It was a big school where Al went. The newly built barracks stretched out in all directions and it was in a desolate place, in desert country; for with so much firing, it is just as well if not much civil population lives in the area. Projectiles from .50-caliber, 20 mm. and 37 mm. guns travel a long distance. The districts near the ranges were restricted to Army personnel.
Every week in the school a new cla.s.s started and every week a cla.s.s finished. As in every other branch of the Air Force, no time was wasted. Cla.s.swork started immediately, but it was not technical cla.s.swork. An instructor lectured, but there were guns and ammunition in front of him for demonstration. The first things to learn were the standard guns of the Air Force: the flexible .30- and .50-caliber machine gun, that is, the movable guns which are aimed at a moving target by the gunner; and the fixed guns-the 20 mm. and 37 mm. rapid-firing cannon which are rigid in the plane and are aimed by aiming the whole ship.
The instructor lectured to the new cla.s.s and he demonstrated with the guns. Al learned each part of each gun, what its name is and what its purpose is. He learned to take the guns to pieces and to rea.s.semble them. The lessons included the things which may go wrong with a gun and how to rectify the stoppage of fire. The cla.s.s learned about magazines, their care and handling and stowage. They learned different types of ammunition, armor-piercing, tracers, high explosives, and what each type is designed for and what it will do, how far and how fast it travels.
A gunner receiving instructions in skeet shooting.
The cla.s.s handled the ammunition and learned to identify each kind, and when they knew the guns they learned how they are installed in the ships and how the ammunition is stowed. At the end of the first phase of training, they knew every part of the gun, had watched the principles of firing and recoil, of loading and ejection, and when each day"s work was done the cla.s.s had its athletics-volleyball and basketball and baseball.
At a gunnery school there is constant practice. The compressed air BB guns were in use all the time. There is a shooting gallery, only very much larger than any private shooting gallery. Mounted at intervals are little machine guns which operate by compressed air. They fire streams of BB shot at moving targets. The targets are little planes which move rapidly across a blue background but when they are hit, they fall backwards. These guns are in use all the time. The gunners are encouraged to use them whenever they are free, and although the little guns do not fire at very high velocity, nor do the planes move very fast, the constant shooting of these guns develops the shooter"s eye, makes him aware of a moving target and how to lead it. He learns here too not to fire a constant stream and let the plane run into it, but to fire in bursts so that each shot takes effect.
It is said that when the gunnery students go to town they head first for a shooting gallery to shoot at ducks and moving pipes and clown"s heads, that they spend their money on cartridges in private shooting galleries.
Shooting is not only the business of the gunnery school, but its sport too. Even the girls who work in the offices take their places in the shooting galleries. There are other kinds of shooting beyond the use of military weapons. The Air Force has developed an extension of the photo-electric cell shooting which is now in all penny arcades. With these a moving shadow plane is shot down by electricity but the weapon aimed is an actual machine gun. Probably the shotgun training is the best non-military shooting the student gunner has. A man who can hit a moving target with a shotgun, can bring down an enemy plane.
Al"s cla.s.s started with simple trapshooting. They moved from station to station while the little clay plates flew always in the same direction. But soon they took up skeet shooting and in this they never knew which way the target would fly. But instructors stood behind them, showed them how to stand, how to aim, how far to fire ahead of a cross flying target, a target moving away or rising or falling. The instruction was good but only by constant practice could the cla.s.s achieve the instant judgment of lead and timing so that they began to break the targets in the air. This was Al"s meat. His scores improved every day. He had the quick eye and fast reaction time of a natural gunner and he had the liking for his work which kept him at it.
On the skeet range.
Toward the end of their training they were given the sport-ingest trapshooting in the world. This is an invention of the Air Force and has never been used by civilians. The shooter sits in a swivel seat on the back of a truck. The road he travels is purposely rough so that he is jiggled and shaken about. As the truck pa.s.ses each one of sixteen dugouts a target flies and the marksmen must try to hit it. And not only is the truck moving and bouncing, but no two of the traps throw the target in the same direction, nor at the same level. The man who can break a good score on this course is really a trapshooter. But the course was not established for fun. It is one thing to fire from a fixed and steady base at a moving target and quite another to fire from a moving base, for here are two speeds which must be calculated, your own and the target"s, and if your base is jiggling too, you have three problems. And these are the problems of an aerial gunner flying in rough air and firing at an attacking plane.
Firing at clay pigeons from a moving base.
The trapshooting experts of the country are enthusiastic about this training technique and the gunners improve every day. It is their improvement which demonstrates whether they are gunners or not. Al"s first trip on the course gave him two hits out of sixteen, his second day, five hits; and then he settled down to a good consistent eleven out of sixteen which is championship shooting. He felt that he had found his place. There was no word here about his smallness. He was the ideal size for a gunner and he had the eye and nerve and c.o.c.kiness of a gunner.
At work his uniform was the loose one-piece coverall of the Air Force and a small cap with a long visor like a baseball cap, which pilots also use because it shades the eyes without getting in the way and because you can wear ear phones over it.
