Lindbergh

by A. Scott Berg

  The next day they all saw, as Lindbergh not only mastered his plane but, four hundred miles deep into Japanese territory—weaving through black puffs of ack-ack—also successfully strafed an enemy barge in Kaiboes Bay.

  After several more days of bombing missions, the crew chief of the 475th had noticed that Lindbergh’s plane invariably returned with much more fuel than any of the others. One evening, MacDonald introduced the new recruit to the rest of the pilots at a briefing in the thatch-roofed group recreation hut; and he asked Lindbergh to explain why that was the case. In his flat Midwestern tones, Lindbergh said that by raising manifold pressure and lowering revolutions per minute, the engines would consume less gasoline, gallons that could be translated into time in the air and an increase in combat radius. The initial reaction from his young audience was of disbelief and disrespect, cracks about grinding their engines down. “These are military engines,” Lindbergh replied, “built to take punishments. So punish them.” Then he added that if any man felt uncomfortable about adopting his methods, he should not. “You’re the captains of your own ships,” he said. “You must make the decisions. After all, you know more about flying your planes than I do.” But over the next few weeks, the three squadrons of Satan’s Angels learned otherwise, as they stretched their six-to-eight-hour missions to ten hours, allowing them to surprise the Japanese with attacks deeper into their territory than expected.

  “In the days that followed,” MacDonald would later recount, “Lindbergh was indefatigable. He flew more missions than was normally expected of a regular combat pilot. He dive-bombed enemy positions, sank barges and patrolled our landing forces on Noemfoor Island. He was shot at by almost every anti-aircraft gun the Nips had in western New Guinea.” By then Lindbergh had logged more than twenty-five combat missions and close to ninety hours of combat time. On July 10, 1944, Lindbergh received a message from Australia requesting his presence. It was signed “MacArthur.”

  He left two mornings later and was met at American Army headquarters in Brisbane by General George C. Kenney, who commanded the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific. Kenney had heard rumors that Lindbergh had been flying combat with Army squadrons, which was against regulations. Lindbergh said he did not want to create any embarrassment, but he did not want to “go back up to New Guinea and sit on the ground while the other pilots were flying combat.” He asked if there was not some way around the regulations. “Well,” the General replied, his eyes lighting up, “it might be possible to put you on observer’s status … [which still] would not make it legal for you to do any shooting. But if you are on observer’s status, no one back in the States will know whether you use your guns or not.”

  Lindbergh was introduced to General Richard K. Sutherland, MacArthur’s Chief of Staff, with whom he discussed his method for increasing the combat radius of the P-38s. Sutherland was so astonished by Lindbergh’s report—that a radius of seven hundred miles could be reached—he insisted that Lindbergh talk immediately to General MacArthur himself. After exchanging cordial salutations, MacArthur—looking younger than Lindbergh expected—asked if what Sutherland had just told him was true. Lindbergh replied that only instruction and training were necessary. “MacArthur said it would be a gift from heaven if that could be done,” Lindbergh wrote in that day’s journal entry, “and asked me if I were in a position to go back up to New Guinea to instruct the squadrons in the methods of fuel economy which would make such a radius possible.” MacArthur also said Lindbergh could do any kind of flying in any plane he wanted. He showed Lindbergh his map of the South Pacific and outlined his general plan of action—the immediate steps, the future steps, “and the limitations which were imposed by present fighter combat radii.”

  Lindbergh returned to New Guinea, where he spent much of his time teaching fuel consumption. He reteamed with some of his friends from the 475th the following week on Biak, a Japanese stronghold three miles across the water. When weather kept him grounded, Lindbergh explored the brilliant coral reefs surrounding the islands.

  Biak also provided Lindbergh with the most grotesque images of war he had ever seen, visions that would haunt him forever. On Monday, July 24, 1944, Lindbergh and several officers drove a jeep to the Mokmer west caves, where the enemy had waged one of its most stubborn stands. They went as far as they could up a crude military road, then walked the next few hundred feet toward the caves. Going down a hill, they came to a pass with bodies of a Japanese officer and a dozen soldiers “lying sprawled about in the gruesome positions which only mangled bodies can take.” Several weeks of weather and ants had eaten most of the flesh from the skeletons. The sight of skulls smashed to fragments prompted one officer to say, “I see that the infantry have been up to their favorite occupation,” namely, knocking out gold-filled teeth for souvenirs.

