Air Force Eagles

by Walter J. Boyne

  The team leader came in a little late, a tired psychological ploy to show how busy he was, how unimportant he considered this meeting compared to his many other duties. Bandfield immediately pegged him as a GS-13 hustling for GS-14.

  "I'm Chuck Baleske, and I'm chairman of this august group."

  Baleske paused, clearly savoring his moment in the sun. Bandfield knew the type well, gunning for position, staking out a claim for the future while being fiercely defensive about the past. Baleske was sleekly vulpine, hair slicked back with too much Vitalis, the odor dominating the room. His round Santa Claus cheekbones contrasted strangely with his long, strong jaw that moved in chewing motions when he wasn't speaking.

  "Colonel Bandfield, we appreciate the effort you went to have these milk-bottle pins pulled, but after a great deal of analysis, we have concluded that the accident investigation report was correct, and that these parts had nothing to do with it."

  He handed Bandfield the black binder, who looked at it and said, "I didn't say that the accident investigation was incorrect or that the milk-bottle pins had anything to do with it. I said that they had deformed, and that a similar condition might cause an accident in another airplane."

  The men around the conference table leaned forward as one. This was clearly what they were waiting for.

  "Colonel, every part in the B-47 went through long analysis here before the airplane was built; we subjected the milk-bottle pin to hours of testing, under all conditions. We know that is strong enough for its function."

  "Did you check these particular pins? Did you analyze their material?"

  "We didn't have to. They were purchased from a qualified vendor, who built them to military specifications; they were inspected by McNaughton quality control. We aren't in the business of tearing every airplane in the Air Force apart and inspecting its individual parts." Baleske looked to his group, who laughed dutifully.

  "This isn't every part, and it's not from every airplane. These are specific parts from a specific airplane, and they're deformed. My question is, what caused the deformation?"

  "Who knows? The violence of the accident, the temperature of the fire?"

  Bandfield wasn't surprised at the animosity in his voice, a feeling that everyone in the room except Riley seemed to share.

  Sitting at the left rear of the room was a tiny gnome of a man, with a great bulging bald head; his chin seemed to be resting on the table. In a voice as high-pitched as nails across a blackboard he said, "Colonel, I'm Roy Palm, and I was in on the structure of the B-47 from the start. I can't tell you how many hours we put in studying this particular kind of fitting, but I can tell you that we decided that it's plenty strong enough. Just a look at the wreckage confirms that—they held together while the rest of the wing broke off."

  Bandfield saw his mistake at once—he had challenged the years of effort they'd put into the airplane. They'd approved the milk-bottle pin once—they couldn't consider reexamining it without casting doubt on everything they'd done.

  Bandfield shook his head as he leafed through the report, which addressed the accident only. Finally, he looked up, saying, "Gentlemen, thanks for coming. You didn't answer the questions I asked, I don't agree with your conclusions, and I predict that we will be in this room in a few months or a few years from now, discussing another accident."

  "Colonel, you can use your crystal ball to predict what you like; we're engineers here, and we deal in facts, not theories." Baleske's voice was triumphant; the home team had won again.

  Bandfield didn't speak until they were passing through the bronze double doors at the front of the building. "Bear, I'm sorry I brought you down here. Those bastards don't want to see a problem because they've rubber-stamped the design in the past. I just hope your WSPOs can control them."

  Riley was shaking his head. "I don't know, they'll just have to chip away at it."

  "Good luck. I've got a gut feeling we've got massive trouble with this milk-bottle thing, and it's just a matter of time before it breaks loose."

  "I hope you're wrong; if you're right, we could lose a lot of crews."

  "Can't you do anything?"

  "I'll talk to LeMay about it, and see if he can't beat up on the bureaucracy. But believe it or not, he's got even bigger worries on the operational side; that's why he's assigning me to a different job."

  "The B-52 WSPO?"

  "I wish. No, I'm supposed to start running ORIs, Operational Readiness Inspections, on a few selected B-47 wings."

