Silver Wings, Santiago Blue

by Janet Dailey

  “You wouldn’t believe it, Ryan.” There was a definite gleam in his eye as he lifted the cup to his mouth and took a quick swallow. “It was supposed to be either the uniform the nurses rejected or else a new design out of that surplus Army green material we had left over from the WAAC uniforms.”

  “That’s not the way it was?” Mitch asked the question being fed to him.

  “Here are these two nondescript typists from the pool wearing the uniform choices—and in walks a professional model in a blue jacket and skirt. I took one look at Cochran and knew damned well whose idea it was and which one I was supposed to choose.” He chuckled and took another sip of the whiskey. “Those WASPs of hers are finally going to have their own uniforms—blue, like the sky they fly in. It was a pretty color.” His forehead creased with a thoughtful frown. “Santiago blue, or something like that. After all, when you’re a woman you just can’t call it blue,” he joked.

  “No, sir. I guess not.”

  “Well, anyway, you can tell your Hayward girl that Neiman-Marcus will be sending a tailor around to get her measurements.” His look became almost fatherly as he studied Mitch’s closed expression. “Have you had a chance to see her lately?”

  “As a matter of fact—” Mitch removed the bottom folder from the stack he’d been going through and inserted it in his attaché case. It snapped shut with a resounding click. “—I have.”

  “She has accumulated a considerable amount of multiengine time.” The general showed an inordinate amount of interest in the liquor covering the bottom of his cup. “I half expected her name to be on the list of candidates for this B-17 training. Wouldn’t you say she’s qualified?”

  “Yes, sir.” Mitch set his case on the floor and picked up the remaining folders to return them to the metal cabinet.

  “It isn’t too late to add her name to the list,” the general remarked as Mitch opened a drawer and began stuffing the folders one at a time into it. “Do you want me to do it?”

  “No —” The file drawer was slammed shut, emphasizing the force of his denial as Mitch swung around to face his commanding officer. Belatedly, and in considerably modified tone, he added, “sir.”

  “Cochran is convinced her girls can handle any plane, even a Flying Fortress. Hell, I know Cochran and Love can fly anything with wings. ‘Course, you know what’s coming next if we get a bunch of WASPs with B-17 experience,” he said with a laughing snort. “She’s going to start agitating to let her girls fly them across the Atlantic to England. Love damned near did. I still don’t know what was going through Tunner’s mind when he authorized that flight.”

  The general had been in England conferring with the Allied forces when he had learned of the proposed flight. Immediate orders were issued to ground the plane with its two women pilots, stopping it in Goose Bay, Labrador, before it made its oceanic hop.

  “It would have been a hell of a precedent to set without any forethought as to the potential consequences. Can you imagine the uproar in Congress if the damned Jerries shot down a B-17 being ferried to England by a female crew? Talk about political hot water—they would have had my head.” He stopped, and a long, weary sigh came from him. “They’re pounding the hell out of us, Ryan.” Standing, he pushed the coffee cup onto the desk top with a prowling kind of agitation. “I just got the losses on that last raid over Germany.”

  “Not good, sir?” Mitch finally understood the purpose of the general’s visit.

  “We lost thirty percent; another hundred planes are grounded for repairs.” The familiar smile was nowhere in sight as “Hap” Arnold stopped in front of his young major. “They’re sitting ducks up there. We’ve got to give them some damned protection … extend the range of our fighters.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Statistics. The war was fought with numbers—casualty lists versus the percentages of expected losses. The many times Mitch had seen the war rooms in England, where uniformed British women moved markers across a map with sticks to show the progress of a raid and indicate enemy movements to counterattack, reminded him of a chess game. And the bombers, with their ten-men crews, were the pawns. In the Pentagon, the war was logistics and strategy. In Europe and the Pacific, it was fighting—and killing or dying.

  New orders came through, informing Martha Jane Rogers to report to Lockbourne Army Air Base, Columbus, Ohio. They weren’t accompanied by an explanation of the transfer nor a description of her new duty. No leave time was given; she was to report immediately. That was the Army way.

