Two hundred feet away, Lieutenant Colonel Kosanovich looked at his watch and cursed—5214 had a mission in six hours, and it was past time to get it out to the refueling pits. He walked rapidly over and called "Hey, Sarge, how long you going to be? This plane has to fly this evening."
"I'm not sure, sir. There's a tiny crack on the underside of the wing that I just stop-drilled, and there's another one up here. I was going to pull a couple of panels off and see what was happening inside."
"Look, we've spent too many man-hours on this inspection already. I want you to sign it off and get it towed out to the refueling pits.
"Colonel, you know what the tech order says—we're not supposed to let a crack like this go without fixing it. At least let me stop-drill it." Stop-drilling was a technique as old as metal airplanes—when a crack appeared, the mechanic drilled a hole at its terminal point, which slowed, but often did not really stop, the spreading fracture.
Kosanovich forced himself to stay calm—first-rate mechanics like Larson were overworked and underpaid, and it was bad policy to lean on them. But when the CO. had asked about this airplane's status, he'd told him it was ready to go.
"Sarge, I told Colonel Coleman this bird was in commission. Tell you what. It is going back to Boeing in Wichita at the end of the month to get the new heavyweight landing gear installed. I'll write up this crack before it goes, and they can fix it there. I'd rather have them replace the panel than have you just stop-drill it. Now get your ass in gear and get this airplane ready to go."
The mechanic shook his head as he carefully climbed back off the airplane to the lift. That was the service—never any time to do anything right, but always lots of time to do it over.
*
Frederick Air Force Base, California/ March 25, 1955
Curtis LeMay's primal presence soaked the Strategic Air Command in a sweaty mixture of fear, respect, and admiration; he was Billy Mitchell, Patton, Rommel, Churchill, Rockne, and Ziegfeld all rolled in one. Apocryphal stories blossomed about the hide-blistering profanity with which he chewed ass, about airplanes not daring to blow up when he smoked on board, about colonels turned into quivering tureens of jelly at his briefings. Most of them were true.
On the other hand, LeMay labored mightily to get the best living conditions for his people, fighting for quarters, and improving the mess halls by sending cooks to hotels to learn their trade. In the process, LeMay had turned SAC into one vast competition, pitting crews against crews, squadrons against squadrons, wings against wings. The single standard was perfection—anything else called for immediate explanation and then practice until perfection was achieved. If a pilot dinged a wingtip in California on Wednesday night, he was explaining why to LeMay personally in Omaha on Thursday morning. If an airman got drunk and ran his car into a ditch, LeMay was on the horn to the airman's boss, wanting to know why he let it happen.
There were two sweeteners in LeMay's program. The most important was the sense he inspired of being on the first team in the world's best air force; the second was his spot promotion program for the crew members who did well over a sustained period of time. LeMay had secured the authority to promote an individual on the spot, without regard to seniority, giving him the pay and rank of the next grade. The hottest of the hotshots had spots on spots—some young captains were wearing the silver leaves of lieutenant colonels. LeMay gave and LeMay took away—if the crew member stumbled anywhere along the line, the promotion was gone, often not only for him, but for his crew as well. The spot was a sizeable carrot to match the forceful stick of LeMay's personality, and it was having a positive effect throughout most of SAC. Under a lesser man, the competitive system could have simply become nonproductive tyranny. LeMay made it work—most places.
No one outside of SAC had any idea how hard the crews were trying, how fully each mission was packed with requirements to accomplish and be measured. A typical SAC bomber flight might begin with a celestial navigation leg, which could include gunnery and ECM practice, followed by an in-flight refueling, practice radar bomb runs, a practice low-level mission, followed by another refueling and another celestial navigation mission. After eight busy hours, the tired B-47 crews would wind up back at the field to shoot instrument approaches and touch and go landings for an hour before shutting down. Then they had to face the long debriefings with maintenance and operations, for LeMay's rules required that the crews had to record how well—or how badly—they did on every aspect of each mission.
A few weeks after the B-47 crash at Tonopah, Coleman succeeded Guy Williams as wing commander, and he let the crews know that he wanted top scores in everything—no matter how they got them.
The crews Coleman inherited were led by veterans of the Second World War, somewhat jaded and not impressed with LeMay's gung-ho competitiveness. They had found the peacetime Air Force to be a good life and stayed in for the flying, which was even more enjoyable because they weren't being shot at. There were few college graduates in the group—most were products of the egalitarian Aviation Cadet program, and most were making more money than they'd ever dreamed of. As soon as they understood what their new commanding officer wanted, they began to figure out ways to beat LeMay's system. Most of their tricks were easy to do and hard to discover. It became common to use visual assists on the radar bombing runs and to help out the celestial navigation legs with radio fixes. Within weeks, the wing had developed a variety of other gimmicks that saw to it that most missions received perfect scores, with just enough screwups to provide credibility.
Basically good crews, they had to cheat only a little to look like world-beaters. For the most part, the crew members regarded the whole process as little more than a high school prank, a joke on that stern principal, Curt LeMay.
