Air Force Eagles

by Walter J. Boyne

"Nazis?"

  "Of course. The ones who got away. It wasn't just the concentration camps like Dachau and Auschwitz, you know. They used slave labor in factories. I was a worker at Nordhausen, building jet engines in a factory tunneled into the mountains. Thousands died there, building it and working in it."

  He paused, eyes gleaming, mouth working. "It took a lot of people to kill six million Jews, not just a few SS guards, but businessmen and officers, people trying to win the war no matter what the Nazis did. And at the end, most of them just stopped their murdering, took off their uniforms and walked away."

  Marshall shook his head in disbelief as Weissman went on. "I'm going to go after the ones I know personally and the ones I'll find out about. And then I'll kill them." He turned back to polishing the canopy, his intensity leaving Marshall shaken.

  A green flare shot up and they started engines, the prop blast swirling diamond-sharp facets of desert sand into a glittering rainbow of colors. Behind the short line of fighters, the sun's rays reached out to reflect off the dark line of distant green hills, hinting at the heat that would crisp them by the time they returned. If they returned.

  There were no taxi-ways and they went quickly through their warm-up drill in the revetments before wheeling out to takeoff, the angular Avias dipping and bobbing on their narrow-tread landing gears past clusters of cheering ground crew.

  In two minutes they were airborne, Myers and the quiet man from New York, David Lipschitz, in the first section, Marshall leading the second with Riley tucked in on his wing. The Messers climbed at a steep angle that still surprised Marshall, slanted back in his seat, his feet nestled in the straps of the unfamiliar German-style rudder bar. Everything about the plane was different—its German smell and hostile German angularity were so different from the P-51. Still, it climbed well, clawing upward at three thousand feet per minute before they leveled off at eight thousand feet. He noted gratefully that all four planes had survived the toughest test, the takeoff, and that none were streaming oil or coolant. So far, so good.

  They headed for the sea in a loose finger-four formation, ignoring the wildly inaccurate fire as they passed over the Egyptian antiaircraft batteries at Ashdod.

  Sweating in the cramped cockpit, Marshall felt a surge of sympathy for the poor German pilots who'd had to fly this dog in combat. He could hardly see out of the fortresslike visor, and the lack of control harmony warned of a malicious plane ready to turn and bite if the pilot was careless for a moment.

  He glanced to the left and his heart jumped. Riley had the wing of his fighter tucked so close he could have touched it. Marshall waved him away, frightened. A midair was the worst flying hazard, worse than combat, worse than fire—the tremendous speed and mass meant that the slightest kiss of one airplane against another could tear them apart.

  Riley shook his head, edging in closer, holding-up his hand to show three fingers. Marshall looked away, not wanting to encourage the madman, knowing what was coming. Riley sidled in and tapped his wingtip three times—skitch, skitch, skitch—against Marshall's fuselage, in a touch so sure, a tap so light, that Marshall barely felt it. Riley then pulled out to a normal combat formation.

  It was extraordinarily delicate flying—a stronger tap could have thrown the airplanes together, sent them tumbling to the sands below. Strange guy, Marshall thought. Quiet on the ground, almost as if he had something to hide. Then he shows off like this.

  The front line was never far away in embattled Israel. Ahead, Myers waggled his wings. The target was a long column of Egyptian trucks, dust roiling behind them, each one crammed with troops. A spearhead of tanks and half-tracks was spread out in loose marching order across the road to Tel Aviv.

  Myers's wing lifted and they dove at the head of the column, each pilot picking a target for the two little bombs his Avia carried, hoping for a lucky hit that would stop a tank. They flashed through the erratic flak barrage, most of it from multiple barrel 40-mm Oerlikons, then arced back up for the strafing runs. Free of its bombs, the fighter felt much better in the climb.

  Marshall armed his cannon and plunged toward the brown sand again, firing at the trucks, noting the black smoke pouring from two burning tanks, one at each end of the column. The ailerons of the Avia stiffened alarmingly as he gained speed, until, at the pullout, it felt as though he was steering a runaway concrete mixer.

