Commander Hawes was forty-three, a veteran naval aviator, and an Academy graduate. He was the F417-3 project officer stationed at the Grumman factory at Bethpage, Long Island.
Lieutenants Bitter and Canidy, each twenty-four years old, had been selected from the large pool of naval aviators at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, where they were both instructor pilots. The requirement had been for two pilots who had more than the usual capacity to guide the aircraft. These two had to have something extra-the talent really to fly. They also had to be bright enough to understand both the real purpose behind the flyover and the damage they could do to naval aviation if they screwed something up.
Lieutenant Edwin H. Bitter fit the requirement perfectly. He was an earnest, intense-looking young man who had graduated from the Naval Academy with the class of 1938. Though on the small side, he had earned his letter on the football field; and he still exercised regularly-and looked as if he did. In spite of their unorthodox nature, which at other times would have bothered him, Bitter had taken particular pleasure in today’s maneuvers over Annapolis. He considered, correctly, that his selection for the job was an honor.
Lieutenant Bitter was, in other words, the straightest of straight shooters. Lieutenant Richard L. Canidy was another thing entirely. Though if anything he was a better pilot than Bitter, he was not an Academy man, and-more damaging still-his attitude disturbed more than a few people who counted. All too often, when his name came up, one would hear words like cocky, blase, arrogant, or defiant. Canidy was thought to cut too many corners. He was even thought by some not to be “serious.” The trouble with Canidy, it was generally agreed, was that he was too smart for his own good. Not smart-ass smart, really smart. He had received (cum laude) a Bach- M elor of Science, Aeronautical Engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1938.
Canidy was dark-eyed, dark-haired, and quick to smile. He was tall-nearly a head taller than Bitter-and moved with fluid grace, but he was not really goodlooking. This deficiency, however, in no way hindered the frequency or the (mutual) pleasure of his encounters with more than usually beautiful and attractive members of the opposite sex. In fact, he was often said to have the same talent for women that Alexander the Great had for territory.
And Canidy was also a magnificent pilot. When he had entered the Navy, he was already a skilled airman with a commercial pilot’s license, an instrument ticket, and 350 hours of solo time. And his skills had steadily improved. An easy way up the Navy ladder was open to him, if he wanted to go that way. He didn’t. He had lost no time letting it be known that while he would, to the best of his ability, do whatever the Navy asked of him, he was not planning to become an admiral.
A Navy scholarship, in exchange for four years of postgraduation service, had gotten him through MIT. That four years would be up in June of 1942. At the moment Canidy intended to swap his old stripe-and-a-half for an engineer’s slapstick. The Boeing Air craft Company of Seattle, Washington, had made him a very good offer of employment, based just about equally on his B.S., A.E., cum laude; on the opinion held of him by several of his professors; and on his thesis, “An Hypothesis of Airfoil Tip Vibrations at S eeds in Excess of 400 MPH.” p In the end, it had been decided that Bitter and Canidy were the best choices to be sent to Bethpage because of their flying skill, and that Canidy’s attitude, though leaving a good deal to be desired, was more than compensated for by his other qualifications.
With secrecy Canidy thought it would have been appropriate had a surprise attack on Toronto or Montreal been in the works. He and Bitter (who, because rooms had been assigned alphabetically, was his Bachelor Officers’ Quarters roommate) had been summoned to the office of the deputy commandant at Pensacola, introduced to Commander Hawes, and informed that they had been selected from their peers for an important mission which involved flying the F4F-3.