UBEEN at the punch, have you, Stanley?” Canidy asked.
“Noel, Noel,” Fine said happily.
UI’m happy,” It. Colonel Stevens saidxuif a little surprised to see you, Major Douglass.”
“There I was, snug in my own little bed, minding my own business,” Douglass said. UWHEN out of the blue–actually, it was out of the gray overcast–came Canidy in his airplane. He told the base commander I had been summoned to a briefing of Vips. The base commander was very impressed.”. j_ “I believe you know Lieutenant Kennedy, Colonel?” Canidy said innocently.
“Hello, Joe,” Stevens said. “It goes without saying that I’m more than a little surprised to see you here, too.”
“Major Canidy gave me the option of talking to Major Douglass here, or not talking to him at all,” Kennedy said.
“As you seem to have already learned,” Stevens said, “Canidy often does annoying things.” He turned his face to Canidy.
“Was it smart to bring that airplane here, Dick?” he asked evenly.
“I didn’t have any choice,” Canidy said. “When I went to Wincanton, the MP at the gate told me that once I went on the base, I was restricted to it until December 26. Something to do with keeping the barbarians away from the natives at Christmas.”
“I thought this field was unsafe,” Stevens said.
UI wouldn’t want to try to take off with a load of bombs,” Canidy said, “but empty, it’s all right.” Stevens reminded himself then that Canidy was not a fool. Not only that, he was an aeronautical engineer who fully understood the “flight envelope” of B-25 aircraft. Before he had decided to land the B-25 at Whitbey House, he had convinced himself that it could be done safely. Flight safety restrictions were based on the worst scenario, a fully loaded aircraft piloted by an aviator of no more than ordinary skill and experience.
According to the book, Canidy had made an unauthorized flight for personal reasons (which, making it worse, included aiding and abetting an officer to go AWOL), during which he had landed an aircraft on a field he knew had been officially declared unsafe. And he had brought with him an officer who was not (at least yet) cleared to visit Whitbey House.
According to the book, he should be tried by court-martial, if for no other reason than to set an example pour les autres.
There was another way to look at it, A highly skilled pilot had made a short hop to pick up a buddy, a buddy who had lost thirteen of the twenty-eight young pilots he had led on a suicidal assault on the German submarine pens at Saint-Lazare. Stevens decided, therefore, to forget the whole thing.
And so far as young Joe Kennedy was concerned, he was to have been told on Friday anyhow that overall responsibility for the flying bomb project had been assigned to the OSS.
“I’m dying to know what’s going on in this place, Colonel,” Kennedy said, “but I’m afraid to ask.”
E I “We were going to bring you here on Friday anyway,” Stevens said.
“Canidy just pushed up the schedule a little.” UCAN I ask what’s here’?”
“Whitbey House is under the office of Strategic Services,” Stevens said, “which is under your father’s old pal Colonel Bill Donovan.” “And I was to be brought here, you said?”
“OSS has taken over the take out the Saint-Lazare sub pens’ project,” Stevens said, “to settle the squabble between the Air Corps and the Navy about who should do it and how. Canidy’s the action officer.” That was the official version, but it wasn’t the entire truth.
Canidy had gone to Stevens and told him he had heard about the flying bomb project, There was no question in his mind that when the Germans started to produce jet aircraft engines, they would do so in plants as well-protected as the submarine pens. Which meant that he wanted to get in on the ground floor of the project.
Stevens had agreed with that and taken the proposal to David Bruce.
Bruce had gone to Eisenhower that same afternoon, and Ike, over the objections of the Navy and the Air Corps, had turned the flying-bomb project over to the OSS.