The Corps IV - Battleground Read online

  He had taken a mug of black coffee and a piece of cold toast and walked out to the flight line. He was afraid that he would throw up and didn't want to vomit in the cockpit.

  The plane chief was there, looking over the armorer's shoulders as he checked the Brownings and the links and placement of the belted.50s. They exchanged salutes. The plane chief, a stocky Italian from Florida whose name was Anthony Florentine), was about as old as Bill was, and took his work and the Marine Corps seriously. He was a corporal.

  "Good morning, Sir," he said.

  "Good morning. Everything shipshape?"

  "Yes, Sir. Just checking the guns, Sir."

  Funny, it looked to me like you were playing chess.

  "You got the word, Sir, that we're to start engines at 0540?"

  "No, I didn't."

  Jesus, I have to take another dump!

  "The Skipper wants the engines warmed up for when the word comes, Sir."

  He looked at his watch. It was 0533. In seven minutes he would have to climb in that cockpit and hope that he didn't have nausea or diarrhea.

  He walked around the plane and did the preflight, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. When he finished he had four minutes to wait. He leaned against the Wildcat, just behind the cowl flaps.

  "I didn't see you in the mess, I wondered where you were,"

  Major Parks said, startling him. He hadn't seen The Skipper coming up.

  "Good morning, Sir."

  "Everything all right? You feeling OK?"

  "Yes, Sir, fine."

  "You got the word about warming the engines?"

  "Yes, Sir. I was about to get in."

  "A PBY radioed at five-twenty-five that it had spotted the Japanese fleet," Parks said. "I expect word anytime now that the Navy radar has picked up aircraft. I want to get off the ground as soon as we get a heading. Hit them as far away from here as possible."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "You're a good pilot, Bill. That's why I put you in a Wildcat. You don't get excited. That's a good thing for a fighter pilot. Excited pilots forget what they've been taught."

  "Yes, Sir."

  Translated, that means you have had second thoughts about putting me in a Wildcat, because I am very likely to get excited and forget what I've been taught, and would probably change your mind if there was time and put me in one of the goddamned Buffaloes. That being the case, you have decided to inspire the troops with confident words.

  Shit!

  Major Parks touched his arm.

  "Good luck," he said. "Good hunting."

  "Thank you, Sir."

  Major Parks was both a professional warrior and a realist. He knew that until the shooting actually started there was no way to predict how Lieutenant Dunn, or any of his pilots, would behave in combat. Even so, he had a belief that he could devise guidelines that would give him some indication-a hint if not a prediction-about which pilots could handle best the stress and terrors of combat. With that goal in mind, he had collected as much data as he could about the behavior of British fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain, the battle Churchill had described both accurately and eloquently: "Never in the history of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few."

  Parks wondered what the few were really like.

  Not without difficulty, he had learned that by and large they were no older than his young officers, and they'd been trained no better. They had also gone up against pilots with more experience than they had, yet they'd done very well.

  He'd found two notable differences between the British pilots and his own, perhaps the most important being that the English were defending their homes, literally fighting above their mothers and their girlfriends, where his kids would be fighting halfway around the world from theirs. They would be protecting their mothers and their girlfriends, too, but abstractly, over a wide and empty ocean.

  Secondly, the Brits had flown Spitfires against Messerschmidts. Both were splendid aircraft; it was a matter of opinion which was the better. One could charitably call the Wildcat the equal of the Zero, and perhaps when they had enough experience against the Zero to make a bona fide analysis, it would turn out to be so. But that could not be said about the Buffalo, which was hopelessly outclassed by the Zero, and probably by even the Kate.

  With no data worth a damn to really go on, Parks realized he would have to go with his gut feeling. He thought that commanders had probably been forced to go on their gut feeling from the beginning of time, but that offered little reassurance. His gut feeling (which he desperately hoped was not wishful thinking) was that his kids-and perhaps Bill Dunn in particular-would acquit themselves well.

  He had given Bill Dunn one of his precious few Wildcats because of that gut feeling. And perhaps, he thought, because sometimes when he saw Dunn on the flight line, a spunky little crew-cutted, clean-cut kid who looked more like a cheerleader than a Marine Officer, he reminded him of those young English kids standing beside their Spitfires in an East Anglian field.

  (Two)

  Lieutenant Bill Dunn watched The Skipper walk down the flight line to the next aircraft, which happened to be a Buffalo, and pause for a word with its pilot.

  I can't remember that guy's name! I'm about to go get killed with him, and I can't even remember his name. I wonder if he knows mine?

  He climbed up on the wing root.

  Corporal Florentino had already opened the canopy. As Bill lowered himself into the seat, Florentino climbed onto the wing root and watched, prepared to help, as Bill fastened his shoulder and lap belts, and then as Bill set the clock, the altimeter, and the rate of climb indicator to zero. He waited until Bill had checked the stick and rudder pedals for full movement, and then jumped off the wing root.

