Lane took it. He had been watching carefully, getting the feel of the craft. It was bigger, but not essentially different from the light sports planes he had flown. The underlying principles were the same. In a moment he had the feel of it, as if his nerves were extending out to the wing-tips and tail assembly.
“Bank her left,” the trainer said.
Lane did so. Now the feel was different; the response was somewhat alien. But he was catching on to it. It was like shifting gears on a new car: it was apt to be jerky until the left foot got the precise feel of the clutch, but then it was smooth. Unless the gearbox was balky, as some were. Minimum experimentation could get it straight.
“Barrel roll.”
Lane went into the slow roll; this was familiar to him, and it helped him gain further understanding of the machine.
“Chandelle.”
This was a shift to the side and a climbing turn. It was a maneuver used to get out from under an attacking fighter plane, and with luck reverse the advantage.
“Can you loop the loop?” the trainer asked after routine maneuvers were done.
Lane laughed. “Maybe you could, in this plane. I wouldn’t try, and I’d rather be on the ground before you do.”
“Lost your nerve, mate?”
“You bet. I don’t know much about this airplane, but I just don’t think it’s built for that kind of stress. I’m not suicidal. Give me a plane I know can do it without shearing a wing, and I’ll try it. I love to do tricks, if I’m sure of the limits.”
“Stand by, then.” The man took the controls, sent the plane into a small dive, then brought it up into the steep climb of the loop. Lane saw where he had misjudged it: this was a faster plane than he was familiar with, and it could go farther up without stalling. It could indeed do the loop.
The trainer brought it over the top and back down, completing the circle. “Your turn, mate.”
Good enough. Now Lane had confidence in the craft, and he had noted the velocities and attack angles as the loop was performed. He emulated these as well as he could, and managed a somewhat less stable loop.
The man nodded. “You’ll do, mate. Take her down.”
Lane realized that he had already passed his flying test. Nobody wanted a fool as a pilot, but in battle there had to be nerve and competence, not argument. He had balked at the loop for the right reason, and come through when satisfied that the plane was up to it. He oriented carefully on the landing strip and started down.
“The flaps, mate.”
Oh. “I’ve never had flaps before. Maybe you’d better—”
“I’ll talk you through it.”
But Lane knew the man would never have let him try the landing, if he had not been almost certain he could do it. This was a significant vote of confidence.
His landing was a trifle wobbly, because of the unfamiliar drag of the flaps, but he followed directions implicitly and made it without event. Only as the wheels touched the pavement did he become conscious of his underlying feeling. It was exhilaration.
Next he reported to the Air Ministry Headquarters in Ottawa for a series of personal interviews. He had to submit several letters of reference from officials in his home town. He had come prepared, and had them with him. The background check took several days.
“You made friends with a Nazi?” the interviewer asked him sharply.
Oops. “Ernst Best, a German exchange student. His father worked for the German Embassy here, so he took two years of college. It happened to be where I was going. I befriended him. We always did disagree on politics.”
“Suppose you come up against him in another plane?”
“No way. He’s not interested in flying. He does gliding, but otherwise he’s landbound.”
“What was your interest in a Nazi?”
“None. I didn’t care about his politics. Every person is a creature of his own society. In Russia they are Communists, in Germany they are Nazis. They’d be traitors if they weren’t. I don’t much like either brand of politics. But when one is taken out of his culture, he’s different, and my sympathy is for those who are different.”
“Why?”
“It’s just the way I am. My fiancée is a Quaker pacifist, and I’m not. I can get along with different people.”
The interviewer gazed at him for a moment, then moved on. Lane wasn’t sure whether his answer was satisfactory. He had heard that one otherwise qualified man had been booted because he had written one bad check to his father. But this was hardly criminal behavior, it was tolerance for other ways. That shouldn’t disqualify him. By his reckoning, the world needed more tolerance. It was intolerance that made for trouble. Now why hadn’t he thought to say that, and really make his point?
