Bomber Pilot Read online

  Actually when I crossed the boundary fence I seemed to have the same 500 feet of altitude I had had on the base leg. The field wasn't long enough to permit a landing coming in that high. Should I give it the throttle and go around, or should I try to land? I knew I could lose altitude by “slipping”; to do that you hold the nose up and throw the plane into a steep bank which results in loss of altitude without increasing forward speed. But we weren't permitted to slip an airplane because that was considered a Navy stunt, though it is the easiest way to lose excess altitude for landing.

  But I had learned another trick, based on the principle that the slower the gliding speed, the shorter the landing. I decided to slow up my glide to the point of stalling my airplane. I would let it fall a little, then make a recovery and land. Immediately I pulled the stick back and the nose of the plane rose. We were not allowed airspeed indicators in those days, but I could feel the airplane slow up gradually until finally the aileron pressure, controlled by sidewise movement of the stick, became wobbly. I knew the wings were stalled, but there was still a measure of rudder control. The nose of the ship fell in the stall, and I prevented a possible spin by kicking rudder one way and then the other in anticipation of the ship's tendency to “fall off.” I looked at the ground and saw that it was coming up toward me fast. I shoved the stick forward. After a moment the nose dropped sharply toward the ground. The landing strip was only about a hundred feet below me as I felt the airspeed pick up slightly. The stick pressure returned a bit, telling me the wings were out of the stall and were flying again. In another instant I would hit the ground. The nose of the plane was pointed down at a dangerous angle, but before the wheels touched I came back quickly with the stick. The nose of the craft rose up and up. I pulled the stick back now all the way into my lap. As it happened I had just enough forward speed to cushion the landing. All three points touched gently and simultaneously, and the ship rolled only a little way to a stop.

  I was almost as exultant over the success of this landing as I had been about the landing on my first check ride. I taxied into the line thinking that I would corner some of the boys standing around and ask them if they'd seen that landing. I parked the ship, filled out the form one, and rushed into the flight room. Lowe met me with an exceedingly mean gleam in his eye. “Who the hell do you think you are? I seen that landing. That airplane just fell in from 500 feet, that's what it did—just fell in! And the next time any student of mine gets smart enough to try that, if he don't break his damn neck he'll be out of here within twenty-four hours.” I believed him. Since that time I've seen a few complete wrecks resulting from pilots trying the same thing. I wasn't good—just lucky—because in such a stall it is impossible to tell exactly what a plane will do. All the fun was gone out of my prize landing.

  My last few days of training at Lincoln were happy. Upon expectation of moving out I traded my Ford convertible for a fine looking black Buick sedan. This transaction was by dint of a small but steady income enjoyed from the old law practice accounts receivable. I bought the car with the idea of making it a Christmas gift to my mother, but I made the mistake of telling that to my friends, who seized on it as a running gag.

  We weren't given the time off we had expected after finishing at Lincoln, and so instead of traveling to Paris, Kentucky, I loaded “mother's car” up with cadets and struck out for our assigned base at Randolph Field, Texas. Jake Greenwell, Chuck Kruck, Harry Cerha, and Ray Williams were with me. We had about one day and night to spare if we went straight to Texas and made good time. We decided to spend the extra day in Houston because everyone wanted to hear a famous boogie-woogie pianist named Peck Kelly. My mother's car arrived in San Antonio with its load of new cadets about ten o'clock the night after we left Houston. We stayed at the Saint Anthony Hotel because we heard most of the Randolph Field cadets frequented the Gunter, and we wanted no premature meetings with our upperclass.

  In the morning we drove out to Randolph. It was about fifteen miles northeast of San Antonio. Known as “the West Point of the Air,” Randolph was laid out with the exactness of an octagonally cut gem. I had seen its tall administration building many times in pictures. Coming in the front gate I felt a welling pride in the Air Corps and in being a part of it.

