Title: Barry Blake of the Flying Fortress
Author: Gaylord Du Bois
Illustrator: J. R. White
Release date: December 18, 2014 [eBook #47696]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by Stephen Hutcheson, Rick Morris, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Barry Blake of the Flying Fortress, by Gaylord Du Bois, Illustrated by J. R. White
FIGHTERS FOR FREEDOM Series
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I | Randolph Field | 9 |
| II | Two Kinds of Rats | 17 |
| III | Jeep Jitters | 26 |
| IV | Lieutenant Rip Van Winkle | 33 |
| V | Sweet Rosy O’Grady | 41 |
| VI | Submarines to the Right | 51 |
| VII | Raid on Rabaul | 60 |
| VIII | Flying Wreckage | 71 |
| IX | Night Attack | 82 |
| X | Hand to Hand | 93 |
| XI | Lieutenant in White | 110 |
| XII | New Guinea Gardens | 118 |
| XIII | Mysterious Island | 129 |
| XIV | Dogfighting Fortress | 137 |
| XV | Slaughter From the Air | 149 |
| XVI | Secret Mission | 170 |
| XVII | Out of the Fog | 184 |
| XVIII | Adrift | 198 |
| XIX | The Catamaran | 212 |
| XX | Floating Wreckage | 225 |
| XXI | Patched Wings in the Dawn | 238 |
Barry and Chick Were Among the First to Leave
The bus from San Antonio pulled in to the curb and stopped. The door snapped open. Half a dozen uniformed upperclassmen wearing grim expressions moved closer to the vehicle.
“Roll out of it, you Misters!” bawled their leader in a voice of authority. “Shake the lead out of your shoes! Pop to it!”
Barry Blake and Chick Enders were among the first out of the bus, but they were not quick enough to suit the reception committee.
“Are you all crippled?” rasped the spokesman of the upperclass “processors.” “Come alive and fall in—here, on this line. Dress right! I said dress—don’t stick your necks out. Atten-shun! Hope you haven’t forgotten all the military drill you learned at primary. You, Mister! Rack it back. Eyes on a point. And out with your chest if you have any. Keep those thumbs at your trouser seams.... All right! Here’s your baggage tag. Write your name on it. Tag your baggage—and make it snappy. Stand at attention when you’ve finished. Hurry! That’s it.... Take baggage in left hand—left, not right. And wipe off your smile, Mister! ’Sbetter.... Mister Danvers, you will now take charge of these dum-dums.”
Barry was sweating. The blazing Texas sun was in his eyes. His chest ached for a normal, relaxed breath; yet he dared not move. Mister Danvers’ barking command came as a sharp relief.
“Right face.... Forward, march! Hup! Hup! Hup! Pull those chins back. Hup! Hup! Eyes on a point! And hold your right hands still—this isn’t a goose-step. Hup! Hup! Shoulders back—grab a brace—you’re in the Army now! Hup! Hup! Dee-tachment, halt!”
For more strained moments the new arrivals stood on the arched stoop of the Cadet Administration Building and listened to acid instructions. The talk dealt with the proper manner of reporting for duty. The tone of it, however, showed the processor’s profound doubt of the “dum-dums’” ability to do anything properly. It was deliberately maddening.
Barry Blake felt a wave of hot resentment sweep over him. A second later cool reason met it and drove it back.
“They’re just trying to see if we underclassmen can take it,” he told himself. “A cadet’s got to learn how to be an officer and a gentleman, in any situation. They’re teaching us the quick, hard way, that’s all!”
Barry held his tough, well-proportioned muscles a little less stiffly. He wondered how Chick Enders was taking the processor’s verbal jabs. From where he stood he could see Chick’s short, bandy-legged figure quiver under the barrage of upperclass sarcasm. Chick’s good-natured mouth was a hard line, and his eyes were pale blue slits above his pug nose. The homely cadet was having a hard job trying not to explode.
Suddenly he relaxed, and Barry, seeing it, chuckled inwardly. He had known Chick Enders since they were both in kindergarten. When he got angry, the kid’s blond bristles would stick up like the fuzz of a newly hatched chick. That always meant a fight, unless Chick’s sense of humor got the upper hand, as it had just now.