  Now there were half a dozen trucks burning. Completely panicked by this first attack from the air, the Egyptian infantry was abandoning the trucks, scattering on foot into the desert. As Marshall tucked into a vertical bank to set himself up for another run-in, he saw an Israeli airplane crashing at the side of the road. It was like a film—he'd looked just in time to see it whole, a slight stream of smoke behind it, nose down at an impossible angle, and then it merged with the ground in an instantaneous change from machine to a fire-gutted cloud of black smoke. He knew that it was either Myers or Lipschitz, for Riley was tight on his wing.

  Remembering his role as a maintenance officer, Marshall felt a stab of apprehension. He mumbled a prayer as he turned for a final pass. "Dear God," he prayed, "if it had to happen, please let it be from gunfire, don't let it be from my mistakes."

  They flew back to Ekron to refuel and rearm and found that it was Lipschitz who had crashed. Myers's airplane sat forlornly in its revetment, streaked with sheets of sand-crusted oil from hits in his oil cooler. Their first battle, and 25 percent of Israel's fighter force was destroyed, and another 25 percent was out of commission.

  "Well, Moshe, shall we go again?"

  "Call me Bear. I'll never get used to Moshe. Now that the Gyppos know we're here, why don't we take a crack at air-to-air? I hear they've really been working Tel Aviv over."

  The Egyptian bases were only fifteen minutes flying time from Tel Aviv. They had been bombing twice daily, using modified Douglas C-47s as bombers and ex-RAF Spitfires as escort.

  The ground crew worked hard, and soon the planes were climbing again, back toward Ashdod, Riley in the lead.

  Marshall saw them just as Riley waggled his wings at the enemy formation, two C-47s acting as makeshift bombers, escorted by four Spitfires. They were loafing along at about five thousand feet, confident that the Israelis had neither flak nor fighters. The F.22 Spitfires were lovely things, with squared-off wingtips, tall rudders, and cowlings bulging like a bosomy woman's blouse from the big Griffon engines. Moving like sidewinders in great S-turns above the two Dakotas, the Spitfire pilots were eager for the bomb drop to be made so they could strafe the city streets with their cannons.

  Riley's flat voice crackled through the radio. "Bombers first."

  They flashed through the surprised Spitfires, pulling behind the C-47s to fire. It was a slaughter. Marshall saw his cannon shells explode a Douglas's fuel tank, tearing off the wing to send his victim spinning erratically to the ground, incontinently spewing out bombs like beans from a bag. Riley's smoking target was slanting toward the sea south of Tel Aviv when the Spitfire escort hit them.

  Still unfamiliar with his plane, Marshall heaved the stick over and booted rudder to turn left ninety degrees in a vertical bank, applying full power as he pulled the nose up in the ridiculously high angle of climb of which the Avia was capable. Two of the Spitfires, their speed bled down by his turn, foundered after him, falling behind. He stood his plane On its wing and saw Riley diving away toward Ekron, the other two Spitfires on his tail, almost close enough to fire.

  Stall-turning, Marshall dove through his own pursuers, flinging himself headlong after the planes on Riley's tail. They grew quickly in size from little crosses into lovely Spitfires shining in the morning sun. His altitude gave him speed and he gained rapidly, firing a long burst at the first one, just hoping to scare him. Instead the long intermittent lines of 20-mm shells magically converged into the glistening Plexiglas, blowing the pilot's head off and sending the airplane vertically into the ground. The other Spitfire turned and ran. Marshall cranked his neck around to see if he was being foll
owed; then, fuel and ammunition low, he eased back the throttle and dove down to catch up with Riley.

  It was a near-fatal error. A Spitfire came from out of nowhere and Marshall's instrument panel disappeared in a blinding explosion as cannon shells hammered into him. One minute he was flying a fighter, the next he was trapped like Houdini in a safe. He jettisoned the canopy, loosened his seat straps, and kicked the stick forward, sling-shotting himself out of the fighter; not waiting to slow down, he pulled the ripcord while he was still tumbling, jerking to a halt as the canopy blossomed.

  He had less than a minute to survey the carnage of four crashed aircraft—his own and the three Egyptian planes. As the Spitfires disappeared to the west, Riley's airplane, the last fighter in the Israeli Air Force, headed toward Ekron trailing smoke.

