Bombs Away (19 page)

Joe finished his four-motor school and he had a week of furlough. He thought he was very tired, that he would go back to the farm and eat and sleep for a week. He saw sacks of fertilizer in the barn and he saw the twin Holstein calves and the third day he was restless. Every flight of ships that went over the house made him step out to look at and to identify the ships. By ear he tried to call the type and number of ships by the sound of the motors. Before the week was done he was anxious to get back. If he had tried to explain it to himself, there was no one to talk flying to. Later perhaps he would take it easier, would find interests besides flying, but now he was a pilot first and everything else was secondary. He had a sense of elation when his week was up. He wasn’t leaving home—he was going home.

THE AERIAL ENGINEER—CREW CHIEF

Pilot, copilot, navigator, bombardier, gunner. There are two more vital members of a bomber crew, both specialists and experts. These are the aerial engineer and the radio operator. These two are technical sergeants, not commissioned officers, but in the bomber crew they have a standing out of all proportion to their stripes.

The radio man is boss of communications and the engineer is the boss of the engines. As with other members of the crew the nation is fortunate in having a reservoir of men, mechanically-minded and with engine experience. It is not nearly so great a jump from Ford engines to the great power plants of the B-24 as it is from no engine to Ford engine. Training a man who has no experience at all with gasoline engines would be a long job and one which could not turn out experts quickly. But we have a wealth of partly trained men, garage mechanics who know gas engines inside out, high school graduates who have kept the motor running when it should have been dead.

Engines are in the souls of our people. The crew chief will go to school in the Army, it is true, but he is better off if he has some experience with machines before he makes his application for school. Aerial engineers are drawn from the ranks of the Army, both enlisted and drafted men. Their questionnaires will have established whether they have some mechanical experience and their intelligence tests will indicate whether they are of the quality the Air Force insists upon.

Air Force specifications for a crew chief are as follows: The nature of his duties—He flies with multi-engine bombers and transport planes and makes repairs and adjustments during flight; he substitutes for or helps the copilot in operation of flaps, raising and lowering landing gear, and other mechanical operations; he serves as aerial gunner during attack, supervises the ground maintenance of the ship to which he is assigned. He has gone to Army Air Force school for eighteen weeks and his training has included basic instructions in materials, care of equipment, electrical and shock, fundamental airplane structure, hydraulic systems and miscellaneous equipment, propellers, instruments, electrical systems, engines, fuel and oil systems, engine operation and tests, airplane inspection and maintenance with both single- and multi-engine planes. He may be eighteen to forty-four years old. If he is married, he must sign a statement that his dependents have sufficient means of support. He must have successfully completed the aircraft mechanics courses and have had experience in the mechanics on a bomber. He must have 20, 20 vision without glasses and no color blindness. His hearing must also be 20, 20. His height should be from 60 inches to 76 inches and his weight from 105 lbs. to 200 lbs., depending on how he is built. Although it is not necessary it would be valuable if the applicant for an aerial engineer has studied airplane mechanics, sheet metal, bench metal work, welding, woodworking, mechanical drawing, blueprint reading, pattern making, mathematics including the fundamental processes, equations and formulae, circular and angular measurements, scales, laying out geometrical figures and development, science, including the physical characteristics of materials used in aircraft construction and maintenance, and physical training.

These things are not required, but if the applicant has had some of them it will be much easier for him to go through the Air Force schools. In one sense the aerial engineer is the boss and the nursemaid of the bomber. His okay is necessary before the ship can take off, and the ship’s readiness to take off is his responsibility. While the pilot may know a good deal about the engines of the aircraft, the aerial engineer is the true expert and to him all references are submitted. He knows his ship from top to bottom, from propeller to tail. He has his own instrument board for reading the activities of his engines. If an engine should stagger or give trouble in flight he is able to make some repairs before landing.

It is the crew chief, the aerial engineer, who keeps count of the hours on his engines, who directs their removal and replacement when they have fulfilled their time. The crew chief has a unique position in the ship, he is the recognized authority in his field. He has a second duty in action. If the ship is attacking or is attacked, he becomes a gunner. He has been trained to operate the machine gun and he takes his place in the defense of the ship. These are the things a crew chief is supposed to do, but ordinarily he can do much more. It is no unusual thing in our Air Force for a crew chief to be able to fill any position in the ship in an emergency. He has been known to pilot, to navigate, and to bomb. He is that kind of restless intelligent man who learns from anything he touches. The pilot depends upon him greatly, depends upon his judgment and upon his knowledge.

