The Fly Boys (7 page)

“Hey, Wallis!” Cappy yelled as the sergeant approached. “I finally figured out what I want for a squadron nose marking!” The
major sketched his ideas in the air for Walli’s benefit. “Picture this: we paint the cowling a solid color. On both sides
we put a sort of shield shape with a big vee in the upper left- and a big vee in the lower right-hand corners. In between
the vees, going on a diagonal from upper left to lower right, I want a lightning bolt. Got that?”

Wallis nodded. “Whatcha want for colors, Major?”

Cappy shrugged. “I haven’t gotten that far.” He glanced at Steve. “You once told me about how your old man was a German ace
during the last war. What’d you say his colors were?”

Steve stalled. “Cappy, don’t you have to get group’s approval for something like this?” he asked hopefully.

“Group will go along with anything I fucking well say,” Cappy replied impatiently. “If they don’t, I’ll take it up with wing,
or Hap Arnold, or fucking FDR if I have to. Got it, Lieutenant?”

“Got it, Major,” Steve replied quickly. Cappy may have looked like a black sheep, but he was a bona fide war hero. He had
twenty-seven confirmed kills, for which he’d been awarded a Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Cross. The brass had
already sent Cappy home to take part in a highly publicized cross-country war bond tour. Cappy had friends in high places,
and had earned himself a shitload of favors when he’d agreed to head up this squadron.

“My pop’s personal colors were turquoise and yellow,” Steve said. “But all the airplanes in his squadron had to incorporate
some of Richthofen’s signature scarlet into their markings.”

“Hey, if it was good enough for the fucking Red Baron, it’s good enough for us,” Cappy said. He turned to Wallis. “Paint the
nose cowlings yellow. Make the shields turquoise. The vees and lightning bolts are scarlet. Got it?”

“Whatever you say, Major,” Wallis replied. “The design ain’t too complicated. I’ll start on it right away. The job should
be done in a couple of days.”

“Cappy, at least take down the fucking tarp,” Steve fumed.

“Nope, it’s staying up.”

“But they’re laughing at us.”

“Let them,” Cappy said. “Pretty soon these webfoots are gonna realize that what they’ve given us is a flag of honor, and then
the laugh will be on them. Like I said before, you’re too thin-skinned, Steve. It’s a bad trait to have generally, but it’s
especially bad in our trade. You want to survive, you’re going to have to learn to be cool and collected under pressure.”

“Cappy, you know that I don’t lose my nerve when the chips are down,” Steve said hotly.

Cappy laughed, shaking his head. “You’re proving my point right now by not listening to me, kiddo. What I’m saying is that
courage and grace under pressure are two different things. You were born with balls, Steve, but grace is something everybody
has to
learn.
” The major studied him a second and then turned back to Wallis. “Tell you what, Sarge. You
hand paint
Lieutenant Gold’s airplane first thing.”

Wallis nodded. “Like a sample, huh? No problem, Major.”

Steve winced. “Cappy, give me a break.”

“Someday you’ll thank me for this,” Cappy said. “Then again, maybe not….” His grin was evil. “Sarge, I want the lieutenant’s
plane done in time for this afternoon’s practice.”

“Yes, sir!” Wallis hurried away, muttering to himself.

Cappy looked around. “Who’s got a smoke?”

That afternoon Steve’s freshly painted airplane was waiting for him as he left the ready room. He was wearing his Mae West
and pistol over his khaki uniform. His goggles and rubber oxygen mask were dangling around his neck, and he was carrying his
helmet.

Sergeant Wallis was standing in front of Steve’s Jug, chatting with Steve’s crew. Wallis looked proud as a new papa. He was
obviously hanging around in order to get Steve’s reaction to his handiwork.

“What do you think, Lieutenant?” Wallis demanded. “Looks good, huh? And she’s all dry. I had one of the spare Jugs backed
into position and kept its engine going so that the prop wash could help dry the paint.”

“It looks good, all right,” Steve said grudgingly. Wallis looked crestfallen at his reaction.
Fuck
, Steve thought.
The guy worked his ass off to get it done, and get it done right
.

“Sarge, you did a great job.” He forced the enthusiasm into his voice. “And I’m proud of the fact that my old man’s colors
are going to grace the squadron.” The vibrant hues of yellow, turquoise, and scarlet did look swell against the Thunderbolt’s
burnished silver skin.

