Fighter Pilot

by Christina Olds

  The truck noisily ground off as soon as the tailgate was shut and the rear canvas was closed and tied. There wasn’t much talking as we swayed with the turns and lurched into one another when the brakes were suddenly applied. If I couldn’t even see to walk, how in the world did our driver know where he was going without headlights? It was so dark I couldn’t tell who was sitting beside me.

  After what seemed like an hour, we finally stopped for good and the rear canvas was opened. We piled out to find ourselves in front of a large building that could only dimly be seen. Three or four steps led up to an imposing double door. After going through the door, light struck us as blackout curtains parted and we were hustled into a large entry hall, complete with a picture of the king of England. I thought this must be a hotel where we’d bed down for the night. Not so. There stood Captain Horton and Lieutenant Thomas, our squadron intelligence officers. They had preceded us to England as part of the group’s advance party.

  Don Horton was all smiles as he proudly announced, “Welcome to RAF Station Wattisham, boys. This will be your new home. You 434th pilots follow Tommy down the hall. He’ll show you to your rooms. But first, grab your bag from that pile over there.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Where were the humble Quonset huts we’d expected? Who managed to get our personal luggage sorted out and brought here ahead of us? There were certainly no complaints as we made our startled way down the hall. We passed a bar on the left before coming to a cross-hallway. Wow!

  Halfway down the corridor Tommy opened a door and said, “OK, Satch, here’s where you, Robin, and Wally will bunk.”

  The room contained three beds, a couple of dressers, a closet, a regular sink, and two large windows with heavy blackout curtains drawn tightly shut. What a way to go to war. It didn’t take long to decide who got which bed; it was always by rank, and Satch Turner was our D Flight commander. I threw my B-4 under a bed, flopped down, and zonked out.

  The next day we explored our new home. It turned out to be one of the RAF’s prewar permanent stations. There were brick barracks buildings, three huge hangars, a headquarters building, squadron operation centers, a mess hall, supply buildings, maintenance facilities, the whole works, even a separated area containing family quarters. It was obvious the station had not been overlooked by the Luftwaffe. Only one of the hangars had a roof left and many of the buildings had been badly damaged. A 3,300-foot runway ran roughly east to west and was intersected by a longer PSP (pierced steel planking) northeast–southwest runway. A taxiway, called the perimeter track, or peri track, circled the entire landing field. Individual hardstands, each holding two aircraft, were clustered on either side of the taxiway. Brand-new P-38s sat on those hardstands, and we clamored to fly them right away. It was not to be. A great deal of local area knowledge had to be learned before we went barging off into the crowded skies over East Anglia.

  We gathered at our separate squadron dispersal huts, where we received lengthy briefings on local customs, flight rules, the English monetary system (whew … farthings, pence, tuppence, bobs, shillings, half crowns, crowns, and pounds), and on and on. We were issued our flight gear: boots, jackets, parachutes, and Mae Wests. Sergeant Charlie Claybaugh opened up a dinghy and lectured us on its contents and use. We paid close attention when he explained that a downed pilot didn’t have a chance of surviving the frigid waters of the English Channel unless he got into his dinghy quickly.

  All that day, while we fidgeted in classrooms, a steady stream of aircraft buzzed our new home. We were being welcomed by the veterans from other bases: P-38s, Jugs, Mustangs, a Spitfire or two, B-24s, B-17s, and even some C-47 Gooney Birds. It was exciting and the days passed quickly. After a hot meal in our new mess hall, we gathered in the bar for an introduction to “arf an’ arf” and mild and bitter. Somehow, cellar-temperature beer wasn’t so bad after all. It wasn’t as cold as American beer, but it wasn’t as warm as we had anticipated. There was a bit of subdued chatter, befitting our status as new guys at the base. Certainly, no one admitted to nervousness. The barroom radio was tuned to the BBC and we listened up when Don Horton identified the announcer with the broad English accent as Lord Haw-Haw, the British turncoat speaking from Berlin.

