“I’m glad you’re here,” Canidy went on. “I didn’t know about starting the engines inside the hangar.”
“We push aircraft to the center lane,” Reynolds said, “and make sure that both hangar doors are open. Then you might as well be outside. You’ve already been refueled.”
“I noticed,” Canidy said. “Thank you.”
“Sailor,” Reynolds said somewhat pompously to his driver, “would you round up some men to push the major’s aircraft?”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” the white hat said. Canidy winked at him, and he smiled back, as if to say that it was all right, Reynolds was a little salty, but a good guy.
Canidy climbed into the Beech, released the brakes, and strapped the thermos and the bag of sandwiches in the copilot’s seat. He wasn’t going to need the sandwiches between Lakehurst and Washington, but it had been a nice thing for Reynolds to do.
He started to leave the cockpit, when the airplane lurched. A half-dozen white hats had started to push it to the center of the hangar. He went aft and closed the door, then returned to the cockpit and strapped himself in. He saw another pair of white hats roll up an enormous fire extinguisher on what looked like wagon wheels.
The plane stopped moving.
Canidy looked at the window. “Clear!” he called.
“Clear!” one of the white hats called back. Canidy set the mixture, primed the port engine, and hit the engine start switch. The starter whined and then the port engine bucked, backfired, and finally caught. He started the other and looked out the window.
Commander Reynolds was standing there with his fist balled, thumb up.
Canidy smiled and gave him the gesture back, whereupon Commander Reynolds saluted. Canidy smiled again, returned the salute, and advanced the throttles.
Once he was clear of the hangar, he got on the radio and asked for taxi and takeoff instructions.
“Navy Six-one-one,” the tower replied, “you are cleared to taxi to the threshold of runway nine. Hold on the threshold. We have an aircraft on final.”
The aircraft on final was a Curtiss C-46. Canidy thought he was coming in way too high, and he was right.
“Six-one-one,” the tower promptly announced, “hold your position. The forty-six is going around.”
“Six-one-one, roger,” Canidy said.
He followed the C-46 with his eyes as it rose again and made a low turn over the pine barrens. It glistened in the sunlight. A new one, Canidy thought. The next time the C- 46 came around at an altitude Canidy saw was much too low. He was right again. Even over the racket of his idling engines, he heard the roar of the C-46’s engines as the pilot gave them enough throttle to make the end of the runway.
When the C-46 flashed by Canidy, he wondered what it was doing here. There were no markings on either wings, fuselage, or tail. The only time aircraft did not have at least identification numbers on them was when their paint had been stripped off, as the paint had been stripped from the Pan American Curtiss at Newark Airport. Was this the Pan American Curtiss? If so, what was it doing here?
The Beech, caught in the C-46’s air disturbance, rocked. Canidy was reminded how big the C-46 really was and how powerful its engines.
“Six-one-one, you are clear for takeoff as soon as the forty-six clears the runway.”
“Roger,” Canidy replied as the forty-six moved past him. When it turned off the runway, its prop blast again rocked the Beech. Canidy waited until it stopped shaking, then spoke one final time into the microphone.
“Six-one-one rolling.”
A few minutes after ten, over eastern Maryland, Canidy raised the Anacostia tower and requested landing permission.
When he went into base operations to arrange for the refueling of the airplane, a Navy captain, curious about an Army pilot flying a Navy airplane, looked at the paperwork, and grew even more curious when he read it.
He had heard about this strange Beech D18S. Officially, he had been informed that by authority of the Chief of Naval Operations “the Navy liaison officer to the Coordinator of Information” would from time to time be basing a D18 aircraft at Anacostia. The aircraft was not to be considered part of the Anacostia fleet, and no one was to use the aircraft without the specific permission of Captain Peter Douglass, USN, the senior Naval officer assigned to COI.
“You at this place, too, Major?” the Navy captain, whose name was Chester Wezevitz, asked. “The information coordinator, or whatever it is?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“What the hell is it?” the captain asked. “I guess what I’m