“Come on, you’re dying to!”
“Did you know that we’re shipping petroleum products from the Gulf Coast to Nova Scotia?”
“Yeah ‘ ” Canidy said, straight-faced. “Where they are transferred to British ships for the Atlantic crossing. Who told you? That’s supposed to be classified.”
“Who told you?” Bitter asked, disappointed that his secret was known.
“I couldn’t tell you that, Eddie, you understand” Canidy said. “Suffice it to say that I broke bread with Colonel William “Wild Bill’ Medal of Honor Donovan last night.”
“Really?” Bitter wasn’t sure if his leg was being pulled or not.
“Really,” Canidy said. “I learned a lot more than I really cared to learn about the strategic implications of economic warfare.”
Still not sure whether he was being teased or not, Bitter challenged, “Did you also know that we are going to start Catalina flights to keep an eye on our shipping?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Canidy lied easily. He loved to keep Eddie Bitter off balance. “Who’s been telling you all this stuff?”
“Admiral Deer mentioned it last night. I didn’t say anything to him, of course, but I wondered if it might not be a good idea to apply for that duty. It’s obviously important, and you could pick up a lot of hours.”
“Eddie, if there’s any job worse than sitting in a Kaydet teaching dummies to fly, it’s in a Catalina, flying endless circles over the ocean.”
“It’s something to think about,” Bitter said.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance the weather is going to keep us on the deck?”
Canidy asked. “I could use another day in Washington.”
“Not a chance. I checked before I went to bed.-Cloudless skies for the foreseeable future.”
“Shit,” Canidy said.
Officers might swear, Bitter thought, but they should abstain from vulgarity.
When they were dressed, they left the BOQ and walked across the base to the officers’ mess, where they had breakfast. Then they returned to the BOQ, picked up their luggage, and went to Base Op-erations.
The glory of their selection to buzz the Naval Academy graduation was over. As soon as they could hitch a ride, which might take all day, they had to go back to Pensacola, where they could count on spending many long hours in the backseat of a Kaydet, the slowest airplane in the Navy.
Norea UN TWO Pensacola Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida 0615 Hours 8 June 1941
Bitter and Canidy, in Bitter’s month-old 1940 dark green Buick Roadmaster convertible, drove across the pleasant, almost luxurious tropical base to the Mediterranean-style officers’ club. There they had breakfast.
They had been back a day and a half, doing hardly anything but waiting to see the deputy commander so he could vicariously experience their triumph in buzzing Annapolis. But today it was back to work, and with a vengeance, Canidy thought: a long cross-country training flight.
Canidy ate an enormous breakfast, and then, in the men’s room, read the Pensacola Journal cover to cover, while he got rid of as much liquid and bulk as he could. There were no toilets in Kaydets; and despite the many hours he had in them, he had not yet mastered the relief tube.
Finally, they drove to the airfield, where two ensigns, already in gray flight suits, were waiting for them at Student Operations. The students followed them into the locker room, and reported on the flight plan they had laid out as Bitter and Canidy changed into their flight suits. The two instructor pilots carefully folded their green uniforms and put them into canvas flight bags. While the odds against something going wrong on their cross-country training flight were remote, if they did have to spend the night someplace they would need uniforms. Naval officers could not go into public wearing gray cotton overalls.
They picked up their parachutes, then were driven out onto the flight line in a Ford panel truck. Dick and Ed jammed into the front seat with the sailor driver. The student pilots and the parachutes rode in the back.
The cross-country flight (Pensacola-Valdosta-Montgomerymobile-Pensacola) they were about to make was the last training flight of the primary flight training program. Their students already knew how to fly, and when this flight was completed would be awarded naval aviator’s wings and sent to advanced flight training. Ed Bitter and Dick Canidy would then start the whole process all over again, with four new officer students.