In the cla.s.sroom they studied tactical firing and controlled fire and they learned the gunner"s responsibility to the ship, the crew, and the mission. And now models and silhouettes of the airplanes of the world were brought out and the cla.s.s was taught through practice to recognize the ships by length and shape of wing, by engine mount, and from every possible angle. This recognition is very important. One must know as far off as possible whether a ship is friend or enemy and if one makes a mistake it may be too late. The cla.s.s memorized the plane types so that they could call out nationality and type after a one-second look at the silhouette.
And now they knew the guns, and they began to study the gun sights, to know sighting errors and how to correct them. And they studied relative movement and where to fire if a target is coming toward you or crossing or moving away. They worked with a camera gun, learning to estimate speed and relative speed. At last they were ready to fire the machine guns from fixed mounts. Trucks carried the cla.s.s out to the firing range where the guns were set up on standards. The first training was fire at a fixed target at 200 yards and at 500 yards.
The scoring method was ingenious. Cartridge tips are dipped in colored paint, blue or red or green or yellow. Each man has his own color, and where the bullet hits the target it leaves a little of the paint so that each man can find the hits he has made.
The next problem was firing at a moving target. Ahead of the gun there is an embankment about eight feet high and behind it lies a railroad track which runs in a large triangle. On this track a car runs carrying a cloth target on a rigging. From the guns the car cannot be seen nor hit, but the target slips along in sight. By running around the triangles the target presents different angles for the guns and thus different speeds in relation to the guns. Thus if it is traveling at an angle away from the fire, its speed in relation to the gun will be less than when it travels at right angles to the line of fire. To get the men used to firing at a moving target they first used .22 automatic rifles, but soon they graduated to .30-caliber machine guns and to .50-caliber machine guns.
It is the tendency of most novices to fire great numbers of shots, perhaps hoping that one will hit the target, and it is a matter of discipline to fire short bursts-in a word, to shoot a machine gun like a rifle and not like a fire hose.
It was hot on the firing range, but under a tented cover were cans of water, kept cool by wet cloths wrapped around them. Each man was a.s.signed a certain number of sh.e.l.ls to fire at the target under different circ.u.mstances every day.
On the firing range, Al loaded a belt of cartridges into the .30-caliber machine gun as he had been taught in cla.s.s. The very tips of his bullets had been dipped in red paint. He took the gun in his hands and felt for the trigger. His instructor stood close behind him, looking over his shoulder. Al looked through the rear ring sight and found the front sight in the circle, and he braced himself for the firing of the gun.
His instructor said, "Look, you have been shooting a shotgun, you expect this thing to kick. Well, it won"t. The recoil action takes up all of the kick. Now, get your eye closer to that sight or you can"t see your target." Al leaned close to his sight and put his front sight on the white target 500 yards away. The trigger had a long pull. He squeezed it gently and the rattle of .30-caliber bullets poured out of the gun. In spite of instruction he had braced so hard that on his first burst he missed the target. The empty bra.s.s cases rattled out of the right-hand side of the gun and it didn"t kick. He drew another bead on the target and this time he didn"t flinch. The first time you fire a machine gun, you have the feeling that it has got away from you and you can"t stop it; but gradually you learn to release pressure on the trigger almost as soon as you have made contact, thus causing the gun to fire in little short bursts of five to ten shots. All down the line of the range other gunners were firing at the same target. They had all stuffed cotton in their ears, not be-cause the noise is so loud but because it becomes irritating after a while. Each man fired 200 rounds at the fixed target and then they went out and brought in the big square of cloth, laid it on the ground, and found that there were colored holes in the fabric where each bullet had left a little ring of paint around each hit. Some were green and some were red, some were blue, and in this way each man could see the shots he had put in the target.
On the machine gun range.
On the second day on the firing range they did not flinch from the guns any more but they fired at the moving target, the streamer carried by the little car on the triangular track. The target moved straight across their line of fire, then turned and made a run at an angle away from them, turned again and angled in, and behind each man his instructor gave him advice on how far to lead the moving target. Every fifth bullet was a tracer and even in the broad day they could see it drive toward the target. A tracer bullet has a small hole in the rear of the projectile. This hole is filled with calcium which ignites when the bullet is fired so that a brilliant calcium flare shoots from the gun. With tracer bullets you can see how you are shooting and correct your aim. The gunnery cla.s.s was not very accurate at first, but under the constant supervision of its instructors its scores day by day grew better. Now they were using the principles they had learned on the trapshooting range. You cannot be told how far to lead a moving target, you must simply do it until you know.
In the cla.s.s they began to study the mechanism and action of the standard gun mount, the waist turret, the bomber turret, the open port mount, the tail gun mount, the tourelle mount, and when they had learned the mechanism of the turret each man was put in to learn to work it. You sit in a small iron seat in a bomber turret, bracing your feet against the foot plate, and there are bars for your hands not unlike the handle bars of a bicycle. Under your urging the whole turret turns either way. The mechanism is driven by an electric battery. A pressure to the right turns the turret to the right. You can make it turn slowly or very rapidly. A slight pressure down on the handle raises the guns and a pressure upward lowers it. The trigger is under your right finger. It is not a technique to be learned easily or quickly. Only practice makes a man proficient. But when he is practiced he can find a target and keep his sight on it as it moves across the sky. Co-ordination of hand and eye must be very acute if one is to operate a turret well. The guns project to right and left on either side of you but your sight is in the middle, cross hairs on a standing gla.s.s. It is in the turret that the need for small men as gunners becomes apparent, for the s.p.a.ce is crowded. You are surrounded with magazines of ammunition and with the machinery of the turret itself. Over your head is a dome of clear plastic through which you can see in all directions. The turret is a delicate and complex instrument and the mechanics of it are a military secret.
