Air Force Eagles

by Walter J. Boyne

  Varney stuttered "Yah, yah, in a—in a couple of minutes, Milo Ruddick will be coming in. Do you know him?"

  "Never met him. Some sort of under-secretary or something?"

  "Assistant Secretary for Defense—not much of a title for the guy who really runs the place. He was a Congressman for eight terms, ran the House Armed Services Committee from behind the scenes. Old Milo is a political powerhouse, with Roosevelt's charm, Harry Hopkins's brains, and John L. Lewis's clout."

  "You seem mighty impressed by him."

  "You're damn right I am. He still likes to be called 'Congressman,' and he calls the shots on defense. If he says yea, it's yea, and if he says nay, it's nay. I've never met anybody who had the military buffaloed like this guy."

  "Then why is he coming here rather than us going to his office? Looks like you'd be at his beck and call."

  "I am, I am. But he wanted a little privacy."

  "What does he want with me?"

  "Well ..." The door popped open and a tall, slender man, impeccably dressed, flowed into the room as silently as a Wodehouse butler. He set down a bulging leather briefcase on the polished wood floor, folded his arms across his chest, and stood looking at them as if he were impressing their image on his mind forever.

  Bandfield understood why Varney was impressed. Ruddick's entrance had not been theater but presence; there was an electric aura of power about the man. He was handsome in the manner of an aging Hollywood star, with thinning curly gray hair, perfectly cut, a contrast to his bushy eyebrows, which seemed to range forever across his broad brow. As he gazed at them his aquiline nose quivered slightly, as if he were sniffing out their personalities, while behind his wire-rim glasses his eyes were thin blue shields, as cold as liquid oxygen.

  Suddenly he stuck out his hand in Bandfield's direction and with that simple movement seemed to change his whole persona from master inquisitor to lifetime friend. "Nice to see you, General Varney. And this must be Colonel Bandfield. I've heard a lot about you from your old friend, General Caldwell."

  They sat down and Ruddick drawled, "I greatly admired Henry. Look there." He pointed to a photograph on the wall of President Roosevelt pinning on Caldwell's third star. "There I am, in the background."

  His voice seemed very familiar; Bandfield tried to place it as Ruddick fixed him with a benevolent grin.

  "And that's where I want you to work for me, in the background."

  "Yes, sir, just tell me what you want me to do."

  Ruddick confided, "First of all, let me tell you why I'm so supportive of the services, particularly the air forces. I always wanted to fly myself, but didn't have the time or money. Both my son Bob and my son-in-law are pilots. Bob flew McNaughton Sidewinders during most of the war."

  Bandfield shook his head. "And he lived through it? He must be damn good to survive a tour on McNaughtons. Troy McNaughton should have been prosecuted for sabotage at the least, and maybe for murder."

  Varney turned ashen and Bandfield knew that he'd said the wrong thing. Yet Ruddick's manner did not change, his tone still johnnycake and honey.

  "Now, I'm right sorry to hear that, Colonel Bandfield. Troy McNaughton's always been a good friend of my colleague, Congressman Dade, and I admire them both. And my dear son, Bob, swears by McNaughton aircraft—he wants to fly one in the Cleveland races someday. I hope your feelings won't affect your objectivity."

  Ruddick lowered his head so that his eyes popped up owlishly over the top of his glasses to stare at Bandfield as he smiled. In the background Varney was white-faced and shaken.

  "Sorry, Mr. Congressman, I meant no offense. If your son liked McNaughtons, they are probably better airplanes than I thought they were."

  Ruddick purred, "Let's change the subject. How much do you know about the Gillem Report?"

  "I've read a little about it—it's a recommendation on how best to utilize Negro servicemen, isn't it?"

  "It's more than that—it's an attempt to bring about integration in a practical way. But most people don't like it. The services say it goes too far, and the coloreds, especially the NAACP, say it doesn't go far enough."

  A skeptical look crept across Bandfield's face. "How do you feel about it?"

  Ruddick glanced at Varney. "Well, you warned me that he was very straightforward." Then, "Colonel Bandfield, what do you think a man who represented the people of Little Rock in Congress for sixteen years feels about integration?"

