by Sid Luft
While I was wondering who was going to challenge me next, my wife was playing bridge with the officers’ wives. This diversion was not very satisfying for her. She spent her days and nights waiting for me to come off duty. It began to be tough on her to sit around in a small town. There were a few other Americans, and we made a point of going out with them and their wives at night dancing, to movies, to parties in the officers’ mess. Nevertheless, she was finding life as a pilot’s wife confining.
It didn’t help her that I was constantly studying. Harry Arbick had motivated me: I studied celestial navigation and flying under the hood (instrument flying). I now had the opportunity to gain more experience than any of my peers.
Marylou decided she was homesick and went back to Los Angeles. When my four-week furlough came up I followed her. We sublet a house on Beverly Glen Boulevard. I could easily see Marylou was back in the routine of lunch with friends and her mother. One night she confided to me she actually had come to hate her life in Canada. I began to think Marylou would be a hell of a lot nicer if I could work nearer to her. I’d heard about a training program for pilots in Oxnard, halfway between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.
I drove up to Oxnard to see the commanding officer, who was later married to Hollywood star Constance Bennett. He greeted me with “Glad to have you aboard. Come on back tomorrow and we’ll check you out.” The next morning, I got up there by 8:00 AM. I was to be checked by an army pilot to become a flight instructor. At four in the afternoon I was still warming the bench. Finally I piped up, “Pardon me, sir, I’ve been here since eight o’clock.” He said, “You could warm it another four days!” A surge of anger came over me and I said, “You don’t get me up at five o’clock in the morning and talk to me that way. Shove it up your ass.” Disgusted, I returned to Canada.
A cold settled in my ears and wouldn’t go away. I was retaining fluid behind the inner ear. On one flight I had to make a quick and dangerous descent. I shouldn’t have been flying in that condition. The ear drained for weeks and weeks. I was put on a three-week leave to recuperate in Phoenix, Arizona. I stayed at the Camelback Lodge near the Arizona Biltmore, a nice little hotel, and Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn were both there. Jimmy was already a private pilot. We were in the bar drinking when a guy yelled out, “Pearl Harbor bombed!” I thought, now it’s official. I was actually relieved.
Marylou was tired of Canada and of playing the wife of a pilot officer. She had designs on acting and did not want a restricted life, no matter how much in love she may have believed she was. I didn’t think she wanted a separation. I had planned on leaving Phoenix and spending my remaining time in Los Angeles with Marylou before returning to my duties with the RCAF. We were still a couple as far as I was concerned. Jimmy asked me, “What’re you going to do?”
“I guess I’ll go back to Canada.”
“Did you ever think of flying for ATC? It’s a private company run by civilians out in Long Beach.” Jimmy explained that ATC was in the business of delivering aircraft. “The commanding officer is a friend of mine; with your experience they’d love a guy like you working for them.”
I considered it but decided to return directly to Canada and put both ATC and Marylou on hold for the moment. When I came back from Newfoundland a letter from Marylou was awaiting me. She wanted a divorce. I immediately called Max, a lawyer I knew in Los Angeles.
“Is there any property?” he asked. There wasn’t. Max said, “Well, if you don’t want to contest the divorce, in six months you’ll be divorced. Park the papers in the trash.”
I hadn’t come to Hollywood to be in the automobile business, nor did I ever have it in mind to marry a movie star. It was wartime; I didn’t know what was ahead of me. I was in a day-to-day existence. I’d married a little local society girl who was not willing to wait out the war. She hankered after the movies, and she was attached to her parents. She thought it was too rough being married to a pilot, and so we said bye-bye.
As for me, there wasn’t much better in life than crawling into a medium bomber, knowing that I could fly up fifteen thousand feet, look down at the cockeyed world, and for one brief, shining moment be captain of my ship. It seemed in those moments that there were no limits to where I might go in life—assuming I’d survive the war.
I quit the RCAF and went to work for ATC. The commanding officer turned out to be a relative of Nicky Du Pont, my old classmate from Hun.
