Air Force Eagles (11 page)

Then, more seriously, "John, I owe you a lot. If you hadn't blown that Spit off my tail, I'd have had it. My engine was already cooking; I'd never have been able to fight them off."

*

Nashville, Tennessee/June 5, 1948

Milo Ruddick glanced at the sign and smiled approvingly.

Ruddick whistled. "Whooee! Well, I know a good old boy like Troy has figured out some way to charge it off to the government. But I thought surplus airplanes were dirt cheap."

Letting the sarcasm pass, Coleman said, "The planes were cheap enough; we got four Sidewinders for six hundred bucks apiece from the storage yard at Kingman. But it takes dough to modify them."

"How they coming along?" Milo always dropped into his Little Rock drawl whenever he was enjoying himself.

"Great. We've kept two stock, for trainers, and Abe Corrson, one of the all-time great speed merchants from the prewar Cleveland air races, is converting two into racers. Troy's named them Viper I and Viper II."

"Can I meet him?"

They walked into the brightly lit shop where Corrson was bending over a workbench, and Ruddick whispered, "Looks like Tony Galento."

The mechanic had the ominous aura of an all-night filling station operator, with a sloping brow, beer belly, and a once-powerful physique covered by hair that tufted into surrealistic topiary art around his tattoos. He barked a few orders and walked away from the team of mechanics busy transforming two obsolete fighters into racing machines, Sidewinders into Vipers.

After the introductions, Coleman asked, "What are you working on now, Abe?"

Fat as he was, Corrson was a ruthless specialist in airplane weight reduction. "We're knocking off pounds. I got them stripping every surplus ounce. We're pulling all the war gear—gun mounts, firing controls, armor plate, radio equipment, even the emergency systems."

"You save a fraction of an ounce here, a fraction of an ounce there, pretty soon you save a pound. That means you need less fuel, so you save some more."

Milo kicked a soft amorphous bundle of rubber. "What's this?"

"It's the self-sealing fuel tanks. We don't need 'em, nobody will be shooting at us. We'll be putting in lightweight neoprene fuel cells from U.S. Rubber."

Waddling toward the wall, he said, "You wanna see a hunnert-pound saving—take a look at dis."

The Sidewinder's regular canopy was sitting on the floor; next to it was a lightweight Plexiglas bubble just larger than the pilot's head. Ruddick looked dubious.

"How will Bob be able to see out of this?"

"He's going to be out front—all he'll have to do is look straight ahead." Pride registered in the fat man's voice. "And if you think this is something, take a look at dis."

He led them to the wing, sitting forlornly on a dolly, the tips a jagged mass of metal.

"We've chopped six and a half feet off each side, gives it a wingspan of twenty-five feet, just about the same as the old Gee-Bees—but with three times the horsepower."

Coleman was no engineer, but he knew that clipping the wings cut down on both lift and drag.

"What's this going to do to stall speeds during the turns?"

"They're going up, Stan." Corrson's voice was contemptuous. "You don't get sumpin' for nuttin'. The guy that flies this is really going to have to be a pilot, not just a limp-wristed pylon pusher."

Ruddick gulped and asked again, "Is it going to be safe?"

Corrson quietly put down his tools, spat, and said, "Shit no, I tole you it ain't gonna be safe, it's gonna be fast. You want to win the fucking race, or you want to be safe?"

Seeing Ruddick's appalled expression, Corrson relented. "Look, it ain't all bad. I'm moving the radiators from the fuselage to these streamlined wingtip fairings. They'll act like endplates and make it easier to fly." He hesitated and said, "Easier than it looks now, anyway. And I'm changing to a thirty-six-volt electrical system; it'll pull the gear up right fast, and get your boy off to a quick lead."

Corrson's face split into a gap-toothed grin, as if he'd solved everybody's problems.

Coleman smiled back weakly. "Tell us about the engines, Abe."

"Hey, they're completely rebuilt. The Allison in a Sidewinder put out about thirteen-hundred horsepower with a three-bladed prop. This's got a four-bladed prop and a two-stage supercharger."

He patted the engine fondly, as if it were a favorite puppy. "This little devil will deliver twenty-eight hundred horsepower at sea level. We'll be pulling a hundred fifteen inches of manifold pressure at thirty-three fifty rpm, running on a special Shell triptane fuel."

Ruddick poked around the piles of parts for a while, then walked out shaking his head, Coleman trailing behind. Turning, Ruddick asked, "Tell me the truth, Stan—is it safe for Bob to fly this thing? I don't want him killed."

"Don't worry, Milo, I'm not going to let Bob get into trouble. He's been practicing in the stock Sidewinders, and doing real good. Today's he's flying practice laps on the race course Troy had laid out—fifteen miles long, four pylons. He's due back about now—let's go down to the operations office and wait for him."

"Well, no offense, Stan, but I'm going to get a second opinion."

Coleman felt relief—he didn't like being on the hook. "Good idea; get somebody to look the racers over, maybe have them fly with Bob. That's the way to go."

"Don't say anything to Bob about this. I don't want to spook him. I'll work it in sometime after the racers are ready to go. Understand?"

"Gotcha."

*

Washington, D.C./July 16, 1948

"Honest to God, Bandy, I don't know what you're thinking about. I understand Milo Ruddick asked you to see him two weeks ago."

"He asked; he didn't tell me. I had stuff to do."

They were sitting on a horsehair-stuffed leather couch in Ruddick's outer office, sweat-stained from the D.C. heat outside. Bandfield moved his foot and a spittoon clanged.

