I recently took a trip down memory lane to remember something I saw when I was nine years old.

That something happened one Saturday night, I’m pretty sure. There used to be a TV show called “Saturday Night at the Movies,” sort of like a pre-cable with-commercials version of HBO. The movie was “The Bridges at Toko-Ri,” based on the novel by James Michener.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the film, it’s one of the really great aviation stories. The plot revolves around a Navy squadron, flying F9F Panthers, during the Korean War. The squadron’s mission is to destroy a series of strategic railroad bridges used to ferry supplies to the North Koreans. The bridges, of course, are at a place called Toko-Ri.

The protagonist of the film is a pilot named Brubaker. If memory serves, and at this distance in time I may not have the details right, Brubaker was a WW2 pilot called back to fly in Korea. He left a law practice and a wife to do that.

The film’s climax is the attack on the bridges. I kind of forgot I was watching a movie, I think. Sometimes a story will hit you that way, you’re in the world, that world, where the characters are doing something extremely scary, and even on screen, the flak thrown up by the defenders of the bridges looked scary to me.

Scary as hell.

Accurate too, because during the attack Brubaker’s Panther is hit and severely damaged. He manages to get away from the target, turns for the coast where he can hope for rescue, but is forced to crash-land still inside North Korean territory. But hope arrives in the form of a rescue helicopter, but the helicopter is hit by ground fire. The crew makes it out, joining Brubaker in the muddy ditch where he’s taken shelter. The North Koreans close in, and one by one they kill the Americans.

All of them.

The image of Brubaker being shot to death wasn’t gory, certainly by later cinematic standards, but it was unquestionably final. Brubaker dies in a muddy ditch, covered in mud.

It was the first time I saw, even if I didn’t exactly comprehend, a good guy, the good guy, the protagonist of the film, die. What I remember was a profound sense of shock. In my nine-year-old universe, which of course encompassed all things, that was something previously unimaginable.

My parents were watching the movie. I don’t remember if I, or they, said anything. I might have said what I was thinking: “They killed him!”

The truth is that moment was seared into my mind. I remember the end of the movie, sort of, where the Admiral ponders the question “Where do we find such men?” But the story had already ended.

It was a shock I never forgot. I don’t say it was a traumatic experience, but I think it was formative. It was certainly a learning experience.

What I learned was that the good guys die, and it’s the bad guys who kill them. And the hero’s story stops right there, in the North Korean mud.

It’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten.

What Charlie Davis Saw

Tag end of September, 2018, at the Hickory Aviation Museum and a little bit of magic happened with the arrival of Madras Maiden, a B-17G owned by the Liberty Foundation.

When you get a chance just to see a B-17G, walk around it, go inside and spend some time at the crew stations, take that chance. If you get to talk to the crew, do it. Get to know some of the people that keep pieces of history like this alive. If you get a chance, help them work on the airplane! Maybe you don’t know anything about Wright radial engines, but I bet if you offer to help them wash the oil from those radial engines off the airplane they’ll be more than happy to let you.

I doubt I’ll ever get to fly a B-17, but at least I did get to sit in the pilot’s seat, and I’d like to thank John Hess of the Liberty Foundation for that. And John, as you probably figured out, I somehow managed to squeeze my over-large self into the left seat without bumping the controls or switches!

That’s how I got to see what Charlie Davis saw.

Shameless self-promotion: Charlie Davis is a character in my novels. He flies B-17s from the first book, Everything We Had, and continuing through the fourth book, Thanks for the Memories.

When, in the second book, A Snowball’s Chance, Charlie looked out over the left wing at that “blank-blank No. 1 engine,” here’s what he saw:

OK, OK. So in my mind’s eye I deleted the fuel truck and the ramp, the tower and the terminal and all that other stuff belonging to KHKY and the present day, and the wing was olive-drab all the way down, and the airplane was actually flying, enroute to Darwin from Del Monte Field on Mindanao, at a time when we were losing the war.

And so in my mind’s eye I looked ahead of the airplane to see what Charlie might see, and here it is:

So you have to ignore the jets at the right and the modern artificial horizon at the lower left corner, but I love the evening sun streaming in from the right. Up ahead of the instrument panel you see the astrodome, which was there only on the “E” and following models of the B-17. But imagine Al Stern sticking his head up into the astrodome to shoot the sun, and maybe grin at Charlie before returning to his navigator’s table.