America was knocking out pilots by the minute. Civilians were flying huge, expensive military aircraft. We were paid triple what I was making in Canada. Officially I was a civilian, living in Beverly Hills. I’d pick up assignments to deliver airplanes. It was a straightforward kind of work, leaving me free to chase dames and have them chase me. Marylou showed up at my apartment one night while I was working for ATC. She stayed over, and in the morning I said, “Now go back to Mom and Dad.” I wasn’t enthusiastic about sleeping with an ex-wife in a casual way. I was already quite used to bachelorhood and glad to be free.
Hollywood, as elsewhere, was overloaded with young women during the war years. They were invariably taking acting and singing lessons and dance classes, and they enjoyed living in the fast lane. I’d make the conquest, but if I wasn’t in love, I’d go on to someone else. So there was Sheila Ryan, under contract to RKO, and then June Lang. I thought June was gorgeous. She had beautiful legs and a great face and lived with her mother, who seemed overly protective. This didn’t strike me as unusual. As our romance flourished June’s mother advised me to leave her alone, as she was being kept by Johnny Roselli, one of the Italian kingpins. “You’ll get a bullet in your head.” Roselli was associated with Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel. It was the beginning of gangster intrigue: mob men, Vegas, and the motion picture industry. I told June’s mother I wished she’d spoken up earlier.
I dropped her fast, telling myself she wasn’t that fantastic. She wasn’t exactly a college graduate. Years later Johnny Roselli was found floating in an oil drum in a Miami bay.
ATC was a big change from the military constraints and discipline of the RCAF. When you became an ATC pilot you were issued two leather fur-lined jackets bearing the round ATC insignia and supplied with a .38 caliber gun.
The first airplane I flew for ATC was an A-20. The second flight was in a Ventura, and I was copilot. The rest of the time I was a captain with a copilot. I flew all over the United States for three months delivering bombers to different military bases.
I experienced one wonderful show-off moment when I flew a B-24 from Long Beach, California, to Newark, New Jersey, where the army was going to pick it up. My parents, although divorced, got together and came out to see me in my captain’s uniform, waving from the pilot’s seat of the four-engine bomber.
I flew Lockheed Hudsons, Venturas, B-24s and B-25s. Most often I flew the Ventura, a medium twin-engine bomber. I delivered them everywhere on this continent, from Georgia to Montreal.
Once I lost an engine minutes after takeoff. It stopped dead. I had just cleared eight hundred feet up in Long Beach when I had to return to the airport. The mechanic thought they could repair the problem. Time went by and I picked up another assignment while I was waiting around. A bunch of us took off for Dallas. The next morning was gray, and we were to fly to Nashville. I received a report at Texarkana that Nashville was closing in. I wasn’t about to fly on instruments. I was shaky, not having flown “under the hood” for some time. Instead I flew up the Mississippi Valley and landed in St. Louis. I gassed up in St. Louis and delivered the plane to Detroit, where I grabbed a transport plane back to Long Beach.
I was next assigned another Ventura. The instruction was to fly to Palm Springs. Here I taxied the airplane up to where another aircraft was parked. I shut off the ignition and stepped out. A kid, fresh out of school, was opening the door with a key. I yelled, “Whaddaya’ doin’?” He told me he was going to repark the airplane.
“Listen,” I said, “do me a favor, don’t rev this engine. Leave it alone, a
nd get out of the airplane.” He continued to ignore me.
I grabbed him and threw him out. “Go near this airplane, I’ll kill you.”
The next morning at five o’clock I got a call at the hotel to come down to the airport. I arrived and asked a mechanic, “Where’s my airplane?” He told me to jump in the jeep and he’d show me.
About a thousand feet down the runway I saw my airplane, cut in half. On the other side of the runway I saw a Beechcraft, totally demolished. “What the fuck happened?”
“The kid you threw out of the airplane got into the Beechcraft, revved up those engines, and the brakes broke loose. He jumped out of the fuckin’ airplane just in time. He’s in the hospital. The Beechcraft cut your airplane in half.”
I was speechless. I knew that kid was a dunce, but I didn’t figure him for plain stupid. Those fresh-out-of-school kids were famous for driving the pilots nuts.
