Fighter Pilot

by Christina Olds

  Somehow I found enough to do in the office to justify my existence, and the threat of being transferred diminished. I knew I was still on the hook, but with each passing day, I felt more secure. The flying was terrific. It didn’t take long to feel completely at home in the P-80. The only difficulty at all was the start, that I-16 pump being the culprit. It posed a real challenge with grave consequences should you screw up. Almost every day a deep rumble shaking windows across the base told of another hot start and another engine change for the hangar crews. Since the normal procedure in those early days was to change the tailpipe every twelve hours of flight and the engine every twenty-five, a hot start or so didn’t seem all that important. The only thing for pilots to avoid was walking behind one of the birds when someone was attempting to get a start. One error, one missed switch, and a flame could shoot out the tailpipe, singeing your eyebrows if you were in the way.

  A couple of weeks later, I received a call from Lieutenant Colonel John “Pappy” Herbst, commander of the 27th Squadron. He asked me to come over to his office to get briefed on a test he had been asked to run. Naturally curious, I hustled over, wondering how and why he had picked me, but delighted to be in on something. Pappy was the leading ace of the 14th Air Force with eighteen kills. He had an enviable reputation as a great pilot as well as a respected and admired commander. I walked in, saluted, and sat when invited.

  Pappy got down to business. “They want two of us to take on the new navy plane, that single-place thing with a little jet in the rear and a conventional engine-driven prop up front. It’s called the Ryan Firebee, or something like that.”

  “I think that’s the Fireball, sir,” I interjected.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “Anyhow, a flight of four of them will be coming out of Miramar. We’ll intercept them down south of Lake Elsinore. They’ll be in a navy fighting spread and we’ll have a go at each other. I suggest we use the vertical as much as possible and don’t even try to maintain our own flight integrity. In other words, I want the two of us to split up and keep them churning. I’ll make a pass, take vertical spacing, call you when I’m clear, you come in, make your pass, take spacing, call, and so on. If we manage to keep each other in sight, which I think we’ll be able to do, then the calls won’t be necessary. The idea is, don’t try to turn with them. I haven’t any idea how well they perform, so let’s not bleed off airspeed and get trapped. Our call sign will be Red One and Two, and we’ll start engines at 1430. Any questions?”

  All the time I was listening I was studying Pappy. He was soft-spoken, but his words had force and conviction. He had dark hair with keen, piercing eyes in a handsome, lean face. It occurred to me he was the spitting image of that new movie star Gregory Peck. Guys weren’t supposed to think of another man as handsome, but I had to admit, he was all of that. He had a commanding presence without the need for posturing. Something about him exuded confidence. I liked him immediately.

  Of course I had questions, but they weren’t about the coming dogfight. I wanted to know why Pappy had picked me. I was pleased and flattered, but not so much as to ask some dumb question without an opening. Just to have been selected out of all the pilots in the group was enough.

  Soon we were off and making our way south toward the rendezvous point. I flew a loose combat position, changing sides easily as Pappy made his turns. It was quickly apparent why he was highly regarded by everyone. He was smooth and flew with concern for his wingman.

  I was determined to do my part to the best of my ability and kept position, scanning the sky ahead for the navy flight. Sure enough, there they were. Pappy and I blanked out each other’s radio as we simultaneously called out the bogeys. The navy fighters were still coming at us, no split, no reaction. They hadn’t spotted us, which was a plus for our gray color and small head-on profile. Pappy gave a slight wing rock and broke hard left. I went almost straight up and rolled inverted. The navy must have seen one or both of us at that instant because they split, two turning for Pappy and two continuing on toward me in a climb. As I closed, I watched Pappy pull up, roll inverted, and go for the two who had made the mistake of trying to climb for me. Had we been firing guns, there would have been at least two downed enemy in that brief ten seconds of the initial engagement. Instead, our gun camera film later confirmed our success. We made several more passes for the fun of it, then broke for home with a wing waggle of thanks.

  “Good flight, Robin,” Pappy said as we walked back to his office. “I don’t think our jets will have much trouble with planes like that or anything with a prop, just so long as we keep our airspeed up and don’t get to churning with them.” I would remember this lesson clearly some twenty-odd years later over North Vietnam.

