_No Penalty for Being Late_
The last fourteen months of my active Navy service amounted to a
determined but futile endeavor to get to war. This crazy-quilt
travelogue took me from Corpus Christi to Jacksonville, Florida,
back across the country to San Diego, to Seattle, to Klamath
Falls, to Seattle, to Pasco, to Arlington, to Seattle, to Hawaii,
to Philadelphia, to Norfolk, and back again to Seattle. Along the
way, intense operational training improved and broadened my flying
considerably.
The rat race began in September, 1944, when at last I was sprung from
my duties as instructor in gunnery and bombing at Corpus and issued
orders to the fleet. I was told to report to the Naval Air Training
Center in Jacksonville, Florida, for a brief operational transition
course. Alice and I packed our worldly belongings in our 1940 Mercury
and set out. When I reached the new base and checked in, I was again
forced to acknowledge that the Navy was not run for my express
benefit. I had drawn an assignment to dive bombers.
To a fighter pilot, being a fighter pilot is very important. Fighters
are the _avant garde_, the lancers, the agile fencing foils of
the fleet, the spearhead of offense and defense in any pitched
air-and-sea battle. The forte of the fighter pilot is individuality,
perhaps erroneously, but nevertheless romantically, inspired by two
wars. I had connived to be assigned to fighters when I was a cadet
at Corpus Christi. With mixed feelings of adherence to duty and
instructions, I decided to try again to bend the course of events
more to my inclinations. If I didn’t try, I thought as a salve to my
feelings, what a waste of two years of intensive training!
“Can’t I get fighter orders?” I asked the officer at the desk.
“We don’t have any fighter-plane orders,” he said.
“Well, in that case, consider me on leave.” I had about twenty-two
days coming, as I had foregone leave since I was commissioned. My
thought was to postpone my reporting date until some fighter orders
came in. Alice and I rented a cottage on Jacksonville Beach. Each day
for three weeks I drove eighty miles to the Naval Base to see whether
any fighter orders had arrived.
During this time--it was October 20, 1944, to be precise, and I
don’t know why I remember the specific date because I remember few
others--a hurricane struck the beach where we were living. This
incredible unleashing of nature’s power was without doubt the most
impressive thing I have ever seen in my life. The pounding sea
ripped up the concrete seawall and stove in cottages. It swept over
automobiles, including ours. I tried to save it, and others besides,
feverishly working on the drowned-out engines while the wind-driven
rain pelted me like BB shot. It was useless. I pushed the Mercury
against a fence which I hoped would prevent the car from drifting out
to sea. Then Alice and I caught the last Coast Guard rescue truck,
which took us to a brick schoolhouse in an emergency housing area for
the displaced people. Before that storm hit us I never quite realized
the awesome force the earth has cached in its storehouses. When this
model of perfection goes awry it is a sight to behold. Against this
force man’s efforts seem feeble indeed.
Against the U. S. Navy this man’s efforts were feeble, too. I was
assigned to dive bombers, along with eleven other instructors from
Corpus. Our instructor was a Marine and a wonderful aviator. He
greeted us thus: “Boys, bombing is my business. If any of you want to
put a little money on the bombing competition, I’ll be glad to match
it.” Without telling him we had been bombing instructors too, we all
laid bets. Dive bombing turned out to be far easier than the glide
bombing we were doing in Texas every day for eighteen months. We won
in a walk. The result was really to our benefit. In the strange way
that a competent pilot shows his respect for other competent pilots,
our instructor worked us night and day with no quarter, and gave us,
rather than a transition, a post-graduate course in the finer points
of dive-bombing tactics.
As a result of my desire to be a fighter pilot, I found my rear-seat
man an annoyance through no fault of his own. To this day I find
it hard to justify a flight crew of more than one in almost any
airplane. The additional crew encumbers the pilot and compromises the
performance of the airplane with added weight and duplication. Most
of the new rear-seat men remembered all the horror stories they heard
in training school about target fixation on a dive. So whether the
pilot liked it or not, the men insisted on calling out the altitudes
during the dive. The only cure for this was for the pilot to recover
at such high G that the rear-seat man blacked out. Sooner or later
he’d get the point. But my man stumped me. He never gave up. Once I
dived almost into the ground and pulled out viciously. On the way
down the rear-seat man called the altitudes: “10,000 ... 5,000 ...
2,000 ... 1,500 ... 1,200 ... 1,000 ... 800....” And from there on
I was blacked out. Coming to in the climb, I could almost hear him
shaking off the blackout, foggily picking up where he left off,
calling altitude as we _climbed_. I gave up.
