The Lonely Sky: The Personal Story of a Record-Breaking Experimental Test Pilot
308
The Lonely Sky: The Personal Story of a Record-Breaking Experimental Test Pilot
308Paperback
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Overview
After the war, Bill Bridgeman left the Navy a restless man. Seeking action, he joined Douglas Aircraft as an engineering test pilot. Soon he was asked to take over the final stages of the Skyrocket testing program. The Skyrocket, a javelin-shaped experimental ship, was a challenge to Bridgeman. The story of his day-by-day life with the plane is the substance of THE LONELY SKY.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781440158704 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | iUniverse, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 11/19/2009 |
| Pages: | 308 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d) |
Read an Excerpt
THE LONELY SKY
THE PERSONAL STORY OF AMERICA'S PIONEERING EXPERIMENTAL TEST PILOTBy William Bridgeman Jacqueline Hazard
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 William Bridgeman with Jacqueline HazardAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-5870-4
Chapter One
The morning had begun gently, warm and fragrant, like most Honolulu mornings. Then, one hour after I had taken the duty on the week-end-deserted base, Sunday exploded. At once I was no longer a shiny new ensign; the old chiefs promoted me, within minutes after the first bomb dropped through Number 3 hangar, to an equal, a comrade pitching in against an awesome catastrophe.Until this morning I had been an onlooker, respectfully staring up at the United States Navy; she answered my needs, she did the thinking. I had been taught very thoroughly to fly; the rest, the matter of decision, would wear off on me slowly as I grew into the organization.
It was disquieting to discover that the giant mother and father, the protector, needed me. If I felt any pride at being accepted, integrated all of a sudden, it was dampened by the unsettling awareness that I was the Navy.
And now in the welcome dark, I huddled around the radio with the rest of the PBY squadron in the shelter of Number 2 hangar. We discussed vacantly the day we had lived through, and we waited for the Japs to return. The weary drone of conversation was interrupted occasionally by thearrival of trucks that rolled up mysteriously to pass out food, coffee, and, finally, saw-horses and planks that were to be used for cots. All was done that could be done-carbines had been passed and trenches had been dug. The wounded had been found and carried down to the BOQ. There was nothing more to do.
From the little radio before which we attentively sat came the familiar voice of a Stateside news commentator. The sound of the voice at first was reassuring. It was the sound of home.
"We have lost the islands! We have backed up to the West Coast, where we will hold the enemy."
At home they had given us up. Now there was no doubt at all in my mind that we were trapped. The voice that dismissed us was a voice of authority. One I had heard since I was in high school. He was announcing our defeat to us. There was no recourse now but to wait. I slept.
The rough board under my back, the darkness of the now- enforced blackout, the image of a thousand screaming little Jap troops, bayonets pointed, climbing onto Ford Island didn't stop me from sleeping. Though I was now certain that Ford, a ship adrift headed for an iceberg, was helpless, I could escape into sleep.
0430 ... it began. The ominous shrill of the sirens, 24 hours too late. The radar had picked up something-a squadron of Jap dive bombers or a seagull-and the sirens set off a warning.
Seven of us were ordered out into the predawn darkness from our wooden beds to look for the Japanese fleet. Out of 45 flying boats, only one PBY was capable of taking to the air.
I awoke as if a searchlight had flashed in my face. After a few hours' sleep my body was restored to the point where weariness no longer acted as a buffer against fear. I remembered yesterday and I was afraid.
One plane was going out to look for the enemy. Out there in the blackness every gun in the Japanese fleet was waiting for us. Where was my other sock?
The fat PBY wallows in the black water, ready for the crew. Her belly is sunk deep with the heavy load of fuel that is required to get us 700 miles out over the water, 100 miles across, and 700 miles back. A big piece of pie cut out of the Pacific.
She begins to taxi down the water runway; a boat before us sweeps the broken pieces of Navy out of our path as we move slowly through the graveyard that is Pearl. We lift heavily from the water, low out of the harbor, over the awkward, looming projections of battleship carcasses. The canefields pass beneath us and we head out into the "piece of pie."
Out of the wet darkness sliding by under us the sun is rising and the search begins. The searchers have little qualification for their mission. We are young, uninitiated, and bewildered. In a matter of hours, from an easy, unenterprising Navy life, we are dropped into the middle of war. We are to find the Jap fleet and report its position to the somewhat optimistic headquarters at Pearl
On our wings we carry bombs that we have been ordered to drop on the Japanese fleet. Two machine guns are warmed up every 30 minutes by gunners who will fire at the squadrons of Jap carrier planes that will fly out at us when we sight their nest.
To break the monotony, which is added to by the vibration of the ship, the noise from the engines, the constant attention on our particular duty, we make bets on the degree of drift. Although we make a joke of it, we are afraid of getting lost.
The sun is high now, burning a white path in the metallic ocean, blistering the eyes of the watch. We are all the way out. We change course and head out on the leg across the "piece of pie."