“Your face is scarred. How did this come about?”
“Childhood fight.” Lane smiled. “I lost.”
“The whole story, please.”
“You asked for it. I was sort of weak and clumsy as a child. A friend stood up for me, but then his family moved and I was on my own. For a while the boys were cautious, afraid my friend would return to even the score if they picked on me, but gradually they got back into it. I tried to stand up for myself, and I think I gave a credible account, considering. But I simply lacked the physical power and stamina to make it stick. So I got my face rubbed in the gravel, and suffered moderate but painful lacerations, as the doctor put it.”
Lane paused, but the interviewer didn’t seem to be satisfied yet, so he went on. “I was unlucky. The abrasions became infected, and the left side of my face swelled up, disfiguring me. It was blood poisoning. I wound up in the hospital. I think my dislike of needles dates from then. I got every kind of blood test, along with X-rays, enemas and pills. I really got to hate that hospital! They were searching for the specific agent of disease, so they could match it to the specific treatment. And they found it. Also, serendipitously, they found a chemical imbalance in my system that accounted for my general malaise. They prescribed medication—I called it horse pills—with a complex formula relating to hormones or trace nutrients or antibodies. I didn’t see how mere pills could help, but I took them. At least there was hope.
“And you know, it did work. The blood poisoning passed, my face healed, except for those faint scars, and I felt better. My body filled out and my coordination slowly improved. I was recovering from the malady that had held me back, and maybe making up for lost time, because my growth outstripped that of my peers. I came to match their average in mass and power, then to exceed it. It took them some time to catch on, but after I beat them they did.” He smiled. “There’s nothing like doing it back to a bully to teach him manners. By the time I reached college, my frailty was long gone. But I never forgot what it was like to have to scramble to be not quite as good as others, and I was always nervous about it. I had to prove myself in everything, beating others not by picking fights in the street but in track or wrestling. I got into running and weight lifting, making sure my body would never lose what it had gained.”
He looked up, realizing something. “Ernst—that’s where I met him. He came out for wrestling too, and I worked out with him. What got me was that he was just like me in size and complexion and hair color, but of a different culture. When he spoke, it was with that German accent, that set him right apart. Just the way my girlfriend Quality was just like any other girl, until she opened her mouth. So I guess I was attracted to each of them for the same reason. They way they spoke, which showed how different they were. Because I’m different too, inside. And I don’t think I’m wrong in having those friendships. They’re good people, both of them, even if they don’t think much of each other.”
The interviewer pondered a moment, in that mystical way of his, then went on.
In due course Lane learned that he had passed the character assessment. He was made a Pilot officer in the Canadian Royal Air Force, and his combat flight training began.
Now he got into the good stuff. His combat training was done in a
Miles Master, which was a two-seater, gull-winged, all wooden plane with a top speed of 264 mph. It was the fastest trainer in the world. The pilots were trained to operate in three-plane formations called a “vic”; two vics made up a flight, and two flights were a squadron, twelve aircraft. They kept in touch by radio, but it wasn’t necessarily clear. They learned that singing in a high voice generated a clearer transmission. “Let’s shape up, girls!” someone would singsong teasingly.
They also learned the operative terms: “pancake” meant to land immediately. “Buster” meant to proceed at full speed. “Scramble” meant to take off for battle. “Angel X” meant they were X thousand feet high. “Trade” meant an enemy formation. And “tallyho” was the R.A.F. battle cry. This was Canada, but the
R.A.F. was where they were heading, once they were ready. “The greenhouse” was the cockpit of the plane.
The plane had a machine gun, but for training a motion picture camera was substituted. When the trigger was pulled this was activated, recording hits and misses. It was a lot of fun, and Lane was pretty sure he would be able to work with a real gun as effectively when the time came.
