Mutley's Hangar - Waypoint by John

The setting: July, 1943…a grass-strip airport somewhere in the US mid-west…

“Anything for me to do today, Mr. Simmons?”

The man looked up from the workbench where he was cleaning a well-used carburettor. He squinted against the bright, late morning sunlight streaming in the open hangar door behind the boy who had spoken. He didn’t answer right away, but made a show of picking up the cleanest of the rags that littered the bench top and wiping the solvent from his hands.

As he stepped around the end of the bench, limping just a little on his game leg, a half-dozen thoughts went through his mind. He considered the boy. About 13 years old, he was – straight hair, a light brown, but sun-bleached almost blonde. It was too long, several weeks beyond needing a haircut. Tommy Harnott was his name, the only child of the couple who owned the small farm that lay about three-quarters of a mile up the dusty gravel road from the airport buildings. He knew the boy’s dad was off somewhere, caught up in the draft, or maybe had volunteered to serve in the Army. Only the boy and his mom were there now.

The place wasn’t being farmed this year, though there was a big garden behind the house and the small orchard was bearing fruit. Jim supposed that the farming was just too much for the woman and the boy to do alone and there weren’t any men around for hire, able-bodied or otherwise. They seemed to be getting by none the less. He supposed that the government must be sending some money from the absent man’s military pay.

Simmons was the owner and operator of the airport, such as it was, the only one for nearly twenty-five miles. It wasn’t much. General aviation was all but dead with the war on. If it weren’t for the aviation needs of the two manufacturing plants in the nearby town he’d have lost the field to the bank months ago. The companies were doing war work, however, and were expanding as fast as they could find people to fill the new jobs.

Both companies kept aircraft at the field for the businessmen to shuttle back and forth to Washington for contract talks and meetings, or for similar reasons to the plants of suppliers or of their own industrial customers. They paid rent for the wood frame hangars where they kept their aircraft, two for one outfit, one for the other. They bought some of their gas here, when he could get it for them, and allowed Simmons to tend to the maintenance of their aircraft. It was enough.

The boy was a regular at the airport. He’d been hanging around at the fence line ever since he was old enough to be out by himself. There weren’t too many other kids nearby – the farms were far apart here, most much larger than the Harnott place. Over the last couple of years, Tommy and Jim Simmons had developed a sort of friendship; not close or familiar, just an unspoken mutual understanding. Jim had begun to ask Tommy to help him from time to time with the occasional chore he couldn’t handle alone– lifting something awkward, holding the other end of a long part that needed attention – that kind of thing. Before long he’d begun to offer the boy odd jobs, painting, mowing or chopping weeds, mostly, and paying him a little for doing them. This summer, Tommy had done most of the mowing out on the strip and around the hangars and the small office.

“I don’t have much today, Tommy. I do need a lift to get this crankcase up on the bench, if you can manage that, though”, he said indicating the shell of a Ranger engine resting on wood blocks on the floor. It looked forlorn and empty without its cylinders and other appurtenances.

“OK.” The two bent to the task and in a few seconds the big aluminium casting rested on the bench, ready to be cleaned up and prepared for re-assembly. Simmons thanked the boy for the help, then turned back to the carburettor. The boy drifted out the open hangar door to stand in the shade next to the building, looking at the sky.

Far off to the south the boy's keen eyes picked out a black dot, low on the horizon. As he watched, it grew bigger, clearly approaching. Something was odd about it. The boy was used to the business twins that came and went from the field, but he seldom saw anything else these days, at least not low or close. This was definitely not one of those.

“Mr. Simmons, is a plane coming here today”, he called over his shoulder.

“No, not that I know of”, replied the man, not looking up from the intricate parts he was working over.

Over the next couple of minutes the plane slowly resolved itself into something big enough for some details to become visible. It had a low wing, four engines and a huge vertical fin. Only one thing looks like that, he thought. A B-17 – it had to be! Nothing else he knew of looked remotely like it. But something wasn’t right. As the plane came closer, Tommy could see that there was a problem. One wing was low, and the two engines on the opposite side were not turning. It was coming here alright, but it was coming on only two engines.

