by Sid Luft
The way I’d acquired my commercial license was by faking my logbooks with Doug Ornstein’s signature. I made a stamp for myself and built up more time than I actually had by marching down to the stationery store and concocting a stamp that looked very much like the Clover Field Flying School stamp. When my faked logbook showed three hundred hours, I had enough to go for my license. I went to the FAA office, a twenty-minute drive from Clover Field, and they took me up and put me through the exercises. The actual flight test was not hard—lazy eights, turning the airplane over at 360 degrees while keeping the nose above the horizon, straight and level flying, take off, landing, and Immelmann, a 180-degree turn. I had to be precise with the stalls and spins. During this period, I was also learning aerobatics from former navy pilots. We’d put the aircraft through maneuvers like slow rolls, figure eights, and loops. We performed usually in an open-pitted aircraft with a good-size engine. I enjoyed the Ryan ST, an all-metal, low-wing craft that I could turn every which way. These maneuvers frightened a lot of people, but I was attracted to this kind of mischief like a moth to light.
The written exam for the commercial license was lengthy and comprehensive: I would have to know not only about engines but about navigation as well. I was able to understand everything, but I was not a test person. I’d hurriedly prepared. I wasn’t one hundred percent ready—there were several questions that stymied me. I excused myself to go to the john. Once outside the classroom I got on the pay phone and called Clover Field, where a pal was waiting on the other end of the line. My friend had a lot of experience and gave me the needed correct answers. This kind of unethical behavior was unheard of, but I was too ambitious not to take this opportunity and use it for what I thought was for the best. I was taking risks because I felt the world was closing in on me and I didn’t have much time to act.
But to qualify for officer status in the Royal Canadian Air Force, I’d need five hundred hours in my logbook, and it now stopped at four hundred. I was one of a number of guys my age who were building up flight time at Clover Field so we could join the RCAF. We all thought we were going to be the equivalent of squadron leaders—dreams of glory—or at least earn a commission of captain with airline experience, which I didn’t have. I’d been flying a little aircraft with a little engine. Nevertheless, of the guys who hung around the flying school, I was one of the few who actually made the RCAF.
I really was learning to fly by trial and error, half derring-do and a semi-ignorant lust for thrills. Once I was at Clover Field taxiing in a little Luscombe, a training airplane. I was on the taxi strip and a guy was holding up a sign: DON’T TAXI BACK OF AIRPORT. I didn’t see the sign, it was so small. And I wasn’t aware that in the Douglas Aircraft hangars, they were revving up the engines of a cargo aircraft, a DC3. They should have had a red flag waving at the tail section. I got caught in the prop wash from the DC3 and it flipped me on my back.
It was Ornstein’s airplane, and Douglas paid for all the repairs.
Marylou defied her parents by marrying me. We eloped to Las Vegas in December 1940, with a ring borrowed from Maggie Whiting, Margaret Whiting’s aunt. Three days after our marriage we still had not slept together as man and wife. Gussie had noticed Marylou’s car parked in front of my apartment and called me up. “I want to talk to you kids—now.”
I’d perceived Lou Simpson—Marylou’s father, a rugged, red-faced man—as rather narrow-minded. He was an executive at Pioneer Flintkote, a division of Shell Oil that manufactured roofing materials. He had plans for his daughter to marry someone from a wealthy family with whom he could play golf on weekends at the Los Angeles Country Club, a place that barred “kikes,” “niggers,” and dogs. His idea of a son-in-law may have been someone from Bronxville, but not a Jewish kid. I was certain he’d been avoiding meeting me for months. Now we both had to face the music.
We sent my driver out for a bottle of whiskey. Marylou was especially nervous and felt she needed to shore up her courage. We belted down some shots, and when we were up to it we made our way over to the Simpson home, where I proceeded to tell Gussie that Marylou and I were deeply in love—in fact, married. Gussie looked as though she was going to have a breakdown. I said, “Please calm down. Marylou and I are married, but we haven’t consummated the marriage. She’s your daughter.” It’s two in the afternoon and both mother and daughter are crying.
This went on four more hours, with Marylou trying to assure her mother: “I love Sid.”