  At the side of the road, they passed a bomb crater in which lay the bodies of another half-dozen Japanese soldiers, partly covered with a truckload of garbage Allied troops had dumped on top of them. “I have never felt more ashamed of my people,” Lindbergh wrote in his journal. “To kill, I understand; that is an essential part of war. Whatever method of killing your enemy is most effective is, I believe, justified. But for our people to kill by torture and to descend to throwing the bodies of our enemies into a bomb crater and dumping garbage on top of them nauseates me.” The caves themselves looked and smelled so hideous—what with burned bodies of Japanese soldiers scattered among mud and filth—that Lindbergh and the other men lasted there but a moment. Two days later, Lindbergh drove to another cliff cave, where he encountered the standing body of a Japanese soldier in uniform, roped tightly to a post set in the ground, headless.

  On July 28, 1944, Lindbergh joined up with the 433rd Fighter Squadron, as observer in the No. 3 position of an eight-plane sweep. Their mission was to bomb and strafe “targets of opportunity” on Amboina, a small, Japanese-held island off the southwest coast of Ceram. As the horizon brightened, Lindbergh took off with other P-38s on Mission #3-407. One of his fellow combat pilots could not help noticing that he had been slow in retracting his wheels upon takeoff. “Lindbergh from Doakes,” those on the mission heard over their radios. “Get your wheels up! You’re not flying the Spirit of St. Louis.”

  Although the Japanese were rumored to have strong flying forces in the area, the skies were clear. Suddenly, the radio squawked that another fighter group had spotted enemy aircraft nearby, a “Sonia” that was successfully eluding two American P-38s, whose pilots had run out of ammunition. As Lindbergh, Colonel MacDonald, and Captain Danforth Miller dove through a white cloud and black anti-aircraft bursts of smoke, Lindbergh got his first sight of a Japanese plane in the air—closing in head-on, with their combined speed close to six hundred miles per hour. “Of all the attacks it is possible to make on a Japanese plane,” MacDonald would later explain, “the one liked least is the head-on pass, for here you and the enemy approach with tremendous speed, each with guns blazing. There is always a good chance for collision, even though both of you try to avoid it, and against a Japanese one could never be sure to what lengths his suicidal tendencies would push him.” Lindbergh fired for several seconds, seeing his machine gun tracer bullets and 20 mm. cannon shells pelt the Sonia; but a collision seemed unavoidable. As the Sonia zoomed closer to Lindbergh, he pulled back on his controls with as much force as he could exert. There was a violent jolt, with but a five-foot cushion of air between them, as Lindbergh successfully banked to safety and the Sonia succumbed to a vertical dive into the sea.

  Not long after the Americans had returned to Mokmer strip on Biak Island, word spread that “Lindbergh got a Jap.” Lindbergh himself never made much of the story. If anybody brought it up, he would merely explain, “I shot in self-defense.” Other soldiers remembered gathering in the lantern-lit mess tent to listen to Lindbergh speak that night. Expecting to hear a good war story from this “god-figure of all pilots everywhere,” the men only heard a soft, Midwestern voice droning on about throttle s
etting and r.p.m.

  Missions were canceled on August 1, 1944, because weather was bad in all enemy directions except north toward the Palau Islands. Before Lindbergh’s arrival, that next step toward Japan, across the equator into the North Pacific, had been routinely considered beyond range. Armed with Lindbergh’s instruction, Colonel MacDonald asked him and two others if they wanted to fly there. Their enthusiasm overcame MacDonald’s warning that the mission would be dangerous, what with enemy fighter strength far outnumbering theirs.

