“There’s nothing else we can do but try it!” Randall stopped him. “Radio the field to start lighting the landing flares in five minutes. And tell them to have men stationed all along the strip to help us get out of this thing in a hurry if we have to. Check your safety belts, both of you! We’re going in, storm or no storm.”
“Good luck, fellow!” Jimmy’s voice echoed in Red’s ears. “I know you’ll get us down, kid.”
“Yes, good luck, my brave friend,” Harry Chan added soberly.
Randall simply nodded and made no reply. The Showa Sho was beginning to bump around a bit in the air, as the first of the approaching storm winds reached out at it. He kept one eye glued on the compass, and one on the darkness of night ahead. His altimeter told him that he was high enough to clear the tallest peak of the mountains that ringed Kiaochow. But every now and then a downdraft of air dropped the plane a hundred feet or so, and each time his heart rose up in his mouth. Cold sweat drenched his entire body, but his grip on the controls was sure and firm.
Three, four, five minutes! The rain had come now, and it was slashing against the glass hood over the cockpit. Reaching over, Randall opened the side-slide, stuck his head out, and peered ahead and down. Raindrops whipped back by the whirling propeller stung his face like needle stabs, but their stinging pain was lost in the surging joy that was his as he was able to make out the twin rows of landing flares below on General Ling Chan’s mountain field. He saw also the arrow of lights that gave him his landing direction. And then, the last drop of fuel was sucked into the thundering engine, the power plant coughed and choked, and died out cold. Randall dropped the nose instantly, and braced himself.
“Take a deep breath, fellows!” he muttered into his intercom mike.
The rain was slackening off a bit, but the wind was even more gusty. It was as though invisible fists shot out to smash against the sides of the Showa Sho and swerve it drunkenly to left or right, as Randall circled slowly down and around to the lee end of the flare-lighted landing strip. The muscles of his arms cried out in protest as he struggled with the bucking, gliding plane to keep it steady. Each time the plane bounced, his heart gave a leap of terror, for he no longer had engine power to pull himself out of a jam.
Finally he was headed in straight, and there were but a dozen feet or so between him and the ground. He still flew with his head out the side opening, because the wind-driven rain was making rivers of water on his windshield. He could see the blurred figures of waiting Chinese guerrillas stationed along the entire length of the landing strip, but he did not look at them directly. He stared only at the rain-swept landing strip ahead. Gradually the plane lost speed, and he eased the nose up to settle in a three-point landing. And it was then that the gods of war made their final effort to bring about his defeat.
Just as a crazy crosscurrent had hit the Showa Sho on its take-off from that strip and lifted it safely into the air, another crazy cross wind slashed against it now to send it careening over on one wing. Through glazed eyes Randall saw the wing tip on his side strike the ground and drag along in an attempt to crab and pull the nose down. He exerted every ounce of his strength to heel the Showa Sho over onto the opposite wing and right the plane before the wing crabbed or the left wheel buckled. One long agonizing moment and then the plane heeled over toward the right, settled evenly on both wheels, and went rolling forward until Red braked it to a stop.
“The ground!” he mumbled a little crazily to himself as silhouetted figures rushed in from all sides and grabbed hold of the wing tips to hold the plane against the wind. “Dear old Mother Earth! How I love you right now!”
Too limp and spent to do anything but just sit there, he did not move, a muscle until Jimmy Joyce and Harry Chan had crawled out of their cockpits and onto the wing to reach in and pound him joyfully on the back.
“You did it, and I knew you would, fellow!” young Joyce shouted. “Can the boy fly a ship, or can the boy fly a ship? I ask you!”
“The answer can be nothing but yes!” Harry Chan cried happily. “The greatest pilot of them all, and my good friend. Here comes my Honorable Father. Let us help you out, Red. You must possess the fatigue of a dozen men.”
“Who, me?” Randall grunted, but nevertheless he let them give him a hand as he pulled himself up out of the pit and dropped down to the ground.
“The gods have been kind and answered my prayers, for you have returned safely!” General Ling Chan cried. “And I can see it in your faces that your mission was a success. But I speak words like a thoughtless fool. Come! There is food and rest awaiting you. When you have had all of both that you wish, you will talk to me.”