  "That's an important job, but there's a lot of guys who could do it. I wouldn't stand for it if I were you."

  "No, this one's a little special. I can't tell you about it now—but you'll understand, I think, when it finally comes out in the open."

  *

  Santa Monica, California/May 18, 1954

  She felt the usual sense of deprivation when Fred Peterson left, as if a vital current in her life had been turned off. He was eternally radiating energy, spinning off ideas as he walked, calling for improvements, making suggestions; he was, in short, exhilarating—and exhausting. Especially when he was as excited as he was today. He had done so much for her; he was a financial genius. The public issue of stock in Marshall Products, Incorporated, had sold out within a few days, much of it, she knew, to Peterson and his friends. Now she had her own factory building on 26th Street, red brick, with two floors of well-lit offices above the cosmetic factory itself. Fred had already rented the second floor to a commercial land development company; the monthly rent almost covered the mortgage on the building.

  He had reserved the third floor for her own offices and the laboratory for developing new products. Never again would she have to stir her stainless steel vats of face cream; now there were high-speed mixing machines that blended hundreds of pounds of materials a day. And never again would she experiment in the kitchen with new fragrances for her Love Potions, using fresh herbs and spices to try to develop something new. She wasn't sure she was entirely glad that this was so.

  The new people he'd sent over—two men and a woman—were proving to be perfect. She'd made the woman, Martha, her personal assistant and put one of the men in charge of production and the other sales. For the first time in years she felt free.

  It was almost five-thirty, time for John to come by and pick her up. She hoped he'd be in a decent mood. The Air Force had at first been reluctant to let him leave, as if it had some sort of plan—a bad plan certainly—for him. Then, two weeks ago, his resignation had been accepted, he'd gone to March Air Force Base to be processed out, and he was a civilian again.

  And, once again, out of work. They'd talked again this morning about him coming to work at the plant; she knew she'd be in for an argument tonight.

  It started the minute the car pulled up. He kissed her and opened with, "Let's not even discuss it, Saundra, it's just not my kind of life. I can't sit at some desk, barely knowing what's going on, and watch you be the big executive."

  They headed up Pico Boulevard and he almost hit a truck.

  "Keep your eye on the road, John. That's just stupid Black male pride, and you know it."

  "It's not Black and it's not male—but it is pride. I'm not going to work at a job just because you own the place. When you start an airline, then I'll work for you."

  She said, "Maybe I'll just do that."

  And he replied, "And maybe you won't have to. I got a job today."

  Relief swept through her. "Doing what?"

  "Flying, what else? Old Hadley Roget wants me to come up to Salinas and test his airplanes—he's building water-bombers to use on forest fires."

  "Is it safe?"

  "Safest thing in"—he jammed on the brakes to let another truck pass—"safer than driving in Los Angeles, anyway. I start next week."

  "Where will you stay? What about us?"

  "I told him I'd work forty hours in a four-day week; I'll be home on Thursday night, and leave Monday morning, As busy as you are, you won't even know I'm gone."
>
  It was true enough; by the time she got home at night she was exhausted.

  "I'll go you one better. You get a little place up there, and I'll come up on alternate weekends. I'd like to spend some time with Patty again, anyway."

  "Great! Only one way to celebrate—Mexican food!"

  They went to the Red Onion and ordered the house specialty, a huge platter of enchiladas, tacos, and chile rellenos, along with a pitcher of margaritas.

  "It's still amazing to me that we can sit here, just like white folks."

  She nodded, mouth full, then plunged in. She no longer tried to avoid talking about Fred Peterson; he was a vital part of her business life, and John had to get used to it. "Fred was by today. He was all excited about the Supreme Court decision."

  Marshall was feeling too happy to be upset by the mention of Peterson's name. "What decision?"

  "The Supreme Court has ruled that segregation is illegal in public schools. No more 'separate but equal'—no more segregation."

  He spooned salsa over his beans and rice. "I'll believe it when it happens." He hesitated, hating to ask, "What does Fred think it means?"