While the processor’s stinging remarks continued, Barry’s memory flashed back to the day that he and Chick had graduated from the Craryville High School. Barry had been valedictorian of the class, and Chick, he recalled, had been prouder of the fact than anyone.
There was an almost hound-like loyalty in the homely youth’s soul, and his hero was Barry Blake. From their earliest snow-ball battles to high school and varsity games where Barry carried the ball and Chick ran interference, it had always been the same. Both had enlisted at the same time and later applied for flying cadet training.
“I’m glad we’re still together,” Barry thought, with another glance at his friend’s freckled profile. “If he’d been sent to any other basic training school than Randolph Field, I’m afraid it would have broken Chick’s heart. We’ll be together here for nine weeks. After that—well, there’s a war on. We’ll train and fight wherever we’re sent, with no complaints....”
“All right, you Misters!” the upperclassman’s voice broke in on Barry’s thoughts. “Right, face! Column right, march! You’ll receive your company and room assignments upstairs. Try not to forget them!”
Still under a running fire of orders and caustic comments, the suffering “dum-dums” were taken to the supply room. Here each new cadet proceeded to draw a full outfit of bedding, clothing, and equipment.
“I feel like a walking department store!” Chick Enders muttered as he joined the line behind Barry. “They must have figured out scientifically just how much a guy can carry if he uses his ten fingers, his elbows and his teeth....”
“Roll up your flaps, Mister!” snapped a keen-eared processor, taking a step toward Chick. “You’ll get your chance to sound off soon enough!”
Just in time Chick caught and straightened out an apologetic grin. He had a hunch that any smile just now would be asking for trouble. Pulling his freckled face even longer than usual, he stepped out at Barry’s heels, and hoped that none of his assorted burdens would slip.
At the barracks, while changing into coveralls and new shoes, Barry and Chick were able to exchange a few hurried words.
“I’d heard that these upperclassmen were pretty unsympathetic,” the homely cadet remarked, “but I never thought they’d lay it on quite so heavy. I guess they stay awake nights inventing ways to make a dum-dum sweat.”
“Don’t let it get under your skin, Chick,” Barry laughed. “There’s no meanness behind their processing. It’s intended to make soldiers out of us. The first thing they do is to prick our balloons—take the conceit out of us, if we have any.”
“And the next thing is to toughen us up,” grinned Hap Newton, their roommate. “Don’t worry—in five weeks we’ll be processing a new bunch of dum-dums, and making ’em like it!”
Before they had finished changing clothes the processor in charge bellowed another order.
“Hit the ramp, you Misters!” he shouted. “On the double! Leave your powder and lipstick till tonight.”
Barry Blake grabbed his cap. He headed for the doorway, tightening his belt as he went.
“Come on, Chick,” he said. “I don’t know what the ramp is yet, but I aim to hit it hard and quick.”
“Me too,” his friend grunted, “even if I lose a shoe.... Mine aren’t laced up yet.”
The ramp, they discovered, was the broad stretch of concrete just outside the cadet barracks. Pouring out of the door, the dum-dums were greeted by rapid-fire commands:
“Fall in! Dress, right! Straighten-that-line-d’you-think-this-is-a- ring-around-the-rosy? ’Ten-shun! Count off! Forwar-r-rd, march! Hup, hup, hup! Column right, march! Column left, march! By the right flank, march! To the re-ar-r-r, march! Squa-a-ad, halt! Left, face! About, face! Forward, march!”
To Barry and Chick, both assigned to Squad 17, these maneuvers were a welcome change. Having mastered close-order drill at primary school, they now went through it automatically. Their taut nerves relaxed. The stiff soles of their new issue shoes were just beginning to smart, when a hollow voice boomed through the air.
“’Tenshun all squads now drilling!” whooped the invisible giant. “Squad 26! Take Squad 26 to the tailor shop.... Squad 17. Take Squad 17 to the barber shop. That is all.”
