by Ed Dover
“Good morning, gentlemen.” He greeted them cordially. “I trust you slept well?”
“As well as can be expected, under the circumstances.” Ford replied.
“I can now inform you that accommodations will be available at the Orange Hotel later this afternoon. One of your American ships is leaving then, and that will make rooms available. Also, it will be necessary for you to report to our infirmary to get your inoculations before you leave. Our doctors are quite busy today, but we have arranged for you to see them first thing tomorrow.”
“That’s fine, Colonel,” Ford said. “Meanwhile I’d like to arrange for a couple of my crew members to return to the ship in the evening to stand security watch.”
“No problem, Captain. Just have them check in at the harbormaster’s office and they can arrange ferry service to your ship.”
Ford assigned Jim Henricksen and Rod Brown to take the second evening’s security watch aboard the Clipper. The rest of the crew, with nothing but time on their hands, strolled around the town. It took a while to get used to the traffic driving on the left.
“Hey, look there,” John Steers exclaimed, “I do believe that’s a beer joint!” He pointed in the direction of a rather nondescript building which appeared very crowded and from which they could hear the familiar beat of someone banging out a boogie-woogie tune on a piano.
“Boy, I could sure use a cool brew right about now,” Swede Rothe added. “Let’s give it a try.”
As they entered the beer parlor they could see it was crowded with American sailors. One of them was at the piano, pounding out the boogie beat they had heard from the street. The dark interior of the building provided some relief from the heat of the mid-day sun outside. The piano player’s buddies were keeping his glass filled for him as he performed. Everyone else was gulping down the brew as if they were making up for lost time from having been at sea too long. It was a raucous, but friendly crowd that made way for the Pan American crew as they edged their way in and bellied up to the bar. Soon all the crew members were hoisting froth-topped mugs. By 4 P.M. the heat had slackened off a little and the crew finally made their way to the Orange Hotel. What with the long hot day, waiting for rooms, and the unexpected beer drinking, they were all soon catching up on a good night’s sleep.
John Steers awoke to the sound of early morning traffic outside the open window of his hotel room. Still bleary from the effects of all the beer drinking the evening before, he pushed aside the carefully tucked-in mosquito netting and sat up on the edge of the bed. The morning air was very cool in contrast with the heat of the day before. He shivered slightly and rubbed his eyes.
Guess I better hit the shower, he thought; might help get rid of the fuzziness. He stood and walked to the open window and stared down for a moment. The three-wheel taxis were sputtering up and down the street. Pretty Javanese women, carrying all sorts of loads on their heads, made their way through the market crowds in stately posture. A few soldiers in a jeep sat at the intersection smoking cigarettes. Except for the soldiers, it was hard to tell that a war was going on. Steers shivered again in the cool morning air, then turned and sought out the shower stall. He had no sooner started lathering up when the air raid sirens sounded.
“Oh, shit!” he muttered to himself, “Now what?”
Hurriedly he rinsed off, wrapped a bath towel around his waist and ran to the window to see what was happening. The scene was totally changed from a few minutes earlier. People were scurrying in all directions. The soldiers in the jeep were roaring off toward the harbor. All was pandemonium. But there was no sign of enemy aircraft as far as Steers could see. The sky was bright and quiet. Off in the distance there was a low hum that could have been aircraft, but it was too far away to identify as either friend or foe. Steers decided that he had time to get dressed and try to find his fellow crew members to see if they knew what was happening.
By the time he got to the lobby the other crew members were gathering around Bob Ford, trying to decide what to do. The Clipper was a sitting duck, moored in the harbor, and they had to move fast if they were to get it airborne and out of whatever danger was implicit in the air raid alarm.
“I say we make a run for the dock, get a launch, get the hell out to the ship, and high-tail it out of here.” Jocko Parrish suggested.
“How do the rest of you feel about that?” Ford polled the crew.
“Yeah!”
“Hell, we could die trying, but I can’t see sitting here doing nothing.”
