Wingmen (9781310207280) (13 page)

Ten minutes
after the destroyer was sighted the
Constitution
’s escorting ships hove into
view, then the carrier herself, a tiny rectangle of gray surrounded
by the parallel wakes of destroyers and cruisers. It was a good
sight, and for a moment, in his mind, Jack was back with the
Hornet
,
among friends, on the way to Tokyo, surrounded and absorbed by the
strength and security of throbbing steel, pulsating power. It’s
great, he thought, just great to be home.

Fred watched
Higgins’ Hellcat bank sharply to the left and head down. He counted
aloud to fifteen and followed him, using stick and rudder to swing
ninety degrees exactly and cut his altitude in half. Glancing over
his right shoulder, he saw Fitzsimmons make his turn and settle
into the new course. Looking to his left, he saw task group ships
heading directly for him. He felt somehow lucky: He would be the
second pilot aboard
Ironsides
, preceded only by the exec, who was flying
in the place of the skipper.
The skipper
, he thought;
too bad.
It must be some honor
to be the first aboard a ship on her first operational cruise. Now
Higgins would have the privilege.

Ahead and to
the left of him, Higgins made his second left turn to take him on a
course down the port side of the carrier. Hoping he wasn’t too
close to the leading plane, Fred made his turn and leveled off
behind the exec’s aircraft. The exec dropped his landing gear and
tail hook. Fred dropped his. Behind him, he knew, in an aerial game
of follow-the-leader, the remaining Hellcats of VF-20 were engaging
in the same ritual, and behind them, the thirty-five Dauntlesses of
VB-20 were doing the same. After the dive bombers would come the
Avengers of VT-20, now circling high overhead. Finally,
ignominiously bringing up the rear, were the four Corsairs, led by
Jack Hardigan, and the four Curtiss Helldivers.

Ahead of Fred,
the exec’s Hellcat passed over a slender light cruiser bristling
with gun mounts. As Fred approached it, he noticed groups of
sailors lining the rails, watching. He released the latch on his
canopy and slid it back, surprised at the rush of cool air and the
roar of engine noise. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes,
then waved to the sailors on the cruiser. A few waved back,
probably thinking what a lucky stiff he was to be having such a
good time up there in the air. In reality, Fred was beginning to
sweat his first landing on the
Constitution
.

During the last
part of his formal flight training, Fred had made his first landing
on a ship underway. At the end of that phase, the officer in charge
of the flight school had addressed the assembled students and said,
among a host of patriotic platitudes and we’re-depending-on-you’s,
that there were tens of thousands of pilots in the world but only a
few who had been trained to make a landing on a carrier deck. He
said that the average Army pilot wouldn’t even know how to go about
doing it and would be scared out of his pants if he had to try.
What he neglected to say was that most Navy pilots had no idea how
to go about it the first time either and were also scared out of
their pants when the time came to try it.

Much later,
sitting in the Officer’s Club bar in San Diego, Fred had overheard
a group of pilots trading sea stories about their bad landings. One
had said that he had been making landings, hundreds of them, for
over a year, when one day he just got rattled and was waved off six
times before producing a satisfactory approach. When he got the cut
and caught a wire, his right tire blew out, the landing gear
collapsed, and he ended in the starboard catwalk hanging straight
down, looking at the blue water a hundred feet below him. Another
complained about the turbulence caused by the
Saratoga
’s massive island
structure, saying that once he got a wave-off from the landing
signals officer while landing and had poured on the coal, but a
downdraft caused him to catch a wire anyway, with full power on.
He, too, had ended up in the catwalk with a five-inch gun barrel in
the cockpit with him. He could laugh about it only in retrospect.
Then the group had solemnly drunk a toast to a good old boy who had
pancaked—whatever that was—right in front of the plane guard
destroyer and had been run over by the ship that was supposed to
save his life. Fred had noticed that pilots always seemed to be
drunk when they told such stories.

Ahead of him,
the exec lowered his flaps and began circling left on his final
approach. Fred was just off the port bow of the
Constitution
, passing down her
port side. From this close, she looked much bigger. Crowds of
people jammed the narrow catwalks ringing the flight deck. Fred
wondered how many of them were spectators and how many were
supposed to be there. He would find out in about a minute. The
great vessel, with its five-inch gun mounts, its hulking island
topped by a jumble of rotating radar antennae, its flat expanse of
flight deck, passed quickly by him. Then it was time for his own
final approach.

As he circled
in, Fred found the LSO’s windscreen and the landing cables, then
the tiny figure of the landing officer himself, with his two
brightly colored paddles. They called this imaginary,
three-dimensional highway, which terminated on the after end of the
flight deck, the groove. The LSO was in sight throughout the short
trip. Fred just had time to see that the deck was still empty; that
Higgins had taken a wave-off. Fred would be the first to report
aboard.

You’re high and
to the left, said the paddles. Now you’re good. A little fast. Your
right wing is high. You’re good. You’re good. Cut.

Fred pulled the
throttle all the way out, saw the deck rush up to meet him, felt
the first rough contact of aircraft and ship. Then the arresting
gear grabbed him and slammed the Hellcat to a stop, throwing Fred
forward against the restraining straps. Fred looked up now,
astonished at being where he was with so little difficulty. He
slipped his goggles up on his head. The sweat poured down his face,
and he knew instinctively that he would enjoy doing this for a
living.

The ready room
was in the island. Fred remembered as much from the briefing given
by the skipper. He was thankful for this much information, even if
it wasn’t very specific, because he would otherwise have had to
search literally hundreds of steel-gray compartments, anyone of
which could have been the ready room for VF-20. Fred was about to
find out the hard way, just how big an aircraft carrier was.