“We can wait only until this storm clears, sir,” Randall said, as strength began to ebb back into his body. “Joyce and I must get on to Chungking as soon as possible. We are to meet Colonel Denton there. And we have something that he must have at once, sir. It is important.”
“Impossible,” General Ling Chan said firmly. “There are storms three times as furious as this between here and Chungking. But do not worry. Yes, Colonel Denton is at Chungking awaiting you. Even at this moment he is being told over the radio that you have returned safely. In a minute you can tell him with your own lips that your mission was a success. But the details of that mission must wait until tomorrow. The storms will be gone by then. Then all four of us will go to Chungking to meet Colonel Denton. And my son, here, will guide us around the Japanese airfields, as only he can do. But not tonight. It is said, do not be a fool and crown one’s success with failure, for then it is no longer success. So tomorrow, when the first light shows over the mountains, we all will go to Chungking and meet Colonel Denton. But now food and rest for the gallant ones. I, General Ling Chan, so order!”
Randall hesitated, looked at Jimmy Joyce and Harry Chan, and then at the General.
“Very well, sir,” he said with a tired smile. “After all, a General’s order is an order. And I guess a few more hours won’t change anything one way or the other...now!”
About the Author
Robert Sidney Bowen was born in Allston, Massachusetts on October 4 1900. His grandfather, Charles F. Bowen, fought in the Fifth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War. Bowen attended the Newton High School at Newton, Massachusetts. After World War I broke out in Europe, he left school to drive an ambulance for the American Field Service in France. In May 1917, the United States Army Ambulance Service took over the AFS, and Bowen, being underage to serve, returned to the United States. When he turned seventeen, he signed up with the Great Britain’s Royal Flying Corps as a Flight Cadet. According to The London Gazette, Bowen was granted a temporary commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force on June 20, 1918.
In July 1918, he went overseas to England, and was assigned to the 84th Squadron, R.A.F. fighting in France on SE5 fighter aircraft. After the end of hostilities at the Western Front, Bowen transferred to the United States Army Air Service.
After the war, he began working as a journalist for the London Daily Mail, the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune, and two Boston newspapers. For several years he was editor-in-chief of Aviation Magazine. He also worked as an editor for Flying News and several motor magazines.
Bowen’s “I Cover the Murder Front” was the lead story in the June 1937 issue of Black Book Detective.
Bowen had turned to writing in 1930, using his prestige as editor-in-chief of Aviation Magazine to write Flying From The Ground Up, a non-fiction work on how to fly an airplane. He began freelancing for pulp magazines. In 1934, he headlined his own pulp magazine, Dusty Ayres And His Battle Birds, for Popular Publications. Twelve issues were released, the first ten published monthly from July 1934 through April 1935. Bowen continued writing for mystery, adventure, sports, and aviation pulp magazines through the 1950s.
After the invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939 sparked World War II, Bowen was asked to produce an adventure story based on the war. This resulted in the famous Dave Da
wson series. Bowen got to work immediately, and the first book, Dave Dawson At Dunkirk, was published in 1941. A total of 15 volumes were released between 1941 and 1946.
By 1945 the series had sold over 2,000,000 copies. Inspired by the success of the Dave Dawson books, Bowen was asked to write a similar series for them. The Red Randall series debuted in 1944, selling 200,000 copies its first year.
During this time, Bowen lived in Wilton, Connecticut, writing seven days a week, from 9 to 5, in an office that he rented over an old garage. He averaged 10,000 words per day, and could complete a novel in ten days. He also never revised his work, believing that any tampering with the story would ruin it.
After the war, Bowen turned to writing books aimed toward adolescent boys, on topics such as aviation, cars, and baseball. He also began writing books about horses under the pseudonym James Robert Richard.
Robert Sidney Bowen and his second wife, MaryAnn (MacIntyre) Bowen, had two sons, James Sinclair Bowen and Richard Fenton Bowen, and one daughter, Virginia Bowen, and, at the time of his death, on April 11 1977, five grandchildren.
The Red Randall Series by R. Sidney Bowen
Red Randall at Pearl Harbor
Red Randall on Active Duty
Red Randall Over Tokyo
… and more to come each month!
Red Randall Over Tokyo Page 12
