But an order was an order, and there was nothing to do but reply to Oracle's 3002, even though he was quite sure it was going to make him look like a fool. He sat down and rapidly typed his reply on a blank sheet of paper:
TOP SECRET URGENT
FROM STACHTOF BUENOS AIRES OO1O GREENWICH 19 APR 43
TO ORACLE WASH DC REFERENCE YOUR 3003
1. RECEIVED 1050 GREENWICH 19 APR 43.
2. HAVE BEGUN EFFORT TO LOCATE AGGIE.
3. LOCATION TEX UNKNOWN LAST REPORTED ENROUTE BIRDCAGE. NO INFORMATION AVAILABLE RE SNOOPY, TEAM, OR EQUIPMENT. HAVE BEGUN EFFORT TO DEVELOP REQUESTED INFORMATION.
4. CANNOT QUERY GALAHAD INASMUCH AS IDENTITY UNKNOWN.
5. UNUSUAL MILITARY AND POLICE ACTIVITY EARLY THIS AM SUGGESTS POSSIBILITY COUP DETAT MAY BE UNDERWAY. PRESENTLY AVAILABLE INTELOGENCE INSUFFICIENT TO PREDICT OUTCOME.
6. UNCONFIRMED INTELLIGENCE REPORTS SARNOFF MISSING.
END
STACHEF BUENOS AIRES
TOP SECRET
He carefully read what he had typed, then took it to the cryptographic officer and instructed him to dispatch the message immediately.
Of all the missions Oracle had ordered, he decided, the priority mission was the location of Colonel Graham. The problem was that he had absolutely no idea where Colonel Graham might be.
The best thing to do, he concluded, was stay right where he was. For one thing, if Colonel Graham were here and became aware the coup d?tat was probably taking place, he would either contact the Embassy or telephone. If that was true, it was his place to be available. Furthermore, the Embassy was probably the best place to gather additional information about the coup d?tat.
Delojo returned to his office, left it to pick up a cup of coffee from the machine in the room housing the typing pool, and returned to his office.
He stepped out on the balcony and gazed down at the street. A group of natives was in the process of rocking a bus. As Delojo watched, they succeeded in turning it onto its side. Gasoline began to spill from the fueling mouth. Someone tossed a match, and the gasoline caught fire.
A minute or so later, the gas tank exploded.
Delojo stepped back from the edge of the balcony. There was no point in making oneself conspicuous in a situation like this.
An Argentine Army Piper Cub flew overhead, from the direction of the Casa Rosada. Delojo had several questions about it. Was it a loyalist, so to be speak, aircraft, or aligned with the revolutionaries? And what was it doing? Delojo had had several conversations with the Army Attach? about such aircraft. For the Attach? had discussed with his Argentine Army counterparts the concept of direction of artillery fire by airborne forward observers, and had been told that this would be quite impossible until Argentine Army artillery units were equipped with radios capable of communicating with aircraft.
Commander Delojo set out to find the Army Attach?. This was an interesting development, and discussing it with the Army Attach? would be a fruitful way of passing the time until something happened.
[TWO]
Aboard Argentine Army Air Service Light Aircraft Type 42 #6
Above Plaza San Martin
Capital Federal
Buenos Aires, Argentina
OB 15 19 April 1943
After a brief period of considerableand visibleuneasiness and uncertainty, General of Division Arturo Rawson, President of the Governing Council of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Argentina, quickly became not only a believer in the amazing capabilities of light aircraft, but quickly applied those capabilities toward the execution ofOutline Blue.
General Rawson had of course previously flown in Type 42 Aircraft (a high-wing monoplane powered by a 75-horsepower Continental A-75-8 engine and known commercially as the Piper J-4 Cub); but on those flights the pilots were Argentine Army Air Service officers with a deep interest in doing nothing that would make a general officer feel uncomfortable or give him any cause whatever to suspect that they were anything but sober, careful airmen devoted to all aspects of aviation safety.
Today, he was being flown by a pilot who had soloed, illegally, in a Piper Cub at thirteen years of age, after six hours of illegal, if careful, flight instruction by his uncle. Later, Marine Aviation Cadet Frade, C.H., had three times come very close indeed to being dropped from the program at the United States Navy Aviation Training Base, Pensacola, Florida. Cadet Frade's problems with the program had nothing to do with his ability, or inability, to fly the Stearman "Yellow Peril" basic training aircraft, or with the academic portion of the training syllabus, but with his difficulty in learning to fly "The Navy Way" at the Navy's pace, while paying strict attention to the Navy's deep concern for flight safety.
For example, some improvised variations from normal procedures during his first solo cross-country flight in the Stearman brought him for the first time before a board of stern-faced Naval Aviators who were considering his possible expulsion from the program.
The flight plan called for him to fly from Saufley Field to an auxiliary field just across the 'Florida-Alabama border, shoot a touch-and-go, and then return to Saufley Field.
He did that. But he was also observed en route by a flight instructor who reported that Cadet Frade not only engaged in twenty minutes of unauthorized aerobatic maneuvers in the Stearman, but followed this outrageous deviation from his authorized flight plan by returning to Saufley Field via the Gulf Coast beaches, along which he flew at no more than 200 feet above the surf, while waving at female civilian sunbathers on the beach.
After his third appearance before the Elimination Board, Cadet Frade realized that any further infractions against the Navy's Flight Regulations, particularly those involving unsafe flight maneuvers, would almost certainly keep him from receiving his wings of gold and second lieutenant's commission.
No more infractions of any kind were laid against him during the rest of his Primary Flight Instruction, nor during Advanced Flight Training, norafter he was rated a Naval Aviator and commissioned second lieutenant, USMCR while undergoing the prescribed courses of instruction which saw him rated as an F4F "Wildcat" pilot.
Things changed slightly when he was assigned to VMF-221 at Ewa, Territory of Hawaii. The Marine Air Group Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Clyde W. Dawkins, greeted him there with a speech. Its most pertinent point developed the notion that now that Second Lieutenant Frade had learned to fly a Wildcat safely, it was his duty, before entering combat, to learn how far he personally "could push the Wildcat's envelope."
"The Envelope" was defined as the limits (in terms of speed, various maneuvers, stress, and so forth) to which the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics had determined the Wildcat could be safely subjected.
Second Lieutenant Frade accepted this order with enthusiasm. By the time he landed his Wildcat on Guadalcanal on the just-captured airfieldnot even yet named "Henderson" after a Marine aviator who had died in the Battle of Midwayhe had proved to himself that the Wildcat's actual envelope permitted, among other things, close-to-the-ground maneuvering at speeds far beyond those given in the official BUAIR envelope.