As in all Air Force training, the time at the gunnery school went very quickly. The students were gun-minded young men. They fired on the ranges and they talked firing in the post exchange. In the daily papers they looked for any reference to aerial gunnery in action in Europe, in Australia, or in China; the students were aware of the increasing importance of aerial gunnery. The spirit of their place in the Air Force was beginning to take hold of them. In the barracks Al tried to read his usual adventure stories, but they didn"t hold him any more. There was nothing in the magazine that would take the place of the things in his head. He wanted to be a gunner on a long-range bomber, a B-17E or a B-24, and although he didn"t tell anyone about it there was a story going on in his head about Al the Gunner over Tokyo or over Berlin. In his mind at night he could see his tracers find the vitals of attacking enemy fighters. He knew what it would look like, for he had seen moving pictures of the way a ship staggers when it is killed and noses over and leaps down until it blows up with a puff of black smoke. And in his mind it was Al"s guns that were doing these things. It was much better than the stories he had read.
Tracer bullets being fired from a power-driven turret.
In the cla.s.sroom they studied tactics of air offense and defense. They learned where an enemy plane attacks from, the angles it will fly at, and they learned where they must fire to bring it down. On moving models the cla.s.s saw the course a bullet describes between two moving planes, how the bullet curves forward if the planes are parallel and backward if they are flying opposite. They had studied from silhouettes and models the shapes of friend and enemy planes, and now with models and silhouettes they studied the shapes of enemy ships, models of j.a.panese aircraft carriers, models of j.a.panese and Italian cruisers. On the firing range they began to work with a .50-caliber machine gun. These guns fire more slowly than the .30"s but they have great range and great penetrating quality. The projectile will pierce an inch of armor plate. They look like the .30-caliber guns but they are just bigger all over-bigger and faster.
Al"s cla.s.s went on the range at night and fired tracer bullets at a lighted target and the night was slashed with the lines of the bullets; and all the time the trapshooting went on and the trapshooting from the moving trucks. Eye and hand and judgement were in constant use. They had fired from a fixed base at moving targets now, they had worked the turret and the flexible gun, and at last it was time for them to go into the air. The practice firing would be with a flexible machine gun from an open c.o.c.kpit plane. The students had learned to load their own belts of ammunition, to take care of their guns. They had learned to repair them when they were broken, how to get them quickly in action when they were jammed, but they had been ground gunners up to now.
On Al"s first day in the air he took his gun and mounted it in the plane as he had been taught to do. He was to fire at a target towed by another airplane. He wore goggles and a helmet, for he would have to lean into the fierce wind to fire, and as he settled himself in the rear c.o.c.kpit he felt strangely competent, for he knew his weapon very well and his firing score had been consistently good.
Before he had got into the plane he had trued his sight, that is, he had laid his guns in a permanent rack and sighted through his sight at a permanent mark. If the sights were not true it would have showed there. As he had walked out to the plane carrying his gun he had seen a reflection of himself in a window and he had wished that the owner of the candy store where he had jerked sodas could see him now. He felt that everything he had wanted to be was justified. He was a competent little man with a competent big gun. The tow plane took off ahead of him and Al"s plane followed. They flew twenty miles to a firing range. Al had his orders and he was to attack, paralleling the target which is called a beam attack. He was to fire at it from various angles coming and going. On the range the tow plane let out the target on its spool until it dragged far behind. The air was not easy. Al"s plane jerked and jumped.
Al saw now that it was a great deal more difficult to fire from a moving plane than from a steady place on the ground.
The work on the ground continued, firing of flexible guns on the gunnery range at a moving target, the firing of the cannon and the skeet shooting, but now every day there was aerial training. Every day the silver training ships went up with student gunners in the c.o.c.kpits. Al fired at the towed target from every angle, from below, from above, and from the sides. He went into high alt.i.tudes to attack the target and he wore oxygen mask and heavy sheepskin clothing and gloves; and when the ships landed after firing he went over the target, looking for the marks which would be his. .h.i.ts, and he was graded on the number of his. .h.i.ts.
In the cla.s.sroom he learned group attack and formation attack on tail and on nose. He fired from the five standard installations, nose, tail, blister, waist turret, and open port, and every day he had his athletics and calisthenics, and every day squad ron drill and squadron ceremony. Al had gained confidence in himself now and in his weapon. He was becoming a gunner. He knew every part and symptom of his gun. His eye could calculate the speed of moving objects. His hands on the guiding levers of the turret moved instinctively.
Aero-gunner carrying his ammunition for his first aerial practice.