  The unknown had always sparked Marty’s interest, although this time, the glitter of excitement that lighted her olive-gray eyes was tinged with regret when she looked at Mary Lynn. Marty was all packed, ready to leave. The time had come to say goodbye.

  “I wish you were coming, too.” Marty hugged Mary Lynn and stepped back. The parting was awkward for her. Almost from the time they’d met, Marty had felt like a big sister to Mary Lynn, always looking out both for and after her, cheering her up when she was down, and offering a shoulder when she needed to cry at the loneliness of being separated from her husband. Marty hated leaving her alone. She worried that Mary Lynn wouldn’t be all right on her own.

  “I’ll be fine,” Mary Lynn assured her, but she had tears in her eyes.

  “Look out for her,” Marty said to Eden, who was hovering in the background.

  “Sure.”

  It wasn’t an idle request. Another one of their number had been killed when her plane crashed under questionable circumstances. The verdict had come back, laying the blame on a sticky throttle.

  Unable to deal with the poignant feelings that tugged at her, Marty didn’t prolong her goodbyes. Her wide mouth quirked with a near smile as she picked up her bags and headed out the door. Together Mary Lynn and Eden watched her go.

  “She’s lucky to be leaving here,” Eden remarked in a flatly serious tone while tears ran down Mary Lynn’s cheeks. “If we were smart, we’d request a transfer.”

  Upon arrival at the Lockbourne Army Air Base outside Columbus, Ohio, Marty met up with five other WASPs, newly graduated from Sweetwater and members of the 43-W-6 class, whose orders read the same as hers—to report immediately to the flight operations building. The spectacle awaiting them at the flight line was awesome—a seemingly endless row of the huge B-17 four-engine bombers. Their three-bladed propellers were almost twelve feet across, in proportion with the hundred-foot wingspan. Marty longed for the chance to sit in the cockpit of one of those Flying Fortresses.

  Inside the operations office, a young flight lieutenant greeted them. “I’m your instructor, Lieutenant Winthrop.” He was a tall, strapping man in his middle twenties, red lights burnishing the brown hair under his cap. “I’m going to teach you ladies how to fly those Big Friends out there.”

  In all, seventeen WASPs had been chosen for training in the B-17s. Looking around, Marty decided it was easy to see the reason they’d been picked. All of them were tall, an inch or two under six feet, with a couple reaching that mark.

  When it was her turn to sit in the pilot’s seat of the mammoth bomber, excitement thudded through her veins. The rubber earphones curved over her head like earmuffs while she went through the checklist, finally coming to that moment of power when her fingers rested on the button to start the number-one engine. She pressed it and watched the first shudder of the big prop. Four massive 1,325-horsepower engines powered the bomber. Soon, the roar of all four was vibrating the plane.

  From the right seat, her instructor taxied the B-17 to the end of the runway, maneuvering the big plane with the outer engines, while Marty felt through his movements of the controls. The plane lumbered like a huge elephant and it seemed to stand about as much chance of getting off the ground.

  With the instructor’s voice guiding her through each procedure, Marty pushed the four throttles slowly forward and the Flying Fortress began its takeoff roll down the runway. When the airspeed indicator showed no miles an hour, Marty pulled back on the wheel. S
mooth as silk, the giant flying machine lifted off the ground. The gear came up with a hum and folded into the plane’s belly, and the airspeed increased by twenty-five miles an hour.

  The sensation of raw power couldn’t be matched, the engines thundering with their deafening throb until they became part of her own heartbeat. Marty became drunk with the feeling. It filled her up until she wanted to shout with the excitement of it. Wait until her brother, David, heard about this. He was still sitting out the war somewhere near Wiltshire, England, with the rest of his division.

  When she wrote to Mary Lynn, which was regularly and often, she raved about the Flying Fortress, undaunted by its upwards of fifteen tons and the prospect of maneuvering a plane of that bulk and power. The required three months of intensive schooling in the operations of the complex bomber, including 130 hours of air time learning to fly it proficiently, didn’t bother her either. As she told Mary Lynn, it wasn’t any more grueling than it had been at Sweetwater.

