Trophy for Eagles (70 page)

He taught Bandy some things he thought he already knew, but which seemed richly different when explained by Lacalle. The
mode of attack in the Chato was "always from above—rarely from
the level—and never, never from below," he said.

"The Fiat has a better ceiling than we do and is more maneuver
able, so we have to attack them when we can dive, shoot, and run."
Lacalle's hands flashed in mimic combat, his eyes deadly serious.

Bandy thought he'd been flying the Chato well enough, but the insight Lacalle brought from his own experience could easily have made the difference between life and death. Lacalle advocated
always cruising in the combat area with the mixture slightly rich. If
combat occurred suddenly, you could apply full power, advancing the throttle and the mixture simultaneously, without risking a momentary cut-out. It cost a little more fuel, but Lacalle insisted that the flights back to the base be conducted with maximum fuel economy, no stunting, no flat-hatting, and this more than made up for it.

"That engine is your great mother's tit, and when it comes time to
suck on it, you want it to be ready." He called the Chato the "good communist God's gift to Spain," and said he wouldn't trade it for anything on the Nationalist side. Bandy didn't believe him, but it raised his morale to hear it said.

Lacalle took him as a protege, called him his
companero,
and
Bandfield began to believe that he'd survive the war.

*

Luke Field, Hawaii/March 20, 1937

The only thing missing in the poster-perfect scenery was Ukulele Ike. Everything else—the soft morning light, the song of brightly plumed birds, an invigorating ocean breeze—called for relaxation
and romance. She wished Bandy were there—or that she were with
him, wherever he was.

Patty watched Amelia Earhart lower herself into a distinctly
different, unforgiving environment. Her metal seat was covered by a
hard leather pad, and she was surrounded by hundreds of gallons of
gasoline in an aircraft that seemed totally hostile to her.

Amelia Earhart had almost mastered the Vega; she felt different in the Electra. It seemed to her malevolent, with twice as many
engines, throttles, props, rudders, everything. She hated it, sensing a lurking evil that promised to reach out and get her.

Patty reached down and helped Earhart with her straps.

"Feeling okay?"

"No." Earhart hesitated. "You know how I'm always quoting Hamlet, saying he wouldn't have been a good pilot because he worried too much?"

"Yes?"

"Well, I'm afraid I'm being the Hamlet on this one. I'm worried
about everything. I wish you were coming along. I'm sorry it wasn't
possible."

"Me too."

The wan look on Amelia's face prompted Patty to say more than
she would have.

"Look, you've had plenty of instruction. You've done well! Don't let this takeoff spook you—it's no different from those we practiced
in California."

Patty hoped her voice carried conviction that she didn't feel. Takeoffs were critical, with the weight of the fuel pressing the
Lockheed's landing gear oleo struts down, flattening the tires, slow
ing the acceleration that would pour a blast of air back to give control authority to the rudders. She had made Amelia practice the initial seconds of the takeoff roll time and again, insisting that she
bring the power up gradually, keeping the aircraft straight with
differential throttle, and not using the brakes. Time after time she
had said, "The brakes will just slow you down, get you in trouble!
Control it with the throttles."

Patty had shown her how the brakes induced a twisting movement that could shear the gear, while the engine power gave the
rudders something to bite on. The problem was that Amelia felt that
the reaction of the brakes was positive, instantaneous; to use the throttle and rudder, you had to anticipate, to begin the corrections almost before a problem developed.

But it was difficult for Amelia, almost as if she were reluctant to really learn, as if she were reaching out a hand to Patty, calling for help, not for flying, but for life. She bitterly regretted that fate had
intervened, that Patty was not going to be able to make the flight
with her. She had finally convinced her husband that it was safer to share the flight with Patty, even if it meant sharing the credit. Then,
in the end, Patty couldn't go. Instead of a capable pilot, there were two navigators, Fred Noonan and Harry Manning.

All of the formalities were over; Manning and Noonan were
aboard and waiting. Patty knew by the way they had checked the
quick-release pins on the safety hatches that they were nervous about Amelia's ability.

Patty moved back to the edge of the runway and gave Amelia the
thumbs-up sign. Mutely, she responded, her face drained of emo
tion, and pushed the throttles forward, the serenity of the Hawaiian
breeze broken by the burbling sounds of the two engines.

Amelia was anxious to be off, to have it over with. As the Electra
gathered speed, it began an implacable drift to the side of the runway. Earhart glanced blankly at the throttles, trying to decide which one to pull back to counter the turn; when she looked up the
edge of the runway was coming close and she jammed on the brakes
to counteract the drift.

The airplane began to turn rapidly, twisting on the inner wheel, flattening the tire further, the outer wing rising and throwing more weight on the tortured landing gear. Shuddering, metal screaming, Noonan and Manning yelling, the Electra whirled in a ground loop. Earhart gripped the wheel tightly, standing on the brakes, letting the engines run wild until, with a snap like a broken limb, the gear folded. There was a shrill knife-sharpener scream as the propellers smacked the ground and the airplane halted in a twisted heap. Sick with fear and relief, Earhart switched off the magneto switches and threw the hatch open. She could hear Manning and Noonan scrambling out behind her.

At the edge of the runway, Patty closed her eyes, praying the airplane would not explode.

*

Alcala de Henares, Spain/April 2, 1937

The new Russian squadron commander, Kosokov, taught Bandy in
three days all he needed to know about the Russians, personally
demolishing the idealized vision his father had provided him. Koso
kov was as hard and treacherous as a rusted saw, totally pragmatic,
and ruthless in a way that made Bruno Hafner seem like Florence Nightingale.