It was the voice of the Field’s public address system. Instantly the processors in charge of the two squads named marched them off the drilling area. As Squad 17 entered the shop, six barbers stood waiting by their chairs. Barry got a quick mental picture of sheep being driven to the shearing pen.
First in line was a sulky-looking youth, whose name-tag proclaimed him to be Glenn Cardiff Crayle. He had a sleek black pompadour, and a habit of passing his hand caressingly over it.
“Just trim the sides and neck, please,” Barry heard him mutter to the wielder of the shears.
The barber exchanged winks with the upperclassman in charge. He slipped expert fingers under a long lock of Crayle’s hirsute pride.
“Maybe you’d better have it regulation, sir,” he suggested with heavy emphasis.
Snip-snip-snip went the shears. Cadet Crayle writhed as if they were a savage’s scalping knife, but he knew he was helpless. Barry Blake chuckled inwardly. “Regulation length” would mean no loss to his own short, wavy hair, or to Chick’s blond bristles.
Six barbers and ten minutes for a haircut! In little more than a quarter of an hour, Squad 17 was marching back to the drilling area. Another half hour of close-order drill—then dinner formation.
Scarcely were they seated in the big cadet mess hall, when the nervous dum-dums found their worst suspicions realized. Mealtime was just another opportunity for hazing by the upperclassmen. Placed at the foot of a table seating eleven men, Barry and Chick discovered that they were the “gunners” of the group. That is, they must pass—“gun” or “shoot”—food and drink up the table whenever asked.
Two minutes after the meal began, the “table commander” at the upper end sent down his coffee cup for re-filling.
“A cup of coffee for Mr. Danvers,” murmured the lowerclassman nearest him.
“A cup of coffee for Mr. Danvers,” repeated Hap Newton as he passed the cup.
“A cup of coffee for Mr. Danvers,” Barry Blake solemnly announced, as he filled it and passed it back.
“You, Mister!” the table commander barked, looking straight at Chick Enders. “The potato dish is empty. You will signal the waiter by holding it up—like this.”
With his upper arm horizontal and his forearm vertical, the upperclassman demonstrated the proper gesture. Hap Newton giggled.
“Silence!” snapped the processor. “What’s your name? Newton? Sit forward on your chair, Mister—on the first four inches. Chin up, get some altitude. And take your left hand off the table. And remember—for a dum-dum to laugh, smile or chortle at mess is an inexcusable breach of manners.”
“Yes, sir,” mumbled Hap Newton, so meekly that Chick Enders nearly dropped the potato dish, trying not to laugh.
Dinner ended all too soon for most of the hungry new cadets. The food was ample, but so excellent that the time seemed too short to do it justice. At the close of the noon hour, Squad 17 was issued rifles, and plunged into the monotonous manual of arms. Not until evening did the weary dum-dums have time to relax.
Their first day at Randolph Field had been a full one—crammed with new impressions that would whirl through their dreams that night.
The weeks that followed were more crowded than any Barry Blake had known. Drills, monotonous, tiring, but excellent for physical “tone,” occupied the first few days. On Monday of the second week the regular training schedule began.
Mornings were devoted to Ground School. Barry and Chick put their best into it, knowing that study was vital to passing later tests. There were five subjects: Airplane and Engine Operation, Weather, Military Law, Navigation, and Radio Code. Of them all, Barry Blake preferred the first. His hobby had been flying model planes since he was in short pants.
The classroom in Hangar V with its blueprints, charts, takedown and working models made him feel at home. Here he “ate up” every lecture on Fuel Systems, Motors, Electric Systems, Engine Instruments, Wheels, and Brakes. The floor of the great hangar itself Barry found still more fascinating. Here were displayed the real planes and their parts, with cutaway and breakdown views. They gave him his first intimate contact with the powerful, fighting ships that he hoped soon to fly.
Flight instruction, in the BT-9 and BT-14 training planes, was always a mixture of anxieties and thrills. There was much to learn, and little time to learn it. In these ships, twice as big as the primary school “kites,” the speeds were higher, the controls more quickly responsive. The gadgets on the instrument panels were just double in number. And the instructors—!
