The Fighting Agents Part 17

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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.signed to a liaison squadron, flying single-engine two-seaters. Or even be a.s.signed 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 pa.s.senger transport, and it was used as a flying cla.s.sroom 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 alt.i.tude, 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 alt.i.tude to make a proper approach (that is, from the other direction, into the wind).

Another of his examiners, to Darmstadter's considerable surprise, had taken the position that since no one was with him in the c.o.c.kpit, they didn't know what had happened, and that it wasn't really fair to a.s.sume that he had done what he had done from panic; that he was ent.i.tled to the benefit of the doubt; and that Darmstadter's best judgment had been to do what he had done.

There had been seven officer pilots on the elimination board. The vote-it was supposed to be secret, but the president of the board told him anyway-was four to three not to eliminate him. He would be permitted to graduate and to transition to Douglas C-47 aircraft.

The C-47-the Army Air Corps version of the Douglas DC-3 airliner-was supposed to be the most forgiving aircraft, save the Piper Cub, in the Army Air Corps. Douglas was building them by the thousands, and each of them needed two pilots. They were used as personnel transports and cargo aircraft. Most of the C-47s being built would be used in support of airborne operations, both to carry paratroopers and to tow gliders.

Hank Darmstadter had understood that his glamorous service as an Air Corps pilot would be in the right-copilot's-seat of a C-47 Gooney Bird. He would work the radios and the landing gear and the flaps, while a more skillful pilot would do the flying.

And that's what he had done at first when he'd come to England. But then the system had caught up with him. He had received an automatic promotion to first lieutenant, based solely on the length of his service. It was the policy of the troop carrier wing commander that the pilot-in-command, whenever possible, be senior to the copilot. And Darmstadter had picked up enough hours, and enough landings and takeoffs as a copilot, to be qualified as an aircraft commander.

Ten days before, when his squadron had returned from a practice mission-in empty aircraft practicing low-level formation flight as required for the dropping of parachutists-the troop carrier wing commander had gathered the pilots in a maintenance hangar and told them Eighth Air Force was looking for twin-engine qualified pilots for a "cla.s.sified mission involving great personal risk" and that those inclined to volunteer should see the adjutant.

Only three Gooney Bird pilots had volunteered. The other two were pilots who desperately wanted to be fighter pilots, and believed that unless they did something, anything, to get out of Gooney Birds, they would spend the war in a Gooney Bird c.o.c.kpit.

Hank Darmstadter, who himself would have loved to be a fighter pilot, didn't think there was any chance at all of getting to be one by volunteering for this "cla.s.sified mission. " He could think of no good, logical reason for his having volunteered. Without false heroics, he understood that there was hazard enough in either towing gliders or dropping parachutists when there were a hundred Gooney Birds all doing the same thing at the same time in a very small chunk of airs.p.a.ce.

The one reason he had volunteered was that he had wanted to, and he was perfectly willing to admit that it was probably a G.o.dd.a.m.ned dumb thing to do.

When he saw the adjutant, there was a short questionnaire to fill out. It asked the routine questions, and a couple of strange ones. One question was to rate his own ability as a pilot, with five choices from "completely competent" down through "marginally competent." Darmstadter had judged himself in the middle: "reasonably competent, considering experience and training." Another question wanted to know if he spoke a foreign language, and if so, which one and how well. And the last question was whether or not he had any relatives, however remote the connection, living on the European continent, and if so, their names and addresses.

He was tempted to answer "no" to both questions, but in the end, he put down that he understood German, and that he had a great-uncle, Karl-Heinz Darmstadter, and presumably some other relatives, in Germany but that he didn't know where.

He hadn't quite forgotten about having volunteered, but he had put it out of his mind. For one thing, he felt pretty sure if they were making a selection of volunteers, they would probably have a dozen better qualified people than a Gooney Bird driver to pick, and for another, considering the Army Air Corps bureaucracy, it would take three weeks or a month before they told him "thanks, but no thanks."

At four o'clock this morning, the charge of quarters had come to his Quonset hut, and told him the adjutant wanted to see him. The adjutant had handed him a teletype message:

PRIORITY.

HQ EIGHTH US AIR FORCE.

COMMANDING OFFICER 312TH TROOP CARRIER WING.

1ST LT HENRY G. DARMSTADTER 03434090 2101 TROOP.

CARRIER SQUADRON TRANSFERRED AND WILL.

IMMEDIATELY PROCEED FERSFIELD ARMY AIR CORPS.

STATION REPORTING UPON ARRIVAL THEREAT TO.

COMMANDING OFFICER 402ND COMPOSITE SQUADRON.

FOR DUTY. OFFICER WILL CARRY ALL SERVICE RECORDS.

AND ALL PERSONAL PROPERTY. CO 312TH TCW DIRECTED.