About a quarter of six I heard whistling. It’s Lou, walking to the living room. “What’s going on here?” He looked puzzled.
Gussie sobbed, “They’re married.”
His reaction was to turn and say, “Who are you?”
I was not going to overlook the slight. I’d been around the house steadily for the last five months. I blurted out, “I’ve been seeing Marylou for some months, and we’ve gotten married, but we haven’t consummated it.”
Lou coughed. “Sit down, let’s talk this over. What do you do?”
“I’m a pilot and I’ve just joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. I’ll be in Canada in about a week.”
He countered, “My cousin is Admiral Simpson. I’ll have you on a carrier in a month’s time. Enlist in the navy, boy, don’t go to Canada.”
I was so recklessly defiant at that age that I knew I’d never get along in the US military. If I’d been in the army I’d have been court martialed, hung, or shot. I thought, This bastard is going to have me killed one way or the other.
I didn’t want to enlist, and I certainly didn’t want to be drafted. The first to be drafted were kids not in college; the second were men who were single. The third classification was married men. Had it not been wartime Marylou and I probably would not have married so quickly.
“Look, Lou, I understand how you feel, but your daughter’s in love with me. I’m in love with her. Things do happen.”
“Well, I don’t approve.”
“If you can talk your daughter out of marriage, I’m on my way.”
The three Simpsons left the room and went upstairs to confer.
Not much time passed before the three of them returned to announce we were going out to celebrate. Amid tears we went for dinner and drinks at the Tropics on Rodeo Drive. For our wedding present Lou and Gussie booked us a suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where Marylou and I became husband and wife. A few days later we were on a plane to Ottawa.
I became a pilot officer with one stripe on both wrists, equivalent to a second lieutenant, and cloth wings stitched on my tunic. The visor cap was like the UK’s RAF. The first day, there was a big party and someone got drunk and screamed at me, “You fuckin’ American, coming up here and flying . . .” Before he was finished I had him hanging out the window with my hands around his throat. I thought, is it going to be me against the Royal Canadian Air Force, too?
The pay was $300 a month. To live decently I sold a lot I owned on Rodeo Drive, and Gussie sold my Packard 12 Roadster and sent me the money.
I started my career with the RCAF at Thunderbird Field, School Conversion Training Squadron, Edmonton, Ontario. When we were sent to Edmonton it was forty degrees below zero, an ice palace, but Marylou and I had a good time. There was an indoor armory where we played polo, and at night we’d often take the horses for a gallop in the moonlit snow. We met civilians we enjoyed spending time with, and we were very much in love. This was our honeymoon, but I was concerned about getting Marylou pregnant. It was the era of the soapy douche, and it seemed to work; it did break the afterglow, however, as the woman had to apply this method immediately after making love.
Marylou seemed to adore our new life, the snow’s brilliance, the sheer force of nature at night. The purity of the intense winter landscape fed our relationship, so much in contrast to our accustomed palm-lined streets and the smoky ambience of near-tropical nights at the beach.
I worked from six in the morning until three in the afternoon. I piloted wireless air gunners, made for n
oncommissioned men who were going to be tail gunners and receive instructions by code. The flights were half-hour stints for the kids to practice their inflight exercises. Later that winter I was sent to the number-one wireless gunnery school in Montreal. I flew a Noorduyn Norseman, a single-engine, Canadian-built bush plane with a high wing that was used during peacetime for transporting mining equipment and able to carry a good-size load, with wheels and pontoons. It was a solid workhorse. Instead of one gunner in the rear it had four.
I got into a brawl in Montreal and hit another officer, Pilot Officer Jennings. We were having luncheon and I signed a chit thinking that was the thing to do. It was $1.40. I wrote down my number and where I was stationed. No sooner had I signed the chit than Jennings’s voice invaded my eardrum: “You fuckin’ Americans come up here and sign those chits.”
Again, my reactive nature blasted, “What’d you say?”
