The Fighting Agents Part 19

1.

FERSFIELD ARMY AIR CORPS STATION BEDFORDs.h.i.+RE, ENGLAND 0615 HOURS 12 FEBRUARY 1943.

Canidy was late. He had been expected at 0600. And Lt. Hank Darmstadter had been waiting to go since he had awakened, after a restless night, at quarter to four. When he looked out the window, there was thick fog, so thick that flight in his Troop Carrier Squadron would not even have been considered. It was likely that the fog would keep them from flying, but there was no one at 0345 whom he could ask.

Dolan knocked on Darmstadter's door at 0500 and seemed surprised to find him wearing the high-alt.i.tude flight gear over his uniform.

"Why don't you leave that sheepskin gear here?" Dolan suggested. "I thought we'd ride over and get breakfast in the Air Corps mess."

Dolan ate a hearty, air-crew-about-to-go-on-a-combat-mission breakfast, complete with real eggs and a slice of ham. Darmstadter's Troop Carrier Squadron had not gone on combat missions and consequently had been issued no fresh eggs, so they should have been a real treat. But he was so nervous he had no appet.i.te, and he ate them only because he told himself he needed the nutrition.

A jeep took them to the revetment where the B-25G had been readied for flight. Dolan made a careful, if leisurely, preflight examination of the aircraft, then hoisted himself onto the hood of the jeep and waited for Canidy to show up.

"You think we're going to go, Commander?" Darmstadter asked. When Dolan's eyes rose in question, Darmstadter added, "The fog?"

"What I'm wondering about is where's Canidy?" Dolan said.

For lack of some better way to kill time, Darmstadter walked around the airplane again. Knowing that he was not only to be checked out in the B-25G but that they were about to make a long-distance flight in it, Darmstadter had studied at length and with great interest TM 1-B-25-G, Flight Operations Manual, B-25G (Series) Aircraft. TM 1-B-25-G, Flight Operations Manual, B-25G (Series) Aircraft.

He had realized the moment Commander Dolan had taken him out to the airplane for his first ride that most of his dedicated study had been a waste of time.

"You'll notice," Dolan had told him, "that we've modified this one a little."

It was a ma.s.sive understatement.

The B-25G had been delivered to the Eighth Air Force with a twin .50-caliber machine-gun position in the tail; with another pair of .50s in a rotating turret on top of the fuselage at the leading edge of the wing; with two single .50-caliber machine-gun positions-"waist guns"-in the sides of the fuselage; and with two fixed .50s and a 75mm M4 cannon in the nose.

All of the guns had been removed and their positions faired over. The bomb-dropping racks and mechanism were gone, and the bomb-bay doors were riveted permanently closed. Auxiliary fuel tanks had been installed in what had been the bomb bay, where the bombs were supposed to be.

In the fuselage aft of the trailing edge of the wing, where the radio operator's and waist gunner's positions had been, there were now five-as many as would fit-light brown leather civilian airliner pa.s.senger seats.

The seats had been "salvaged," Dolan told Darmstadter, from a U.S. Navy Boeing "Strato-Cruiser" transport, that Canidy had "dumped in Africa."

Darmstadter was very curious to learn more about that, but he had come to understand that while Major Canidy and the others seemed to make jokes about everything else, Canidy had been dead serious about the "Ask No Questions" rule.

Dolan had given Darmstadter seven hours of in-flight instruction in the B-25G, which was really more than it sounded like, because with the exception of the first takeoff and landing, Dolan had never touched the controls again.

Somewhat to Darmstadter's surprise, he had been an apt pupil. Dolan's only criticism had come right at the start, "Don't try so hard. It's not that hard to fly, and you're a better pilot than you think you are."

He had made mistakes, of course, but after Dolan had shown him what he was doing wrong, he had not made that particular mistake again. He had had the most trouble, not surprisingly, in landing. The B-25G came in a lot hotter than the C-47, and if the power settings were not right on the mark, it dropped like a stone. The Gooney Bird was a very forgiving aircraft; the B-25 was not.