TO PROVIDE MOST EXPEDITIOUS AIR OR GROUND.

TRANSPORTATION.

BY COMMAND OF LT GENERAL EAKER.

A.J. MACNAMEE COLONEL USAAC ADJUTANT GENERAL.

At 0400 there was soup thick enough to cut with a knife, and the weather forecast said "snow and/or freezing rain," so the most expeditious air or ground transportation had been a jeep. It had been a five-hour drive, and Darmstadter had been stiff with cold when they were pa.s.sed inside the Fersfield gate by an MP wearing his scarf wrapped around his head against the cold.

"The 402nd's way the h.e.l.l and gone the other end of the field, Lieutenant. When you see a B-17 graveyard, you found it," the MP said.

As they drove down a road paralleling the north-south runway, past lines of B-17s in revetments, Darmstadter was surprised to hear an aircraft approaching, engines throttled back for landing. He stuck his head out the side of the jeep and looked at the sky. It was neither raining nor snowing, but conditions were far below what he thought of as minimums of visibility.

And then he saw the airplane. It was a B-25, and for a moment he thought the pilot had overshot the runway and would have to go around. But the pilot set it down anyway.

d.a.m.ned fool! Darmstadter thought, professionally. Darmstadter thought, professionally.

They reached the end of the runway. There was, as the MP had said, a B-17 graveyard: fifteen, maybe twenty, battered and wrecked and skeletal B-17s, some missing engines, some with no landing gear, their fuselages sitting on the ground. Three battered B-17s, Darmstadter saw with confused interest, were still flyable, to judge by their positions near the taxi ramp and by the fire extinguishers and other ground equipment near them. But the tops of their fuselages, except for portions of the pilots' winds.h.i.+elds, were gone, as if someone had simply taken a cutting torch and cut them away. Someone, for reasons Darmstadter could not imagine, had turned three B-17s into open-c.o.c.kpit aircraft.

There were half a dozen Quonset huts and a homemade arrangement of tent canvas and wooden supports that obviously served as some sort of hangar, or at least a means to work on engines out of the snow and rain.

As the jeep approached the area, the B-25 he had seen land taxied down a dirt taxiway, turned around with a roar of its engines, and stopped. Three sailors-it took Darmstadter a moment to be sure that's what they really were- trotted up to the B-25 and started to tie it down and put chocks in place. The crew door dropped open and an Air Corps officer jumped to the ground. Darmstadter waited for the rest of the crew to come out, and then, when the pilot turned and pushed the door closed, he was forced to conclude that, in violation of regulations-and, as far as he was concerned, common sense-the B-25 had been flown without either a copilot or a flight engineer.

The jeep, all this time, had been moving.

"This must be it, Lieutenant," the jeep driver said, and pointed to a small sign reading simply ORDERLY ROOM nailed to the door of one of the Quonsets.

"I'll see," Darmstadter said, and got out of the jeep and walked to the Quonset.

He knocked and was told to come in. Inside were two Navy enlisted men, three Air Corps enlisted men, and three naval officers, all three of them wearing gold naval aviator's wings. Two of them were wearing USN fur-collared leather, zipper jackets. The third wore a navy blouse, with pilot's wings, the gold sleeve stripes of a lieutenant commander, and an impressive row of ribbons. Some of them Darmstadter had never seen before, but he recognized both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart.

Darmstadter saluted.

"Sir, I'm looking for the 402nd Composite Wing."

"You've found it, Lieutenant," the Navy flyer with the DFC said. He offered his hand. "I'm Commander Bitter."

"How do you do, Sir," Darmstadter said.

"You must be Darmstadter," the lieutenant commander said.

"Yes, Sir," Darmstadter said. He handed over a Certified True Copy of the teletype message from Eighth Air Force.

The door opened and a tall Air Corps officer, a major, the one Darmstadter had seen climb out of the B-25, entered the Quonset hut. For the first time, Darmstadter got a good look at his leather A-2 jacket. There was a Chinese flag and what was apparently some kind of a message in Chinese characters painted on the back.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing flying in that s.h.i.+t?" one of the other Navy flyers said. He was the oldest of the three, a ruddy-faced middle-aged man.

"Oh, ye of little faith!" the Air Corps major said, then turned to Darmstadter. "You must be Darmstadter."

"Yes, Sir," Darmstadter said.

"I could tell because you looked confused," the major said. "And like the kind of guy who would dump a C-45." He paused a moment. "You're in good company, Lieutenant. Commander Bitter also dumped one, didn't you, Commander?"

The middle-aged Navy flyer laughed.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n, I'd forgotten about that," he said. "He did, didn't he?"

"Presumably," Commander Bitter said, his voice revealing that he was a little annoyed at the reference to a dumped C-45, "you're going to explain what this is all about?"