  Uneasiness turned to amazement when we realized what he was saying: “… and in closing this evening, I want to congratulate the 479th P-38 Group on a successful journey from California across the Pond and offer all of you a warm welcome to your new home, RAF Wattisham. We know you’ll be comfortable there, and just to make sure you know we’re thinking of you, we’ll pay you a small visit very soon.”

  Not many moments later, a string of explosions went off somewhere nearby. Many of us instinctively ducked. It turned out that a lone JU-88 had dropped his payload on the depot base across the field from our location. No damage was done, and even better, no one was injured, but it sure got our attention. So much for the secrecy surrounding our overseas movement!

  5

  A Small Event Called D-day

  We’d been at Wattisham since May 22. The base had beautiful quarters, good mess, adequate hangars, and brand-new airplanes. In fact, it was the best damned place I’d been stationed in the army. Even the English rain was refreshing. Mildew had yet to set in. I flew one of our new ships, a J15-LO, in the first week. God, they were sweet! It’s unbelievable what an improvement they were over the older aircraft. Buzzing was almost expected here, so everyone did it. The Brits tolerated us as we dove at their fields, occasionally waving cheerily or maybe angrily when we spooked a plowing mule. One day I got the screwy notion to hop over and have a look at France. Didn’t even have ammo. I started to climb, but then common sense prevailed. I knew I’d be seeing enough of it soon.

  Until then the squadron had been focused on giving a few hours’ “warm-up” time for each of us new guys before starting combat ops. A major from the 364th joined the 479th to coordinate our preparations and get us on the right track. We practiced missions daily. Soon our launch, assembly, and landing procedures were being executed with amazing smoothness. The major said he thought we were ready, and we knew we were. When I recalled the training we had received at 4th AF in the states, I shook my head. It had been inadequate, poorly planned and administered. It could have been much better preparation for combat. It proved to me that a war can’t be fought effectively by armchair strategists. If those bird colonels had just come here first, observed the various fighter units, and then planned our training, we could have built a program with all the things that were so damned vital to combat flying. We were OK, but we could have been a whole lot better.

  Mishaps weren’t uncommon. Crazy Lieutenant Canella cheated death when he ran his plane into the ground at 400 mph, staggered back up into the air, dragged across the roof of a warehouse, plowed through a pile of bricks and tar barrels, and then walked away unscathed from a burning wreck. There wasn’t enough left of the bird to cart away as scrap. Captain Walker, commander of the 436th, spun in on May 25. He had been test-firing his guns and when last seen was at 800 feet on a single engine and burning. It was a blow to his squadron.

  My own airplane arrived that same afternoon: a spanking new P-38-J15-LO, just under twenty hours’ flying time on her. It was a thrill to drink in the beauty of that living piece of machinery and realize it would be mine. It was my future, my survival or demise in this war. Sergeant Glen Wold, my crew chief, was enthusiastic. We had already plotted the myriad little tweaks and adjustments we would do to make number 28707 the best flying plane on the field, or for that matter in the whole theater. I thought we’d name it SCAT II for Scat Davis, my roommate at the Point. Even though he’d been disappointed when he couldn’t fly because of his eyesight, Scat would at least be here symbolically. Wold took care of it that night, painting SCAT II on the nose for my first mission the next day.

  My first combat was anticlimactic. I saw a few halfhearted puffs of flak but sure loved the hot-metal smell of my new P-38, the odors of oil, hydraulic fluid, ozone from the ra
dio tubes, leather from the seat, and the faint whiff of residual perfume from the WASP pilot who had delivered it. The only thing missing was some cordite from the guns. On the second flight of the day we went on a patrol sweep over France and I damned near passed out from lack of oxygen. In debrief the major crawled all over me for not flying perfect formation. I doubt he could have flown perfect formation either without oxygen at 20,000 feet. It was one of those simple little mistakes that could get someone killed, and I had gotten away with it at least this time.

