Eagles at War (55 page)

She really shouldn't have come. She was missing a meeting with the Weyerhauser executives on getting priority delivery of more lumber, and some people from the San Jose city government were coming down in the afternoon to talk about creating a plant to build Roget houses up there. But she couldn't miss the dedication ceremonies, not after all they'd been through with Henry Caldwell. Suddenly, she stiffened and drove her nails into Bandy's arm.

Bandfield was outraged, remembering all the bitter conversations with Caldwell in Germany. The man died as Elsie's greatest defender, even though she had sworn to get revenge on him. Caldwell had never had much faith in Troy McNaughton's promise to "take care of her nicely." Instead, he had been desperately worried that McNaughton might somehow harm her. But here she was, appearing as happily unconcerned as she had been when they'd watched the Yankees beat the Cubs in the 1938 World Series.

Mercifully, the whole business of Caldwell's involvement with McNaughton Aircraft had died a quiet death in the convulsion of demobilization that had come with the end of the war. Instead of a court martial for lack of judgment, Henry Caldwell had received a posthumous Medal of Honor. The citation for the medal talked about his last, valorous combat with Hafner, but the real reason for the award had been his monumental contributions to airpower.

McNaughton, his skin deeply tanned and hair now totally silver, led Elsie away by the hand. Still unrelentingly flirtatious, she left reluctantly, casting one last look over her shoulder at the smiling Air Force general.

Bandfield whispered, "What an actor."

McNaughton was pretending to be delighted to have seen them and was waving broadly as he made his way through the crowd toward them, Elsie lagging behind.

"Patty! You're as beautiful as ever." He grabbed Bandfield's free hand and pumped it, then slapped Roget on the back.

"Hadley, you old dog, we hear you're making a fortune from your houses! Why don't you come down to Nashville and set up a factory in my shop? We've got a lot of excess capacity."

Before Roget could think of a reply, Elsie bounded up, dressed in a filmy blue silk dress, wearing a pillbox hat. The red nails gleaming through her white open-toe shoes confirmed that she wasn't wearing hose. In spite of his genuine distaste for her because of the harm she'd done Henry, Bandfield had to admit that her flashy beauty was undeniable.

Bubbling with enthusiasm, she shook Bandy's hand, saying, "Hi, y'all. Isn't this thrilling? I just wish old Henry could be here to enjoy it."

There was a brief silence. Of all the things she might have said, this was the least expected—yet the most Elsie-like. Bandfield almost said, "Yes, and Bruno, too," when Troy capped her remark.

"We wanted you to be the first to know—we got married last week. Meet Mrs. Troy McNaughton." He beamed as if he were their oldest family friend letting them in on a secret they would all cherish. Bandfield realized now how Troy had "taken care of her." She probably owned a big chunk of McNaughton Aircraft.

Elsie nodded vigorously but clung to her opening remarks. "Old Henry, he'd have liked the airplanes, but hated the waiting around for the ceremony. Have you seen his statue? Troy commissioned it. It looks just like Henry when he was younger. It's really good."

Bandfield began to recover and realized that he was still holding Elsie's hand.

"Wonderful. Best wishes to you both. No, we haven't seen the statue. It's really quite a day for you, isn't it?"

"Sure is." McNaughton glanced at his watch. "You know, they've asked me to make the remarks at the dedication, after General Orr's introduction." He added, "Wish I had time to take you over to our hangar to show you our X-plane. It's top secret, but I could get you in."

"What's that, Troy? I thought most of McNaughton's effort was going into missiles."

"That's our San Diego branch. Back in Tennessee, we've built a research plane. We're working for the Navy, can you believe it? We're competing with Bell to see who'll be the first to break the sound barrier. Once we've done that, we've opened up a whole new frontier."

Roget turned away and shrugged. The whole thing was incomprehensible to him. After failing to produce a single first-line fighter during the war, McNaughton Aircraft was riding higher than ever, and Troy McNaughton was clearly as much in favor with the military brass as he had ever been.