Frederick Air Force Base had begun life as a primary training base in World War II, and the H-shaped wing headquarters building was the usual wooden shack, upgraded with shiny pine plywood panels and industrial-grade carpeting. In the glassed-in conference room adjacent to Coleman's office, Major Fitzpatrick was immersed in a mound of paperwork. A table on his left had all the reports on the last month's missions, with piles of Form l's, maps, navigation logs, and the mission debriefing logs. On his right was the ground school work—war plan briefings, code of conduct, special weapons training, any one of the dozens of courses that were going on all the time. He was enjoying himself, ignoring Coleman's hovering presence.
"This ain't easy, pal, but I'm getting there. There's only so much fixing you can do with the paperwork. It's a damn good thing the crews are doing as well as they're doing legally."
Fitz, as always in a flight suit—Coleman wasn't sure he even owned a uniform—and still the incorrigible con man, the loner with a heart of stone, was in his element doctoring mission reports to improve the scores. He kept an array of pens and pencils at hand to match whatever the crews were using and had a forger's facility with handwriting. The ground school work was relatively easy; just a few pencil strokes were enough to raise the recorded grades.
The flying reports were another matter. Even with the best cheating will in the world, crews often failed to put down the near-perfect numbers required to make them competitive in the race to be number one in SAC. Some of the mission elements—radar bombing or electronic countermeasures, for example—were scored by the ground, and unless the crew found some way to cheat in the air, there was no way anyone, not even Fitz, could falsify the results. Actual practice bomb drops couldn't be fixed—there was no disputing the call from the ground on those. But other elements of the mission were fully controlled by the wing—the number of refuelings, the amount of fuel transferred, celestial navigation legs, nuclear weapons training—and these Fitz could improve as the situation demanded. His main problem was to make sure that any changes he made were kept coordinated with the rest of the reports on the mission. You could not, for example, record an in-flight refueling of forty thousand pounds of fuel, immediately followed by pilot proficiency work involving t
ouch and go landings. The people reviewing the paperwork at Headquarters would know the aircraft would have been too heavy to land and immediately smell a rat.
"Listen, boss, we've got a real problem in covering maintenance. We're falling further and further behind, and just pushing a pencil doesn't fix the airplanes. Sooner or later, there's going to be an accident."
"What's bothering you?"
"Well, you got the maintenance officer signing off on the periodic inspections. We don't know how many airplanes have problems that have just been passed over."
"Look, these airplanes are almost brand-new—they can skip a few inspections and nothing will happen. Don't you worry about it."
Although they were equally good pilots, Fitzpatrick was much more attuned to airplanes. Coleman flew them and forgot them; Fitz became absorbed in them, understood all the complex systems, knew where failures could occur.
"You're a funny guy, Coleman. It used to be you always thought that your luck was running out, that you had to ration everything out to yourself. Now you act like there's no tomorrow, that you can cheat day after day and never get caught."
Coleman stared at him as old fears and memories stirred.
Fitzpatrick went on. "Just don't say I didn't warn you. We've got no idea about what corrosion or metal fatigue might do on these monsters. They're not built like the old-style airplanes, and they fly in a totally different flight regime."
Coleman was disturbed; Fitz normally never gave a damn about anybody or anything, just as long as he got forty or fifty hours flying a month. He frowned. "They should be better than the B-17s and the B-29s; look at all the experience behind them. Don't sweat it."
Holding up a red pencil to check its hue against the marks on the paper he was working with, Fitz shrugged and said, "We've been playing this little game now for over a year, and it takes more fixing everytime. The crews are getting lax. I don't know how long you can keep a lid on this—it's the old pitcher to the well bit."
"Don't talk like that. We only have to keep this up till the fall, when the list for brigadier general comes out. If I can keep this wing number one till then, I'm home free."
"What if the guy who takes over after you looks into the paperwork? What if the guys tell him what's been going on?"
Coleman felt his confidence return. "First, the guys aren't going to say diddly—they're in this as deep as I am—as we are. Second, there's not going to be any time for a new guy to learn the job and look over the paperwork from the past. All anybody will see is that when Coleman left, things went downhill fast. And that's how I want it to look."
Fitzpatrick went on with his work, and Coleman said, "Besides, who do they have who's as good a con man as you, Fitz? They'll never figure out what you've done."
Fitz nodded in agreement; the only reason he was doing it at all was just to beat the system.
*
Santa Monica, California/April 11,1955
John never felt comfortable in Saundra's plush offices, so much nicer than anything he'd ever had in his life. And it was worse because Prosperous Fred was there, dressed in his five-hundred-dollar suit and hundred-dollar shoes, face shiny as a bowling ball, oozing wealth at every pore, and so nice to them both. Marshall was jealous of him, and he resented that fact as much as he resented the man.
"Now listen, you two, old Fred's going to give you his last word on this crazy idea. I think you are nuts to get into the firefighting business, John—there's no proven market for it and it's got to be as dangerous as hell. And of all the businesses you could go into, there's none where being Black would make it more difficult for you. You'll be dealing with rednecks in every part of the country—and I don't think they'll want to deal with you."
