‘’Are you kidding, Ingrid? You are now family to me.’’
17:18 (Midwest Time)
Friday, March 27, 1942 ‘C’
Crawford’s Nest Ranch
Havre, Montana
Patrick, standing on the back porch of the family house, watched Ingrid approach with John at a trot, returning from a tour of the ranch’s fences. Even after only nearly two weeks of vacation, Ingrid already looked much better and her skin had acquired a nice tan under the Montana Sun, while daily morning jogs and horse rides had helped her build up her endurance. To everyone’s amazement, she had turned out to be an incredibly skilled horse rider, as if she had been born in the saddle, something that had pleased John and which he had used to the utmost, with Ingrid proving more than good enough to replace one of his departed ranch hands. Ingrid had also proved to be skilled in all the traditional chores of a farm, from milking cows to caring for chickens, thus
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helping greatly Joan as well. For Patrick, those two weeks had inflamed a hidden but intense desire for the beautiful and athletic redhead teenager. Unfortunately, the newspaper he held in one hand could soon very well take her away from Montana, but Joan had insisted that she needed to see it at once.
The two riders first went to the barn of the ranch, to take the saddles off their horses and feed and water them. Patrick, buttoning up his coat first, went as well to the barn to meet them, finding Ingrid already taking the saddle off her horse. He let her finish that job before approaching her with his newspaper.
‘’How was your day, Ingrid?’
‘’A real pleasure, Patrick. The air is so pure here in Montana and the landscape is beautiful. Riding around is a delight to me.’’
‘’I’m glad to hear that, Ingrid. Uh, I bought in Havre the morning edition of the Washington Post, after coming out of class. I believe that you should see the article on the front page.’
He then handed the newspaper to Ingrid, who eagerly grabbed it and scanned quickly its front page. An instant grin appeared on her face as she read.
‘’The President has signed an executive order permitting the enrolment of women in the Army?’’
She then read carefully the article, her grin slowly fading into an indecisive scowl.
‘’Damn! This says little about the conditions under which women will serve, apart from specifying that they must be single or without children under their charge and must be eighteen or over and fit. The Army says that it is still studying those terms and conditions of enrolment, but that the order excludes the Navy.’
She then looked with discouragement at Patrick.
‘’It could stil be a while before those paper shufflers in Washington make their minds. It could be a long wait for me before I could put on an American uniform.’
Patrick didn’t reply to that, wishing mentally that such wait would mean that Ingrid would stay longer here in Havre.
11:07 (Midwest Time)
Tuesday, March 31, 1942 ‘C’
Crawford’s Nest Ranch
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Young Helen, answering the doorbell for her mother, opened the front door to find herself facing a tall Army officer, with an official Army staff car waiting in front of the house.
‘’Uh, yes? What can I do for you, mister?’’
The officer smiled down at the fourteen-year-old girl, who was a good head shorter.
‘’Good morning, miss. I am Captain Edward Bollins, from the office of General Arnold, in Washington. I am here to bring an urgent message to Major Ingrid Dows.
She is stil here in this ranch, I hope?’’
‘’Yes, she is, sir.’ replied Helen, her mind kicking in overdrive. Seeing that a driver was waiting in the staff car, she pointed him to Bollins. ‘’You might as well get your driver inside, mister: it is cold and I will have to find Ingrid for you. You could both have a cup of hot coffee while you wait in the lounge.’
‘’That sounds like an excellent idea, miss.’ said the captain before turning around and shouting at his driver.
‘’CORPORAL, SHUT DOWN THE CAR AND COME INSIDE!’
‘’YES SIR!’
The shouts attracted Joan from the laundry room. Sizing up the officer, she invited him inside, along with his driver, and took their coats while telling Helen to go get Ingrid. She then invited her guests to go sit in the lounge, then hurried to the kitchen to prepare cups of coffee. Ingrid, wearing dirty jeans and a wool pullover, showed up in the lounge four minutes later. Bollins and his driver got up and saluted her, to which Ingrid came at attention.
‘’Thank you, Captain. Please excuse my present appearance: I was milking the cows in the barn. So, you are sent by General Arnold?’
‘’Correct, Major. I have a plane waiting at Havre Airport to bring you to Washington, where General Arnold wishes to speak with you tomorrow morning.’
‘’Is it about enrolling me in the Army Air Corps, Captain?’
‘’I believe so, Major. I understand that he wishes as well to discuss with you the enrolment and training program of our future female aviators.’
Hope and joy rising in her, Ingrid looked at Joan, who was entering the lounge with a coffee service tray.
‘’Joan, I wil have to leave for Washington today with these gentlemen. I am going to wash up, change and pack.’
Joan looked surprised at first, then smiled to Bollins.
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‘’It is close to lunch time, Captain. I would be most happy to invite you to eat here before you leave with Ingrid.’’
‘’That is a fine thought, madam. I accept with pleasure.’
‘’Then, have some coffee first, to warm you up.’
As Joan took care of Bollins and his driver, Ingrid ran upstairs and undressed, then went to the bathroom to have a quick shower. Forty minutes later, she was back down in her Filipino going out uniform and with her personal belongings. By then, the whole family had been alerted to her imminent departure, with John, Patrick and Marilyn gathering around her in the dining room. She looked at them all soberly, speaking softly.
‘’My dear friends, I do not know yet where I will end up or when I will be able to come back here. Just know that I will always cherish the souvenirs of my stay here.
Marilyn, my radio and CD player unit, along with my laser discs, are irreplaceable. I may be sent to some jungle camp or other god-forsaken place and I don’t want to have them stolen or damaged. I would thus like to let them here in your care until I can return to pick them up. If I don’t return from the war, then I want you to keep them.’
‘’Please, don’t say this, Ingrid. You wil come back from the war, I am sure.’
Ingrid then gave Marilyn a pained look.
‘’I would like to think the same, Marilyn. Unfortunately, I am in a specialty where the survival rate of the average pilot is measured typically in weeks, or in months at best.
Please, take care of my radio and discs, whatever happens.’
Tears then appeared on the cheeks of Patrick, who then ran out of the dining room without a word. Guessing what it was about, Ingrid excused herself with the others and ran upstairs, finding Patrick in his room, crying while sitting on the edge of his bed.
Going to him, Ingrid crouched in front of him and gently took his face in her hands, forcing him to look into her eyes.
‘’Patrick, you don’t need to cry because I am going.’
‘’But…you may never come back.’ he replied in a strangled voice. She nodded to that and spoke even more softly.
‘’Patrick, I know that you were falling in love with me. You are a nice, kind boy and I am flattered by your love, but I must go and serve my new country. You will have to be strong and to be patient. I promise to send you letters regularly, though.’
‘’I…I would like that very much, Ingrid.’
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‘’Good! Now, you better freshen up before going back down: your eyes are all red. Come!’’
Making him get up from his bed, she led him to the bathroom and used a small towel to wash quickly his face, then kissed him and smiled to him.
‘’There! Feel better? Let’s go back down now.’
The others didn’t ask or remark about what happened upstairs when they came back down, with Joan instead sending them to the lounge while she and Helen finished preparing dinner. Sitting on a couch facing Captain Bollins, Ingrid gave him an innocent smile.
‘’So, Captain, how is official Washington, or for that matter the public at large, reacting to the President’s executive order permitting the enlistment of women?’’
Bollins paused before answering, the question being a hotly debated one. Ingrid then nudged him a bit.
‘’Don’t be afraid of saying things as they are, Captain: I realize that you don’t make the opinions around Washington and I have a rather thick skin.’
‘’Very well, Major. To be truthful, the talk around the officers’ mess is quite heated on that subject, to say the least. Most senior officers think that the President is out of his mind for wanting to enlist women. I will not piss you off with the type of arguments against using women which are floating around Washington: I am sure that you heard plenty about that before.’
‘’That is quite correct, Captain. I managed to become a fighter pilot in the Philippines solely because the situation was so dire there, not because I was asked to become one. But go on, please.’’
‘’Please don’t take this badly, Major, but many in Washington stil don’t believe your successes in the air as a fighter pilot. Some media commentators, without being specific, also allude that you are basically a fake and could not do what was claimed publicly. However, General Arnold, through the reports from General Brereton, knows exactly what you did in the Philippines, which is why he is so anxious to meet with you.
The way you developed new air tactics especially interest him. He told me to tell you that he will welcome any ideas you could present him about new tactics and doctrines which you may have learned from your adoptive mother, Nancy Laplante.’’
‘’Then, I shal pen some thoughts on paper for him in advance during our trip to Washington. In fact, many things I saw in the Philippines made me wish I could have
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changed them. Our biggest failings by far are in joint operations and tactics: this stupid inter-service rivalry between the Army and Navy has already cost us dearly in terms of duplication of efforts and lack of coordinated action. Fortunately for the Philippines, General MacArthur and Admiral Hart jointly decided from the start to coordinate their efforts against the Japanese, something that actually saved us more than anything else in my opinion. Too many people seem to forget that they are wearing an American uniform, and not simply an Army or Navy uniform.’
Bollins nodded and took a sip of his coffee before making a remark on a polite tone.
‘’You are quite right about that, Major. If I may say so, while you look indeed very young, you do not speak like what I would have expected from a mere teenager.’
‘’There is an explanation for that, an explanation that I will give in person to General Arnold. If he is to become my new commander, then he deserves to know about me.’’
Since Bollins couldn’t understand what she meant and not wanting to talk about this in front of the others, Ingrid excused herself with the Crawfords and led the captain to the laundry room, where she closed the door behind them before speaking.
‘’What I am going to tell you now and to General Arnold later was known only by General MacArthur, to whom I confided my secret.’
Ingrid then spent two minutes to tell Bollins about the souvenirs of her past incarnations, concluding with a sentence while looking the captain in the eyes.
‘’If General Arnold doubts this and wishes to test me on that, then tell him that I am ready to meet any group of historians or archaeologists and then speak or write in the ancient languages that I know. I can tell you that I can speak and write at a minimum Latin, Attic Greek, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Romanian, Occitan, Hebrew, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Arabic, Persian, Norse, Old Gaelic, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Dravidian, Ionian Greek, Elamite, Chaldean, Aramaic and Old Egyptian. I can also speak but not read many more languages: most of my past incarnations were not wel educated or were il iterate.’’
Bollins was left speechless for a moment, his face pale as he stared back at Ingrid. He finally nodded and spoke hesitantly.
‘’I…I wil pass the word to General Arnold, Major Dows.’
‘’Excellent!’ Said Ingrid, becoming jovial and patting his shoulder. ‘’Then let’s go see what Misses Crawford has prepared for lunch.’’
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Leaving with Captain Bollins after lunch was harder than expected for Ingrid.
The two weeks she had spent in Havre had been the first time in months that she had felt part of a family. She was also sad to leave Patrick, whom she found to be a truly nice boy and whose obvious pain to lose her hurt her. She however had a destiny to fulfill, one more in a 7,000-year history of destinies, some fulfilled but many more cut short or ending in tragedy or disillusionment. By the time that they arrived at Havre Airport and took place in the Lockheed C-60A LODESTAR twin-engine transport plane which had brought in Bollins, Ingrid’s mind had turned to her incoming meeting with General Arnold. Recollecting to the best of her excellent memory what she had learned from Nancy and what she had seen and experienced in the Philippines, plus adding her own personal thoughts, she started scribbling down notes, with the firm intention to type them into a proper memorandum once in Washington.
08:50 (Washington Time)
Wednesday, April 01, 1942 ‘C’
Offices of Lieutenant General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold United States Army Air Force headquarters
Washington, D.C.
Having had time to speak first with Captain Bollins, Henry Arnold eyed Ingrid critically as she was introduced in his large office by his secretary: she either was a fraud, like many already believed, or she was a most extraordinary person who could prove to be a tremendous help to him and to the nation. However, her accomplishments in the Philippines could not be denied without a lot of bad faith and were enough by themselves to make her most valuable. Getting up from behind his desk, Arnold saluted her first, acknowledging her as a recipient of the Medal of Honor, then went around his desk to go shake her hand. He was immediately struck by her great beauty and tender age for her rank.
‘’I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally be able to meet you, Major Dows. I have heard many good things about you from General Brereton and even from General MacArthur, who told me that he would take you back as a fighter pilot and squadron commander any day.’
‘’I am flattered, General.’
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‘’I’m just stating facts, Major. Uh, about what you said to Captain Bollins, know that I may in the near future take you on your offer to be tested. If you are what you say you are, then you will only become more precious to me and the nation than you already are.’
‘’General, I am only a lone fighter pilot among many. I am no more precious than any of the hundreds of thousands of young men presently serving.’
‘’I like your modesty, Major, but your valor in combat and your inspired leadership entitled you to some well-earned praise. You think completely outside of the box and, right now, that is what I need. But please, let’s sit down and talk.’
They then took place on separate sofas facing each other across a low coffee table. Arnold discreetly admired her svelte silhouette, well molded by her tailor-fitted Filipino going out beige uniform, her huge blue eyes and her angelic face framed by reddish-brown hair falling to her shoulders. He had to say that a less scrupulous or gentlemanly commander would probably be most tempted to abuse her, something that was actually one of the problems he was trying to prevent.
‘’Let’s not waste time by turning around the pot, Major. The main reason you are here this morning is because of the President’s executive order allowing the enlistment of women in the Army and Army Air Corps. You will be the first but not by far the only woman to be enlisted, which brings me to the second reason you are here. An aide of mine, assisted by Jacqueline Cochran, the famous aviatrix, has already studied the question of how to employ women in the Army, especially as aviators and ground crews, and presented me recently with a report of their findings, conclusions and recommendations. Now that I have you here, I would like to get you to review that report and add to it your own ideas, if you have some to present on the subject.’
‘’I do have many ideas and suggestions on that subject and on others, General. I took the liberty during my trip to Washington to write down a few things which went through my mind about the possible organization and training of female aviators, rules about how to employ them and protect them from abuse while respecting their rights and also about joint tactics and doctrines. I typed up my notes in proper memo format last night. Here is what I came up with, General.’
Arnold eagerly took the four-page document given by Ingrid and started reading it. He nodded a number of times in appreciation, finding in the document many points already recommended by either his aide and Jacqueline Cochran or mentioned over a year ago
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by Nancy Laplante during her visit to Washington. There were also many points which were completely new to him and which particularly attracted his attention.
‘’This idea of yours of composite air units, with a mix of fighters, bombers, transports and other types of aircraft, is quite interesting, Major. Such units could be very useful in isolated, dispersed locations like in the Pacific area. It could also solve one of my main problems I am facing about enrolling and using women, which is basically how to ensure their efficient use without dispersing them around in small groups and thus making them vulnerable to abuse or harassment. By combining many female squadrons of various types in one group or wing and placing them under the command of a female officer, this would all but prevent any such abuse or harassment.’
Arnold then looked up from the document, staring into Ingrid’s eyes.
‘’You would be the perfect commander for such a composite unit, Major. You are combat-proven, are an effective leader and have the open mind to make such a novel unit work. What do you say to that, Major?’’
‘’That I would be thrilled to command such a unit, General.’ said Ingrid, not having hoped for this much. ‘’If that is the case, then could I suggest that this composite unit also includes some helicopter sub-units as well? Nancy told me a lot about helicopter characteristics and operations, along with their tactical doctrine, but I have yet to see a single helicopter with the American forces in the Pacific. Yet, such units could prove invaluable, as long as the machines available have enough range. Another type of aircraft which would be useful in the Pacific would be an electronic reconnaissance and airborne radar platform.’
Arnold gave her a puzzled look, stunned by the extent of her knowledge on things that were supposed to be highly classified and were known by only a limited number of people.
‘’Your adoptive mother did tell you a lot of things, Major.’
That brought a malicious smile to Ingrid’s lips.
‘’Even more than you think, General. About this composite air unit, would you mind if I later prepare a proposed organizational chart for such a unit?’’
‘’I would actually appreciate that a lot, Major. I don’t want to reflect badly on my present staff officers, but none of them are really comfortable with anything that is not accepted Army Air Corps doctrine, if you see what I mean.’
