I made sure Luiz's hand was on the undercarriage lever andnot on the flaps, shoved the throttles up to full power against the brakes, paused, then flipped off the brakes. And we ran.
But not as fast as at Barranquilla. We were heavier now, 2,000 pounds of bricks and a lot of fuel. On the windless runway we picked up speed slowly… slowly… slowly…
At 80 I tried a little back pressure: the nosewheel lifted sluggishly. I waited, the spark of light rushing closer, getting brighter, then hauled full back on the control column.
And yelled: 'Gear up.'
A sudden roar as the undercart doors started to open, a momentary heaviness as the wheel legs buckled before she was clear of the ground, and then we were flying – just. The light flicked away below, the tops of the trees rushed past, and we were staggering flatly towards the coast, picking up speed. And finally over the sea, retracting the flaps and pulling gently into the laden climb to our cruising height.
I throttled back carefully. After a time Luiz said: 'That was – quite exciting. I understand why you preferred to take off at night.'
'Yes.' Iwas busy checking everything within reach to make sure its nervous system hadn't been strained by the take-off. I was still worried by the starter motor crack-up; you don't usually bust a large piece of equipment violently without it leaving scars, but nothing was showing up on the starboard engine instruments. And itwas only a starter motor…
I climbed on a heading of 098, both magnetic and true: in this area the magnetic variation was too small to bother with. Twenty minutes after take-off we passed through 8,000 feet. I took her up another 200, levelled out until I had 180 mph on the clock, then throttled back to lean cruising power and let her slide gently downhill to 8,000 exactly. Known as 'putting her on the step'; you get a little more airspeed for the same fuel, or the same speed for less fuel. Theoretically, you can't do either – but with a good theoretical knowledge of aerodynamics you can prove a bumble bee is too heavy to fly.
When I flattened out again at 8,000, the airspeed had crept up to 185 – and it stayed there. I smiled, a little smugly, and started to sing.
I didn't want to join the Air Force;
I don't want to go to war.
I'd rather hang around
Piccadilly Underground
Living on the earnings of a high-born lady…
Luiz was looking at me curiously. 'Battle hymn of the RAF,' I explained. 'Ah.' He reached into a pocket. 'You are sure you would not prefer a cigarette?'
We sat almost shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped cockpit, cold in the high night air rushing past, dim in the faint glow of the instruments. And bracketed by the dry roar of the engines, die splatter of white flame from the exhaust stubs.
An hour after take-off I was squinting through the exhaust flames on my side, trying to make out PointeàGravois in Haiti, which should be our first landfall. It wasn't there, but the northern horizon was a rampart of clouds, so probably Haiti was up there somewhere. At diis height we were probably getting a dying breath of north wind from sister Clara.
I decided to assume we were on time but off course to starboard. I altered the heading to due east – largely because it was easy to steer. Navigation in the Caribbean is never critical – not with islands popping up every hour to give youa definitefix.
What worried me more was that the starboard engine had missed a couple of beats in the last ten minutes. In itself nothing important, except that I had my mind on that engine after its starter troubles. And aeroplanes usually play fair with you: they wheeze and cough and tremble before they die – if you're awake enough to notice the signs.
Yet there weren't any other signs: the rpm held steady, oil pressures and temperatures were normal. I laid a hand on the metal of the engine control pedestal. It trembled slightly, but it always had. Just the normal palsies of old age. So… So?
Luiz said: 'And still nothing.' He had the radio in his lap and was twiddling.
'It's only just past three in the morning.'
'I hope you are right.' He turned it off.
The starboard engine missed another beat.
He asked: 'Where do you want me for the attack itself?'
'Better be down in the nose. You've got a good view, there; you can tell me anything you see.'
'My friend, you do not sound very impressed with my… usefulness.'
'You know exactly damn well why I'm not.'
The engine missed again – bad enough for him to notice, this time. He turned away, staring out at the exhaustfiâmes.
I had caught a flicker – no more – on the rpm dial, a shudder on the oil pressure. But now both were normal again. Just in the general way a doctor hands out a pill, I pushed the starboard mixture to full rich. It would cool things, if there was a hot spot the temperature gauges didn't show. It might bum off any carbon on the plugs. But mostly it would show the engine that I, the doctor, cared.
Still with his head screwed round, staring out of the window, Luiz asked: 'Do you think we will have to abort the mission?'
'Hell, no.' Or did I mean – Not yet? She'd fly on one engine, all right – it's the first thing you practise with a twin-engined aeroplane – but she'd be limping along at around a hundred and forty, and that engine would be drinking nearly a gallon a minute. And – damn it – there's no crossfeed on a Mitchell; each engine uses the fuel from the tanks in its own wing. We could run out of fuel on the good engine and still have 400 totally unusable gallons left in the other wing. // we lost an engine- At that point we lost it for about a second; the Mitchell slewed to the right. Then, with a broadside of backfiring, she caught again. Instinctively I hauled her back on to 090 degrees.
Yet the oil pressure was normal, the temperatures a bit below – but that was the effect of the rich mixture.
'I think it must be electrical,' I said, as calmly as I could. It would be, of course. If anybody could invent an aeroplane without electrics, he'd get an award from every pilot in the world, headed by the Keith Carr Medal with Crossed Beer Bottles. The nice thing about a jet engine isn't the speed; it's that the thing doesn't need continuous ignition and will keep you steaming around the sky when every blasted wire's fallen out of the aeroplane.
Reluctantly, I reached out and tried cutting the magnetos. With one out, I got a normal – normal for this tub – drop of around two hundred revs. With the other cut- I held her against the vicious swing, snapped the switch back to Both and the engine caught again in a ragged blast of thunder.
'It's a magneto, all right,' Luiz said knowledgeably. I frowned at him, then remembered he'd already flown a hundred times as many hours in this vintage of American bombers as I ever would – I hoped. And he was right, anyway. One of the magnetos was as good as dead.
Well, it happens all the time: that's why they give you two magnetos per engine. But even with electricity, there has to be a reason. I tried to remember where the magnetos were installed on a Cyclone engine… Then I remembered, all right: in the rear casing, right alongside the starter motor.
Now I saw the cold, thin tight-rope ahead – and behind. It's the classical pattern of flying: ignore a small thing, and it grows on you like a cancer. I'd ignored that starter motor, let it spin itself to bits – but forgotten it might not be entirely in bits. Some part was still spinning, rubbing the motor casing, building up heat and melting the magneto wiring. In a few minutes, those wires would be trickles of hot metal. Then on to the second magneto… already it must be affected, or the whole engine couldn't have cut.
Ignore a cancer and it eats you hollow; forget a jammed motor and it slowly poisons an engine. Just an ounce or two of busted metal, spinning out of control only a few feet away, and no way to stop it up here at 8,000.