"I'm going to borrow Dolan for a couple of days," the major said, and then, as if he had just remembered his manners, offered his hand to Darmstadter. "I'm d.i.c.k Canidy, Darmstadter. Welcome aboard."

"Sir," Darmstadter said, "I'm a little confused."

"So am I," Commander Bitter said. "Where are you and Dolan going?"

"An island called Vis in the Adriatic Sea," Canidy said, then turned to Darmstadter. "You checked out in the B-25, Darmstadter?"

"No, Sir," Darmstadter said. "I've never even been in one."

"Fine," the major said. "I was afraid you might have picked up some bootleg time."

Darmstadter was now wholly confused.

"No, Sir," he said.

"Eric needs a ride home," Canidy said. "We're going to take Lieutenant Darmstadter along with us."

"He just said he's never even been in a B-25," Commander Bitter said.

"That's the whole idea," Canidy replied. He turned to face Darmstadter. "What I want to find out is whether a pilot with about your level of skill can be taught to land and take off from a dirt runway with a stream running through the middle of it."

"Sir?"

"It'll be two or three days before we go," Canidy said, "time enough for Commander Dolan to check you out in the B-25. That is, presuming you're still an eager volunteer? "

"Sir, I'm still confused," Darmstadter said.

"But maybe you've heard enough to rethink a little? Reconsider volunteering? If you want to walk, you can walk right now. No hard feelings, and no black marks on your record."

"You aren't pulling my leg, are you, Major?" Darmstadter said. "You're making a joke of it, but you really meant everything you said, didn't you?"

Canidy nodded.

"And that's all I'm going to be told, isn't it?"

The major nodded again.

"In or out, Darmstadter?" Canidy asked. "It's up to you."

"In, Sir," Darmstadter said.

"Commander Dolan," the major said, "may I suggest we follow that delightful naval custom of splicing the main brace to welcome a new officer to the wardroom?"

"Aye, aye, Sir," Commander Dolan said, and took a bottle of bourbon from a file cabinet.

"For Christ's sake," Commander Bitter said, "it's half past ten in the morning!"

"I'm Joe Kennedy," the third naval aviator said to Darmstadter, offering his hand. The gold letters below the aviator's wings on the leather patch sewn to his flight jacket identified him as LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR., USNR. "It's a little crazy around here, but you get used to it."

Dolan pa.s.sed around gla.s.ses that had once contained Kraft cheese spread. They now held a good two inches of the bourbon. Commander Bitter shook his head but took one.

Canidy took a small swallow of the whiskey.

"Rule One around here, Darmstadter," he said, "is that you don't write home to Mommy about what you're doing or what you've seen. And you don't tell your pals, either. The Second Great Commandment is like unto the first. You don't ask questions. But before we put that into effect, you can have one question."

There were at least a dozen questions spinning around in Darmstadter's mind. He was surprised at the one he blurted: "Why are the tops cut off those B-17s?"

"That's not the question I expected," Canidy said. "I thought you'd ask what's going on around here. Then I would have told you that you have just joined the OSS on a probationary status. If you turn out, you'll join the OSS's private air corps. If you don't . . . you won't like what will happen if you don't. Not a threat, a statement of fact."

Darmstadter had heard about the OSS. Very hush-hush, involved in all sorts of things involving espionage and sabotage and dropping agents behind enemy lines.

Canidy saw the shock on Darmstadter's face and smiled.

"As far as the B-17s are concerned," Canidy went on, "what we're trying to do with them is turn them into radio-controlled flying bombs. We fill them with an English explosive called Torpex. Then Joe gets in, fires it up, and takes off. We cut the roof off so he can bail out. The plane is then flown to the target by radio control. If we can get the sonofab.i.t.c.h to work twice in a row, we're going to fly one into the German submarine pens at Saint-Lazare. So far we haven't been able to get it to work twice in a row."

Darmstadter looked into Canidy's face and saw that he had been told the truth. "You've had your question," Canidy said. "I answered it. That's all you get."

"I understand, Sir," Darmstadter said seriously.

The door of the Quonset creaked again as it opened. Darmstadter saw an enormous Packard limousine sitting outside. It had been adopted for military service by having a serial number stenciled onto the hood and the words U.S. ARMY on the doors. But it still looked, Darmstadter thought, as if it should be rolling up to Buckingham Palace and not a Quonset hut in a B-17 graveyard.

A tall, attractive woman wearing the uniform of a sergeant of the Women's Royal Army Corps came in. The uniform was of rough woolen material and ill-fitting, but it did not hide the fact that beneath it was a very well set-up female, indeed.

She looked curiously, hesitantly, at Darmstadter.

In the prescribed British manner, the WRAC sergeant came to stiff attention and stamped her foot.