‘’I fully understand, General. About the terms of service for women who would enlist, have any been decided on by now?’’
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‘’Me and General Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, have already discussed that subject, armed with the report made by Colonel Maxwell and Miss Cochran. Any woman enlisted in the Army or Air Corps will enjoy the same terms of service and benefits as a regular male recruit. Enlisted women will have full military status, equal pay and equal authority to that of male soldiers of similar rank and seniority. They will have to be eighteen years old or over, be physically fit and be either single or married without children in their charge. In the case of married women, they will have to obtain the permission of their husband to enlist. They will serve in mostly segregated units or sub-units under the command of female officers, to avoid possible cases of harassment and abuse. Some positions in those units needing experience and special qualifications will have however to be filled by men, at least at first, since there is no such thing right now as a female sergeant-major or a female senior ordnance specialist.’
‘’What if a case of sexual harassment or abuse, or even rape, occurs, General?
In Nancy’s history, women who complained about such abuse or reported being raped were too often treated like the guilty ones or laughed at, with their attackers being covered up by the chain of command in order to avoid embarrassment to their unit.’
‘’Actual y, Misses Roosevelt, the First Lady, came up with a most original idea, Major. Basically, chaplains will make sure that this doesn’t happen.’
‘’Chaplains, General?’’ said Ingrid, utterly surprised. Arnold chuckled at her reaction.
‘’Yes, chaplains. Any case of complaint of sexual harassment, abuse or even rape will bypass the normal chain of command once above the level of the most senior female officer available in that unit or formation. It will instead go up through the chaplain chain of command and, if the complaint is deemed valid, will end up directly in Washington, where a mixed male and female Judge Advocate General board under my direct supervision will treat that case. Also, during the basic and specialist training phase of female recruits, chaplains attached to their courses will supervise the training to ensure that male instructors and commanders do not abuse their powers. Nancy Laplante did tell me about such abuses happening in her history and I had no problem believing her about that, Major. The last thing that I need is to have scandals and charges of abuse or rape impact on our war effort. To return to the terms of service of female recruits, all the Army and Army Air Corps trades will be opened to them except for the infantry, armored units, field artillery and combat field engineers. Women will however be allowed to serve as anti-aircraft artillery gunners within female formations
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and as airfield construction specialists, on top of serving as fighter pilots and as crews aboard bombers, reconnaissance and transport aircraft. I intend at first to send female units and sub-units of the Army Air Corps exclusively to the Pacific Theatre, in order to evaluate their effectiveness and adjust their employment doctrine before eventually sending female units to the European Theatre. As you may know already from newspapers, the Navy has flatly refused to enlist women anywhere, except as nurses.’
‘’I read about that and expected it, General. From what you have told me up to now, I am quite happy about the proposed terms of service for women. As you saw in my memo, I would propose that the first batch of women to be recruited in the Army Air Corps contain as much as possible women who are already qualified in civilian life as pilots, aircraft mechanics and the like, with such women skipping the need to attend basic flying or mechanical training. As for the women qualified as clerks, cooks and other trades widely occupied by women in civilian life, I believe that recognizing their training and expertise should be self-evident. You must have seen some male clerks who were rather crummy at typing, General.’
‘’Oh, I have seen a lot of them, Major, believe me. If this could reassure you about this business of enlisting the right type of women, I am planning to put you, along with Miss Cochran, in charge of recruiting our first batch of women across the country.
My initial goal is to enroll enough women at first to fill the ranks of one overseas air combat unit of at least group size, plus six or more squadrons in the United States charged with ferrying newly-built aircraft to their assigned bases. A number of female administrative support units will also be formed to serve the needs of higher headquarters, both in the United States and overseas. This way, we will be able to free the most men possible for actual combat duties.’
‘’And after the war, General? What wil happen to all those women? Wil they be able to keep serving?’’
Arnold hesitated for a moment before answering her.
‘’To be totally frank, Major, this is as much a political issue as it is a military one.
However, I fully intend to support the retention of female veterans of the Army Air Corps under the same conditions as male veterans, unless Congress orders otherwise.’’
Ingrid nodded, both reassured and satisfied.
‘’Thank you, General. That is much appreciated. I have one last question to you about the enrolment of our first women. Will I be allowed to recruit any woman volunteer, anywhere in the United States and in Hawai ?’’
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‘’What do you mean, any woman anywhere, Major?’’ asked Arnold, suddenly suspicious. Ingrid kept a straight face while looking directly into his eyes.
‘’I mean that I would like to be able to enroll women irrespective of their race or ethnicity, General. I know that the Army segregates black soldiers at present, but since female units will already be segregated on the basis of sex, then further segregation should be unnecessary in order to satisfy the present rules. Be assured that I am more than ready to ensure that no objection or negative attitude towards non-white female recruits wil come from within my unit, General.’
Arnold stared at her in silence for a long moment as he debated her request, then gave a tentative answer.
‘’I wil talk with General Marshall and Secretary of War Stimson about that, Major.
Your argument makes sense, but this question could be very sensitive politically.’
‘’I understand, General. Thank you again for your open-mindedness.’
‘’I will welcome anything that helps the effectiveness of the Army Air Corps, Major. Right now, we have an acute shortage of pilots and aircrews, while I know thanks to Miss Cochran that there are at least a few hundred qualified female pilots with lots of flying experience around the United States. Another thing, and this specially concerns you and your future combat command, Major. I fully intend to use your unorthodox thinking about air tactics and doctrines, along with your knowledge of future doctrines which you have learned through your adoptive mother. The unit you will form and command in combat will be in a sense an experimental one and I hope that you will be able to develop and prove new tactics and doctrines which could then be adopted by the whole Army Air Corps. I will thus give you wide freedom in how you prepare and lead your future command to war. I will also use your unit to test in combat some of our newest planes and systems and will make sure that your unit gets a high priority on equipment and materiel. You spoke earlier about helicopters and electronic reconnaissance planes. Well, Nancy Laplante did introduce us to those concepts and we did initiate the development and production of a number of new types of aircraft based on her suggestions. It will only be fitting that her adopted daughter get to test those same aircraft in combat. Your female unit will not be saddled with hand-me-down planes and materiel, Major.’
Ingrid felt immense joy and pride at those words: things were going much better than she had dared to hope.
‘’I promise you that you wil not be disappointed, General.’
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‘’Excellent! Then, let’s start all this on the right step. Get up and stand at attention, Major!’
Arnold got up as well and grabbed a bible lying on the coffee table.
‘’Please raise your right hand, Major Dows, then repeat after me: I, Ingrid Dows, swear to serve and defend the United States of America and its constitution, so help me God.’
Ingrid repeated the swearing-in formula, then shook hands with Arnold, who smiled to her.
‘’Welcome into the United States Army Air Corps, Major Dows. You may look very good in your Filipino uniform but I’m sure you will look even better in an American uniform.’
After making her sign her enrolment contract, Arnold then led Ingrid out of his office and handed her to Captain Bollins, who was told to guide her through the complete administrative induction process and also to have her kitted out. This took the rest of the day, with Ingrid ending up getting that evening a room at the officers’ mess complex in nearby Fort Myers. The next day, she met with Colonel Robert Maxwell, who was slated to be the initial commander of the so-called Women’s Division of the Army Air Corps, and with Jacqueline Cochran, who had also enlisted as a major and would become responsible for the running and administration of the female units engaged in training or aircraft ferrying in the United States. Maxwell proved to be for Ingrid an agreeable surprise, being both a competent, decisive and open-minded senior officer with plenty of experience as an aviator and administrator. As for Jacqueline Cochran, Ingrid was warm enough with her but remembered what Nancy had told her once about Cochran’s ambition and her tendency to serve her own interests first. After a lengthy conversation and exchange of ideas, the trio decided on the procedures for an initial recruitment campaign, with Cochran promising to use to the fullest her contacts with the female aviator’s association of the Ninety-nines, which counted the most experienced female flyers in the United States. While Cochran and Maxwell started setting up the concrete measures of that recruitment campaign, Ingrid worked on thinking over and producing a proposed organization chart for her future combat unit, helped in that by Maxwell, who gave her pointers about the types of servicing and support units and sub-units which already existed in the Army Air Corps, providing her with examples of tables of organization and equipment. That saved Ingrid a lot of time, who was able to present
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on the following day, Wednesday, her proposed unit organization chart to General Arnold. Arnold studied it in silence for a long moment, with Ingrid waiting nervously waiting for his verdict. The graying general finally looked up from the document, his expression neutral.
‘’This is indeed quite an unorthodox unit, Major, but that is what I was expecting from you. Its mix of sub-units and equipment type is interesting and should in fact satisfy the air support needs of most individual senior commanders in the Pacific. I approve your proposed chart as is. Do you have a proposed name or designation for your future unit, Major?’’
‘’Yes, General! I wish to call it the 99th Composite Air Group, ‘The Fifinel as’.’
‘’The Fifinel as?’ said Arnold, smiling in amusement. Ingrid nodded her head.
‘’Yes, General! It is the name of the mascot adopted in Nancy’s history by the female aviators enrolled as auxiliary pilots by the Army Air Corps. I have a picture of the logo of the Fifinel as here with me.’’
Ingrid then took out of her briefcase a thick black binder and opened it to the first page, which, like the other pages, contained inside a plastic transparent holder. A large color picture was centered on it, showing a cute winged female figure wearing the goggles, helmet and leather jacket and boots of an aviator. A few words were printed under it in bold letters, which Arnold read aloud.
‘’To my beloved Ingrid, from Nancy.’
‘’This binder was a gift from my adoptive mother. So, what do you think of that logo, General?’’
‘’I like it! You have my permission to have it registered officially, along with the proposed name and unit designation of your air group. Uh, what is contained in that binder, Major?’’
‘’A most precious gift from Nancy, General.’ said solemnly Ingrid while turning the first page. ‘’It is a glimpse in the future of aviation.’’
Arnold nearly felt his knees give up as blood rushed to his brain at the sight of the color picture of the fantastic jet aircraft on the second page. Ingrid then started turning slowly each page of the binder, each showing a different aircraft.
‘’Sir, my ultimate dream is to make such aircraft possible and to put them into United States’ service in the years to come. Right now, we have a war to win and I fully intend to devote myself to that end, but I later hope to help make that dream become a reality.’
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19:28 (Washington Time)
Saturday, April 04 1942 ‘C’
Official residence of Lieutenant General Arnold Fort Myer, Arlington
Henry Arnold’s wife got close to her husband and whispered to him as their military steward let in another two civilian men and led them to Arnold’s private lounge.
‘’Henry, who are all those graying civilians you have invited tonight? I never met them at any official reception before.’’
‘’That is understandable, dear: they are either historians, linguists or archaeologists, not government bureaucrats or politicians. These two should be the last of them. I will now go talk to them briefly. If Major Ingrid Dows shows up in the meantime, just escort her to my private lounge.’
‘’Dows, the young female fighter ace? First, a bunch of old goats, then a teenage girl? This meeting of yours sounds most strange, Henry.’
‘’Because it is a strange meeting, dear.’ replied maliciously Arnold before kissing her quickly and going up to his private lounge. He found there a steward in the process of serving tea or coffee to the nine men sitting around on sofas and easy chairs. None of the men was less than forty in age and most looked like the academicians they were.
Arnold politely dismissed his steward once he had finished serving his guests, then closed the door behind the steward and faced the civilians. One of them gave him an inquisitive look then.
‘’At first, getting an invitation from you made me quite curious, General. Now that I see that you invited as well other fellow historians and archaeologists to your house tonight, I am downright puzzled. I didn’t know that you were so interested in history, General.’
‘’Actual y, to be totally frank, I have only a passing interest in history, Professor Holtz. You are actually here to help me answer a question about something that has troubled me for the last few days. A young officer will soon show up here at my invitation and I will then ask you to test that officer about her historical knowledge and linguistic skills. That is why I asked you to bring specimens of writing in various languages, both modern and ancient. Don’t be afraid to test her about extinct languages in particular. Before you ask why, I must first caution you that what will be said here
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tonight will be considered a military secret. I will thus ask you not to discuss it later with other colleagues.’
‘’You are frankly intriguing me, General.’ said Holtz. ‘’If that young officer of yours is so good with ancient languages and history, then it is a pity she is not a professional historian.’’
‘’She’s actually too busy being a fighter pilot to work in a museum or a university, Professor. Please keep very discreet about this, but this officer pretends to remember her past incarnations, along with the languages she spoke and the skills she practiced in the past. This sounds fantastic, I know, but you are here at my invitation to help prove or disprove her claims. Please be polite with her even if you think at first that she may be a fraud and give her the benefit of the doubt, unless she clearly shows up to be lying.’
The assembled academics and historians looked at each other with incredulity and surprise before one of them protested to Arnold.
‘’You can’t be serious, General. Many people in past decades pretended to remember past incarnations, but they all were eventually proven to be frauds. The concept of incarnation itself is disputed by most true scientists.’
‘’As I said before, I know that the concept is hard to believe. However, I have a teenage girl who outsmarted in terms of tactics many senior officers who were vastly more experienced than her and also led magnificently in combat a squadron of pilots who were all older than her. She also openly showed that she could speak an ungodly number of present languages, including two obscure Filipino dialects. In turn, she said to me that she could speak such languages as Sanskrit, Old Egyptian, Aramaic, Elamite and Norse, among others.’
The men sitting around Arnold looked at each other again, now much less dismissive.
That was when someone knocked on the door of the lounge. Arnold hurried to the door and opened it, revealing his wife standing in front of a teenage girl in uniform.
‘’Major Dows is here, Henry.’
‘’Thank you, dear. You may come in, Major.’
Watched with a mix of curiosity and skepticism by the civilian men sitting around the lounge, Ingrid took the chair offered by Arnold and sat, then looked calmly around her before smiling slightly and nodding to Arnold.
‘’I see that you took me on my offer to be tested about my incarnations, General.’
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‘’I hope that you wil not be offended by that, Major. There is a lot resting on your shoulders and I prefer to know as well as I can my officers, as well as their true potential.’
‘’I am not offended one bit, General. If anything, I wish to be taken seriously by the men around me. This could be one way to gain respect despite my young physical age. If you decide after tonight to advise other senior commanders about my abilities, then I have no objections to that, General.’
Ingrid then returned her attention on the assembled civilians and started speaking in a measured tone.
‘’Gentlemen, let me present myself. My name is Ingrid Dows, born Weiss in Berlin, Germany, in 1923. I gained the ability to remember my past incarnations only recently, in early 1941. I was then a German prisoner of war held in London and had become very attached to Nancy Laplante, the Canadian time traveler from the year 2012. She had just taken the decision to secretly adopt me when, one night, me and her started simultaneously to remember our past incarnations. It came like an avalanche of images, words and feelings, one past incarnation after the other, always in regressing chronological order. Within two months, we both had reached the point where our mind had gone back to our first incarnations ever on Earth. Mine was as a Semitic nomad woman named Amdira, who was born and died in the Sumerian Basin 7,000 years ago.’
One historian, clearly skeptical, then cut in with a question.
‘’And do you have an explanation for how you and Miss Laplante got to remember your past incarnations, miss?’’
‘’First, you may call me ‘Major’, not ‘miss’, sir. Second, I believe that it was a gift from someone very powerful, someone who has no physical form and is pure spiritual energy. Call it ‘God’ if you want, I and Nancy called it ‘The One’. As for why me and Nancy, I could only say that The One must have chosen us for some purpose that is still unclear to me. Now that I am here, you may start testing me, gentlemen.’
With Arnold grabbing a notepad and a pen, like most of the assembled historians and linguist in the lounge, Holtz opened the question period by presenting himself.
‘’Major Dows, I am Professor Richard Holtz, curator at the New York Metropolitan Museum. I am also considered an expert in ancient European languages and history.
What European languages, both modern and ancient, can you speak?’’
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With the other men ready to scribble on their notepads, Ingrid concentrated before answering calmly.