You look to the right to check on your co-pilot, where so many of Charlie’s ill-fated co-pilots sat.

And there are things in this picture that wouldn’t be there in 1941 or 1942, but I hope most people realize that, among other things, the plastic water bottle wouldn’t be there.

Maybe it isn’t perfect. But going to Shiloh or Gettysburg, and looking at those carefully manicured and tended fields, that’s not the way it was on those bloody days that made those awful battles remembered.

Here’s what matters to me: I got to sit there and imagine, and, yes, dream a little bit.

If you get the chance, you should too, just to see what Charlie Davis and the real-life people I drew him from saw.

Thanks again, Madras Maiden. You really are the stuff of dreams.

Women: Tough as Hell

Recently the writers group I belong to discussed the issue of creating strong female characters in atypical female roles.  I have a character, a female police officer, that’s been giving me fits for years.  She just feels like cardboard to me, and I know I’m missing something in the way I write about her.  And of course that night our female members were not in attendance.  Alas.  Men talking about women can be a one-dimensional experience.

As a coincidence, though, this last week I came across a blog by Carey Lohrenz.  Ms. Lohrenz was the second female naval aviator “accepted” into the F-14 fighter community.  Here’s a chance to look into the issue, I thought, and for those of you who are interested, here’s the URL for the blog:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carey-d-lohrenz/military-women-pilots-veterans_b_1516021.html#es_share_ended.

Thinking about Lt. Lohrenz’s career problems made me remember another excellent female pilot community, the WASPs of World War II.  The RAF had a similar outfit that did the same job: ferrying aircraft from the factory to embarkation points or airbases, maintenance test flights, all the aviation drudge work that would free up male pilots for the “stress of combat” that supposedly women just can’t handle.  Women, in both the US and England, were forbidden to go into combat; it was simply too tough for them, and they’d never stand up to it.  In fact, in the US, male civilian pilots lobbied successfully to have the WASPs disbanded even before the end of World War II.  Too much (successful) competition, I guess.

Mm.  Wonder what a pioneer wife in the Arizona territory, say about 1870 during an Apache raid, would have said to women not being tough?

Thinking about the WASPs called up another memory.  General Charles “Chuck” Yeager was a fighter pilot in World War II and had twelve kills.  There were not that many male pilots who flew fighters that achieved even a single kill, much less the coveted five kills that made you an ace in the USAAF or the RAF.  (The Luftwaffe required ten kills.)  The tradition of five kills making an ace goes back to World War I, but that’s another story.

There was another pilot in World War II with twelve kills who deserves mention: Senior Lieutenant Lilya Litvyak of the V-VS, the Soviet Air Force.  Litvyak was first a member of the all-female 73rd Guards Fighter Regiment and was later transferred to a male unit.  She was wounded three times in the service of her country.  She received numerous awards for valor, including the Order of the Red Banner.  I’m no expert on Soviet military awards, but Wikipedia says it was the “highest award given by…the Soviet Union.”  That makes it at least the equivalent of the Distinguished Service Cross in this country; our Medal of Honor seems more the equivalent of the accolade “Hero of the Soviet Union,” which Litvyak received posthumously, like so many of our own Medal of Honor winners.  In Litvyak’s final fight, jumped by eight ME-109s, she was finally shot down and killed.

Litvyak’s best friend, Katya Budanova, was also an ace, with eleven kills, and like Litvyak was killed in action.

The Soviets had a number of female combat pilots.  One, Olga Yamshchikova, was credited with 17 kills.  Others flew the famed Il-2 Sturmovik attack aircraft.  The Sturmovik was essentially a piston-engined A-10 and flew the same sort of incredibly dangerous mission, low-level ground support.  One Soviet female pilot, Anna Yegorova, flew these missions in the Sturmovik throughout the war and was decorated three times for valor.