“Lieutenant Baird has it in for me, Barry,” Chick Enders confided, as they headed down the concrete apron toward their ships. “No matter what I do, he just sits back and sulks. All the encouragement I’ve had from him is a grunt or a glare—ever since the day I taxied into the wrong stall with my flaps down.”
A step or two behind him, Barry glanced down at Chick’s short legs twinkling below the bobbing bustle of his ’chute. In spite of himself Barry chuckled. The idea that anybody could “have it in for” a fellow as homely and likeable as Chick was just too funny.
“Perhaps Lieutenant Baird has other troubles,” he suggested. “Remember, when your flight period begins he has already spent an hour with a hot pilot by the name of Glenn Crayle. That lad is enough to curdle the milk of human kindness in any instructor. I wouldn’t worry about it, Chick. You passed your twenty-hour test all right, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Chick admitted. “Maybe it is Crayle, more than I, who’s responsible for the lieutenant’s sour puss. Crayle’s a born show-off and a sorehead as well. Even the processors couldn’t prick his bubble, and they tried—oh-oh! G-gosh! I—er—hello, Crayle! I—uh—didn’t see you coming.”
Walking fast, Cadet Crayle passed the two friends with a glare. They turned and watched him disappear into the Operations Office. Chick Enders let out his breath in a long whistle.
“He must have heard all we said about him before he zoomed past us,” Barry said, with a dry smile. “Oh, well! It’s the truth, and it may do him good when he thinks it over.”
Practicing his chandelles that afternoon, Chick gave less thought to his instructor’s sour mood. As a result he did better than usual. Barry Blake, for his part, forgot the incident completely. It was not until special room inspection, the following Saturday morning, that he recalled Crayle’s ugly look.
Barry Blake was room orderly that week. This meant that he alone was responsible for the general neatness of the quarters he shared with Chick and Hap Newton. For ordinary morning and evening inspection the preparations were simple. Beds must be made, the room must be swept and dusted, and everything had to be in its proper place.
On Saturday, however, all three roommates pitched into the work. Everything must be in perfect, regulation order—each blanket edge laid just so, each speck of dust wiped up. Shoes, clothing, equipment must be spotless, or demerits would fall like rain.
To make sure that Barry had overlooked nothing in his dusting, Chick and Hap went over the furniture with their fingers, searching for a smear of dust. They found none, until Hap tried the bottom of the waste basket.
“Two ‘gigs’ for you, Mister Blake—if the inspecting officer had found that,” he remarked, with a wink at Chick.
“You’re dead right, Hap,” Chick spoke up, wiping his finger over the same spot. “The inspecting officer will do it with white gloves, you know. And if he gets a smear—”
“Aw, drive it in the hangar, fellows!” Barry protested with a grin. “Give me that waste basket and a rag. And then go wash your own hands.”
“Okay—but not in the washbowl I’ve just finished cleaning!” retorted Hap. “It’s too near inspection time. I’m going down the hall.... Coming, Chick?”
Barry polished the bottom of the waste basket as if it were brass. As he put the cleaning rag away, he glanced about him.
“If this room were to be any cleaner, it would have to be sterilized,” he declared. “Bring on your white gloves, and let’s see what they can find now. Guess I’ll have just time to join Chick and Hap down the hall and get back before inspection.”
The three roommates had figured almost too close. They were just starting back to their room when call to quarters sounded. As they hurried into the hall, a uniformed figure darted across the farther end.
“Say!” hissed Chick Enders. “Didn’t that mister come from our room?”
“I thought so,” muttered Barry. “He looked like Glenn Crayle! I wonder....”
There was no time for more speculation then. Official footsteps were approaching. The three cadets were just able to reach their room and stiffen at attention by their beds before the inspecting party came in view.
The officer in charge was Captain Branch, whose piercing black eyes had never been known to miss a spot of dirt. Square-jawed, quick-moving, he entered the room accompanied by a cadet officer with notebook and pencil. His thin, sensitive nostrils sniffed the air.
“Who,” he asked sharply, “has been smoking here within the last few minutes? The room smells foul!”
A tense, five-second silence followed. Barry Blake broke it.
