Eagles at War (15 page)

Sometimes Patty and Bandy would steal away to explore the island in a rusty 1933 De Soto sedan the Maintenance Squadron commander had loaned them, exploring the rough back roads, farm wagon-worn ruts between the fields of pineapple or sugar cane. Other times they would take long walks around Kahana Bay. People told them that they were missing the real beauty of spring and summer, but they found more than enough to admire, from the blatantly sexual antherium to nameless tiny white flowers. And, best of all, the kids slept soundly at the other end of their spartan, lanai-style open guest quarters. At sunup, the outrageously feathered birds would begin an aria competition, birdy opera stars practicing voice exercises. The chorus would start off low, building in volume until it sounded like an explosion in an aviary. It was a lovely way to awaken, and for the first time in years they had time for leisurely, familiarly conjugal lovemaking, touching and playing affectionately, telling each other with gestures how good it was to be together, how foolish all the arguments were, building to a mellow satisfaction that still left a little edge of appetite. There were quiet talks and little courtesies afterward—getting the coffee, bringing a magazine—gestures more important than the joining. Their life took on a new domesticity; in Hawaii, twenty-four hundred miles from the States, they achieved a closeness and a sense of family that had eluded them in California or in Ohio. Patty knew that most of the problem had been her own flying career—it was time that she put it behind her.

The happy tone for the entire trip had been set at their initial reception at Wheeler Field. Bandfield had been briefed—warned—that Willie Westerfield was the commander of the 19th Air Base Group, overseeing the two maintenance squadrons with which Bandy would be working. Their last meeting had been many years ago, when Westerfield had scuttled Bandfield's flying career—or so they had thought. As tall and thin as Ichabod Crane, Westerfield had been the senior officer of the board investigating the mid-air collision between Bandfield and his fellow cadet Charles Lindbergh. Bandfield still stirred with resentment when he remembered Westerfield, in a cleft-palate Kentucky twang marshalling the "evidence," his thin-slit alligator eyes staring unblinking at the board as he recommended that Bandfield be washed out. Lindbergh got off scot-free.

What the review board didn't know, and Bandfield was too young and scared to tell them, was that Westerfield's recommendation was influenced by another matter—Bandfield's brief, chaste romance with a lovely Mexican girl named Maria. Captain Westerfield was very interested in Maria himself.

Time and Patty had long since healed Bandfield's wounds, and he had probably gone further in flying out of the Air Service than he would have in it, so he was prepared to be friendly. Still, he was a little apprehensive as he stood opposite the main barracks, Building 102, to face the row of family quarters. Like their guesthouse, the houses were of undistinguished island architecture, but the grounds were studded with impressive barrel-bottomed coconut palms and breathtaking foliage, all held together with the drafting table neatness of a white-washed peacetime permanent station. A young adjutant, Lieutenant Dunning, puppy-eager to please, escorted them through Westerfield's quarters toward the sound of ukulele music and laughter. At Army flier gatherings, the celebration—that is, the pouring of drinks—started the moment the first person showed up.

The Bandfields followed Dunning over mat-scattered polished teakwood floors toward the garden, where a forest of leis served as a backdrop for Westerfield, Adam's apple bobbing, his tanned face betraying both years of drinking and many hours of flying. Bandfield felt a little squeeze of apprehension when he realized that the woman next to him was a slightly plumper but still beautiful Maria.

Westerfield stepped forward, leis in hand, twanging, "Aloha! Welcome to Wheeler Field!"

Bandfield didn't know how to salute a major carrying flowers, so he stuck out his hand instead. Westerfield enfolded it, pulling him to him, and boomed out again, "You may remember my wife—Maria, Major Bandfield."

Maria slid toward him, throwing first her leis and then her arms around his neck, kissing him as she said, "Oh, Bandy, you've come for me at last!"

"He made me do it. That's the sort of thing that keeps him from being promoted, that and his drinking, but I love him anyway." With a few words the two women established that they were married to equally goofy mates, always a basis for instant inter-wife friendship.

