Fighter Pilot

by Christina Olds

  The daily schedule was not for the faint of heart. Half of us were bussed the seventeen miles to Stewart in the morning and did our flight training. We then went back to the Point and academic classes that afternoon. Those of us on the squad practiced football until chow. The next morning we had academics and then flew in the afternoon. This schedule rotated between the two halves of the class who were in flight training. By an arrangement through Coach Blaik, I was always scheduled for the afternoon’s first flying and was sent back to football practice in a truck. All was OK until we entered the night flying phase. With that I was put back into a truck after football practice, went up to the field, and met the schedule for my night flight. Mind you, sometime during all of this I had to study for the next day of academics. There was no slack in the system. Flunk a course or two, and that was that. You were out. Gone. The pressure was enormous, but we faced it and grew used to the challenge. Very few, if any, of my classmates failed courses that year.

  In the middle of this craziness, game schedules continued as usual through the season. Buoyed by cadet corps morale and national fervor, we faced Navy again. This encounter became the hardest, physically, of my football career. At the start of the second quarter, a middie smashed a deliberately vicious forearm into my face. I crashed to the ground, put my hand to my mouth, and felt gushing blood and a terrible gap. Where the hell were my goddamn teeth? I crawled around the grass searching for them. Red Blaik and my teammates yelled for a doctor. They hauled me off the field and laid me out in the locker room. I struggled to get up and back to the game. The team doctor sat on me, closed my gums and torn lip with thirty stitches, and ordered me done for the day. I jumped up howling at Blaik until he overruled the doc. With cotton stuffed up my nose, blood all over my uniform, and black stitches where my upper lip used to be, I emerged back onto the field to the roar of the crowd. Lined back up in front of that same middie, I smiled a toothless, bloody grin, and growled. At the snap I hit him hard and came down on him with one knee, then whispered, “How’s that feel, asshole?” That guy got carted off with two broken ribs, out for the game. The game continued in a brutal back and forth, but Navy won 14–0. For some reason, my performance during our 6-3 season earned me All-American honors, but I never did get my goddamn teeth back.

  At Stewart we called our flight instructor in basic “Military Bill.” He was the only one who lined his flight up each day for inspection. He’d pace back and forth imparting orders. In the air his flight instruction had the same pompous bluster. Surely, no one flew an airplane better or knew more about one. We were to understand that clearly. The only problem was I quickly learned I could fly the BT-13 better than Military Bill. Unfortunately, he learned it, too. Sure enough, Mil Bill did what he could to cut me down to size. He announced that I was too big for fighters. He was going to see to it that I was sent to bombers. He did, and I was assigned to twin-engine advanced for the final phase of training the next semester. I was deeply disappointed to have my hopes for a fighter pilot career dashed by someone like Bill, but I would continue to do the best I could.

  Basic training ended just before the short Christmas break. I went to my roommate Scat Davis’s home in upstate New York for a visit. Scat had washed out of flight training before it even began, due to bad eyesight. He was beside himself about it. It seemed grossly unfair because he was just color-blind. I promised him he’d fly with me throughout my career. I vowed that his name would be painted on every aircraft I flew. Scat’s parents made us comfortable for the holidays. It was the best Christmas vacation I’d have for the next several years.

  We went back to the January grind, with June just a blink away, entering what was traditionally known as the Gloom Period at the Point. Football season was over, and I was aware that my glory days on the field were gone for good. I missed the exercise and team camaraderie. Life was getting serious. The dank winter weather deepened that mood. Gray granite walls dripped with black, icy water, and slushy snow piled up in every corner. The sun hid behind dark clouds and never showed its face for weeks. Academics were demanding and never ending. Our instructors were in nasty moods, probably from dealing with our own gloom. Day after day, hour after hour, we stood in our raincoats as the Tactical Department tried to think of something to improve the mood of assemblies. Marching didn’t do it. Even roommates fell to quarreling with one another. I was lucky. My two roommates, Uncle Wilk and Scat, always had smiles on their faces and mischief up their sleeves. Our area in the barracks resounded with laughter as some poor soul found liquid shoe polish in his shoes, tried to clean his trashed room fifteen minutes before Saturday inspection, or found pages of a book glued together.

