Trophy for Eagles

by Boyne, Walter J.

  He picked up the Waianae mountains that backed Wheeler Field, then saw the typical Army layout of hangars and post. He advanced the mixture and dropped down, determined to buzz the field and see Millie wave to him before he tried the wheelless belly landing. The Army would see what he was going to do and have the meat wagons ready.

  He checked the field. A flight of three Curtiss Falcons was taxiing out, and two Boeing PW-9 fighters had appeared from nowhere, bobbing up alongside. The pilot in the closest Boeing pulled in, grinning and holding up a single finger. He was first! Where was Millie? My God, where was Millie?

  Breathing hard, heart pounding, Bandfield's hands trembled as he entered the pattern, slowing the Breese down to 95 mph, then 80, searching the flight line all the while. The yellow Vega would have stuck out; it wasn't there. Maybe they had landed on another island.

  He forgot about the jettisoned landing gear, coming down to level off as if the wheels were below him. He stalled and dropped with a shudder to the green grass surface. The impact forced the struts up through the wings, and the Breese slithered around in a circle as he cut the switches. He pulled himself up from the cockpit, feeling totally foolish, trying to get away from it before it exploded. Then the cheering crowds arrived in trucks, cars, and buses.

  A group of pilots grabbed him and carried him to a beautiful young Hawaiian girl who heaped a garland of leis around his neck and almost kissed him on each cheek. "Where's the Vega? Have you heard anything from Winter?"

  A big major introduced himself. "I'm Major Bill Grant. Congratulations—you're the first one we've seen. The last report we had on anyone was the message you got from the W. S. Miller. How much time should we give them before we put out a search?"

  The pilots crowded around, staring at him, wondering if he was too tired to realize he'd won, that the $25,000 was his.

  Bandfield yelled, "Start now, goddammit! The Vega was much faster than my airplane. They're either down, or they've missed the island. Get out every goddam thing you've got and get it in the air.

  The major walked away, irritated with this smart-ass civilian who'd humiliated him in front of his men. James Dole, short, self-important, wearing a white snap-brim hat, came smiling up with the check in his hand.

  "Mr. Bandfield, it's my honor ..."

  Bandfield ignored him, turning to run and grab the major by the arm.

  "Listen, I'm sorry, I'm crazy with fear. My girl's on that airplane. Please don't get mad. Just get me an airplane to go after her."

  Grant looked at him. "Take it easy, Mr. Bandfield. I'll go in and notify the Navy. We'll put up a full sea and air search. You'd better get some rest."

  Bandfield staggered back with the group of pilots, subdued now. Hawaii revolved around him, new odors, bird calls, flowers, and he was unaware of it all. He had only one thought, that of a yellow Vega, circling, looking for those gray dots that he had found. It must still be flying.

  *

  Wheeler Field, Hawaii

  4:00 p.m., August 17, 1927

  Bandfield was stretched out in the flight surgeon's office, the painfully austere white walls and cane furniture somehow offset by some plants with absolutely obscene waxy red flowers. He was totally bushed, the hard work and twenty-six-hour flight providing an easy target for the two ounces of Old Grand-dad, its label clearly marked "For Medicinal Purposes Only."

  Major Grant came into the room.

  "We've had a radio report from Oakland, Mr. Bandfield. Three of the airplanes returned to Oakland. Three did not, including yours. They have no word on either Winter's Vega or Hafner's Bellanca."

  Bandfield followed his characteristic practice of embracing guilt, telling himself that if he hadn't abandoned Hafner, Millie would have been all right. He went through the whole routine, blaming himself, then telling himself that he wasn't so important that God would hurt Millie to punish him, then retreating into the wallow of guilt again.

  A crackling roar sounded over the flight line. Tired as he was, he recognized it as a Liberty engine, instead of the Wright Whirlwind he was praying for. He got up and walked to the window as the phone rang.

  A yellow-winged Loening amphibian, wheels extended, made a precise pattern and landed into the wind. He saw it turn around at the far end of the field, to taxi back to the Wheeler operations building.