Hadley saw that Bandfield had also edged away. They both watched McNaughton closely as he spoke to a group of field grade Air Force officers who had wandered over, attracted by Patty and Elsie, but pretending to be interested in the parachute-veiled memorial.

Bandfield whispered, "Hadley, he doesn't look much different than when we saw him in New York."

"That was nine years and one war ago, Bandy, and the son-of-a-bitch looks as young as ever. His hair's gone silver—better than yours, it's just going."

Bandfield flushed, irritated for the millionth time in his life with Hadley's nerve-prodding sense of humor. It was true. He had aged visibly during the war, his hair was thinning, and here was McNaughton, except for his hair almost as young-looking as ever, and even more confident, more intense. Only his eyes had changed, grown still colder in contrast to his smiling face. They walked back toward the newlyweds to hear McNaughton announce, "You folks are going to have to excuse me. They've asked me to do the honors at the dedication, and it's almost time. At ten o'clock sharp, I'm having a flight of Sidewinders come over, followed by a flight of Mambas. Then I've got a surprise for you. After that I'll say a few more words, we'll pull the parachutes off, and that'll be it!"

General Orr started the ceremonies with a muffled curse when he found the microphones weren't working. A harried lieutenant bustled to the stand to push some buttons. Orr had an unfortunate speaking voice, a shrill, high drone that made listening torture.

"We're here today to dedicate a memorial to a great man, a combat hero in the greatest American tradition, Lieutenant General Henry Caldwell." His voice dully screeched on, as if he were reading an efficiency report, talking about Henry Caldwell's dedication, vision, attention to duty, stripping him of vitality and humor, painting a portrait of the man as lifeless as the statue about to be unveiled.

Bandfield thought back to the last battle, when all of Henry's pugnacious love of combat had surfaced. He'd directed the battle like an old-time naval captain. And Bandfield fought away the last memory of Caldwell. Perilously close to crashing the whole way, he'd managed to fly the battle-ravaged C-47 back to crash-land on a Luftwaffe auxiliary field. The officer in command, a surly major, had refused to allow his men to help until Bandfield had accepted his formal surrender. The rear of the C-47 had been awash in Caldwell's blood. One arm useless, slipping on the bloody aluminum floor, Bandfield had worked with two black-clad Luftwaffe mechanics to take Caldwell's cold body down from its gory harness.

". . . and now I'd like to introduce a pioneer in his own right, one of Henry Caldwell's closest friends, Mr. Troy McNaughton, who will unveil the memorial."

McNaughton was as good as Orr had been bad. He started off with a few funny stories about Caldwell that rocked the crowd with sympathetic laughter, then turned on the tears with a somewhat exaggerated tale of Caldwell's devotion to his wife. He surprised Bandfield by talking expertly about Caldwell's true accomplishments—the careful spending of funds before the war, the preservation of the aircraft industry during the Depression, and his prescient vision in bringing about the B-29 and the long-range fighter.

Bandfield felt Patty's nails dig in again as McNaughton went on more true to form. "Henry Caldwell had the guts to encourage me when I wanted to quit. He took a gamble on McNaughton Aircraft that paid off handsomely on the Russian front—some say it won the war there. And now, first you'll hear, and then you'll see, some of the results of his confidence."

A flight of three Sidewinders swept over, the crackling of their Merlin engines sounding like ancient history against the rumble of the three Mambas that followed, black smoke pouring from their jet exhausts.

After a brief delay, McNaughton interjected: "And here's one that I wish Henry could be with us to see, the latest member of the McNaughton family."

Patty saw it first, a tiny cross that grew as rapidly as if it had been fired out of a cannon. It flashed over them, a silver shark with swept-back wings and a triangular swell to its fuselage. It was past the airfield boundary before the rounded thunder roar of its exhaust rolled over them.

"That's the new McNaughton Copperhead—fastest jet in the world."

Bandfield watched the airplane pull up in a sharp right turn, reverse, then head back down the field to repeat the pass in the opposite direction. He shook his head in disbelief. It was basically a single-engine Messerschmitt Me 262! In his missiles and his airplanes, Troy McNaughton still lived off the work of others—especially the work of Henry Caldwell.