‘’In terms of European languages alone, I can speak and write German, French, English, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Occitan, Latin, Greek, Castellan, Norse, Attic Greek, Ionian Greek and Celt. I can also speak but not write Oïl Frankish dialect and Koïne. You may test me in any of those languages if you wish so.’
Holtz, still skeptical, then asked her a series of questions about her past European incarnations, each asked in a different language. Every time, Ingrid answered him without hesitation and in the same language, showing clear fluency in it. After ten minutes or so, and with General Arnold already quite shaken, Holtz looked up from his notepad, his face pale.
‘’She was able to speak fluently in Latin, Greek, Castellan, Occitan, Celt and Norse. She also answered correctly my questions about the periods of history her incarnations lived. Professor Weizmann, I will let you the floor concerning Semitic and Middle East languages and history.’
‘’Thank you, Professor Holtz.’ said the Middle East specialist, who then eyed Ingrid cautiously before starting to test her languages skills. He took much longer than Holtz, ending up testing Ingrid in more languages and also making her read and even write in a few languages. At the end, Weizmann had to wipe cold sweat from his forehead.
‘’General, your young major can speak Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, Arabic, Persian and what I believe to be Ancient Egyptian and Phoenician. She was also able to read and write in Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyph, Sumerian cuneiform and Phoenician.’
Now getting excited rather than skeptical and seeing Ingrid as a possible source of priceless historical knowledge, the other specialists nearly tripped over each other to question Ingrid. Arnold had to restrict their questions to those proving the ancient language abilities of Ingrid in order to avoid an all-night session. After over two hours of a memorable exchange, the specialists announced to a stunned Arnold that they could certify that Ingrid could speak a minimum of 37 languages and dialects, most of them obscure or extinct. Asking politely Ingrid to leave the lounge for a moment, Arnold then collated the lists from the historians and linguists before asking them one question.
‘’Gentlemen, in your professional opinion, could anyone know all these languages without the benefit of remembering their past incarnations?’’
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‘’No, General!’ answered at once Richard Holtz. ‘’Learning one such old language alone is the business of years, if not decades. Your major clearly knows even more languages than we were qualified to test her on. Such knowledge would take centuries to acquire. This girl is truly a treasure trove of historical knowledge, General.
You are sure that we could not borrow her services for a while?’’
‘’Uh, unfortunately you can’t have her. We have a war to win at the moment.
Well, gentlemen, you have been very helpful to me tonight. Thank you for accepting to come.’
‘’It was a true pleasure, General.’ replied Weizmann. ‘’This was a fascinating experience indeed. If I may remark on it, I hope that you realize that, apart from knowing all those languages, your young major also has the cumulated life experiences of all her past incarnations. She has in fact thousands of years of life experience in her. Your oldest general would be a mere young brat in comparison to her.’
Arnold was struck hard by those words, not having realized that by himself.
‘’I must say that I didn’t think about that, Professor Weizmann. Thank you for pointing it to me.’’
Arnold then accompanied his guests to the main door and wished them goodbye.
Closing the main door, he turned around and eyed Ingrid, who had been waiting patiently in the reception lounge, standing by a window and looking outside. She in turn looked at him from the corner of her eyes as he approached her, finally pivoting to face him with a sober expression.
‘’Before you say anything about what you heard tonight, General, please understand that those past memories are just that, memories. There is only one personality controlling me now, and it is that of Ingrid Dows, a young major under your command. I do not deserve any special treatment, nor do I ask for any. I only want my due for the merit I may earn by my actions, General, no more.’’
Arnold nodded at that, pleased by her modesty. Still, it was hard for him not to look at her as a person of exception and to treat her as a subaltern rather than as a superior being.
‘’Your modesty is refreshing, Major. Many others would not hesitate to use such a talent for their own profit.’
That made a malicious smile appear on Ingrid’s pulpous lips.
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‘’It could have been effectively much worse in others, General. Just imagine General MacArthur having my gift.’
‘’Oh God!’ could only say Arnold while grimacing.
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CHAPTER 10 – THE FIFINELLAS
08:20 (New York Time)
Monday, April 20, 1942 ‘C’
Army recruiting center, New York City
State of New York, U.S.A.
Even after having read the statistics
from Jacqueline Cochran on the number of
women holding pilot licenses in the United
States, Ingrid was surprised by the size of the
crowd of women now filling to near capacity one of the halls of the army recruiting center she had reserved for three days. Prominent newspaper ads in bold letters and prime time radio announcements had been running for six days now, offering all women with experience in piloting, aircraft maintenance and other trades of interest to the Army Air Corps to show up at specific locations and dates across the United States. For today and the two next days, female volunteers from the New York and New Jersey states could show up in New York to enlist. To ensure a good response, General Arnold had authorized the immediate reimbursement of all travel expenses of the candidates, whether they were accepted or not, with paid return tickets and pocket money for those who would be refused for whatever reason. Captain Ernest Wakefield, whom Ingrid had managed to grab back as her administration officer, had taken care of the arrangements for the recruiting campaign, helped in this by Captain Peter Shmelling, her old logistical officer from the 17th Pursuit Squadron, who had also been recuperated by Ingrid. She had not been able to gain back the services of Paul Gunn, who was now part of General MacArthur’s staff, but she had found a real pearl in the person of Captain Vance Hemmingsworth, a bear of a man with a jovial character and a long experience in aircraft maintenance. Hemmingsworth would in turn be helped by Master Sergeant Jack Vicenza, the designated chief mechanic of the group, and Master Sergeant Harry Coyle, the chief armorer, in interviewing and selecting
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the candidates for the positions of aircraft mechanics and other ground support technicians.
Ingrid, wearing an army female uniform, which included a pair of trousers fitted for women, decided to start without delay in view of the rapidly filling hall. She thus stepped forward and addressed in a strong voice the more than 500 women present.
‘’Welcome to this recruiting session of the Army Air Corps, ladies. I am Major Ingrid Dows, the designated commander of the future 99th Composite Air Group. As you may already know from the advertising campaign which attracted you here this morning, we have many posts to fill, both flying and non-flying. Whatever the specialty you are seeking, however, once you are accepted you will be wearing the uniform of the United States Army Air Corps and could then be shipped to any number of locations, including frontline airfields. You will then serve at the least until the end of the war, unless you are liberated first for medical or disciplinary reasons. You will most probably suffer through privations, harsh living conditions and lack of sleep. You may fall sick from tropical diseases, be wounded or even be killed, either accidentally or through enemy action. All that will be in the service of your country and that will be your ultimate reward. For those of you who want to serve but are not ready to kill an enemy, either directly or indirectly, for reasons of religion or conscience, know that I will respect your choice and will not think less of you. You will then be registered as conscientious objectors and will be offered positions in the United States connected to training, administrative support or ferrying of new planes. For those who came here with the sole goal of quote killing Japs unquote, then leave now! I want people who will fight to protect and serve the United States, not simply out of hatred or racism. For those of you who will not be accepted, mostly for medical reasons, then you will be given money to pay your way back home.
As bitter as this could be if it happens to you, you will still be able to keep your head high, as you showed yourself ready to serve the nation. With all this said, we will now start the selection process. At the end of each row of benches in this hall is a sign showing a list of various specialties, be it as pilot, aircrew, combat support, technical trades or administrative trades. I will ask you once I am finished speaking to take place in the appropriate rows. Lastly, you were all given a form listing all the specialties opened to women in the Army Air Corps and asking you to write down your qualifications, experiences and the type of specialty you want to fill. Make sure to fill that
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form before me or one of my assistants interviews you. You may now shuffle places, ladies.’’
It took a good five minutes for the women to sort themselves out in separate files.
While there were more than enough candidates sitting in the rows for pilots and aircrews to satisfy Ingrid, they were easily outnumbered by the women wanting to join administrative and logistical trades, while the ones interested in technical support and maintenance were a clear minority. Vance Hemmingsworth, a big man with wide shoulders and a barrel chest, whispered in Ingrid’s ear as they watched the women change seats.
‘’It looks like I wil have much less candidates to interview than you, Ingrid.’
‘’Yes, I see that. I’m afraid that we wil not have a choice about employing a number of men with our ground crews. Well, let’s start!’
Ingrid then walked to the first candidate waiting in line to become a combat pilot and smiled to the pretty woman of about twenty.
‘’Please follow me, miss.’
Entering with the woman in one of the small offices connected to the waiting hall, Ingrid made her sit in front of a small desk, while she sat behind the desk. Taking the recruitment form filled by the woman, she read it quickly while the candidate looked on nervously, prompting Ingrid into giving her a reassuring smile.
‘’No need to be nervous, Miss Luttrell: everything wil be fine.’
‘’I’m sorry, Major. It is just that flying is what I love the most. However, I can’t fly rented planes anymore since a flight interdiction was imposed on all private aircraft across the country.’
Ingrid nodded while continuing to read the information on the form.
‘’Hum… 246 hours on light monoplanes, private pilot’s license… Are you wil ing to kil men, Miss Luttrell?’’
Ingrid had asked her question in a cold, impersonal tone, to judge Virginia Luttrell’s reaction. Instead of being scandalized by it, as many American women would be, she answered in a firm voice while looking Ingrid into her eyes.
‘’For my country, yes, Major!’
Ingrid then wrote a few words on the form before ripping off one of the carbon copies and putting it in her ‘out’ basket. She then put the top copy in a green folder, which she gave to Luttrell, getting up and shaking her hand as well.
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‘’Welcome in the training program for female fighter pilots, Miss Luttrell. You can now go upstairs to be medically examined. If you are found physically fit, you will then be sent with the other accepted candidates to a basic military training camp.’’
Virginia Luttrell, who had got up like her, nearly crashed back down on her chair as emotion washed over her.
‘’My God! I was thinking that you were about to send me back home.’
‘’Sorry to have scared you like that, miss. I am certain that you will do wel as a fighter pilot. If, however, you are deemed medically unfit to become a fighter pilot, would you then be ready to accept another type of specialty?’’
‘’I wil serve any way I can, Major.’
‘’That’s the spirit! You may proceed upstairs now.’
‘’Thank you so much, Major!’ replied happily Luttrell before walking out of the office.
The second woman Ingrid interviewed was close to thirty and dressed elegantly.
Ingrid again read quickly the form filled by the candidate.
‘’Suzanne Humphrey, 27 years old… 390 hours of flying… Private pilot’s license and flying instructor’s license, plus license for seaplanes… Works as flight instructor in Roosevelt Field… Participation in air races and air shows. Not bad at all, miss.’’
‘’Thank you, Major.’
‘’I see here that you applied with the British Embassy to join the R.A.F. Why?’’
‘’Because I wanted to contribute as a pilot to the war effort and because the Army Air Corps didn’t accept women…until now.’
‘’And why ask to become a fighter pilot rather that a bomber pilot or a transport pilot?’’
‘’Major, I believe that I am good in aerobatics and I want to use my talents to the most in this war.’
‘’And would you be ready to fire on an enemy plane or ship, knowing that your action could kil or hurt men?’’
‘’Yes! I am not a very good shot but I can learn.’’
‘’I effectively believe that you can, Miss Humphrey. I approve you as a fighter pilot candidate. Bring this file upstairs, where you will get a medical exam. Good luck, Miss Humphrey.’
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The third woman to be interviewed by Ingrid was tiny, standing barely 155
centimeters, and was clearly in her thirties, a rather old age for a potential combat pilot.
The reading of her form however impressed Ingrid. Betty Huyler had been flying for fourteen years, accumulating nearly 1,400 hours of flying. She had also been the president of the ‘Ninety-nines’ until last year, when she had been replaced by Jacqueline Cochran. Betty was actually applying to become a transport pilot. Ingrid did not hesitate and scribbled on her form, keeping a copy for herself and handing the original to Betty in a green folder while smiling to her.
‘’I am sure that we will end up serving side by side in the Pacific, Miss Huyler.
You may proceed upstairs to pass your medical exam.’
‘’Thank you, Major! I am looking forward to fly with you.’
Ingrid continued to interview candidates at a fast rhythm, spending on average less than five minutes per woman. She was thus able to interview 43 women before lunch time, refusing politely in the process two women she found way too fragile physically to support the rigors of combat. Sandwiches and juices were then distributed to the remaining candidates who were still waiting. Ingrid ate with the candidates to support their morale and distract them with tales of combat in the Pacific. After only thirty minutes for lunch, Ingrid then started again to interview candidates. The fourth candidate she saw after lunch was a woman near thirty with curly black hair cut at the neck. She was not really pretty, without being ugly, but she looked resolute and Ingrid liked her instantly. She did a double take on seeing the form filled by Teresa James: she had accumulated a total of 2,254 hours of flying and earned a living as a flying instructor and as an air show pilot. She even had a show nickname: Spin Lady. She was also married to a B-17 bomber pilot. Ingrid smiled to James, both impressed and amused.
‘’Well, I see why you want to become a fighter pilot, Madam James. Maybe one day you will escort your husband’s plane during a mission.’
‘’That would indeed be ironic, Major.’
‘’Indeed! Well, your qualifications would render jealous any male candidate. I will thus not insult you with more questions. You may now go for your medical exam.’
A bit before six in the afternoon, Ingrid went to speak with her three captains and two master sergeants assisting her, to see the results to date.
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‘’Well, guys, to date I accepted fourteen fighter pilots, 27 bomber pilots, 19
transport pilots, 22 ferrying pilots, eight navigators and 21 air gunners for bombers and transport planes. How are you doing on your side?’
‘’I got a total of 33 women already qualified in maintaining aircraft, plus nine potential flight engineers.’ answered Vance Hemmingsworth. ‘’I however also have a total of 87 enthusiastic volunteers ready to learn and having at a minimum a high school diploma, plus some mechanical aptitudes.’’
‘’I will take them!’ replied Ingrid at once. ‘’The way this war is lining up, we can’t afford to be choosy. And you, Ernest?’’
‘’Me?’’ said with a grin the administrative officer. ‘’I am buried under a mound of secretaries, clerks, telephone operators, archivists, cooks and others, all grossly overqualified by Army standards. I even have a few heavy truck drivers and two taxi drivers in the lot, plus seven female police officers.’
Master Sergeant Harry Coyle sighed on hearing that.
‘’I wished that I had a surplus like you, sir. Up to now, we haven’t got a single girl qualified on explosives or munitions.’
‘’Maybe we wil find such girls in places like Texas or Oregon, where there are big prospecting and mining industries which use a lot explosives.’’ suggested Ingrid.
‘’Are you ready to continue for a couple more hours after supper, guys?’’
‘’Why not?’’ answered Peter Shmelling. ‘’These girls were patient enough to wait all day in this hall. We might as well try to pass all the ones remaining before closing shop for the night.’
‘’Then, we wil all go eat, then wil return here to continue until we empty this hal .
With the type of response we got here today, I suspect that a crowd will be waiting for us in Chicago on Thursday. There are a lot or armament and chemical factories around Chicago. You may just hit the jackpot there, Master Sergeant Coyle.’’
20:02 (Los Angeles Time)
Tuesday, May 12, 1942 ‘C’
Best Western Hotel, downtown Los Angeles
California
Having shed her U.S. Army regulation necktie and uniform jacket in order to relax, Ingrid was sitting in the sofa of her hotel room and reviewing the list of candidates
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her team had recruited today in Los Angeles when someone knocked lightly on her door.
A bit surprised, as she was not expecting anyone at this hour, she nonetheless got up from her sofa and went to the door, unlocking it and half-opening it to see who wanted to see her. She immediately recognized the tall and dashing man facing her: it was Howard Hugues, the famous billionaire, aviator and aircraft builder.
‘’Mister Hughes? To what do I owe the honor of your visit?’’
‘’The honor is mine, to final y be able to meet such a great pilot and Medal of Honor recipient like you, Major Dows. To answer your question, I came because of your recruiting campaign for female volunteers for the Army Air Corps. Before you object by saying that I am not a woman, a rather obvious fact, I came to intercede on behalf of two very good female friends of mine who want to join your unit but are afraid that their present employer in Hollywood would block them under the excuse that they signed a long-term contract with their studios.’