"This place gives me the creeps—you'd think Daniel Webster was going to walk in."

"I wish to hell we
were
visiting Daniel Webster instead of Milo Ruddick. He's pissed off that you didn't report as soon as he asked you to."

The pleasant-looking secretary nodded, and they went inside. Ruddick moved around from behind his desk, smiling, clasping Varney's hand in his, then putting his arm around Bandfield's shoulder.

Ruddick was dressed in an expensive pinstripe suit. Bandfield had never seen a shirt like the one he was wearing; it had a white collar and long French cuffs, but the rest of the shirt was a deep blue. He didn't like it, but he knew it had to be expensive. Everything about Ruddick seemed expensive—especially his goodwill.

"So here's our elusive Colonel Bandfield. You know, Colonel"—it sounded like
Cunnel
—"when I call a military officer in, even a four-star general, they're usually pretty prompt."

"Well, a firm is modifying two McNaughton Sidewinders into racing planes. My son is supposed to fly one of them in the Thompson Trophy race at Cleveland."

"This year?"

"No, they won't be ready by September, they're shooting for 1949. Sometime between now and then, I'd like you to go out to Nashville and look at the racer. Then fly with my son and see if he has the skill to handle it."

"I'm sure General Varney will give me time to do that. But your son is probably qualified—you told me he flew McNaughtons during the war, didn't you?"

"Yes, but these are going to be highly modified. Frankly, they scare me. I'd like you to take a look. Now, tell me what you learned about integration."

Bandfield looked down and scuffed his foot on the thin carpet. "Mr. Ruddick, you're not going to like what I have to say. I talked to a lot of people around the country. I talked to Colonel Johnson at Lockbourne. It looks to me like the service is making a big mistake with segregation. We're missing out on a lot of talent, and spending a lot of money doing it."

"Well, it's a moot point. In ten days, the President is going to sign an executive order that will force integration in the services. So all this doesn't sound too bad to me; I don't mind those findings at all."

Varney looked relieved as Bandfield went on. "Yes, but I also found out that you're lying through your teeth when you say you don't oppose integration personally. You had my friend, John Marshall, fired at McNaughton, just because he was a Negro!"

Varney jumped in. "Colonel Bandfield, you're out of line." He turned to Ruddick. "I'm sorry, sir, I had no idea this would happen."

Not accustomed to sharp talk from subordinates, Ruddick stepped forward in anger, fists balled, then stopped to compose himself. After a teeth-clenched moment he grunted, "I'm sure you didn't, General. This is outrageous, and it makes me wonder if Colonel Bandfield has the good judgment required to fly Air Force aircraft. I'm going to have to look into this matter."

Bandfield strode toward the office door; then on impulse he turned around, to ask, "Does this mean you don't want me to go to Nashville and fly with your son?"

Varney shot toward him bellowing, "This is no joking matter, Bandfield. You shut up before I shut you up!"

*

Washington, D.C./July 23, 1948

The men who'd slaved under him in the China-Burma-India theater called him "Larry the Lash." Now Lawrence Gunter sat at his Pentagon desk, face flushed with anger, yelling, "Don't tell me he's under house arrest! Tell me you'll have him in my office in an hour. You understand, one goddamn hour!" He slammed the receiver down, cracking the black plastic.

The morning had gone well until now; his long-awaited appointment as commander of the Berlin Airlift had finally come through. Major General Gunter, with his patented combination of begging and threatening, had just finished wringing twenty of the best people in the Air Force out of personnel for Operation Vittles. But now he'd been told that the one man he wanted most was under house arrest at nearby Boiling Air Force Base, and "might not be available."

While he waited, Gunter reviewed the facts. The Russians, rattling tanks instead of swords, had clamped a blockade around Berlin on June 23rd, knowing that the United States didn't have the military power to prevent it. The United States had hung tough. On June 26th, aircraft under the command of Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay began airlifting food and coal packed in GI duffle bags into the beleaguered city of more than two million people. The "LeMay Coal and Feed Company" was doing a good job, using twin-engine Douglas C-47s to airlift as much as a thousand tons a day, and America was responding with pride.

LeMay was the combat commander who had burned Japan to the ground, but Gunter was a master of airlift, his training gained flying the Himalayan Hump. Gunter—and the men he'd just chosen—had more airlift experience than any other group in the world.

The papers on Gunter's desk were filled with the excitement of LeMay's efforts—the hustle and bustle at the terminals, aircraft lined up waiting to be loaded, tired crews staggering out for yet another flight, and maintenance doing miracles on the flight line. Twenty-four hours a day, long lines of C-47s and a few of the larger, more efficient C-54s passed through the crowded aerial corridor to Berlin, stacking up to orbit in great columns of traffic before letting down to land. And each day, the tonnage being lifted rose.

It made wonderful reading—and it was all wrong. Gunter knew that there shouldn't be any airplanes parked—they should either be in the air or in maintenance. The crews shouldn't be tired—they should be flying or resting. And there shouldn't be a stack of orbiting traffic; instead, the stream of aircraft should be regulated like a conveyor belt, moving at equal speeds, precisely spaced, and never deviating from standard procedures. If a plane had a problem, or got sent around for weather, it should simply plod back to the point of origin to rejoin the stream in a never-ending process flow. Gunter knew that you had a good airlift—and the airlift over the Hump had been the best—when it became a boring operation to watch.