It was near enough that he could hear the engines now, running hard as the pilot held the big plane in a maximum effort slip to counteract the asymmetric thrust. It made its way toward the field in that peculiar skewed attitude indicative of hard cross-controlling – ailerons banking it one way, full opposite rudder preventing the turn. The big Boeing was crabbing in, losing height as it came. It was too low and getting lower - too fast for the strip, but not daring to slow or lower flaps or gear – yet.

He held his breath watching the arrival unfold. At what seemed to be the last possible second the landing gear started down, and the flaps. The gear came all the way out, barely; the flaps didn’t have time to get even half way. An instant before the landing gear touched down, having cleared the low wire fence at the south end of the strip by a few scant feet, he heard the roar of the two engines diminish. The nose began to rise a little and the plane started to straighten itself to align more closely with the broad grass runway. The low wing on the port side rose slowly, ponderously, but never got near to level before the left main gear slammed down onto the grass, throwing dust and chunks of turf and forcing the wings level as the other wheel came down equally hard.

Skidding for a heartbeat on the misaligned landing gear, the big plane then bounded back into the air a foot or two as the landing gear struts recoiled, before settling again. It skidded again, but came straight as the pilot stood on one rudder pedal, then, as soon as it was tracking straight, on the brakes. It ate up the remaining strip swiftly, slowing all the while, but still lumbering on at a good rate. It was rapidly approaching the end of the strip where the buildings stood off to the right side. At the end, there was another wire fence, with a deep drainage ditch and a dirt road just beyond.

Just as it seemed that a disaster was inevitable, the bomber turned sharply, hauled around brutally in a seemingly impossible turn to the right by the right brake and the left engines - responding to throttles suddenly pushed open for a few seconds. It skidded through the turn, throwing up clods of dirt from the tail wheel and the main gear on the side away from the buildings as it turned toward them. The turn, almost a ground loop, sapped most of the remaining momentum from the big juggernaut and it bumped the final hundred feet over the rough sod toward the buildings and coasted to a stop, looking just as if it had been parked there intentionally. The big Perspex nose was thirty feet from the front of the maintenance hangar, pointed slightly skyward.

At some point before that Jim Simmons had come limping from the hangar as fast as he could manage when he’d heard the approaching engines. He stood next to the boy, mouth agape, as the two port-side engines wound down and clattered to a stop, magneto impulse clutches clicking out the dying cadence.

From the belly just forward of the wing, a squarish hatch dropped open on a hinge and men began to emerge. As one after another dropped out of the hatch, Tommy and Jim Simmons watched the pilot and co-pilot through the cockpit windows, shutting down systems, then removing bulky headsets and getting out of their seats. The co-pilot looked shaken, the pilot unruffled and confident. The tail gunner came up beside the plane, having come out at the rear from his own private exit. The men grouped up on the grass, ignoring the civilians, chattering about the wild landing.

The pilot descended from the hatch last, making a total of ten, four of them officers. He was wearing the silver oak leaves of a Lieutenant Colonel. A tag on the front of his flight jacket said, “Elliot”. He gathered the men around him. The co-pilot, still looking very much like a man who‘d just gotten a glimpse of the hereafter and didn’t wish to go there yet, hung back a half step behind the colonel’s right shoulder, staying out of his direct view.

“OK, men, let’s get this sorted out. We have a schedule and we need to get back on it. We’re due to be in England in three and a half days, and I still intend to be on time. Let’s take stock and see what we need to do to make that happen.

Sergeant Weiderczyk, were you able to get off the message I requested”

“Yes, sir” answered a man, one of several with three stripes on their sleeves, obviously the radio operator.

“Acknowledgement?”

“No, sir, not that I picked up. I don’t know if they got it or not. I sent it blind, three times.”

The Colonel turned to the man and the boy who stood a few feet away. They were staring at him with wide eyes, hardly blinking, still coming to grips with what was happening. “Got a phone here, mister” he asked.