‘’Well, your friends don’t need to be afraid anymore about that, Mister Hugues: my directives from General Arnold specified that the wish to enroll in the Army Air Corps supersedes any work contract obligation, and he insisted on ‘any work contract’.
Unfortunately, today was the last recruitment day my team was doing in Los Angeles, as we wil leave for San Diego tomorrow morning.’
‘’That’s alright, Major: my two friends came with me tonight. They didn’t attend today’s recruitment session because they were afraid that showing up in public would create quite a public raucous.’’
‘’I understand. Your friends are here, in this hotel?’’
‘’Yes, and not very far.’
Howard Hughes then half turned and signaled to someone down the hallway.
‘’You may come in, ladies.’’
Ingrid opened her door wide, letting in Hugues and waiting for the two announced women to get to her door. Her jaw nearly dropped on the floor when she instantly recognized the two famous actresses who then entered her room.
‘’Miss Katharine Hepburn? Miss Hedy Lamarr? I can’t believe this!’
‘’You better believe it, Major.’ replied at once the headstrong Katharine Hepburn, who was wearing slacks rather than a dress. ‘’Both I and my friend Hedy want to serve
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the United States in this war but need to break loose from our respective contracts with MGM.’
Closing the door of her room and locking it, Ingrid pointed her bed to Hughes and the two women.
‘’My hotel room is rather small and on the economical side, so I can only offer you my bed to sit on while we speak. Tell me what are your qualifications or skills which could interest the Army Air Corps and in which specialty you would like to serve?’
After exchanging a quick glance with Hedy Lamarr, Katharine Hepburn spoke first.
‘’Well, for starters, I am an athletic woman who likes sports and enjoy open air activities, like hunting and skeet shooting. I am in fact considered an expert shot with a rifle and a shotgun. Also, my good friend Howard has been giving me private piloting lessons for two years now and I gained my pilot’s license two months ago on monoplane and have accumulated 98 hours of flying to date. Hughes also often gives me rides in his planes and even took me up recently in one of his helicopters, which he has just started to build for the Army.’
‘’Hum, I may just have the ideal job for you, Miss Hepburn. How about as air gunner on a helicopter? You may even become a copilot/gunner on one of the attack helicopters which wil be part of my air group inventory.’
The actress sucked air in as her eyes went wide open, with a big grin then coming to her face.
‘’But that would be great! Hell, sign me in right away.’’
‘’In a minute, Miss Hepburn.’’ said Ingrid, amused. ‘’Let’s first hear what your friend has to say. So, Miss Lamarr, what qualifications or skills do you possess which would interest the Army Air Corps? And I am not talking about your physical beauty.’
Hedy Lamarr sighed at that last remark from Ingrid.
‘’Well, my beauty is about the only thing that men have accepted to see in me up to now. They all think that I am some kind of brainless dol . While I don’t have a formal high-level education, I am self-taught, have a vivid imagination and am a bit of an inventor.’
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‘’What she is not saying,’ interjected Howard Hughes, ‘’is that she is actual y a certified genius. She is the co-author of a patented brevet on radio frequencies.’’
‘’It is called ‘Secret communication system’ via frequency spread spectrum, Howard.’ corrected Hedy Lamarr, who then took a document from her purse and gave it to Ingrid. ‘’Here is a copy of the patent in question, Major.’’
Ingrid read quickly that document before looking up at Lamarr with frank admiration.
‘’You know what, Miss Lamarr? According to what my late adoptive mother, Nancy Laplante, frequency hopping was a common encryption system for secure communications in 2012, the year she came from. However, she didn’t tel me that you were the one who invented that concept. Uh, I believe that you speak German, as you were born in Austria, correct?’’
‘’Correct! I also speak Yiddish.’’
Ingrid nodded her head at that and spoke to her in Yiddish.
‘’So, you are an Austrian Jew, Miss Lamarr? Know that I was a German Jew before becoming an American citizen through adoption. Alright, what would you say to become an electronic warfare officer, miss? I could use your quick mind and understanding of encrypted communications aboard one of my flying command and control aircraft.’
‘’I would be quite happy in such a position, Major. I have seen what the Nazis did in my native Austria and don’t even dare think of what the Japanese are doing to the populations they enslaved around the Pacific. I want to serve in order to help defeat that tyranny.’
‘’And you wil have an opportunity to help in that while in my air group, Miss Lamarr. Welcome to the 99th Composite Air Group, the Fifinel as, ladies.’
09:48 (California Time)
Sunday, May 17, 1942 ‘C’
Manzanar relocation camp
370 kilometers Northeast of Los Angeles
California
Vance Hemmingsworth, like Ingrid and Master Sergeant Jack Vicenza, who was driving the military bus they had signed for in March Field, near Los Angeles, looked with dismay at the huge guarded camp sprawled around the arid desert ground. Dozens of
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wooden barracks were lined in long rows, surrounded by a barbed wire fence and eight guard towers. Armed military policemen stood watch in the towers and at the camp’s main gate.
‘’And they forced whole families with children to relocate in this hole?’
‘’Yes, they did, Vance, thanks to a presidential executive order and to the bigotry of too many Americans.’ replied Ingrid, her tone bitter. ‘’Al the Japanese-Americans in the West Coast area have been relocated to such camps on orders from Lieutenant General DeWitt, the Army commander for the West Coast area. Just this camp is supposed to be holding close to 10,000 civilian men, women and children.’
‘’Ten thousand, in such a small camp?’’ exclaimed Jack Vicenza, a big and powerful man who had a heart of gold. ‘’They must be crammed like sardines in there.’’
‘’We wil soon see by ourselves, Master Sergeant.’ said Ingrid. ‘’Drive up to the main gate and stop, to let me speak with the MPs on guard.’’
‘’Yes, Major!’
Vicenza rolled to less than four meters from the main gate before stopping, with Ingrid then stepping out of the bus. She was met nearly immediately by a MP sergeant who hesitated before saluting her.
‘’What is the nature of your visit, Major? We were not informed about any official visit today.’
‘’What do you mean, not informed, Sergeant?’’ said Ingrid, feeling her blood boiling up. ‘’I sent an advisory message about our visit over two weeks ago.’
‘’Well, I haven’t seen it, Major.’
‘’Well, we are here now, Sergeant. I will go speak with the camp commandant.’
‘’Uh, if it is about transferring some of the internees, Major, then you will need an authorization signed by General DeWitt for that.’
Getting quickly pissed, Ingrid stared hard at the MP sergeant, rising her voice.
‘’I have with me a mission order countersigned by General Marshall, Sergeant. I don’t believe that your precious General DeWitt can overrule him. Now, where is the commandant’s office?’
‘’Uh, it is in the second building to the left after you enter, Major.’
‘’Thank you!’ said tersely Ingrid before getting back in the bus and telling Vicenza where to go. They rolled forward as soon as the MPs opened the main gate, stopping again in front of a wooden building with a sign announcing it as the camp’s
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command center. This time Ingrid grabbed the large briefcase containing her recruitment forms and office supplies before leaving the bus. Vance Hemmingsworth also grabbed a similar briefcase and followed her inside, where a surprised military clerk and a civilian secretary greeted them. The camp commandant, a major of the California National Guard, came out of his office on hearing Ingrid’s voice as she spoke to the secretary. The man proved mild-mannered and polite, shaking hands with Ingrid and Vance as he presented himself.
‘’Major Ziegler, Camp Commandant. What may I do for you, Major Dows?’’
‘’Two weeks ago, I sent an advisory message directly from the offices of Lieutenant General Arnold in Washington, telling the headquarters of the 6th Army to warn you that I would be visiting your camp on this date, in order to possibly recruit women here for the Army Air Corps.’
‘’But we never got that message, Major.’
‘’I see! You must have at the least seen or heard the advertising in newspapers and on the radio about our recruiting campaign, Major Ziegler.’
‘’We have, but we never imagined that you would come here to recruit personnel for the Army Air Corps, Major Dows.’
‘’And where do you think that you could find the most women able to read and understand Japanese, Major? We need such linguists for our signals and electronic warfare sections, preferably some who are also familiar with radio procedures. Here is my mission order authorizing me to recruit women anywhere in the United States, irrespective of race or ethnicity. As you can see, it was signed by General Arnold and countersigned by General Marshall. Now, where would it be possible to meet and interview the women who could be interested to join?’
‘’The camp theatre would probably be the best place for you, Major Dows: it is centrally located and has a large room with plenty of benches.’
‘’That wil do. Do you have a public announcement system on which I could be heard from the whole camp?’
‘’We do! In fact, we use it every day to pass all kinds of general information or directives. There are loudspeakers in every barrack.’
‘’Excellent! Could I use it for a moment?’’
‘’I see no problem with that, Major Dows. This way, please.’’
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Ziegler led Ingrid to a small room which appeared to be used as the communications center of the camp, with two radios and a telephone switchboard in it.
He powered on a separate system and presented a microphone to Ingrid.
‘’You just need to push the button at the base of the microphone and everybody in the camp will hear you.’
‘’Thank you!’
Ingrid then thought over her message for a moment before activating the microphone and speaking into it.
‘’Attention, everybody! This is Major Ingrid Dows of the Army Air Corps speaking. A meeting will be held in half an hour in the camp’s theatre, in order to recruit any female volunteer who would be ready to serve with the Army Air Corps in this war.
Any volunteer, with or without usable skills or experience, will be welcomed to enlist, as long as she is eighteen years of age or over, is physically fit and is single or without children in her charge.’
Ingrid then shocked more than one of the Americans present by repeating her announcement in fluent Japanese. She finally gave back the microphone to Major Ziegler, who was looking at her open-mouthed.
‘’Thank you for lending me the use of your P.A. system, Major. Could someone please show us where the theatre is?’’
‘’Uh, I wil guide you, Major Dows.’
Ingrid didn’t have big expectations about recruiting crowds of Japanese-American women into the Army Air Corps, especially in terms of women with pilot licenses. She and Vance Hemmingsworth were however agreeably surprised to soon see about thirty young women starting to file into the theatre. Ingrid distributed recruitment forms at once to them and explained a few things to the internees before going to sit behind a small folding table to receive her first candidate. She was a rather small but very pretty young woman with almond eyes and distinctive oriental traits.
Ingrid did a double take on reading the information scribbled on her form.
‘’You were working as a radio intercept specialist for the Army in San Francisco, helping decrypt Japanese encoded messages? And they let you go?’
‘’They didn’t let me go, Major: they booted me out of the intelligence center I was working in, supposedly as a security risk, then shipped me here with my family.’ replied
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Mary Takahashi with a pure California English accent tainted by bitterness. ‘’Can you really enlist us and thus allow us to serve the United States with honor, Major?’’
Ingrid gave her a resolute look.
‘’Miss Takahashi, know that I was born in Berlin, Germany, and that until less than one year ago I was a German prisoner of war held by the British in London. Yet, here I am. If that army unit in San Francisco was stupid enough to part with your services, then I will consider that my gain and their loss. What other qualifications do you have which could be useful to the Army Air Corps, Miss Takahashi?’’
‘’Well, I do have a college diploma as a radio repair technician and I worked in my father’s radio repair shop…until we were forcibly relocated and he lost both his shop and his house, that is.’
Ingrid gave a sober look at Mary Takahashi, who evidently had a lot on her heart, and for good reasons.
‘’Despite all that, are you still ready to serve the United States faithfully and to the best of your abilities, Miss Takahashi?’’
‘’Yes, I am, Major!’
‘’Then consider yourself enrolled in the Army Air Corps as a signals specialist.
You will depart this camp in our bus, once we have finished interviewing all the volunteers here. Go pack your personal belongings and come back here after, with your luggage.’’
‘’Thank you, Major. By the way, six other girls here were from my old radio monitoring and decryption center.’
‘’They got rid of seven qualified Japanese linguists and radio listening specialists?’’ exclaimed Ingrid, having difficulty in comprehending such stupidity. Mary Takahashi shrugged her shoulders.
‘’Hey! Who said that racists had to be intelligent, Major?’’
Ingrid ended up departing Manzanar Camp in the afternoon with her bus nearly full. That visit in retrospect proved a masterstroke, as it provided her future air group with nearly all the trained radio operators and intelligence specialists Ingrid needed.
Topped with Jenny Kawena, a Japanese-Hawaiian young woman who had worked as a cryptanalyst and linguist of officer-level civilian rank at a Navy intelligence center in Honolulu, the girls of Manzanar were going to do just fine. As for the feared lack of women qualified on explosives and ordnance handling, the visit in the Chicago area, with
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candidates also streaming in from Detroit, had much alleviated that deficiency. Master Sergeant Harry Coyle was able there to enlist literally dozens of women who had been working for over a year on ammunition assembly lines, putting together shells and bombs, filling them with explosives and also assembling their intricate fuses. More women came from weapons assembly lines, where they had similarly been producing parts for weapons, assembling them and test-firing them. From the eagerness of those women to enlist, Ingrid was able to deduce that they had not been treated with much respect by their male supervisors in most plants. She also found out that most of them had been paid ridiculously low salaries for the work they did, to the point that their army salary as simple privates was at least as much as they had done in their previous workplaces. The visit in San Antonio, Texas, had for its part provided a pearl in the person of Sally Nolan, an adventurous young woman with degrees in mechanical and civil engineering who had been working for a mining company, maintaining their heavy rolling equipment and roads. Ingrid’s only disappointment, but not a surprise for her, was the visit to Atlanta. There, the old-fashioned attitudes of the South about traditional roles for women had drastically cut down the number of candidates who showed up.
Still, Ingrid could call her recruiting tour a great success.
15:29 (Washington Time)
Monday, May 25, 1942 ‘C’
Office of Lieutenant General Henry Arnold
The Pentagon, Arlington
Virginia
Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold raised his nose from the report he was reading and looked at Ingrid with incredulity.
‘’You were able to enroll 245 pilot candidates, each with a minimum of 200 hours of flying time, plus another 352 with over 100 hours? That’s incredible!’’
‘’I also got a total of 3,681 candidates qualified for the positions of aircrews for bombers or transport aircraft, or for various maintenance, logistical and administrative positions. Even with some attrition, which can be expected during the training, we have more than enough women to fill our immediate needs. I however strongly suggest that any surplus candidate not be simply returned home: whether we like it or not, we will suffer casualties in the Pacific and will need periodic reinforcement. As already
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suggested by Jacqueline Cochran, we should establish a training base dedicated to the formation of female personnel, General. That would do a lot to cut on the feared sexual abuse and harassment.’
‘’I agree, Major. In fact, I already have my eyes on a small airfield in Sweetwater, Texas, for that purpose. It can easily be enlarged and the weather there is ideal for flying. By the way, I noticed that you have already presented names for the senior positions in your air group.’’
‘’Yes, General! I based myself on the flight experience of those women, their strength of character and their leadership potential.’
‘’Very well, Major. I must say that you have done a fantastic job up to now. It is now time to start training your girls and turn them in proper aviators and Army Air Corps specialists. As promised before, we will not waste time by forcing your girls to take basic courses in subjects they are already qualified on. Besides, we cannot afford to waste time now.’
The tone used by Arnold for his last sentence alarmed Ingrid, who stiffened in her chair.
‘’What do you mean, General? We did weaken the Japanese a lot in the Philippines, no?’’
Arnold hesitated before answering her.
‘’It is true that Japanese losses around the Philippines were heavy. However, we recently lost a big advantage on them when they completely changed their codes and radio procedures. As a result, we can’t anymore decipher their radio traffic or even analyze their pattern. We suspect that this is related to another blow to us in Europe.
The Germans managed to recently capture in Norway, before they were forced to retreat back to Germany, documents which showed them that we could decipher their ENIGMA-encoded traffic. They then changed all their codes and encrypting equipment and the whole ULTRA program is now basically useless because of that.’
‘’My God! Nancy told me that ULTRA was possibly the greatest asset we had in this war against Germany.’