The constant flow of radio traffic is carefully decoded from a lead-bound decoding book. But the messages we break are not for us. Radio silence is kept with our home base-even that thin string of authority is cut from us. Back at Pearl they will send only to warn us of an attack.
We take a high-noon sight and the search is relieved by lunchtime. Coffee, turkey sandwiches, canned tomatoes; the meal unleashes nervous small talk.
Now we go back to our corners. We are on the way home. Just a half a day more of searching dutifully and finding nothing and maybe we will make it back, after all-that is, if we are still on course.
Radio silence is broken with a message to Pearl, a report on the patrol: NO HITS. NO RUNS. NO ERRORS.
Halfway back on the last 700 miles of the search the sun has lowered over the empty, darkening sea. The heat in the vibrating plane is lessened, the anxiety of the crew is lessened-we have not found the Jap fleet, we're going home. The enemy has evaporated.
It is night when we sight the unlighted harbor. Now all that remains between us and the small comforts that still remain on Ford is a landing. To separate the land from the water, we look for the blackest area-that is the harbor.
Hanging over the water at night, it is impossible to judge distance. The pilot must rely on instruments entirely.
In the faint light of the cockpit we attentively watch the calculating dials on the instrument panel. Speed is set at 77 knots and we begin our gradual descent of 200 feet per minute from a mile out. We drop gradually, holding at 77 knots. There it is! The short hissing, shish ... shish ... shish ... shish of the small waves as the water feels the keel skim through it. Throttles off! The belly drops down into the water, rocks gently; we taxi up to the figures on the ramp waiting to pull us on shore.
No hits. No runs. No errors.
Chapter Two
It had been almost two years since I had left Hawaii for uneventful, tedious duty in Australia, where I continued to search for the enemy in a PBY. And now, flying in from Sa Diego to Kaneohe on the windward side of Oahu, with the other members of the newly commissioned 109 Bombing Squadron, the island lay beneath me, healed up and bustling with the sure movements of offensive war. Under the roar of our starboard engines Pearl Harbor floated by, mended.Things had altered since my last arrival, I had evolved from an obscure ensign into a lieutenant, j.g., and my fat, awkward flying boat had finally been replaced with a Goliath. Now I was the commander of the four-engine 4800-horsepower ship, something capable of going after the enemy.
Things had changed on the island too. At night it was ablaze with light. Over the field, beacon swords two miles high swept the sky. Honolulu wasn't hiding from anything.
We were expecting orders to join our sister squadron already in the Ellice Islands, and so each week was lived as if it would be the last that girls, liquor, and sleep would be available.
The war was "somewhere out there" as the first month lagged into two, then three, months. The sun was hot and the surfing was good at Waikiki. Our lumbering ex-Air Force bombers sat polished and painted, newly dressed in Navy blue and fitted with typical Navy engineering-an added gun there, extra armor plate, and the latest in long-range overwater navigation devices.
About 75 per cent of the crew that manned them were veterans, but everyone in the outfit was brand-new to Lieutenant Commander Norman "Buzz" Miller's first squadron. The duty that any of us had seen had been, for the most part, a pull-in-your-horns kind of duty, looking for the enemy, while hiding behind clouds.
But now the day of the negative search was over. The battle of Midway had been fought and won, the offensive war had begun, and we waited in Honolulu for the day we would be ordered out to join it.
While we waited, the Navy kept us busy flying-two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon. We were drilled with tedious repetition in tactical attack maneuvers.
In the late afternoons, when the "play-war" was finished for the day, we gathered on the beach to ride the surf; and as we lay stretched out in the warm sand the conversation dealt mainly with women and little with war or what was waiting in the string of islands, 2200 miles away. It could hardly be said we were enduring any hardship, our leisure interrupted only from time to time with a wave of anxiety. However, the amount of guilt suffered by any of us was quickly overcome by a night in Honolulu, and the war continued to remain a long way away.
The morning after a particularly hilarious evening, I was supporting myself with a cup of coffee in the squadron office when Hal Bellew, a good-looking "live-it-up" character, stuck his head through the door in a rare state of excitement.
"Have you guys seen the plane in from Funafuti? God ..." Coffee cups settled in saucers and we all clamored down to the field.
The ship stood with great authority on the runway, the paint peeled off in spots; careful, ugly patches marked her sides. There was no nonsense with the crew; everyone knew what to do. In the rear of the plane was a well-worn mattress and the emergency kits all had broken seals. The crew wore no ties; the sleeves of their grayed and faded khakies were frayed where they had been cut off above the elbows; side arms hung from their waists and their skin was leathered.
It wasn't any of the combat stories that the "old campaigners" told us, it was this used and weary B-24, landed triumphantly amid our manicured planes, that sobered us. The crew of the beat-up bomber watched with something close to amusement as we poked and peered at their ship. A bunch of eager boy scouts, respectfully asking questions about what "raiding" out of Funafuti was like. The black-burned crew had been out five months; they were old warriors.