In World War II, the USAAF and the RAF decided that the effectiveness of aircrew decreased if they were required to simply keep going until the war ended or they were killed.  That was the reason for limiting the number of missions or combat hours a pilot was required to fly.  It was based on lessons learned by both air forces in World War One.  In the US Eighth Air Force, when losses were heavy at the beginning of the war, crews were required to fly 25 missions, and the survivors were often in bad shape.  Later, as the effective opposition of the Luftwaffe decreased, that mission total was increased to 35.  I’ve spoken with some of the survivors of these missions.  In their 80s, that experience is just as vivid and emotionally wrenching as it was in their 20s for many of them.

In the Soviet Air Force there wasn’t any such thing as a tour of duty.  You were there for the duration.  Surviving pilots, male and female, could have as many as 1000 missions in their logbooks.  There were plenty of women in the Soviet Air Force who could claim that distinction.  Those ladies must have been tough as hell.

What was it like, then, for those that were required to just keep flying?  What kept them going?  Because it would seem that we aren’t talking about male or female qualities here, but simply human qualities.  Why, then, should it be so important to deny that women have those qualities?

Nothing here should be construed as saying that the Russians are tougher than the Americans, or that women are necessarily tougher than men, but it amazes me that easily available history like this is ignored.  Facts, it would seem, are far less important than ideology.  Lt. Lohrenz’s career came to an end due to political chicanery by those whose agenda required women to be “kept in their place.”

The point is that we have no cultural referents that aid us, as writers, when we depict strong female characters in non-traditional roles.  Women who try to create such roles in real life and are too visible, like Lt. Lohrenz, become targets in no-holds-barred political dominance games.

History shows that our cultural stereotypes have nothing to do with truth or facts.  This being said, why do those stereotypes continue to exist?

Are men actually afraid of women?  That might be a question for all of us, male and female alike, to ponder.

As the title of this essay suggests, I believe women, potentially and often in fact, really are tough as hell.  That’s the first thing to remember, but darned if I can figure out what the second thing should be, or the third, to come up with a better idea for female characters.

Turn the Cup

Last week Lt. Col. Richard Cole, USAF-Ret., passed away on April 8. Col. Cole was the last surviving member of Doolittle’s Raiders at 103. During the mission he flew as copilot in the lead airplane.

One can only imagine what Cole felt during that mission, but try, if you will, for a moment, to put yourself in his place. It is the morning of April 18, 1942. America and its Allies are losing the war in the Pacific.

Pause and reflect on that. Seventy-seven years ago, this country was losing its war against Japan. Japan started the war with a surprise attack against the US Navy’s Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. The day before that attack, the overwhelming majority of people in the US were against any involvement in the war in Europe, or active involvement in the war between Japan and China. Afterward, on the morning of December 8, young American men lined up for blocks outside of recruiting offices to enlist and fight Japan.

Only America didn’t have a lot to fight with, and wouldn’t for months to come. Those young men lining up to enlist that Monday morning would learn close-order drill with obsolete Springfield rifles, at best, and at worst, they’d drill with broomsticks as their fathers did in World War One. On that morning, America’s air forces had only a handful of heavy bombers to carry the war to the enemy, nearly all of them obsolete or obsolescent. The fighters that would clear the skies of Axis aircraft were still in their test phase. Medium bombers like the B-25 and the B-26 were only beginning to come off the assembly line.

The oceans protecting America from attack also prevented us from easily reaching our enemies in Europe and Asia.

But we could put sixteen B-25 medium bombers on the deck of an aircraft carrier, something neither bomber nor carrier had been designed for, and send that aircraft carrier close enough to Japan so that those medium bombers would have the range to attack Japan and fly to airfields in China. That was the plan. It gave the bomber crews at least a chance of survival.

In the event the task force sent to attack Japan was dis covered by a Japanese picket boat who radioed the news of their presence before being sunk.

Doolittle and his men had the range to strike Japan. They didn’t have the range to reach the Chinese airfields where they might reasonably hope to land, and live to fight another day. At best, they could reach the Chinese coast, most of which was occupied by the Japanese, where the odds of capture were very high. To attack Japan now meant the odds of surviving the mission were very small indeed.

It was already a volunteer mission, but the discovery of the task force well east of their planned launch point changed everything. Doolittle again asked for volunteers. He got them. All of them volunteered to go, knowing the odds against survival, already bad, were now much worse. It hadn’t become a suicide mission, but it was close.