‘’It actual y was, Major. To return to the Pacific, our own successes around the Philippines have led the British to think that they didn’t need any more to reinforce their positions in Asia and India. They even withdrew a few naval units from the Indian Ocean and have greatly cut the shipping of war materiel to Australia, which is now forcing us to try to compensate for these cuts despite our own deficiencies in the area.’
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‘’So, we bleed to help the British in the Pacific and we get spat in the face in return, General?’’ said Ingrid, anger flaring in her. Arnold nodded his head, seemingly aging in his chair under the worries.
‘’It gets worse, Major. The Germans, before withdrawing from Norway, were able to capture many examples of the modern weapons introduced in British service and there are indications that they are adapting quickly those new technologies to their own weapons. We seemingly also made a major strategic mistake by refusing to help the Soviets.’
‘’But, General, you know like me the kind of long-term threat Stalin represents for the future of Europe. He is a monster and has proved that he can’t be trusted.’
‘’I agree with you, Major, and I also think that Stalin got what he deserved. Our problem is that, without our shipments of war materiel, the Red Army found itself short of many types of weapons and equipment at a critical moment. The Russian Winter saved Moscow in January, but the Germans have since pushed back the Red Army on nearly all fronts. Keep this to yourself, Major, but the oilfields of the Caucasus were just taken intact by the Germans, via surprise airborne assaults. Hitler now has all the oil he wants, plus huge resources in iron, coal and non-ferrous metals. The President has ordered that this piece of news be kept confidential, in order not to hurt the American public morale. As a consequence of all this, the military situation of the British has worsened noticeably in Europe in the last months and Prime Minister Churchill has pleaded with President Roosevelt to get even more help from us. The President agreed and has ordered those shipments of troops, aircraft and materiel to England be increased, with corresponding cuts in our shipments to the Pacific. This leads me directly to the case of your female air group, Major.’
Ingrid stared at Arnold, all ears, as the general continued.
‘’These developments have in a way played a crucial but discreet role in convincing many members of Congress not to fight the President’s executive order allowing female enrolment in the Army. The Congress, like the President and the Chiefs of Staff, including me, now realizes that we could be in for a very long and costly war, especially in Europe. Don’t take this badly, Major, but sending female units to the Pacific will raise less protests from the British than if we send male units, which are in high demand in Europe. Be reassured, though: I have no intention of simply shipping your women to the Pacific and dump them there as a simple stopgap. You will get our latest planes and equipment and you will be free to fight the way you think, using your own
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tactics, as long as you fulfill the basic missions given to you by your theater commanders. Your future accomplishments and sacrifices will be recognized and acknowledged publicly, and that is a promise from the President himself, who by the way now knows about your past incarnations. Lastly, I have two pieces of news which will impact on your unit. First, the British are planning for an attack and landing in Denmark, with the support of substantial American forces, for this summer, which means that more of our newly formed units will be sucked into the European Theater. Second, the Navy has convinced the President, against my advice, to launch an amphibious offensive in the South-west Pacific Theater, to ensure the protection of our lines of communication with Australia. This operation is slated for the July or August period and will need all the air support it can get. I fully intend for your air group to be part of that effort. In fact, I promised to General MacArthur, whose forces are in support of the Navy and Marines operation, that he would get your unit in time for that offensive. I have thus ordered that the training of your women be done as speedily as possible, by cutting out most of what you would call the ‘chicken shit’.’
‘’General, If I may raise a point about the training of my women, my experience in the Philippines has showed me that, in the Pacific, air units must be ready to defend by themselves their airfields from Japanese ground attacks. I thus insist that all my women get at least some basic training on how to shoot, maintain and operate infantry weapons and that they all receive an individual long arm, apart from regulation pistols or revolvers.
They should also learn how to dig themselves in and build field fortifications.’
Arnold smiled at her words.
‘’That’s funny, Major: General McNair, in charge of training for the Army, visited me three days ago to discuss with me the training program for your women. He then insisted that they get the same basic individual training program than that of any other Army recruit. I believed that you just validated his point.’
Arnold then got up from his chair, imitated by Ingrid, and went to shake her hand.
‘’My aide has your mission order to go join your pilots on the basic military orientation course for officers in Orlando, Florida. Train your girls well and turn them into tigers, Major.’
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10:27 (Midwest Time)
Friday, July 31, 1942 ‘C’
Tarmac of Luke Field, Arizona
General Arnold came to attention and saluted as the graduates from Fighter Pilot Course 42-E marched in parade order past the V.I.P. stand on which he stood. Ingrid, having acted as an instructor on air tactics and aerial gunnery for the course, stood behind him with the other instructors, all male, of the course. Despite her pride at seeing all of her 31 women graduate from the course today, Ingrid’s joy was tempered by the bad news that had come from the Pacific during the last two months. Still deprived of precious intelligence information because of the changes to the Japanese codes, the American Navy had fought two major sea battles with the Japanese, losing in May in the Coral Sea and ending up in a bloody draw off Midway in June. Midway had been saved from being taken by the Japanese, something that would have been strategically catastrophic for the United States, but at the cost of two precious fleet carriers sunk and a third one damaged. American shipyards were now working overtime to make up those losses, but it would take months to rebuild the strength of the Navy in the Pacific.
Despite her grim thoughts, Ingrid still smiled to Teresa James, who was leading the parade as the top student of the course. Ingrid could hear some of the whispered remarks and comments from the spectators, a majority of them being parents of the graduating pilots. The fact that six of the top ten students of Course 42-E were women had disturbed quite a few spectators and press photographers and reporters present. In fact, the lowest ranking woman candidate still placed 68th out of 96 students who were graduating, a still respectable performance. In truth, the average male candidate, with less than 200 hours of flying time even after five months of training before joining this course, was at a severe disadvantage compared to the average women from the future 170th Fighter Squadron, ‘The Witches’, who had on average around 900 hours of flying time before they arrived in Luke Field.
The official part of the ceremony now completed; General Arnold left the V.I.P.
stand with the commandant of the fighter school. He however slowed down while passing in front of Ingrid and whispered to her.
‘’I must speak to you after this, Major. Go now to my staff car and wait for me there.’
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As Arnold was walking away, Major Garret Jackson, Commanding Officer of the 544th Training Squadron in charge of Course 42-E, looked at Ingrid, intrigued.
‘’Why would General Arnold want to see you in his car like this?’’
Ingrid gave him a cold look: Jackson had been polite but reserved towards her during the course, obviously not approving of women fighter pilots.
‘’First, it is certainly not for what some would like to imagine, Major Jackson.
Second, that’s strictly General Arnold’s business.’
She then walked away from the other instructors, following Arnold from a distance and arriving with him at his parked staff car after a minute. Arnold stayed outside of the car to speak to her, something she appreciated: it would be more difficult now for others to insinuate things. There were already too many nasty and completely false rumors about Ingrid and her female pilots, rumors circulated by reporters too happy to create supposed scandals in order to boost their newspapers’ copies. Arnold had in fact to get his driver to politely get rid of a photographer that was a bit too insistent in prowling around the staff car with his camera at the ready and his ears up. Arnold then took a large envelope from inside his car and gave it to Ingrid, eyeing her gravely.
‘’I told you in April that I would probably need your pilots sooner than later, Major.
Wel , I now have mission orders for you and your air group.’
Ingrid looked back at him with shock.
‘’But, General, we stil have to get our aircraft and qualify on them, then we need to train together as a unit for at least a few weeks before we are ready for combat.’
‘’You will have two weeks to qualify on P-38N at the Lockheed’ Burbank plant, where you will directly pick up your planes. Then, you will go to Muroc Field, a secluded airfield in the California Desert, where you will discreetly organize, train and finish equipping your air group. Then, by the end of August, your air group will depart for the South Pacific, mostly by sea, and establish itself in Espiritu Santo, in the New Hebrides, from where you will provide air support to our incoming operation in the Solomons.’
‘’The Solomons… Guadalcanal.’’ said softly Ingrid, making Arnold nod his head.
‘’I see that your adoptive mother has indeed told you much about this war, Major.
Yes, you will support our amphibious invasion of Guadalcanal, which is now more than ever in need of all the air support it can get in view of our recent losses in aircraft carriers. For this, your group will truly have the best we can provide, Major. While your fighter squadron will be equipped with the new P-38N LIGHTNING, your 177th Medium Bomber Squadron will get a new attack variant of the B-25 MITCHELL, the B-25NG.
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Your 117th Transport Squadron will itself be our first squadron to be fully equipped with the new Fairchild C-142A GLOBEMASTER heavy transport aircraft, and you will have as well a composite helicopter squadron and a reconnaissance squadron, the 171st Reconnaissance Squadron, with a photo-reconnaissance variant of the P-38N and two pre-series prototypes of the airborne radar variant of the C-142, the EC-142E
WAVEMASTER.’
‘’That wil indeed do a lot to help us do our job in the Pacific, General. Now that I know where my group is going, could I request from you a blanket requisition order and a special budget so that I can have some special tropical kit and materiel produced or bought directly from civilian suppliers? My experience in the Philippines has shown me that the standard kit list of the Army Air Corps is poorly adapted to the tropical conditions of the South Pacific.’
Arnold only thought her demand over for a couple of seconds before agreeing to it.
‘’Keep me informed about that new equipment and how it impacts your operations in the Pacific, Major, so that I could eventually make them standard equipment for our other units in the Pacific. A blanket requisition authorization and a supplementary budget of 300,000 dollars will be awaiting you in Muroc Field. You will also get your individual small arms there: I have given orders to the Quartermaster of the 6th Army to let you have about whatever you want, within reasonable limits. By the way, talking of the 6th Army: you may be happy to hear that General Marshall was quite displeased on learning that Lieutenant General DeWitt had unilaterally decided to overrule the mission order to you authorizing you to enroll women anywhere in the country. General DeWitt has since been posted to Alaska.’
‘’Good for him!’ said Ingrid, smiling with contentment before becoming serious again. ‘’Uh, under whose command will I be once in Espiritu Santo, General?’’
‘’You wil be under the direct command of Rear Admiral John McCain, Commander of Aircraft South Pacific, designated as Task Force 63 for the operation in Guadalcanal. I will make sure that he understands what you could do with your new planes and will request that he does not keep you in a straightjacket over there. He however seemed like a reasonable, competent man to me, so you should not have problems serving under him.’
‘’Well, General, I was married to a Marine, after all.’ replied Ingrid with a slight smile.
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‘’True! Tell your girls to pack quickly, Major: a cargo aircraft from the 117th Squadron will come at two this afternoon to pick you up and bring you to Burbank. They are waiting for you in the South Pacific.’
At a little before two in the afternoon, as promised by General Arnold, a huge and powerful Fairchild C-142A GLOBEMASTER showed up, landing in a surprisingly short distance on the main runway of Luke Field and then taxiing to the tarmac where the women of the 170th Fighter Squadron were waiting with their personal kit. Ingrid grinned on seeing that Betty Huyler was at the commands of the giant transport aircraft, waving at her from the cockpit. The four-engine aircraft then pivoted around to present its rear cargo ramp to the waiting women, displaying at the same time the female flying gremlin insignia of the Fifinellas proudly painted on its twin vertical stabilizers. The rear ramp then came down, letting the excited female fighter pilots climb inside the huge cargo bay with their luggage. Ingrid was met inside by Betty, who shook hands with her.
‘’You must be proud to pilot such a plane, Betty.’
‘’Indeed!’’ replied the petite aviatrix in an enthusiastic tone. ‘’The Fairchild C-142A GLOBEMASTER is a truly astounding plane with some tremendous capabilities.
Nancy Laplante helped design it via her recommendations and suggestions, so you can be particularly proud about that.’
‘’I am, Betty. We wil be able to do some astounding work with your C-142s in the South Pacific. Wel , let’s take off and go to Burbank. I am anxious to see what Lockheed has for us.’
She saw well enough for herself two hours later, after her C-142 had landed on the runway servicing the Lockheed production plant in Burbank, California. She had seen pictures of the Lockheed P-38 LIGHTNING before, shown to her by Nancy Laplante, but the planes she saw lined up in a separate area had some strikingly different features from what she remembered. As a tall and thin test pilot from Lockheed named Tony LeVier was leading her and her group towards the fighter planes assigned to her air group, she could see those differences in more detail. For one thing, the cockpit, instead of being in the rear half of the central nacelle, now occupied the nose section, reversing its original position with the machine guns. The cockpit also had a modern-looking teardrop-shaped, clear bubble canopy. There were eight heavy .50
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caliber machine guns, instead of four machine guns and one 20 mm cannon, and those were now positioned with their ammunition bins behind the cockpit, with their barrels flanking the pilot on each side. It radically changed the look of the central nacelle on the P-38 but, as far as Ingrid could see, that change provided a much better view forward and down to the pilot, whose side vision was not blocked anymore by the inner wing sections and the two piston engines. The wings themselves were also different, deeper at their roots and with a thinner profile. Ingrid understood that Nancy had probably directed a redesign of the wing profiles, in order to get rid of the severe aerodynamic compressibility problems in speed dives experienced by P-38s in Nancy’s history.
Those problems had their roots in a poor understanding at the time of airflow dynamics around a wing at speeds approaching Mach one. The other visible difference was the larger diameter, four-blade, paddle-like propellers. Overall, the final product looked exciting as hell to her, while her female pilots seemed as well to like what they saw.
Once near the first P-38N, Tony LeVier turned to face the 32 female fighter pilots and patted the fuselage of the fighter plane.
‘’Ladies, I present you the first production batch of the new model of the Lockheed P-38 LIGHTNING, the N model. It has not seen combat yet but it should make quite an impression on the Japanese…and on the Germans. This model has its origin in December of 1940, when the Canadian time traveler, Nancy Laplante, visited us in Burbank and made all kinds of suggestions and proposals. At the time, our original model P-38 was already quite a revolutionary aircraft but Miss Laplante showed us ways to make it even better…much better in fact. As a result, our P-38D model, which had been our standard production model up to then, gave way to the P-38N on our production line. Your new mount has two of the new Allison V-1710-77 engines, each rated at a maximum continuous power of 1,595 horsepower and at a war emergency power of 1,875 horsepower, which gives this baby a top speed of 432 miles per hour on military power at an altitude of 25,000 feet, or 450 miles per hour on emergency power.
Those engines power new, four-blade propellers of a larger diameter than the original ones, which give to our P-38N a climbing rate that is simply incredible. Our prototype went up from standing takeoff to 20,000 feet in five minutes flat.’’
Tony LeVier then paused as most of the female pilots swooned about how fast their future planes were. After a moment, he moved to the muzzles of the four heavy machine guns visible on the starboard side of the central nacelle.
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‘’You also have a total of eight .50 caliber heavy machine guns, each provisioned with 550 rounds, as your main armament, more than enough to shred any enemy plane to pieces with a short burst. Added to that, you have six wing pylons and one belly pylon for fuel drop tanks or a mix of drop tanks, up to 4,000 pounds of bombs, or rocket pods.
Those rocket pods can be either for six five-inch rockets or sixteen three-inch rockets in pods. These rockets are by the way of a brand-new design, thanks again to Miss Laplante.’’
Seeing Ingrid smile at that, LeVier in turn smiled at her and spoke softly.
‘’I was told that Nancy Laplante was your adoptive mother, Major Dows. She was a truly great woman and I regretted very much her passing.’
‘’Thank you, Mister LeVier. You are most kind.’
‘’You are welcome, Major. Now, to continue on the P-38N, it has a range on internal fuel and with 4,000 pounds of bombs of 750 miles, or of 2,200 miles with drop tanks and no bombs. This, plus the fact that you have the inherent safety of two engines, makes the P-38N the ideal fighter aircraft for the Pacific, with its long distances over water. The P-38N also incorporates many more new technologies and features, like fully transistorized radios and electronic equipment, forward-looking infrared cameras for night and bad weather flying, powered ailerons, dive airbrakes and a simplified fuel management system.’