“Let’s go, then, but everyone keep your head up. Just stay together and follow me.” Ford ordered.
Just as they reached the street, the all-clear sounded.
“Now, what the hell?” Swede Rothe blurted.
“Must have been a false alarm. Maybe today’s the day they test the system.”
“No,” Ford added, “I don’t think they’d do that during wartime. Too much of a chance they’d mistake a real raid for a drill some time. But I think we need to get down there anyway, just to check things out.”
As they approached the harbor they could see what had caused the alarm. Taxiing in from the breakwater were several Consolidated PBY flying boats. They all had U.S. Navy markings. Colonel Koenrad stood at the edge of the dock waiting to greet the first PBY crew as they came ashore. Ford approached and stood next to the Colonel.
“Who are they?” Ford asked.
“I don’t know, Captain,” Koenrad replied, “but the situation looks very similar to your arrival.”
Soon the PBY crews came ashore. Colonel Koenrad greeted each of them and soon the reason for their arrival became clear. They were the last surviving PBY patrol squadron to have escaped from Cavite in the Philippines.
Bob Ford greeted the pilot of the last PBY to land. “Glad to see you made it okay,” he said as he shook the Navy pilot’s hand, “We’re sort of on the run ourselves.”
“Yeah, I spotted that big flying boat when we came in. Sure hope you have better luck getting out of here than we had getting out of Cavite.”
“Oh, how’s that?”
“We just made it out of there by the skin of our teeth. There was one other PBY in our squadron. They got him just as he was lifting off the water. Poor bastards never had a chance.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Ford said quietly. “Now what do you do?”
“Wait for orders from CINCPAC I guess. Most likely be assigned patrol duties out of here in the meantime. Can’t really say for sure. This is one helluva screwed-up war as far as communications is concerned!”
“You’ve got that right!” Ford acknowledged. “We had a royal welcome when we came in the other day. It was pucker time for sure there, for a while. I’m just hoping we can clear up that situation for the rest of our flight.”
“Well, lots of luck, Captain. Just keep your guard up the rest of the way and you should be okay. By the way, where are you headed anyway?”
Ford hesitated for a moment. He was remembering the Plan A directive about secrecy. But this was a Navy pilot he was talking to. What harm could it do? “We’re supposed to get back to the States as best we can. Right now we’re taking the long way round by heading west. It’s sort of a crap shoot at this point because we’ve never flown a Pan Am Clipper in these parts before. You could say we’re really ‘winging’ this one.” There, he’d explained it without really giving out any specific information. That should do.
“Well, I wish I was coming with you. I have a hunch we’ll be driving these PBYs around here for quite a while. See you when the war’s over!” and he extended his hand. Ford shook it and the two pilots nodded silently toward each other. Then the Navy pilot turned to join his fellow crew members as they went with Colonel Koenrad to the debriefing session in the administration building.
As Colonel Koenrad had promised, the crew was called to the base infirmary to receive shots for typhus, dysentery, and cholera. The Dutch doctor had a peculiar procedure for administering the shots. Instead of the usual place �
�� in the upper arm – he put them in just above the nipple of the left breast. Jack Poindexter and Barney Sawicki turned so pale that the doctor thought they were going to faint. He quickly sat them down and shoved their heads between their legs. Eugene Leach passed out in a dead faint and had to be revived with smelling salts. Bob Ford got a severe case of the chills and shivered all night, even with his raincoat wrapped around him.
Swede Rothe, stoic as ever, managed a wry grin as the doctor inserted the needle. “Hey, that must be pretty strong stuff, doc!” What do you have in there, Mickey Finns?”
“No, sir,” the doctor replied, “but it is a fairly new and potent safeguard against typhus, dysentery, and cholera. Considering where you intend to go, it is just as well we give you a little discomfort now in exchange for some protection later. All our reports indicate that those diseases are raging almost out of control further up into the sub-continent. The war seems to have caused a considerable breakdown in sanitary conditions.”
“Well,” Swede concluded, “I guess you’re the doc and I won’t argue with that. Just so those boys are up and ready to fly by morning.”