  Our engagement with the navy must have broken the ice for me. It wasn’t very long after that I was standing at the ops counter trying to convince the squadron operations officer that I absolutely, positively, unconditionally needed to fly. He wasn’t impressed.

  “Hell, Olds, you flew yesterday. You got more damn time than people who’ve been here twice as long. How’m I gonna tell those other guys you need that bird more’n they do?”

  I was framing my answer when a familiar voice said, “Major Olds, how’d you like to be in my outfit?”

  I turned to see Colonel Leon Gray standing beside me. I had been so intent on putting the bite on the ops officer I hadn’t noticed him arriving. Neither had anyone else, for that matter. No one had called the room to attention when he, as senior officer, entered. Colonel Gray didn’t seem to pay any attention to our breach of etiquette. He was looking at me with a serious, hard stare.

  I had met him at Wattisham the previous summer, when he’d toured with a group of full colonels, but knew him more by reputation. He wasn’t a big man in the sense of being tall, but he was solid, with a square jaw and intense, piercing eyes, a man not to be trifled with. He had served briefly in the Air Corps before the war and afterward flew for an airline. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Leon reentered the service and, because of his experience, was assigned to the Ferry Command. In that assignment, he took aircraft across the Atlantic, over the Sahara, and all the way to Russia. Somewhere along the way, he managed to get out of Ferry Command and become a reconnaissance squadron commander working for Elliott Roosevelt in North Africa. He had earned the Distinguished Service Cross for his preinvasion pictures of the beaches of Anzio and Salerno, getting badly shot up in the process, and wound up in England as commander of the Reconnaissance Group at RAF Watton.

  Now he was here at March, commanding a fourth squadron of P-80s. We junior officers couldn’t figure that one out. Gray’s squadron was a separate unit, not under the group commanded by Tex Hill. It turned out that the air force had put the best man in charge of pioneering a new age of photo reconnaissance, now to be done with jets.

  I didn’t hesitate for a second. “Yes, sir, I’d like that a lot. But, sir, I don’t know anything about taking pictures.” I could have bit my tongue. That hadn’t come out the way I’d meant it, and I saw the colonel stiffen. I meant to be honest and confess I had no background in reconnaissance, except for that one time over the marshaling yards at Stuttgart, which surely didn’t count.

  “I’ll take care of the picture taking, Major. I want someone to train my pilots and be my operations officer,” he said with a bit of an edge to his voice.

  Damn, I hope I haven’t screwed this up, I thought. I didn’t know much about Colonel Gray’s outfit, only that it was a photo recce unit. They hadn’t yet received their recce birds, so they were flying the P-80A like the rest of us, but they didn’t belong to the 412th. Gray had a reputation as an aggressive leader and a great pilot. In addition, he wore the DSC, second only to the Medal of Honor. Tex Hill had the only other DSC at March Field.

  Hoping to recover, I repeated, “Yes, sir, I’d like that a lot! When do I report?”

  “This afternoon soon enough for you, Major?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll be right there!” Whew …
now things were really humming. Bless the man. He turned out to be the best boss I had for the rest of my thirty years and became one of my dearest lifelong friends.

  I tried not to jump and shout, but inside, I was doing just that. Finally, a job! No more just hanging around and trying to “make work” as I had been doing for weeks. Assignment as the umpteenth assistant group ops officer didn’t have much feeling of permanence about it. Not that I had minded scarfing up all the flying time I could beg, borrow, or steal, but I didn’t like the lack of responsibility. The ax might fall at any time, and I’d be out looking for another job.

  Running the paperwork for my transfer was a joy. It didn’t take long. That same day I deposited my flight gear in my new locker and placed a pad and pencil on my new desk. Next, the important part: Get to know the people, get familiar with squadron procedures, and most of all, learn how Colonel Gray operated and what he expected of me.