‘’Excuse me, but what are those infrared cameras you just spoke about, sir?’’
Asked one of the pilots, Gertrude Meserve.
‘’Well, FLIR cameras, as they are also called, are nifty new gadgets which give you a color picture of objects and their backgrounds according to their respective temperatures. You can thus see their heat signatures, even at night and through fog or clouds. You could even see a man in the middle of a forest with your FLIR cameras. I must caution you however that this technology is still highly secret and must not be discussed in public or with reporters. Normally, this FLIR technology would not have appeared for a good thirty years at the least, but we now have it, thanks again to Miss Laplante.’’
As her female pilots commented excitedly about that, Ingrid mentally thanked Nancy: she may be gone but she had time to truly put her mark on this war. Now with this new fighter aircraft equipping her unit, she was going to be able again to strike hard at the Japanese.
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16:11 (California Time)
Thursday, August 20, 1942 ‘C’
Temporary hangar of the 99th Composite Air Group Muroc Field test and training center, California Ingrid was directing a group critique on the latest bombing practice by her fighter and bomber pilots when a convoy of trucks stopped in front of their hangar, with Captain Peter Shmelling and Master Sergeant Harry Coyle climbing down from the two lead trucks. Shmelling and Coyle then presented themselves to Ingrid, saluting her.
‘’Major, we have the weapons and ammunition sent by train from the Sharpe Arsenal, along with six instructors who will teach our personnel about our new individual weapons.’’
Her interest poked at once, Ingrid eyed the six NCOs coming down from the trucks before looking back at Shmelling.
‘’So, what did we get, Peter, assault rifles?’
Her logistics officer shook his head at that.
‘’Sorry, Ingrid, but the Browning AR-41 is still reserved in priority for our infantry units. We however got something quite interesting in my opinion: M2 and M2A1 .357
magnum caliber carbines. They were especially designed for second line personnel and are both light and very handy. We also got a large quantity of Colt Shooting Master revolvers in .357 magnum, which I was told is now the standard sidearm of the female members of the Army Air Force.’
‘’Wait a minute, Peter! I thought that the .357 magnum cartridge was from the future, after this war: Nancy had a .357 magnum revolver with her when she arrived from the year 2012.’
Peter made a malicious smile at her question.
‘’Wrong, Ingrid! An American hunter designed the .357 magnum round in 1936
and it has been manufactured for the commercial market ever since. However, I was told that our carbines were originally due to be chambered for a new .30 caliber round but that Nancy Laplante strongly counseled us to instead chamber it in .357 magnum.
The armorers at the Sharpe Arsenal told me that, when they made comparative ballistic tests between two M1 carbines chambered respectively for the .30 round and the .357
magnum round, they found the .357 magnum round to be superior to the .30 in terms of muzzle velocity, muzzle energy and penetration. The .357 magnum also had the big
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advantage of using a round which was already in production in the U.S.A. The U.S.
Army then decided to adopt the M2 carbine, a selective-fire variant of the M1, and the M2A1, a M2 with folding stock, in .357 magnum caliber as the new Army personal weapon for second-line troops like drivers, clerks and signalers, and for crew-served weapons operators. In order to keep commonality of ammunition around the second echelons, the Army then decided to adopt the Colt ‘Shooting Master’ .357 magnum revolver with a four-inch barrel. That revolver is now as well the standard sidearm of Army aircrews and pilots.’
‘’Well, I’l be...’ could only say Ingrid, not having expected this but also being quite pleased with this state of affair. ‘’And what else did you get in terms of heavy weapons for our group?’
‘’I was able to convince the personnel of the arsenal to allot us a number of heavy and medium machine guns for our air group ‘airfield defense sections’.’
‘’Very well! Let’s take a look at those carbines and revolvers.’
Accompanied by Shmelling and Coyle, Ingrid went to the first truck and had two weapon crates taken down and opened on the tarmac. One of the army weapons instructors took out two small rifles, one with a fixed wooden stock, the other with a folding steel stock.
‘’These weapons were produced by the Inland Manufacturing Division of General Motors and actually are evolved, selective-fire models of the original M1 carbine design intended initially for production, Major. The carbine with fixed stock is the M2 carbine, while the one with the folding stock, meant for your pilots and aircrews, is the M2A1.
Both are selective, semi-automatic and fully automatic fire weapons and are fed by a 30-round box magazine. With its stock folded, the M2A1 has a length overall of only 25.5
inches, or 35.6 inches with the stock extended. The M2 weighs a mere 5.5 pounds, a good four pounds less than the Garand M1 rifle or the Browning AR-41 assault rifle.
Both models can also accept bayonets. Those carbines, while having less range than a typical rifle, still have more range and penetration than submachine guns and should be ideal for your female personnel and particularly for your pilots and aircrews, Major.’
Taking the M2A1 presented by the instructor, Ingrid examined it with interest, liking at once its lightness and short length, especially with its stock folded. With such weapons, and with the aircraft and ground equipment the air group now had, her women would be well equipped for the fighting ahead of them in the Pacific. With the special tropical
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equipment she had been able to buy directly from civilian manufacturers, thanks to the special supplementary budget allotted to her unit by General Arnold, her women would as well be able to live and work in better conditions in those tropical jungle conditions than if equipped with Army standard issue kit.
13:52 (Washington Time)
Monday, September 7, 1942 ‘C’
Office of Lieutenant General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold U.S. Army Air Force headquarters, Old Executive Building Washington, D.C.
Being told by his secretary that Colonel Robert Maxwell, the commander of the Women’s Division of the Army Air Corps, wanted to see him, Arnold told her to let him in and got up from behind his desk to go shake his hand. However, the frustrated expression on Maxwell’s face told Arnold at once that something was wrong. Maxwell still stopped at attention in front of him and saluted him, to which Arnold saluted back before asking him a question.
‘’Is something wrong, Colonel? You don’t look happy.’
‘’That’s because I am not happy, General. In fact, I am furious and that is not because some of my women screwed up. I just spoke with Admiral King’s operations officer, whom I intended to inform that the convoy carrying the 99th Composite Air Group had left San Francisco for Espiritu Santo two days ago. That Navy Captain Browning then told me that there was no space for our women in Espiritu Santo and said that the airfields there are still under construction and already full of other aircraft. When I proposed that our air group could instead land in Efate or Noumea, he again said that there were no facilities for our women there.’
Arnold, not liking this one bit, then eyed Maxwell critically.
‘’Did you tell this Captain Browning that we were sending our 99th C.A.G. to Espiritu Santo in order to support our marines on Guadalcanal and to relieve the Japanese pressure on them?’’
‘’I did, sir, but he wouldn’t budge about his refusal to greet our women in either Espiritu Santo, Efate or Noumea. If I could say, sir, I had the distinct impression that the real reason for the Navy to refuse to house our women in those bases has more to do with the sex of our aviators rather than with a lack of facilities there.’
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‘’I see! Don’t have our convoy rerouted yet, Colonel: I wil call at once Admiral King and try to iron out this problem. Thank you for informing me of this, Colonel Maxwel .’
Maxwell doubted very much that the notoriously irascible Chief of Naval Operation would show sympathy towards the women of the 99th C.A.G. or would be ready to accommodate them: apart from having an explosive character, Admiral King was also known to have very little regards towards women in uniform, having publicly pestered against President Roosevelt’s executive order allowing American women to serve in the military. Stil , he saluted Arnold before pivoting on his heels and walking out of Arnold’s office.
Returning to sit behind his desk, Arnold then picked up the receiver of his telephone and called the office of Admiral King, with whom he was connected with after a few seconds.
‘’King speaking! What can I do for you, General Arnold?’
‘’Admiral, one of my senior officers just spoke with your operations officer, Captain Browning, with the intent to inform him that the convoy carrying my 99th Composite Air Group had left San Francisco two days ago, heading for Espiritu Santo.
My officer was then told that there were no facilities available for our air group in either Espiritu Santo, Efate or Noumea, and that our air group would have to operate from somewhere else. Admiral, I made this new air group rush through its training and equipping in order to send as quickly as possible some extra air support to our marines in Guadalcanal, who frankly could use any help they could get right now. Surely, your commander in the South Pacific could find some place to lodge and allow to operate my new air group, so that they could support our marines.’
When King answered him, Arnold could nearly hear and feel the contempt dripping from his voice.
‘’General Arnold, you are perfectly free to waste your planes and equipment on a bunch of women in uniform who want to play ‘Amazons of the air’ but I have no intention of allowing my naval bases in the South Pacific to be turned into giant bordellos by mixing a few hundred young women with my sailors and marines. Let them find another place to land than my naval bases.’’
King then cut the line rather brutally, leaving an angry Arnold to look at his own receiver for a moment before putting it down. Thinking for a few seconds, he then got up and
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walked out of his office, heading towards the nearby building housing the headquarters of General Marshall, the powerful commander of the Army. The new complex slated to replace the collection of buildings in downtown Washington presently housing the various American military commands, to be called ‘The Pentagon’, was stil under construction and Arnold wished that the work could be further accelerated. Trying to coordinate a war from a dozen separate buildings dispersed around Washington didn’t help one bit.
Some eight minutes later, he was introduced into the office of General George Marshall and saluted him at attention, then exchanged a handshake with the commander of the U.S. Army.
‘’So, Henry, what do you have for me today?’’
‘’A problem of Army-Navy cooperation which could result in the utter wasting of a fine aviation unit, General.’ answered Arnold, who then took a couple of minutes to explain what was happening. He was a bit surprised to see that Marshall didn’t show surprise on hearing about that problem, simply nodding his head once while speaking in a disgruntled tone.
‘’I was kind of expecting this, Henry. I believe as much as you do that those women of the 99th Composite Air Group, who are led by our top air ace, could provide some precious air support to our marines on Guadalcanal. When I think that a big part of our marines’ problems was caused by the Navy itself, when our fleet precipitously withdrew, taking the supply ships carrying the equipment and provisions for our marines with it, and this after losing a night battle which our ships should have won.’’
‘’But, General, our women are due to arrive in the South Pacific in ten days. If not in Espiritu Santo, Efate or Noumea, where are they going to go? If they go to Australia, then they will be out of combat range of Guadalcanal and will find themselves useless.’’
‘’Please remind me of the distances between Guadalcanal and our various bases in the South Pacific and Australia, Henry.’
Arnold took out from a shirt pocket a small notebook and opened it, then read a few numbers.
‘’Espiritu Santo, our nearest base from Guadalcanal, is some 560 miles from it, while Efate is 800 miles from Guadalcanal. Noumea is a good 980 miles away, which would be placing it at the limit of the range for our fighters and medium bombers, and
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this without counting the extra fuel one would expend in combat against the Japanese.
As for Australia, Brisbane is over 1,300 miles away from Guadalcanal, while Townsville, on the Northeast coast of Australia, is still a good 1,100 miles from Guadalcanal.
General, Australia just won’t do: Guadalcanal is out of combat range from Australia for our combat airplanes. If our air group can’t find a place to operate from which it would be close enough to Guadalcanal, then we will have wasted that air group, through no fault of our female aviators.’
Marshall shook his head, disgusted by the utter stupidity of the prejudice shown by the Navy.
‘’I am afraid that I wil have to go speak with the President about the Navy’s attitude. We shouldn’t let our marines die just because of such stupidity. I will keep you informed about any progress on that front. Thank you for informing me of this, Henry.’’
‘’My pleasure, General.’ said Arnold before saluting Marshall and then leaving his office.
Once alone, Marshall called the office of Admiral Leahy, the President’s military assistant, who authorized and coordinated all the visits of military officers to the President. First explaining to Leahy the reason he wanted to speak with President Roosevelt, Marshall then asked the old admiral to book a meeting appointment with the President, or at a minimum to speak with him on the telephone. Leahy’s immediate answer to him was that President Roosevelt was too busy to be bothered with something as trivial as a unit’s basing location and that there was effectively a shortage of space and facilities at the various bases of the South Pacific Command. Marshall then tried to insist, underlining the precious air support the 99th Composite Air Group could provide to the marines in Guadalcanal, as long as they could use an airfield close enough to the Solomon Island, but Leahy didn’t budge and politely hung up on Marshall. Utterly frustrated, Marshall also hung up and thought for a moment while sitting behind his work desk. Finally taking a decision, he called in his duty signals officer and dictated two messages for him to prepare for his signature.
‘’Major, please write down these two messages, to be prepared at once for my signature, with ‘Secret’ security classification and ‘Immediate’ priority. The first one wil go to General MacArthur, at the Southwest Pacific Area of Operation headquarters in Brisbane, and will inform him that a convoy carrying the personnel, planes and equipment of the newly formed 99th Composite Air Group, led by Major Ingrid Dows, is
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on its way to the South Pacific but was refused by the Navy access to its bases in Espiritu Santo, Efate and Noumea. I have thus decided as a consequence of that Navy rejection to assign the 99th Composite Air Group to his command, to be employed in the most efficient manner in the Southwest Pacific Area of Operation. Major Ingrid Dows is to be given a wide liberty of action, as she has been tasked by General Arnold to experiment new tactics and test new equipment in combat. General MacArthur is to acknowledge receipt of this message and is to forward any questions he will have about the 99th C.A.G. to the offices of General Arnold in Washington. The second message is to be sent as ‘Secret’, ‘Immediate’, to the commander of the naval convoy carrying the 99th C.A.G., telling it to reroute to Brisbane, where the 99th C.A.G. will put itself under the command of General MacArthur. That’s it, Major.’
The duty signals officer, who had seen combat in the Philippines, looked with incredulity at Marshall.
‘’The Navy would refuse the help of a whole combat air group, General? But everybody in the Pacific is screaming for more planes and pilots.’
‘’I know, which makes the Navy’s refusal to host this air group just because it is made of women even more stupid, Major. Hopefully, General MacArthur will be able to fully exploit that air group in his own command area. Hell, by all logic and geography, the Solomons should be part of the SWPAO, not of the Navy’s South Pacific area. I know that MacArthur was a big supporter of young Major Dows, so I have high hopes that he will greet her air group with open arms.’
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CHAPTER 11 – SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATION
16:35 (Eastern Australia Time)
Friday, September 18, 1942 ‘C’
Grand Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Area
Eight floor of AMP Building, Downtown Brisbane Australia
General Douglas MacArthur was working at his desk in his office on the eight floor of the AMP Building, which housed his headquarters, when he heard a sort of commotion coming from the anteroom occupied by his secretary and military aide.
Intrigued, he got up from his chair and went to the door of his office, opening it. He was about to ask what was happening when he saw that both his secretary and his aide had their heads stuck out of windows and apparently looking at something outside. He also heard what sounded like an aircraft propeller turning at idle. Now curious as well, MacArthur went to the window where his secretary was and looked out through the window, to see what had attracted her attention. He then saw something he had heard about before but had never seen in person: a helicopter. It was fairly small, about the size of a fighter aircraft and was in the process of flying down slowly towards a nearby parking lot, which was nearly empty at this hour on a Friday afternoon. Two details about that helicopter then caught his eyes: it had two rotors mounted one over the other on a common vertical drive shaft; it also had no tail rotor. His secretary then noticed him and smiled excitedly to him.
‘’Have you ever seen something as strange as this, General?’’
‘’I believe that it is called a helicopter, Misses Sotherby. I heard about them but this is the first time I see one. It looks quite nimble, I must say. From its markings, it is certainly an American one.’’
‘’From where could it have come, sir?’’ asked his aide, an army captain.
‘’Since we don’t have helicopters in Australia and since such machines typically have a short range, it must have come from a ship near the coast. The passengers from this thing most probably came here to see me. I will ask you to go down to the reception lobby and greet those visitors before bringing them up to me, Captain Jenkins.’
‘’Yes sir!’
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As his aide hurried towards the elevators, MacArthur kept watching the helicopter as it landed smoothly in the vacant parking lot. Remembering that his aide kept a pair of binoculars in one drawer of his file cabinet, MacArthur went to get them and returned to the window, in time to see one person step out of the helicopter, to then start to walk towards the AMP Building. A happy smile came to MacArthur’s face when he recognized that person.