“Oh, yes.” the doctor assured him, “These symptoms are very temporary. I assure you they’ll all be fine by tomorrow.”
With the shots taken care of and the 90 octane gasoline loaded on board the Clipper, all but two of the crew returned to the Orange Hotel. Rod Brown and Jocko Parrish returned to the Clipper to stand security watch for the night. It was clear that the false air raid alarm, caused by the arrival of the U.S. Navy PBYs, had only increased the tension in the air. Everyone was speculating on the imminence of the next real air raid. The trouble was there was nothing anyone could do about it, which only added to the sense of frustration. Ford went to bed early, wrapped in his raincoat, trying to overcome the chills that shook his wiry frame. The rest of the crew was not disposed to much in the way of an evening’s entertainment at the local beer parlor again. All of them bedded down early and sought to revive their energies by getting a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s flight was going to be one of the longest legs thus far. As best as they could figure out from their makeshift charts, the journey to Trincomalee on the island of Ceylon
[7] would take the better part of twenty hours. And they had the unknown quantity of trying to operate on auto gas with engines designed for 100 octane. It was going to be an interesting flight.
The Marine Air Terminal as it looked when NC18602 arrived in New York on January 6, 1942.
CHAPTER XI
ACROSS AN UNKNOWN SEA
“Swede,” Bob Ford huddled with his First Engineer, “we need to conserve as much of our remaining 100 octane as possible. As soon as we have a safe altitude – say a couple of thousand feet – we’ll level out and switch to the 90 octane tanks.”
“Okay,” Rothe replied, “but it’s strictly a crap-shoot as to what might happen when we try to lean out to cruise power. Those cylinder head temps could go through the roof and we could blow a jug.”
“I’m aware of that. It’s not like we have any kind of choice at this point. If we can maintain enough power without pushing redline on the cylinders, well, that’s all we’ll need to do until we can get to Trincomalee. After that, we’ll just have to see.”
Swede nodded in agreement. He resumed his place at the engineer’s desk and concentrated his vision and thoughts on the big panel in front of him. Ford climbed into the left seat and gave a thumbs-up sign to Johnny Mack. It was time to go.
They left Surabaya in late afternoon. They would have to fly through the night to arrive in Trincomalee in daylight. A night flight had one other advantage: flying blacked-out would provide less chance for detection by Japanese patrol planes; which probably would not fly at night anyway.
As soon as they reached 2,000 feet, Ford leveled off and gave the order to switch to the 90 octane tanks. Swede Rothe reached for the large circular fuel valve handles. “Fuel pumps on, cross-feed on,” he called out instinctively as he slowly moved the valves from top center mains to the sea wing tanks; all the time concentrating his vision on the fuel flow and cylinder head temperature gauges. The fuel gauges fluctuated momentarily, then stabilized. They were now flying on auto gas; a condition never contemplated by the engineers at Boeing or at the Wright engine factory.
“How’s it look, Swede?” Ford asked.
“So far, so good. Cylinder head temps seem to be holding. But we’re flying full rich. We’re going to have to lean it out for best fuel range.”
“Okay, just watch those gauges. Let’s do it a little bit at a time.”
Very slowly, Rothe pulled back the mixture controls. As the levers came back, each increment changed the ratio of gas to air so that the amount of air increased while the amount of fuel burning in the cylinders decreased. “Manifold pressure coming up,” he reported, “Looks good so far.”
“Okay, come on back more.”
Another increment; another increase in manifold pressure. Then: “Skipper, the cylinder head temps are starting up.”
“Roger. Just keep an eye on them.”
Rothe continued leaning out the fuel flow. Manifold pressure increased, then slowed and began to decrease. They had reached optimum mixture. He readjusted the mixture to maintain the peak manifold pressure. But the cylinder head temperatures kept rising. “Head temps five degrees below redline,” he called out.
“What’s the maximum under redline we can sustain?”