  "You're against it."

  "To be honest, I am not, personally. I think it's inevitable, but not in my lifetime. My former constituents are against it one hundred percent, but I have to determine what's best for the service."

  He spoke without bombast; it was a statement of political fact, but Bandfield was always suspicious of people who used the phrase "to be honest"—more often than not it meant they were lying.

  "How do you see my role? I don't know how I can help you."

  "General Varney's told me about your assignment for him—test-flying the new prototypes, visiting the factories, being his leg man, if Meat-axe will pardon the expression."

  Varney nodded eagerly—it was obvious that he'd pardon Ruddick of anything.

  "Colonel, all I want is that you just keep your eyes and ears open as you go around the country. Ask questions on the flight line, in the officers' clubs. Try to find out how service people feel about integrating the military. Form a picture of the real situation, and give me the pros and cons. If integration isn't going to hurt the services, I won't oppose it and I'll try to educate my former constituents to accept it. But if—as I fear—early integration will be harmful, then I'll fight it tooth and nail."

  As he spoke, Bandfield placed his voice—it was Edward R. Murrow's, with a Southern drawl, richer in tone, warmer, and laced with indulgent good humor. The man could have made a fortune in broadcasting.

  "I can do that, but what good will it be? I'm just one man; I can't gather a genuine statistical sample."

  "Colonel, you have a reputation for being hot-headed, hardworking, and totally honest. I don't want a six-inch-thick report that shows the third standard deviation of a multiple choice questionnaire. I want someone with some common sense, somebody who can get a gut feel for a situation. Varney says you fill the bill."

  Bandfield felt the same uneasy ambivalence about Ruddick that he might have felt about a likeable car salesman. The man had a marvelous personality, and he was direct and to the point. Yet in his eyes there was a thinly veiled hint of mockery, a cozy awareness that he was playing his game, and playing it well.

  "Sir, I don't even know what my own feelings are. A good friend of mine, John Marshall, was one of the Tuskegee pilots. He fought in Italy and scored a couple of victories. John worked for me for a while in California, after the war. There were no problems with anyone. But the racial climate's different there. There's no way for me to guess what a guy from Alabama or Georgia might be thinking."

  "You don't have to guess about Southerners—I already know what they're thinking. But integration's coming. Truman wants it because he needs the black vote. It's just a matter of when and where, and if it should be delayed. And for me, the major question is whether it should come first in the armed services. What do you think?"

  Varney, tense as a torsion bar, watched Bandfield tussle with the question. "I don't know. The Constitution applies to everybody, black, white, or in-between. Everybody has a duty to serve. But I'd have to see what it does to military efficiency. I know from my friend that the guys from Tuskegee, the 332nd, did well enough during the war."

  "Did you know that General Eaker didn't think so?"

  "No, I didn't. What did he say?" Eaker was one of the most respected men in the Air Force, a war hero and a gentleman.

  "General Eaker argues that the Negro units required too much support relative to the results they produced. He says that the service shouldn't be a testing ground for race relationships, or for advancing the prestige of the Negro race."

  As Bandf
ield chewed this over, Ruddick went on. "Remember that the 332nd was an elite, segregated unit. Segregated Negro units have done well in every war since the War Between the States. But today the issue isn't proficiency, or bravery, or even patriotism. The issue is integration—when, how much, and where."

  Varney's face was now even paler; he was openly apprehensive, like a child caught smoking behind the barn. Bandfield feared that he might be on the verge of a heart attack.

  "Are you okay, Sam?"

  Varney nodded, and Frank said, "Mr. Ruddick, I'll be glad to work with you, to find out all I can and give you an opinion. But I can't tell you how much confidence to place in it."

  "Don't worry, you won't be my only source."

  Bandfield stood up and turned to Varney, who seemed to be recovering. "Where do I start?"

  "I'm sending you to North American first, to check out in our first jet bomber, the B-45. Then it'll be Convair, Martin, and McNaughton. Somewhere along the line, I want you to spend time at Lockbourne Air Force Base—that's where the majority of the segregated Negro units are located now."