Pilot reunions are a little different than most; instead of recounting old friends' successes and failures, they tend to run to who has crashed and how, with the best stories being foolish survived accidents. Underneath lay the tacit understanding that those who crashed were somehow at fault to a degree the speakers could never be. Instead of "Did you hear old So-and-so got divorced," it was "Old So-and-so propped his old Jenny and it got away from him! He grabbed hold of the elevator, and the damned thing dragged him from Clover Field to Long Beach," or "Remember 'Downwind' Faulkner? Always drunk? Bailed out of a B-10 over Cleveland, chute didn't open, went right through the roof of a saloon, landed on the bar! Talk about poetic justice."

When they got down to business, Bandfield found that Westerfield had invited all the key people he'd be working with. He had been worried that he might be viewed as a feather-merchant expert from out of town, but the pilots were as concerned as he was about the overheating problems of their new P-40s and welcomed Bandfield's experience. The most interesting among them was Lieutenant James Curtiss Lee, affable, ingratiating, yet somehow disturbing to Bandfield.

Lee was just back from China, where Chennault's newly formed Flying Tigers were experiencing exactly the same P-40 engine-cooling problem that Bandfield was in Hawaii to solve. Chennault, now a brigadier general in the Chinese Air Force, had directed Lee to go wherever he had to—Hawaii, Wright Field, the Curtiss plant in Buffalo—but to solve the problem. Lee was happy to have a chance to do it on Oahu and glad to work with Bandfield. Bandfield knew he needed Lee's help, but by the end of the party he had figured out his unease with the man. Like of lot of up-and-coming young officers, Lee's charm masked an implicit message: be nice to me now, because you're going to be working for me later.

*

Wheeler Field Flight Line/December 7, 1941

Bandfield left a pot of coffee for Patty when he went to meet Jim Lee at six o'clock—the two men were both early risers. The line chief, Master Sergeant Norman Higbee, was on deck as always; he resolutely refused to let anyone work on "his" airplanes without being present. Higbee was old Army, broad-shouldered and big-bellied, a hillbilly with sun-bleached hair that stood white against skin that burned but never tanned. He was suspicious of everyone, officers, the native Hawaiians, and especially the new troops filling up the tents between the ramp and the runway. Equally devoted to work and to booze, he divided his days and nights between them. He didn't get along with many people; he did get along with Bandfield and, to a lesser extent, with Lee.

In the last two weeks, the three men had pretty well isolated the engine-cooling problem. The task of forcing enough air through the radiator was enormously difficult. The designers always wished to minimize the size and frontal areas of the radiators to reduce drag and were always optimistic about the resulting cooling effectiveness. Then, as other factors forced changes—higher power settings, cowling modifications, operation in different climates—the engines would overheat just as they always had in the past.

Higbee had watched doubtfully when Bandfield removed the cowling and drilled holes in it. He was even more dubious when tufted strings were inserted through the holes. No one had authorized the modification, and he hated to see a flatland foreigner, even a good Joe like Bandfield, punching holes in one of his airplanes. But Bandy conned him along, and when they ran the airplane up on the ground, letting it roar at full power while the temperature indicator climbed, all three stood close together observing how the tufted flows danced, peering through the shimmering lethal disc of the propeller. Once, for comparison, they had run the engine with only a few of the strings in the holes, and the remaining tufts lay perfectly flat, with the temperature leveled off well within the normal operating range. It told them that there was some sort of pressure disturbance around the lip of the intake, one that might be cured by drilling more holes. They would test the theory this morning.

Jim Lee was holding the P-40's radiator cowling, a piece of aluminum as large and shapely as a 1941 Cadillac fender, running his fingers over the curved inner edge. "They build them strong enough to take a beating from the air pressure, vibration, everything. Firing the guns must shake the hell out of it."

Bandfield nodded. "This curve is a little airfoil, giving us lift where we don't want it. I think it spoils the airflow through the radiator by setting up a burble at the mouth. Let's drill the bejesus out of this one to try to break up the pressure area, leak it right through. Then we can fill in behind the lip with putty, tape it down, and run it up on the ground. Between smoothing the inside contour and boring holes in the lip, we should have it."

Lee nodded. "Sounds reasonable. Why don't you get the guns belted up, and I'll take it out over to the firing range and see what the effect of firing the guns is."