“I don’t know, sir,” he managed to say. “It was none of us three. We don’t use tobacco.”
The muscles of the captain’s jaw bulged. The thin line of his lips hardened.
“What is your idea in leaving rolls of dust under your bed at inspection?” he demanded bitterly. “And dirty soap on your washbowl? And that can of foot powder on the desk? And that drawer—”
He broke off, to stride across the room. From the crack of a drawer in Barry’s desk drifted a tiny feather of smoke. Captain Branch jerked it open. There, on a charred paper, lay a smouldering cigar.
With his face like a marble mask, the officer tossed the cigar into the washbowl.
“Gentlemen,” he said heavily. “This is an idiotic defiance of authority. Unless you can clear yourselves immediately in a written report, appropriate punishment must follow. That is all.”
Not until the captain was out of hearing did the roommates dare to look about. Then, with a sigh that told more than words, Barry stooped and picked up two big, fuzzy “rats” of dust. Wordless, Chick Enders took the can of foot powder from the desk and wiped up what had been spilled.
Hap Newton groaned.
“It was Crayle, all right,” he declared. “I recognized him by the way he carries his head.... But why? Why should he want to sabotage us?”
“I think I know,” said Barry. “Two days ago he overheard Chick and me talking about him. What we said was true enough, as this frame-up proves—that Crayle is a sorehead, with an inflated ego.”
“Inflated and inflamed, both!” Chick Enders exclaimed. “He’s always trying to tell what a hot pilot he is. He hates anybody who shows him up.”
A hard grin stretched Hap’s wide, good-natured mouth.
Smoke Drifted Through a Crack in the Drawer
“We’ll show him up for a sneaking rat,” he said. “Nose up to the desk, fellows, and we’ll get busy on that written report....”
“Pull out of it, Hap!” Barry Blake interrupted. “We’ll only do a ground loop that way. Our best maneuver is to say nothing about Crayle and take our medicine. We can’t prove a thing against him, anyhow.”
Hap Newton’s jaw dropped. He sat down hard on his chair.
“You-you’re crazy, Blake!” he gasped. “We’re likely to be dismissed from Randolph for what’s happened this morning. Why should we sacrifice our wings, our reputation—everything we value here—to protect a yellow snake-in-the-grass like Crayle? That’s what it will mean!”
“We’ve circumstantial evidence that Crayle did it,” Chick Enders put in. “He had no business in our quarters. And it would have been idiotic for us to stand inspection in a room as raunchy as this, if we could help it. That ought to be plain to anybody. Get your pen and paper out, Barry.”
Seated at the desk, Barry Blake shook his head.
“We won’t make anything plain by accusing Glenn Crayle, fellows,” he stated. “That mister may be a fool in some ways, but he’s covered his tracks. Remember, we only thought that he came from our room. And, from the captain’s viewpoint, it would be natural for us to accuse someone else if we were guilty.”
Barry let those points sink into his roommates’ minds for a full minute.
“On the other hand,” he went on, “suppose we face the music. That is what Captain Branch would expect us to do if we were innocent and had no proof. We’ll pay a stiff penalty, of course, but I don’t think we’ll be dismissed from the Field.”
Hap Newton rose and stared out of the window. Chick Enders passed nervous fingers through his short, tow-colored hair.
“You’re right as always, Barry,” the homely cadet said finally. “There’s a paragraph in ‘Compass Headings’ that says: ‘Flying Cadets do not make excuses.’ I have a hunch we’ll be doing punishment tours for the rest of our course, but I’m ready to suffer in silence.”
Hap Newton grumbled and fumed, but he, too, gave in.
“I’ll get even with Crayle,” he added vengefully. “I’ll fix him—”
“No you won’t, Hap,” Barry cut in, “unless you’re willing to fly at his level. The ceiling’s zero down there. Come out of the clouds, fella! And help us clean this room for the second time today.”
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! Up the long concrete ramp—halt—about face—and back again. One hundred and twenty steps to the minute, thirty inches to each step—a fast walk, in civilian life. But these three, covering a prescribed beat at widely spaced intervals, marching in silence and without pause, are not civilians. Not by a long shot!