  "Great. My buddy Marshall is at Muroc—working for McNaughton of all people. I'll try to get some background from him. What else have you got for me?"

  Ruddick handed him the bulging briefcase. "Here's the Gillem Report, with the back-up documentation. When you digest that, I'll have more."

  *

  En route to Lockbourne Air Force Base, Ohio/ September 6, 1947

  In splendid solitude, far above everyone in the sky, their four jet engines churned out long white trails of vapor glistening in the sun, an endless cone of icy crystals tracking the silver bomber's path. Below, brilliant alpine cloud tops belied the black turbulence they concealed within. John Marshall lolled in the back seat of the bomber, glad to have this unexpected respite from the demanding research flying he was doing at Muroc.

  "Well, Bandy, you must have a lot of pull to get a plane like this for cross-country work. I'm glad you decided to take a poor old reserve lieutenant along for the ride."

  "Just part of my job. How does this bucket compare to your rocket plan?"

  "Like the Queen Mary to a Chris Craft."

  Silent as a sailplane, the XB-45 flew at eight miles a minute, six miles above the ground. From behind them, rays from the setting sun gave a feathering of orange and purple to the line of thunderstorms percolating on the horizon.

  Marshall's voice suddenly lifted an octave. "Holy-moly, check the fuel gauges!"

  Bandfield glanced down; the main tanks, one-quarter full only moments ago, were registering empty. He glanced at the "how-goes-it chart" on his clipboard where he had carefully plotted the fuel consumption for their four-hour flight out from Muroc. Everything was on the button—either they had had a sudden massive fuel leak, or the gauges were out.

  Marshall echoed his thoughts. "Might be the gauges."

  "Famous last words."

  Bandfield had taken a cram course on the aircraft systems at the North American plant, followed by a three-hour check-out flight in the local area. But the XB-45 was a complex airplane, and he still had a lot to learn.

  "What do you want to do, Bandy? We're only a few minutes out of Lockbourne."

  "Nothing right now. Can you see if we're streaming fuel?"

  Marshall, seated behind Bandfield in the narrow cockpit, turned and searched behind them, craning his neck to see out of the long slender canopy. "Nothing out there. I just wish I was home with Mama."

  Bandfield's direction-finder needle began to move as they crossed over the Lockbourne ADF facility. He called his position into Lockbourne as he cranked the bomber into a holding pattern.

  He was furious with himself as he visualized the blueprint for the accident unfolding, a series of small mistakes. First, he should never have taken an experimental aircraft on a cross-country flight when he only had a few hours in the plane. Second, while Marshall was an experienced test pilot, he'd never flown in the XB-45 before. And stupidest of all, they'd overflown Scott Field, confident that there was plenty of fuel. That's how accidents happened—not one thing, but a series of minor quirks that added up to a catastrophe.

  The airplane was wonderful, fast, smooth, powerful, and easy to fly, a tremendous advance over any bomber he'd ever flown—when all was going well. But he was far from proficient in it, and things were beginning to unravel fast. His flight plan called for an hour's fuel remaining when he arrived, and now the tanks were bumping empty and the field was socked in with a stack of traffic waiting to land.

  "John, I'm sorry about this—I'm too old for this kind of shit. I should never asked you to come along."

  Marshall ran his finger around his new hard hat trying to ease the pressure points, yearning for his old leather helmet, and ill at ease only because he couldn't help.

  "Listen, this is a great experience for me. I'll see how an old pro handles a problem."

  A few weeks before, Bandfield had rung Marshall up at McNaughton's Muroc flight test facility as soon as he'd left Varney's office. Marshall was glad to work with him on the integration issue, and he suggested that they visit Lockbourne together, to show him exactly what segregation meant in the service. Varney sent orders authorizing them to use the XB-45 for some cross-country work. It sounded like a good idea, killing two birds with one stone, but now Bandfield realized that he should have known better. The airplane had completed its company test program, but it was too new, too trouble-prone, to take this sort of liberty with it.

  "You going to declare an emergency, Bandy?"

  "Not yet. If we've got fuel that's not showing up on the gauges, I'd just as soon hold here until we're cleared. We might ... oh, shit."