‘’Yes! Lady Hawk is back!’
‘’Lady who, General?’’ asked his secretary, mystified.
‘’Our Ace of aces, Major Ingrid Dows. The last time I saw her was when she was forcibly evacuated by air from the Philippines six months ago, along with me, due to a direct order from the President. Now, she is coming back into the fight with an air group entirely composed of women. She must have taken off with that helicopter from one of the cargo ships of the convoy bringing in her 99th Composite Air Group. God knows that we can use every new plane we can get. Could you please call the office of General Kenney to tell him that the commander of the 99th Composite Air Group has just arrived by helicopter and that I would like him to come to my office right away.’’
‘’Yes, General!’
As his secretary went to her desk to use her telephone, MacArthur returned to his office, where he stood in front of the big map of the South Pacific and Australia covering nearly half of one wall. He then studied that map carefully while keeping in mind where Guadalcanal was situated in relation to Australia. The message received a few days ago from General Marshall concerning the 99th C.A.G. had both infuriated and pleased him: infuriated because of the stupidity of the Navy for refusing the help from a complete air group; pleased by the fact that this Navy refusal was in turn providing him with some much-needed extra air assets. The timing for the arrival of the 99th Composite Air Group was also perfect, as Australian and U.S. Army engineer units had just finished building a number of new airfields around Port Moresby, in Papua New Guinea, which had been threatened for months by the Japanese. Some of these newly built airfields were still empty, waiting for air units to show up to occupy them. Well, new air units were now arriving, just as he was preparing to move his field headquarters to Port Moresby in order to deal with the Japanese threat in Papua New Guinea.
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A few minutes later, as MacArthur was still looking at his big map, the commander of his Fifth Air Force, Major General George Kenney, arrived in his office, stopping at attention and saluting him.
‘’You wanted to see me, General?’’
‘’Yes, George! I am happy to tell you that your new air group, the 99th Composite Air Group, is about to arrive. Its commander, Major Ingrid Dows, has just landed by helicopter in the parking lot across the street and should be here in minutes.’
‘’Excellent! I saw her helicopter land: quite a nice-looking machine, I must say.’
‘’Wait til you see Major Dows, George: she’s quite a looker as well.’’ replied MacArthur, a malicious smile on his lips. ‘’By the way, don’t be misled by her young age: she is a lot more mature than she looks like, even though she is only nineteen years-old.
She is as well a master strategist and air tactician, on top of being our Ace of aces, with 72 confirmed air victories under her belt.’
‘’Nineteen, General?’’ exclaimed Kenney, both stunned and shocked. ‘’And she leads a full air group approaching the size of an actual air wing? You really believe that she will be up to the job of leading such a large unit?’’
MacArthur then looked at Kenney with a most serious expression.
‘’George, in reality this girl is an old mind in a young body. Before she became a fighter pilot in the Philippines, she confided a big secret to me: she can remember her past incarnations, all 7,000 years-worth of them. General Arnolds tested her assertion while she was in Washington by inviting a bunch of archaeologists and historians to ask her questions in dozens of ancient and modern languages: she passed that test with flying colors by proving that she could speak over 35 languages, most of them extinct by now. In terms of personal life experience, we are mere infants compared to her.’
‘’Wow!’ could only say Kenney, overwhelmed by this revelation.
‘’Wow indeed! Now, we have her and her new air group and I fully intend to use them to maximum effect against the Japanese. My idea is to assign her air group to our newly built airfields around Port Moresby, where they will be closest to the action and will be best able to support our ground troops in Papua New Guinea, as well as our marines in Guadalcanal. You saw the unit and equipment list for the 99th C.A.G. we received by message from Washington, correct?’’
‘’I have, General. It is quite an impressive list and includes models of aircraft never seen before in the frontlines. I am especially anxious to see what her helicopters
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will be able to do to help our soldiers fighting the Japanese along the Kokoda Trail. To be frank, I know very little about helicopters in general and about their capabilities in particular. If they are all as impressive as that little machine now parked near our building, then I wil be happy.’
‘’Well, they wil still need proper airfields to accommodate them, George. Come close to this map and tell me which airfield could best serve the needs of the 99th C.A.G., taking in account the number and types of aircraft it has.’
Approaching the map and concentrating on the cluster of nine airfields surrounding Port Moresby, four of which were brand new and with a fifth one recently expanded.
‘’Hum, I would readily give them the full use of both Durand and Wards Airfields, plus the better part of Jackson airfield, which is still mostly empty of aircraft and only houses one bomber group headquarter unit at this time. Jackson and Wards airfields also have the bonus point of being linked by a taxiway, which allows planes to go from one airfield to the other. As for Schwimmer Airfield, its installations are still quite limited, with no hard buildings or aircraft revetments built yet. I would thus let the 7th Fighter Squadron continue to use it for its P-40 fighters.’
‘’That sounds just fine with me, George. Could you call your office and ask that they gather and bring here enough maps of the Port Moresby area and of the whole Papua New Guinea, Solomons and New Britain Islands and of Australia, to provide the needs of an air group.’’
‘’Right away, General.’
Kenney had just finished his call to his office when MacArthur’s aide walked in with Ingrid Dows, with both coming at attention and saluting.
‘’Major Ingrid Dows reporting, General!’ said loudly Ingrid while saluting.
MacArthur returned her salute before pointing Kenney to her.
‘’I am truly happy to see you again, Major. May I present to you your new air boss for the Southwest Pacific Area, Major General George Kenney, in charge of the Fifth Air Force?’
‘’Pleased to meet you, sir.’ said Ingrid while shaking hands with Kenney. The latter, nearly enthralled by her youthful beauty, had to concentrate to stay focused on the matter at hand.
‘’And it is a pleasure to finally meet our Ace of aces, Major. My predecessor, Major General Brereton, said a lot of good about you.’
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‘’That was most considerate of him, sir. Now that I am here, may I ask if I am to land my aircraft, equipment and personnel here, in Brisbane, or somewhere else, sir?’’
MacArthur took on him to answer her on that subject.
‘’I wil want your convoy to reroute to Port Moresby, Major. A number of new airfields have recently been built around Port Moresby and are still empty of aircraft.
Your air group is just in time to fill them. If you will approach this map, General Kenney wil show you which airfields wil now be yours.’
With Ingrid joining MacArthur in front of the big map, she took out a notepad and a pen and listened carefully to the descriptions of the airfields around Port Moresby done by Kenney. At the end, she quickly measured the distance between Port Moresby and Guadalcanal, as well as that with Rabaul, the main Japanese base in this area of the South Pacific. The interest she showed towards Rabaul didn’t escape the attention of the two generals, with Kenney commenting on it.
‘’Do you plan on attacking Rabaul, Major Dows? I must say that it is a tough nut to crack, with plenty of planes and guns defending it. My bombers were barely able to make a dent on it despite numerous past attacks.’
‘’With all due respect to your bombers, sir, I read the action reports from your squadrons while in Washington and their bombing tactics and accuracy didn’t impress me. For one thing, they went in in penny packets and bombed from too high, resulting in few hits and little damage caused. Know that, before I left Washington, General Arnold tasked me and my air group to test new tactics and equipment while in the South Pacific, so that new air doctrines could be written. I will hit the targets you will point to me, plus will ask you from time to time to hit targets of my choosing, but I would be most happy if you would let me attack using tactics of my own choosing.’’
As Kenney hesitated a bit then, MacArthur jumped in.
‘’Give her as much free hand as you can, George: you wil not regret it, I assure you.’
‘’Alright! My priority concern right now is to stop the Japanese advancing on Port Moresby, using the Kokoda Trail, and to attack them from the air and from the sea.
Rabaul and Lae, with their airfields and harbors, are my other main concerns. Feel free to attack any of them, but put a priority on being able to respond quickly to any ground threat along the Kokoda Trail. As for Guadalcanal, I understand that the original goal of General Arnold was for your air group to support our marines there but, with the Navy’s
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refusal to lodge your unit in the New Hebrides, your aircraft are now probably out of combat range of Guadalcanal.’
‘’Maybe, maybe not, sir. The operational range of my new aircraft may surprise you. However, especially in the case of my helicopters, to be able to fuel up in Milne Bay, which is much closer to Guadalcanal than Port Moresby is, would solve most of my problems when attacking the Solomons.’
Ingrid then turned to look at MacArthur.
‘’Sir, I would need your help in convincing the Navy and our marines in Guadalcanal to accept to house part of my helicopter squadron, which could then operate from Henderson Field and provide close air support to our marines there.
Maybe the marines will prove more flexible and less misogynistic than the Navy about accepting the help of my women.’
‘’With the way our marines in Guadalcanal are screaming for air support, I doubt that the First Marine Division commander, Major General Vandegrift, will refuse to take in your helicopters, Major. I will talk with Admiral Ghormley, at the South Pacific Area headquarters, and will do my best to convince him to let your helicopters operate from Guadalcanal.’
‘’Couldn’t we just ignore Admiral Ghormley and rely only on General Vandegrift’s answer on this, sir?’’
Both MacArthur and Kenney were amused by that feisty reply, with MacArthur answering Ingrid.
‘’I suppose that Admiral Ghormley could do little to actually stop you from using Guadalcanal, Major. If he protested your move there to Washington, he would probably cover himself with contempt and ridicule. However, with the present state of the fighting in Guadalcanal, resupplying your helicopters by air could prove to be a most dangerous job.’
‘’We came to the South Pacific to fight, sir, not to hide from the enemy. We wil take the risks needed to be taken in order to do the job, sir.’ was Ingrid’s firm reply. Her response was met by approving nods from both MacArthur and Kenney.
‘’I see that you have lost none of your combativity I witnessed in the Philippines, Major. You can thus count on all the support I can give you. There is one last point that I need to clear out with you, Major.’
‘’And what is it, sir?’’ asked cautiously Ingrid.
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‘’What ranks are your squadron and flight commanders? What ranks are your non-commissioned aircrews? What ranks are your ground support personnel?’’
‘’Uh, apart from me and a handful of male officers of my technical and administrative staff, all my officers wear the rank of second lieutenant, while my female non-commissioned personnel’s rank, either aircrew or ground crew, is as simple private.
Please understand that all my female personnel were recruited from civilian life last September, a mere five months ago. They haven’t had time to accumulate enough seniority to go up in rank, while I don’t have the authority to promote them myself.’
MacArthur, like Kenney, clearly didn’t like her answer, with MacArthur then looking at Kenney.
‘’George, what rank do your squadron and flight commanders normally wear?’’
Kenney, who could see where MacArthur was going at and who also found that state of affair disturbing, answered at once in a firm tone.
‘’Sir, my squadron leaders are either captains, at a minimum, or majors, while my flight leaders are at least first lieutenants. They wear such ranks because they have extra responsibilities as leaders and also because they need the appropriate authority to give orders to their subalterns. Non-commissioned aircrew members should be at a minimum corporals or, more typically, sergeants. As for members of ground support crews, they also need clearly identifiable crew leaders and technical specialists, with each ground support team assigned to a specific plane needing a sergeant or technical sergeant as team leader. As for Major Dows herself, as the commander of an air group, she should be a lieutenant colonel. In view of the unusual size of her air group, which is composed of no less than five squadrons and one anti-aircraft battery instead of the usual three squadrons, the rank of colonel would not appear excessive, in my opinion.’
MacArthur nodded his head at that, then shouted out loud, surprising Ingrid.
‘’CAPTAIN JENKINS, COME HERE AT THE DOUBLE!’
MacArthur’s aide took only seconds to enter the office and salute his boss at attention.
‘’You need something, sir?’’
‘’Yes! Get all the rank insignias for both officers, NCOs and enlisted personnel that you can find quickly in our offices and bring them here in a box. Make it quick!’
‘’Yes sir!’
As the captain ran out, Douglas MacArthur faced Ingrid again, his expression most serious.
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‘’I frankly find inexcusable that General Arnold didn’t use his authority to even try to allot proper ranks to your officers and enlisted personnel before sending them to the South Pacific, Lieutenant Colonel Dows. However, as your theatre commander, I do have full power to distribute promotions and rewards as I see fit. From now on, you are officially a lieutenant colonel, while your squadron leaders and senior staff officers will wear the rank of major. As for your flight leaders and heads of technical, logistical and administrative sub-departments, they will wear the rank of captain. Your enlisted personnel also need to be of a rank usually found with their male counterparts filling similar positions, with ground crew chiefs being no less than sergeants. Once back on your ship, write down a list of the promotions you will distribute around under my authority, justifying them as being ‘promotions in the field’. I am due soon to visit Port Moresby, where I intend to move my theater headquarters to in November. You will be able to then give me your list of promotions, so that my personnel administration staff can officialize it and adjust the pay of your personnel.’
Ingrid had to restraint herself from going to the old general and hug him, so happy she was for her women.
‘’General, I will never be able to thank you enough for what you just did for the women of my air group.’’
‘’You can thank me by destroying lots of Japanese planes and ships and by kil ing lots of Japanese soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel Dows.’ replied MacArthur with a malicious smile. ‘’As soon as you wil have your new maps and rank insignias, you will fly back to your ship and reroute your convoy towards Port Moresby, where you will be free to take possession of your assigned airfields.’’
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CHAPTER 12 – PAPUA NEW GUINEA
11:42 (PNG Time)
Monday, September 21, 1942 ‘C’
Field communal kitchen and cantina of the U.S. 43rd Bomber Group (Heavy) Jackson Airfield, 2.4 miles northeast of Port Moresby Papua New Guinea, South Pacific
A number of officers and enlisted men working at the advanced field headquarters of the 43rd Bomber Group (Heavy) had started to line up for lunch at the unit’s kitchen and cantina when one man suddenly shouted out while pointing at a big dot approaching from the South in the sky.
‘’HEY! LOOK AT THAT BIG THING APPROACHING. IT IS GOING TO LAND
HERE.’
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‘’Gee! It must be the strangest plane I ever saw, apart from being the biggest one I ever saw.’ added another airman in the lineup. Then another aviator also shouted out loud while pointing out.
‘’I SEE TWO MORE PLANES COMING IN FOR A LANDING.’
Lieutenant colonel Randolph Masters, who was on his way to the kitchen with his operations officer, Major Jim Lockwood, stopped and stared at the three big incoming planes, trying to identify them.
‘’They look like three Fairchild C-142 GLOBEMASTER heavy transport aircraft.
They are probably from the 99th Composite Air Group: their arrival was announced this morning by encrypted radio traffic. They are supposed to be coming from Townsville, where the convoy bringing in the planes and equipment of the 99th stopped to unload its planes and thus allow them to fly in to Port Moresby. The facilities here at Port Moresby harbor were simply too limited to permit the unloading of dozens of aircraft from cargo ships, while the roads around Port Moresby would make it nearly impossible to tow airplanes unloaded from ships in the harbor. Damn, I hope that Ingrid Dows is aboard one of those three C-142s: she was a real hellraiser in the air over the Philippines and I would love to meet her again.’
‘’Are you sure that her reputation was not overblown, sir?’’ asked Lockwood.
‘’How could a simple girl with no formal fighter pilot training accumulate a claimed total of 72 air victories?’’
Lockwood suddenly found himself facing an angry Masters, who pointed a hard index at him.
‘’Listen up, Major, and listen well! That simple girl, as you call her, fought on the ground in the jungles of Bataan and led bayonet charges against the Japanese after her last P-40 fighter aircraft became non-operational. I spoke with other fighter pilots and with anti-aircraft gunners who watched her fight the Japanese in the air and they all agreed that she was by far our best fighter pilot. Many of those men owed their lives to her, so please cut that misogynistic crap and show respect to her when you will meet her. Got that?’’
‘’Uh, yes sir!’ could only say Lockwood, stunned by the fury in Masters’ voice.
Masters then kept watching the three huge transport aircraft as they landed one after the other on one of the three parallel runways of Jackson Airfield. Their very short landing rolls impressed him but not as much as when he saw the staggering number of vehicles
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which then came out by their aft cargo ramps, including big trucks towing trailers. One of those trucks even carried a radar mounted on a telescopic mast.