  In the midst of Gloom Period antics, Ben and I went to New York City on weekend liberty in March. Just before returning on the evening train, I had one scotch and soda. That’s all. When we headed for check-in at the Point, I was confronted by a guy who seemed to harbor a personal vendetta. He finally got me with the honor code by asking, “Did you drink?” I answered truthfully, “Yes.” I was number eight in class military standing, but that was the end of my time as cadet brigade captain. My classmates went up in arms in my defense, to no avail. From cadet regimental staff, I got busted down to private, only the second cadet in the history of West Point to earn that dubious honor. The punishment included marching tours right up to graduation. One more thing to add to my schedule!

  My multiengine instructor for the bomber lead-in, Lieutenant Hacker, didn’t like the thought of having to fly two engines any better than I did, but our AT-10 was a decent aircraft. I learned to enjoy everything about it. He was good at his job and honed my abilities with enthusiasm; soon he admitted that I could land the bird better than he. Eventually the weather cleared and we took great glee in doing a few loops and barrel rolls, knowing we were breaking the rules for student bomber pilots, to say nothing of restrictions against doing such maneuvers in the good old AT-10. Another restriction prohibited us from penetrating any airspace near the FDR estate south of Poughkeepsie. That was too bad, I thought. Roosevelt might welcome the entertainment.

  One day Lieutenant Hacker and I got crazy and flew under every bridge on the Hudson from Albany to New York City. That escapade implanted in me a love for pressing the limits of flight, a fascination that would piss off many bosses for the next thirty years. Lieutenant Hacker and I promised each other we wouldn’t discuss our adventure with anyone, ever. Rumors abounded when calls came in from witnesses, but I faithfully kept that secret until long afterward. I don’t know how he managed it, but that lieutenant convinced the powers-that-be that I should be sent to fly fighters. Military Bill got overruled. I probably owe Hacker my successes and possibly my life, considering the losses suffered by bomber people in the war.

  Graduation was approaching when the saddest event of my young life blindsided me. I knew my father had taken ill with pneumonia and had been lying in a Tucson hospital for several weeks. Nina was constantly by his side, telephoning me with daily reports. His recovery seemed certain. She sent hopeful assurances. On the morning of Friday, April 23, my brother Stevan and I were fetched out of class and informed that Dad had suffered a heart attack the night before. He was asking for us. We flew immediately to be with him. As my beloved father lay dying I held his hand and told him I was going to be a fighter pilot. He smiled weakly at me and said, “Robbie, listen to me. I never once went up in the air without learning something new. Never, ever think you know it all.” He died at noon the following Tuesday. His ashes were taken up in a B-24 and scattered over the mountains west of Tucson. I was devastated.

  Life at the Point seemed trivial for the next month. Only a steely new determination got me through. My father’s mother, Grandma Topsy, came up as my date for the graduation festivities. General Hap Arnold pinned on my class pilot wings May 30. I grimly marched my tours off through the night, completing the last one just an hour before graduation. On June 1, 1943, I received my diploma to thunderous applause from the cadet corps
but without the one person who mattered most. As I repeated the words of the officer’s oath and stepped into manhood, I dedicated my wings and my commission to the memory of my father. Then I stepped off the fields of West Point and into the wild blue yonder.

  3

  Pilot Training

  With second lieutenant bars and shiny new pilot wings I joined seven West Point classmates with orders to Williams Field, Arizona, for training in the P-38 Lighting. Our group included a mixed bag of personalities, all good young men, but as different from one another as any such number could be.

