Bombs Away (18 page)

In the sixth week, there was practice at forced landings. Wilmer went up with Joe and directed him to a place over power lines, fences, and orchards, and then suddenly cut the engine. Then it was Joe’s problem to pick out a place to land and by turning and gliding to approach it and to come down for a landing. But just before the wheels touched the instructor turned on the motor again and they went up and looked for another difficult place and did it all over. This training develops judgment of distance and surfaces and it also provides the basis for saving a pilot’s life if he is in trouble.

In the seventh week there was dual and solo practice in 180-degree overhead approaches, lazy 8’s and pylon 8’s, and chan delles. There was advanced acrobatics, snap rolls, slow rolls, and Immelmann turns. In this week, Joe began his night flying.

In the classroom the cadets studied weather, its importance to flying. They learned weather services and the organization of airplane teletype report. They studied ceiling, cloudiness, and visibility as they apply to flying, rain, snow, sleet, and drizzle, fog, smoke, and haze, winds and wind shifts. They learned to read and make weather charts. This was the work with and about planes, but at the same time they were soldiers. Like all the other cadets they had their military drill daily and their athletics to keep them fit. Like all the other cadets during their training there was very little time to themselves. A letter written home now and then, a few moments in the post exchange to drink a Coca-Cola. In the barracks they talked flying, nothing but flying.

Recently a survey was made to find out what the cadets read and the answer is very simple. They don’t read anything except their textbooks during their training. In the classrooms the study of airplanes themselves was undertaken, with models and parts; the study went on of parts, actions, and workings of planes. They studied air flow and pressure distribution on the wings, lift and induced drag and equilibrium in flight. With models and drawings the class learned what the invisible medium of the air does to ships in flight, where the pressures are and how they are utilized in flight, the aerodynamic effect of controls and flaps, the principles of the propeller of both fixed and variable pitch. They learned how a propeller can bite deep or shallowly into the air. Then again with models and parts they saw how a ship is built, how the wings are braced, and how strength and lightness are achieved. And when they had covered the ships they studied engines, four-stroke cycle engines and Diesel engines, and they learned the various engines used by the Air Force; air-cooled and liquid-cooled engines, the arrangement and functions of units; ignition systems and generators were torn down for explanation and there were working models to demonstrate mechanics. They studied fuels and lubricants and what kinds are used and why, fuel systems and carburetor systems, superchargers. They studied the instruments which check on engine action and signal any distress in any part. The class learned to operate various types of engines, to start and stop them, and finally they learned maintenance and repair and inspection and inspection symbols. From front to back they went over the ships until they knew the cable lines of the controls, the bracing structure, and the hydraulic pistons. It was a beginning study of how an airplane works, every part of it, why each part is built as it is and what its reaction to the air is.

This was the elementary flying school, and when they finished each student had sixty hours in the air—twenty-nine hours with an instructor and thirty-one hours of solo flying. They had flown by instruments and they had flown at night and each cadet had learned to navigate his plane and learned the traffic rules which are standard everywhere. They had been nine weeks at the school and in that time they had begun to be real flyers. At least they felt like pilots and probably they were the only men in the Air Force who thought they were. They talked flying and dreamed flying. Actually their work was only starting, they were just out of kindergarten. From primary school they would go to basic school, there to have many more hours in the air and much more theory.

In basic school they would learn about radio communications and how to prepare field messages and they would learn to use the radios in planes. Their study of the weather would be worldwide and they would learn methods of weather forecast from data. All of the study would be related to flying. Clouds would be taken up and how clouds indicate weather and what forecasts can be made from clouds. There was little time and much to learn.

Joe studied thunderstorms and hurricanes and their effect on flying. In basic school the old enemy, ice, was studied, the hazard of ice formations on the wings that have pulled down many ships. They learned the use of de-icers, the inflatable rubber wing and tail edges which crack the ice off and drop it away. Basic training was an enlargement of primary training. In flight Joe made turns and climbs, glides, stalls, spins, spirals, 8’s, landings, and take-offs and forced landings, but now accuracy was demanded of him. He must be sure of his control of his ship. His spot landings must be perfect.

In his basic school there was a great emphasis on instrument flying. Nearly three hours every week were devoted to flying by instruments alone. For this training advanced-type Army ships were used, faster and more powerful ships. At the end of nine weeks at basic school, Joe had seventy more hours of flying and fifteen hours on the Link trainer. He had learned to fly a ship in formation with other ships, had learned the signals of formation so that he could space his ship perfectly with the others. And during the last week at basic school he had had transition flying in an advanced trainer. The nine weeks were over and this was the grammar school of the air. Advanced school followed and now Joe felt less a flyer than he had after his first solo. He had begun to see the actual complication of flying well and how much must be learned.