I suspect, sitting in the cockpit of Doolittle’s B-25, looking at a very, very short stretch of flight deck, pitching up and down in the heavy sea running at the time, Richard Cole was afraid. I suspect he wasn’t alone. But I’m also certain he focused on his job, which was to help Jimmy Doolittle get their B-25 off the deck of the USS Hornet. I know that, because every B-25 got off the deck of the Hornetand attacked Japan.

That moment in history, along with many others in those first grim months of the war that put America’s back to the wall, should have served as a warning to the dictatorships of Japan and Germany that democracy does not produce weaklings or cowards. Democracy produces men and women whose stake in their country is far greater, even immeasurably greater, than those who serve the whim of a single person. To die for the Emperor, or der Fuehrer, is to die for a man, however vainglorious the trappings of office. To risk your life for America is to put your life on the line for every single one of your compatriots, for all Americans, that the idea of America may survive. Not for a man. For the ideal.

I believe everyone on that mission understood that ideal. And now the last living link to that moment, that mission, is severed. But their willingness to risk that sacrifice, in that mission, in that moment, meant the survival of the ideal that is most truly America.

The damage done to Japan by the bombs of Doolittle’s Raiders was relatively insignificant. Japan itself barely noted the raid.

Imagine the effect, though, upon discouraged Americans, bludgeoned by one defeat after another, with the forces of the Axis seemingly unstoppable and triumphant, when banner headlines carried the news: TOKYO BOMBED!

The exaltation of a moment when hope is renewed, when faith is renewed, when belief is renewed, is something we should seek to understand and always remember. It shouldn’t be moments in a war, not alone. When justice prevails in this country, when freedom is renewed and strengthened for every American, when the future becomes brighter and more accessible to all, those are the moments when the ideal of America is clarified. And those are the moment from which we draw the courage to look down a heaving flight deck and fling ourselves into the unknown to keep that idea, that ideal, alive.

In an earlier post I wrote about Richard Cole and the cups the Doolittle Raiders drank from at their reunions. One by one, as the survivors of the mission and the war passed away, those cups were turned over. Now the last cup is turned, and the last living link to what it was like to fly off a carrier deck and bomb Japan, in what, truthfully, was no more than the sort of gesture that tells an enemy the fight isn’t over, that link is dissolved.

Now all we have is history too easily forgotten. For the last cup, the last living link, is turned over. Now we must all remember the meaning behind those cups.

For those of us who remember, though, thank you, Col. Cole. Thank you for drinking from the cup. Thank you, and all who were with you, for your part in America.

Today in History

Today is September 1, 2017. Seventy-eight years ago World War II began, when the Nazis invaded Poland. The United States of America didn’t come in to that war until December 7, 1941, or, more technically, December 8, 1941, when Congress voted to declare war on Japan. As a side note, the US wasn’t legally at war with Germany until December 10, 1941, when Nazi Germany declared war on the US. That, despite the fact that the US Navy was in an undeclared shooting war with the U-boats of the Kriegsmarine under the so-called “Neutrality Patrol.” That “Neutrality Patrol” was a risky endeavor for the US Navy. Some of you may have heard of the USS Reuben James, DD-245, a World War 1 era destroyer sunk by a U-boat on October 31, 1941, while engaged in Neutrality Patrol duty.

The US was at war with Germany, then, from December 10, 1941, through May 8, 1945 — VE Day — not quite three and a half years. The US was at war with Japan from December 8, 1941, through August 15, 1945, when Japan ceased hostilities, even though the formal surrender wasn’t signed until September 2, 1945. So, something less than three years and nine months for us Yanks, but nearly six years to the day for the British, who declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939.

World War II, in some ways, involved every single person in the United States, Europe, Russia, and Japan. Over twenty million died. Six million of those dead were deliberately exterminated by the Nazi policy of genocide towards those deemed to be “untermenschen” — Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs, those with birth defects and subnormal intelligence. This policy of “racial superiority” painted the Nazis as enemies of humanity and civilization for all time, a stain that will never, can never, be erased.

Lesser known to us in the West are the atrocities inflicted by the Empire of Japan upon the people of China. Some scholars contend that World War II actually began in 1937, when the Japanese went to war to conquer China. The Japanese religion of Shinto taught that the Japanese were superior to all other people of the Earth. This belief, like the Nazi belief in their own “racial superiority,” enabled the Japanese military to behave with the utmost bestiality in China and during the war with the Allies in the Pacific. The total casualties of that side of the war will never be known.