  They announced their arrival in the hostile area by strafing a ship. The men soon sighted three enemy planes, which Colonel MacDonald and Lieutenant Colonel Meryl Smith destroyed. Suddenly Lindbergh noticed an enemy fighter diving on Smith; and by the time he had turned back in Smith’s defense, that same Japanese Zero had shifted its attack toward Lindbergh, then within gun range. As the Zero dove down, firing on Lindbergh’s tail, MacDonald tried to force it off with a deflection burst, as did the mission’s two other planes. Too low to dive, Lindbergh could only bank toward MacDonald, who saw him crouching in front of the plane’s armor plate, waiting for bullets to hit, as he “commended his soul to God.”

  “I think of Anne—of the children,” Lindbergh would later write of the moment. “My body is braced and tense. There is an eternity of time. The world was never clearer. But there is no sputtering of an engine, no fragments flying off a wing, no shattering of glass on the instrument board in front of me.” One of the deflection shots had set fire to the Zero, whose pilot had simply proved to be a blessedly poor shot. All four Americans returned to Biak unharmed.

  Bombers had been requesting fighter cover over Palau for some time, but they had repeatedly been refused on the grounds “that the distance was too great and the weather too bad.” This mission with Lindbergh refuted such excuses. Within days, the top brass had done an about-face on sending other fighters there; within weeks United States forces landed at Palau; and within three months, MacArthur would wade ashore at Leyte, his triumphal return to the Philippines.

  Shortly after the mission to Palau, MacDonald was granted a leave to the States. He tried to talk Lindbergh into returning with him—now that he had tempted fate twice. But Lindbergh refused, saying, “I haven’t finished yet.” He rejoined the Marines on Biak, where he shared a tent with Major McGuire. From New Guinea, Lindbergh moved on to Kwajalein and Roi Island, where he instructed fighter squadrons in long-range cruising procedures and, despite admonitions, flew on combat missions. Several officers talked to Lindbergh about resecuring his colonelcy and returning to the Pacific to serve with MacArthur; but Lindbergh said he wanted to complete his present study first. Besides, he intimated to his diary, “There are political complications, and I am hesitant to accept a commission under Roosevelt, even if I could obtain one.”

  At another private meeting with MacArthur in Brisbane, the General told Lindbergh of his recent conference with the President in Hawaii. MacArthur said Roosevelt’s mind and voice were as commanding as ever, but he was amazed at how sickly he looked. He said that FDR would almost certainly be reelected that fall, “unless the people learned of his actual state of health.” MacArthur was otherwise interested in all Lindbergh had to say about his mission to the Pacific, especially in his success increasing the combat radius of the P-38 by almost two hundred miles. MacArthur asked how many Japanese planes he had shot down, and Lindbergh told him of his experience off the south coast of Ceram. “Good,” said the swaggering commander of the Pacific, “I’m glad you got one.”

  On his way home, Lindbergh conducted one more series of tests at Kwa-jalein and Roi islands. Flying again in the F4Us that had brought him to the Pacific, Lindbergh wanted to see how heavy a bombload the Corsairs could carry. The first week of September 1944, he engaged in exercises over the Japanese-held atolls of Taroa, Maloelap, and Wotje. He began his trials by carrying the standard thousand-pound bomb, and over the next week trebled that weight. He even built a special belly rack for a large bomb. By the end of his second week, Lindbergh navigated his Corsair through tricky winds while carrying a two-thousand-pound bomb and two thousand-pound bombs—the heaviest bombload ever attached to an F4U. On September thirteenth, he dropped that load on Wotje Island, completely wiping out the southern portion of a Japanese gun position. “The take-off and drop with 4,000 lbs. of bombs completes the test program I laid out several days ago,” Lindbergh told his journal. After flying fifty combat missions, he was ready to return home. In the end, Lindbergh considered the F4U “the best Navy fighter built during the war.”

  That afternoon he flew to Kwajalein, and the next day to Hawaii, where he arranged his return to California. Late on the night of Saturday, September 16, 1944—after stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles—Lindbergh taxied to the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego for the night. The next morning, he telephoned his wife and his mother, to tell them he would be making the final leg of his trip home as soon as transportation came available.