  Formation flying had that combination of danger and excitement that was exhilarating. Midair collisions always seemed seconds away as she learned to edge her wing tip closer and closer to another bomber, riding out the bumpy air of its propwash until she finally reached the smooth currents where the wings broke the air together.

  Marty loved every minute she spent in the cockpit of the B-17, with its myriad gauges and dials, learning to stall and spin the monstrous plane. She was learning to fly one of the biggest and most famous bombers in the war. The thrill of it was something she knew Mary Lynn would understand. She missed having her there, missed the long talks, and missed hearing the odd fragments of the war in Beau’s letters to Mary Lynn. Marty wasn’t the kind to admit to being lonely—not when there were plenty of male pilots in the same B-17 training class who were more than willing to show her a good time. But none of that could make up for the closeness she’d had with Mary Lynn. So the letters came and went.

  At Camp Davis, the merits of the tow-target squadron’s female members—beyond the admitted decoration of pretty faces on the flight line—were finally being recognized. Artillery officers on the beachhead were asking for the women pilots to fly the tedious patterns on the gunnery range. Too many of the male pilots became bored with the constant figure-eight precision work, and either took off to practice aerobatics or else pleaded excuses not to fly the missions at all, aware some eager females would volunteer to take their places.

  Sometimes, to fill the hours, Mary Lynn flew on afternoon as well as morning missions. There were only so many letters she could write to Beau or her parents—and now Marty too. Flying gave Mary Lynn many things she needed. Riding out the flak from misguided artillery fire, for those moments, made the war seem very real to her—made her feel part of it, seeing, hearing, and feeling some of what Beau went through. Temporarily she was elated by the sense of it. Flying provided an escape from the pressures of loneliness and the slow trickling time. The strain and tension of hours in the air made for an exhaustion that allowed her to fall asleep, too tired to think about the achings inside.

  With a Coke and a cigarette in her hand, Mary Lynn sat on a chair in the ready room, still dressed in her droopy flying togs and bent over her legs, her forearms resting on her thighs. She noticed the operations officer glance at his watch for the third or fourth time, an irritation starting to seep into his expression.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Carlson was supposed to be here ten minutes ago to fly a diving mission. All the gunners are in position on the beach, just waiting for him. If I have to cancel, I’ll really catch it.” The disgust in his voice was edged out by the exasperation of being caught in the middle, between the officers who had to fill their quota of gunners and the pilots who loathed missions in the “coffin,” as they called the A-25 Curtiss Helldiver.

  Two weeks ago, Mary Lynn knew who would have leaped up to volunteer—Marty—who was always ready to dare something new. It suddenly hit her that she was out from under everyone’s wing—her parents, Beau, and Marty. She was truly on her own, free to do what she pleased.

  “I’ll take the mission.” She stood up, all five foot two and five-eighths inches of her.

  Skeptically, he looked at this pipsqueak of a woman with the dark, lively eyes and rounded cheeks, a dark-haired, cherub angel. “Have you ever flown a diving mission before?”

  “No,” Mary Lynn admitted. “But you need a pilot and here I am.”

  The operations officer appeared to remember the gunners in place on the beach, and perhaps the wrath he’d incur if he failed to send a plane out to them. “Go ahead,” he said with a gesture that seemed to say the outcome was out of his hands.

  The A-25 Curtiss Helldiver was a more powerful Navy dive-bomber than the A-24 Dauntless Mary Lynn flew on tow-target missions. She managed to find a Helldiver on the flight line that wasn’t red-lined, which, in itself, was unusual. Although she’d never actually flown a diving mission, she’d seen A-25s dive at the gun emplacements along the beach. Cameras were located in the gun barrels, and recorded how well the gunner followed the diving plane.

  After takeoff, Mary Lynn set a course for the artillery range. As she approached the beach, she adjusted the collar with her throat microphone and contacted the gunnery officer. He instructed her to climb to 8,000 feet, then dive at the artillery positions and level off at 200 feet to simulate a strafing run.

