Roaring Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (37 page)

Tom glanced at the fuel gauge, winced, and glanced at the MiG again. This was how he liked it, no maneuvering, just slip in behind the airplane and kill it. Advancing power, he dove under the unsuspecting MiG and maneuvered behind him. He fired his remaining .50-caliber rounds into the MiG, in one ferocious sixty pounds of lead lump that tore the plane apart in a violent red and black explosion. Ivan probably never knew what hit him.

Another glance at the fuel gauge and it showed him down to five hundred pounds—roughly eighty gallons. Tom started a nervous climb, and when he got to 16,000 feet, he called in to the K-13 weather officer. He knew a knot of pilots would be gathered there, hanging around to listen to the fights, trying to visualize events from the rapid-fire radio calls that streamed in, determining from the pitch of the friends’ voices how scared or how elated they were.

Somewhat to his surprise, Gordon Maxson, a friend from his days at Nellis came on saying, “Don’t shoot them all down, Tom; leave some for us.”

“Gordon, I’m low on fuel, and I need to know what the winds are. If there’s much of a headwind, I can’t make it back.”

“Stand by one.”

There was a minute’s wait; Tom could imagine Maxson riffling through the weather data, checking for any pilot reports. He came back on, “Doesn’t look good, Tom; you’ve got about a fifty-five-knot wind, quartering from the east. No help, a lotta hurt.”

“Roger, thank you, Gordon. I’m not going to make it back to Kimpo, so I’ll turn west, and try to land on the beach at Pen Yang Do.”

Pen Yang Do was an island twenty-five miles out in the
Sea of Japan. The “Dumbo” rescue aircraft, a Grumman SA-16 Albatross, usually orbited there.

Maxson came back, “Roger, Pen Yang Do.”

Tom looked at his fuel gauge again, bumping toward empty. “That may be too far for me. Ask them to come in closer to the shoreline; I think I’ll have to leave this bird pretty soon.”

“OK. Stay on this frequency and let us know how things are going.”

A few minutes later, at 11,000 feet, the engine flamed out. He kept the airspeed at 220 knots and flew as precisely as possible, trying to stretch the glide as far as possible. At 3,000 feet he called Maxson again.

“Gordon, I’ve cleared the coast; I’m about three thousand feet and I’ve got the Albatross in sight. I’m going to eject pretty soon.”

“One second, Tom; there’s a few guys here with something to say to you.”

Ed Chalkley came on the horn and said, “Tom, you cheap bastard, you’re just trying to get out of paying me the five bucks you owe me. You get your ass safe back home here!”

Another three or four guys came on with similar rough sentiments and Tom felt pretty good.

“Adios, you guys, I’m leaving now.”

He reached down, unfastened his safety belt so that the windblast would rip the seat away, and pulled the ejection seat handle. The next instant was filled with pain and confusion as the canopy blew off and the ejection seat fired, compressing him down as he shot out of the aircraft, no longer a pilot but a projectile. Numb from the shock of the ejection, hoping he hadn’t collapsed his spine, he kicked clear of the seat, deployed his parachute, and hit the water within a minute.

The icy water sent chills down him, but he got rid of his parachute canopy, inflated his dinghy, and crawled in.

The Dumbo had followed him down and was already
taxing over to him. A rope line was fired from a big hatch in the rear fuselage, and Tom grabbed it, pulling himself close enough to the plane for two crewmen to help him up into the opening. As soon as he was aboard, the SA-16 started moving forward. His mind went back to the Catalina that had rescued him off Guadalcanal, and the image was heightened as a North Korean shore battery began lobbing shells out toward the Grumman. He turned to the grinning airman and said, “Two wars, two bailouts, two rescues. Not a bad average.”

The whole 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing had been monitoring his radio calls and there was a huge celebration going on when the Albatross put down its wheels and landed at Suwon.

Tom’s heart sank when he saw the wing commander, Colonel John Meyer, waiting for him. Meyer was tough; he had twenty-four victories in World War II against the Germans and had shot down two MiG-15s in Korea. He was a disciplinarian who demanded that rules be followed, and he obviously had heard from others about Shannon engaging in combat when his tip tank wouldn’t jettison.

“Captain Shannon, you know what the rules are about a hung tank, don’t you?”