But he'd shot hour after hour of touch-and-go landings until his technique satisfied Dolan. Then he'd spent another two hours trying to touch down right at the end of the runway and to bring it to a complete stop as quickly as possible. He was aware that he had not been able to accomplish that to Dolan's satisfaction. And he was embarra.s.sed about that, even after he told himself that he should not be. What Dolan was asking would have been difficult for a good, experienced pilot, and he knew he was neither.

They heard the crunch of automobile tires a minute before they could see the glow of headlights in the fog. But then the distinctive grille of the Packard limousine appeared.

"I stopped to get the latest forecast," Canidy said by way of greeting. "I presume that the rubber bands are all wound up and we can go?"

"It'll take five minutes to light the runway," Dolan said.

"It'll take that long to warm it up," Canidy said. "Tell them to light it."

Darmstadter was confused by that. There were no landing field lights at Fersfield. If there were, he thought, he would have seen them.

Commander Bitter and Lt. Kennedy drove up in a jeep.

"I would suggest that you wait until you've got at least a thousand feet," Bitter said. "But Weather says it's going to be this way until noon, maybe later."

"I think we can get off," Canidy said. He turned to Darmstadter. "Get aboard, Darmstadter," he said. "Strap yourself in the seat that faces backward."

Then he gestured for Dolan to precede him aboard. It was more than a gesture of courtesy, Darmstadter saw. He was telling Dolan that Dolan would function as aircraft commander.

As Darmstadter was strapping himself in, Canidy appeared momentarily in the cabin to wedge a canvas Valv-Pak between one of the seats and the fuselage ribs. Then he disappeared. The plane shook as the left engine started to turn, then caught.

From where he was sitting, Darmstadter could look out the small window where the waist gunner position had been faired over with Perspex. Though he couldn't see much, he did see Sgt. Draper standing beside Commander Bitter, both of them with their hands raised in farewell. And then there was nothing to see but the edge of the taxiway as the B-25G trundled to the threshold of the runway. Then he saw a fire at the end of the runway. He unstrapped himself for a better look, and saw that it was a GI can-a No. 10 tin can-and that the fire burning in it was gasoline. Pressing his head against the Perspex, he looked as far as he could down the runway. It was lined at fifty-foot intervals with flaming GI cans.

He realized that the burning sand-and-gasoline-filled cans were the runway lights Canidy and Dolan had been talking about. They would not "light" the runway, in the sense of illuminating it, but they would provide an indication where the runway was. He quickly counted cans. He got to fourteen. That meant seven hundred feet. Not nearly enough to take off.

And at that moment, having completed the run-up of engines, the B-25 started to move.

As Darmstadter watched with something approaching terror, the dull glow of another burning can appeared through the fog, and then another. Despite the thick fog, he realized, it would be possible to take off by staying on the runway between two lines of burning GI cans.

And then the rumbling of the undercarriage suddenly stopped. A moment later the nose of the B-25 lifted, so steeply that he fell against the seat that he was supposed to be strapped into, and he heard the whine of the hydraulics as the gear was retracted.

The reddish glow of the burning cans disappeared; there was nothing whatever to be seen through the Perspex window now but gray.

Darmstadter found the heavy sheepskin flying gear, put it on, and plugged it in. Then he put earphones over his ears and adjusted the oxygen mask, with its built-in microphone, over his lower face.

"Do you read?" he asked.

"We have been calling you, Lieutenant," Canidy's dry voice came through the earphones, "with no response. We thought maybe you'd had a last-minute change of heart."

"Sorry, Sir," Darmstadter said. "I was putting on the sheepskins."

"We're pa.s.sing through eight thousand," Canidy said. "I'll let you know when we pa.s.s through ten. Make sure the oxygen is working."

Darmstadter opened the valve and felt the cold oxygen in his nostrils and throat.

"Oxygen okay," he said.

"Couple of things," Canidy said. "Make sure you've got a walk-around bottle and a spare. We're going way up, so stay on oxygen."

"Yes, Sir."

"If you feel like it," Canidy went on, "and it might be a good idea, move around a little. Wave your arms, bend your legs. But don't work up a sweat. If you do that, the sweat will freeze and weld your skin to the oxygen mask. Then it will smart when you try to take it off."