“The shields turned out real sharp on both sides of the cowling, I think,” Wallis said. “They’re so bold and ballsy they suit
this big mother.”

Steve nodded. The Jug
was
big. She had a forty-foot wingspan, but it was her thirty-six-foot-long, fifteen-foot-high fuselage that won her the title
as the biggest single-engine fighter. The Thunderbolt was nicknamed the Jug because of its profile. Most fighters had a streamlined,
sharklike fuselage, but the Thunderbolt’s nose was stubby, rounded, and blunt, like that of a sperm whale.

Wallis’s eyes were narrowed. “Lieutenant, I gotta ask. Is there something about the paint job that’s bothering you?”

“Nothing, Sarge,” Steve sighed. He reached up to pat the turquoise shield embossed with those scarlet vees and the lightning
bolt. No way anyone could miss those shields on both sides of the cowling which framed the ram scoop air intake for the high-altitude
turbosupercharger.
If only the vees stood for something other than Vigilant Virgins
. “Like I said, you did great.” He clapped Wallis on the shoulder. “I gotta get airborn.”

Steve climbed up onto the wing, and then hoisted himself into the spacious cockpit. What a pleasure! Every other fighter that
Steve had flown had a tiny, cramped cockpit that made him feel like a pretzel, but the Jug’s fuselage was so deep that even
a six-footer had room to stretch his legs.

He waited for his crew to stand clear, and then started up the air-cooled, 2,100 horsepower Pratt & Whitney. The four yellow
tips of the twelve-foot-diameter paddle-blade prop began to spin. Steve tested out his oxygen mask as he waited for the ops
officer to signal him takeoff permission. Once he’d received it, he lowered the electrically operated teardrop canopy, locked
it down, and moved the Jug out.

The heavy Thunderbolt needed a lot of runway to get off the ground. As he was rolling along, building up speed, he passed
a group of Marines in the midst of a softball game on an unused airstrip. The webfoots broke off playing to point and laugh
at Steve’s gaudy Jug as it rumbled past.

Fuck them
, Steve thought savagely. Grace under pressure, Cappy had said. The Marines would eat crow once the Double Vee Squadron had
proven themselves in battle.

He pulled back on the stick, luxuriating in that special instant when his wheels left the ground. He retracted his landing
gear as he climbed, his spirits lifting along with his airplane. Any day spent flying was a wonderful day.

Steve was especially pleased with the Thunderbolt’s performance. He thought the Jug was an outstanding airplane. A lot of
the pilots in the squadron didn’t agree with him, but they were pilots who’d gained their experience flying much smaller fighters.
The chief complaint was that the Jug handled like a truck. Next on the list of gripes was the fact that the Jug was so big.
The concern among many of the guys was not how
they
were going to shoot down the enemy, but how the Japs could ever miss
them
.

It was true that it took a steady hand to show the muscle-bound Thunderbolt who was boss. Steve guessed that it made sense
that a pilot would feel nervous riding such a headstrong mount into battle if all his experience had been in lighter, more
nimble fighters like the Bell Aircobra or the BearClaw fighter designed and built by his father’s company. Steve wasn’t worried
about the Jug’s size or its lack of maneuverability, but then he’d been happy flying his twin-engined, twin-boomed P-38 Lightning,
which was even bigger than the Jug, and also something of a truck. Also, he’d found that what counted over maneuverability
was speed, stability, the ability to deliver a knockout blow, and if need be, to take a few punches in return.

The Jug could do all that, in spades. She had an outstanding top speed, and a 42,000-foot ceiling. It was true that she presented
the enemy with a big target, but her air-cooled engine allowed her to shrug off the kinds of hits that might sever the coolant
line of a liquid-cooled power plant, causing it to overheat and seize up. When it came time to hit back, the Jug’s eight .50-caliber
guns could literally blow out of existence Tojo’s lightweight, unarmored airplanes.

Not that the Jug was perfect, Steve thought as he and the rest of the squadron slowly followed Cappy Fitzpatrick up to thirty
thousand feet. She gulped fuel, making her an extremely short-range airplane unless she was equipped with drop tanks. It was
a good thing she could absorb hits, because she sure as hell was going to take some. At high speeds and high altitudes she
was unbeatable, but the Japs liked to fight low. Dropping the Jug down below fifteen thousand feet, or letting her air speed
fall below 250 miles per hour turned her into one sleepy babe. Steve found this especially irksome since his last mount, the
twin-engined P-38 Lightning, could climb like an angel and dive like a submarine at any altitude. Finally, like a typical
heavyweight, the muscle-bound Jug had spindly legs. Her weak landing gear could snap on you if you set her down too hard.