"And now, let me show you a fitting memorial to a great man."

When the reverberations of the Copperhead's engine had finally gone silent, McNaughton signaled and a team of enlisted men pulled at the shroud lines. The big cargo chutes came off, revealing a gleaming McNaughton Sidewinder on a pedestal, its wing tilted in a right bank. Then the center chute was removed, and there was Henry Caldwell bigger than life, his left hand reaching down as if to steady himself on the lowered wing of the Sidewinder, his right holding a superb model of the Boeing B-29 as if he were launching it to fly.

A burst of applause rippled through the crowd. It was a good likeness. The artist had captured Henry Caldwell in his prime, dynamic, filled with energy, and looking to the future. The strength portrayed in the statue's uplifted arm looked fully capable of launching the fleets of B-29s that had won the war against Japan.

McNaughton spoke again: "Now look at the remaining parachute, ladies and gentlemen."

They turned and two sergeants pulled the parachute away. It was a standard street sign at Muroc, and it read caldwell boulevard.

Exultant, McNaughton said, "In a few ten years, this will be the center of the base, and Caldwell Boulevard will be one of the main thoroughfares. I've seen the plans, and this is the place Henry ought to be!"

There was a long burst of applause as McNaughton turned and saluted the statue of Henry Caldwell. General Orr, clearly irritated by the masterful performance, said, "This concludes the ceremony, ladies and gentlemen. There are refreshments in the big tent."

As the crowd began to move away, Elsie stepped between Patty and Bandy and took them by the arm, leaving George and Charlotte to trail along.

"It was Troy's idea, and since he was donating the memorial, they let him have his way. I think it's nice. Jim Lee was a hero, too."

Shocked by her blithe insensitivity, the Bandfields pled their children's fatigue and walked toward the parking area where Hadley was waiting in his new Frazer Manhattan.

"My God, Bandy, did you ever see anything like it?"

"No—but somehow it's the way life always works out. It's a wonder it didn't turn out to be Lee Boulevard and Caldwell Street, the way Elsie felt about them."

"They should name a street after you! You were a hero, too, right from the start."

"Honey, I don't want them naming any streets after me for a long time—they generally do it for dead people!"

"Doesn't it bother you at all? And how about McNaughton? Why do you suppose he donated the memorial, or arranged to have the streets named that way?"

"I don't know, Patty. Guilty conscience, maybe. He'll probably charge the government for it some way. The one sure thing is that they both would have gotten a laugh out of it."

He was silent for a while, then said, "And we might as well, too. I've got an idea we'll both be back here at Muroc before too long, maybe walking down Caldwell Boulevard toward a new airplane."

She glanced at him. "Maybe a new airplane. But surely some new buildings.

***

Authors Note

This work grew out of years of study, interviews and correspondence with a wide variety of talented people. Among them were famous military leaders and/or legendary pilots like
Generalleutnant
Adolf Galland, General Jimmy Doolittle, Major General F. O. Carrol, Lieutenant General Laurence Craigie, Sir Douglas Bader, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Tony LeVier, and Slick Goodlin. Some were great engineers like Dr. Hans von Ohain, Sir Frank Whittle, Dr. Anselm Franz, Dr. Ludwig Bolkow, Ezra Kotcher, and Don Berlin. Many others were less well-known but enormously capable people like Opie Chenoweth, Dr. Guido Mutke, Brigadier General Benjamin Kelsey, Vance Breese, Tom Lanphier, C. V. Glines, Waldemar Voigt, Archibald Hall, Robert Rummell, Gene Odekirk, George A. Page, Payton Magruder, Russ Schleeh, Bill McAvoy, and Sam Shannon. There were literally hundreds of others, and all added to my general store of information. I've synthesized much of the factual information in this book from these sources, and of course added to it the fictional elements necessary to compress so much time and so many events into so few pages.

I want to express my deep gratitude to my editor Jim Wade, his able assistant Victoria Heacock, and my agent Jacques de Spoelberch for their invaluable guidance. Thanks, too, to Henry Snelling and DeWitt Copp for all their insight and patient help.