage on the trip down. When we were married by a
Justice of the Peace in Corpus Christi she wore one of my shirts as a
blouse. A cab driver was best man.
Alice and I rented an apartment in Corpus. Inevitably it became
a hang-out for my bachelor friends among the instructors. There
were too many parties. In that wartime atmosphere it was not quite
possible to avoid a party even if we wanted to, which was not always
the case. But when Alice came, it was as though I gained a balance
wheel. My entire outlook changed.
I was always profoundly conscientious about my students. Slipshod
instruction in gunnery and bombing could cost a combat pilot his
life. But now I took on a new, voluntary chore. I became a specialist
at saving the pilots slated for wash-out--the imperfections of our
factory. In a way it was faintly comparable to my job at Boeing, when
I redesigned parts that would otherwise have been scrapped.
I’m not certain just how or why I was moved to do this work. It may
have started one day when I learned that an entire flight of cadets
was about to be washed out. I looked into it and discovered that
their instructor was a former student of mine. Had some imperfection
in my own teaching caused this chain reaction? In any case, to my
regular flights I added hundreds of hours of overtime work with these
bruised pieces of fruit. To me this work, an attempt to mold these
wayward men and their machines into perfect fighting units, was the
most trying, and in some ways the most rewarding, of all. I tackled
the job with missionary-like zeal.
Most of the work amounted to patient tutoring, simply building
confidence first, then teaching technique. Occasionally, however, it
was a matter of using common sense. I remember one case. The cadet
was an ex-theology student. He stopped at our apartment one morning
after church.
“Mr. Crossfield,” he said. “What can I do? I don’t want to give up.”
He came in and sat down while Alice rustled up some coffee. This
was a very sad case. The cadet had been before three different
boards. Each board failed him. For some reason he simply could not
make precision landings, which were crucial to flying on and off an
aircraft carrier.
While we sat waiting I looked at him, trying with him to ferret out
his lack. Then I noticed his legs. They were the shortest I had ever
seen on a man. An idea flashed in my mind.
“Can your feet reach the rudder pedals?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said. But as I thought about it and mentally measured
his legs in the cockpit, I knew he wasn’t being completely frank. He
probably reached the pedals, but with difficulty.
“Tell you what you do,” I said. “I’ll get you another flight and
tomorrow when you go up I want you to put a pad--_two_ pads--behind
your back. This will bring you forward and closer to the rudder bars.”
Next day the student flew with two pads behind his back. From then on
the precision landing was a cinch. It was that simple, after over two
hundred hours of apparently indifferent instruction. The flying board
reversed its decision and he went on to fight in the Pacific. I don’t
know what happened to him.
The best way to learn anything thoroughly, I believe, is to teach
the subject to others. This is no new thought: college professors
and scientists have known it for centuries. With each new student
you begin all over, retracing the same fundamental course, each
time exposed to a fresh, inquiring, and often challenging mind, and
sometimes superlative ability. During my eighteen months at Corpus I
logged 1,400 hours of single-engine time. Thus in one sense I learned
to fly a thousand times, repeating the same familiar steps over and
over and over, but each time adding a little knowledge and polish.
I think that this single tour of duty, more than anything else, honed
my flying to a point of near-perfection.