Jim replied that there was, in the office. He pointed to the small building a hundred feet away. The colonel turned to the radio operator and directed him to get on the phone and to make contact with their base, letting them know that they had landed safely, but that technical assistance might have to be flown in.

The sergeant answered with a curt, “Yes, sir”, and moved off to do the Colonel’s bidding.

Turning to one of the officers, the aircraft commander said, “Mister Murphy, you remain entirely responsible for that Norden bombsight. I want it covered and I want you next to it, awake, with your sidearm, at all times. You will have no other duties while we remain here. If you need a relief for a latrine trip or anything else, I want another armed officer in your place until you return. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Off he went, re-entering the aircraft.

And so it went. The navigator was detailed to determine their exact location. Once having done so, he, along with the radio operator, was to relay it by telephone to the Army Air Corps authorities, along with any additional information regarding their situation that might be available by then. The navigator was soon at the workbench in the hangar, head-down over a chart, in deep conversation with Jim Simmons.

Turning to a grizzled looking sergeant who appeared a little older than most of the rest of the crew the Colonel said, “Well, MacKinnon, you’re the flight engineer. What are your thoughts?”

“I’ve been thinking about it, Colonel. They went rough just seconds after we switched tanks. They got lean, then quit pretty quickly – just a minute or two, as you know, sir. Switching the tanks back again didn’t help. It’s only 3 and 4 that are affected. I’d say we have contaminated fuel – more likely dirt than water, but maybe some of both. When they were fuelling us early this morning we got the last of a truck full on the starboard side and then another truck filled the rest of the tanks. I’d bet the starboard side fuel is dirty, and the strainers are probably blocked solid too. Nothing else seems to fit the facts.”

“What does it take to put that right, Mac, remembering we’re out in the boondocks here?”

The sergeant thought for a few seconds – you could almost hear the gears turning. “It can be done, Colonel, but we’ll need a pump of some sort that can handle gasoline safely, some hose or tubing and a filter or a good fine strainer. A filter would be best. There’s too much fuel involved for a hand pump. We need to empty the dirty tanks, either into drums or some other kind of receptacle. After we clean the strainers, we can pump some or all of it back in straining or filtering it clean as we go. I’d like to follow the first draining by flushing the dirty tanks with more fuel, then draining again, before we refill ‘em the final time. If we can come up with a pump, a filter, some plumbing and containers, we ought to be able to pull it off.”

“OK, Mac, carry on with it. You can use all the enlisted men except Weiderczyk. Mr. Evans…”, he gestured to the co-pilot, without turning to face him, “…will oversee the work on the aircraft. Let him know if there’s anything you need that you can’t work out on your own, and in any case, keep him up to date on how things are going. I’m sure that fella’ from the airport will help with whatever he has available, particularly when we tell him he can bill Uncle Sam for whatever we use. Oh, and as of right now, I don’t want anyone smoking within a hundred feet of this aircraft. This is a fuelling area now and will remain so until you’re done and everything is restored. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

As the sergeant gathered the rest of the men and began to work out their plan, the Colonel turned to the co-pilot, grabbed him by the elbow and steered him away, none too gently, out of earshot of the others. He turned then to face the man.

“Captain Evans, you weren’t much help to me on that approach. I was a little too busy trying to not lose the ship and these men to enter into a debate of the merits of bailing out.”

The captain cast his gaze down to the ground, then looked up into the Colonel’s piercing brown eyes. “Yes, sir”, he said, “I apologize for what happened. It’s just that I’ve never been so scared in my life. I have no idea how you made it to this field. That ship is not supposed to be able to fly like that. Colonel, I’ve been an instructor pilot on the B-17 for the last five months. I’m supposed to be an expert on what it can and can’t do. If I hadn’t witnessed what just happened with my own eyes I would not have believed it was possible. I thought for sure…no, I knew…I knew we were going to stall and spin in, or roll inverted or just come down short. With the gas we’ve got aboard we would have gone up in a fireball.” He stopped and drew a deep breath. “I’m sorry I lost it. It won’t happen again, sir.”

“Well, we made it, Captain, and as you’ve just learned, the B-17 can do some things the Boeing engineers would have us think it can’t.