  Marshall hit the ground, rolling as he punched the quick release button on his parachute harness. He'd somersaulted to a stop, and lay still for a moment, eyes closed, catching his breath, gingerly trying to determine if he'd been wounded or injured. He opened his eyes to a Roman circus scene. A scowling gladiator-muscled farmer was poised with a pitchfork over his throat, about to pin him to the ground forever. Behind the farmer an angry group had gathered, muttering ominously. He thought he understood the Hebrew word for Egyptian.

  Marshall closed his eyes, wishing that his Luftwaffe flying gear had some Israeli insignia.

  When he opened his eyes again, the pitchfork was still there and the muttering was growing louder. He took a breath and shouted the only Jewish words he could remember: "Gefilte fish, gefilte fish," and then, in English, "I'm an American."

  Putting down the pitchfork, the farmer said in a cultivated accent, "Why didn't you say so? You're the damnedest, blackest American I've ever seen. Thought you were one of the Gyppo bomber pilots. I was within a toucher of pronging you."

  Marshall told the story to Riley that night at the pilot's hangout, the Atom Bar in Tel Aviv. Bear laughed and said, "I tan so easily, I'd better watch it. In a week, you'll look like a Swede next to me."

  They were quiet for a while and Marshall said, "You know, that makes four for me. One more and I'll be an ace."

  "Don't bust your ass getting there, John. Being an ace isn't everything."

  "That's easy for you to say. You're already one. But there's never been a Negro ace. I'm going to be the first one."

  "I hope you run out of wars first, John. Besides, the Air Force won't give you official credit for these Gyppos."

  Then, more seriously, "John, I owe you a lot. If you hadn't blown that Spit off my tail, I'd have had it. My engine was already cooking; I'd never have been able to fight them off."

  "Glad to do it."

  "I know that. But I want you to know you've got a friend for life. I'll never forget it."

  Marshall was sure he would not.

  *

  Nashville, Tennessee/June 5, 1948

  Milo Ruddick glanced at the sign and smiled approvingly.

  " 'RaceCo,' eh? Good name. Who's chairman of the board?"

  "I am, sir. Bob is the president and Troy is the treasurer."

  "Well, it's his money, I don't blame him for wanting to be treasurer. How much has he spent so far?"

  Coleman nodded his head sagely and whispered, "About a quarter of a million."

  Ruddick whistled. "Whooee! Well, I know a good old boy like Troy has figured out some way to charge it off to the government. But I thought surplus airplanes were dirt cheap."

  Letting the sarcasm pass, Coleman said, "The planes were cheap enough; we got four Sidewinders for six hundred bucks apiece from the storage yard at Kingman. But it takes dough to modify them."

  "How they coming along?" Milo always dropped into his Little Rock drawl whenever he was enjoying himself.

  "Great. We've kept two stock, for trainers, and Abe Corrson, one of the all-time great speed merchants from the prewar Cleveland air races, is converting two into racers. Troy's named them Viper I and Viper II."

  "Can I meet him?"

  They walked into the brightly lit shop where Corrson was bending over a workbench, and Ruddick whispered, "Looks like Tony Galento."

  The mechanic had the ominous aura of an all-night filling station operator, with a sloping brow, beer belly, and a once-powerful physique covered by hair that tufted into surrealistic topiary art around his tattoos. He barked a few orders and walked away from the team of mechanics busy transforming two obsolete fighters into racing machines, Sidewinders into Vipers.

  After the introductions, Coleman asked, "What are you working on now, Abe?"

  Fat as he was, Corrson was a ruthless specialist in airplane weight reduction. "We're knocking off pounds. I got them stripping every surplus ounce. We're pulling all the war gear—gun mounts, firing controls, armor plate, radio equipment, even the emergency systems."

  Ruddick gulped. "Is that safe?"

  "I don't believe in safety; I believe in winning races. Look at this."

  Abe took them over where his men were reaming out existing holes in formers and boring new ones.

  "You save a fraction of an ounce here, a fraction of an ounce there, pretty soon you save a pound. That means you need less fuel, so you save some more."

  Milo kicked a soft amorphous bundle of rubber. "What's this?"

  "It's the self-sealing fuel tanks. We don't need 'em, nobody will be shooting at us. We'll be putting in lightweight neoprene fuel cells from U.S. Rubber."