“Don’t know, Skipper. We’ve never flown it this way before. If we were redlining with 100 octane we’d have some chart parameters to go by but this auto stuff is...”
BANG! The sudden sound filled the cabin and the Clipper shook as though it were in the grip of a gigantic storm.
BANG! Again.
“Backfiring on Numbers Two and Three!” Johnny Mack called out. “Those cowlings are shaking like Jell-o!”
“Back off the mixture, Swede!” Ford shouted.
Rothe quickly moved the mixture controls toward the rich side of their range. Just as quickly the banging stopped. But the cylinder head temperatures remained just under redline.
“Okay, let’s regroup and try again. We want a setting just under where the backfiring starts. Can you get a feel for that, Swede?”
“Aye, Skipper. But those head temps aren’t coming down any.”
“Never mind the head temps. As long as we can find a mixture that won’t backfire, we’ll run with that. Try it again.”
Once again the mixture controls came back. Once again the manifold pressures increased and the cylinder head temperatures rested within a degree of the forbidden redline. Then: BANG! BANG! The Clipper shook as though it were a rag doll in the hands of a very active child. Quickly, but with more control this time, Rothe eased the mixture controls back to just under the mark where the backfiring would start. “That’s about the best we can do,” he called out. “We can stay below the backfire point, but I can’t guarantee the head temps. They’re just about out of normal range for long-range cruise.”
“As long as we can control the backfiring and they’re running smoothly otherwise, let’s go with it. We’ll just have to stay at this altitude Just keep your eyes on those gauges.”
Using their atlas and makeshift charts, Rod Brown plotted a dog-leg course out of Surabaya, west to the Sunda Strait, then southwest through the strait and then northwest along the southwest coast of Sumatra. As the sun set they threaded their way along the Sumatra coast, staying in the long channel between the main island and the chain of small islands paralleling the coastline. Night fell as they approached the far northwestern end of Sumatra.
“There goes our last positive landfall. Rod, do you have the DR heading to Trincomalee?” Ford asked, turning toward his Second Officer who was bent over the navigator’s table in deep concentration.
“Yes sir, coming up right away.” Brown answered. Then he jotted down the numbers on a small square of paper and handed it to Ford.
“275 degrees,” Ford
noted. “Any allowance for magnetic variation on that?”
“No, sir,” Brown explained, “the best I can make out from the Bowdich’s manual, this far around the globe we can just about draw a straight line that would run through the North Pole and the Magnetic Pole without much variation. Even if we miss Ceylon Island, we’d have a landfall on the Indian coastline that could lead us to Ceylon.”
“Try to get some star sights too. I’d just as soon not have to do too much backtracking.”
They continued into the night across, what was to them, an unknown sea. Soon, unseen by the crew, the southern islands of the Nicobar chain passed abeam their starboard wing. Brown was able to get two star sightings before clouds began to close in overhead. With the engines leaned out as far as the 90 octane gas would allow without backfiring and the cylinder head temperatures hovering just under the redline, they could not risk climbing higher to get above the clouds.
Soon it began to rain; intermittently at first, then continuously, as the hours dragged by. Crew members observed their duty rotation schedules with barely a word of conversation. The mechanics and off duty crew members on the lower deck slept fitfully amid the clutter and close confines created by all the spare parts. The night became an endurance contest between the crew and the machine. The pilots were now flying totally on instruments as the lowering rain clouds obscured any physical view of the ocean or sky. It was as though they were all in a sort of endless black limbo; jostled by the intermittent turbulence, listening to the staccato sound of rain against the fuselage and the constant drone of the engines. The world outside had ceased to exist. They were alone in the universe, and there was no end in sight to their journey.
Dawn came slowly. As the darkness paled they were still enveloped in a continuous grey cocoon of clouds and rain. They had now been airborne for the better part of 19 hours. According to the dead reckoning estimate that Rod Brown had posted on their makeshift chart, they should soon make landfall off the coast of Ceylon. But, shrouded as they were by the gloomy amorphous grayness around them, there was no way to detect the presence of land.