For future reference, when I give an order in a crisis, I expect you to comply, not argue with me. If things are less tense, I’m willing to entertain your ideas and opinions, but not with two engines out and every foot of altitude and knot of airspeed needed to make this god-forsaken little pea-patch of a field. It wasn’t the time or place for an ad hoc meeting of the Air Corps chapter of the West Point debating society.

Now, if you’ve got control of yourself, I want you to stay on top of the work Mac and his people are doing. Don’t bird-dog him, but help him knock down any roadblocks he runs into. Once the fuel operation is under way to the point where the others can keep it moving, I’d like you and him to personally look over the whole undercarriage, wheels, tires, brakes, struts, the works. We just gave it a hell of a workout and I’ll feel better knowing Mac has eyeballed it. Make it your idea when the time is right. He’ll respect that. Report immediately to me with any problems that appear to preclude us flying out of here today.”

“Yes, sir. I won’t let you down again, Colonel.”

Turning on his heel, the colonel began to walk toward the tiny office building. Noticing the boy, who was staring at him, he stopped short, did a little double-take and said, “Hello, son. What’s your name?”

“T... To...Tommy, sir,” he stuttered out. “Tommy Harnott.”

“Well, hello, Tommy Harnott. I’m Colonel Elliot – Bill Elliot. What brings you to this place?”

“I live just up the road, sir. I come here whenever I can. I like planes and Mr. Simmons lets me hang around and watch, and sometimes he lets me help him some.”

“Do you know what that plane is”, he asked, nodding his head back toward the bomber.

“Yes, sir. It’s a B-17, a Flying Fortress. I read about them, and saw some pictures in a magazine, but I haven’t ever seen one before. It’s big!”

“Well, big or little, they all want to fly, Tommy. Sometimes you just have to coax them a little.” He looked at Tommy again, remembering something from a long time ago, then added, “Come along son. When he’s done with my navigator and with MacKinnon, you can introduce me to your Mr….Simmons is it?”

Just outside the office door the man stopped and looked around. His sharp eyes took in the airport and the sky, the hangars and the few disused, single-engine aircraft tied down in the grass parking area.

Twenty minutes later it was getting crowded in the tiny airfield office. The sound of a small gasoline engine could be heard pop-pop-popping through the open door and window, coming from the general direction of the bomber. Simmons had been able to provide the pump and the other hardware that Sergeant MacKinnon had needed and the work was under way.

The navigator, a Lieutenant Oliver, was on the telephone. He had already relayed the name and coordinates of the airfield back to the military authorities, confirming no damage or injuries, and explaining the situation. The radio operator stood at his side, holding a list of hurriedly jotted notes out for the Lieutenant to read from.

“That’s right! Colonel Elliot says that he still expects that we’ll make Wright field today, but it may be after dark. He wants the active runway lighted if we haven’t arrived by dusk. When we’re close enough to contact Dayton radio we’ll use the same call sign and IFF codes that were originally assigned to us this morning.” A pause. “No, I’m not going to repeat it over the telephone. Look it up, Mac, or get it on the secure teletype from our point of departure. We should be on your list of scheduled arrivals anyway. We’re supposed to overnight there, get a quick maintenance inspection and continue in the morning. The Colonel doesn’t, I repeat, does NOT, want our departure time delayed because of the late arrival.”

Jim Simmons stood to the side, leaning on a window sill, listening. The Colonel made a gesture toward the door with his eyebrows to Simmons, then put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and moved out into the bright sunlight.

“You got anything for rent here, Mr. Simmons”, the Colonel asked.

“A car – no Colonel, there’s only my old Ford, but if you need to go somewhere, I’d be happy to…”

“No, no, an aircraft. Do you have a plane for rent here?”

Jim Simmons stared back at him, uncomprehending. Why would this military man want to rent an airplane, here, now, with all this going on?

“Well, do you”, the officer asked again.

“Ahh, yes, sort of, Colonel. There’s that Curtiss bi-plane over there. It belongs to old Doc Harvey in town. He doesn’t fly it much any more – not at all, really. You just can’t hardly get the gasoline any more. But he’s authorized me to rent it out for him if there’s ever an opportunity.”