  The next few days the first lieutenants got outranked. It really pissed us off. I figured that the captains and majors would be eager until things started getting hot, and then they’d remember their wives and kids back in the States and let the lieuts go on all the missions. Things always come out in the wash. We’d get our chance.

  Missions got a bit more interesting with a bomber escort. God, those B-17s and B-24s! Box after box of them, columns for as far as the eye could see. There was lots of flak and I was quite certain that at least six bursts were aimed at me personally. We were diving as I watched the stuff in my mirror. It was fascinating. Big orange bursts with puffs of black smoke tracking directly in a line behind me. The same day we had yet another escort mission. I saw and called out eight or nine German cargo ships on the river, but got no reaction from lead. I vowed to go down lower the next opportunity I got. The following day was another escort deep into Germany. We picked up the bombers over the Zuider Zee and stayed with them to the target and back. We saw plenty of flak but still no German fighters.

  I managed to worm my way into two more missions. The first was a patrol over the French coast between Calais and Le Havre. The bombers were obviously softening up the coast. It was a feint that didn’t give away much, but I’m sure the Germans were getting worried. There was little enemy response. On the afternoon mission the group was assigned to various patrol points. We roamed all over occupied France but saw not a single fighter. The bombers blew the hell out of two airfields just as we were preparing to go down to strafe them. Had we been five minutes earlier we would have been in the impact area when they dropped.

  I was frustrated by the lack of action. I slapped the release on the side of my oxygen mask to free up my mouth for a string of cussing at no one in particular. We’d been briefed on strict radio discipline for these missions. That meant shut up and don’t say anything, no matter what we saw sitting or moving around down below. We passed trucks barreling down tree-lined roads, trains stopped in patches of woods with wisps of steam giving them away, deserted-looking airfields with small buildings backed up against surrounding forests, surely hiding something. There were large and small marshaling yards, sometimes with supply trains sitting there, just waiting. All of them begging, “Hit me! Please hit me!” There were plenty of lucrative, tempting targets, and our leader, “Highway,” just kept sailing along as though we were over England. What was going on?

  We all thought our squadron CO, Major Miller Herren, was a really good guy, although brand-new first lieutenants weren’t very qualified to judge that. But our naive impressions were all positive. He worked long hours getting us organized before we shipped out. He trained us hard, and we liked that. He was direct and to the point. He didn’t tolerate slackness, and he inspired us to do our best. We judged him to be fair and not intimidating, unlike some of the senior officers whom we’d dealt with in our short careers. Best of all, he flew the airplane well and more than once had proved himself with us.

  But now it seemed that there was a problem. It wasn’t that Major Herren was losing face by not leading us into battle the way we wanted and thought he should. It wasn’t a case of beginning to think he was showing a timid streak by not getting at the enemy. It wasn’t really that at all. I think we believed the boss was under some kind of pressure not to expose us to the wily Hun. We thought maybe he was getting the word from group or even higher up. For us, the situation was downright embarrassing. What were the men in the experienced groups over here thinking of the brand-new 479th? Our daily ops reports must have been embarrassing reading compared to theirs. I’d already made a habit of reviewing daily reports from other bases, and I admit I was sick with envy. Other squadrons were shooting up everything, even getting into aerial battles with the Krauts. We remained unblooded. It was a creeping, awful feeling to be left out, as though we’d been judged as pantywaists afraid to join the big boys.

  I could just see it coming. “Daddy, what did you do in the big war?” Or from some veteran, “You say you were in the 479th back in ’44? Wasn’t that the chicken outfit that never shot its guns? Oh yeah, now I remember. Excuse me, pal, I see a buddy of mine down at the other end of the bar,” and he’d walk away with a scornful sneer.

  So on this fine June morning over Germany, the situation became intolerable for me, and, not for the first or last time in my life, the devil got behind me and gave a shove.

  I broke radio silence and announced, “Newcross Lead, this is Newcross Blue Three. I’ve got a train at our eight o’clock! I’m going down. Will you cover me?”

  “Roger, Blue Three,” came the response.

