Bombs Away

by John Steinbeck

  In the Air Force, Abner got his wish to associate with the best engines in the world. They were his babies. He had torn them down and inspected every little part. He had heard them when they were happy and his ears could tell him when they were hurt. The pilot of a bomber could rely on him completely. If Abner said the engines were in good shape, they were all right. He was a quiet man. You had to like him for his silence and everyone did. It is probable that only one thing could outrage him, the mistreatment of a fine piece of machinery. In his little town in California he had been an authority in his field and in the Air Force he was an authority. The men called him “Chief” instinctively. The officers wondered what lucky bomber crew would get him permanently. He had a way of caressing an engine lightly with his fingers. He had a way of cocking his head and rubbing his chin while he listened to an engine. But his interest in engines had greatly enlarged. He knew the whole ship now, the hydraulic lifts on the landing gear, the little cables of the controls, the mechanism of the bomb releases. In an emergency he could do anything in the ship, fly it, bomb from it, lay the machine guns, and even navigate. Many a pilot will tell you that a good crew chief is the greatest man in the air, and from his beginning Abner seemed destined to become one of the greatest of crew chiefs. When his study and his training and his practice were done, Abner was ready for his permanent post in a bomber crew.

  THE RADIO ENGINEER

  The long-range bomber crew is almost complete now. It has pilotage, navigation, offensive power, and defensive guns and it has engine maintenance in the air. It lacks only its ears and tongue, its ability to hear and to talk. This has not been left until last because it is unimportant. The bomber’s radio and its operator are vastly important. In modern air warfare, either offensive or defensive, it is unusual for a ship to act as a unit. Air tactics call for a number of ships to carry out a given design. The whole plan is the unit, not the ship. The moment a bomber leaves the ground it has only one contact with its ground command and with its flying command and that is through its radio. Into the ears of the radio operators come orders, warnings, changes, and out through his radio go reports of missions, dangers which entangle other ships, reconnaissance observations, and position.

  This radio man and his instrument are the contact of the ship with the world outside. And with the complication of tactical and group flying his position has become more and more important. He must maintain communications at all times. He must sometimes even repair his set under fire. Like the engineer the radio man is drawn from the ranks of the Army. The reports on his education and his aptitude indicate whether he is well suited for this complex and responsible position. Let us say that in his high school work he has reported that he studied electrical shop or bench metal work, mechanical drawing, blueprint reading, mathematics, or physics. Such a background suggests that he is eligible for Army Air Force radio school. In this country there are many thousands of men who have made radio a hobby. The great Radio Hams organization, which has helped so often in national emergencies, has as members only a small proportion of the amateur experts available for the Army schools.

  “The radio man and his instrument are the contact of the ship with the world outside . . .”

  In addition to these there are many thousands more who have studied radio by correspondence course or have worked in radio shops, and all of these have a sturdy background for the Air Force radio school. A radio man may be anywhere between the ages of eighteen and forty-four. His hearing must be perfect, but he may wear glasses if they correct his eyesight to normal vision. If he is married he must sign a statement that his dependents have sufficient means of support. Once chosen he will go to radio school, and for a little over eighteen weeks he will study his job, radio operating, Morse code, code typing, radio telephone and telegraph procedures, flight operations, direct and alternating current circuits, transmitters, receivers. He will learn the radio compass and he will learn to service and to maintain the equipment he will be required to use.

  In addition he will learn gunnery, for everyone in a bomber crew must in some emergencies be a gunner.

  Harris was a proper man for Air Force radio. He was graduated from high school, having had some science and having been most interested in the physics of electricity. While he worked in a large chain grocery, he was not content with that. He had wanted to get into radio since he had first left high school. To that end he had taken a mail-order course and later, by persistent saving, had bought and assembled parts for a little short-wave sending and receiving set. And he was licensed to use it. He carried on lengthy conversations with other hams. They were always groping out to the distances, these hams. They would rather hear a dull man from 5,000 miles than an interesting one from 500. A strange brotherhood they were, almost a lodge. Their dearest acquaintances they never saw. A ham who could make an acquaintance in Timbuktu was just twice as fortunate as one who only had friends in Guam. The war, that is, before we got into it, was a sad thing for Harris. One by one his friends were cut off the air by Germany. Some of them told horrible things before their sets went dead. Harris knew better than most what an Axis victory meant to the defeated. When a man was shot Harris sometimes heard about it from another before he went off the air.

  When the war was on, Harris spent every hour trying to hear the illegal sets in Germany and Holland and Norway. These men of radio are internationalists as scientists are. Harris hated the Axis not for killing and silencing strangers, but for hurting his friends whose voices he had heard and who had heard his voice. Then we entered the war and Harris surrendered his license. He still listened but he could not send anymore. He had planned to join the Army to get into military radio, but while he was making up his mind his draft board solved the problem for him and he was inducted into the Service. His tests and his experience automatically indicated his destiny. He was delighted when he was chosen to go to radio school. With Harris’s background it was still hard work, but probably not quite so hard as it was for some of the others. Radio was his first interest in the world and after his eighteen weeks he was graduated and made a technical sergeant.