With so much to do and so much to learn, the weeks moved quickly by. It seemed only a little time until the five weeks were out. Al had qualified as an aerial gunner with a high score. His record had been so good that he might easily have applied for and been accepted as a gunnery instructor, but he had joined the Air Force to fight and he did not make his application. He was a.s.signed to bomber training center and one day, with his orders in his pocket, he climbed on a train to go to the place where bomber crews are a.s.sembled and trained as a unit. And it seemed to him very long ago that he had mixed chocolate sodas and poured caramel syrup over dishes of ice cream for giggling girls. He didn"t seem the same young man who had done these things, and the fact of the matter was that he was not the same young man. He had none of the great words of the news-papers and the propagandists on his tongue. Probably he could not have put into words the urge he felt, but it was an urge toward action. Like a hunter he wanted to see live game in his sight, and when his work was done he wanted to see the smoke of a destroyed enemy trailing behind a falling ship. He was the hunter of the air, the stinger in the tail of the long range bomber, and he wanted to join his group.
The hits are counted and stamped on an aerial target
THE NAVIGATOR.
The purpose of a long-range bomber is to fly to a given target and to drop its bombs. That is the simple statement of it and its complication arises in the technique of getting the bomber to the target and getting it home again. The bombardier is there to drop the bombs on the target. The pilot will guide and control the ship. The crew chief will see to the engines. The gunner protects the plane from attack and the radio operator keeps up communication with ground and other planes. But bombers, given a pin point to go to, must have navigators to tell them how to get there. A plane cannot fly by sight over seas and deserts or at night or in clouds and arrive at its destination, any more than a ship can.
The aerial navigator is a very necessary member of a bomber crew. The word navigation, referring as it does to the sea, is misused, but apparently it is going to continue to be misused. An attempt was made to change aerial navigation to avigation with practically no success at all, for navigation seems to have lost its exclusive reference to the sea and will refer to any directed travel by instrument and map. Aerial navigation is not much different from marine navigation except that things happen more quickly. The basic instruments are the same, the compa.s.s to tell the direction in which you are going and the s.e.xtant and chronometer to tell you where you are. Other instruments-air-speed indicators, drift meters, etc.-are more recent inventions and their use is limited to airplanes. The basic instruments are very ancient. The compa.s.s has only changed in accuracy since early Chinese seamen placed a little lodestone bar on a chip of wood and floated the chip in a saucer.
The modern compa.s.s is a marvel of accuracy, but its principle is that of the lodestone on a chip-that a magnet will point toward magnetic North. Gioja"s refinement in the fourteenth century was only followed by a long series of refinements and corrections, and the principle of crossed staff and astrolabe is carried through in the marvelously accurate modern s.e.xtant and octant.
The modern radio time signal is the completely accurate grandchild of the well-built and protected chronometer, and the aerial navigator is the child of the sea captain who shot sun and star from his quarter-deck and brought his ship over the curve of the earth to an unseen port. The aerial navigator, of all members of a bomber crew, except possibly the gunner, practices an ancient profession, and of all the members of the crew the navigator needs more technical education and training. The ideal candidate for commission as aerial navigator in the Army Air Force will have some background in mathematics and in astronomy. Engineers make good navigators because, in addition to the basic knowledge, they have acquired the method of thinking and studying which is required at Army Air Force Navigation Schools. Such engineering training, however, is not required.
The navigator enters the Army Air Force in the same way as do the bombardier and pilot. He makes application and is sent to an induction center where he is tested physically and mentally before he is a.s.signed to Navigation School. The navigator candidate will have a different temperament from pilot and bombardier. He is rather more studious and more a perfectionist in his work. There is no "fairly close" in navigation. The point indicated must be found exactly. For example, a squadron of bombers rarely takes off from the same place. Individual planes may leave from different stations with orders to rendezvous at a given place and at a given time. In each plane it will be the navigator"s job to get his ship to that place in the sky at a given moment. His work must be exact, else his ship will not be in its place in the flight.
When the navigation cadet has pa.s.sed the physical and mental tests, the manual apt.i.tude tests, and so forth, he will be a.s.signed to a school. The school and the course will be described as follows. Its objective is to qualify students as navigator members of a combat crew. Its scope-qualification as precision, dead-reckoning, and celestial navigators and qualification as junior officer members of the combat crew. The duration of the course is fifteen weeks. The course is divided into two parts, flying training and ground school, and in this particular school there will be more ground work than flying work for the navigator has a great deal to learn.
In ground school he will learn dead-reckoning navigation. He will learn instruments, maps and charts, radio navigation. In celestial navigation he will learn the general theory, time and hour angle, instruments, star identification, and astronomical triangles. In meteorology he will learn the theory and principles of weather a.n.a.lysis, the interpretation of weather maps, the discussion of forecasts. He will learn the meteorology of the ocean, of thunderstorms, tornadoes, and icing conditions, and on top of all of it, as in every other Air Force school, he will have constant athletic and military training.
Navigation cla.s.sroom.