"Yes, Sir," Darmstadter said, chuckling.

"And stop calling me 'Sir,' " Canidy said.

It grew colder very quickly as the B-25 maintained its climb.

And by the time the B-25 leveled off, and the sound of the engines changed as they throttled back and leaned off for cruising, it was bitter cold in the fuselage, and the bulky, sheepskin, electrically heated flying suits and boots did not provide comfort, only protection from frostbite and freezing.

Every fifteen minutes or so, Darmstadter got out of the leather-upholstered, civilian airline seat and, within the limits of movement the flexible oxygen hose gave him, stamped his feet and flailed his arms around. Carefully, for he believed what Canidy had said about working up a sweat and freezing the mask to his face.

They had been airborne an hour when Canidy came over the intercom and asked him to bring up some coffee. Darmstadter hooked up a portable oxygen bottle and found the wooden crate that held two narrow-mouthed stainless-steel thermos bottles of coffee and one much larger, wide-mouthed thermos holding sandwiches in waxed paper. He took one of the thermos bottles and two china mess-hall cups forward.

He poured coffee and handed a mug to Canidy, who indicated with a jerk of his thumb that it should go to Dolan. Dolan took it, moved his mask away for a moment, sipped the coffee, and then put the mask back on.

"s.h.i.+t," his voice came over the earphones. "Burned my f.u.c.king lip!"

Darmstadter glanced at the altimeter, then looked at it again, more closely, to be sure he had read it right. It indicated 27,500 feet, which was three thousand five hundred feet higher than the "maximum service alt.i.tude" for a fully loaded B-25G, according to TM 1-B-25-G TM 1-B-25-G.

Had Canidy rigged the engines so they would function at that alt.i.tude? he wondered. Or was the greater alt.i.tude possible because the weight of the guns and the parasitic drag of their turrets and mounts was gone?

Then he thought that the only thing he knew for sure to explain what he was doing at 27,500 feet over the Atlantic Ocean was that they were headed for an island called Vis. He had a hundred questions in his mind about that, including how come there was a landing field in an area shaded in red-indicating "enemy occupied"-on every map he had ever seen of the Adriatic area.

And, of course, there was the big question: Why had they picked a C-47 pilot with a mediocre record like his to go along? It was almost impossible to accept the reason Canidy had offered, that they wanted to see if a pilot of his skill level could manage a takeoff and a landing on a strip that had a stream running through the middle of it.

Canidy surprised him by getting out of the copilot's seat and motioning him into it, then pointing to the altimeter, then handing him the chart.

That was the first time he'd seen the chart. They had politely but carefully kept him from seeing it before they'd left. Dolan had even kept him from attending the final weather briefing at Fersfield by going there before he came to Darmstadter's room to wake him up.

The chart for the first leg of the flight showed a course leading out to sea in a general south-southwest direction so they would pa.s.s no closer than two hundred miles to the coast of France. Then it turned southeast, with Casablanca, Morocco, as their destination.

There were cone-shaped areas drawn on the chart, the small end in France, the wide end over the Atlantic. Canidy explained that they indicated the normal patrol areas for German Messerschmitt ME109F fighters, based in France. There were larger cones, which Canidy identified as the patrol areas for German Heinkel bombers used as long-range reconnaissance aircraft. The larger cones covered much of the B-25's projected route.

"The theory," Canidy said dryly, "is that the Heinkels fly at about ten thousand feet, which gives them their best look for convoys and the best fuel consumption. And we hope that if one of their pilots happens to look up here and see us, he will decide that prudence dictates he keep looking for s.h.i.+ps."

"But what if one of them sees us?"

"We have two defenses," Canidy said. "We're a little faster. If that doesn't work, Brother Dolan will lead us in prayer."

"We're faster because you removed the guns? That weight is gone?" Darmstadter asked.

"The weight, sure, but primarily because of the parasitic drag," Canidy said. "By taking the two turrets out of the slipstream, we picked up twenty knots at twenty thousand feet. We got another five or six knots when we faired over the waist-gun position. We can go either faster or farther at the same fuel-consumption rate."