  Grant hung up the phone and turned to him, smiling. "It's one of the rescue ships, Bandy. Looks like they've got somebody."

  They raced out to the ambulance and sped, siren roaring, down streets bordered by flowering trees and redolent with plumeria perfume. Bandfield sat with his eyes closed, praying that it was Millie. The Loening was big enough to carry Winter and Gordon too.

  They pulled up at the operations building just as the Loening taxied in and shut down. The pilot clambered out of the front cockpit and slid back along the wing as Bandfield ran up and grabbed a strut. He thrust his foot on the little steel steps and leaped up to peer in the cockpit—at Bruno Hafner, wet and very angry, a bedraggled Nellie clutched in his lap.

  *

  Oakland Municipal Airport

  10:00 a.m. PST, August 18, 1927

  The atmosphere in the Post Enquirer radio shack was funereal, the silence broken only when the radio crackled to life, people drifting in and out, talking in whispers. The tiny room was fouled in a distinctive fog of stale smoke, spilled coffee, and unwashed bodies. Hadley Roget recoiled when he stuck his head in the door.

  "Dolan, I'm surprised the air in here doesn't short the radio gear out. You can cut the smoke with a knife."

  Ray Dolan, obviously under severe strain, nodded abruptly and looked away. After Bandfield had landed and Hafner had been rescued, there had been absolute silence.

  By midafternoon, the crowds had increased until a respiratory rotation system started, people outside rushing in to fill the place of those who staggered out to breathe.

  The jubilation that had followed Bandy's landing had changed into a morbid gloom. Dolan, chairman of the race committee, was white, his hands shaking, leaping at every vagrant buzz of the radio. He had told Hadley earlier that he felt like a murderer, that Dole was a murderer. The relatives, ground crews, and hangers-on of the missing aviators forged into the radio shack, enduring the foul air and eventually displacing almost everyone else as the minutes lengthened into hours.

  A monumental rescue effort was underway. The Golden Eagle was out of fuel, down somewhere in the endless Pacific. Search missions were to be flown from both California and Hawaii. The Navy was already searching, diverting the destroyers that had been stationed en route and deploying every available patrol plane.

  The field pulsed with the false reassurances that attend futile efforts. As at the election-night headquarters of a losing politician, every morsel of positive news was greeted with enthusiasm, while reality was shrugged off. A wild surge of elation greeted the news that red flares had been seen streaking from Mauna Loa, but nothing developed from the rumor.

  The hugeness of the task was not discussed. All the airplanes in the world searching would not have been enough, for there was no way of knowing if the Vega had crashed just beyond the Farallons, just before Hawaii, or anywhere in the Pacific between or beyond. Yet the search had to be made for the sake of the searchers, if not for the lost. A glimmer of hope was held out that the Vega would be able to float indefinitely, with its empty tanks and flotation bags. There were continual mutual assurances that Winter had carried a rubber life raft. Millie Duncan could be sitting in a raft; they must search for her.

  Every plane on the field was made available for the rescue effort. Dolan became the organizer, allocating areas to search and times to fly. Bill Erwin and Al Eichwaldt, the fabric of the Dallas Spirit repaired, were off at 2:15 p.m. The two were old professionals, and Jimmie Irving had donated the two-way radio set from his wrecked aircraft. It somehow made everything seem safer. Eichwaldt began sending reports one after another. The first came only five minutes after takeoff: "2:20. Going strong. W
e are passing the docks and will see the lightship soon. We are carrying the tail high at 1,700 feet and making close to 100 speed. Will call again passing the lightship. "

  There were a spate of trivial messages as Eichwaldt familiarized himself with the equipment, making the typical amateur's mistake of sending unnecessary words. Hadley ached to go outside and draw a breath, but was riveted to the spot, watching the operator record the messages.

  Later the room rippled with a brief flurry of excitement when a message came in from Wheeler Field. The crowd waited breathlessly as the Morse code was copied, then groaned in resentment. The message read simply: "Race committee in Hawaii advises Hafner to receive second prize."

  Messages from the Dallas Spirit crackled through the gloom.