When he finishes the course he will be able to take a ship or a plane to any given point. During his school the work will be hard and constant, but if the student has the fort.i.tude, the mind, and the body, and can take it, he will emerge from his school an essential part of the bomber team. In his hands will lie responsibility for direction, for knowing the winds and the drift, for knowing the earth and the currents of the air. On the navigator"s direction, the pilot will find the enemy whether it be an invading ship near Midway Island, a submarine base in the Aleutians, or a tank factory in Europe. When the target is found, his work will be over while bombardier releases his bombs, and then, again, the navigator must take the direction of the ship, must find the way home, must find the little point of land with the runways where the bomber will come to rest. The success of the bombing mission, a great part of it, is very definitely in the navigator"s hands. He is an indispensable member of the bomber team.
Allan had got his degree in Civil Engineering and was two months in postgraduate work for an electrical engineering degree when the war broke out. His father was county engineer in a central Indiana county and had been for twenty years. Allan knew he was fit for the Army and would eventually be in the Army. He thought of applying for the Engineers Corps, but the Air Force seemed to him the more interesting Service. Like every other young man in the country, he thought he would like to be a pilot. That was natural enough. When uninstructed people thought of the Air Force, they used to think only of pilots. The great organization of ground crews and air crews rarely occurred to them. They have read only of pilots. The heroes in their magazine stories have been pilots. Newspapers have spoken almost exclusively of pilots, yet the pilot is actually only one part of the functioning Air Force.
It cannot be successfully argued that without the pilots the planes do not fly, for without any part of the Air Force the ships do not fly, without weather men and mechanics, without commanders and enlisted men. An error by a grease monkey will bring down a plane as surely as an error by a pilot. It is a force of split responsibility. No one position is more important than another. It is true that the pilot is most in evidence and has been treated most romantically in the press, but the pilot himself knows as well as any, and better than most, how much he must rely on the ground maintenance crew, on navigator and radio man. An Army pilot knows that he is not the fair-haired boy of the Air Force. There isn"t any fair-haired boy. The force must function as a unit. One might as well say that the controls of a plane are more important and necessary than the engine or that the air foil is more important than the propellers. The plane does not take the air unless every part functions successfully and the Air Force does not function unless all of its men do their jobs. This is very well known in the Air Force. It is only civilians who think of the pilot as separate and more important and romantic than his brothers. But Allan had read the usual things and he, like many others, thought of the Air Force as a group of lordly officers who were pilots with valets to service their planes. He made application for training and was accepted on his scholastic record, for in engineering school he had a background of mathematics, a training in the use of instruments, several courses in astronomy, the controlled thinking that goes with mathematics and the discipline toward exactness that goes with engineering. His application was accepted and he was sent to an induction center and there his hair was clipped with all the others. He drew his work clothes and his neat khaki uniform. He was given the intelligence test and the apt.i.tude test, the interviews and physical examinations, and finally Allan was called to a private interview with an officer. He stood nervously waiting for the unknown. The officer said quietly, "At ease, sit down there." He had a report on the desk in front of him. He glanced down at the papers and then up at Allan. "You have a good rating here," he said. "There is nothing in this report to indicate that you would not make a good pilot. Some difficulty might show up in training, but it isn"t likely. Physical and mental reports are both good." Allan began to breathe again. "Thank you, sir," he said.
"There is something in this background and report I want to talk about," the officer went on. "You should be a good pilot, but with your engineering background you should make an even better navigator." Allan leaned forward in his chair. "I thought I"d like to be a pilot," he said. "Everyone wants to be a pilot," the officer said, "but we need navigators as much as we need pilots. The ships have to get to the targets and back. It isn"t a second-choice job. On your record, I would like to recommend you for navigation school. After fifteen weeks, if you pa.s.s, you will be commissioned a second lieutenant. Your ground pay and your flying pay will be the same as a pilot and rank and promotion are on the same basis. And you must understand that a navigator is not a washed-out pilot. He is a specialist in his own line and your background qualifies you particularly. Think it over and report to me tomorrow morning."
Allan sat in the induction center post exchange, drinking c.o.kes and thinking it over. His mind was quick to grasp implications. The specialty he was offered was work for all his life. He knew that when the war is over a great part of the commerce of the world will be air-borne, that great ships and possibly strings of towed gliders will carry the people and the produce of the world from place to place. He knew that, except for short hauls, the old methods of transportation, ships and rails and trucks, were going to disappear because they were slower and more expensive and less efficient than air transportation. In college he had talked often with students and instructors about the future of air commerce, and all of these ships would need navigators and the route plotters and dispatchers would be navigators. It was a whole life work that was being offered him, and it seemed to him a better and more interesting life than a civil engineering job which, during his memory at least, had been precarious.
He went to the counter and got another c.o.ke and sat down again. The war was going on. It had to be fought and won. If he wanted action, he would have it. A bomber doesn"t hide its head, even its defensive work is attack. He would see all the action he wanted and would take a definite and important part in it and when the war was won, he had a profession which would continue to be action. Allan had always done his own thinking. He went over the question carefully. Pilots would be necessary too after the war, but there would be a great many more pilots than aerial navigators. There would be all the combat pilots and the copilots, all the thousands of civil pilots. Navigators would be very definitely in demand. In the middle of his third c.o.ke, he thought with some guilt how he was considering a future in peace and was selfishly figuring what he would gain. It was true, the future of the navigator, and it was to be considered. And now that he had considered it, he shut it out of his head. There was a war to be fought, and he was very tired of c.o.ke. As he walked back to his quarters he thought how he would see the world at war and would see it at peace, all of the world, the cities and peoples of the Orient and of South America. He would help to carry food to the new-born peoples of Europe when the German locust was killed and driven out. Probably the seed which would make Europe fruitful again would be carried through the air. If he wanted to see the life of his planet during his own time he could not want a better profession.