  "He says it's a landmark decision, that only a liberal like Earl Warren could have gotten it through the court. From a business point of view it won't have any effect for four or five years, but after that, look out!"

  "Why four or five years?"

  "It's sort of arbitrary—he thinks we won't feel the effect until kids have been integrated in high school for four years—the same with college."

  "Well, your Mr. Peterson is a mighty smart businessman, but you can tell him from me that he's off by about ten years. No matter what the Supreme Court says, segregation is going to be around for a long time. There'll be blood in the streets before there will be Negroes in the classrooms in the South."

  *

  Willow, California/August 13, 1954

  A pall of smoke hung like a great gray jellyfish, long tendrils of white smoke whisping down to the fires dotting the state. Forty miles from the Willow airport, the whirring cicada-like murmur of bark and leaf rubbing together broke the stillness of the supercharged afternoon heat, the arid crackle signaling how little moisture remained in the foliage of the vast Mendocino forest. One hundred thousand acres hovered at flash point, the deciduous trees fluttering millions of brown distress flags in the growing westerly wind that spun red snakeskins of bark from the manzanitas. The scrub brush—"light fuel," the Forest Service firefighters called it—was so dry that limbs snapped at a touch. Above the scrub, evergreens towered in frowsy lines, the dust covered needles drooping, resin oozing, ready to turn from tree to torch with a spark.

  On the flight line, the local Forest Supervisor, Joe Dasmann, felt his nerves grow taut. He was exhausted from two days of parceling out his slender resources to fight a dozen fires, and now he had to get rid of these volunteers and get back to work.

  "Mr. Roget, we appreciate you and Mr. Marshall coming up here, believe me. We're all for using airplanes—been using 'em for years to drop supplies and smoke jumpers. Just today I dropped a whole mess of gear in to a crew we've got fighting a vicious fire on the side of Copperhead Canyon. And we're getting ready to experiment with aerial tankers, too. There's a line item in the budget for it next year. We're going to convert a Stearman crop duster for experiments."

  Marshall winced as Roget barked, "Damn it man, you already done that! You don't need no budget item to test this—I'm offering to demonstrate it to you for free!"

  "I appreciate that, really. I just don't have any authority to let you do it—but if you crash, I'd have all the liability. I'm not going to take that chance. Besides, I've got my hands full right now fighting little fires, trying to keep them from becoming big ones."

  Marshall put his hand on Roget's arm. "We understand, Mr. Dasmann, and we'll be on our way. I would appreciate it if you'd just take a look at our airplane, and let us tell you what we're thinking."

  Dasmann walked with them toward the bright orange TBM Avenger parked at the side of the runway. Built by General Motors for Grumman during the war, the ex-torpedo bomber sported a 1,700-horsepower Wright Cyclone engine beneath its gleaming cowl. Roget had replaced the rear turret with a sleek fairing, then spent hours preparing it as carefully as if it were a racing plane.

  "Man, that's a big bird! Looks better than any I ever saw in the Navy. How much water will it carry?"

  "Six hundred gallons. We cleaned up the airframe, tore out the military equipment, bulged the bomb bay and sealed it into one big water tank. We can drop it all at once, or in two passes, three hundred gallons at a time."

  Dasmann eased himself up on the wing to peer in the cockpit.

  "Go on, get in, I'll show you the gear we installed to drop the water."

  Twenty-six tired and thirsty men met at the bottom of a steep draw in Copperhead Canyon, sixty-two miles from Willow. Their faces were blistered underneath the dusting of chalky charcoal ash from the fire they'd just contained to the sloping mountainside, their throats as dry as their canteens, hacking and gasping from inhaling too much smoke as they clung to their spades and axes as weary Roman legionnaires clung to their swords.

  The foreman, Warren McCarley, reminded them, "Don't wet your boots." Most were veterans and knew better. The young ones might pour water on their thick-soled boots, hot from the scorched earth they'd been working, and get their feet scalded by the steam.