A few weeks later came the last straw. Sometimes on our flights we
carried aloft a three-pound bag of powdered gilt-paint pigment. If
the usual floating targets were engaged by other flights, we tossed
the bag of paint out of the cockpit. When it splashed into the
ocean, it spread out and made a good substitute target. I handed my
rear-seat man the paint bag and told him to drop it if and when I so
instructed.
It was an unforgettable take-off. By regulation we kept the
greenhouse canopy open, and the cockpit was always very windy. About
midway down the runway my rear-seat man got curious and opened the
bag. Then he dropped it. The bag burst. The rushing wind caught the
powdered paint and swirled it through the cockpit--a regular blizzard
of gold. I was almost blinded. The gold flecks coated everything,
including our faces and hands, sticking to the oil film that usually
covered us on those flights. I cleared my eyes somehow and landed.
The cockpit, the instruments, everything--and both of us--were
beautifully gold-plated El Dorados. Weeks went by before I got all
the flecks out of my hair. Incidents like this strengthened my desire
for the lonesome fighter cockpit.
Fate intervened favorably. After a couple of months, I was ordered
to report to San Diego for fleet orders--without my rear-seat man. I
packed the car again and we set off cross-country. Alice was about
two months pregnant.
We were leaving Shreveport the next morning when suddenly I recalled
all the stories I had heard at Corpus about the bigness of the State
of Texas. “I’m going to cross Texas the long way in one day,” I said
to Alice. It was 986 miles to El Paso. We made it, but the cost was
high. A little further along, in New Mexico, Alice had a miscarriage.
My orders required me to report in “on or before” a certain day that
January of 1945. Time was short. If I took Alice to a hospital I
would have to leave her there alone in New Mexico, an unthinkable
desertion. But I knew the long drive remaining would be dangerous for
her. Trying to make the best of an impossible situation, we decided
to push on as rapidly as possible to leave Alice in the care of my
sister, Elena Ruth, who lived near Los Angeles.
I drove on swiftly, without sleep, completing the cross-country
drive from Jacksonville to Los Angeles in eighty-eight hours.
When we reached my sister’s house, Alice was very ill. She almost
died. It was a sobering lesson for a young man. I made up my mind
then that no matter what challenge loomed in my life I would never
tackle it at the risk of involving her or anyone else. I would go it
alone--all the way. From that time on, Alice, with my encouragement,
drew a protective cocoon around her life. She never inquired about
what new Mount Everest I might be scaling, and in fact until she
read this book she had little idea of the flying at Edwards. I’ve
pointedly ignored it, both with her and the children. I’ve lived in
two different worlds: in hers with our family, and in the world of
my other love, aviation. This separation is a boon. It removes the
insidious and encumbering influence of expressed day-to-day concern
so common in the lives of pilots. And to some degree--to a great
degree, I hope--it has spared her the anguish of waiting for the
telephone call so many of her friends have received when their men
bought the farm.
When I was certain Alice was in good hands, I raced on to San Diego,
reporting in twenty minutes before the deadline.
Good news was waiting for me at the end of that mad journey. When I
got there, the last man to report, some of the other pilots had been
assigned to dive bombers, torpedo planes, and so on. But at the very
last minute a request came through for a few fighter pilots for Air
Group 37, based in the Seattle area, of all places. I snatched up the
orders and hurried north to Seattle, then to Klamath Falls, Oregon.
As soon as she was well, Alice joined me.
We had time to visit with her family and to spend a few days on the
farm in Boistfort Valley. I found my father and mother--like most
farmers during the war--short-handed but more prosperous. My father’s
research and diligence were bringing handsome returns. He was laying
plans to build a modern barn with an automatic milking line, and to
buy new power tools and tractors.
He was reconciled to my chosen profession by then, but he openly
urged me to do more. “A pilot,” he said, “is nothing more than a
glorified chauffeur. Use your skill and talent in flying as a tool to
help accomplish something lasting and significant for mankind.”
From Air Group 37 at Klamath Falls I was re-assigned to Air Group
51 at Seattle. We recommissioned that famed squadron and moved to
Pasco, Washington. Air Group 51 prepared for war. We flew morning,
noon, and night. Our skipper, Commander William Lamb, an Annapolis
graduate, was one of the ablest men I have ever met. He rated others
strictly by performance. Although I was a senior lieutenant, with
many more flying hours than most of the pilots, I flew last man
Charlie until I proved to him in the air that I knew what I was
about. After that he assigned me to command a division. All Naval
officers must assume a collateral duty, and as I had been with every
squadron, I was assigned as an Engineering Officer. When we changed
a wing, or conducted a major overhaul of an airplane, it was my job
to take the plane into the air for the first test hop, to make sure
it had been put back together properly. This was not flight-test
work in its purest sense, but as close as I could come. I took keen
satisfaction in squeezing longer life from some of those tired old
birds and tried to keep them in near-perfect mechanical order, just
as I did my automobile.
