Eagles at War (16 page)

Lee had attacked on a ninety-degree angle to Bandfield, ignoring the sporadic antiaircraft fire and shooting directly into the cockpit of the lead aircraft. It staggered and veered out of formation just as a flight of three Zeros dropped on Lee's tail. He dove away to escape.

Their pilots unaware of Bandfield's kill, the Japanese bombers roared across the field with him in formation; he fired again just before they dropped their bombs, and another dive-bomber nosed straight over to plunge directly into an ancient Boeing P-26 fighter parked at the end of the flight line. Bandfield maintained formation and was ready to shoot again when the Zeros caught him, the concentrated fire from two fighters crashing into his engine, tearing off the cowling over which he had labored so intensely. The propeller shuddered to a halt, turning from a source of power into a gigantic air brake that sent him mushing toward the ground. The Zeros resumed their strafing runs. By sheer accident Bandfield was in perfect position for a straight-in approach to runway 24.

There was no problem telling the wind direction; all of Wheeler Field was in flames, a mountainous cloud of black smoke streaming parallel to the flight line. Dropping like an elevator, he went through the P-40's complicated gear-down drill; nothing happened as the smoke-and-flame-studded field raced upward at him. He jammed the stick forward, forcing the nose almost straight down to maintain flying speed. The gear snapped down just as he crunched into the ground and rebounded crazily toward the ramp.

Got to get another airplane, Bandfield thought. Throwing himself out of the cockpit, he ran toward the flight line, now sheathed in flames billowing from the line of destroyed hangars. The ramp was heaped high with the jumbled carcasses of destroyed airplanes. A Curtiss P-36 was burning fiercely and two of the little Boeing-Pea-Shooters had been tossed together, the wing of one draped in comradely fashion over the other.

Lee had climbed back into the battle, dropping behind a Zero that had just strafed the flight line and had pulled up to do a series of impeccable barrel rolls.

Extraordinary thing to do in a fight, Lee thought, as he watched the fire-dotted lines of his tracers intersect with the Zero just as it rolled inverted again, its gleeful Japanese pilot unaware that he had one second to live. The bullets of all six guns reached their harmonized point within the Zero's thirty-eight-gallon fuselage tank, turning man and metal into a red fireball. Out of ammunition, Lee chopped his throttle and sank into a steep approach, ingrained habit causing him to check his watch as he touched
^;
down. It was 8:42 a.m. as he turned in toward chaos.

Still working like a demented dervish, Higbee saw the next wave of Zeros moving in to strafe; he dropped under a P-40, heard the thud of bullets and roar of exploding tanks as the little silver-gray fighters whipped by overhead. When he crawled out he grunted in dismay. Only two of the fighters they had prepared under fire were still whole, a P-40 and a Sidewinder, the rest burning or badly damaged. He saw Bandfield and Lee running toward him and signaled them into the two surviving aircraft. Lee leapt into the P-40, his engine catching even as his chute harness was being cinched up. Bandfield jumped on the wing of the streamlined Sidewinder—next to the P-40 it looked more like a racer than a fighter—and climbed through the automobile-style door into the tiny cockpit.

Bandfield felt uneasy in the unfamiliar plane, his legs spread by the drive shaft that ran from the aft-mounted engine to the propeller. When the engine caught the airplane shook like a washing machine with one caster gone, vibrating so badly that his vision blurred. He'd forgotten how rough the engine-propeller coupling was at idle speeds. Back at Wright Field, he'd flown perhaps twenty hours in the McNaughton, always swearing that he would never use it in combat. The P-40 was no Spitfire, but it at least gave you the sense you could compete.

Bandfield followed Lee, heading south toward Pearl. After six minutes, he saw a formation down low; the airplanes were different than those that had attacked Wheeler.

Over the radio, Lee called, "Ah, Major Bandfield, if you read me, there's a flight of eight Nakajima torpedo planes heading toward us. I'm attacking now."