  Bill checked the emergency canopy release and the fuel gauge, then glanced out the canopy.

  "Ignition switch off, throttle open, mixture at idle cut off," he called. "Pull it through."

  Florentino grasped a propellor blade and pulled on it, then the next blade, and the next, until the engine had been turned through five revolutions. Otherwise, oil that had accumulated by gravity in the lower cylinders would still be there when the engine fired. Since oil does not compress, lower link rods would have been bent or broken.

  Bill put the Fuel Selector Valve handle to MAIN TANK and turned the crank opening the engine cowl flaps. He checked the propellor circuit breaker switch and then set it on AUTOMATIC. Outside, Corporal Florentino had charged the starter mechanism with a Type C cartridge, a kind of super-sized blank shotgun shell. When it fired, its energy would turn the engine over until it started.

  Bill set the supercharger on LOW, pushed the Carburetor Air handle in so that air would be delivered directly to the engine, and set the throttle for 1000 rpm.

  He looked to make sure that no one was near the propellor and that a ground crewman had a fire extinguisher ready to go.

  "Clear!" he called.

  Florentino made a wind-it-up motion.

  Bill turned the battery switch to ON, turned on the Emergency Fuel Pump, and watched as the fuel pressure gauge rose to fifteen pounds. Then he held the primer switch on for three seconds, turned the ignition switch to BOTH, and fired the starter cartridge.

  The propellor began to turn, and then there was the sound, rough, of the engine catching. The Wildcat shuddered, and the engine gave off a small cloud of blue smoke. He moved the mixture control to AUTO RICH and flicked the primer switch a couple of times until the engine smoothed out.

  He idled the engine at 1000 rpm, and then teased the throttle further open until it indicated 1200 rpm. There was nothing to do now but wait for the oil pressure and inlet temperature needles to "move into the green." This made reference to little green arcs painted on gauges and dials to show where the indicator needle should point, if things were as they were supposed to be. There were also little red arcs that indicated a dangerous temperature, or pressure, or the like.

  The oil pressure gauge almost immediately indica
ted 70 psi (Pounds Per Square Inch) and then the oil inlet temperature gauge needle came to life. It slowly began to move across the dial to the green arc, stopping at an indication of 86? Fahrenheit.

  Then he checked the magnetos, which provided the ignition spark to the engine, by switching from their normal BOTH position first to LEFT and then to RIGHT. The tachometer showed a drop of less than 100 rpm, which meant he had no problem there.

  The goddamn airplane is not going to suffer some fatal internal malady and keep me on the ground. That would have been nice. Not exactly heroic, but nice.

  He let it run another minute and then shut it down. It was warmed up and ready to go. He sat in the cockpit for another minute, listening to the creak of metal as it cooled, and then a Jeep came down the flight line with Captain John Carey at the wheel. He signaled down the flight line. Dunn had expected this. The word had come, and there would be last minute instructions and probably a pep talk.

  "We've been over this before," Major Parks conceded. "You all know where you're supposed to be when we get in the air. What we have now is where the enemy is: bearing 310, about 90 miles. Radar reports too many of them to count."

  Now he's going to say, "Go out there and give them hell, men! Win one for the Gipper! Semper Fi! To the Halls of Montezuma!"

  Major Parks said, "I'll see you all later at the debriefing."

  Bill was a little surprised to find himself trotting, almost running, back to the Wildcat. As he climbed in, he saw for the first time that something had been stenciled below the canopy: 1ST LT W C DUNN USMCR CPL A M FLORENTINO, USMC.

  That wasn't there yesterday. He must have painted it on there last night. And I didn't see it before because I had other things on my mind, like getting killed.

  "Great-looking sign, Florentino," Bill said when the plane captain appeared at the side of the cockpit.

  "Thank you, Sir."

  He fastened his seat and shoulder harness again and went through the start-up procedure. The engine caught immediately and quickly smoothed down. He checked the Manifold Pressure Regulator and the Propellor Operation; then he de-sludged the supercharger. After that he followed the Buffalo which had been parked beside him toward the runway.

  When he was lined up with the runway, he went through the final take-off checklist, which takes longer to describe than to do: He checked to see that the indicator in the wing root showed the wings were properly spread and locked. He locked the tail wheel; made sure the sliding portion of the canopy was locked open; set the aileron and elevator tabs in NEUTRAL and the rudder tab a couple of marks to the right. He checked to see that the fuel selector switch was on the main tank and that the cowl flaps were open. He made sure the propellor governor control was pushed all the way in; that the supercharger was set to LOW, the mixture control set to AUTO RICH, and the Emergency Fuel Pump to ON. He pushed the Carburetor Air Control all the way in and finally pushed the throttle to FULL.