  Al Tucker, Lou Nesselbush, Charlie Waller, Hank Rosness, Buck Coursey, Don McClure, and Bob Orr went through the fighter training with me, and each of them played a role in showing me how individual personalities meet the stresses of war. I don’t claim to have been aware of their impacts at the time, because life was too challenging, too much fun, too exciting, and too immediate for any of that. The lessons I learned took effect slowly and often weren’t recognized until years later. Those of us who survived became wiser and more mature in many ways without realizing it.

  We all became members of the 479th Fighter Group and went to war together. One was killed, two became POWs, one almost finished a tour but quietly disappeared, two finished and went home, and the remaining member went on to fly two tours, and became a twenty-two-year-old major and ultimately commander of the 434th Fighter Squadron. That was me.

  Our train ride to Chandler, Arizona, was long, hot, and crowded. We had an appointment with the future and it included a raging world war. We felt it was the place we were supposed to be. In Chandler a truck picked us up for the twenty-minute drive to Willie airfield where we signed in and received a long list of offices to visit. The duty NCO gave us billeting assignments and orders to report to our training unit for duty the next morning. The rest of the day was spent wandering over the sprawling base finding the dozen important people who acted very bored as we signed paper after paper and listened to briefings concerning how we were to behave for the rest of our lives. These briefings were structured to make us feel we were the lowliest creatures God ever created, outranking no one and subservient to all.

  We were disabused of our perceived valuable status as newly commissioned second lieutenants. However, after Beast Barracks at the Point, this was nothing. As a matter of fact, it was exhilarating! The next morning provided more of the same takedown treatment. Later we learned that this was a special treatment in response to the somewhat rambunctious attitude displayed by our predecessors in the January ’43 class when they arrived at training. Lesson learned: Don’t reveal your status as a West Point grad if it can be avoided. Have something to be proud of before you declare your value.

  The P-38 would wait a bit in our training. First we had to fly the AT-9, a twin-engine of dubious performance. The intent was to introduce trainees to the rigors of twin-engine flight before meeting the P-38, sort of a training-wheels approach before being unleashed in the high-performance machinery. Fortunately, that phase passed quickly and the great day soon arrived. It wasn’t a P-38 we were to fly, but a bird named the P-322. There were some major differences between the two, although they looked alike. For one thing, the props on the 322 rotated in the same direction, as opposed to the counterrotating engines on the P-38. That meant engine torque we wouldn’t have to deal with in the Lightning. In addition, the oil and coolant flaps were manually controlled. You flew with one eye on the temperature gauges, constantly adjusting settings for every phase of flight by sliding levers back and forth to keep the values in the green. The P-322 lacked the turbo-superchargers of the 38, and its performance at altitude was pathetic. These particular aircraft had been built for the Brits, who wisely refused to accept them. The generally accepted belief was that the P-322 was a more dangerous airplane than the Lightning, at least for the pilot. Training was organized and we quickly got into the swing of things.

  Late one afternoon, when I returned to my room, I found a note pinned to my door. I would report immediately to the base adjutant. I wondered what I had done to merit such individual attention. The adjutant was a crusty old first lieutenant whom I saluted smartly. He must have been in his late thirties, but he looked like Methuselah to me.

  He fixed me with a hard stare, but I detected a hint of humor in it. He held my gaze for several seconds before saying, “Lieutenant Olds, there is a lady in that building across the street who would like very much to see you. Through the double doors, turn right, and she will be at the fourth desk on your right. Can you manage that?”

  I saluted and left. What in hell was this all about? I heard the adjutant suppressing a chuckle as I left.

  I found the woman easily and introduced myself. She was not as forbidding as I had expected. She smiled and asked me, “Lieutenant, are you independently wealthy?”

  It was a strange question. I wondered what she was getting at. I assured her I was not at all wealthy. She began a stern lecture. “Lieutenant, whether you want it or not, and even whether or not you deserve it, Uncle Sam wants to pay you for serving in his Army Air Corps. In fact he will do so each and every month. All you have to do is go to the base finance office on the first of the month, sign your pay record, and collect whatever may be due for your sterling service. You seem unaware of this little fact.”

