by Adam Makos
After putting Pam to bed, Jesse sat in the living room with Carol and switched on the radio. A big band melody drifted into the kitchen, where Daisy was fixing sandwiches. Daisy enjoyed Jesse’s taste in music—Glenn Miller, Nat King Cole, and Etta James—but whenever Jesse tried to pull her to her feet, Daisy drew the line. She was convinced that she was a terrible dancer.
Daisy overheard fragments of somber conversation as the men discussed Jesse’s barrier bounce. She leaned closer and snuck a peek. At one point Jesse sat back, wrapped his hands behind his head in frustration, and said, “If I had done anything right, I would have killed myself.”*
Daisy’s eyes widened.
Carol spoke about the time he had crashed on the carrier USS Cabot. He had been coming in to land when he saw the forward deck crowded with planes and lost his nerve, causing his Corsair to skid across the deck and into a trench.
“I nearly crushed several men,” Carol admitted. What Carol didn’t reveal was that he had only remained an aviator to honor his father, a factory laborer new to America from Germany.
Jesse stayed silent. His greatest fear, one he’d confided to his squadron mates, was of dying and leaving Daisy a widow.
“Makes you think of hanging it up, huh?” Jesse said.
Carol nodded.
In the kitchen, Daisy quickly turned back to the sandwiches, her face frozen with shock. She had always comforted herself by thinking, My husband is different—nothing will happen to him.
Daisy added cups of coffee to her platter, entered the living room, and set it on the table. Jesse sat up and tried to force a smile. He nibbled at the corner of a sandwich, like he was eating only to please her.
Daisy returned to the kitchen, her eyes heavy with worry.
Four weeks later, May 2, 1950
Quonset Point Naval Air Station
The USS Leyte loomed over the clusters of pilots and their loved ones gathered on the concrete pier. The carrier’s tower stood ten stories above a flight deck loaded with planes and the ship’s long angular shadow darkened the shallow water.
It was a pleasant spring morning. Sun snuck through the clouds and reflected off the chrome of the cars on land. About one hundred pilots from Fighting 32 and her sister squadrons said their goodbyes. The pilots wore summer uniforms—tan slacks, tan jackets with black shoulder boards, and tan hats with black brims. Their girlfriends and wives wore their Sunday best hats and knee-length skirts.
In the midst of the crowd, Daisy dabbed her moist eyes with a handkerchief and watched Jesse hold Pam’s hand as the little girl twirled circles around him. Carol Mohring hovered nearby, reluctant to leave Jesse’s side. In the middle of a throng of giggling college girls stood Marty Goode and a few pilots. The girls wore cream-colored sweaters with the brown letter B of nearby Brown University.
Credit 11.1
The Leyte (right) alongside the Wright at Quonset Point
Jesse tried to cheer up Daisy. He asked what souvenirs she wanted him to bring home for her.
“Maybe something from Anathens?” she asked, sniffling.
Jesse raised an eyebrow in confusion.
“You know—from Anathens, Greece,” Daisy clarified.
Jesse grinned. “Darling, I think it’s Athens, Greece.”
Daisy shook her head. She was pretty sure it was “Anathens,” just like “Annapolis.” Jesse chuckled but decided to leave it alone. In contrast to Daisy’s fretting, he was bursting at the seams to see the world.
Soon, Fighting 32 would board the Leyte and their new mother ship would whisk them to the Mediterranean to join the navy’s 6th Fleet, the only armed forces in those waters, a unit nicknamed the “Dancing Fleet.”
A period of work and play would follow. The pilots would train over the open seas and even launch a mock assault on the sun-drenched island of Crete. But it was the shore leave in Greece, Italy, France, and Lebanon that made the Dancing Fleet a navy man’s dream duty. Stories had slipped back to Quonset Point from earlier cruises—visions of white uniforms, champagne, dances, and girls, slinky French ones and tan Italian ones who loved to chase pilots and sailors.
Daisy glanced around as sailors gathered to untie the ship. At the entrance to the pier, other sailors from the base band were unloading from a bus and unpacking their trumpets and drums. Daisy knew her time with Jesse was running short.