Bandfield clicked his transmitter and bent the throttle forward on the Sidewinder, trying to flog three hundred miles an hour out of it. Checking his armament, he saw that the 37-mm cannon wasn't loaded; he had to depend on the four . 50-caliber wing guns.

Ahead, one of the Japanese planes blew up, and he saw Lee diving away, then zooming into a climb just as he started his own attack.

The controls on the Sidewinder were heavy, and he used brute force to turn in behind the last of the Japanese torpedo planes, inching his sight up toward the fuselage center section.

The Japanese pilot flicked his controls and darted out of Bandfield's sights to begin an intricate aerial ballet that set them drifting back toward Pearl Harbor. Even as he concentrated on the fight, Bandfield's peripheral vision registered the acres of flame and smoke at Pearl and the hundreds of isolated dots of fire around Oahu.

The Japanese pilot was good, jinking left to disappear into thin air. Bandfield rolled and turned, unable to find him, then banked back to chase the formation again. He had just picked another target when his Sidewinder bucked and shuddered as if it were being beaten by a telephone pole flail. Machinegun fire burst through the aft section of the fuselage and spattered against his armored seat. The aircraft suddenly became very quiet, with the propeller ticking to a stop in front of him. Smoke filled the cockpit and Bandfield didn't hesitate, popping the car-door entrance open, just as the emergency manual called for, and sliding out and down the wing.

It wasn't until the chute opened that the realization hit him that he'd been shot down by a goddamn bomber! What a total failure the Sidewinder was! Or was it? Maybe it was just him, getting over the hill, no longer able to cut the mustard.

Bandfield hitched a ride back to Wheeler to find that Lee had landed, shot up but unwounded at Ewa Field. Wheeler, once the stronghold of Hawaiian aviation, was wiped out; by now there were more pilots on hand to fly than there were planes remaining for them.

Panic-stricken, he ran the mile back to the guesthouse. He was disoriented—nothing looked the same and he suddenly realized that all the palm trees had been blasted flat, and that the burning hole in the ground was where his guesthouse had stood. His knees buckled in fright.

Bandfield leapt into the hole, trying to see if there were bodies, desperately hoping that there were not. Amidst the debris, he saw some familiar items—photos of Patty's family, George's stick-horse, broken chairs, and a table cloth. Finally, he moved away from the smoldering flames. He saw a military policeman stationed at the end of the street. Bandfield raced to him and, scarcely coherent, demanded to know if there had been injuries.

The MP, a stickler for protocol, carefully perused the handwritten list on his clipboard before telling Bandfield to check the base hospital. Bandfield didn't ask him if anyone had been killed; the MP might be wrong. A Signal Corps corporal came by on a motorcycle, and the MP, friendlier now, persuaded him to drop Bandfield off at the hospital.

He prayed all the way, Hail Marys and Our Fathers cascading out as they threaded through the debris-strewn streets.

"God, if they were inside, they are gone; no one could have lived through that." Tears welled in his eyes, and when the motorcycle came to a stop, the driver had to gently tap him on the knee and point to the hospital doorway.

Still praying, he ran into the pandemonium of the receiving room, realizing instantly that it was the same medical facility he'd been taken to after his 1927 flight to Hawaii. Nothing seemed to have changed but for the addition of dozens of wounded soldiers and civilians. Amidst the chaos he found a calm, round-faced nurse seated at the reception desk, making entries in a ledger just as if it were a normal day. She recognized his name immediately and, without a word, led him down two endless corridors.

He peered around the door into the tiny room where Patty was sitting, sobbing hysterically. He closed his eyes and slumped against the wall, afraid to go in.

He kissed Patty fervently, with his eyes closed, almost unwilling to ask about the children. He looked around to see young George sitting on the bed, absorbed with a toy metal dump-truck.

"You and George are okay? Where is Charlotte?"

Patty could scarcely breathe. "She's just down the hall, in the bathroom. She got a cut on the scalp, shrapnel, I guess, bled like a stuck pig."