  The engine roared, the plane began to strain against the brakes, and the needle on the Manifold Pressure Gauge rose to indicate about fifty-two inches. He released the brakes and the Wildcat started to move down the runway, as if it was chasing the Buffalo in front of it.

  He dropped his eyes momentarily to check the oil and fuel pressure, the oil and cylinder head temperatures, and the indicated airspeed. The needles were all in the green. He thought he saw the airspeed indicator needle flicker to life, which usually happened about 40 knots, but he wasn't sure. It didn't really matter. He would sense in the seat of his pants when the Wildcat wanted to fly.

  The rumble of the landing gear suddenly stopped. The Wildcat, having reached an airspeed of about 70 knots, had decided to fly. Without thinking about it, Bill swapped hands on the control stick, using his left hand on the stick to counter the Wildcat's tendency to veer to the right on take-off and freeing his right hand to crank up the landing gear. It took twenty-seven revolutions of the crank, hard turns, to get it up.

  When he had finished and put his right hand back on the stick, he looked around for Major Parks, spotted his Wildcat, and maneuvered to get into his assigned position behind him. He was not at all surprised when he was in position and had adjusted the throttle, the mixture, and the trim, to see that he was climbing at 1,000 feet per minute, indicating 125 knots, and with his cylinder head temperature right at 215? Centigrade. That's what the book said was the most efficient climbing attitude, and Major Parks flew by the book.

  As they passed through 12,000 feet, he put the black rubber mask over his face, readjusted his headset to accommodate it, and turned on the oxygen. It felt cool in his mouth and throat, and somehow alien. At 14,000 Parks leveled his flight out.

  Several minutes after that, Parks wiggled his wings, seeming to point with his right wing tip. Bill followed the line down, and there they were, two thousand feet below them.

  He was surprised at the color scheme. The Kates' fuselages, wings, and rear appendages were painted a lemon yellow. And the red ball of Japan was not readily visible on either fuselage or wings. From the windscreen forward, the Kates were painted black. And so was the bomb hanging under the fuselage.

  Jesus Christ, there's a lot of them!

  I'll be goddamned, the Zeroes are below them! What the hell is that all about? Didn't they think we'd try to intercept?

  Following Parks's lead, he put the Wildcat into a dive, correcting without thinking about it for the Wildcat's tendency to drop the right wing and turn the nose to the right.

  As he approached his first target, Bill could clearly see the aft-facing gunner bringing his machine gun to bear on him.

  That bastard is shooting at me!

  That triggered two other-alarming-thoughts:

  Christ, I didn't test my guns!

  I forgot to pull my fucking goggles down!

  The Wildcat shook with the recoil of the.50 caliber Browning machine guns in the wings. And two other thoughts came:

  Jesus, my tracer stream is way out in front of him!

  I'll be goddamned! He blew up! How the hell did that happen?

  And then he was through the layer of Kates and approaching the layer of Vals beneath them.

  I fucked that up! I didn't get a shot at any of them, and here come the fucking Zeroes!

  Our Father, who art in heaven-

  I don't think I can turn this sonofabitch enough to lead him-

  I'm skidding all over the fucking sky! You 're a real hot pilot, Mr. Dunn. In a pig's ass you are!

  OK shit, there goes one of our guys. His right fucking wing just came off!

  For yea, tho' I walk through the valley of the shadow of death-

  That's right, you miserable cocksucker, just stay right there another five seconds, four, three-

  Gotcha!

  Holy shit, there's somebody on my tail! A fucking Zero, what else?

  I can't get away from him.

  Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed-

  Chop the fucking throttle, stupid! Put it in a skid, let him overshoot you!

  Oh, my God, the windshield's gone. I can't see a fucking thing. I'm going to die. Where the fuck are those goggles? Where the hell is that Zero? Why does my leg feel wet? Did I piss my pants?

  Not unless you're pissing blood, you didn't.

  I thought it was supposed to hurt when you got wounded.

  Oh, shit, it hurts! I wonder if it's broken?

  (Three)

  "How do you feel, Dunn?" the tour guide from the Atlanta Zoo asked, pulling up a folding metal chair to the side of Dunn's bed. "Well enough to talk to me?"

  What if I said "no"?

  "Yes, Sir."

  "The more you can tell me about what happened out there, the better," the tour guide said. "You want to take it from the beginning?"

  "We were at fourteen thousand, about thirty miles out, when Major Parks spotted them. He showed us where they were and went into a dive, and I went after him."

  "And?"

  "And that's all I remember."

&nbs
p; "Come on."

  "I remember being surprised that the Zeroes were on the bottom of the formation, not the top."

  "OK. That was unusual. They apparently intended to use the Zeroes to strafe the field here. I guess they didn't think we had anything to send up against them. When you went in the dive, then what happened?"

  "I shot at a Kate."

  "You got it. It was confirmed."

  "The Kates were on top. Then there was a layer of Vals. I went right through them without firing a shot. And then I was in the Zeroes."