The next morning, after a second interview, he was a.s.signed to an aerial navigation school.
Aerial navigation is a technical job. It is learned in the cla.s.sroom and the laboratory, and for that matter the laboratory, the training plane AT-7, is a cla.s.sroom itself. In each ship there are three desks and three sets of instruments so that three students may work at the same time. Cla.s.srooms in the training centers look like any cla.s.srooms. They are long and the desks are arranged in line. At the front is the instructor"s stand with a blackboard behind it, while on the instructor"s table and on his stand is the demonstration equipment he uses as he lectures to his cla.s.s. The room looks like other schoolrooms, but there its similarity stops. In the cadet cla.s.srooms are no sleepy students slopping in their seats, no whispering or writing of notes, no horseplay. There isn"t time for it. The cla.s.s marches to its desks. Each man stands at attention until he is ordered to be seated. He sits up at his desk with his eyes forward on the demonstrable a.s.sumption that an alert posture is concomitant of an alert mind.
In the navigation school a great deal must be learned in a very short time. The work has been designed to be as much as a very good man can stand. A second-rate man cannot stand it at all, but with the initial testing a second-rate man rarely gets into navigation school.
Allan marched to his desk and stood stiffly until the cla.s.s was ordered to be seated. The instructor did not waste any time. He went quickly into the definitions of navigation. On the sphere before him, which represented the earth"s surface, he explained the system of co-ordinates, meridians and parallels, lat.i.tude and longitude. He explained the great circles and small circles, the difference between a great circle course and the Mercator course. He spoke of the statute mile and the nautical mile. In the first cla.s.ses the different projections of maps were discussed, the Lambert-Conformal Conic projection and the Mercator projection, gnomonic, stereographic, and other projections, and the methods of measuring course and distance on each. Definition was immediately followed by application in every case. And after each set of definitions there was a quick questioning of the cla.s.s not only to find out how much the individuals had learned, but to set in their minds what they had learned.
But the navigation school was not solely cla.s.s work. Their military drill and formation was as rigid and continuous as that of any other school in the Air Force; and from cla.s.s they went to the athletic fields where they played the active games the Air Force encourages, football and basketball, volleyball and baseball, obstacle races, running and jumping. After the hours in the cla.s.sroom they needed the playing fields to shake the kinks out of their backs. They hadn"t really time to get tired and after the cla.s.s work and the athletics were done and the formations were done and they had eaten their dinner, it was still a good idea to get out the textbooks and to study what had gone on during the day. For the work goes very rapidly and it is difficult to go back and pick up.
The training ships for navigators are AT-7"s, twin-engine, all-metal ships equipped really as flying cla.s.srooms in navigation. Along the right-hand side of the plane are three desks for three cadets and beside each desk is a drift meter and a compa.s.s. In back of the pilot, and in sight of all the desks, there is an auxiliary instrument board with dials showing alt.i.tude and air speed and air temperature-in fact, all the information that is needed for a navigator to do his work. In the roof of the ship there is a turret through which the navigator can shoot the sun or a star to find his position. The driftmeter is really a simple instrument: a gla.s.s, through which one can look down through the floor of the plane, on which are parallel lines. A k.n.o.b allows one to rotate the field of the gla.s.s. Looking down through it the navigator finds an object on the ground, a tree or a house, and catches it in the parallel lines of the gla.s.s. Then, by rotating his gla.s.s, he makes the object stay within the parallel lines and not slide across them. Having done this, a relation is established in the figures on the side of his instrument which gives him the amount of his side drift. At night he drops a flare to use as an object.
Navigation cla.s.s practicing with the octant
Navigation cadet looks through the driftmeter.
In these flying cla.s.srooms each student plots the course, takes position, each without consulting the other. It is in this way that immediate application of the lessons of the cla.s.sroom is obtained.
In the beginning the cadets use their octants outside the cla.s.sroom until they become familiar with the use of the instrument. In the cla.s.sroom Allan learned the use of the plotting sheet. He prepared plans for flights he would later fly, by plotting in the locations of airports, lighthouses, and other actual objects in the immediate area. He learned map symbols and how to do pilotage.
The cla.s.s studied the magnetic compa.s.s and its variations and deviations. The other instruments used by the navigator were studied, altimeters and air-speed meters, air-temperature thermometers, the airplane clock, directional gyro, the artificial horizon, bank and turn indicators, rate-of-climb indicators, and automatic pilots. Study and practice were constant and simultaneous. They studied the celestial sphere and practiced in identifying stars, estimating their declination and hour angle. They learned the names of constellations and of the navigational stars. They committed to memory the pattern of each constellation and the names of the navigational stars in each constellation, and finally all of the acc.u.mulated knowledge was put into the practice navigation plan. Here was the study of the mission to be accomplished, the rate and alternate routes, the weather forecasts for the area, and emergency landing fields along the route were chosen, each student for himself.