  They both watched the engines' RPM counters begin to spool down as the tanks ran dry, first number three, then one, then two and four together.

  "Lockbourne Approach Control, this is Air Force Niner Four Eight One over the beacon at thirty thousand. We've just lost all four engines."

  "Roger, Eight One, are you declaring an emergency?"

  Over the intercom Bandfield called, "No, you stupid fucker, I'm diverting to Honolulu." But on the air he said, "Ah, Roger, Lockbourne, we're declaring an emergency, two souls on board, zero fuel remaining, descending now through twenty-eight thousand."

  "Maintain a minimum rate of descent until I can clear the traffic out below you, Eight One; I'm going to have to divert half a dozen planes in the holding pattern."

  Marshall's voice was cheerful on the intercom. "Well, Bandy, at least I can get into the Lockbourne club with no problem; we'll have to buy a few drinks for all the guys we're delaying."

  Bandfield was too busy for the comment about segregated clubs to register, and he mumbled, "How does it feel to be in the biggest, fastest glider in history?"

  Lockbourne Approach came back on frequency with the weather.

  "Eight One, Lockbourne reporting one thousand scattered, two thousand broken, light rain, wind variable, gusting fifteen to twenty. Cloud tops reported at angels twenty-two, with turbulence and lightning in all quarters."

  "Roger." Not good, but not too bad, and it didn't make any difference, they were going to have to make it on the first approach. He wasn't about to bail out of a prototype, especially since the handbook had warned that the airplane was not easy to leave.

  Silent as a shadow, they slipped into the cloud layer at twenty-four thousand feet, plotting an exacting orbit around the station, two minutes out, 180-degree turn, track back in, 180-degree turn, then two minutes out again, descending all the while at a constant one thousand feet per minute.

  "Lockbourne, Eight One. How you doing on the traffic, I'm passing sixteen thousand now."

  "Roger, Eight One, you're cleared for approach and landing, runway twenty-three, emergency equipment standing by, runway wet with standing water at approach end, braking action reported poor."

  The cockpit lights dimmed as Bandfield cranked the big jet around to its final approach.

  "We're l
osing the battery, John. I don't know what that'll do to the gear and flaps. Strap yourself in tight, babe, I may have to belly in.

  Even as the needle of his automatic direction finder turned as they passed over the beacon at 1,700 feet, Bandfield reproached himself again for not knowing the airplane well enough, trying frantically to recall the emergency procedure to lower the landing gear—there wasn't time to look it up, and the hydraulic system was complex. A little back pressure brought the nose up, slowing them to 130 miles per hour, just as they lost all of their electrical power, lights going out, gauges sticking or flopping like dead ducks. Then, as if on cue, the clouds parted and he saw the welcome convergent white streaks of the runway lights ahead.

  "Field in sight."

  Marshall spoke for the first time in minutes. "I'll bet old Daddy Johnson will be there to meet us."

  "Gear going down."

  The silence was agonizing as the landscape slid toward them, seeming to roll up, the trees at the edge of the runway rising, the lights getting brighter, aircraft and trucks now visible on the ramp. Bandfield's hand automatically went through what he remembered of the emergency gear-down drill.

  "Brace yourself, John, I can't verify if the gear is down or not."

  Hands sweating, Bandfield mouthed a silent prayer that the fuel had really burned off and wasn't pooled in the belly, a bomb waiting to go off when they touched down. He leveled off just short of the runway, slightly nose high, and when the big jet's main gear kissed the runway the two pilots bellowed in relief.

  As the nose gear touched down, Bandfield eased on the brakes to roll out on the taxi-way leading to the ramp where the fire trucks and ambulances were now converging.

  "Good job, Bandy, but now you're really in trouble."

  "Hey, babe, after that, nothing's going to seem like trouble."

  "Oh, yeah? Look who's waiting for us."

  At the side of the runway, West Point training showing in his ramrod-stiff stance, was the base commander. Colonel Joseph J. Johnson—"J-Cubed" to the troops—had led the all-Negro 332nd Fighter Wing into combat. Utterly demanding of himself, uncompromising with others, he got results.