The recent headlines had set her emotions on edge. Five days earlier, the papers had revealed the fate of a lost navy plane. A month before, the four-engine Privateer reconnaissance plane—nicknamed the “Turbulent Turtle”—had vanished over the Baltic Sea, north of the Soviet Union.
The newspapers had been following the saga of the lost “Baltic Plane” and were now reporting that residents of a Danish island had found American flight uniforms washed ashore, and a Swedish fishing boat had pulled up its nets and discovered the landing gear from the plane—riddled with bullet holes. The unarmed navy plane had been shot down, its ten-man crew murdered over international waters. And the perpetrators?
The Soviets.
The senseless brutality troubled Daisy and all navy wives. On New Year’s Day that year, a columnist for The New York Times had made his prediction for 1950: “Perhaps we will have to get used to the thought that we are in for a long period of worry and uncertainty.”
Daisy asked Jesse if he’d be near the Soviets in the Mediterranean. Jesse stroked Daisy’s back and assured her that the Soviets were far away and that the Leyte would be safe. “The worst that can happen is a sunburn from sunbathing with French girls!” he joked. Daisy playfully punched his shoulder.
On the fringe of the crowd, Tom Hudner puffed away at a pipe as he watched Jesse and the others. His shoulders hung relaxed and a smile lined his face. He enjoyed naval ceremonies, even one as simple as a ship’s departure, and he’d quickly forgotten his disappointment that his family hadn’t come to see him off. His dad couldn’t get away from work, and his younger three brothers and sister had school.
The pipe was a new affectation for Tom; it made him feel like a sailor of old, like Horatio Hornblower from the Beat to Quarters novel he had read as a boy. In his own way, Tom was about to sail into the unknown, maybe even into battle. The Soviets’ belligerence seemed senseless to Tom, but not surprising. They had been angling for a fight since WWII.
In August 1945—just two weeks after the war’s end—Soviet fighters had attacked an American B-29 that was parachuting food and medicine to a POW camp in Korea. Then in September and October they attacked navy planes off the coast of northern China. The following spring they used American P-39 fighters—given to them as lend-lease—to attack an American C-47 transport over Austria. And those were just the aerial clashes in one year’s time.
Trumpets and trombones blared lazy notes as the band tested their instruments. A murmur traveled the crowd, then an officer shouted, “Okay, let’s hop to it.” Couples embraced. Children hugged their father’s waists.
Jesse picked up Pam, kissed her, and set her down. He embraced Daisy as her tears dripped onto his shoulder. She wanted to whisper in his ear: Jesse Leroy Brown, stop risking your life and stay with us! In her mind, she and Jesse could live out their days in their cottage near the pond. But she knew saying anything would only spoil Jesse’s adventure.
When Jesse let go, Daisy pulled herself together. Her eyes flickered with a thought. She knelt by Jesse’s leather handbag and pretended to be checking that it was zippered. Swiftly, she slipped a slender book from her coat pocket into his bag without him noticing.
Carol stepped up to Daisy and awkwardly held out his hand. She shook it, and he smiled and turned for the ship. His sea bag, like most of their belongings, had already been loaded.
Jesse kissed Daisy once more before forcing himself to break away. He followed Carol a few paces, then turned back to his wife and shouted, “Don’t worry, darling, I’ll send you a postcard from Anathens!” Daisy laughed in the midst of her tears. Jesse blew her one last kiss, then walked
away.
—
Tom followed Jesse and the others onto the gangway that arced into the ship. Marty went on excitedly about how sexually liberated French girls supposedly were. Signal bells rang out from the tugboats that were idling at all four corners of the ship.
Glancing up at the carrier, Tom felt small. An American flag flapped against the clouds, radar cones were revolving, and anti-aircraft guns aimed skyward from their turrets. A loudspeaker blared, “All hands to quarters,” and sailors began lining up, their numbers wrapping around the deck. They were but a fraction of the 2,700-man crew who provided the flyboys with a mobile airfield from which they could strike any foe in the world as Uncle Sam’s fist.