The war had ceased to exist for me these last four months. But now, curiously, these men had flown out of it three days ago-Funafuti to Canton, across to Palmera and into Kaneohe. A bird out of a storm.
The visitor from our sister squadron set off a period of restlessness and rumor, resulting in heavier and longer drinking at night. The skipper occasionally joined the sessions at the officers' bar. After an hour or so he would disappear alone.
"Buzz" Miller was a quiet man with dark, Indian features and reddish-tan, smooth skin. He managed to accomplish what he wanted with a minimum of conversation; he had yet to lose his temper. The young skipper was friendly with his officers, but always there was that air of preoccupation about him. The enlisted men immediately respected Miller. He understood them; it was easy for him to see their point of view. He himself had entered Annapolis from the ranks.
Although none of us had ever seen the captain drunk, there wasn't one of his officers who could out drink him. I remember a morning in San Diego at the prim, other-era Coronado Hotel, before our Transpac. Bellew, who, second to the skipper, was the most respected drinker in the outfit, was feeling his way down the dark corridors of the old, Victorian building on his way down to the bar for a morning pickup. The old man was similarly indisposed and heading for his room. They passed each other and continued for several yards, then simultaneously they stopped, turned back to verify what they had just seen, and with obvious horror at the sight of each other painfully groaned in unison, "Good God!"
On duty, however, Miller never showed the effects of the night before. He stood stick-erect and because of his narrowness he appeared taller than the six feet he was. If he had nerves we never saw any evidence of them. Everything about Miller was hard and unyielding.
Then one morning the news appeared on the bulletin board with Miller's big signature under it:
Attn all Personnel Bombing Sq. 109-As of December 3, 1943, the first echelon will leave for Apamama at 0900. Aircraft will stop over at Palmera and Canton en route.
Two days later we flew out to join the war. Apamama lay 75 miles southwest of Tarawa, the Jap fortress recently flattened and occupied by the Marines. It was a tiny atoll in the Jap-held Gilbert chain, part of the steppingstone path of islands used by the enemy to work their way deep into the southwest. Above the Gilberts were flung the Jap-mandated Marshall Islands and above them, north and west, lay the Mariannas and the Bonin Islands, leading like beads on a string to within 150 miles of Tokyo.
Admiral Halsey's surprise party had softened up the Marshalls the year before and now the big offensive was rumbling toward the Central Pacific.
The Navy Liberators were sent into Apamama beforehand to break down Jap resistance and stir things up generally through the Gilberts and the Marshalls, all the way up to Kwajalein at the top and Eniwetok in the neighboring Carolines. The two squadrons on Apamama were to act as raiders deep in enemy territory, keeping an eye open for the Jap fleet, laying mines in the dozens of atoll harbors, and hitting enemy installations where they could be found. From the air Apamama was a solid thicket of green palm trees, sheared down the middle by a white runway. The main body of the atoll was no more than six miles long and a mile across, followed by a tail of loosely connected pieces of land that formed a crescent-shaped lagoon.
The lush green oasis in the sea was unbelievably lovely, almost absurdly picturesque. It stood as Robert Louis Stevenson had drawn it in Treasure Island-sun glinting off the white said, pillared with tall palms; clear emerald water and the thick growth of polished leaves and bright blossoms.
Those first few days on the island were jumpy ones; we were waiting to be called into actual strike procedure. We didn't have to wait long. Three nights after we arrived we were briefed on our first strike. After dinner the Old man pulled down the big map in the Operations hut. Every rock that breaks water in the Pacific was charted there ... small reefs, lagoons, and water depths, all clearly marked.
"Tomorrow morning we will mine the harbor at Makin," he pointed to the island. "Three crews will go ... I'll take Johnny and Bill."
My name burst over me. Across the blue map he traced our path into the lagoon and out.
"You can expect fire from these two positions. A submarine called Lifeguard will lay out at this point," he designated a spot in the sea. "In the event you are forced down, radio him your position."
The commander, still remote, a stranger, looked into the face of every man before him. It was to be Miller's first strike too. "This should be an easy one. We won't drop any bombs and we don't expect to meet any fighter opposition. We will drop our mines and get out. That's all. Take nothing with you. Is that clear? I don't think you'll have a bit of trouble."
The palm trees dripped yellow light from an enormous moon. A ridiculously poetic night to be thinking about the isolated, disconnected acts that make up war-it was a night for Long John Silver to be searching the island for treasure.
On my cot in the oppressively hot tent I reassured myself that it was only a milk run, that I had been thoroughly trained for this business, and all I had to do was remember what I had been taught. I had supplied the crew with swim-fins as a personal precaution, a move that caused Bellew great delight. "What do you think you're going to do, swim all the way back?" Besides the fins, that I had ordered hung above every man's station on the plane, we carried extra rations, extra water, compasses, navigating equipment-enough stuff for a cruise back to the States.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE LONELY SKY by William Bridgeman Jacqueline Hazard Copyright © 2009 by William Bridgeman with Jacqueline Hazard. Excerpted by permission.
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