Joe: "You were blocked out, sir. Please repeat."
Peabody: "Go left. Go left... Stay out of that cloud ... Oh my gawd!"
(The three planes had just disappeared into the cloud.)
Peabody: "Holy cow. D-don't get r-r-rattled now, you guys. All of you cold your horses - I mean hold your courses - till you dome out of the c-c-cloud. Fly straight ahead and d-d-d-don't..."
(At this point two planes fall out of the bottom of the cloud in tailspins.)
Peabody: "B-b-bail out!! Bail out!... MAYDAY... two crashes f-f-f-five miles north of..."
(The two planes, Curly and Jim, recover from the spin simultaneously 1000 feet below the base of the cloud, on the opposite course to the one on which they entered the cloud. They are abreast of each other on parallel courses. The third plane, Joe, comes diving out of the base of the cloud and drops into the leader's spot in front of them, making a perfect 3-plane V.)
Peabody: (after a string of incoherent obscene observations)"... Th-that's ENOUGH!... B-b-break up the f-formation and return to base immediately... by yourselves. Get on the ground as soon as you can."
Joe: "Rajah. Return to base at ground level. Wilco. Out."
(The formation breaks up and the three of them nose over and dive down to treetop height. They hedgehop back to the base, leaving Peabody screaming at them to get back to altitude all the way and falling far behind.)
Peabody; "Corry Tower, Corry Tower, this is Lieutenant P-P-P-Peabody calling. Over."
Corry Tower: "Hear you loud and clear, Lieutenant. Go ahead."
Peabody: "Three w-w-wild men are heading for your field. Get your trash-trucks out by the runway. Have the Marines arrest them as soon as they land."
Corry Tower: "Wilco. Out."
Back at the field Curly and his pals made normal landings, taxied up to the line, and beat it to the Blue Angels radio shack to hear a playback of the tape. There, they were hailed as conquering heroes by a hilarious bunch of pilots and sailors.
Lieutenant Percy Peabody, as jittery now as a one-legged man trying to stomp out a brush fire in an ammo dump, fouled up his landing instructions from the tower and came in on the wrong runway, cross-wind. He ground-looped, blew a tire, knocked off a wing tip, and nosed up in the grass off the runway. The crash crews helped him out of the cockpit and towed the wreck in.
By the time Peabody got back to the line the story was all over Corry Field and everybody he met let him in on the secret.
It didn't take him long to realize that the very best thing he could do about it was nothing.
That afternoon Percy was driving another instructor back to Main Side and explaining what had happened.
"Aw, I knew what the score was all the time," he said. "I was just playing along with the act. I'll bet those Blue Angel wise guys still think they fooled me."
"I wouldn't be surprised if they do," said his friend.
At this point a hotrod bearing the Blue Angels insignia roared past them at about 80 mph. There were three sailors in it wearing dirty dungarees. Peabody ignored the them.
"How about that landing, when you sort of ground-looped a little bit?" asked his pal. "What about that?"
"The right brake grabbed on me," said Peabody. "Some dumb mech set it up too tight. If I hadn't of been on the ball it would of been a bad crash."
Chapter Two
LOOSE NUT
A month later Curly received orders to sea duty. He was to command a fighter squadron on the great new atomic carrier Guadalcanal, flagship of Rear Admiral Windy Day.
When Curly paid his courtesy call on the Admiral upon reporting he noted a certain reserve in the Admiral's manner. Even though Curly tactfully shunned any reference to inverted fight in big seaplanes, the admiral did not call him by his first name, nor did he slap him on the back and give him a handful of cigars, or urge him to stay for dinner in the cabin.
The Admiral was not an especially vindictive man, and Curly was a fine squadron commander. So for a while nothing happened between them. Curly avoided the Admiral whenever possible, but finally his past caught up with him.
One morning when Curly was scheduled to take off at 3 a.m., the call orderly goofed and didn't wake Curly up until two minutes before he was due in the ready room for briefing. Curly scrambled out of his bunk and instead of dressing fully he pulled on his G suit over his pajamas, put on his shoes, and hurried up to the ready room just as the briefing began.
"This is an exercise with SAC, to test our night fighter defenses," said the briefing officer. "The ship is 200 miles west of San Francisco. We are putting out a screen of 12 night fighters to intercept and 'shoot down' bombers which SAC will be sending out from 4 a.m. to noon. You people will be relieved on station at 0630 and will land aboard at 0700.
"Each pilot's station is shown on the blackboard. Just go to your station and orbit there until you spot a bogey or we vector you to one. Planes will operate singly, with a 20-mile interval between orbiting points. Orbit at 60,000 feet, keeping radio silence until you make contact."
The pilots, wearing red goggles to protect their night vision from even the dim lights of the ready room, spent the next ten minutes working out their navigation, getting the weather dope, checking frequencies, calls, and codes, and doing other little chores that precede a night-flight operation. At 0240 the squawk box blared, "Pilots, man your planes," and they bounced to their feet and scrambled up to the quiet, darkened flight deck, ready for any emergency that might arise in the next four hours. Well, almost any, that is.