They are Flying Cadets Blake, Enders, and Newton, wearing the uniform of the day, with field belt, bayonet scabbard and white gloves. Their penalty for a dirty room is posted on the company bulletin board: five tours and six “gigs,” or demerits, apiece. That’s a lot easier than they expected. Still, a “tour” lasts one hour and covers almost four miles. They have three hours still to go.
“And Glenn Crayle’s enjoying ‘open post’! Right now that mister is doubtless disporting himself with some sweet young thing at a tea dance in the San Antonio Flying Cadet Club.... Tramp, tramp, tramp.... Here’s where the ‘gig’ dodger ought to be! One of these days, he’ll slip up....”
Glenn Crayle never became a “touring cadet,” however. In small, clever ways he continued to work out his grudge against Chick and Barry. One of his bright tricks was to dust itching powder over the stick of the “Jeep,” or Link Trainer, knowing that Chick Enders would be the next to handle it.
The “Jeep” is a marvellous device to teach aviation cadets the art of flying by instruments—without ever leaving the ground. Entering it, the fledgling pilot finds himself in a cockpit like that of a real plane. Before him is an instrument panel. Above him an opaque canopy shuts off his view of everything else. In his closed cockpit are all the familiar controls. His situation is the same as if he were flying through clouds at night.
Poor Chick had a case of “Jeep jitters” from the moment he started his “flight” under the hood. The little moving ball and the two queer little needles simply would not stay in place. According to his instruments he dropped one wing and went into a “spit curl” or side slip that cost him precious altitude. Correcting it, he over-controlled. Dangerously close to Mother Earth, according to the Jeep’s altimeter, he zoomed, stalled, and theoretically crashed.
Climbing (in theory) to five thousand feet, Chick attempted once more to conquer the “jeepkrieg.” For some moments he succeeded. Then, without warning, his hand on the stick began to itch. He stood it as long as he dared, let go for one second of frantic scratching—and was lost.
Fifty feet from the theoretical ground he pulled out of his dive. He hedge-hopped over some imaginary trees, caught the stick between his knees, and tried to climb while scratching. Result—a third crash.
“I give up!” gurgled Chick, slamming back the canopy and bouncing out to the surprise of his instructor. “The thing has given me hives on my hands, sir. I’ve committed suicide three times by the altimeter, and I’m afraid I’ll do it in earnest!”
The instructor glanced at Chick’s reddened palm and snorted.
“Very well, Mister,” he snapped. “Spin off and get control of your nerves. You can try it again tomorrow when you’re out of the storm. But you’ll never learn instrument flying by mauling the stick the way you did just now.”
Within the week Chick had mastered the art of level “flight” in a “Jeep.” Yet he knew that his itch-inspired tantrum stood against his record as a prospective pilot of warplanes. The men who fly the Army’s fighting ships must have nerves of chilled steel. Those who might crack under the strain of air combat must be weeded out.
Second thought told Chick that Glenn Crayle must have doctored the “Jeep’s” stick. No hive ever itched as wickedly as his palm; and Crayle was using the trainer just before him.
“I’ll call that rat out for boxing practice, and work him over,” the angry cadet told Barry. “Crayle may outweigh me, but I’ll whittle him down to my size.”
“If you did,” Barry Blake pointed out, “he’d still win, according to his twisted way of thinking. Crayle knows that open grudges are frowned on here at the Field. If you let yourself get mad enough to beat him up, your supervising officer will put that down to poor control, too, Chick. Another show of nerves might wash you out as a pilot—for good. Stick it out, man! The sixty-hour test is only a week away.”
The sixty-hour progress test is a landmark, warning the Randolph Field Cadet that his basic training is nearly over. Sixty hours of flight training have been accomplished. All fundamental flying movements have been mastered, of course, at primary flying school. At Randolph Field they have become still more familiar. Climbing turns, steep turns, “lazy eights,” and forced landings have been learned and practiced thoroughly. Now the pilot’s ability to fly by instruments alone is to be judged.