Tom mumbled, “Yes, sir,” and Meyer was into a five-minute tirade about discipline, rules, safety, and ego. His face grew red and his neck veins bulged as he leaned into Tom, his finger jabbing him in the chest. Then, abruptly, he finished with, “But seeing that you got four confirmed kills, I’m not going to court-martial you; I’m putting you in for a Distinguished Flying Cross. You are dismissed.”

Tom saluted and turned to head for the bar, thinking,
That makes thirteen. Boy, this is really going to burn Harry up.
He got about twenty feet before the medics reached him to take him off for X-rays, standard procedure after an ejection.

April 15, 1952, Boeing Field, Seattle

Construction of the XB-52 and YB-52 had taken place in a restricted area of the Boeing plant, where the workers were all veterans with top security clearances. The two planes were virtually identical, the difference in their designation coming only as a funding ploy that allowed $10 million in production funds to be spent on the prototypes.

Superficially similar in appearance to the B-47, the prototype B-52s were much larger, with a 185-foot wingspan, eight Pratt & Whitney YJ57-P-3s, placed in four nacelles of two engines each, and a strange-looking undercarriage, four trucks of two wheels each. The wings had a thickened wing root that both decreased weight and increased fuel capacity. The cockpit used tandem seating, as in the B-47, but General LeMay had insisted that a conventional side-by-side cockpit be used and the production aircraft were already redesigned to accommodate his wishes.

The airplane would have flown in 1951, but in November of that year the XB-52’s pneumatic system had suffered a massive failure, blowing out the entire rear section of the wing. The incident had forced Boeing to put in a hurry-up call to Vance Shannon to come in and advise on the redesign that was incorporated in the YB-52 and subsequent aircraft.

The super-secret security surrounding the airplane disappeared the week prior to April 15, as Boeing public relations gave newspapers advance notice of the first flight. The hillside east of Boeing Field and all the perimeter streets were jammed with spectators, anxious to see what the future held for Boeing and Seattle. To them the aircraft represented jobs, careers, new cars, and house payments—and also the defense of the United States.

Shannon was in the privileged group watching the first-flight crew, Tex Johnston and Lieutenant Colonel Guy Townsend, go through their methodical preparations.
Johnston’s career had followed Shannon’s by about ten years but had closely paralleled it in many ways. The amiable but sometimes tempestuous Johnston had made many first flights and also flown racers at Cleveland, winning the Thompson Trophy race in 1946. Townsend had been vital in the B-47 program and was credited with selling the airplane to the top brass of the Air Force.

Everyone who had participated in the famous 1948 Dayton “weekend at the Van Cleve” when the proposal for the B-52 had been created was on hand. Vance’s job was done, and he asked Vaughn Blumenthal, the aerodynamicist, how he thought things would go.

“Vance, there’s only one thing I’m worried about, and I think we took care of it. The ailerons are so big, I was afraid that they might overbalance and perhaps flutter at higher airspeeds. So we’ve rigged the control forces to be very high, and set the pickup point for the spoilers at about forty-five degrees of control movement.”

“That should avoid the problem, all right, but won’t it make it tough to handle?”

“That’s what Johnston gets paid for, handling. I get paid for making sure it doesn’t come apart in flight.”

All the conversation dwindled as the YB-52 moved down toward the end of the runway, moving its nose from left to right, as if it were a ludicrously huge hound dog sniffing the wind, as Johnston checked the crosswind landing gear. After the check, he caused a collective gasp from the spectators by allowing the aircraft to move sideways down the taxiway, compensating for the slight crosswind. Lightly loaded at 225,000 pounds, the wingtip outriggers were well above the ground. Shannon had seen fully loaded taxi tests when the wings drooped so that the wheels rolled along the ground, keeping them from touching it.

The takeoff began with a ground-shaking run up to 100 percent power on all eight of the 9,000-pounds-of-thrust engines, with black smoke pouring out behind in a
torrent. Then Johnston released the brakes, and the YB-52 jumped forward, accelerated rapidly, lifting off at 11:08
AM
to begin its climb for the flight to Larson Air Force Base at Moses Lake, Washington, where additional testing would be done.

Shannon turned to George Schairer, who stood watching the aircraft, still visible from its trailing plumes of black smoke. “Well, George, you are off to a good start. How many of these things do you think you’ll build?”