He climbed from
the Hellcat carrying his plotting board and the miscellaneous
accouterments of his flight gear. Behind him a multitude of figures
in colored jerseys descended on his aircraft and began to push it
down the deck toward the bow of the ship. Fred was suddenly out of
the familiar surroundings of his aircraft and smack in the middle
of uncertain, almost alien, territory. Not wishing to appear stupid
even though he knew that most sailors considered ensigns to be
quite stupid, he headed for the only man who didn’t appear occupied
and asked him where the ready room was.

“Huh?” said the
man, almost shouting to overcome the sound of the twenty-five knots
of wind that threatened to carry away everything Fred was holding
on to.

“Where are the
ready rooms?” Fred shouted. Overhead another Hellcat took a
wave-off and snarled down the length of the flight deck, tail hook
dangling.

“Beats me,”
said the sailor. He wore a close-fitting cowl the same color as his
jersey, and it covered his entire head except for the face.

Fred decided
that further talk was futile and left the man standing there. He
headed for the only open hatch he could see, stepped inside, and
was instantly gratified to be out of the wind. He looked around,
saw nothing that he could recognize, then bravely went forward. It
was, he decided, better than standing there helplessly until
someone wandered by. When he turned the first corner he came to, he
collided with an admiral.

“Pardon me,
sir,” said Fred, noticing the single gold star on each collar
tab.

“That’s all
right, son,” said the admiral. He was a fiftyish man with a
friendly face and an emaciatedly thin body, on which his uniform
hung like a well-pressed rag.

“I was just
heading for the ready room,” said Fred. He picked up a black grease
pencil dropped in the collision. “You wouldn’t know where to find
it, would you, sir?”

“As a matter of
fact,” said the admiral, “I don’t have the foggiest idea. Here, let
me help you.” The wizened little man took the grease pencil and
tucked it into a pocket on Fred’s left arm.

“Thank you,
sir.”

“I was just
heading topside to watch the air group come aboard. Would you care
to join me?”

“Why, uh, yes,
sir, I guess I would.” Fred turned aside in the narrow passageway,
to let the admiral by, still slightly awed by the man’s rank and
his obvious friendliness.

“You must have
been the first one aboard,” said the admiral over his shoulder. The
two hurried down the corridor Fred had just traversed, turned into
a narrow flight of steel steps with a single handrail, and headed
up.

“Yes, sir, I
was. The first one was actually the exec but he took a wave-off,
and then I came in.” They reached the first level above the flight
deck, circled around, and headed up again.

“Well, let me
be the first to welcome you aboard the
Ironsides
. She’s a fine ship, don’t
you think?”

“Yes, sir, I
think she is.”

“How many ships
have you been aboard, son?”

Another deck,
another ladder.

Fred was
getting tired of climbing. “I never kept track, sir, but I think
about two.”

The admiral
laughed. When they reached a final level, he pulled open a
watertight door that led outside. The two men stepped through and
onto a narrow steel ledge with a chest-high wall. Fred looked down
on the flight deck in time to see a Hellcat (it looked like Hughes)
catch the last wire and plunge to a halt. “Nice view from up here,
sir,” he said.

“It certainly
is, son. It’s so good we discourage spectators from coming up and
getting in the way.” The admiral leaned against the retaining wall
and looked out over the flight deck, which was three decks down.
His loose uniform flapped in the wind. Fred put his plotting board
down on the deck and moved up next to the admiral.

“I guess I
haven’t been very polite, sir. My name’s Ensign Trusteau.”

A Hellcat came
down the groove, plopped onto the deck, and screeched to a halt.
Blue-jerseyed sailors scrambled across the deck to release the tail
hook.

“Ensign
Trusteau. What the hell’s your first name?”

“Fred, sir.
Frederick.”

“Well, Fred,
I’m Clarence Berkey. You can call me Admiral.” Below them the deck
crew manhandled the Hellcat’s wings into the folded position and
began to roll it down the deck. “Jesus H. Christ, that’s a slow
bunch of plane pushers,” said the admiral. “I’ve seen faster crews
on a Chinese junk.”

“Maybe they’re
just inexperienced,” replied Fred. He’d thought the plane pushers
were pretty fast; the organized confusion that reigned on the deck
below would look impressive to any but the most experienced.

“You take that
situation over there,” said the admiral, pointing to the port
corner of the flight deck forward, where Fred’s aircraft and two
others were sitting, wings folded and wheels chocked. “They should
have put the first one on the elevator and sent it down. When the
rest of the group gets aboard and they have to put up a CAP,
they’ll have to shuffle all these goddamn air planes like Chinese
checkers.” Fred looked for and found the forward elevator, in the
center of the flight deck.

“But that would
leave a hole in the deck,” he said, “and they’d have to work around
it.”

“Not that
elevator, Fred. There’s another one over there on the edge of the
flight deck, right about in the middle. It’s a new invention. They
call it the deck edge elevator. It’s revolutionizing plane
pushing.”

“That’s very
interesting,” said Fred, hoping he didn’t sound stupid. It
was
very
interesting. Another fighter landed, snagging the wire while still
airborne, and crashing to the deck like a falling stone.

“That LSO’s
bringing them in too high. What was his name?” The admiral pulled a
battered little leather notebook from a back pocket, thumbed
through its handwritten pages and came to a name. “Lieutenant
Harden. Got to talk to him.”

“Pardon me,
sir, but are you the force commander?”

The admiral
laughed. “Not me, son. I’m on vacation.”

“You must be
the—”
What was it
the skipper called him?