Marshall was rested and well, his body hardened by the tough training he'd imposed on himself. Mentally he'd bounced back from the rough treatment the Air Force had given him, charging it off as just one more example of government racism. Now he spoke in a civil but determined voice.
"You've said all that before, Fred. You may be right. But I'm going to do it, whether Saundra gets involved or not."
Saundra turned in her tall-backed red leather chair, bristling. "I am getting involved—you both know that. I can afford to back you for a couple of years, if you start small. After that, we'll see.
Peterson shook his head and smiled. "All right. But you've got to set up a separate corporation, so that your liabilities can't hurt Marshall Products. John, it looks to me like you're going to be vulnerable to a lot of liabilities. What happens if one of your pilots gets killed flying your airplane?"
"We shouldn't lose any pilots; I'll train them myself. Besides, I'll have them sign a waiver when they're hired. Believe me, there's enough pilots looking for jobs that I won't have any trouble picking and choosing."
Saundra waited until he was finished and then spoke to Peterson sharply, something she never did before. John wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that Peterson had married two months before. Or that he'd married a white girl.
"Fred, we've been through all that. We'll set up a separate corporation, and I'll invest one hundred thousand dollars in it to get it started. That's settled."
"No, it's not. Since you insist on going ahead, I'll come in with you, on a couple of conditions. I'll add a hundred thousand to the pot, for a quarter interest—I think that's fair."
Marshall felt a grudging respect for the man. Peterson had argued vigorously against the whole idea, and now he was willing to put up as much capital as they—as Saundra—was putting up.
Saundra was pleased, not so much by the money, but by his support. "What are your conditions?"
"Well, as I understand it, you're going to buy six of these TBM planes from Roget, are you not?"
"Yes, three this year, three next."
"Okay. My first condition is that I buy one of Roget's converted bombers to use as a flying headquarters. I want it fitted out with the best radios and whatever you use for flying in bad weather. And I want it to have couches that convert into beds, a full bathroom, no damn bucket in a closet, and a complete galley, everything. It won't have to carry a lot of people, three or four, but I want it to be able to carry them in comfort. I'll put up the money for the airplane and lease it to you for a dollar a year."
Marshall felt uncomfortable; he couldn't tell where this was leading. "We don't need anything like that, Fred. We could use the money better to buy more equipment. And one of Roget's airplanes is going to cost at least six hundred thousand, maybe more."
"John, don't try to tell me how to invest my money." Disdain dripped from his voice; he spent more on clothes each year than John had earned in the Air Force. "I'm telling you that you do need it. When the season starts and you start following the forest fires, you'll be heading into the Southwest and the South. You've got to have a place to stay; I can't have you sleeping by the side of the road if you're responsible for so much of my money."
Marshall flushed. He'd never even thought that he might run into discrimination in this business. Peterson was thinking ahead—maybe that's why he had so much money and John had so little.
Peterson went on. "But that's only part of it. I really want you to have an airplane capable of flying some of the Black leaders around the country on a moment's notice. When the airplane's not actively being used in fighting fires, I want to be able to use it as an executive transport for some very special people."
Saundra looked pensive. "I don't want to sound negative, Fred, but does this make sense? Wouldn't it be better just to give them the money to fly commercially?"
"It would if they weren't being watched by the FBI. Hoover has his eyes on them; he thinks they're all Communists. I want to use the airplane to give them free access to all parts of the country without being followed."
Marshall, remembering his own concerns, laughed too loudly. "Come on, Peterson, you're being paranoid. You think the government's shadowing some poor Negro ministers around?"
Vis
ibly angry, Peterson snapped, "For Christ's sake, John, they let you rot in prison, didn't credit you for your victories, and hounded you out of the service because you were Black! And you don't think they'd watch our leaders? What the hell is the matter with you, anyway? Sometimes I think flying's turned you into an Oreo."
"An Oreo? What the hell's an Oreo?"
"He's a nigger who's black on the outside and white on the inside. You've got to wake up, John."
Saundra stared at them. Peterson had never used the word nigger before in her presence; John had never heard it said without taking violent exception to it.
Things were changing.
*
Wichita, Kansas/May 14, 1955
Seven hours before, 51-5214 had left Frederick Air Force Base on a standard SAC training mission. Now it swept along at 39,000 feet, stars glittering above it, the ground below masked by billowing thunderstorms glowing incandescent with lightning.
"Wichita, this is Nectar One Nine, over your station at thirty-nine thousand feet, request clearance for an approach and landing at McConnell."
"Roger, One Nine; you're cleared for standard jet approach to McConnell. Be advised that there are thunderstorms in the southeast and southwest quadrants."
Nectar 19's mission was to end at the Boeing plant in Wichita, where a more rugged landing gear was going to be installed. As its mission ended, another of SAC's 1,200 B-47s would be starting another. At any given moment as many as five hundred of them were in the air, practicing their war plan strikes against the Soviet Union.
The pilot acknowledged the transmission and pressed his intercom switch. "Radar, you painting those storms?"
"Roger; looks like they're all over the area; he must only be picking up the big ones."
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