  The enlisted men of a bomber crew study navigation in their time off

  When the orders came assigning him to a long-range bomber crew he felt savagely good, for he hoped he could help to strike a blow for his friends who had been choked off the air by Germans.

  THE BOMBER TEAM

  This has been an account of the training of the individual members of a bomber crew before they are assembled finally, given their ship, their group training, and their mission. But the air crew is not cut off from the ground crew. Necessity and intelligence have created a relationship between men in the Air Force which is unique in the armed forces. The necessity lies here—an individual in artillery, if he fails in his duty, may be responsible for a shell missing a target. The responsibility of an officer of infantry is much greater than that of a private. But in the Air Force the error or dereliction of a ground crew man, his failure to carry out his job intelligently, can bring a ship crashing down as surely as a bad pilot can, and a crashed ship and a dead crew is a terrible loss.

  In this book the point has been made again and again that the Air Force takes only the best men of brain and nerve and judgment and body. It is for the reason that every member of the Air Force must take a great deal of responsibility. A weak link cannot be permitted in the chain for the chain is too interrelated. And with this necessary delegation of responsibility there goes a relationship and a respect which are also unique in the Air Force.

  A commissioned flying officer, knowing that his mission and even his life are in the hands of each member of the whole group, is not likely to become the self-sufficient martinet. It wouldn’t work. The Air Force is an association of experts and each must place a dependence on the other. In military formation and discipline, men and officers act with precision and snap, but in mission their actions are more likely to be like the work of a fine construction crew. Their discipline is m
ore likely to be the result of the wills of a number of intelligent men all going the same way. It is impossible in the Air Force blindly to carry out an order. If you don’t know what you are doing you can’t do it. This fact makes for a very different relation between men and officers than has obtained in many military organizations. The old-time soldier would say that discipline would disappear under such a system, but actually the opposite is true. It can be suspected that the old iron discipline helped to conceal from the private soldier the incapacity of the officer, but the Air Force cannot have bad officers or the ships do not fly. The private knows that his officer is an expert in his field and his discipline is that of trust. The officer knows what depends on the private’s work and his discipline is one of respect for his men.

  The bomber crew is a team in a true sense but it is also true that the whole Air Force is a team. This relationship has not been accidental, it has been carefully planned and carried out by the commanding officers who know how much is at stake. These men being flying officers know what it takes to keep a ship in the air. First and most important of all, it takes the best possible human material, second, complete training of that material, and third, individual and group initiative. It must not be thought that discipline is lax. In effect, it is stricter than in most branches of the Service. But in the Air Forces discipline is defined as that conduct of the individual which in a group best carries out the missions. And blind, unreasoning, unintelligent obedience does not accomplish this definition. A man must be good to get into the Air Force at all, but once in and trained his goodness is recognized and used. That is the strength and certainty of Air Force discipline. Every man is responsible to and for the team, not in fear of punishment nor hope of reward—team play is something far different from that.

  Every week the Air Force schools all over the country are graduating their specialists. From a four-motor school in Texas a class of pilots comes, from New Mexico bombardiers, from Nevada gunners, navigators from Kelly Field, radio operators from South Dakota, crew chiefs from Illinois or Mississippi. Their individual training period is over and their final training is ready to begin. They will be trained as units in a tight, clannish organization—the bomber crew.

  A bomber crew approaches its ship for a mission

  This crew, once established, will remain as a unit. The men will know one another as few men ever get acquainted, for they will be under fire together. They will play together after a victory. They will plan together and eat and sleep together on missions. And finally there is the chance that they may die together. The ties between members of the bomber team are tighter than those of nearly any organization in the world. There must be respect and liking among the men. One ill-fitting man can throw out the smoothness of operation. Dislike may split a crew. This crew must function like a fine watch. One slow or rusty part could make the whole crew bad—such are the complications of human relationships. Relationships are a part of the final training of the group, the getting acquainted, the working together under conditions which are like those they will find on their deadly missions. And when the crew is established and in working shape, the gunners will think their pilot is the best pilot in the Air Force. The pilot will tell anyone that there is no crew chief like his and he will give examples and prove it. The crew will be a tight unit, a jealous unit. Their feeling will not be loud nor boastful, nor even stated unless one member is criticized, but the feeling will be there. And this fierce, inner loyalty extends to the ships. A bomber crew which uses the Flying Fortress, the B-17E, will feel that there is no ship like it. The crew of the Consolidated B-24 will be just as partial to its ship. This is a curious thing. The ships are about equal in performance and yet each one has its passionate adherents. And individual ships are personalized too, are given names and even unconsciously thought of as persons. No amount of precision, mass production manufacture, can remove the personalities from the ships. No two ships fly quite alike, each one has its personality to be learned in the controls by pilot and copilot and in feel by the rest of the crew. The ship is the center of the bomber crew. They will spend many hours in her. She is a part of the crew too.

