Although trained as a B-25 pilot, Wes was determined to fly fighters, another manifestation of his intelligence, and got himself attached to the fighter test squadron for flying. After flying with him in an AT-6, the only single-engine two-seater in the squadron, I was sure that he would have no problems flying fighters, and he soon checked out in the Mustang and the other propeller fighters. In those days few, if any, fighters had two seats. A pilot's first flight was, of necessity, solo. When the time came for Wes to make his first jet flight, in a P-80, I followed him in another P-80 as a chase pilot. I was astounded, to put it mildly, when at about 250 mph and 250 feet, he did a slow roll. At first I thought he was turning left and started to follow, but instead he went all the way around in a good roll. Even at Eglin in the forties, this was strictly verboten except in airshows. I was thinking that if he crashed out of the roll I had better dive in next to him. That would have been easier than trying to explain his roll. I thought no one had seen it, or if someone had, it wouldn't be reported. Wes knew better, but the sheer exuberance of flying a jet for the first time was too much for his restraint mechanisms. I really couldn't blame him. I felt much the same way on my first P-80 flight.
Artie Lynch expressed the feelings of most fighter pilots when he met Wes after that flight. He said, "I saw that roll, and I know why you did it — you had to!" Wes flew with the fighter squadron for the rest of his stay at Eglin. He was a fine pilot and flew on many tests and in firepower demonstrations in which he demonstrated his fighter-pilot skills in the most impressive way possible, that is, accurate weapons delivery.
Wes had a distinguished career after he left Eglin to accept an appointment as a Rhodes scholar. He held many important planning positions in Air Force headquarters, flew in the Berlin airlift, received a Ph.D. from Harvard, and was the first professor of political science at the Air Force Academy. Following his retirement from the Air Force, he served as chancellor and president of the University of Pittsburgh for more than twenty years. Despite his academic achievements, Wes still considers his flying days with the fighter squadron at Eglin some of the most enjoyable of his life, and we often reminisce about them with pleasure.
Barney was with us for only a short time. His request had been approved to return to college under a new AAF program in which officers whose education had been interrupted by the war could pick up where they had left off. He left almost immediately for the University of Florida in Gainesville, about 300 miles from Eglin. While Barney and I were in Alaska, Dick Jones was transferred to the 20th Fighter Group at Shaw Field, South Carolina, so the three irresistible bachelors at Eglin were now reduced to one.
Rode, Walt, Wes, and I plus Ted Shea, a civilian technician from MIT who was at Eglin to maintain the A-1 computing gunsight and to monitor the test, became the founding occupants of the house. We shared the rent and the housekeeping chores, but Wes, probably as a backlash from his West Point years, didn't make his bed for the entire six months we roomed together, although he did wash the sheets now and then. One of my chores, since I am an early riser, was to rouse the group in time for work. I did this by turning up the phonograph to its full volume and playing Red Ingle's recording of "Temptation." Then I would quickly vacate the area to avoid the missiles hurled from the balcony that encircled the living room. After a few weeks in the house, we decided it should have a proper name. After some thought I suggested Auger Inn, which was immediately and unanimously approved. To those not familiar with flier's euphemisms for "crash" and "death," words almost never used by pilots, to auger in means to crash and die. An auger is a type of drill, and a spinning airplane boring into the ground remotely resembles a drill boring into a plank.
Another euphemism for the same thing, "to buy the farm," has an interesting etymology. When a military plane crashed or crash-landed on a farm, the farmer would usually claim an exorbitant amount from the government in payment for his destroyed crops, forcing the government, in effect, to buy the farm. By common usage it became the pilot who bought the farm when he was killed in a crash.
Auger Inn became well known in the Eglin area, with many parties in the house and on the dock, which was complete with a canoe and a sailboat. As the original residents, or Auger Innmates, married or were transferred, other pilots moved in, until finally in 1949 the house was sold, and there was no longer any room at the inn.
Not only had the housing situation improved, but my personal life brightened considerably when Glindel Barron returned from vacation. I asked her for a date, she accepted, and after several more dates the realization slowly began to dawn on me that there just might possibly be something in life more important than flying.
11
Gunsights and Highball
During these months, March to October 1947, I enjoyed a stretch of some of the best and most interesting flying of my career. Despite being assigned to the climatic hangar for the first half of the period, I was able to fly with the fighter test squadron almost as much as I had before the transfer. I became the test officer on the A-1 gunsight in the P-38L and was one of a group of pilots on Project Highball, testing the interception capability of the P-80. On many weekends I flew in airshows in the Southeast and on other weekends flew on personal cross-country flights. To top it off, I made several long ferry flights and, wonder of wonders, was able to buy a new car.
Cars were hard to acquire after the war. Auto manufacturers had to switch from war production back to production of civilian vehicles, and it was late 1947 or early 1948 before cars could be bought without paying ridiculous premiums. Consequently, it was quite common for young people not to have their first car until they were in their mid-twenties.
My nonflying life was even more satisfying. After several more dates with Glindel I had fallen deeply in love, and we began to go steady ('go 'sted e: to date regularly and exclusively, usually a precursor to engagement and marriage). We dated almost every night and had lunch together as often as possible. Life was sweet, both in the air and on the ground.
The A-1 gunsight in the P-38 was the first radar-ranging, computing gunsight used by the Army Air Forces. The test version of the sight was called the Davis-Draper sight, after its inventors Col. (later Lt. Gen.) Leigh Davis and Dr. Stark Draper of MIT. Dr. Draper later was instrumental in the development of inertial guidance, which made space navigation possible and which is used in almost all military aircraft today. The sight was developed in the MIT laboratories and was mounted in a P-38 because of the space available in the nose section of the pilot nacelle and the clear field of view for the radar resulting from the space between the propellers. It had been installed in one P-38 in early 1945, and by 1947 that P-38 was the only one remaining in active service in the AAF. The sight could not have been installed in any of the single-engine propeller fighters without some kind of a high-drag pod on the wing outside the arc of the propeller. That summer, Glyn (short for Glindel) told me she could always tell my plane when it flew over because it had two tails with a board in between, not a bad description for an airplane novice.
Flying the only P-38 in the Air Force prompted some interesting reactions from former P-38 drivers. Colonel Slocumb, the squadron commander, flew P-38s during the war and, like all P-38 pilots, loved the airplane and its distinctive sound, a throaty purr due to the turbosuperchargers. He told me to taxi by his office at the corner of the hangar on every flight and rev up the engines so he could enjoy the sound, which of course I did. Whenever I flew it up to Bedford, Massachusetts, to enable the MIT technicians to modify the sight, the airplane would be surrounded at each refueling stop by former P-38 pilots and mechanics lovingly renewing their acquaintance with it. It was lucky that the airplane was made of aluminum or it would have rusted away from the tears shed on it.