“Well, we’re building lots of B-47s and they’ll be around for a while. I figure we’ll build a couple of hundred B-52s, at least. They should stay in the inventory for ten years, maybe fifteen, so we’ll have a good aftermarket for modifications and parts.”

That night Vance heard the story about Johnston’s landing at Moses Lake. The YB-52 had flown for three hours and eight minutes, probably a record for a first flight, with Johnston and Townsend checking every system in the aircraft before making a first landing attempt at Larson. They were well down on final when a scramble of Air Defense Command interceptors forced a go-around. On the second attempt they landed smoothly, Townsend deployed the brake parachute, and the aircraft came to a halt before a crowd of awestruck military leaders and plant officials.

In the debriefing room, the Boeing and Air Force engineers were surprised to find that the enthusiasm of both Johnston and Townsend was guarded. After most first flights, the test pilots are exuberant, and it’s rare that the airplane is not called the best they had ever flown. But both Johnston and Townsend seemed fatigued. One of the engineers, Paul Demchak, asked Johnston, “Well, what do you think is needed?”

Johnston, deadpan, replied, “New flight suits.”

Nonplussed, Demchak asked, “New flight suits? I thought you had new flight suits.”

And Johnston shot back, “If we are going to have to
manhandle this son of a bitch around, we’re going to have arms bigger than our legs, and we’ll need new flight suits.”

Demchak took the point, passed the word to Blumenthal, and the aircraft was rerigged before its next flight.

Shannon knew how Johnston felt—and how Demchak felt, too.

September 3, 1952, Kimpo Air Base, Korea

They called it K-14, and as Major Tom Shannon stepped out from the C-54 transport and looked around, he could see very little improvement over his last base, K-13, some twenty-five miles due south. But it was soon evident that the American penchant for comfort had been working hard. The offices all seemed well equipped, the supply officer had a complete array of flight equipment, and there was even an Officers Club, just varnished plywood interior, decked out with photos and models, but still a cut above anything he’d experienced at Suwon.

The big difference, of course, was on the flight line, where gleaming new F-86Es had begun to replace the war-weary F-86As. There were now 127 F-86s operating in Korea. About half were here and the rest were with the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing based at his former base, Suwon. The Communists had perhaps five times that number of MiG-15s in the theater. Unaccountably, they had not sought air superiority, being content to engage the Sabres on favorable terms over MiG Alley. Still the threat was always there, and the Chinese continually built new airfields in Korea into which a formidable air force could be flown on an instant’s notice. If the Reds seized air superiority and used airpower to back up their massive infantry and artillery, the UN troops would probably be rolled back down to Pusan—and maybe all the way into the sea.

As he stretched to rid himself of the cramped muscles
from the flight, he thought,
I wonder what’s wrong with me.
He had finished his last tour in Korea in January, returned to the United States, and married Nancy in February. He took her with him to Nellis and then to Williams Air Force Base near Phoenix, where he had instructed in gunnery. She had been completely happy until he told her he had volunteered for a third tour in Korea.

That evening would play forever in his mind, for although he had felt like a jackass many times before, the evening brought him to a new height—or depth—in the realm of jackasses. They were getting ready for dinner, and Nancy had prepared London broil, one of his favorites, on the little charcoal grill he’d bought. She was standing next to him, the platter of London broil hot off the grill in her right hand and an open bottle of Paul Masson Emerald Dry Riesling, her current favorite wine, in the left.

“Honey, I hope you’ll understand, but I’ve got a chance to go back to Korea. It’s my chance to command a squadron.”

She hesitated for half a beat and said, “You are kidding, of course?”

“No. I hate to leave you, but I can’t pass up this opportunity.”

The grace that stood her so well on the dance floor now paid off in the swift movement of her hands, as the right dumped the London broil in his lap, her left deftly pouring the wine over his head.

Jumping up, he knocked the table over and, rebounding, fell backward over his chair. From the floor he pleaded, “Jesus, Nancy, there’s no need for that.”

“There’s no need for anything, obviously, especially me. Well, I’ve got two little surprises for you. One is, I’m leaving, tonight. The other is that I’m pregnant, due in seven months.” She stormed from the room, pausing at the door to say, “Marie had it right all along. I never should have slept with you, either.”