The next day Barney and I wandered around Hollywood and were somewhat disappointed. Hollywood and Vine looked much like any other intersection, and we saw nothing remotely resembling a movie star. We did see the Brown Derby and Grauman's Chinese Theater, which was impressive in a gaudy way, and the famous footprints in the concrete out front. That night we were taken to Earl Carroll's Vanities for dinner and a spectacular show featuring gorgeous showgirls, who really opened my oeils, and comedy skits, similar to today's Las Vegas shows.
Early the next morning, we took off for Eglin. It was a bright day, and I could see Los Angeles, the beautiful coastline, and even Catalina Island clearly. I was astounded by the extent of the city, although it was far smaller than today. I would get to know the city better in 1956, when I returned with my wife and two children, as a graduate student at Cal Tech.
We flew back by a more northern route, landing at Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Shreveport, Louisiana. The terrain was much more mountainous along the first part of the route, and we saw the meteor crater just north of Route 66 in Arizona and also had a glimpse of the spectacular Grand Canyon. I didn't fully appreciate its magnificence until, en route from Cal Tech to the Air Force Academy, we spent several days there. It was also a relief to look at something other than partial differential equations, Laplace transforms, Bessel functions, and complex numbers.
The trip back was uneventful, and we landed at Eglin just before dark. The flying time for the trip was about eight and a half hours each way. Somewhat weary, we ate dinner in the club snack bar that night. The fare and the surroundings were much simpler than those of the two previous nights, but it was good to be home.
4
Top Guns in Texas
When we reported to the flight line at seven in the morning on August 9, Colonel Muldoon called Barney Turner, William Vandersteel, and me into his office and said, ''Get right over to operations at the Very Heavy Bomber Squadron. They have a B-twenty-nine ready to fly you to Mitchel Field. Get the base ops people there to drive you to the Republic Aviation plant at Farmingdale, where you'll pick up new P-forty-seven Ns. I expect you back before dark."
The P-47N was a bigger, long-range version of the P-47D, developed for the long overwater flights in the Pacific theater. It had been tested at Eglin months before I arrived, and there were several in the squadron. During the tests, Barney had flown a simulated long-range combat mission of twelve and a half hours. The flight surgeons were quite interested in the physical effects on the pilot of a flight of such long duration in a fighter. They were flabbergasted when they weighed Barney at the end of the flight and found he had gained weight. However, when they learned how much food he had carried with him in the cockpit, they were surprised he had gained so little.
Since I had never ridden in a B-29, I was given the bombardier's seat in the nose, between and just forward of the two pilots. After going through what seemed like an interminable checklist, we finally started the takeoff roll. The B-29 accelerated well, but I was surprised that we took off in a flat attitude, with the nosewheel only slightly off the ground. We climbed in almost the same attitude, and when I inquired why the climb wasn't made at a steeper angle, I was told that the nose was held low to keep the climbing speed higher and improve engine cooling. I was intrigued by the actions of the pilot during the takeoff and initial climb. He was moving the control wheel forward and back and from side to side with no apparent effect except the production of a great deal of creaking. As far as I could tell, the airplane was flying smoothly. A year or so later, when I made some takeoffs and landings in the B-29, I could feel through the control wheel the need for all those adjustments, to keep the wings level and maintain the proper climb angle, though it had not been apparent to me as a passenger.
When I had first seen a B-29 in April 1944, in Karachi, India (now Pakistan), I never dreamed that I would someday fly one of those monsters. In fact, at that time they were heavily guarded, and we mere fighter pilots were not allowed anywhere near them. We were pleased to see them nevertheless, since we knew they were to bomb Japan from bases in China.
We took off at about seven-thirty and about four hours later flew over New York City on the way to Mitchel on Long Island. It was a clear day, and from the bombardier's position in the nose I had my first view from the air of the city where I had spent the first fifteen years of my life. Instead of looking for the famous landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, I searched out the beach on Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn from which I took my first airplane ride at the age of seven, and Floyd Bennett Field, where I spent many weekends scrounging flights in Buster Warner's cabin Waco. He was a family friend, which greatly increased his scroungability.
We descended and landed at Mitchel. Though it was a fairly short field for a B-29, it was no problem for our experienced pilots. Base operations fixed us up with a car, and we grabbed a sandwich while we waited for it. We were taken directly to the AAF office on the flight line at the Republic plant, where we signed for the P-47s, inspected them, climbed in, and were on the way back to Eglin within an hour of our arrival at the plant, with Barney in the lead and Vandersteel and me following in loose vic (V) formation. The long-range Ns could easily make it to Eglin without refueling.
Our Ns were equipped with autopilots, the first I had seen in a single-engine fighter. In fact, they were three of the first to be so equipped and were to be tested at Eglin. Barney told us to spread the formation still wider and try the autopilots to see if they were functioning. I turned mine on and found that it worked quite well, holding altitude, heading, and airspeed within close tolerances. It worked quite well, that is, until somewhere over Virginia, where I caged my directional gyro, which controlled the autopilot heading, to make a correction of almost 30 degrees. When I uncaged it, the P-47, which had been docile until then, reared up into a violent wingover and plunged toward the ground, rapidly gaining speed. Evidently, the autopilot could not make an instantaneous correction of that magnitude without overreacting. My first instinct was to take over the controls and pull it out manually, but the autopilot vetoed that suggestion. It was too strong to overpower. I had to shut it off before I could regain control. It was fortunate that Barney had spread us out, or I might have run into Vandersteel, which, among other things, would have frosted Colonel Muldoon. For the remainder of the flight the autopilot and I declared a truce, and we landed at Eglin well before dark, after a flight of about four and a half hours.
The P-47 was a delight to fly. The cockpit was roomy and quiet since the engine exhaust went through the turbosupercharger near the tail before being discharged. The 2,000-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine is one of the most dependable engines ever made. The airplane was quite stable, and its wide landing gear made it easy to land and almost impossible to ground loop. The cockpit was so roomy that supposedly, when a pilot was under attack, he could run around the cockpit and yell help every time he passed the radio.