They also did do target shooting with a stationary machine gun, and then they fired at box kites towed by Fairey Battles, a light British bomber. They had to learn to recognize both friendly and enemy aircraft. They practiced Morse Code, navigation, night flying, and blind flying. They learned meteorology and the detection of thermals, because the weather could make a big difference when flying. Lane already knew that, of course, but realized that in war he would not be able to choose his flying weather, as he had as a civilian flyer. Also radio transmission procedure, aircraft maintenance, and the care and spot repair of engines and machine guns.
Lane was issued his uniform, indoctrinated into the military routine, and got his identity tags, which were on fireproof composition fiber. He was now a combat flyer.
The other trainees celebrated their success by going out on the town and getting drunk. Lane would have gone along, but he thought of Quality, and couldn’t. It was not just that such celebrations were known for womanizing, which he wouldn’t do, but that Quality, as a Quaker, would neither touch liquor nor associate with anyone who did. He had not had any since knowing her, and felt it would be a betrayal of her if he did so now. So he remained clean, perforce. Of course his participation in training for combat was a betrayal of Quality’s nature too, but somehow that was less personal than the small things. So he remained home, as it were, and wrote her a letter.
• • •
After two months of combat training, Lane was transferred to his permanent unit: the 242nd Royal Air Force Squadron in England, a unit flying the all metal Hawker Hurricane. This was a tough and durable fighter with a top speed of around 320 miles per hour, armed with eight Browning .303 machine guns. This was the fastest and fiercest aircraft Lane had encountered, but what fascinated him was the combat gunsight.
The gunsight was a circle with a horizontal crosshair. It had three controls. The first was a key to give power to the sight, making the circle and crosshairs glow. The second was a rheostat which controlled the intensity of the glow. The third was a dial which controlled the size of the circle. The dial could be set for the wingspan of the enemy craft that the pilot expected to engage. When the wing-tips touched the edges of the circle, the craft was in range. The eight machine guns were aligned to form a small circular clump of fire at a range of 250 yards. The Hurricane’s guns could fire tracer, incendiary, ball, and armor-piercing bullets at a cyclic rate of 9,600 rounds per minute.
Lane whistled. “I pity the enemy plane that gets into range!”
But he realized that the enemy plane was likely to have similar firepower, and a similar range. When he got close enough for the kill, he would also be close enough to be killed.
The guns were covered with a wooden shield, to decrease wind resistance and enable the plane to fly faster, as well as to cut wind noise and keep foreign matter out of the barrels. When the guns were fired, the wooden shield was blown away, so a ground crew could immediately tell when a pilot had fired on an enemy. As if they weren’t going to take the pilot’s word about it?
There was further training and preparation carrying him through the year 1939. There was a permanent flying station in the R.A.F that helped establish a comfortable, homelike atmosphere. A central brick building housed the pilots’ bedrooms, restaurant, bar and quiet room. There was a laundry service, and batmen in attendance. The building was surrounded by lawns and tennis courts. The ground crews assigned to each pilot were very protective of that pilot, and would fight, it seemed, at the drop of a hat if anybody said anything against him.
The “wake up” drink of the R.A.F. was tea. Lane had found this quaint at first, but soon enough settled into the habit and developed a liking for it. He also learned to respect the tray of vitamin A pills which sat in the mess with the sign “for night flying personnel only.” They did seem to help, when he had night practice, though he wasn’t sure whether this was real or imaginary.
The flying uniform was a thick silk-lined “teddy bear” and a fireproof coverall flying suit called a sidka. For very cold weather there was a fur-lined Irving suit. When flying, the pilot wore a parachute, silk gloves under flying mittens, a heavy helmet with earphones, a throat microphone and an attached oxygen mask. The helmet plugged into the radio. The safety belt was a Suddon harness: straps over the shoulders and across the chest to the back.
He received letters from Quality, who had gone to Spain, to his surprise, and seen the civil war there first-hand. She was not a passive pacifist, but an active one; she sought to do whatever good she could in the world. He could hardly fault her for that, but he wished she were well away from that battle-torn nation. Some of what she described horrified him; she should never have been exposed to such horrors. He was relieved when he learned that that war was over and she was all right. He had no liking for the insurgent generals who had turned against their own country and conquered it, but he just didn’t like the thought of Quality possibly getting hurt.
