“You just volunteered to run around in the Philippines, Lieutenant,” Whittaker said. “How do you feel about that?”
“I thought I had to prove I was a radio wizard first,” Hammersmith said.
“That was before you told me you have the hots for our girl . . . ,” Whittaker said.
“Damn you!” Cynthia said.
“Obviously,” Whittaker went on, “I could not go off to run around in the jungle and eat monkeys and leave you here to pursue yon fair maiden by yourself.”
“Obviously not,” Hammersmith said, and chuckled.
Damn it, Cynthia thought, they like each other!
3
FERSFIELD ARMY AIR CORPS STATION BEDFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND 7 FEBRUARY 1943
First Lieutenant Henry “Hank” Darmstadter, U.S. Army Air Corps, a stocky, round-faced young officer of twenty-three, was not sure why he had volunteered for a “classified assignment involving great personal risk” or why he had been accepted.
As a simple statement of fact, rather than from modesty, he understood that he was not the world’s greatest airplane driver. There was proof of this. He had twice—once in basic and again in advanced—been sent before the elimination board. The first time, the reason had been simple. He had suffered airsickness.
The only reason he had not been eliminated in basic and sent to navigator’s or bombardier’s school, or for that matter to aerial gunner’s school, was that his class had an extraordinary number of cadets who also suffered from airsickness, plus half a dozen guys who had just quit. The elimination board had considered all those cadets who had an airsickness problem and decided that Darmstadter, H., was the least inept of the inept.
They really couldn’t eliminate all of those who under other circumstances should have been eliminated. Pilots were in short supply, and the demand was growing. When he had been given another “probationary period” by the elimination board, it had two conditions. The first was official: that he “demonstrate his ability to perform aerobatic maneuvers without manifesting signs of illness or disorientation. ” Translated, that meant that he do a loop without getting airsick. The second, unofficial, unspoken condition was that he understand he would not get to be a fighter pilot or a bomber pilot, and that there was a good likelihood, presuming he got his wings, that he would be assigned to a liaison squadron, flying single-engine two-seaters. Or even be assigned to the Artillery to fly Piper Cubs directing artillery fire.
Hank Darmstadter had conquered his airsickness. He wasn’t sure whether this was because he had grown accustomed to the world turning at crazy angles or to being upside down, or because he had simply stopped eating when he knew that he was going to be flying.
He had been given his wings and his second lieutenant’s gold bar and sent to advanced training. Not in P-51s or P- 38s or B-17s or B-24s, but in C-45s. The C-45 was a small, twin-engine aircraft built by Beech. It had several missions in the Army Air Corps, none of them connected directly with bringing aerial warfare to the enemy. It was used as a small passenger transport, and it was used as a flying classroom to train navigators and bombardiers.
Two weeks before Hank Darmstadter was to graduate from advanced training in the C-45 aircraft, he had, flying solo, dumped one. He had lost the right engine on takeoff, and if he had had one hundred feet less altitude, he would have gone into the ground. But the hundred feet made the difference, and he had been able to stand it on its wing and make a 360-degree turn and get it back onto the runway, downwind and with the wheels up, just as the second engine cut out.
Thirty seconds after he had scrambled out the small door in the fuselage, there had been a dull rumble, and then a larger explosion as the fuel tanks ignited and then exploded.
When he appeared before that elimination board, they had discussed the accident and Darmstadter, 2nd Lt. H., as if he were not there. In the opinion of one of his examiners, if he was that far along in the course, he should have known and demonstrated the proper procedure to follow in the case of engine failure on takeoff. And the proper procedure was not to make a dangerous 360 and land the wrong way on the runway as Darmstadter had done, but to make the proper adjustments for flight on one engine, then to circle the field and gain sufficient altitude to make a proper approach