“All right, you
Virgins
—”

Steve cringed as Cappy’s voice crackled through his headset. Thankfully the Marine fighter squadrons used a different radio
frequency, so they couldn’t eavesdrop. Then he remembered that it was the webfoots who’d christened the squadron in the first
place: one look and the Marines would know exactly what those double vees stood for.

“Find your positions,” Cappy ordered.

The squadron broke into three flights of four, each flying in box formation. Steve was in the last box, in the rear starboard
corner, flying as flight leader Captain Crawford’s wingman. Cappy had assigned flight positions according to an officer’s
rank and the number of his kills. Steve was only a first lieutenant, and his nine kills might have been hot stuff in some
other squadron, but here his score was relatively low. Crawford, for instance, had twelve kills. Steve’s position in the extreme
rear outside corner of the last squadron was an especially dangerous one because he’d be the first guy to be jumped in an
ambush, but because of his excellent eyesight and ability to spot the enemy, Cappy had figured Steve could handle it. Steve
considered Cappy’s confidence in his ability an honor.

“Remember our procedure,” Cappy was saying. “We fly high. We spot Tojo, and we power-dive on him like a ton of bricks.”

Ton of bricks was right, Steve chuckled to himself. The Jug, empty, weighed maybe three times what the Zero did loaded.

The squadron was flying just off the coast of Santa Belle. There had been no enemy air activity in the area for weeks, but
Steve constantly swiveled his head, searching for the enemy against the infinite pale blue sky banded with wispy high-altitude
cirrus clouds. He didn’t expect to see any Japs, but he had long ago trained himself into the routine of knowing what was
happening in the sky around him. It was a habit he didn’t want to break.

“—The idea is to destroy your target in a single pass,’ Cappy was lecturing the squadron. “Hit and kill him before he even
knows what’s happened. With eight guns, you’ve got the firepower to do it.”

Something caught Steve’s eye on his starboard side, and his heart began to pound with that scary, giddy jolt of combat anticipation.
As the specks closed on the squadron Steve saw that they were Marine Corsairs. He relaxed, and as his pulse slowed, he wryly
noted his undeniable sense of disappointment.

“You get yourself into a turning fight with Tojo and you’ll find yourself spiraling downward,” Cappy was warning. “Then, before
you know it, you’ll be beneath the Jug’s optimum operational altitude, and Tojo will be flying rings around you.”

Steve waited for Cappy to finish and then clicked his throat mike. “This is Gold. We’ve got company. A finger four formation
of webfoots coming at us three o’clock level.”

“I see them,” Cappy said. “Just ignore them.”

“That’s gonna be hard to do, Cappy,” Steve replied as the gull-winged, dark blue Corsairs surrounded him.

“Lieutenant Gold, this is Captain Crawford. You’ve got a darned webfoot coming up between us.”

Steve had to smile. Crawford had been a grammar school teacher before the war, and couldn’t ever bring himself to swear.

“He’s trying to cut you out of the box,” Crawford continued. “Tighten up, tighten up, Lieutenant.”

The Marine pilots were good. They were operating almost at ceiling, but they still managed to slice Steve out of the flight’s
box formation. Before he knew it he was neatly coralled by the four Marine fighters. They were close enough for Steve to see
the pilots’ faces. They were pointing to the double-vee shield insignias on his cowling.
They were laughing
.

“Cappy, this is Steve!” he snarled furiously into his throat mike. “I told you they’d make fun of us! They’re laughing at
this fucking shield you’ve got me branded with!”

“Steve, calm down,” Cappy ordered. “All right, everyone, listen up: follow me up to thirty-eight thousand feet. Steve, you
just climb right out of their box. Those bluebirds can’t fly much higher than present altitude.”

“At thirty-eight thousand any meaningful flight practice is going to be spoiled,” Crawford cut in. “We’ll never really see
combat at that altitude. The Japs are willing to concede the heavens to their honorable ancestors.”

“Don’t bust my balls, Captain,” Cappy muttered.

“I hate running away from these bullies,” Steve grumbled.