  I was already on my way, fangs out and trigger finger curled. After a quick check of the armament switches and a fast look around for other aircraft, I made a full-powered, shallow dive toward that bloody train, the train that was going to either get me into this damned war or get me court-martialed. Probably both.

  I banked hard to the right to line up, then pulled the pipper through the length of the freight cars, put it a bit above my aim point to allow for range, rolled wings level, and made a pass, shooting in front of the train to stop it and to give the French engineer and fireman time to bail out. I jinked around again, stopped the sight on the engine’s boiler, squeezed off a burst, saw the HEI sparkling all over the straining engine, and watched a fountain of smoke and steam burst out of the stack. I thought about the train crew and was glad I hadn’t aimed at the engineer’s cab. It wouldn’t be nice to shoot up some poor Frenchmen forced to drive Hitler’s freight around France in broad daylight, as these guys were doing.

  I pulled up and reversed. The next pass I raked my .50 caliber along a part of the now-stalled train. It was easy to see the sparkles light up the freight cars, but kind of disappointing when nothing blew up. For more than a year Pathé News had been full of film clips of trains exploding during strafing passes—spectacular stuff for a twenty-one-year-old novice. Maybe they didn’t always blow up.

  As I pulled around for a third pass and checked over my shoulder for flak, the entire train was lit up from end to end! Then I saw that the whole damned squadron had come down to get in on the fun. My initiative had been too much for the rest of the troops to resist. I hadn’t heard anything on the radio, so this was pure initiative by the individuals. Everyone got his chance. No frustrations were left in that bunch. They all banged away at what must surely have become the most shot-up train in the entire war.

  Eventually, Newcross Lead took over and guilt set in. Major Herren’s voice was like slivers of ice when he ordered us away. Then he fell silent, coldly silent. We formed, sorted ourselves out, and followed him back to England like docile sheep without a peep. His silence left us stewing and wondering. Had I gone too far? Was he angry, or just maintaining radio silence like the orders? Hell, he couldn’t fire all of us, could he? Certainly I would be fair game. No doubt about that. But there was still the satisfaction of having finally fired my guns, and I thought of the happy looks I’d get from my crew chief and armorer when they saw the telltale powder marks on Scat’s nose.

  It was a grim flight home. We had been out almost five hours and some of us were really sweating out the gas, since we carried only one tank. But our worries became insignificant when we passed over the coast just south of Dieppe and saw the bombers coming out about 15,000 feet above us. The flak they caught over Dieppe was the most vicious imaginable. One bomber caught it squarely, and I watched him fall in a huge ball of flame all the way
to the ground. It was a horrible sight. One can’t help admiring the courage of those bomber crews. That’s no way to fight or fly, if you ask me, and a really horrible way to die. Here I was, stupidly worrying about a simple court-martial.

  The truck ride back around the perimeter track as we headed for debriefing was not filled with exuberance. Someone tried to crow about our great contribution to Hitler’s demise, but his remarks were halfhearted and no one was very talkative. It crossed my mind I should jump off the truck and head for the woods, but it was out of the question. Music was music, and the sooner faced the better.

  Debriefing was intense to say the least. Old Mother Horton, our S-2, kept at us and stretched the whole process beyond belief. Finally it ended, and in the ensuing hush my name was spoken softly, quietly, and with great menace.

  “Olds, come over here.”

  I went and stood in front of the boss at attention.

  He started in on me with painful intensity. “You broke formation. You disobeyed regulations. You defied my authority. You exposed the squadron to unwarranted risk, and for all I know, you attacked an unauthorized target!” The major was really mad, angrier than any of us had ever seen him. His voice was low and steely and his eyes were blazing.

  I had visions of steel bars and rock piles. It was going to be Leavenworth.

  Major Herren went on with his tirade. As he warmed up, things grew even darker. The room shrank, the ceiling came down over my head, and my peripheral vision vanished. All I could see were those steely blue eyes of his boring into mine. I stood at attention and tried to stare back. I heard the major’s words, but I concentrated mostly on keeping my eyeballs locked on his.