  It was obvious she was having a bit of fun at my expense. I blushed.

  She then added, “Not only do we give you your basic pay as a second lieutenant; you get flying pay on top of that, plus any travel pay due, and you will even get what we call per diem occasionally. It tends to add up, and makes it possible for you to pay your officers’ club dues, to buy things at the PX, to eat, and to cover all sorts of expenses that lieutenants seem to encounter every day. See that sergeant down the hall in his cage? He has lots of money and is anxious to share some of it with you. And he or someone like him will do so every month you wear that uniform. Now go, and it was nice meeting you.”

  Damn, no one told me about this at West Point. What else did I miss?

  The sergeant counted out more money than I’d ever had in my life and smiled as he told me what trouble the finance office had encountered in trying to find the missing lieutenant. As I departed, obviously looking embarrassed, he said, “Don’t neglect us again, Lieutenant—we might not find you twice.” This was the most direct and enlightening education of my short career, and I was grateful to the people on the base for teaching me the financial facts of military life. I was going to be paid to fly!

  Within a short time, the reality of this business hit our group of eight. Bob Orr was flying solo, crashed, and died. We never knew how it happened. It stunned us, but it was reality in the life of a pilot. We had lost five classmates back at the Point in training accidents before graduation, and wearing wings didn’t keep it from happening now. I’d have to learn to deal with it. I was sorry to lose a good friend and squadron mate, but glad it wasn’t me who had bought the farm.

  Despite accidents our self-confidence soared, and we would often dogfight among ourselves. It wasn’t exactly against regulations, but it couldn’t be ignored when two of us jumped a stray P-322, which turned out to be our squadron CO’s. That afternoon seven of us were lined up before the desk of a very livid major. We received a royal chewing out and wondered if this was the end of our fledgling careers. Finally, the major said he knew the “ambush” had been carried out by one of us and asked who had done it. He was astounded when Al Tucker and I stepped forward and confessed. He didn’t know quite what to say. I guess he had never heard of the honor code. We had learned that officers do not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. We simply did what we’d been conditioned to do. He sputtered a bit, and I think he admonished us not to do it again. I was never certain whether he meant don’t dogfight or don’t jump him. It didn’t much matter.

  Our next step was gunnery training at Matagorda, Texas. We reported at the end of July for a month. The base was on a spit of land jutting into the Gulf of
Mexico south of Victoria, Texas. It couldn’t really qualify as a hellhole because any hole there would have been under water. Hell with humidity. We were there for training in aerial gunnery, and nothing else mattered, not the ovenlike heat, the lizards, the sandstorms, the wretched base food, or even the stinking, undrinkable water we were supposed to use. Whoever owned the Coca-Cola franchise for the base must have made a fortune. We even used the soda for brushing our teeth and shaving after a few people got sick from the water.

  A lot of the June ’43 class assigned to all types of fighters had converged for this phase. On top of great flying, we had a whopping good time together. We flew AT-6s, Texans, which had a .30 caliber machine gun pointing forward through the propeller, just like the ones used by our World War I heroes Elliot White Springs and Eddie Rickenbacker. No one seemed to care that those of us assigned to P-38s had never flown the AT-6 before. Don’t worry, just fly it, we told ourselves. All of the aircraft were equipped with a 16 mm movie camera that recorded each firing pass at a towed target. We were taught to assess film of our gunnery passes, and most of us improved rapidly as the days went by. Understanding the physical and mathematical forces involved wasn’t essential to success. Leading a target was subject to the laws of physics but also took a bit of luck, some Kentucky windage, and maybe some innate talent. Your speed, your target’s speed, your angle-off, and the G forces involved all had to be taken into account. I got the big picture of all the factors in play and got pretty good at punching holes in the towed rag.