Both Barry and Chick Enders had worked hard to perfect themselves in flying “under the hood.” The test should have held no terrors for either of them. Yet, as the hour approached, Chick grew nervous. He knew that his instructors were watching him for signs of another explosion.
“I’ll have to be extra good today,” he told his roommates, as the three donned their coveralls that afternoon. “Captain Branch just had me in the office for a little talk. I’m worried, fellows.”
“I noticed that you were sort of ‘riding the beam’ when you came into the locker room,” Hap Newton said, picking up his parachute. “Eyes fixed on vacancy, expression of a calf in a butcher’s cart, and all that. ’Smatter, Chick—did he bawl you out?”
“No, Hap, he was kind—too kind entirely. Reminded me of a sympathetic executioner. He’s flying with me on this test—in his own washing machine. If he so much as coughs when we get ‘upstairs’ I’ll probably reef back the stick and go into a stall.... Well, wish me happy landings. I’m taking off.”
Barry Blake shook his head gloomily at Chick’s departing figure.
“The kid’s in a storm already,” he muttered to Hap. “If Chick were the best gadgeteer on the Field he’d never pass a test under the hood with that case of jitters.”
“Instrument flying will show jumpy nerves every time,” Hap agreed. “It’s tough, Barry. The whole thing started when Glenn Crayle doped the ‘Jeep’ stick with itching powder. Of all the lowdown, squirmy tricks, that was the worst! And he’ll be tickled half to death if Chick is washed out.”
Barry Blake was so upset about his friend that his own nerves were none too steady. When he stepped into the cockpit, however, he took a firm grip on himself. Glenn Crayle, he vowed, should not have the laugh on two of them.
Barry was a born flier. Once in the air, he lost every trace of jitters. His performance was better than ever. He passed the test with a high mark, and brought his instructor back smiling. Hap Newton, who landed soon after, also passed without difficulty.
“Where’s Chick?” the latter asked, the moment they were alone.
“Still flying,” Barry said shortly. “There comes his ship. Flight Commander Branch must have been giving him an extra-thorough test.”
The two friends watched Chick’s ship come in for the landing. With engine cut off, it glided down. The wheels bumped—bounced—came down again.
“He’s heading for the hay,” Hap Newton yelled, as Chick’s plane slewed around. “Give her the gun, Chick!”
As if his frantic shout had actually been heard, Chick’s engine roared into life. The ship leaped into the air, and climbed like a cat with a dog after her.
“That washing machine must have developed a wobbly tail wheel,” Barry muttered; “or maybe it was a freak breeze that caught him.”
“Shucks, Barry,” Hap answered unhappily. “There’s no use making excuses for him. Chick’s still got the jeep jitters. He’s as good as washed out now.”
“Not if he lands okay this time,” Barry said.
Chick’s plane banked, turned, and came down the base leg with open throttle. The engine cut out. A wing dropped slightly, to counteract the drift of the light wind. So far, Chick was handling her nicely. At just the right second he lifted her nose a little to make a three-point landing. The tires touched....
And then it happened. The tail swung sharply. Chick, feeling it, cracked open his throttle, but he was a split second too late. The plane swapped ends, pivoting on a wing. Dust spurted from the runway. With a splintering, ripping crash the wing gave way. The plane nosed over, propeller biting the dirt.
Barry groaned, and started running before the dust began to settle. From West B. Street came the clanging of the ambulance and the crash truck. From the length of the West Flying Line men were running, each with an ugly picture in his mind’s eye—fire!
But neither smoke nor flame appeared. Instead, two helmeted figures crawled out of the wreckage. For a moment they stared at each other. Then, shaking his head, the Flight Commander walked away.
Barry Blake caught Chick roughly by the arm.
“Snap out of it, man!” he whispered. “Crayle’s here in the crowd, laughing himself sick. Reef back and gain some altitude! Chin up!”
Except for Crayle, few of the cadets about the plane were laughing. From the look that Captain Branch had given Enders, they sensed that this was no ordinary ground-loop that would qualify Chick for the Stupid Pilot’s Trophy. It was the tragedy that all cadet pilots dread—the wash-out.