Ed’s new assignment was incredible good luck, He was getting back in harm’s way, and this previously had seemed out of the question. Up to now his only reasonable expectation was to spend the war as a staff officer, a shore side staff off ficer, far from action. He was a crippled aviator, who stood virtually no chance of passing a flight physical again. And alas, he was a very good staff officer. Very good staff officers are usually much too important to send to sea. A very good crippled staff officer was a double kiss of death.
As the work he was doing for Admiral Hawley had become less and less important, his feeling of frustration had grown. When he first went to work for the admiral, the disaster at Pearl Harbor had still been a bleeding wound, and the assignment of Naval Aviation assets had been critical.
There had been neither many planes nor the spare parts and support equipment for them. Thus the appointment of these throughout the world had been very much like an intensive, indeed, deadly, game of chess.
As aircraft and equipment had trickled from assembly lines, daily decisions–based on losses–and educated guesses–based upon less than complete understanding of war plans–of requirements had to be made.
A wrong guess–or estimate, as it was called in the trade–was at the time a genuine threat to the conduct of the war. Sending more aircraft, or fewer, than the tactical situation required could have lost more than a battle.
But that situation had changed. Everybody was still screaming for more aircraft, but in point of fact, the major problem for the last several months had been scrounging shipping space rather than equipment to ship.
The trickle had become a flood. Aircraft manufacturers who had been delivering four aircraft a day were now delivering twenty. Or forty.
The Naval Flight Training Program, vastly expanded, was delivering a steady, and steadily growing, stream of pilots.
Bitter knew that his job could just as easily have been accomplished-perhaps been better accomplished–by one of the directly commissioned civilians who had entered the Navy in large numbers, men from automobile and furniture factories, grocery distribution, railroads, even five-and-ten cent-store executives. These people were skilled and practiced in moving “supply line items” from Point A to Point B in the most efficient manner.
The need for someone qualified to base the supply decisions on tactical considerations had ceased as soon as the American industrial complex began to stamp out airplanes with the same efficiency that it spit out automobiles and refrigerators.
As often as he dared, he had asked Admiral Hawley to have him returned to aviation duty or to a ship. He was a naval officer first and an aviator second, and he could hold his own on a ship, as executive officer or even as captain, with luck.
Admiral Hawley had always courteously but firmly refused. The Navy needed him most where the Navy had put him, the admiral kept telling him.
And, as things had turned out, the admiral had been proved right.
He was going overseas, going in harm’s way, back on flight status, because that was what the Navy needed.
Four days after the DCNO marched into Admiral Hawley’s office, Sarah drove Ed to Anacostia Naval Air Station in the Cadillac, as she had fifty times before. The only difference was that this time he wouldn’t be back in a couple of days. Otherwise, it was the same routine. He traveled in a blue uniform, carrying two suitcases (his priority orders waived weight restrictions) and a stuffed leather briefcase.
Sarah clung to him when the public address system announced the boarding of the Air Force C-54, and the pressure of her breasts against his abdomen reminded him that he was going to miss that part of their marriage. Joe cried, and there were tears in Ed Bitter’s eyes when he kissed his son.
The plane refueled at Gander, Newfoundland, and again at Prestwick, Scotland, after fighting a headwind across much of the Atlantic, and then took off again for Croydon Field outside London, where it was scheduled to land at half past ten in the morning London time.
TWO] U. S. Army Air Corpn Station Sornham St. Faith 6 January Major William H. Emmons, who was the commanding officer of the 474th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron of the Eighth United States Air Force, was more than a little curious about Major Richard Canidy.