From this incident I was brought up on charges before a Colonel Spake in Long Beach. The fact that I physically threw the kid out counted against me. They seemed to be ignoring that it was the kid who trashed the airplane.
Colonel Spake was irate. He’d been in the roofing business in Texas before recently donning a uniform. He announced, “We’ve got a charge of assault by Private Benson.”
“You do?”
I was shocked. It was on the record that the kid was responsible for what happened. Spake continued: “You physically assaulted an army private.”
I said, “Yes, sir, I was captain of the airplane.”
“You’re not a captain, you’re a civilian.”
I had to control my fury. “I’m trusted to an airplane, captain of the aircraft, carrying out classified work, and you tell me I can’t be in charge of my aircraft?”
With this last question he responded, “You’re fired. I’ll give you ten minutes to get off this post.”
With my reactive nature I retorted, “Can I have twelve, Colonel?”
Now he was howling. “Furthermore, I’ll have you in the infantry in forty-eight hours.” Shades of my ex-father-in-law.
“No shit,” I said, and then turned to his stunned secretary. In a polite voice I asked, “Would you please put in writing what you have witnessed? And by the way, what’s your name?”
Spake growled, “Yeah, put it in writing.”
I then asked her to read it back to us, and she did.
I’d learned in Canada after another American had been similarly threatened that coercion or threats of any kind were not acceptable. Out of control, I turned to Spake before I left the room and said, “Listen you dumb cocksucker, you can’t coerce me.”
The next day I went up to Douglas Aircraft. I was interviewed by Win Sargent, one of the top test pilots. Two days later I was working for Douglas as a test pilot.
Win took me aside. “What the hell did you do at Long Beach? There’s a colonel who’s got it in for you.”
I said, “Fuck that colonel.” I explained the situation. Win contacted a general who had considerable power. Colonel Spake was sent far away to a cold climate, definitely not like Texas or California.
The Douglas Aircraft industry was headquartered at Clover Field in Santa Monica. They manufactured the DC-3, a forerunner of the DC-10 and the workhorse of the US Army and Navy. The DC-3, unlike its predecessor, the DC-2, had retractable landing gear and a twin-engine cargo. It was to be used by commercial airlines for transcontinental work.
By the time I began working at Douglas I was a serious, seasoned pilot. I’d flown in every condition by now, and knew instruments. Many mornings we’d take off under zero weather conditions. The local weather around Santa Monica was usually dense fog, zero visibility, until midday when the sun rose high enough to burn off the fog. We’d take off on instruments until we were at least two hundred feet above ground and able to climb through that stuff.
Training for this was on the ground under a black cloth over the canopy of a simulated cockpit. This contraption was about six feet long and two and a half feet wide, controlled by hydraulics and motors, simulating every possible movement.
The amount of horsepower a pilot could legally fly was on the license. I was now qualified to fly on instruments and unlimited horsepower, which meant I was finally able to fly airplanes of any size.
14
DOUGLAS PILOTS CAME from all walks of life—navy fliers, former airline pilots. I was the youngest of the Douglas aviators. My childhood hero Doug Corrigan also worked for Douglas Aircraft. A great test pilot, he was also a grade A master mechanic. He was never seen dressed in anything but his bomber jacket, work shoes, pants, a frayed shirt, and string tie. He carried a black lunch pail to work every day. He was a small, unassuming guy who parted his hair in the middle and had the look of Mortimer Snerd, with a loveable quality.
On July 17, 1938, he’d earned his nickname, Wrong Way Corrigan, when he took off from Floyd Bennett Field, Long Island, and landed near Dublin, Ireland, where he removed his goggles and simply announced he’d “lost his way.” Corrigan had been warned not to attempt a transatlantic flight in his rickety plane. Corrigan’s flight, lasting twenty-eight hours and thirteen minutes, won him worldwide acclaim. He rejected the modern compass and map that were presented to him (on the basis that he’d never finished high school) and said instead he would “fly low, near the railroad station, and read the name of the town.” Much the same technique I’d adopted in my barnstorming years.
Whenever I ran into him I’d jokingly corner him by the sleeve of his bomber jacket. “Doug, before this is over you’re going to tell me the truth.”