The door opened and Charlotte ran to throw herself in his arms, her face barely visible under the huge bandage. When she leaned back he kissed her on the cheek, then held her at arm's length to look at her. She had always been an open child, though sometimes timid. She had started talking at seven months, and he could see she had something to say now.

***

Chapter 5

Nashville, Tennessee/December 25, 1941

They sat in Troy McNaughton's oak-paneled office, a bottle of Old Forester bourbon on the table between them, smoke floating up from their cigars, the sound of rivet guns humming in the factory bay below them.

"What a lousy way to spend Christmas! This has been a bad month, Troy. You heard that Hong Kong surrendered?" Caldwell asked.

"What gets me is that the English were no better prepared, after two years of war. Seems like they would have learned something."

There was a long silence. Elsie Raynor was on the phone with a supplier, raising hell about prices and deliveries, her cultivated voice reverting under pressure to its original New Jersey inflections. As usual, neither man acknowledged her presence. Caldwell was edgy, anxious for the meeting to be over so that he could spend some time with Elsie. She always refused to see him until he'd concluded his business with McNaughton, saying that she didn't want him to be distracted when they made love.

Caldwell coldly got down to business. "We've got
real
problems. I'm getting nothing but unfavorable reports on the Sidewinder from the field. McNaughton's practiced voice, an instrument he'd used to sell everything from Fuller brushes to fighters, bristled with irritation. "That's
always
the way. Nobody's
ever
satisfied."

"No, this isn't just dogface bitching. You guaranteed it would do at least three hundred and fifty miles an hour; most people are having trouble getting three hundred out of it. And the goddamn thing is useless above seventeen thousand feet. What can you do to improve it?"

"Well, slip me some funds for research. We could use some more wind-tunnel time to clean up the design. Even better, give us the dough to build a wind tunnel right here. I need a wind tunnel for the jet."

"God, I'm leery about funneling any more dough to McNaughton; people are already saying I'm too easy on you."

"Look, we're delivering what you ordered. You've been loading the airplane up with equipment; you pulled the supercharger off it. What the hell do you expect? It's as fast as the P-40."

"No, it's not, and you know it. Worse than that, it's got some lousy flight characteristics. You saw the report Bandfield wrote."

McNaughton snorted in triumph. "Jesus, no wonder, he lets some Jap shoot him down, he's got to blame something. He didn't sound too sure of himself; besides, did he submit a report on him getting shot down in the P-40? I tell you, there's nothing wrong with the Sidewinder that a good pilot can't handle."

"Look, if Bandfield can't handle it, nobody can. We've got green kids with maybe two hundred hours flying these planes. In the last month we've lost five of them in flat spins."

"Accidents happen in wartime flying. The main thing is we're producing a hundred airplanes a month and the rate is building. By next fall, we'll be ferrying the airplanes across Alaska to Siberia. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?"

Caldwell's tone was bitter. "Yeah, but I told the Russians I was sending good airplanes. These guys are tough negotiators—they'll scream to high heaven when they find out the airplane can't cut the mustard."

"Henry, the airplane is
fine.
We'll continue to improve it. Give us more powerful engines, Packard Merlins instead of the Allisons."

Face drawn, Caldwell snapped, "I've promised the Merlins to Dutch Kindleberger at North American."

"Come on! You know the damn P-51 is so lousy at altitude that the British are going to use it for tactical reconnaissance. And you're complaining about the Sidewinder!"

"I promised Dutch the engines, Henry. I can't go back on him."

"Why not? Exigencies of the service, demands of the state department. Ship me the damn engines and I'll get some better fighters to Russia for you. Who knows when North American will deliver?"

Caldwell felt his stomach shrink. He
might
be able to ship the old Allison engines to North American for another year or two, until Packard built the production rate up enough to supply Merlins for both the P-51 and the Sidewinder.

A wave of weariness swept over Caldwell and he slumped in his chair. He'd fought for years to get U.S. airplane companies prepared for war. Then war came and
no one
was ready; it was as if nothing had been learned since 1939.