In elementary and basic school, airplanes alone had been the preoccupation, the flying of ships accurately from one place to another, keeping them out of trouble and maneuvering them. In advanced school the purpose of the military airplane began to emerge—attack and defense. Now, Joe studied not ships but military ships. Armament and attack became the main study. The history of pursuit aviation. The class studied Japanese and German pursuit and bombardment methods and their texts were the confidential reports on enemy ships in action. They studied the fighting techniques of the enemy and the methods of overcoming them and they learned our methods of attack, patrols, area protection, and strafing methods. Joe worked on pursuit formation and flight and squadron tactics. Night-fighting tactics were included with night landing systems, navigation at night, and methods of spotting enemy planes, barrage balloon and anti-aircraft guns. He learned about bombardment formation and tactical fire.

In advanced school, cadets suddenly stopped being simply pilots and became fighting pilots. In addition to being a pilot Joe had to be a gunner too. In advanced school there was a gunnery course. He learned the care and stripping of machine guns, both the .30- and the .50-caliber. In pursuit, the pilot is gunner too. Joe studied gunnery much as a gunnery school taught it. He fired at moving targets and learned the laws of lead and distance.

And now the class took up photograph interpretation and they learned the importance of rapid and accurate target identification and how to read aerial photographs. There came a new course in identification, the recognition of different types of naval units, again with models and silhouettes. Joe learned to identify battleships and battle cruisers, aircraft carriers, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. He learned enemy craft and our own and those of our Allies.

At the end of his advanced school Joe and his class were commissioned. They were no longer cadets but lieutenants. The bars were on their shoulders now and the silver wings on their left breasts. The cap ornaments were changed from propeller and wings to the eagles of officers, but they were still students. Joe changed his living methods. He no longer lived in barracks and ate at the cadet mess. He shared a room in bachelor officers’ quarters and provided his own meals at officers’ club, or, if he wanted to pay for it, in cadet mess. But he had two more schools to go to before he would be a bomber pilot. He had to go to twin-motor school and to four-motor school. In bigger and more complicated ships he had to fly formations and practice missions in the big ships. He had to learn to use four throttles instead of one, and now that he was getting to be a real pilot he didn’t think very much about it. He was still a student and the work was constant. He was doing much more than learning a craft and a profession. He was growing into a way of life.

His father wrote to him about the crops and about the Holstein twin calves that had been born. His brother wrote about his marriage and it seemed very remote to Joe. It is not very likely that when the war is over the four-motor pilots will go back to farms and businesses. They will be flying men permanently. The new dimension will be open to them. They will move the produce of the world. Flying will be so deep in them that they will not leave it. In a world which has left wheels for wings they will be the hearts and brains behind the wings. As no other group they will be needed when the war is over.

In the squadron rooms now, they talk of flying and of flying problems. They talk with their hands, thumb against thumb and the fingers spread like wings. The hands are the ship and the little fingers are the ailerons. It is a characteristic gesture. They fly their hands while they talk. Joined hands make dives and climbing turns. There is a close fraternity among pilots and they have their own language and their own set of symbols. To have gone through the schools they must be very good, very intelligent and alert. They carry themselves with poise and confidence. When the four-motor school is finished, when they are at last four-motor bomber men, they fly the great ships—ships that cost a quarter of a million dollars to build and that have all the world knows about flying in their construction and their instrument boards. These men should be confident and proud, for their hands on controls and throttles hold also attack on the enemy and direct defense of the nation.

Other branches of Army and Navy may have complicated actions and tactics designed to win a war, but for all the complication of his training the bomber man’s mission is very simple. He must find the enemy and destroy him, whether it be his factories, his troops, his supply lines, or his invasion ships. The history of the Army Air Force is very short. Ships were lost on the ground in the surprise at Pearl Harbor, it is true, but we have never lost an air battle; and on two occasions, in a war that is not yet a year old, the enemy has been met at sea with his strength of escorts and anti-aircraft and fighter planes. The big bombers have come in like avenging birds and they have left a broken, scattered, and distracted enemy. All over the country, in hundreds of schools, the young men are becoming pilots. Every day hundreds of new, raw young men are shivering with excitement when they climb into the little primary ships, and every day the finished pilots bring down the great bombers and are graduated to their final bomber stations. It is an endless business.