  Basic school was like a plunge into a pool of ice water. We had been so unbridled in training at primary school that we were amazed by the change. I thought the system was horrible. I was older than most of my classmates and I had been a first lieutenant in the Infantry Reserve. But in the early winter of 1940 that made absolutely no difference; I was merely a cadet. I learned from the upperclass that here I was “just another lousy dodo, lower than whaleshit,” who had to “reach up to touch bottom.” I drilled gladly all the time we were supposed to drill, but when not assigned to duty I stayed in my room. I acquired an intense dislike for my upperclassmen. About the only thing they did or said to me I didn't mind was when they called me “Kentucky,” which I liked.

  The flying was great. Our planes were the North American BT-14s, successors to the BT-9s. They were wonderful craft, and to us they seemed extremely complicated and powerful monsters. They had 450-horsepower engines, two-way radios, variable pitch propellers, and many complexities entirely new to us.

  On my first ride with Lieutenant Watkins, my instructor, we flew around to look over the area and then dropped down low to do figure eights over a road. The plane seemed very low to me, but I was confident Lieutenant Watkins knew what he was about. After a few figure eights he told me to take over and try some, but he warned me not to gain altitude. The thought struck me that he cared as much for his neck as I did for mine, and he wouldn't let me get low enough to hit anything. So I made a figure eight or two and then gradually began letting down until I was below the level of some of the trees. Some weeks later I was outside the instructors’ room and heard Watkins comment to another instructor about my almost knocking the tops out of some of the trees on the first day's flying. I discovered that one of the first tests given students in those days was carrying any maneuver down to a very low altitude to ascertain whether a student was ground shy. My flying perhaps wasn't great, but at least that was one test I passed.

  At that time, in the early winter of 1940, the United States was looking to major expansion of our air garrison in Hawaii and the Philippines, as well as the pilot training program at home. The crying need for pilots was obviously the reason I didn't feel in danger of washing out. Indeed, it might well have earned me my wings, for orders had gone out to the training center that all students who could possibly make the grade were to be passed. This is not to say that students were not being eliminated; only about 35 to 40 percent of my original class finally graduated. But in other times this might well have been 10 to 15 percent. Many of those who were eliminated from my original group survived to do service as bombardiers or navigators. Giving a washed-out pilot a shot at navigating or bombardiering has its faults. I lived to see in the combat zone the frustration of a would-be pilot relegated to a bombsight or a navigator's computer. It was a problem with no adequate answer.

  One night in the early stages of night flying I did royally mess things up. I suppose my own nervousness was the main cause. I forgot to relax. As soon as I took off that night I began having trouble with my radio. I couldn't get it tuned properly to the tower frequency. I had been called in to land several times but had not heard the calls. When the tower operator saw that his radio calls to me did no good he flashed me a green light with the “biscuit gun,” a signal spotlight used to give directions from the tower when radio communications fail. I had been completely checked out on dual night landings and the whole night procedure several nights before. I knew what a green light from the tower meant, but I was paying so much attention to tuning my radio that I never thought to look at the tower.

  All the other ships had been called out of their zones for their last landing and there I was still a circling lone companion to the stars. Finally it occurred to me that they
must have tried to get me to land. I made my approach, all the time continuing to twist the dial furiously in an attempt to get contact with the tower. Just as I was making my glide into the field I caught a scrap of a radio message, obviously meant for me: “Go around, you fool, you're too damn high.” I had committed again that grave error of dividing my attention. Sure enough, now I did notice I was too high—but then I was an expert at losing excess altitude. I would simply slow up my glide a little and come in shorter. Then I remembered what a narrow escape that last stall-in landing of mine was. I also remembered that I had been given a specific direction to go around. I did.

  I made only one landing that night to three or four for each of the other students. When flying was called off I went to the flight building to learn that the flight commander directed that I stay there until he came down from the tower. He came down shortly and gave me more concentrated hell than I'd had since I entered flying school. He made all sorts of the meanest personal references garnished with a little knife-edged profanity. When he finished shouting I would have gladly strangled him—except for the fact that I had promised myself a pair of wings. That was my narrowest squeak at Randolph. The next night I went out to fly again and I had no trouble at all. Maybe the screaming I got was just what I needed.