  When she had achieved altitude, she nosed the A-25 at the beach. The roaring whine of the engine seemed to be building to a crescendo. Seven tons of airplane were screaming toward the ground, and Mary Lynn had a strange, disembodied sensation of watching it all.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the altimeter needle spinning away the feet. She pulled back on the stick to level out of the dive, and felt the resistance. Bracing herself, she pulled with all her might. The plane, bent on its headlong course, was slow to respond. The force of gravity pressed its weight on her, flattening her and blackening the edges of her consciousness. Then the plane was swooping out of the dive, so close to the breakers that she could see the frothy spume.

  “That was great! Sensational!” The artillery officer’s excited voice chattered in her earphones. “Do it again!!”

  “Yes, sir!” Exhilarated by the diving run, she went back up to altitude and attacked the beachhead again.

  When Mary Lynn returned to base, she learned Jacqueline Cochran’s experiment was soon to be put on parade. Generals from the Pentagon as well as the First and Third Air Force Headquarters, accompanied by the national press, were flying in to review the female tow-target squadron. The public relations officer’s promise to generate publicity for them was about to come true.

  The day before the generals’ expected arrival, Mary Lynn completed an afternoon mission and landed at the field. Leaving her plane on the flight line to be serviced by the ground crew, she headed for the ready room, flight strain tearing her muscles.

  “Mary Lynn, come here!” Eden called to her from the door and waved her to hurry. “You’ve got to see this.”

  She picked up her pace and jogged the last few yards to the building, her interest only mildly aroused. “What is it?”

  “Come on.” Eden led her up the stairs to the door of a storeroom located above the pilots’ ready room.

  The door stood open, and the room had been cleaned out. In place of the crates and boxes were card tables and chairs. The storeroom had become a small, private lounge. Eden pointed to the sign on the door. It used the acronym for the Women Airforce Service Pilots, and made its own cute play of it to read: “WASP Nest—Drones Keep Out or Suffer the Wrath of the Queen.”

  “You’re kidding,” Mary Lynn declared upon seeing it. “Whose idea was this?”

  “I have the feeling the P.R. officer put the idea in Major Stevenson’s ear—a real catchy publicity stunt for the newspaper photographers tomorrow. It’s bound to make an impression on them.” A certain grimness was in the curve of Eden’s lips.
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br />   “What difference does it make?” Mary Lynn reasoned with a trace of irony. “Let’s enjoy it.”

  With an agreeing shrug, Eden followed her into the new lounge where they sat at a table and smoked the cigarettes that had become almost a constant preoccupation with them. As the “Nest” was discovered more joined them, and the talk turned to the cause of all this—the impending visit of the generals.

  “I wish we had our new uniforms,” one of them griped.

  “Have you been measured for yours?”

  “What did you think of that tailor from Neiman-Marcus? He rattled on so … trying to describe what color Santiago blue is, that it took him forever to get my measurements,” a buxom pilot complained.

  “I’ll just bet that’s what took him so long,” another said with a laugh.

  “That man loves his work,” a brunette declared.

  Until the new uniforms were issued, they were forced to wear their old improvised uniforms—tan gabardine slacks, white shirts, and battle jackets. The next day, they paraded past the beribboned generals and their director, Jacqueline Cochran, then came to a halt and stood at attention in their spit-shined military shoes, their columns lining up in front of two huge bombers.

  The generals and their entourage approached to review the squad of women. Eden scanned the ranks of gold braid, wondering if Cappy’s major was among them, but he wasn’t in evidence. After the generals and Jacqueline Cochran came Major Stevenson, the commander of the tow-target squadron, and his staff.

  The front row were nodded to and smiled upon by the starred Army officers while they murmured questions to the women’s director of flying with her honey-gold hair and soft, southern voice. As they walked between the rows of women, the generals dawdled. Eden had the distinct impression they would have liked to get their chest decorations caught on a busty battle jacket or two.