Curly buckled himself into his seat, hooked up his oxygen tube, and ran quickly through his checkoff list. His plane would be the first one launched and was already positioned on the catapult. The bull horns went through the regular preflight ritual: "Now check all loose gear about the deck. Stand clear of jet blasts. Stand by-y-y to start engines.... START ENGINES." The flight deck exploded with a great WHOOM.
Curly ran his engine up to full power, carefully noting the behavior of his rpm and tailpipe temperatures, throttled back, and stuck his fist out with his thumb up. Soon the launching light on the bridge went from red to green and the bull horns cut through the thunder of the jets, "LAUNCH AIRCRAFT."
The Catapult Officer gave Curly the highball, waving his lighted wands in circles overhead. Curly poured the coal on carefully, gave rpm and tailpipe temperatures a final check, put his head back against the rest, and brought his right hand up to the salute position, holding it for a second to let his jets develop full thrust. Then he braced himself, whipped the hand down, and grabbed the stick, and waited patiently for about half a second.
Down in the bowels of the ship a red light flashed to green, the catapult chief pulled a trigger and Curly went rocketing down the track, picking up 150 knots of airspeed in about 1/10 of the time it takes to read this sentence.
As he hurtled into the blackness and felt the bridle get snatched off at the end of the track, Curly hauled back some of the stick to make sure he didn't settle, flipped the landing gear control up, and concentrated on his gyro and altimeter.
In a jet airplane at sea on a dark night, the first 500 feet are the hardest. The penalties for small mistakes below 500 are severe. Above 500, it's a milk run. As his altimeter wound up past 500, Curly relaxed and settled back, ready to deliver the milk.
During the next three hours a couple of the boys on the south end of the picket line had a little action with a SAC bomber trying to sneak out and clobber their ship. But nothing at all happened in Curly's sector. He just went round and round in a 10-mile circle, watching his radar and listening. Half an hour before he would be relieved, and as dawn started breaking, Curly was singing inside his face mask:
The general public, now here's what they think --
We're a bunch of balonies addicted to drink,
Our motors, they frighten their babies, they say-y-y,
They accuse us of leading their daughters astray,
So, put on your tin bloomers, we'll...
&nbs
p; At this point Curly's jet flamed out and so did the ballad. But a flame-out is just a flame-out even on a dark night. At 60,000 feet you've got time to tinker around, find out what's wrong and fix it.
You can't get a restart in the thin air above 30,000 feet, so there was no hurry. He had plenty of time to check and double-check every item on his restart procedure. Curly headed his plane toward the beach, flipped his throttle back to the starting gate, stuck his nose over, and held his speed high enough so that his jets wouldn't stop windmilling. He checked his gauges and fuel system methodically and found everything okay Nearing 30,000 feet he hauled the nose up at a sharp angle and held it there for a while to dump out any fuel which had accumulated in the tailpipes and make sure he wouldn't get an explosive start, which is regarded as very bad luck among jet pilots. Then he nosed over again, hit the restart button, and shoved his throttle forward. No start.
The old adage says, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Curly tried and tried and tried, but he got no restart. He squeezed the button on the stick to tell the Guadalcanal he was having a little trouble but was working on it. His radio was just as dead as his blowtorch. He shot a quick glance over the side and noted with relief the line of surf far below, indicating he was crossing the coastline. At least he wouldn't wind up in the water.
You don't make dead-stick landings at night in rough country in jet planes. Approved procedure in the jet jockey trade, when you can't get the furnace going again, is to eject. Curly continued trying to restart but decided that his contract with the government to fly that airplane would expire at 10,000 feet.
At 15,000 a hydraulic line in the cockpit let go, splattering fluid all over Curly. In the forlorn hope that maybe only his earphones were out and the transmitter was still working, he squeezed his button and sang out, "This is Navy 7641, Lieutenant Commander Cue - Mayday - Mayday - Position 10 miles inland and 220 miles northeast of Guadalcanal -10 miles inland and 220 miles northeast. I am ejecting. Out."
Curly slowed down to as near stalling speed as he dared and pulled the safety pin out of the seat ejector. Then he tucked both feet up under the seat, flipped the switch that jettisoned the cockpit canopy, jerked his oxygen tube loose, and reached over his head with both hands. Getting a firm grip on the protective curtain, he yanked it down in front of his face, thus firing the ejector and blasting himself out into the night, seat and all.
Seconds later the seat flew apart and fell clear, leaving Curly tumbling end over end at a couple of hundred knots. Then the automatic ripcord puller acted, there was a sharp clap like a 40-mm gun as the chute cracked open, and Curly decelerated as if in a racing car with locked brakes.
As the drag of the chute checked his forward speed, Curly swept back and forth in great arcs under the chute like a kid in a swing. Gradually the swinging damped out and Curly floated through the darkness toward the good earth below, with the stars peering curiously down at him, and surrounded by the most awe-inspiring silence he had ever listened to.
His plane glided straight inland for about fifteen more miles and then nosed over and plunged smack into the middle of Clear Lake, a good-sized body of water in the mountains sixty miles north of San Francisco. Nobody saw it hit; it left no trace except a small oil spot on the surface.