In nearly every small town in America there is a garage run by a natural mechanic. He has usually graduated from high school, and even while he was in school he has repaired automobiles. Such a one was Abner. In his second year in high school he bought two abandoned model T Fords, and using the frame of one, engine block of the other, two wheels from each, he put together a car that would run. But once it was running he was not satisfied, he tinkered with the carburetor until it ran on practically no gasoline. He cut off the fenders and soldered a bullet-shaped body together. For two years he had the car and it was never the same two days in a row. And before he was through he had a fast, smooth-running automobile. Even in high school people sent for him to make little repairs on their cars. He took a correspondence school course in automobile mechanics. When he was out of high school he had already a group of customers and so he opened a little garage in an abandoned blacksmith’s shop, dug his own pit and, for that matter, using the repaired blacksmith’s forge, made many of his own tools, some of which were more efficient than the ones you buy. Everyone has known a mechanic like Abner, long chin, muscular body, gray eyes, straight blond hair. People trusted Abner to do anything, he was a wizard with an automobile. His bills were reasonable and fair. When he had little work to do he made tools and played with an engine and put it together. He never had time to be married but thought he would someday, if he thought of it at all. His hands, cracked from gasoline and oil, were curiously delicate and his fingers were deft. Boys brought their broken bicycles to Abner to be welded and once he built in a few hours a homemade iron lung for a child suffering from infantile paralysis—and it worked too.

When a customer brought a car to Abner’s dark garage he usually stayed around a while to watch the work, for the mechanic personalized his work. He talked to motors, questioned them. He started the motors and listened and he could tell a great deal about a motor by listening to it. It is doubtful whether Abner had much ambition for money or position. He studied constantly, but it wasn’t really study. He just wanted to know about mechanical things. When Abner enlisted in the Army, a month after war was declared, his little community in California was upset. Who would repair bicycles? To whom could you take a car and know it would get the best treatment? Who would make a carrying brace so that you could put a canoe on top of a sedan? A customer asked Abner why he had enlisted. Abner wasn’t much for such talk. He said helplessly, “Well, we’ve got a war and—you know they’re putting 2,000-horsepower motors in those big bombers? God almighty, I’d like to see those engines.”

He enlisted in the Army and questionnaires and tests moved him to the Air Force; and hard as the work was it is doubtful if Abner ever had a better time in his life than at the Army schools. Here for the first time he had the finest engines in the world to play with. He had that certainty in his work which is called authority and he was early slated to be a crew chief. He had confidence in his ability and he gave everyone else confidence in him. On the ground he got his corporal’s stripes and then he began to work on the ships and he became a sergeant.

He was bound to be an aerial engineer, a crew chief. He was the proper kind of man for the job. Given work to do in the air it is doubtful whether he would be aware of it being off the ground. His careful hands and good eyes made him an expert gunner. And besides all this he commanded instant respect as a crew chief must. He wanted to know things. He studied navigation in his spare time and he copiloted ships occasionally. Abner is no ideal figure. He is the best possible kind of a crew chief, but he is not an uncommon man. He is, however, primarily and almost uniquely an American kind of a man. Nearly every town has its Abner. The children know him and the boys with their old cars ask his advice. He is a simple man as a good scientist must be. He is a humble man but he will take no nonsense from anyone.

In the Air Force, Abner got his wish to associate with the best engines in the world. They were his babies. He had torn them down and inspected every little part. He had heard them when they were happy and his ears could tell him when they were hurt. The pilot of a bomber could rely on him completely. If Abner said the engines were in good shape, they were all right. He was a quiet man. You had to like him for his silence and everyone did. It is probable that only one thing could outrage him, the mistreatment of a fine piece of machinery. In his little town in California he had been an authority in his field and in the Air Force he was an authority. The men called him “Chief” instinctively. The officers wondered what lucky bomber crew would get him permanently. He had a way of caressing an engine lightly with his fingers. He had a way of cocking his head and rubbing his chin while he listened to an engine. But his interest in engines had greatly enlarged. He knew the whole ship now, the hydraulic lifts on the landing gear, the little cables of the controls, the mechanism of the bomb releases. In an emergency he could do anything in the ship, fly it, bomb from it, lay the machine guns, and even navigate. Many a pilot will tell you that a good crew chief is the greatest man in the air, and from his beginning Abner seemed destined to become one of the greatest of crew chiefs. When his study and his training and his practice were done, Abner was ready for his permanent post in a bomber crew.