“You heard me,” came the defiant reply. I pounded him as he finished his retort. I was put under open arrest and sent back to the dormitory on the facility. While I was waiting to be paraded in front of the commanding officer for striking another officer I saw the door to his office was ajar. I overheard an Aussie who was a squadron leader say, “Wing Commander, go fuck yourself, you old cocksucker.” He couldn’t stop swearing, continuing, “Fuck you, you dirty old son of a bitch,” and then he walked out. I thought, This is going to be a tough act to follow. I was aware that the Aussies were treated like shit. They were fighter pilots sent in directly from Australia. A division of noncommissioned men, they’d arrive in Canada already half nuts from the strain of flying bombers. They were high strung and some of them broke down; others became drunks. It was a dangerous, tough life for these overworked young men. When I was officer of the day I found a kid locked up in the local precinct. He was an Aussie picked up dead drunk. A nice guy, he was reduced to sobbing. I saw right away that these kids’ nerves were shot.
“Officer Luft.” My name was barked out. I explained what had happened, that I had misunderstood, that I thought I could sign the chit, and that I regretted hitting the officer. The wing commander was not sympathetic. “You’ll have to see the air force marshal in Toronto.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, surprised that they were making this into an issue; I knew they couldn’t court martial me. As an American, I was in the Canadian Air Force but was not obliged to take the oath. I could quit and walk across the border at any time.
The wing commander told me to report to a warrant officer, who would be accompanying me by train from Montreal all the way to Toronto. I was being treated like a prisoner. Fortunately, the warrant officer was a nice guy and the trip to Toronto, besides being a waste of time, was not a hardship.
The air force marshal sat behind a large desk, and his uniform displayed more spaghetti than I’d seen to date. He made a little speech about my behavior from the papers on his desk. Again, I explained I was very sorry, I lost my temper, it was a misunderstanding. I went on to say I was actually outraged that I’d been insulted as an American who came to Canada in good faith. He then asked me where I’d like to be stationed. I said I’d like to advance myself, and that Picton, Ontario, would be OK. He told me I had a fine record and I said, “Thank you.” The marshal was the opposite of the wing commander. He was grateful that Americans came up and enlisted.
Around March 1941 I was transferred to Picton, across the river from Rochester, New York, on Lake Erie. The following summer was lovely, with beautiful weather every day. I was flying something that looked like a Spitfire but was twice as big. It carried the same engine. Now the cadets were working with targets.
Once, though, I was returning to Saint-Hubert Airport in Montreal when, from out of nowhere, a violent snowstorm blew in and I was unable to land. I could only approximate the distance. I was in a Noorduyn Norseman, ferrying training pilots. I remained out of the area for twenty minutes, hoping the front would move on. Airplanes were trying to line up for a landing at the end of their exercises, and there was a great deal of confusion. I made a pass over the airport and saw a red light indicating danger: get out of the area. I nearly collided with another airplane. I was instructed to reduce my speed and land downwind. I came in too fast and the runway was packed with deep snow. I’d never landed in snow. I’d disobeyed my instructions and came in too high over telephone wires. I hit the end of the runway and went into a snowbank and slowly turned over on my back. Luckily, the aircraft didn’t catch fire. I loosened the safety belt and promptly fell on my head. Before I could even walk away from the airplane, the tail section crumpled the rudder, and there was some damage to the top of the wing. The emergency trucks and ambulance were at the ready. I helped the kids out. Fortunately, no one was hurt. I’d had experience flying in Edmonton where there was snow, but it was lightweight compared to this situation. I was not as experienced as the guys who were bush pilots delivering mail and supplies infield to the prairie country of Canada. They flew in any weather. I was a nutcase from California who was still learning.
Another time I was delivering a Lockheed Ventura back to Montreal with a navigator and copilot. I took off from Dallas. It was fall and the weather around Nashville was consistently rainy in that season, with fog and storm fronts. A front was closing down on me and I was running out of fuel. The ground was soggy, and I stuck the airplane in a field near Charleroi, Pennsylvania, about the size of a postage stamp. We got out of the airplane and there were farmers and local townspeople swarming around us. The airplane wasn’t damaged, but I knew I couldn’t fly it out, so I locked it and walked away. I got conscripted to give a talk at the local high school that night. Eventually the RCAF had to haul the airplane away.