Higbee spoke up. "Way ahead of you, Lieutenant. I've already belted up this one, and I gotta spare standing by, fully fueled and armed. All we'd have to do is swap the chin cowlings and go."

They had finished the work and were tightening the Dzus fasteners on the cowling when Lee looked up to see some aircraft, so well remembered from his China combat experience, sliding in over the Waianae Mountains. His jaws moved wordlessly, not believing the familiar shapes could be here, so far from China—then he sputtered, "Holy Christ, here come the fucking Japs!"

Just to the left of Kolekole pass, two large formations of aircraft were outlined against the mist cresting the green haze of the range, shadowing past like fish in a shoal.

"The first group's dive-bombers—looks like Mitsubishi fighters behind them." Lee jumped off the wing and ran to the other P-40 while Bandfield threw himself in the cockpit, hands flying around the controls to get the engine started. Higbee pulled the chocks from each plane, then sprang to the wing of a third Curtiss, opening up the access plates to load ammunition.

Within a minute, the two P-40Cs were rolling straight ahead into the wind, taking off from the grass triangle enclosed by the intersecting runways.

In both cockpits, the pilots automatically went through the myriad motions necessary to raise the gear, close the cowl flaps, snap the switch to charge the six . 50-caliber wing guns, and turn the reflector sights on, all the housekeeping details of preparing for battle, while at the same time tracking the Japanese, choosing a place to attack. It took Bandy two and a half minutes to lead the climb to five thousand feet, get some altitude to trade for speed, and take a moment to be sure they were properly prepared for combat. A moment of stark terror in Spain had taught him that there was nothing worse than pressing the trigger of unarmed guns. Looking to the south as he turned, he saw swirls of aircraft making magpie dives into the boiling clouds of smoke rising from Pearl Harbor.

Anger and reluctant admiration forced him to think, They're really working us over. It's one hell of a strike! For a moment he debated about flying to Pearl for his attack, then realized he'd lose time going back to rearm and refuel. There were plenty of targets over Wheeler.

Higbee was on the wing of a fourth P-40, laying in with sweating hands the belts of . 50-caliber ammunition brought out to him by some grinning young soldiers, so inexperienced they were enjoying the bombing as much as fireworks over a carnival midway. He darted a glance up from his work in time to see two bombs destroy the supply building, blowing its corrugated roof into four huge waving scythes that slashed through palm trees like a steak knife through a filet. Another bomber flashed by, crew members' heads visible, black-goggled coconuts behind the glistening canopy. Higbee saw the big rising-sun insignia and made a mental note of the black tail number, EII-214, irrationally determined to put the pilot on report for low-flying.

As the Japanese bombers circled the field, a wave of Zero fighters came in low to strafe the rows of immobile aircraft, sitting-duck targets tied to the ramp. It was clear that the Japanese had practiced well, their quick bursts shifting from plane to plane. Each burning plane threatened its neighbor, and the field came alive with people trying to save them, pushing them away from the fires, even as airplanes exploded and hangars collapsed. Partly clad soldiers swarmed from the tent area like ants, frantically pitching in to put out the fires or prepare planes for takeoff. Higbee and a crew of four were able to get four P-40s and three McNaughton Sidewinders ready for any pilots who showed up, while other scratch teams were loading them with ammunition belts.

One of the Japanese Aichi D3A bombers had strayed out of formation. A beautiful aircraft, with a slender, long greenish-silver fuselage and Spitfire-like elliptical wings punctuated at each end with the rising sun insignia, it reminded Bandfield of the old Curtiss A-12 attack plane.

Bandfield had learned combat in Spain and honed his knowledge in England, and he knew that shooting at an airplane was easy but hitting it was very difficult. He held his fire, letting the Aichi fill his sights, approaching so close that he could see the rear gunner taking pictures of burning Wheeler Field with a hand-held camera. Thinking, Now there's a real fucking tourist, he pressed the control stick trigger. Only the three guns in the left wing fired, but the stream of bullets exploded the Aichi's center fuel tank, sending the pilot and his tourist gunner to oblivion.