World War II ended 72 years ago. The veterans of that war are mostly gone. Too soon, they will all be gone. Their memories will be lost to us. The nature of the war they fought against fascism, bigotry, and intolerance is in danger of being lost with them.

Let’s remember a time when this entire country came together with a common cause, to defeat enemies who espoused genocide and bigotry as the norm.

Let’s keep that memory alive, lest we be scorned by those who fought for us.

To End an Era

Twenty years ago I met this old guy at an air show. He looked like the kind of guy you picture as a grandfather, a sweet benign smile that lit up his eyes, soft-spoken, white hair where he had any hair left on his head. Wrinkles. Age spots. Thick glasses.

He had his log of missions flown in World War II. Turns out he was a flight engineer / upper turret gunner with the 2nd Bomb Group, 15th AF.

“That’s when I shot down an ME-109,” he said, pointing to the date written in the log. He was the only veteran assigned to a new crew. The other gunners used the wrong lubrication on their weapons, and their guns jammed up as a result. He, however, knew the proper way to lubricate his machine guns so they’d operate in the severe cold of the stratosphere where the 2nd Bomb Group flew their missions. “Boy, after that, my crew thought I walked on water.”

Then he told me about the “Last Man Club.” Local veterans of World War One started it. There was a prize for the last man still alive of the original group. I don’t remember what it was. Maybe it was a bottle of brandy, or champagne. Maybe they all contributed to a fund. The point was, it went to the last man. The last man who remembered going over the top at Chateau-Thierry or Belleau Wood. What that was like.

A good friend of mine, Brad Kurlancheek, sent me a link to a story about the Doolittle Raiders and their version of the Last Man Club, which inspired this post. Here’s the link; it’s well worth a look.

http://www.history.com/news/one-final-toast-for-the-doolittle-raiders

Richard E. Cole, who served as Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot, is the last man living who remembers what it was like to take off in a B-25 from the pitching deck of the USS Hornet, April 18, 1942.

The image that struck me the most from that article was the picture of the silver cups the surviving Raiders used to toast each other during their reunions. When one of the Raiders died, they turned his cup over.

Now only Richard Cole’s cup is left. The last man. All the other cups belonging to all the other Raiders have been turned over.

To me there’s something poignant in that image. Who, after all, gets to turn over Cole’s cup? Imagine being the one appointed. You aren’t a Raider, but for some reason — maybe because you are the eldest surviving child of a Raider — you’re chosen to perform the ceremony, because make no mistake, that’s what it is, a ceremony. In the simple act of turning over a silver cup, you perform something mundane and earth-changing at the same time. You end an era. The last living link to that morning, April 18, 1942, is severed. After that, history consists of silver cups, turned upside down. Those upside-down silver cups will be an exhibit in a museum. People walk by and look at them and wonder what all the fuss is about, and why those guys decided to have those cups made. Why those guys wanted to remember that morning when America was losing the war, and they volunteered to be at the very tip of the spear America would build over the next three years to hurl against Japan.

At another air show, twenty years ago, I had the chance to shake hands with a man who was part of that spear. I got his autograph, and I shook his hand and thanked him. Just a simple, normal handshake, a courtesy you perform without thinking.

Only the man was Thomas Ferebee, bombardier on the Enola Gay, and the hand I shook was the one on the bombsight, August 6, 1945, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

A man, or a silver cup turned upside down; and a link to history, that whispers to you, whose message you must make the effort to hear, to really listen to that whispering.

Listen. Just listen.

Things you shouldn’t do

…early in the morning, before finishing your first cup of coffee, with a cat on your lap. And one of those things is to answer a comment on your blog about your stories!

A very kind gentleman wrote to me to express his appreciation for my novels, and to tell me a little about his father. I’m saying “gentleman” and “father” because the mistake I made was, somehow, to erase his comment! So instead of replying directly to him, I’m writing this post.

I guess I’m saying I should know better than to try and do too many things at once, especially early (-ish) in the morning.

There may even be some way to resurrect that comment, but I think I’m just going to have to own up to my mistake, say mea culpa, and move on with what I wanted to say, which was thank you.