  "2:40. From now on I will double up on my messages so you can copy me better as I know my sending is none too good. Tell Jimmie the radio set is working fine. Send my love to Ma."

  "2:50. We are flying at 300 feet and under the fog with a visibility of 30 miles and are passing the Farallons now."

  The crowd in the radio shack looked concerned; the classic way to an accident was to attempt to fly under the weather.

  Hadley asked, "What kind of an instrument pilot is Erwin?"

  "He's okay. He passed the flight check, didn't he?"

  Dolan's voice was high, strained, ready to crack. "We didn't check them for instrument flying."

  Hadley commented, "He might be a little rusty, but he'll be fine. He shot down eight Germans; a little fog isn't going to bother him."

  More messages came through, none vital.

  "3:49. The ceiling is now 700 feet. We are flying at 500. We have not seen anything at all of other planes or anything since the Farallons and all is okay except Bill just sneezed. We are keeping a sharp lookout for the Golden Eagle."

  Hadley could visualize the tension on board Erwin's airplane.

  Eichwaldt was covering his own fear with rough humor. When it grew darker, their danger would become as great as that which had claimed the others. Whenever there was a silence, the crowd in the radio shack tensed. Roget felt the whole effort was pointless, that there wasn't a chance in a billion of finding the Golden Eagle in the present weather conditions.

  "4:20. We just passed close to a rain squall. The air was very bumpy. Visibility is clear ahead."

  Other messages indicated ships they had sighted. The weather had apparently improved. People passed in and out of the radio shack as tension curled the air, palpable with blue-gray smoke. The messages became increasingly grim as time passed.

  "8:00. It is beginning to get dark."

  At 8:20 p.m. the radio operator whistled. Erwin's radio was powered by a wind-driven generator, and the cycles of the transmissions varied with the airspeed. The radio operator could tell from the rise and fall of the cycles on his meter that the Dallas Spirit had stalled and spun. The white needle on the gauge was a mute mechanical witness to the emotional drama in the Swallow.

  "8:51. Belay that. We were in a spin but came out of it okay. We sure were scared. It sure was a close call. The lights on the instrument panel went out and it was so dark Bill could not see the wings."

  The pilots in the room shot worried glances at each other. A spin in the dark over the ocean was usually fatal. The crew of the Dallas Spirit had been lucky.

  Roget closed his eyes and imagined himself in the cockpit, feeling what Erwin was going through as his senses told him one thing and his instruments another. Even an experienced instrument pilot was vulnerable to the sensations of vertigo, to believe what one's ears and eyes reported instead of the random pointing of the tiny dials on the instrument panel. There was no such thing as seat-of-the-pants flying. If you didn't have instruments, or didn't know how to use them, and got in clouds, you would inevitably stall and spin.

  Roget wondered if they had working flashlights. Despite all the Eveready ads, flashlights were something you carried around until the battery went dead and you needed it. Two people's lives ultimately depended upon the dim glimmer of the instrument lights. Erwin and Eichwaldt were both probably shivering with fear. It would be worse for Erwin, for he would know precisely the danger, while Eichwaldt would die still in the hope that Erwin would master the situation. Hadley writhed in sympathy.

  The subdued murmur within the shack ceased when the radio clattered. There was another transmission.

  "9:02. We are in a . . . SOS."

  Then there was silence; the frequency meter showed a peak, and then fell to nothing as the Dallas Spirit finally crashed into the sea, the lapsed pointer a final malevolent confirmation of two deaths.

  There was a total silence in the room. Then Roget said, "Now we've got two more to look for. And maybe nobody to find.

  ***

  PART II

  THE STAKES GO UP

  ***

  Chapter 4

  Grand Central Airport, Glendale, California/November 30, 1929

  The thin heat of the early-morning sun began to battle with the crisp white frost feathering the red-tile roof of the mission-style terminal. Bandfield buttoned his old leather jacket, grown tighter in the last two years, and slumped against the wall of an arch of the covered walkway. As always, he was quite early for the meeting. He spent his time admiring the new airport.