I made six flights with a navigator across the North Atlantic from Newfoundland. We’d receive instructions to take off in Montreal. I’d open up the envelope, read the instructions, and fly out and back. Sometimes it would be a false mission. Out of Newfoundland we’d fly to Prestwick, Scotland; to France; and to a region of Finland, where I encountered the women’s Russian ferrying command. Both the Americans and Russians were in Finland.
I delivered the first modified A-20 bomber, painted all black. It was used for special operations. The female Russian pilots would pick up these planes in Finland and fly them at tree level over northern Prussia at night. They wouldn’t talk to the American pilots. They were strong, masculine women who often didn’t survive. They were very courageous. The modified A-20 was but a small step beyond experimental stage, equipped with night-flying restricted gear. Germany had an entire fleet of destroyers in Norway right across the North Sea. And the British engaged Germans in combat over the English Channel. Generally, after delivering an A-20, I flew back in a Lancaster, a heavy bomber. I was not interested in actual warfare. It didn’t appeal to me. Some men had to be fighter pilots. But for me, there were enough risks flying the North Atlantic.
Jim Mitchell, one of the former navy pilots who taught me aerobatics at Clover Field, had also joined the RCAF. A quiet, serious guy, he was a mechanic and a great instructor. Flying aerobatics had given me a strong sense of control; precision flying, as it were, helped me become more proficient. As he was older and more experienced, I looked up to Jim and considered him a friend. One morning in Canada, he took an aircraft on a mission that I’d been scheduled to fly, a delivery across the North Atlantic. Jim disappeared on that run. We figured he must have iced up and crashed. I was devastated over the loss of a great friend, and I began to think that if it weren’t for Jim, I’d be dead. Over the years I often thought of Jimmy Mitchell as my involuntary guardian angel. I’ve never stopped thinking about him. He was a top pilot with three times more expertise than me. It was a huge personal loss.
Four pals got stranded on an ice cap in Greenland for a month. These pilots were flying from Gander to Greenland on instruments when they experienced intense turbulence. Luckily, they survived, living inside the fuselage until they were rescued. The winds were too strong for the rescue airplane to
land, so supplies were dropped in for them. I half expected a disaster to happen to me—it was all around me, and there was always that taste of danger in my mouth every time I took off.
13
THE DAY I ARRIVED in Picton in 1941, I’d walked into the officers’ mess and Harry Arbick, an officer, came up to me and said, “So, you’re the tough guy? You like to fight, Officer Luft?”
To which I replied, “No, sir, I’m not tough, but if you want to take the tunic off, I’ll knock your fuckin’ brains out.” The mess hall had emptied out and it was just the two of us. When he took off his tunic, I said, “Officer Arbick, I don’t want to hurt you.”
He continued, “You think you’re a tough guy, take your first shot.”
Quite a gentleman, I thought. “Take yours,” I offered.
He threw a punch, and I returned it by knocking him right on the jaw. It was all over. His mouth was cut up. I stood him up and we shook hands. He said, “You’ll do.”
Harry Arbick was my commanding officer and formerly with the North West Mounted Police. He looked like the old movie actor Jack Holt—mustached, sturdy, ready for duty. Arbick and I became good friends. He eventually went overseas, and when he left he gave me a photo and signed it, “To my dear friend, Sid Luft, the best winger I ever had.” I treasure that memento of my early life. He retired after the war, and I invited him and his wife to New York to spend a week as my guest when Judy opened the RKO Palace in 1951.
Marylou took my brawling in stride, mostly because I reassured her that people seemed to love to challenge me. Those brawls didn’t last long, and there wasn’t any severe damage to anyone. We didn’t pack guns or use knives; it was the acting out of the brawler as romantic hero. The times were different, and guys had other goals. We were all under pressure—we didn’t know if we were going to survive. We were young and it was war. And there was tragedy all around us. My buddies went off on missions and some never came back. Pilot Officer Holden got bored with flying cadets and went overseas. He was in a fighter group that got blown out of the sky and, like many other men, he left a wife and children behind.