What’s your name, pal? Stan, or Sam? Maybe you can tell I’m not too happy with myself. I read about your dad, who was with the 49th Fighter Group in the SW Pacific. He wanted to fly, like so many youngsters of his generation, and only poor eyesight kept him out of the cockpit. But he still followed his dream; if he couldn’t fly himself, he could keep ’em flying.

I understand the modern USAF has a saying, “No Air Power without Ground Power.” Imagine this guy standing under a hot sun. It’s the tropics, so that sun shines down from directly above, and New Guinea? Guys who were in Vietnam might compare notes with guys who served in New Guinea for which theater qualified as “Boonies Numbah Ten Thou.” Further, bad chow, no fresh meat, fruit, milk, or vegetables, for months on end. Some accounts even say the medical staff of the 5th Air Force worried about scurvy. That’s how bad the situation was from a supply standpoint.

My commenter also mentioned his father was at Dobodura. “Dobo” has an interesting place in the history of the theater. Before the Japanese landing at Buna (July 1942) the Allies scouted the north coast of Papua New Guinea near Buna for a forward landing field. The region between Dobodura and Popondetta was selected, but in the event building an airfield at Dobodura had to wait until the Australian Army could push the Japanese back over the Owen Stanley Mountains to their start line at Buna and Gona.

My commenter’s father was there for that. How I wish I could have spoken to him!

In the event the man in question continued to serve our country until finally retiring from the reserves as a Lieutenant Colonel. That’s pretty awesome.

So, pal, I hope you read this, because I really want to know your name, and maybe we could exchange emails and you could tell me a little more about your father? I have an ulterior motive, after all. He was there in the time frame I’m writing for book six in my series, Shoestring’s End. I’m not a historian, but I try to keep my fiction as true to history as I can.

Some people would say I need all the help I can get. Hope you see this and respond, but anyway, thank you, and my thanks to your father for his service.

The Vast Ocean

This morning I finished reading Norman Dixon’s fascinating book, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence. It was sufficiently thought-provoking that I suspect I will have to go back and reread it several times, taking notes and making comments as I go.

However, I don’t intend to summarize the book or my impressions of its content. Instead I want to comment on the bibliography and chapter notes at the end of the book.

Perusing the bibliography of a non-fiction book is sometimes an exercise in self-congratulation and sometimes one of self-flagellation. I consider myself fairly well-read, and I was thinking, as I turned to the bibliography at the end, that I would find any number of books that I had already read. Partly this was because many of the factual accounts and a number of the conclusions reached by Dixon were in accord with things I had already read.

I didn’t count the number of works and papers cited by Dixon in his bibliography. They were numerous, somewhere between one hundred and two hundred, at a guess. I’m not a professional psychologist, so I didn’t think I’d be familiar with many of the papers or their authors, but I really did think at least some of the works cited by Dixon would be known to me. Or, at the least, I thought I’d know the authors.

Apparently I’m not as well-read as I thought. I recognized a mere handful of the authors, such as Liddell-Harte, Forester, and Glenn Wilson. The only book I read in that long list was Forester’s. That’s C.S. Forester, better known for his Horatio Hornblower series, but here cited as the author of a novel titled The General, which I read with great interest if not exactly pleasure when I was much younger.

In thinking over the reasons for this, one might be that Dixon’s work was first published in the mid-1970s, when I was still at university. Much of what I’ve read that would be relevant to Dixon’s subject matter I encountered 15 to 20 years later, when I became interested in the subject. So perhaps the relative familiarity of Dixon’s work derives from reading authors who came after him.

Or perhaps I’m not as well-read as I thought.

Regardless, I had to chuckle at myself when my certainty of a smug experience consisting of, “Yes, I’ve read that, very good” and “Aha, but of course he quoted from this,” and “I remember reading that, most intriguing” to a steadily growing confusion when I realized I had read virtually none of his sources!

This in turn led me to wonder at what point one may truly regard oneself as well-educated. One might perceive a certain complacent self-satisfaction in that term, perhaps, and that might be the lesson I should derive.