  Aviation had come a long way in the last decade, from flying out of cow pastures to this beautiful airfield, with its concrete runway and long line of Maddux Airlines hangars filled with Ford Tri-motors. Across the runway were the curious half-dome hangars where they were building the crazy-looking Slate all-metal dirigible. He had seen it once, an enormous tin ship that looked like an accordion-pleated egg, with some nutty turbine system for power. Good luck, he thought. It was tough enough to get a normal-looking aircraft to fly, much less a "revolutionary" one.

  God knew Roget Aircraft could use some luck after struggling almost through another year. No one yet knew what the stock market crash the month before meant, but it had been a fantastic year for aviation. Some weird-looking Russian bomber had flown from Moscow to New York. Two Brits had flown nonstop from England to India. Jimmy Doolittle flew a complete flight, takeoff to landing, on instruments. The Graf Zeppelin, the good old-fashioned kind of quick-burning dirigible, built of aluminum and fabric and filled with hydrogen, had flown around the world.

  Even poor old maligned Richard Byrd had redeemed himself for his humiliating flight in the America by being the first to fly over the South Pole. Bandfield had ached for him in 1927, when Byrd had finally flown the Atlantic, only to crash in the sea off the coast of France. At least he had broken with Tony Fokker, and flown a Ford Tri-motor over the South Pole. Balchen, who could get along with anybody, even Byrd, had been his pilot.

  Earlier, Bandy had parked his waxed and gleaming Roget Rocket, the fifth—and last—to be built, next to a line of open-cockpit biplanes. The first Roger Rocket had burned, but three of its namesakes were earning their keep flying from New Orleans to Atlanta for Southern Airlines. It wasn't much to show for almost three years of sweat and strain. Yet tight as things were, he was still sometimes glad that Roget Aircraft had stayed small, and hadn't yet made it into the big time. Lockheed had sold one Vega after another, but was then absorbed by Detroit Aircraft, which intended to become the General Motors of the air. The stock-market crash had ended those dreams, and now Lockheed was in trouble, like everybody else.

  Ten thousand dollars. I won't take a cent less than ten thousand for it, he thought. He knew that he would, though, that he would grab $5,000 if it was offered, anything to keep Roget Aircraft alive for another few months.

  That's what the meeting was about. By pure chance, two of the men he admired most in aviation, Wiley Post and Slim Lindbergh, were together in California, attending a meeting on some new Civil Aeronautics Association rulings. He had asked them to look at the latest version of the Rocket, and they had agreed to meet him in Glendale. Lindbergh was of course by far the most famous, but Bandfield thought that th
e one-eyed Wiley Post was going to be one of the truly great pilots of the next decade. Both men needed new airplanes, and he had been told that Post needed a fast cabin monoplane with a good range, and was leaning toward the Vega. Lindbergh had said only that he wanted something in which he could fly with his new wife as copilot.

  Bandfield thought he could meet Post's needs easily. The Rocket was a better airplane than the Vega, although it didn't have its reputation. It might boil down to price, and he wasn't sure what the Lockheed people would do. They might be as desperate as he was.

  And it depended a lot on what Post wanted to use the airplane for. Aviation was still cursed with people wanting to set meaningless records, dropping like rocks into the Atlantic or the Pacific, causing expensive searches, but rarely being found. The whole business grated on him. Each time he read of an attempt, he thought of Millie. Since she had gone, more than a dozen had followed her into the oceanic void. They were lost without hope or purpose, and far from helping aviation, they harmed it.

  Lindbergh's requirement would be different. He was working with Pan American, testing flying boats. He had already set the most important record ever made, the Paris flight. And now he was aviation's statesman-engineer, always seeking progress, but never at the expense of safety.

  The only problem was that Lindbergh might want more than Roget Aircraft could deliver. Bandfield wondered how much of Lindy's interest stemmed from their old friendship. They had not met since the days on Long Island, but they had corresponded every few months, and Lindbergh was always supportive.

  The rest of the field was still deserted, quiet in the sun, when a deep-blue Franklin Airman convertible sedan rolled up; Lindbergh was alone in a car the company had named for him.

  "Hello, Bandy. Burned up any more airplanes?"