One man I especially admired in that outfit was a boot ensign named
Smith. He was a natural hunter like Sergeant York, or Gabreski, or
Chuck Yeager. No matter how hard I tried--and I went full-bore--he
could always top my score in aerial gunnery. He was eventually
transferred to another outfit, but of all the men I knew in the Navy
this Ensign Smith stands out in my memory like a sore thumb--or an
unscaled Mount Everest. I don’t know what ever happened to him.
We were scheduled to ship out on the aircraft carrier Cabot, but she
broke a shaft, so our Group sailed to Hawaii, planeless, on an LSV
that burned out a bearing and so proceeded at a top speed of six
knots. It was one of the longest voyages of the war, I’m sure. The
ship was crowded with aviators and soldiers. I remember it as one
long Acey-Deucy tournament, which in the end I lucked out and won
(the pot was $28.00). In Hawaii we were assigned to the aircraft
carrier Langley and given brand-new, 400-mile-an-hour F6F airplanes.
And that was as close as I came to the war. In Hawaii we moved
down to the island of Maui and for several months trained with
the Second Marine Division, preparing for the invasion of Japan.
The training was quite realistic, with live ammo and bombs. We
were assigned a specific landing point on the coast of Japan, and
on Maui we practiced our invasion role on terrain similar to it.
Then the scientists unlocked the power of the atom and ended the
war. We boarded the Langley, lashed down our planes, and steamed
to Philadelphia via the Panama Canal. We based in Philadelphia for
a few weeks at Mustin Field. From there we moved to Norfolk for
decommissioning. Alice had been waiting on the farm ever since I
shipped off to Hawaii.
For a while I considered remaining in the Navy after the war. It had
many appeals for me. I met some of the finest men in my life in the
Navy. It was a good life if you approached it from the right point
of view in the right frame of mind. It was an opportunity to do my
country a service in my chosen endeavor. The Naval Air Test Center at
Patuxent River, Maryland, where new Navy planes are flight-tested,
had just opened up, and I thought of applying for a test pilot’s job
there. In fact I talked to Commander Lamb about it at length. He
gave me little encouragement to buck the Academy men and those with
technical training with my “trade school” background. I decided then
to return to college for a sound engineering education. I was well
grounded in aviation, but too many people, such as Commander Lamb,
clearly held an advantage over me. If I had known then that the Navy
would send many of its officers to college after the war to obtain
engineering degrees, I might have stayed on and thus avoided the
tight financial squeeze that soon followed.
A lunatic episode, the maddest race of all, climaxed my Navy career.
I’m not certain how it began. I think that the separating officer
at Norfolk resented reservists who were deserting the Navy. “Okay,”
he said, “we’ll separate you in Seattle, the point closest to your
home, and fast, too. You’re due at the separation center there not
‘on or about’ but ‘on or before’ five days from now. You’ll have no
transportation priority.”
“But how do you expect me to get to Seattle in five days with
no priority?” I asked. It was November 1, 1945, and the entire
transportation system of the nation was staggering under the load of
returning servicemen. Without a priority commercial airlines were
out of the question. All military airplanes were jammed. Trains were
packing people in like sardines and running days behind schedule.
“That’s your problem,” the officer said. He handed me my orders.
This return trip to Seattle suddenly and curiously emerged as a great
game. I don’t know why. I guess it was because the officer implied
that I could never make it. _All right, I thought, if that’s the way
it is, that’s the way it is. And I’m not about to report in late
for the first time in my Naval career and spoil a perfect record._
I packed a few clean clothes in a suitcase, sealed and shipped my
foot-lockers (which arrived months later), and set off.
From beginning to end the trip was insane. I left Norfolk on a train,
standing in the aisle. We chugged north for a thousand years and then
south for another thousand, then east, I think it was, and finally
arrived in Washington, D. C., which is about a hundred miles from
Norfolk--fourteen minutes by fighter plane. I made up my mind right
then that I would get back on a train only as a last resort, after
trying a mule. Incidentally, I still feel that way about trains. I
checked in at Military Operations in Washington and by great luck got
a hop almost immediately to Olathe, Kansas. I waited patiently there
for a ride farther west, or north, or northwest, but the few planes
that came through were jammed with priority passengers. The time was
ticking by rapidly.