So far so good. But Curly didn't have it made yet. The blackness below meant mountains, and parachuting into mountainous country at night is a tough way to make a living. For one thing, you can't tell which way the wind, if any, is blowing until you hit the ground and find out all of a sudden. You may get slammed against a cliff, dragged over one, or hauled over jagged rocks.
Curly had his usual luck, and though he came down in rough country, his chute hung up in a tree leaving him swinging ten feet above the ground, twenty miles from Clear Lake. Curly slid out of the harness, dropped to the ground, and noted by his watch he was due back on the ship in forty-five minutes.
It was a balmy night and his G suit was soaked with hydraulic fluid so he took it off and left it and his heavy crash helmet at the foot of the tree where his chute was. Then he started walking down the mountain just as dawn was breaking.
Soon he came to a paved road and took careful note of the spot so he could come back later and recover the government property that he was signed up for. Then he headed downhill on the road, confident he would soon find help.
Meantime, there was quite a flap on in the State Hospital for the Insane at Napa and all the surrounding area. A dangerous nut had bolted from the loony bin that night and was now at large. In his saner moments this screwball thought he was a space cadet and spoke the language of space and jet pilots fluently. But when he wasn't in outer space, he tended to commit unprovoked homicides. He had blasted off from the bughouse that night in pajamas. All police in California had been alerted, given a description of him, and had been warned that he was dangerous. A statewide manhunt was now in progress for the loose nut. Heavily armed patrol cars were scouring the countryside and roadblocks controlled all key points.
At this time there was no excitement whatever on the Guadalcanal. Cue's group wasn't due back at the ship for forty-five minutes. The fact that they heard nothing from Cue was not alarming because he was required to keep radio silence until he had something to say.
Curly was right in his guess that he would find help soon, but you are entitled to your own opinion whether or not it was "help." In half an hour Curly spotted a police car coming up the road, took station straddling the white line in the middle, and waited.
He was puzzled when the driver slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt fifty yards away. There was a pause while the occupants apparently held a brief conference. Then, four state policemen, armed with shotguns, piled out, deployed, across the road, and advanced, keeping Curly carefully covered all the way.
When ten yards away, the corporal in charge yelled, "Stick 'em up, mister. Don't make a move."
Curly dutifully raised his arms in deference to four double-barreled riot guns and asked, "Why all the excitement?"
"You other guys cover me while I frisk him," said the corporal, laying his gun down on the road, and advancing gingerly.
"What's coming off here?" demanded Curly as the corporal gave him a quick frisking.
"Okay, boys, he's clean!" yelled the corporal. "Bring me the handcuffs and leg irons."
"Wait a minute," yelled Curly. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Nobody answered this irate inquiry and, as the manacles were snapped on, Curly began to see red.
"Age 35, 160 pounds, 5 foot 10, and wearing pajamas," said the corporal. "It's him, all right." The other three agreed.
"You guys are nuts," Curly roared as they led him in chains toward the car.
"Oh," said the corporal, "so we're the ones who are nuts? How about yourself?"
"I am Lieutenant Commander Cue, United States Navy," said Curly with some heat. "I just..."
"Pleased to meetcha, Commander," said the corporal. "I'm Napoleon Bonaparte, and that there fella over there is Dr. Einstein. That's John Paul Jones over there, and --"
"Listen," roared Cue, "I just bailed out from a jet plane off the Guadalcanal. I've got to get word back to my ship."
"Hunh," said Dr. Einstein. "Used to be a space cadet but now he's only a Navy jet pilot."
This touched off a profane explosion by Curly and, as he started erupting, the Little Corporal said, "You guys keep him covered. He's dangerous. Look at his eyes."
There is no denying that by this time Curly had a wild look in his eyes.
"I been lookin' at 'em," said Dr. Einstein. "Anybody can see he's as crazy as a tree full of gooney birds."
"Yeah," agreed John Paul Jones, "and, like they said at the bughouse, he's wearing pajamas."
"I can explain the pajamas," Curly began. "I was called late..." Then he realized the utter futility of trying to explain pajamas when they wouldn't believe the other stuff, so he clammed up.
"Go ahead, Admiral," needled Joh
n Paul, "tell me about the pajamas. I was on the Enterprise during the war. Greatest ship in the Navy. We never went flying in our pajamas, though."
For the next hour, as they sped toward police headquarters, Curly alternated between heated repetitions of his story and torrents of abuse for the cops. He criticized their intelligence, character, performance of duty, and their parents' morals in language which can only be learned by long years of naval service. By the time they got to headquarters, each one of the cops wanted to beat Curly into a black-and-blue pulp. (But not with three witnesses present!)
Meantime, when the other planes returned, Curly had turned up missing in the Guadalcanal's landing circle, and could not be found on the radar screen. The ship immediately broke radio silence, called the missing plane, and when repeated calls got no answer, Admiral Day canceled the exercise and launched an all-out search.
Stand BY-Y-Y to Start Engines Page 3