“I might be interested in a short rental, Mr. Simmons. I have an old debt to repay. What kind of condition is it in? I’ve had all the engine failures I care for in one day. Is it in good shape? Is it reliable?”

“Oh, yes sir. Old doc keeps it up real well. I just did an annual on it a couple of months ago. It hasn’t been flown recently, but we run the engine for ten minutes or so about once a week, just to keep everything dried out and oiled up. There’s enough gas for that.”

“OK, then, Mr. Simmons, I’d like to rent it for about an hour. Have you got some flying gear – I’m thinking of goggles, mainly. “

“Sure, Colonel. I can fix you up. Let me get a pair.”

“Make that two pair!” He looked down at the boy. “You do want to go, don’t you”, he asked, pulling a wallet from his pocket to pay Simmons for the rental.

Three and a half hours later, Tommy and Jim Simmons stood in the doorway of the old hangar, watching as the B-17 prepared to depart. The men were climbing in. The tools and equipment used to clean up the fuel and flush the tanks had been put away and most of the freshly filtered fuel was back in the big bomber’s gas tanks.

Jim Simmons spoke. “Tommy, I don’t know how he intends to turn that thing around. I offered to use the tractor to try to tow it backwards a ways and give him some room, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He says he can manage it from where it sits. I don’t see how.”

Tommy, with the old pair of flying goggles still hanging around his neck by the frayed rubber strap, smiled. Actually, he hadn’t stopped smiling since he’d climbed into the front seat of the Curtiss bi-plane, except when the smile broke into a wide grin every few minutes. “Watch, Mr. Simmons”, the boy said quietly, “He told me how he was going to do it.”

Soon all four of the Wright Cyclone radial engines were running, hammering away at a fast idle, impossibly loud, warming up the oil. The afternoon sun glinted from the spinning blades, creating the illusion of phantom propellers, spinning slowly.

The man above them in the left seat grinned and threw them a jaunty half-salute, then lowered his eyes to the business at hand. The last crewman, MacKinnon, had put away the fire extinguisher he’d had at the ready during the engine starts. He made his way to the open hatch, moving carefully along the aircraft centreline from the nose so as to avoid the deadly arcs of the whirling propellers. He grabbed the hatch lip and pulled himself up, then pulled the hatch closed by an attached lanyard. In a few seconds his head appeared between the two pilots and he could be seen giving Elliot a thumbs-up hand signal and talking into the pilot’s ear as the Colonel held his headset slightly away from his head, nodding.

Seconds later, Simmons watched as the left outboard engine revved up to high power. The opposite wing began to move – backwards. The bomber was rotating on its left main wheel, which was under the left inboard engine nacelle; that wheel was being held by the brake. When the right wheel had backed about eight feet, the engine rumbled back to idle, the propeller wind-milling in the sunshine as it slowed. A few seconds later, the right outboard engine accelerated and the left wing crept back eight or nine feet, while the right wheel stayed planted where it was. The Colonel was backing the big bomber up!

In three or four more such cycles the B-17 had waddled well back from the front of the hangar, the tail wheel scribing a saw-tooth pattern in the grass as the tail swung from side to side. There was clearance enough now to manage a hard right turn. When Colonel Elliot finally swung the big airplane, the left wingtip cleared the side of the building by ten feet or more. His arm was out the side window waving to them as he straightened from the turn.

The engines rumbled loudly as the Boeing taxied away from them toward the south end of the grass field. There, it would make its turn for the impending takeoff. The noise of the engines lessened as it rolled away, opening the distance. Simmons said quietly. “I’ll be damned. Tommy, that man is a real pilot.”

The setting: October, 1924…a farm pasture somewhere in the American south-east…

Twelve year-old Billy Elliot watched, mesmerized, as the fabric covered bi-plane glided down toward his father’s big pasture. Its engine was cutting in and out, running for a few seconds at a time as a little more gasoline made it through the iced up carburettor… He could make out the lettering “US Air Mail” on the big flat side of the fuselage…