Corrigan would laugh and say, “Sid, I was going to fly to California.” And he never changed his response.
One of the aircraft I tested for Douglas was the A-20. The variant I flew had a French designation on the fuselage; when it reached the hands of the French it was renamed the DB-7 (dive bomber). It was used for low-level bombing, and the cockpit could accommodate a gunner in the back and bombardier and pilot in front. The ground procedure for testing the airplane was to take it for a forty-five-minute flight, checking controls, instruments, hydraulic and electrical functions, looking for anything that might need an adjustment or modification. If there was a malfunction of any kind the airplane was returned and fixed and tested again.
When a Douglas test pilot returned the airplane and signed his sheet, it signified the craft was free of any problems and ready to be turned over for purchase. We delivered the tested aircraft to one of the two air force depots in the United States: Daggett, California, which was in the desert about forty-five minutes from Santa Monica; or Las Vegas, a little hick town in those days—just one hotel, El Rancho, and a few motels.
Once there was an alarm at Clover Field that the Japanese were in the vicinity. We had to remove every C-54 bomber from the field. Pilots were all over the place, jumping in everything. We flew the aircraft to Mines Field, now Los Angeles International Airport, and then on to Las Vegas. On our return flight to Santa Monica, Jimmy Haizlip, a former navy pilot who was famous for setting speed records, was aboard the cargo ship. I noticed Haizlip seemed disoriented—unusual behavior for him. By the time we landed at the field he’d flipped out. He ran from the aircraft yelling, “Whaddaya know, it’s snowing!” Bolting across the runway, grasping at imaginary snowflakes, shouting, “Snow at last!” He’d gone berserk.
Many men could not withstand the stress. There was another pilot, Tommy Chastain, who happened to have married the sister-in-law of Lynn Bari, my soon-to-be second wife. He put a .22 to his head and blew his brains out.
I suppose I was able to withstand tremendous pressure because I had a streak of hell-raising in my genes. I sure didn’t avoid taking risks. Once when I was in the midst of a takeoff in an A-20 and the winds changed, I decided to take off from west to east, opposite of the general direction in a normal takeoff. I held the airplane down, waiting for maximum speed, and when there was a drop-off I flew it off an edge. I was only two seconds from the end
of the runway when I raised the landing gear.
When I got back to the pilot’s house there was a message from Jake Moxness, my chief pilot, to come to his office. I went up there right away.
Moxness barked, “You know where I was when you pulled that stunt?” He was angry.
I said, “Where were you?” I felt like an ass.
“I was on the end of the runway with General ‘Cockombottom’ and you pulled that stuff. Last year, O’Leary bent six prop blades and he paid for them, six thousand bucks.”
“Sir, I’ll never let it happen again.”
Jake was kind to me: “Please don’t, for your own safety.”
“My word, sir.”
The conversation changed and Moxness began telling me about an engine that he thought was the future of aeronautics. He asked me if I’d like to take a look. I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. We walked through locked doors, a series of catwalks, and several buildings. Jake had to give a secret code to enter the restricted building where, on a long work table in an isolated chamber, rested the first captured Messerschmitt jet engine—aviation’s future. The Germans were more successful in developing equipment than we were. However, the ground war was currently going against them. The Russian front had proved fatal to the German infantry. I beheld the jet engine, agreeing with Jake that it was indeed an awesome sight. Our top-speed aircraft, the P-51 and P-38, loaded up with cannons, machine guns, and fuel, could travel up to 325 miles an hour, while the German fighters were doing 500 miles an hour, running rings around us.
Jake said, “There it is, Sid, the future. Stick with it!”
At Mines Field I knew a French engineering test pilot who was chosen to fly the first “flying wing” aircraft. He had a lovely wife; we’d have a bite to eat and a couple of drinks, the three of us. I thought they were an interesting couple, and I’d made a mental note to look them up again in future. Later the Frenchman went to Muroc Lake and got killed when the wing crashed during a test flight. This abrupt termination of life happened all too often. These losses were always a jolt to the system, and they seemed to happen to the most experienced pilots, men whom I admired and respected. It left me with a bitter taste, and always the question: why should a lowly pilot like myself still be here?