  Time passed swiftly. Colonel Gray was one smart operator. The squadron bustled, the people were happy, our jets were well maintained under the eagle eye of Warrant Officer Gruber, and we flew constantly, far more than the fighter squadrons down the flight line, much to their chagrin. The photo reconnaissance version of the P-80 wasn’t yet off the production line. It didn’t matter. We flew our butts off anyway.

  Colonel Gray was an out-front, follow-me type. Under his leadership we took the new aircraft to the limits of its envelope, to say nothing of our own. We were the first to fly at night. People actually came down to the flight line that first night to see what they thought would be streaks of fire behind our tailpipes as we took off. Not to be so. Except for a dearth of nav gear the P-80 was a delight to fly in any and all conditions. Our main concern was the rate at which it burned fuel.

  The fuel and range limitations of the new aircraft were an adjustment from what we were used to in aircraft like the Mustang and Lightning. A lot of people in the Air Corps asked questions about range and endurance, and some of them had enough clout to pose a menace to the future of jet aviation. However, we learned, sometimes the hard way with bent birds and lost pilots, but we learned. The higher you went, the thinner the air. That meant less drag, more fuel efficiency, higher ground speed, and more distance covered in the time airborne. That meant having to take off, climb immediately, and get to altitude, usually around 35,000 or 36,000 feet. For deep missions or on a long cross-country, as we burned down fuel and the bird became lighter, we would “cruise-climb,” easing the jet higher still. On some flights we’d wind up around 42,000 feet. The new jet had been equipped with a cabin pressurization system, something new and not too reliable at that time. But when it worked, it was great, and allowed us to operate at those altitudes in comparative comfort. It was simply progress.

  While I continued to serve officially as ops officer for Leon Gray’s bunch throughout the rest of 1946, Pappy Herbst tapped me often to fly with him after our afternoon spent playing with the navy Fireballs. We were testing the new jets in every way we could, and, of course, in the true manner necessary to push the envelope, we engaged in some serious aerobatics. This tended to attract a lot of attention. Pretty soon, Pappy decided we should put on an official acrobatic show for the public. Local newspapers got hold of the news and the word spread announcing the date in mid-June for the first ever jet acrobatic show. We practiced and practiced, adding new variations of loops and rolls in each session. We’d put the jet through its paces for the audience.

  Life in the evenings, and out of the P-80s, usually involved hanging around the officers’ club bar at March. At that time the field was in the middle of nowhere. It was near Riverside, but it was too far from any interesting nightlife to tempt us off base very much.

  One night in early June, about a week before the scheduled air show, my friend “Woody” Woodward and I were sitting in our usual places at the O club bar and idly chatting about nothing in particular, when the night turned into a different experience altogether. Woody was the club officer and we were both in Colonel Gray’s P-80 squadron. We had become friends during the past months and shared many memories of our time in England during the war. Woody had flown bombers, two tours as a matter of fact, and had been rewarded for his effort by an opportunity to fly fighters in a special group of similarly experienced bomber guys. Their mission was to fly out in front of the bomber stream, checking the weather, especially over the target. To what end, I couldn’t figure, but what the hell, they had certainly earned the right to act like fighters if they wanted to.

  We were hashing over some finer points of flying bombers versus fighters, and savoring our beers, when “Ace” Hastings came over and joined us. He sat down, ordered a beer, and announced he had three hot girls over in Palm Springs eager to meet some real jet pilots. Problem was, he didn’t have a car and knew that I did. Hmm, I confess I wasn’t too eager to drive all that way at this hour, but after some persuasion, the three of us piled into my car and we set off through the Banning Pass toward Palm Springs.

  Once we were there, Ace guided me to a motel. We parked and walked to the door of one of the rooms. Ace knocked. The door opened and we entered. There were the three ladies waiting for us. One was small and mousy, with an unfriendly look on her face. The next was good-looking, dark and tall, with a nice smile. The third—my God—was Ella Raines, the movie actress! I recognized her right away. We had seen her movie with John Wayne in the lounge at Wattisham, a flick called Tall in the Saddle, and had liked it so much we made the projectionist run it again. It turns out Ace had met her previously in New York and there seemed to be something going on between them. Woody immediately teamed up with Valerie, the tall, dark-haired girl. She turned out to be Ella’s stand-in. The little one was Ella’s secretary, and by luck of the draw, she was my “date” for the night.