"Clever," Darmstadter said. "The engineers obviously knew their stuff."

"Thank you," Canidy said, smiling.

"You did it? You're an engineer?" Darmstadter blurted, remembering as he spoke that it was a question and questions were against the rule. But Canidy didn't jump on him.

"You will doubtless be awed to hear that you are dealing with R. Canidy, BS, Aeronautical Engineering, the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology, '39."

Darmstadter bit off just in time the question that popped to his lips: "How'd you get involved in something like this?"

He was beginning to understand that there were questions he could ask, but that asking personal questions was taboo.

The answer, anyway, seemed self-evident. Whatever the OSS really did-some of the stories he'd heard about the OSS simply couldn't be true-it obviously had a high priority for personnel and equipment. The big bra.s.s had apparently decided that an MIT-trained aeronautical engineer could do more good working and flying for the OSS than he could, say, as a maintenance officer in a troop carrier or heavy bombardment wing.

Canidy connected a portable oxygen bottle to his face mask, then went into the cabin. Ten minutes later, he returned.

"I'll sit there awhile, John," he said to Dolan, motioning him out of the pilot's seat. "Take a nap."

When Dolan had hooked up a portable oxygen mask and gone back into the fuselage, Canidy's voice came metallically over the intercom.

"Dolan's a h.e.l.l of a fine pilot," he said. "He was a gold-stripe chief aviation pilot before the war."

Darmstadter had heard that both the Navy and the Marines had enlisted pilots in peacetime, and the legend was that they were better pilots than most of the officers because all they did was fly.

"And then he got a commission?" Darmstadter asked.

"No," Canidy said. "First, they took him off flight status. Bad heart. Then he got out of the Navy and went to China with the American Volunteer Group as a maintenance officer. Then Then he got a commission." he got a commission."

"But he's flying!"

"How Commander Dolan pa.s.sed a flight physical, Darmstadter, is one of those questions you're not supposed to ask," Canidy said. "When you were in preflight, and they were giving you those fascinating lectures on military tactics, did they touch on 'conservation of a.s.sets'?"

Darmstadter thought about it, then shook his head.

"I don't remember," he said.

"What you're supposed to do, if you're a general or an admiral and about to enter battle, is decide what 'a.s.set' you absolutely have to have if things get tough. Then you squirrel that a.s.set away so it's ready when you need it. I just sent my a.s.set back for a nap. If anybody can sit this thing down safely on a mountain strip with a stream running across the runway, Dolan can. You follow?"

"Yes, Sir," Darmstadter said. He was more than a little uncomfortable. Canidy was obviously a highly skilled B- 25 pilot and comfortable doing things with it that most people would not try (his solo flight of the B-25 through the soup the day Darmstadter had first met him was proof of that). And he had just admitted that he didn't think he could make the landing on the island of Vis.

"There is an additional problem," Canidy said. "Commander Dolan thinks he is still twenty-two years old and that the doctors are dead wrong about the condition of his heart. He will take affront unless handled properly. Kid gloves are required."

"I understand, Sir," Darmstadter said.

"And I told you before, stop calling me 'Sir,' " Canidy said.

Six hours and fifteen minutes after taking off from Fersfield, the B-25G landed at Casablanca. Darmstadter made the landing. He had to tell himself there was no reason to be nervous. Landing on the wide, concrete runway of a commercial airport on a bright, sunny afternoon should be a snap, compared to landing on the rough, narrow gravel runways at Fersfield. But he was aware that it was sort of a test. Major Canidy was in effect giving him a check ride to see how well Dolan had done as an instructor pilot.

Darmstadter was enormously pleased and relieved that the landing was a greaser.

A Follow Me jeep, painted in checkerboard black and white and flying an enormous checkerboard flag, met them at the end of the runway and led them away from the terminal to a remote corner of the field. There was an old hangar there with the legend AIR FRANCE barely legible through a layer of rust.

As they approached, the doors opened and a ground crewman gave Darmstadter hand signals, directing him to taxi to the doorway and then shut it down. The moment the engines died, a dozen Air Corps ground crewmen manhandled the B-25 inside the hangar and closed the doors.