Sir Isaac Newton once remarked, if I remember the quote correctly, that however brilliant he was perceived by the rest of the world, to himself he always seemed like a small boy bending over to pick up pebbles on a beach that bordered a vast ocean. Curiosity impels me to look that up, and a moment’s Google search reveals the following from the Cambridge Library exhibition on Sir Isaac:

“I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Footprints_of_the_Lion/introduction.html

So perhaps from time to time it does one good to be reminded how very, very vast that ocean of knowledge is, and perhaps to understand that any one man’s collection of pretty shells and pebbles is necessarily limited.

The Much-Maligned Bell P-39

Bell P-39 night-firing. Note engine exhausts and air scoop behind the cockpit. Wing guns are .30-cal., the two guns firing through the propeller are .50-cal., and the 37-mm cannon is firing through the prop spinner.

Before I started writing Boxcar Red Leader, I knew there was an airplane called the P-39, that it was built by Bell Aircraft, and was fairly unique among fighter designs of the era in having tricycle landing gear and the engine mounted in the fuselage behind the pilot, to leave room in the nose of the airplane for a 37-mm cannon. The propeller driveshaft passed from the engine behind the cockpit, under the pilot’s seat, and connected to a gearbox that drove the propeller. The P-39 was a contemporary of the far-better-known Curtiss P-40. I also knew the airplane was called the “Iron Dog” and there seemed to be a sizable contingent of former P-39 pilots who actively disliked the airplane. There’s even a verse about it, in the old Air Corps folk song “Give Me Operations:”

Oh, don’t give me a P-39
The engine is mounted behind
She’ll stall and she’ll spin
And she’ll auger you in
Don’t give me a P-39!

Evidently the center of gravity and the center of lift in the P-39 were in a very sensitive relationship, far more so than in other, more conventional airplanes. This resulted in an airplane very sensitive to pitch inputs, such that only very small increments of elevator control were needed to effect pitch change. This goes directly to the “she’ll stall and she’ll spin” verse above. When pulling gee in a tight turn one pulls back on the stick; if not done with skill, the turn will tighten to the point where the g-load exceeds the lift generated by the wings, causing what is known as an “accelerated stall.” Entering a stall from a turn will lead to a spin, and evidently the P-39 had interesting spin characteristics, to the point where many pilots were convinced the airplane would actually tumble end over end.

On the other hand, there were pilots who absolutely loved the Airacobra. Chuck Yeager flew the airplane in training, loved it, and relates in his autobiography a conversation he once had with a Russian pilot who flew the P-39 – successfully! – against the Luftwaffe. Edwards Park flew the P-39 in New Guinea, and his account of that time is written in his book, Nanette: Her Pilot’s Love Story, a narrative I recommend as one of the best books about flying I’ve ever read.

My perception is that much of the dislike directed at the P-39 resulted from the pilots who were thrown into the airplane straight out of flight school and then expected to fly the P-39 against the experienced Zero pilots of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the skies over New Guinea. Most of these pilots had never flown an airplane more powerful or faster than an AT-6 trainer. Later in the war pilots like this would be sent to an OTU, or Operational Training Unit, to encounter the P-39 or P-40 under the relatively benign conditions of a stateside training base. In the Pacific, in 1942, kids fresh out of flying school were put in P-39s and P-40s and sent out against the Japanese. The loss rate, from accidents and combat, was horrendous.

The P-39, like the P-40, was equipped with the Allison V-1710 engine. The V-1710 was a fairly good engine, but in the P-39 and the P-40 it had only a single-stage supercharger, and, as a result, the performance of both airplanes fell off sharply above 17,000 feet. If what you have to defend Port Moresby and Seven-Mile Drome from Jap bombers flying at 23,000 feet is a P-39, you face a difficult tactical problem, one not helped by the fact that the defenders of Seven-Mile rarely had enough warning to climb high enough to intercept Japanese bombers with any hope of success.

Between the high loss rate and the poor performance, compared to the A6M2 Zero fighter the P-39 found itself matched against, it’s no wonder the pilots disliked the airplane.

Still, I kind of like the P-39. I’ll never have a chance to fly one, to see for myself just how sensitive and well-balanced those controls are, or if she really will tumble, but there’s something about the way the airplane looks.

Over and above any of that, the P-39 was one of the two pursuit airplanes the Army Air Forces had at the beginning of World War Two available in significant numbers. It didn’t matter, from that perspective, how the pilots felt about the airplanes. It was what they had.