  Waddling toward the wall, he said, "You wanna see a hunnert-pound saving—take a look at dis."

  The Sidewinder's regular canopy was sitting on the floor; next to it was a lightweight Plexiglas bubble just larger than the pilot's head. Ruddick looked dubious.

  "How will Bob be able to see out of this?"

  "He's going to be out front—all he'll have to do is look straight ahead." Pride registered in the fat man's voice. "And if you think this is something, take a look at dis."

  He led them to the wing, sitting forlornly on a dolly, the tips a jagged mass of metal.

  "We've chopped six and a half feet off each side, gives it a wingspan of twenty-five feet, just about the same as the old Gee-Bees—but with three times the horsepower."

  Coleman was no engineer, but he knew that clipping the wings cut down on both lift and drag.

  "What's this going to do to stall speeds during the turns?"

  "They're going up, Stan." Corrson's voice was contemptuous. "You don't get sumpin' for nuttin'. The guy that flies this is really going to have to be a pilot, not just a limp-wristed pylon pusher."

  Ruddick gulped and asked again, "Is it going to be safe?"

  Corrson quietly put down his tools, spat, and said, "Shit no, I tole you it ain't gonna be safe, it's gonna be fast. You want to win the fucking race, or you want to be safe?"

  Seeing Ruddick's appalled expression, Corrson relented. "Look, it ain't all bad. I'm moving the radiators from the fuselage to these streamlined wingtip fairings. They'll act like endplates and make it easier to fly." He hesitated and said, "Easier than it looks now, anyway. And I'm changing to a thirty-six-volt electrical system; it'll pull the gear up right fast, and get your boy off to a quick lead."

  Corrson's face split into a gap-toothed grin, as if he'd solved everybody's problems.

  Coleman smiled back weakly. "Tell us about the engines, Abe."

  "Hey, they're completely rebuilt. The Allison in a Sidewinder put out about thirteen-hundred horsepower with a three-bladed prop. This's got a four-bladed prop and a two-stage supercharger."

  He patted the engine fondly, as if it were a favorite puppy. "This little devil will deliver twenty-eight hundred horsepower at sea level. We'll be pulling a hundred fifteen inches of manifold pressure at thirty-three fifty rpm, running on a special Shell triptane fuel."

  Ruddick poked around the piles of parts for a while, then walked out shaking his head, Coleman trailing behind. Turning, Ruddick asked, "Tell me the truth, Stan—is it safe for Bob to fly this thing? I don't want hi
m killed."

  "Don't worry, Milo, I'm not going to let Bob get into trouble. He's been practicing in the stock Sidewinders, and doing real good. Today's he's flying practice laps on the race course Troy had laid out—fifteen miles long, four pylons. He's due back about now—let's go down to the operations office and wait for him."

  "Well, no offense, Stan, but I'm going to get a second opinion."

  Coleman felt relief—he didn't like being on the hook. "Good idea; get somebody to look the racers over, maybe have them fly with Bob. That's the way to go."

  "Don't say anything to Bob about this. I don't want to spook him. I'll work it in sometime after the racers are ready to go. Understand?"

  "Gotcha."

  *

  Washington, D.C./July 16, 1948

  "Honest to God, Bandy, I don't know what you're thinking about. I understand Milo Ruddick asked you to see him two weeks ago."

  "He asked; he didn't tell me. I had stuff to do."

  They were sitting on a horsehair-stuffed leather couch in Ruddick's outer office, sweat-stained from the D.C. heat outside. Bandfield moved his foot and a spittoon clanged.

  "This place gives me the creeps—you'd think Daniel Webster was going to walk in."

  "I wish to hell we were visiting Daniel Webster instead of Milo Ruddick. He's pissed off that you didn't report as soon as he asked you to."

  "I didn't report to him because I don't want to tell him what I'm going to have to tell him."

  "Which is?"

  "That he's a bigoted horse's ass."

  "Don't kid around, Bandy, this guy's too important to the Air Force."

  "I won't be rude, Meat-axe, but I'm going to give it to him straight about integration."

  The pleasant-looking secretary nodded, and they went inside. Ruddick moved around from behind his desk, smiling, clasping Varney's hand in his, then putting his arm around Bandfield's shoulder.