The physical aids to navigation were filled in the plan, radio stations, light beacons, prominent landmarks. The plan for observation was included, data on celestial bodies to be observed. The navigation plan considered all circ.u.mstances and all accidents and deviations so that the mission would surely be carried out.
Throughout all the work the mission is of first importance. Now all the apparently unrelated lessons began to fall into place. Of the whole bomber crew the work of the navigator is the most intellectual. He does not handle any control of the plane. His work is committed to paper. He makes a map of what the ship will do and where it will go, and when his map is made he guides the ship through his figures to its objective and home again.
The ship is a pin point hovering over a globe with sun and stars swinging over it and the navigator must know every moment exactly where he is in relation to all s.p.a.ce. Allan"s cla.s.s moved through its course, working and studying too hard even to know they were working hard. Armed with their figures and their facts and their instruments they made practice flights and were a little surprised to find that the formulae worked, that the ship went to the spot on the earth which was the spot on the map. Navigation is good clean work and there is a great satisfaction in plotting the course of a flight and carrying it out.
Someone once described navigation as being broken up into three phases-(1) determining a place to go, (2) determining how to get there, and (3) determining that you get there. Navigation is work for a perfectionist. It is not enough to come close to a given spot. A closeness is as worthless as a great miss. Three planes take off at different times and at night. Their mission is to meet at a spot over the world which is not marked and to meet in the dark at a given moment. The basic instruments are stars and time to which man-made instruments are applied by the prime instrument of all, the navigator. If he misses his unmarked place by even a mile or gets there inaccurately in point of time, the rendezvous will not be made.
Navigators should be able to navigate by dead reckoning means with a maximum course error of one degree and maximum E.T.A. (estimated time of arrival) error of 1 minutes per hour of flight since the last landmark or fix. They must be able to navigate during daylight by celestial means to within 25 miles of objective over distances approximating the full tactical range of aircraft; while during darkness they must be able to navigate by celestial means to within 15 miles of objective over distances approximating full tactical range of aircraft. And finally they must be able to locate reasonable objectives at night under blackout conditions from a definite landpoint 25 to 50 miles away from the objective with pilot taking evasive action.
Practical navigation in flight.
Allan"s cla.s.s made its maps and its flight plans. Allan was becoming a navigator. He felt the pleasure of directing the ship by his observation. Every day there was a new mission, its object to put to use the recently learned lesson. They flew in all weather, day and night. The weeks went on and the graduation flight came into preparation.
This is numbered Mission 20. It is a long celestial flight and is described as follows: "This mission will be the graduation flight and consists of three flights of at least four hours" duration. This mission should simulate a tactical mission to complete the transition necessary for the student to apply all the technique he has learned to the tactical navigational requirements. It should be in daylight and in darkness, the daylight portion to be over water. All methods of navigation will be practiced." It was a tactical mission, but it was much more than that. They would be navigators when they came back from it. The flight plans were made several days in advance. No two ships were taking quite the same course, yet all of them would fly the legs of a huge triangle and the two points away from camp were near cities. Further it was rumored that the cadets would be entertained at the two stops. For fourteen weeks the cla.s.s had not rested. They had hardened on drill ground and athletic field. Civilian flesh had melted away and its place was taken by harder flesh, disciplined flesh. The cadet did not get so tired now, but sleep was still the most desirable thing in the world. There never was enough of that.
They drew up the flight plans for Mission 20 with great care and all of the cla.s.s shaved extra close and had new haircuts for the flight. They checked their s.e.xtants for error and went over their little cases of instruments. The silver ships were warming up on the line. The navigation cadets drew their parachutes and lounged in the squadron room waiting for their time, and then they lined up and the squadron leader spoke to them shortly. The formation marched out to the line where the engines of the AT-7"s were idling now. They broke up and three cadets went to each plane. Each one sat at a little desk and adjusted his head set and plugged in on the communication system. They laid out their maps on the desks and studied them. The metal doors slammed shut. The ships moved out one by one to the runway. The pilot looked back at the three cadets bent over their desks. He smiled for a moment. He picked up his microphone and his voice was in the ears of his students. "Here we go," he said, and he switched the speaker to the tower. Safety belts were fastened, parachutes buckled over legs, and the shoulder harness over the seat backs where it could easily be reached.
Through the top turret of the training plane a navigation cadet takes a night shot with his octant.
From the tower the take-off instructions blasted in their ears. "Roger," the pilot said and put his two throttles ahead.
It was afternoon when the flight started. The silver ships leaped up into the air one after another and circled once for alt.i.tude. Allan could see the fields below with the lines of barracks, with the parade ground and the columns of young men drilling. The work had been so hard that he had not seen it in the whole before, but now this phase of his training was over and at each of the stops they would be met by local people. They would go to dances and be fed, and when they came back they would be commissioned and a.s.signed.
Last minute instructions before a night cross-country flight.