Sailors leaned from the tower above and looked down as the pilots boarded. At the end of the gangway, an officer stood in a blue uniform jacket. Behind him, a square passageway led into the heart of the Leyte. The officer held his hand in a frozen salute against the black brim of his white hat. As the pilots passed him, each snapped a salute in response. Jesse did the same and stepped into the dark tunnel and Tom followed him in.
—
For a better view of the carrier’s departure, Daisy led Pam closer to the water where the other young wives and pilots’ girlfriends milled about. Daisy edged close to Dick Cevoli’s wife, Grace. The two exchanged greetings as Grace cradled her infant son, Steve. Grace was tall with long brown hair and a slender, gentle face. Several times, Daisy and Jesse had visited the Cevolis’ cottage in Shore Acres, an idyllic community south of the base. From the cottage’s front window, the carriers could be seen at the pier.
Daisy had met Grace and the other young women the summer before, when Jesse brought her to the air group’s summer social in the officers’ club. Amid clouds of cigarette smoke and the sounds of clinking glasses, the pilots and their wives and girlfriends had lined up to shake hands with the new black couple. On the drive home, Daisy had told Jesse how special the others had made her feel, like she was royalty. After that, Daisy visited the officers’ club once a week for happy hour with Grace and the other young women.
Chimes sounded and the band began playing the lively tune “Anchors Aweigh.” The women around Daisy began waving up toward the men on the deck, hoping their pilots would appear. The girls tucked away their handkerchiefs to present a fond farewell sight.
Grace Cevoli held her son’s tiny hand and helped him wave. Daisy glanced in Grace’s direction and realized that the woman wasn’t crying, yet Grace had as much to lose as she did. Daisy dried her nose with her handkerchief. She was beginning to understand the duty of a military wife.
Daisy smiled and waved like the others; she would wait for Jesse’s letters and hope that he was right—the worst that can happen is a sunburn.
* * *
* Later, in the same living room, Jesse would confess his fear of the Corsair to his friend Vic Breddell, a black enlisted man in charge of cockpit training. “You know, Vic, I think that Corsair will kill me,” Jesse said. “I just have that feeling.”
CHAPTER 12
A DEADLY BUSINESS
Twenty days later, May 22, 1950
Off the southwest coast of Sicily
TOM JUMPED FROM THE WING of his Corsair and hurried past the parked planes to where Cevoli was standing. Jesse and a pilot named Koenig exited their planes and rushed in the same direction. The men stopped breathlessly at Cevoli’s side. They were all wearing cloth flight helmets and silver aviator sunglasses, having just landed on the deck of the Leyte in rapid-fire sequence, twenty seconds apart.
At first, no one said anything as the carrier steamed into the noisy wind. The men glanced at their watches—it was nearly 4 P.M. They searched the hot and hazy blue sky. Far in the distance, thin white clouds hovered over the coast of Sicily like snowy alpine peaks. A destroyer and eighteen other ships surrounded the proud carrier, each bow cutting the waves and trailing white lines on the sapphire blue sea. Together, the ships formed the Dancing Fleet, the navy’s largest active force.
Already the fleet had visited Portugal and Greece, and now it was here in Sicily. Just moments before, the four pilots had been aloft, practicing their aerial gunnery by blasting a white banner towed by another plane. The catch was, they couldn’t actually see if they had hit the banner until the tow plane came down and dropped the banner into the sea, where it would be reclaimed.
As the pilots waited for the tow plane to return, adrenaline surged in their veins. The four men often flew together, and on paper were assigned to “Cevoli’s flight.” Traditionally, Cevoli was the flight’s best shot, having fired at live planes and ships in World War II, and Jesse was second best, with a year’s worth of trigger time over Tom. But it was Lieutenant Bill Koenig, the squadron’s newest member, who was the most competitive.
A short, baby-faced pilot from Iowa, Koenig scanned the sky, his pale blue eyes beaming intensity. Today, he was certain, his aim had been on the money. Everyone joked that if there ever was a perfect naval officer, Koenig was the man. His tie was always cinched the tightest, his shoes always the best polished.
Tom had known Koenig for years. They had met during their shipboard duty days and crossed paths again in flight training, only to reunite when Koenig was assigned to Fighting 32, to the same flight as Tom.