Now the blond six-footer stood perfectly erect, surveying his
pilot-victims. His eyes were slits watching with the expectant cruelty
of a savage chow, blinking back the smoke from the cigarette that always dangled from his mouth. Kosokov ran the squadron with an
iron fist. When the Popular Army beer wagon first pulled up, its
sides decorated with signs saying "Bar" and "Free Service," he had driven it away with a burst of fire from his rifle. He permitted no drinking on the field at any time; woe betide any pilot who smelled
of liquor before a flight. Even Lacalle was deferential to him.

Lacalle's squadron had been moved nearer to Madrid during the
early part of April, coming under the Russian's command. Kosokov
insisted on flying with each pilot to check his skills, including Lacalle. It was a calculated insult, administered in front of the squadron, that the proud Spaniard could never forgive.

Bandfield was glad that his victories, and shooting the Fiats off
Lacalle's tail, had induced Lacalle to be his friend. The Spaniard
was now deeply depressed, and needed someone to talk to. Not only
was the tide of battle shifting against the Loyalists, but the communists were becoming more and more powerful. Lacalle took
Bandy into the village, got a bottle of rough red wine, and told him
about how his people had hated the bourgeois, how cruel the
landowners had been. "When the Marxists took power, they forced
collectivization, put all the land to work. I thought it was a good idea, that the rich wouldn't live off the workingman's labor. The harvests were all going to be centralized and distributed fairly."

They were sitting in a peasant's hut, a rough wooden table between them. Lacalle drank from his tin cup, poured again.

"Now it was the communist committee men who stole the
harvest; the workers wound up exactly as before, with barely enough
to live on through the winter."

"If you are disillusioned, if you don't believe, why do you keep on
fighting?"

"Simple. As bad as the communists are, the fascists are worse. And I think the communists are less efficient. If they win the war,
the people will be able, someday, to get out from under them. If the
fascists win, we will live under Franco's thumb for life."

Bandfield's heart went out to him; Lacalle would have been a leader in any air force in the world, and he was forced to fly and fight for a cause he didn't believe in.

"There are other reasons, too."

Bandfield was silent, waiting.

"The fascists have killed two of my brothers, and one of my sisters. Thank God my father and mother were already dead."

The next few days brought news that sunk Lacalle deeper into his
depression. The war was going very badly in the north. The Loyalist
territory was shrinking daily, meter by meter. Contact had already
been cut off with France, and there were no means to reinforce the Loyalist forces from the South. Lacalle could no longer learn what
was happening to his wife and two children at his home in Bilboa, a
garden city gradually being reduced to rubble by the daily bombing.

Bandfield was depressed too, despite his victories. He had shot
down four airplanes; he wondered if they would pay him in dollars,
as they had promised. He couldn't believe they would.

He was doubly glad now to be Lacalle's friend. It would have been a bad thing to be in a squadron where your immediate supervisor didn't like you and the squadron commander, Kosokov, didn't like your immediate supervisor.

Any doubts that he might have had about Kosokov were dispelled
in their first encounter. The Russian took Bandfield in his turn on a checkout flight, thoroughly besting him in a mock dogfight. But the real lesson came afterward. They had been shooting landings when
Kosokov whipped away in a violent bank, sideslipping in to land at
the far end of the field. Bandy flew at three hundred feet as the
Russian walked over to where a sentry was lying. The American,
circling with the left wing of his Chato pointed at the pair, saw
Kosokov kick the apparently sleeping sentry. There was no response.
The Russian pulled out a pistol, shot the man in the head, and went back to his airplane. When they landed back at the operational end of the field, he took the measure of Bandy's expression.

"Drunk on duty.
Kaputt."

Bandy made up his mind not to drink on duty.

The following day Kosokov led nine Chatos into a fight over the Brihuega-Valdesor-Pajares sector. Three Savoia-Marchetti trimotor bombers, pretty fabric-covered airplanes with a distinctive hump
backed look, were scooting in, escorted by a flight of five Fiat CR-32
biplanes. It was a beautiful sight, the eight aircraft and their shadows
leaping like dolphins among the marshmallow clouds.

Kosokov gave the attack signal and the Chatos hammered into the
formation, Lacalle leading four into the Fiats and Kosokov taking the rest against the bombers.

Bandy was lucky. The dive took him directly behind the last
fighter. It was at top speed, quivering in its mottled sand-green-and-
ocher camouflage, blue-black smoke crackling from its exhausts. The upper wings had three black bands on each tip, followed by a
large white X. The Italian pilot, a novice probably, was concentrat
ing on maintaining his position in formation, and Bandy's four machine guns tore holes from the engine back to the cockpit. The pilot slumped forward, and the Fiat went into a dive, flame curling from the engine.

A Savoia had broken from the formation, the right engine smok
ing from Kosokov's attack. The gunner in the humpbacked bomb
er's top began firing as Bandy closed in a diving attack from the right
rear.

Like imminent danger, combat split time into two dimensions. In
one, everything happened instantaneously. In the other, all of the events were indelibly recorded in slow motion. He ignored the bullets going over his head, and fired. His first burst went through the insignia on the aft fuselage, a black circle with a white chicken inside. Cockroaches, chickens, he thought, the Italians have funny ideas about heroic insignia. He pulled back on the stick and fired again, edging the four streams of bullets into the bomb bay. The Savoia blew up, and he flew through a cloud of smoke and metal.