  So, to the assembly field come the men and they are fitted together. The commissioned officers live together and the non-commissioned officers live together. At present there are no privates in a bomber crew. When they have learned enough to be there, rank and pay have been increased. Gunners, radio men, crew chiefs are sergeants drawing specialist’s pay and flying pay. Pilot and copilot, bombardier, and navigator are commissioned officers. The men live together, go out together, eat together. They fly individual missions, flight missions, squadron missions. If an animosity should arise, here in final training is the place to root it out. Here develop close associations, friendships that are permanent; and it must be that way, for rigid discipline can never take the place of mutual liking and respect. There are more musketeers here than the original three, but the motto of a bomber crew might well be the familiar “All for one and one for all.” Men who know what they are doing are the best fighting instruments in the world. Nothing manufactured can take their place. Men are the true weapons of the Air Force and it is an understanding of this that makes our bomber crews what they are. It is an understanding of this which goes into the careful choice of candidates, the careful training of individuals, and finally, the careful grouping of the men in the crew.

  The men graduate from the schools and they get their orders and usually a little furlough, for they have worked long and hard. Before the furlough is up they are restless. A place without airplanes is no longer a good place to them. They do not rest well if the sound of ships on the runway is not in their ears. They are trained for a job and with very few exceptions they want to get to their job.

  This final phase of training will simulate battle conditions in every possible way. The crews will bomb targets in the water, they will be given patrol missions, and if they are lucky they may get a submarine. Each man has been thinking in terms of his specialty, but now each will begin to think in terms of the mission. The word mission will change its meaning. Mission is the end toward which they have been working. A mission will be the most important thing in the world to them. On the field they will get to know men of more advanced squadrons and then one day these squadrons will be gone giving no destination; but the crews that are left will read newspapers and sometimes an oblique piece of information will tell them where their friends are.

  Training, bombing, getting used to the ship and to their duties in the ship go on and on. The group will be a unit. And then one day a stir of excitement will run through the squadron—the orders are in. It is time to pack up. It is time to go. They do not yet know where. They may go any place toward which the compass can point. The men move about quickly. The ships are packed. Squadron records are boxed. Then final orders come and quietly the men take their places, the engines turn over. The ships rumble out to the runway. Then the ground shakes under the spinning wheels and the air roars with the motors. The mission has begun.

  It happened that Bill the bombardier, Joe the pilot, Al the gunner, Harris the radio man, Abner the engineer, and Allan the navigator all finished their training at the same time. Hundreds finished at that time and received their orders to proceed to their final training, but these were ordered to a field in Florida. They came in on the train and shortly were assigned to their squadrons and flights. The commanding officer had observed the men carefully. In case he made a mistake in building the crews it could be changed but it is better not to make a mistake. He assigned the men to a crew together with a copilot and two other gunners. This was the crew and it was to be permanent.

  It was hot at the field and damp, and millions of mosquitoes hummed about day and night. The men slept in shelters open all the way around but tightly screened. But even then some mosquitoes got in and many little black bugs walked through the meshes of the screen at will. Fanciers of bugs that bite favor the black bugs over the mosquitoes as unpleasant
visitors. For a mosquito must find an exposed place to bite, but the black bugs go right under the covers with you. For a few days the new men fought and slapped the bugs and finally they gave up and relaxed and the bugs bit them and they didn’t suffer so much.

  The field had been built quickly, leveled quickly. Shelters were still going up. The air was thick and humid and pools of water were everywhere. If it was a toughening process in discomfort it was successful. The nearest town was five miles away. It was not the Florida that the Chambers of Commerce talk about. The field itself had been torn and chewed by the bulldozers out of a palmetto swamp, leveled, and the asphalt runways laid down, and around the field, well spaced, stood the brown B-24’s like giant mosquitoes.

  In the operations room the new crew stood about a little diffidently. Their shirts were sweated through, their faces ran with perspiration. They had been told to get acquainted. They examined one another secretly. They were a little embarrassed and then outside and on the other side of the field a motor turned over and caught and another and two more. The new crew moved as one man to the open door and looked across the field to where a bomber was warming up. They could see the crew of that ship climbing in, taking their sheepskin clothes, their masks, and their parachutes with them. And Bill said “They’re going high.”

  Flying Fortress takes off on a practice mission

  “It will be cool up there, anyway,” said Allan.

  The strangeness wore off in a very few days and when the nine of them got into a ship together for the first time, it disappeared. On their first flight they tried to do their best. Abner went over his motors on the ground and hovered about like a worried hen. He hesitated to report the engines ready for fear he might have missed something. Joe took his place. Harris was working at his radio set, sitting in his swinging chair behind the copilot. The gunners were in the section behind the bomb bays for the take-off and Allan and Bill had their seats on the left side. They would both go into the nose of the ship as soon as she was in the air. Abner came aboard through the open bomb bay and as soon as he was on, the doors rolled shut. Joe leaned out of his window, “Clear number one.”