  Almost before I felt well settled at Randolph, I saw the announcement on the bulletin board that certain members of my class were to report to stand an extra inspection. It was apparent, though not announced, that we were being looked over as the prospective cadet officers to take over upon the departure of the upperclass. It came as something of a surprise to me, despite my previous military training. I supposed I had just come to think of myself as being unmilitary. We marched out single file and demonstrated one at a time our ability to give commands. Shortly thereafter appointment of the new cadet officers was announced. Chet Tucker became the “big dog,” otherwise known as the first captain, or battalion commander. I was selected second captain, and given command of our beloved C Company. That suited me fine, as Tucker and I had become good friends.

  Quickly on the heels of the announcement came the departure of our upperclass. Then a new class of dodos arrived. I never bothered the lower classmen except insofar as I had to run an orderly company. I felt their business at Randolph was to learn to fly and not to be hassled by me. I had had genuine affection for C Company before I ever came to command it, and my feeling grew substantially. It had been said for many years that the basic school should properly be called “Randolph-by-the-C.” While I was in command the company didn't win all the parades, but it was a fine organization, well drilled, smart looking, and proud, with magnificent spirit.

  As an upperclassman I had much more time to make acquaintances in the town of San Antonio and to see my friend Buck Harding, cousin of the beautiful Kak Hosford of Omaha and a flight instructor at Kelly Field. Buck planned to take leave to go home to Omaha for Christmas, but said he would see to it that I got put on some of the party lists during the season. I suppose he must also have told his friend Jean Browne to look after me. I saw myself building up to a grand holiday. Jean took me to three or four Christmas parties and introduced me to most of the season's group of young ladies of San Antonio. I was a little shocked to find that none of them seemed to think there was anything romantic in being a flying cadet. I discovered that cadets were called “gadgets” and that I had better parade as a visiting easterner rather than a local gadget, since gadgets continually overran the town. They were generally looked upon as a pack of drunks who hung out at the cadet club of the Gunter Hotel entertaining a group of perennials known as “cadet widows,” girls who accepted the attentions of each succeeding class of cadets.

  As my time at Randolph came to an end I was given some warning that I was to go to Kelly Field for advanced training, which pleased me very much. Kelly was an old Army field; most of the old timers since the days of World War I had gone there. In addition to the break I felt I was getting in my assignment, I learned that at advanced school I was to be the big dog. Tucker was going to Brooks Field. This would leave me the ranking officer of my class at Kelly Field and in command of the biggest contingent from Randolph. I left Randolph with no regrets.

  Kelly Field was located almost directly across town from Randolph on the southwestern edge of San Antonio, much closer in than Randolph. The best thing about the advanced school was the flying. We had North American AT-6s and BC-1s. They were very fine airplanes, about half again as powerful as our 450-horsepower basics. They had constant speed propellers, retractable landing gear, and many refinements that made us think they were almost the latest type of pursuit craft.

  Shortly after I arrived I met my instructor, a pint-sized Pennsylvanian named Richard Herbine. He was then a second lieutenant, in spite of the fact that he had more flying experience than almost any other instructor on the field. He had graduated from West Point a number of years before, had gone through the flying school, and had resigned his commission to go into civil aviation. As a civilian pilot he had flown for Eastern Airlines and had later become the director of the Division of Aeronautics for the state of Pennsylvania under Governor Earle. Lieutenant Herbine met more my idea of what a pilot should be than anyone I had ever known. He had a backlog of flying experience sufficient to carry him through any kind of emergency. He had all the daring necessary to do anything he needed to do, but he was not foolhardy. From him I learned that a pilot should have infinite coolness in emergencies, but also the caution to ensure that the only emergencies he ever meets are those not of his own making. A good Army pilot will perform a suicide mission in combat if need be, but he will not kill himself doing acrobatics low to the ground, buzz the house of his best girl, or take an airplane into bad weather if it is not a good ship to fly on instruments.