Through his window, Allan could see another plane shimmering in the sun beside him. He had not had time to think in the top of his mind about anything but navigation. His eye went to the altimeter, 3,000 feet. He wondered where he would be a.s.signed as an instructor; his grades had been good but he didn"t want to be an instructor. Perhaps he would navigate one of the big transports with food and supplies to the fighting world, but there were older men who could do that. No, he hoped he would go out on one of the big ships with a belly full of bombs. He hoped an electric plant or a factory would rise in a red roar because of his navigation. Or best of all he hoped he might find an invasion fleet as the big ships did at Midway and help to strew the ocean with the hopes of conquerors. That was the best of all. But mostly he hoped to be on a fighting ship that carried bombs. He looked at his compa.s.s and then up at the altimeter again. The needle slid to 5,000 feet. He picked his mike from the clamp on the wall and pressed the b.u.t.ton and he spoke the course into the pilot"s ears. The pilot nodded. "Wilco," he said. The ship banked and leveled out again. Alan looked down at his compa.s.s. The ship was on his course.
THE PILOT.
The pilot is still in the public mind the darling of the Air Force. To the Air Force, however, he is only one of a number of specialists highly trained to carry out a military mission. But the public, led on by fiction and newspapers, still considers the pilot the overshadowing officer in an airplane. The reason for this is not far to seek. In early airplanes the pilot was all alone and, more, in the experimental period of heavier-than-air craft, the pilot was usually the man who had built and powered the plane he flew. Further, he was the only man in the world who knew the tricks of his ship well enough to fly it. A pilot did not change planes then. When one was crashed, he built another one. During the last war the airplane was used almost exclusively as an observation instrument. The ship flying over enemy lines came back and reported positions of enemy troops and artillery. But as soon as a ship went over your lines, you sent up ships to intercept him. And thus both ships came to be armed. Out of these observation missions, and their repulse, grew the romantic and courageous dogfights of the last war when individual pilots carried insignia and gained reputations like medieval knights. Then it became simply a matter of individual shooting down individual plane. Then names like Richthofen and Rickenbacker became the symbols of everything young men wanted to be. Later in the war, group flights to protect the observation planes were undertaken. And still there were the dogfights, but a new member had been added-the observer. While the ships were fighting, his job was to take photographs of enemy positions.
Single-seater planes had learned to fly low by then, spraying ground troops with their machine guns, and camouflage had developed to conceal guns and supplies. It was only toward the end of the war that the bomber came to be used and it was an inaccurate arm which actually threw high-explosive rocks at an enemy; and bombing did not develop colorfully enough to overshadow in the public mind those silver knights who met in single combat over the line while men looked on and cheered the victor and buried with full honors the vanquished, whether he was friend or enemy, and set his propeller over his grave. It was the ultimate in romantic combat, complete with trappings and roaring steeds and audience. Missions were fairly lax then and it was more important to have the marks of dead enemies on your ship than to have taken fine photographs. At least this was so with the public. The pilot was the king.
Cadet starts his training to be a pilot.
It was after the war that the complicated tactics of air warfare were developed. Then the mission became more important than the game. Then air forces became integrated groups waging warfare of attacks on ground objectives. Then fighter and pursuit ships became supplemental to the bomber. The bomber did the damage. It was the striking weapon. Pursuits and interceptors then were a.s.signed to protect their own bombers and to attack the bombers of the enemy.
The development of the bomber required the addition of new kinds of air fighters; gunners, to protect the mission; bombardiers, to drop explosives accurately on a target; navigators, unerringly to find the target. And the targets changed too. Whereas the first bombs were aimed only at munitions dumps and troop concentrations and roads, the new targets were more profoundly far-reaching. The bombs sought the factories where munitions were made, the dynamos which created the power to run the plants, the rail lines and highways over which the tools of war were transported. Douhet wrote and Goering and Mus solini believed that if enough bombs were dropped on a civil population, nerves would break and the will to resist would disappear. It may be that this is true. It has been tried in Spain, in Poland, and in England and it has not succeeded yet, but that may be because not enough bombs were dropped. Ten times the number might have done the job. The number dropped so far have only succeeded in making peoples angry and resistant and vengeful. What does work, however, is the destruction of plants, shipyards, docks, ships, and transportation systems, and these have become the new targets for the bombers, just as the bombers have become the main weapons of the Air Force. With the development of the importance of the bomber, the pilot too has changed his status. He is no longer individually the most important man in the Air Force. Just as the ship is a highly complicated unit, so the air crew is considered as a unit, each member of which is equally important. The newspapers still to a certain extent dwell lovingly on the pilot, but the Air Force itself knows that the eye at the bombsight and the finger on the trigger of the blister guns are equally important. This does not mean that individual heroism is finished. On the contrary, it has increased, but a pilot can no longer go to death and glory alone. His crew and his mission put brakes on his knight er rantry, and to the pursuit pilot the mission is of more importance than the shooting down of enemies too. Indeed, in England the refusal of the Royal Air Force to rise up in single combat, although they were taunted and reviled, was probably the saving, not only of their Air Force, but of England too. For, by refusing to fight individually, they later were able to drive the German bombers out of the English skies.