“Here he comes!” Tom shouted, pointing to a speck in the sky behind the carrier. Jesse and Koenig and Cevoli leaned forward to see. Before takeoff, mechanics had painted the tips of each pilot’s bullets a different color to track their scores.
The shape of a Corsair swelled as it came into view. A three-hundred-yard rope stretched from the plane’s belly and behind the rope a thirty-yard banner fluttered like an advertisement over a beach. The Corsair dropped level with the Leyte’s deck and buzzed dramatically between the carrier and the neighboring destroyer. The white banner was riddled with colored holes.
Tom’s eyes lit up at the sight. Cevoli grinned with the reigning champion’s confidence. The men were especially happy not to be towing the banner. Being a tow pilot required nerves of steel. The risk started right from the deck when the tow pilot needed to take off faster and steeper than usual to avoid dragging the banner in the water. Once he reached fifteen thousand feet, the danger factor rose exponentially. The tow pilot needed to fly straight and level while other pilots swooped in from the side to shoot the banner behind him. If a shooter misjudged the trajectory of his bullets, the tow pilot could come under friendly fire.
Credit 12.1
Bill Koenig
Only Carol Mohring ever volunteered for this job. As the shakiest pilot in the squadron he seemed continually eager to make friends, from carpooling with Jesse to towing the banner, anything to get the other pilots to know him as more than the kid with the German accent.
Carol flew his Corsair ahead of the destroyer and released the hook on his plane’s belly. The tow line plummeted and the banner fluttered down like a streamer. Carol’s plane accelerated and peeled left to enter the pattern to land.
The banner splashed down into the sea and rolled on the waves. “Come on, come on, stay right there!” Koenig said. His voice had a midwestern “gee whiz” twang. Tom chuckled at his friend’s intensity. Koenig had a point—sometimes the banner became tangled in the tow line and sank, the scores forever lost.
The destroyer veered toward the banner and several crew members appeared on the edge of the deck with a long pole and hook. With one scoop they lifted the banner from the sea. Tom breathed a sigh of relief. Koenig happily shook a fist. Next, the destroyer’s crew would count the holes by color, then radio the results to the Leyte.
The flyboys practiced often, and with live rounds, for a reason. Their commanders suspected that the opening battle of World War III might be waged in the Mediterranean. The Soviets desperately wanted to gain a “warm water” port there so they could send warships to the Middle East in the event of World War III, to block America’s access to oil. That was why the Leyte was in the Mediterranean, and why the 6th
Fleet was permanently stationed there—to flex American muscle and demonstrate to the Mediterranean nations that America could defend them from the communists.
So far, the strategy was working. A year earlier, America and her allies of World War II—notably, Britain, Canada, and France—had formed NATO, a new alliance against the Soviets. They welcomed Italy and Portugal into the fold and agreed that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” Now NATO was working to recruit Greece and Turkey before communism could topple a government and give the Soviets a warm-water port.
“Clear the deck! Clear the deck!” the Leyte’s loudspeaker blared. The deckhands scattered to their trenches and the LSO stepped to his platform. A spindly blue rescue helicopter edged alongside the carrier, ready to pluck a pilot from the sea in the event of an accident. Tom and the others took cover in a trench at the front of the deck to watch Carol land.
Carol was in the middle of his U-turn and perpendicular to the ship, about twenty-five yards above the sea. His left wing was angled downward, his wheels and hook were dangling.
Tom lifted his sunglasses for a better look. The distant Corsair’s nose seemed to be angled a bit high. Its tail was drooping a bit low.
“His approach is off,” Cevoli said. “He needs to speed up.”
Tom murmured in agreement. Flying too low and slow was dangerous in a Corsair—and so was the act of acceleration. A pilot needed to level his wings before adding heavy power or else the Corsair’s powerful engine would surge and the propeller’s massive torque would twist the plane clockwise onto its back.
The LSO stood with his arms at his sides. Carol was still too far away to be directed. The distant Corsair’s left wing dipped farther toward the sea. Then it flicked shakily upward.