  By the strong rule of the alphabet, I found my closest associates among my classmates were Cadets Amend, Andrews, Couvrette, Crabtree, and Crewes. Frank Amend was from Stillwater, Oklahoma. Andy Andrews was a long-nosed, keen-witted lad from El Dorado, Arkansas. Couvrette hailed from San Diego. Crabtree was another Oklahoman from a little town named Ada. Johnny Crewes was from Columbia, South Carolina. Naturally we became a well-knit group within the larger organization of our class. We flew together and saw each other all day long. One of the main things which stimulates such friendship is formation flying. We had to fly on each other's wings from time to time and that requires complete reliance upon each other. We thought we were the best group of six on the field. We could put up two nice close-flown Vs of three aircraft. We loved formation flying in the same way that an infantryman loves good close-order drill. But it is really not the same thing at all. When I hit combat it didn't take me long to learn that in those days a pilot's life absolutely depended upon his ability to fly good formation, because its purpose was mutual protection.

  In trying to judge myself as a big dog, I can see that my failing was that I prized the friendship of my classmates too much to be a cadet captain of the strictly military type. I knew if the boys didn't like me I could “gig” them into line by depriving them of their time off. That seemed to be the traditional way. I gigged the boys hard sometimes, but then on more than one occasion I gigged myself after I had intentionally violated the rules and went out to “pound the ramp” with the rest of the guys walking off tours.

  I became more and more absorbed in flying. I found that Lieutenant Herbine had a great deal more to give his students than most of the new pilot instructors had, as a result of his experience with the airlines. I was fascinated with the business of learning to fly a radio beam. Lieutenant Herbine went into all the mechanics of how a beam works with four open quadrants in each of which a code letter A or N can be heard. These quadrants are bounded by four legs of the beam formed where the quadrant letters overlap each other. Since the signal for an A is a dot and then a dash, and the signal for an N is a dash and then a dot, the natural result of superimposing one over the other is the transmission of a steady hum over yo
ur radio receiver.

  I started taking beam procedure on our Link trainers before we ever had it scheduled. The Link was a little mock airplane, mounted on a pedestal, which by a thousand ingenious electric motors simulated the action of an airplane and recorded its action by an inked track on graph paper. The pilot using it was under a hood, operating flight instruments like those in an airplane. Great as we thought it was, it was strictly stone age compared to modern simulators.

  My early beam-flying instruction helped me a great deal when we were making our first night cross-country flight to Corpus Christi, Texas, which was about an hour south of Kelly Field. There was a light line leading to Corpus, but there were also several other light lines leading in different directions from the south part of San Antonio. I picked up the light line that seemed to coincide with the proper compass heading and set forth merrily. But after I had flown about fifteen minutes a suspicion entered my mind that I was off course. I couldn't find any reference that would assure me that I was where I ought to be. The lights of the city of San Antonio were now too far behind to help. I looked at the map in my lap and noticed that the south leg of the Kelly Field radio range ran directly down to Corpus Christi. Heading south from the field, the quadrant on the left side of the beam was an A and the one on the right was an N. I read off the frequency of the range and started trying to tune it in. After a moment I got what I thought was it—the monotonous “dit-daah, dit-daah, dit-daah” signal of the A quadrant. I listened intently for a few seconds waiting for the station identification signal to come on. Finally there was a pause in the “dit-daahs” and then came “daah-daah dit-dit—daah-dit.” That was it! Those were the letters ZN which identified the Kelly range. I knew then that I must be in the south A quadrant and I turned to a compass heading of due west. After a few minutes I passed through the on-course of the south leg and over into the N quadrant. Then I turned due south again and flew along the right-hand side of the beam. I didn't even look for lights any more.