When I heard that I might have better luck in Chicago, I wormed my
way on board a military plane going there. In Chicago I felt richer:
I was now far ahead of the train. I could have boarded a train in
Chicago that day and made it to Seattle with ease. But the thought of
that prolonged trip was enough to make me gamble. Heavier air traffic
was moving across the South so I jumped on another military airplane
and wound up in Fort Worth, Texas. This move put me _behind_ the
train schedule. I had to make it by air, or else....
In Fort Worth I waited. Without a priority it seemed hopeless. But
luck is where you find it. I discovered very late that night that
the Naval officer dispatching people on the airplanes was an old
student of mine from Corpus Christi days. As a favor to a buddy, he
stamped my orders with the lowest possible priority. Still it _was_ a
priority and it moved me ahead of about a hundred people in the line.
Hurrying now, for I was far behind the train schedule, I scrambled
aboard a plane heading for Oakland, California, with an intermediate
stop in Phoenix, Arizona. If I didn’t get bumped in Phoenix, I knew I
had it made.
I got bumped in Phoenix. I then had less than twenty-four hours to
make it to Seattle.
I paced the floor of the waiting room. The clock ticked on. Then
a minor miracle happened. Completely unexpected, an airplane came
through Phoenix headed for San Francisco. It was an old R4-D,
converted to a hospital plane, manned by a flight crew and a staff of
male and female nurses, flying back and forth between the East and
West coasts, hauling the wounded to hospitals in the East and caring
for them along the way. They were returning for more. I have never
seen people so dead tired. I don’t think any of them had slept in a
bed for a month. Yet they immediately turned their thoughts to my
comfort. They gave me a sleeping bag, some hot coffee, and a ride to
San Francisco. This little touch of humanity made me feel like a new
man. Moreover, this hop to the Coast made up much lost time and put
me ahead of the train again.
In San Francisco I boarded an Air Force plane bound for Seattle. As
fate would have it, just then some luckless pilot drove an airplane
into a mountain nearby. The plane I was on was diverted from its
destination to help in the search for survivors. They dropped me off
at the end of the world--Medford, Oregon. I might have made it to
Seattle by train yet--a ten-hour trip--but having come that close, I
refused to give up, although I was getting pretty tired at this point
and was badly in need of a bath and clean clothes.
The next morning I met an Air Force colonel who had flown down to
Medford in a B-17 bringing a ground rescue crew. At that moment he
was debating with himself whether to return in heavy weather to his
base at McChord Field, Tacoma, about thirty miles south of Seattle.
I got into the debate, urging that the weather wasn’t so bad and that
he return to McChord with me as his passenger. At about three in the
afternoon we took off into a raging snowstorm. I sat shivering in the
plexiglass nose turret.
When we got to Tacoma about dusk the snowstorm was still in
full fury. I think the Colonel would have sought another field
then--probably _any_ pilot would have--except for the expression on
my face which plainly said: “It doesn’t look so bad to me.” Coming
from a Naval aviator, it was a challenge to this Air Force type,
perhaps. He lowered the gear and we threaded our way up the river
through the storm groping--and I do mean groping--for McChord Field.
It was dark and snowing hard when we landed. The runway lights were
on, the tower was manned, but otherwise there was not a soul to be
seen. No jeep came out to the plane; hell, the weather was too lousy.
My clock was running out. Without so much as a “thank you” to the
Colonel, I plowed through the deep snow to a road where I hitched a
ride in a truck that happened along. The truck dropped me at the base
gate. I then moved out onto the main highway and thumbed a ride--I
believe it took two rides--to Seattle. I arrived at the Processing
Center at eleven o’clock that night, one hour before my deadline,
November 6, 1945.
I have recounted these last days and hours of my active Naval service
in some detail for special reasons. For one thing, the recollection
of that trip has always astonished and amused me, especially the
way those Florence Nightingales just happened along in Phoenix in
the hospital plane and took pity on a forlorn traveler engaged in a
restless, disjointed journey, a crazy race against time. That was
the dénouement of the trip; that hop really let me win. And to those
people, whose names I cannot recall, I shall be forever grateful.
Another thing: I think this screwball tale tells a lot about the
workings of the feeble clot of gray matter which I call my mind.
I should close this account by adding the significant fact that there
would have been no penalty whatsoever if I had arrived late. Even a
couple or three days late.