  McCarley was pleased; there had been only one flame front. It has been rough work stumbling on the mountainside, eased by the fact that the fire was burning downhill and not up and because the brush thinned out lower down, among the rock outcroppings. Another quarter-mile and it would have hit the stand of old rotting logs and a heavy ground cover of pine needles and branches. Then it would have raced down to where the canyon settled into a densely packed quarter-mile-wide floor, full of tinder-dry foliage that would have started an uncontainable blaze. McCarley squinted up at the clouds gathering overhead—they held at least the promise of rain along with their threat of lightning. Even a small shower would help cool down the vegetation and slow down the spread of the next blaze.

  A ham radio operator, McCarley was delighted with the new radio he'd been issued and, tired as he was, methodically stretched the antenna in the best direction for a report back to the base station at Willow. He glanced at his watch—4:21—enough time to report, walk the men back to the trucks, and get home in time for dinner.

  "Willow Operations, this is McCarley, over."

  The Willow operator came back loud and clear. "Hey, Warren, how you doing? Got all your marshmallows toasted?"

  "Yeah, thought we were going to lose it about halfway through, had some rolling logs come tumbling down. A little draw caught one and it stopped the others—" His voice was drowned out in a crack of thunder that reverberated though the canyon.

  "Holy Jesus, Warren, what happened?"

  "Bad news, Willow—looks like multiple lightning strikes down the canyon, less than a couple of miles from here."

  "Did it start a fire?"

  "It had to—that lightning looked like a scene from a Frankenstein movie. And if there is one, we're in deep shit."

  McCarley's voice came on again, now tinged with fear. "I can see the smoke already. We've got to get moving, Willow, and try and beat it out of the canyon."

  "Can you stop it?"

  McCarley didn't bother to unplug the radio. They couldn't stop it and there was no way to pack the radio out.

  Dasmann was slinging his leg over the polished cockpit side when a woman raced out of the operations shack, waving a sheet of paper.

  "Joe, we got a problem up in Copperhead Canyon. A lightning strike started a big fire downwind of McCarley's crew."

  Dasmann glanced at his watch; it read 16:23. "Did you tell them to get the hell out of there?"

  "They didn't need no telling; Warren said he could see the smoke already."

  "Did he say how far he was from the road?"

>   "Nah, but I took a look at the map—figure it's three miles, maybe more."

  "Wonder what the winds are?"

  "Don't matter; if a fire goes down that canyon, it'll make its own winds. I've been in there; it's thick with manzanitas and scrub pine that'll burn better'n matches."

  Dasmann turned to Marshall and Roget. "How about a demonstration, right now?"

  Marshall said, "You got it. Climb in the backseat there and tell me where to go."

  Roget hopped off the wing to get the fire extinguisher, yelling "Clear!" as he ran.

  None of McCarley's men needed to be told what to do—their lives depended upon reaching the road before the fire reached them, and they dumped everything to lighten the load for the steady jog eastward.

  From above, the fire looked like a blossoming Rorschach inkblot, spreading slightly to the north and south, contained toward the west, but racing in an all-consuming flame to the east, licking down the canyon in great leaping arcs of flame, throwing firebrands ahead to spot new fires. The lightning had struck little more than two miles from McCarley's crew, but the wind was advancing it eastward at eight miles an hour. An invisible balloon of heat rolled ahead of the flames, roasting the foliage, stripping it of every molecule of moisture so that it exploded into flame when the first spark reached it. The canyon, now changing into a chimney, pulling heat and flames up to ignite the sides, was burning like a dynamite fuse, a snaking, rustling stream of fire aimed at the small fire-fighting party racing toward safety.

  The twenty-six men strung out in two parallel files, forcing themselves along the paths they'd cut to get in that morning. McCarley had a good eye for time and distance, and they'd covered the first mile in a little over twelve minutes, not bad for tired men in rough terrain. But he knew the fire would be doing better, striding with long tongues of flame, never stumbling, never falling, never short of breath.