  We went to dinner and I couldn’t take my eyes off Ella. What man could? To me, she was ravishing. Perhaps it was my imagination or just hope, but I thought she seemed to be somewhat interested in me as well, for all the good that would do on this one evening. She was happy and laughing with Ace, and I found myself suddenly disliking him intensely.

  The rest of the evening passed swiftly. Woody and I wound our weary way back to the base just as the sun came up, leaving that damned Ace with the girls.

  What the hell. So much for that, I thought, but I couldn’t get Ella off my mind. There was a spark to her quite beyond her striking beauty, and I was desperate to find a way to see her again. But how? Movie actresses didn’t have listed telephone numbers. Studios were not about to reveal addresses. I was stumped. To this day, I don’t know how he did it, but my friend Woody, with consummate resourcefulness, found Ella’s telephone number and home address. I bought a bottle of champagne, jumped in my car just two days later, drove the sixty miles to Coldwater Canyon, and knocked on Ella’s door. The secretary answered and announced Ella was not there.

  I felt foolish, especially since the secretary had supposedly been my date, so I just blurted out, “This is a present for Father’s Day,” shoved the champagne into her hands, and left, driving back to March Field, cursing myself for being so stupid.

  The formation acrobatic demonstration with Pappy was scheduled for a few days later at the main commercial airfield south of Los Angeles. I screwed up my courage, called Ella, and invited her to the air show. To my surprise, she readily accepted. I can’t remember how it all worked out, but I picked her up and drove us down to the field that day. My jet was already there. Pappy and I did our thing, and then I drove Ella back to Beverly Hills after we finished.

  The acrobatic show back in those magical days was incredible. There was little of the structure and oversight that would accompany such displays in later years. Pappy was in fine form, pushing me to my limits, as usual. Several times I thought, God, Pappy! You’re going to scrape me off! It took everything I had to keep the right wingtip of his P-80 steady and still, right there about 4 feet up, 4 feet left, and 6 feet forward of my canopy. I was avoiding downwash from his wi
ng. My own wing turbulence didn’t affect Pappy at all. I had a reference line from his wingtip to the forward edge of his nose access panel. Any movement back or forward, up or down, from my position was obvious and easily correctable. Holding there also gave me enough peripheral vision to have some idea of what was happening in front of us. And what was happening right now wasn’t all that reassuring. Pappy called, “We’re going to loop!”

  We started down to gain airspeed for the maneuver. I could sense our dive angle and acceleration. We were going like hell and still headed down as we crossed the north end of the flight line. We were already even with the tops of the hangars … and we still hadn’t bottomed out? Now I could see the hangar windows. Oh God.

  “Jesus! I’m four feet lower than you, Pappy! Give me some room!” I screamed over the radio as I eased up a foot or two and fought a bit of downwash from Pappy’s wing. There was the grandstand itself. I could see the top of it, small as it was, across the top of Pappy’s fuselage. And then came the g-forces, building rapidly—my G suit squeezing tight. It felt like a rock against my stomach. I was already tensing my stomach muscles as hard as I could and screaming silently into my oxygen mask. Now, everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. I fought to keep that wingtip where it belonged, but the world was growing dimmer by the second. Grayness closed in from all sides and my vision tunneled down to nothing but Pappy’s wingtip. I was on the verge of blacking out completely when the forces relaxed slowly and my vision returned to normal.

  What was this? Ten minutes later? Impossible! But that’s what it felt like as we came to the top of our loop and started down the other side. Now a new thought. (You’re thinking too much, Robin!) With all those g-forces as we went up the front side, did we gain enough altitude to complete the down side of this loop? This was the opening maneuver for our debut as the first jet acrobatic team in America. That we were first was an easy assumption. No one else in the United States had jets. Maybe we were the first in the world. I liked to think that was so but hadn’t heard whether the Brits might have started something. We’d practiced several times, and Pappy’s loops were a piece of cake. He was so damned smooth he made me look good hanging out there on his right wing.