In September, Germany invaded Poland. War had been building, and now it had come. Lane had mixed feelings. He had been training for this, and hoped to see action soon. Yet he knew it would have been better if Hitler and the Nazis had never existed, so that peace had remained. He was both eager to put that bully Hitler in his place, and guilty because of the way Quality felt about violence and war.
The 242nd Squadron was transferred to France to help bolster its defenses. Lane was in the Air Component of the RAF, known as the AC. It was stationed between the town of Lille and the river Somme in the northernmost part of the country. The planes did not go near Germany, to Lane’s frustration; they did not even do a great deal of drill. They just waited. Since he was not interested in exploring the favors of the local French girls, it was a dull time.
On the ninth of April, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. Still the squadron did not act. It was saving itself for the defense of France, and was coordinating with the French, who seemed marvelously efficient in taking no action. They depended on their fancy Maginot Line to the east, and on the sanctity of the territory of Holland and Belgium to the north, buttressed by the British Expeditionary Force. This was part of the Air Component of that Force, commanded by General Gort.
On the 10th of May, Germany invaded Holland and Belgium, on the way to France. Now at last it was time for action. The planes went out: two bomber squadrons and two fighter squadrons. Lane did not; he was in one of the fighter squadrons held in reserve for the moment. This was because the situation was so confused that the commander did not know where the greatest need would be.
It turned out to be hell out there. The moment the bombers approached the advancing German lines, they were attacked by swarming German planes. The fighters tried to engage the Germans, but were outnumbered and outpiloted. They took horrendous losses. In fact, the unit suffered 50% casualties, and it was doubtful whether
they had inflicted significant casualties in return. At first it was hoped that some planes were merely late coming back, but as time passed it was obvious that they had been lost. When a plane ran out of fuel, it had to come down wherever it was. Probably that had not been the problem; they had been shot down.
Lane went out the following day. The German positions were not where he had been told; they were closer. In fact they were rushing west at an alarming rate, directly toward the Air Component base. Caught by surprise, Lane and the other planes of his squadron tried to attack the Luftwaffe bombers, but could not even get close before being engaged by the snarling ME-109’s. He quickly discovered that he was up against a superior plane; the Messerschmitt could outclimb, outdive, and outspeed him. But he was able to turn inside it, and that was his one advantage. Lane wanted to make a scrap of it, but he saw two of his companions go down, and the others turned to flee. He was in danger of being isolated in the midst of the enemy, which was sure disaster. He had to turn tail himself.
And the retreat was worse than the brief battle, because the Germans pursued, shooting down two more before quitting the chase. It had been mostly chance, Lane realized, that had saved him from that fate. He just had not been among those targets chosen by the hunters.
But there was no safety back at the field. No sooner had he landed than he had to refuel and take off again—for a field farther to the south. Because it was apparent that the Germans could not be stopped, and would soon overrun this field.
That was the beginning of a continuing disaster. The unit was reinforced by several more fighter squadrons, but communications were poor and coordination with the ground forces was worse. Contact with the Advanced Air Striking force was lost; the Germans had driven a wedge between the northeast and northwest of France. The lack of ground transportation was another critical problem; many units were forced to abandon equipment and burn planes which were too damaged to fly safely. There were stories of other squadrons which would retreat one day, fly a mission the next, and retreat again that night. Lane’s unit retreated to an airfield near Amiens, bedded down for the night, and woke just in time to take flight before Guderian’s advancing tanks. They were shunted from one airfield to another, receiving scant welcome anywhere. It became every man for himself, with each pilot scrounging for his own food, servicing his own plane, and sleeping under its wing. They had to search for enough fuel to take off and fight. And still the Germans came on, relentlessly.
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