  As was the case for millions of women “left behind,” the war had at least as deep an impact on Anne as it did on Charles. During those years, she had moved into two different houses in Bloomfield Hills and raised four children, living with shortages and ration coupons. Without robbing her of her tenderness, the war had toughened her—forcing her to build her own “world of people.” Fortunately, the local artistic community offered a number of stimulating minds—Lily and Eero Saarinen, the Finnish architect, whose father Eliel Saarinen had built and directed the Cranbrook Academy of Art; Carl Milles, the Swedish sculptor; and several teachers from Cranbrook, including sculptors Svea Kline and Janet de Coux. She enjoyed her art classes, especially sculpting; and she spent as much time as possible in her trailer, writing.

  While recuperating after the birth of Scott, in August 1942, Anne recalled an outline of a flying episode she had written before the war. One year later, it had become a thirty-thousand-word novella about the ordeal of a pregnant wife flying in a two-seater across the Alps with her husband, a daring English pilot. While she was in the middle of writing it, Charles expressed his cold opinion that he did not believe the story could be published for some time, because of the way the public still felt about them. Her publisher, Alfred Harcourt, felt otherwise.

  In some ways, Lindbergh proved to be right. The Book-of-the-Month Club turned down The Steep Ascent, citing a number of fanatical letters from members who, upon reading its announcement, said they would resign if the club endorsed it; Reader’s Digest said it was too difficult to excerpt; and Harcourt, Brace set its first printing at twenty-five thousand copies, half that of Listen! The Wind. The first reviews confirmed the publishers’ cautious position. While they were largely positive, enough of them dipped into personal criticism—“It is no accident that these two fliers dangerously lost in the Alps found safety on Mussolini’s soil”—to hurt the book’s sales. Immersing herself in her diaries and ever-widening correspondences with new friends—which included many lonely, worshipful women—Anne Lindbergh would not publish another book for eleven years.

  Just as Anne was adapting to Bloomfield Hills, she learned that their landlord was unable to renew their lease. She wrote Charles that they would have to be packed up and moved into a new house by September 1, 1944, even though he would still be away. “I do not like to leave the decision about the winter on your shoulders,” he had written her while in New Guinea, “but there seems no wise alternative, and you know there is no one I trust as much.”

  “As far as the Ford Company is concerned,” he told her, “I have done about all I can in that connection. Their aviation problems are now primarily connected with mass production, in which I am only secondarily interested, and which they understand far better than I.” As a result of his work in the South Pacific, Lindbergh said he would have to spend much of his time in Connecticut, in connection with United Aircraft’s fighter program. “This is work I am interested in,” he said, “but which I have no intention of carrying on indefinitely. I entered it becau
se of the war, and I remain in it for that reason only.” That said, Lindbergh was prepared to move to any section of the country that appealed to Anne; “there is nothing I would rather do than spend a few months studying and writing in a beautiful and quiet place,” he wrote, echoing his sentiments of three years earlier.

  She found such a place in Westport, Connecticut—just an hour by train from New York and twenty minutes from the United factory in Bridgeport. It came unfurnished, but Anne felt “it looks rather like us—settled down among trees and a field and a brook,” with good schools, swimming, and boats nearby. She toiled for weeks to make Charles’s homecoming as perfect as possible.

  Amid her packing, Anne’s eyes had almost passed over a short paragraph in the Detroit Free Press: “AUTHOR-PILOT MISSING OVER SOUTHERN FRANCE—SAINT-EXUPÉRY.” After months on the ground teaching pilots, the forty-four-year-old writer had just returned to action and had been alone on this reconnaissance flight.

  Anne had fearfully combed the newspapers for years, always half expecting to find such a headline. Throughout the war she had carried him in her thoughts, poring over every article and book he wrote. She even considered The Steep Ascent an offering to him, which might somehow reunite them. “I am sad we never met again,” Anne admitted to her diary. “I am sad he never tried to see us, though I understand it; I am sad that politics and the fierceness of the anti-war fight and the glare of publicity and the calumny and mixed-up pain and hurt and wrong of my book kept us from meeting again. I am sad that I never had the luxury of knowing whether or not he forgave us for our stand, forgave me for my book [The Wave of the Future].” Anne could hardly bear the irony that Saint-Exupéry had been called upon to make “the supreme sacrifice” for his country just as France was being liberated. Anne had felt such grief only twice before, upon the deaths of her sister Elisabeth and her first baby.