‘’Wow! These girls got the very latest equipment available to the Air Corps.’
‘’How many of their planes are we expecting to be based here, sir?’’ asked cautiously his operations officer.
‘’According to the message we got this morning, their 177th Bomber Squadron, equipped with B-25NGs, and their 117th Transport Squadron, equipped with C-142s, will use this airfield, while Wards Airfield will house the 99th C.A.G. headquarters, the 170th Fighter Squadron, equipped with P-38Ns, and the 171st Photo-Reconnaissance Squadron, equipped with a photo variant of the P-38N. A helicopter squadron will on its part lodge at Durand Airfield. Such an injection of new airpower should do us a lot of good here in Papua New Guinea. If Dows proves as feisty and devious as in the Philippines, then the Japanese are in for some very unpleasant times indeed.’’
Lockwood was tempted to say something then but managed to keep his mouth shut.
Before the duo could enter the kitchen tent, six more C-142s overflew Jackson Airfield, heading to the nearby Durand and Wards airfields, where they landed. Finally getting in and grabbing some food, Masters and Lockwood had time to eat their lunch and come out again before two huge helicopters flew over them in a thunderous noise of engines and rotating propellers. Masters, who had never seen a helicopter before, was left with his mouth wide open as he watched the big machine fly by.
‘’My God! These things are as big as those C-142s which just landed here. You probably could move a whole infantry company with one of those.’
‘’And what about those, sir?’’ said Lockwood while pointing at eight speedy helicopters behind the heavy helicopters which had just overflown them. Masters had one look at them before replying to Lockwood.
‘’Those have the looks of pure kil ing machines. Look at their nose-mounted cannons: they seem to be 20 mm guns to me. They should be able to make mincemeat out of Japanese soldiers. Damn, I real y need to meet with Dows and speak with her.’
16:37 (PNG Time)
Field headquarters of the 99th Composite Air Group Wards Airfield, 2.5 miles north-northwest of Port Moresby
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Major General George Kenney was in a very good mood as he entered with three of his senior staff officers and Ingrid the newly positioned field headquarters building of the 99th Composite Air Group. That building, painted khaki with a camouflage scheme, was actually a large prefabricated module which had been lowered in place by one of the two heavy lift Sikorsky UH-3 SKYCRANE, and this after having been picked up at the vertical from the deck of the cargo ship which had transported it from San Francisco.
‘’I must say that you have some fantastic pieces of equipment as part of your air group, Colonel Dows. I can’t wait to see how your new planes and helicopters will do against the Japanese.’
‘’Well, you won’t have to wait very long for that, General.’ replied Ingrid as she led her three visitors to the main operations room of her headquarters building. ‘’Seven of my aircraft are presently in the air, conducting some reconnaissance work over objectives designated by me. Once we will have the results and photos from those reconnaissance missions and wil have time to analyze them, we wil then strike...hard.’’
‘’And what are those objectives you designated, Colonel?’’ asked Colonel Richard Conway, the operations officer of the Fifth Air Force.
‘’Rabaul and the Japanese forces advancing along the Kokoda Trail, Colonel Conway. I want to surprise the Japanese and hit them before they can even realize that my air group is here. I will explain my general plan of attack once we will be in front of my main operations map.’
Conway, like George Kenney and Brigadier General Julian Barnes, obviously wanted to know more about that attack plan but managed to wait until their group stopped in front of the big map pinned on a wall-mounted cork board and covered with a transparent plastic film. Ingrid then used something which left her visitors wide-eyed: a small laser pointer which had belonged to Nancy Laplante and which she had inherited from her, along with other items from the year 2012.
‘’First, about the reasons I selected those objectives as priority targets. The need to target the Japanese troops advancing westward along the Kokoda Trail is obvious: they are threatening Port Moresby and its airfields and are already too close to anybody’s taste. Right now, four of my RP-38N photo-reconnaissance fighters are taking a systematic photo and infrared coverage of the whole Kokoda Trail, up to and including Buna, on the East Coast of Papua New Guinea, in order to find where the Japanese forces are concentrated.’
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‘’Uh, excuse me, Colonel: infrared coverage? What’s that?’’ asked Conway, confused. Ingrid answered him patiently, understanding how very few people would actually know about thermal and infra-red imagery.
‘’By infrared coverage, I was alluding to the capacity of our aircraft to use infrared cameras and thermal imaging cameras to see in the dark and detect heat sources, including human thermal signatures. With a thermal camera, you will see a person as a white silhouette on dark background, even through jungle foliage. With them and infrared camera pictures taken by my aircraft, we will be able to spot and locate the Japanese soldiers present along the Kokoda Trail and will then be able to target them for bombing and strafing during the day.’’
‘’That sounds like a good plan indeed, Colonel.’ said Kenney approvingly. ‘’Up to now, it has been very difficult for us to provide artillery support to our troops on the Kokoda Trail, due to the fact that it is nearly impassable to vehicles. As for bomber support, the dangers of hitting our own troops in that thick jungle is quite great. Your helicopters sound like the perfect solution for our problems there.’’
‘’Thanks, General. Now, about the other priority target I have chosen: Rabaul.
Rabaul is actually the main source of the air and naval enemy threat in this region, not only to us in Papua New Guinea but also to our Navy in the South Pacific and to our marines in Guadalcanal. The Japanese aircraft harassing our marines on Guadalcanal on a nearly daily basis come from Rabaul and its airfields, while Rabaul’s Simpson Harbor is the base for many Japanese warships and troop transports entering the waters around Guadalcanal. Thus, eliminating Rabaul as a threat by destroying the aircraft and ships based there must be considered as a priority target for us.’
‘’And how do you propose to do that, Colonel Dows?’ asked a bit caustical y Colonel Conway. ‘’Our airplanes have launched to date a multitude of air strikes against Rabaul, causing only minor, temporary damage, while losing a number of precious planes and aircrews. That place is defended by over 300 anti-aircraft guns and by Japanese fighter aircraft, while a Port Moresby – Rabaul return trip is a good thousand miles, out of reach of most of our light bombers and fighter-bombers, unless they go in with a reduced bomb load.’’
Ingrid gave in return a critical look to the operations officer of the Fifth Air Force.
‘’Colonel Conway, your airplanes have caused little damage to Rabaul for two main reasons. First, they attack in penny packets and in uncoordinated fashion, except for one notable exception in the recent months. Second, they bomb from too high an
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altitude and thus achieve only poor accuracy. Add to those two factors the fact that your planes are mostly of aging designs and don’t have the sophisticated instruments and sensors used by my own airplanes, which are all pre-series aircraft whose models have barely started to enter mass production. Take for example my helicopters: nobody else but me have them on strength and in the frontlines in the Pacific, while only the British have operational helicopters in Europe.’
‘’But your aircrews are all devoid of combat experience, except for you. Do you really believe them capable of doing such a difficult job on their first combat missions?’’
‘’Yes, they do lack actual combat experience, Colonel, but they have one thing in their favor: I taught them all that I learned about air combat during my time in the Philippines, including the weaknesses of the various Japanese airplanes they will face, and they listen to me. By contrast, our fighter pilots fighting in the Philippines, while formally trained for combat, insisted at first on following outdated air tactics and on ignoring the directives about concentrating on the enemy bombers rather than looking for a fight with Japanese fighters. As a result, they got slaughtered, until Major General Brereton put his foot down and told them to cut both the dogfight glory-seeking and the constant blabbing and screaming on the radio.’
‘’She is right about that, Dick.’ then said George Kenney. ‘’Brereton spoke at length with me about how the air war went over the Philippines and he mentioned to me his frustration about our male fighter pilots’ indiscipline in the air and refusal to adopt the new tactics promoted by Colonel Dows. Personally, I do not doubt that her female pilots and aircrews wil show a good performance in combat.’
From Conway’s hard expression, Ingrid strongly suspected that he was stil skeptical about her aircrews but didn’t dare contradict his superior, at least openly. Kenney then looked back at Ingrid to ask her another question.
‘’And how do you propose exactly to attack Rabaul with your air group, Colonel Dows?’
‘’What I propose is an operation in three parts, sir.’ answered Ingrid, who then used her laser pointer as she described her plan of attack to Kenney, Barnes and Conway. At the end of it, Kenney nodded his head, impressed.
‘’I see that your reputation for deviousness was well earned, Colonel Dows. I agree with your attack plan. However, the weather is presently quite bad over the Solomons and, to a lesser degree, over Rabaul, nailing both the Japanese aircraft in
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Rabaul and our aircraft in Guadalcanal to the ground. Advise me once the weather will allow you to attack, so that I could coordinate your actions with those of my bombers.’
‘’Wil do, sir!’
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CHAPTER 13 – RABAUL
03:25 (PNG Time)
Sunday, September 27, 1942 ‘C’
Wards Airfield, Port Moresby area
Papua New Guinea
Major General George Kenney, along with Brigadier General Julian Barnes, watched on with a mix of hope and dread as the planes of the 99th C.A.G. based in Wards Airfield took off in rapid succession: hope for a successful strike on the Japanese in Rabaul; dread at the thought of many of those young and brave women possibly dying today. Today was announced by his meteorological section to be the first day of good weather in nearly two weeks over the Solomons and Rabaul, so Kenney expected the Japanese to be active in the air today. With a clear sky and a full moon, the women of the 99th C.A.G. actually had some decent visibility as they took off in the darkness of the early morning, some two and a half hours before sunrise, and the takeoffs proceeded well and quickly, without any accident, demonstrating the skills and experience at piloting of the aviatrixes. In contrast, many of Kenney’s male pilots were barely out of flying schools in the United States and had often proved to have abysmal skills in map
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navigation, while flying in the dark was proving daunting to them. Kenney sighed as the last of the P-38Ns fighter-bombers rose in the night sky.
‘’May this be a good day for those women and for us, Julian. This is one big poker move Dows is playing.’
‘’I am sure that they will do well, sir. They demonstrated quite convincingly their skills and bravery during the last four days, when they located and hammered the Japanese advancing along the Kokoda Trail. Our Australian infantry is already loving them, and not only because they are young women. Those who were skeptical about women combat pilots are now quickly becoming a distinct minority. As for young Ingrid Dows, I saw her at work in Australia, when she was recovering for combat wounds sustained in the Philippines, and I was impressed to no little degree with her intelligence, cunning and piloting skills. The Japanese in Rabaul are in for a very bad day, mark my words, sir.’
‘’I hope that you are right, Julian.’
03:42 (PNG Time)
Aboard a Fairchild EC-142E WAVEMASTER command and control aircraft Flying at high altitude 110 miles west-northwest of Rabaul
‘’We just got a short message from our headquarters in Wards Airfield, Captain: our planes are now in the air.’
Jenny Kawena, the 99th C.A.G. intelligence officer, nodded her head at that report from one of the three female radio operators monitoring friendly radio frequencies. Three more radio operators, all of them ethnic Japanese-Americans, were monitoring the Japanese frequencies emanating from in or around Rabaul, while Captain Hedy Lamarr was sitting at the electronic warfare station of the EC-142E, monitoring the signal from the Japanese radar located in Rabaul. Approaching Lamarr’s station in the big lower cabin of the converted C-142 transport, Jenny looked for a moment at the cathode screen Hedy was watching.
‘’Any sign that the Japanese may have detected us, Hedy?’’
‘’Doubtful, Jenny: their radar signal is stil well below detection strength. Also, the Japanese radar’s working frequency limits its effective range to about ninety miles, twenty miles short of our actual flying station. I will be able to jam it the moment that you wil give me the go.’’
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Jenny nodded her head again, satisfied. Despite not having a diploma in electronics, Hedy’s genius-level I.Q. had allowed her to assimilate by herself a lot about that and other technologies during her formative years. She had also sat on special training sessions given in the United States by the manufacturers of the extensive electronic surveillance and jamming equipment of the EC-142E, sessions during which she had dazzled her instructors with her brilliant mind, speed of assimilation of her training material...and great beauty. Jenny next moved to the radio monitoring station manned by Corporal Mary Takahashi.
‘’Anything special on the Japanese frequencies, Mary?’’
‘’You could say that.’ replied Mary, smiling. ‘’Their headquarters in Rabaul is now sending a general message giving the latest weather data and estimates about the conditions around Rabaul and the Solomons. Our planes will find a mostly clear sky and moderate winds over Rabaul.’
‘’Excellent! This means that we may find the Japanese planes in Rabaul lined up and ready to takeoff for a raid on Guadalcanal after sunrise, just in time to offer us easy, concentrated targets to our planes.’ replied Jenny before returning to her own work station as the surveillance commanding officer of the EC-142E, where she studied again the most recent set of air photos taken over Rabaul and Simpson Harbor. If nothing had changed since yesterday, the P-38N and B-25NG pilots of the 99th C.A.G. should find moored in Simpson Harbor the light aircraft carriers SHOHO and TAIYO, the heavy cruisers CHIKUMA, HAGURO, NACHI and MOGAMI, two light cruisers, nine destroyers and 27 cargo ships. The two light carriers had actually been photographed from high altitude by a RP-38N photo-reconnaissance as they were in the process of delivering more aircraft to the two operating airfields around Rabaul, Lakunai and Vunakanau.
Three other airfields around Rabaul were still under construction and empty of aircraft, so Ingrid had decided to ignore them and to concentrate on the two operating airfields and on the Japanese ships in Simpson Harbor. The RP-38N doing that reconnaissance works had actually evaded detection by the Japanese, whose radar coverage did not reach the altitude used by the RP-38N, who had also been flying above the cloud cover while using its infrared cameras.
05:46 (PNG Time)
Lead P-38N, approaching Rabaul from the Northwest
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In the lead of her unit formation, Ingrid gave a short radio message to her pilots as the mountains surrounding Rabaul and Simpson Harbor became visible in the distance, outlined in the dark by the light of a full moon.
‘’To all Fifinellas, from Lady Hawk: go roller now!’
On that prearranged coded command, her pilots followed her in a shallow dive towards the ocean, to then level off at an altitude of a mere fifty meters above the wave, helped in that by their night vision goggles and their radar altimeters, two technologies from the future imported by Nancy Laplante in 1940 and then given to both the American and British governments. As she closed in on Rabaul, Ingrid did a silent prayer, wishing luck to her female aircrews in this most dangerous mission. She was less than ten kilometers from the coast of New Britain, approaching Rabaul from the Northwest, when she gave another short order by radio.
‘’To all Fifinel as, from Lady Hawk: dragster now!’
She then switched to her internal fuel tanks and jettisoned her now nearly empty drop tanks before accelerating at maximum power, quickly taking speed while still flying very low. Just as she overflew the coastline, she gave yet another order.
‘’To Witches, from Lady Hawk: sky jump now! To Hellraisers: bumpy ride now!’
The 24 P-38Ns following her own fighter-bomber, obeying her order, raised their noses in order to jump over the crestline of the mountain range surrounding Rabaul and Simpson Harbor, passing barely fifty meters above the ridgeline and continuing to climb for a couple of seconds before rolling on their back and diving steeply, rolling again to return to a normal position and splitting in three groups in order to better aim at the Japanese ships in the harbor and at the aircraft parked in the Lakunai and Vunakanau Airfields.
‘’GOOD LUCK AND GOOD SHOOTING, GIRLS!’
06:06 (PNG Time)
Japanese anti-aircraft gun position west of Lakunai Airfield Private Hondo Kenji, who had been on early morning watch, was in the process of waking up the rest of the crew of their Type 88 75 mm anti-aircraft gun, one of the 367
anti-aircraft guns defending Rabaul and its harbor, when he started hearing the muffled noise of distant aircraft engines. Thinking at first that some Japanese planes either had just started their engines or were approaching Rabaul, he didn’t pay much attention to
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that at first and continued waking up his comrades. Then, as he was about to go heat up some water to prepare tea for his comrades, that engine noise suddenly became a lot more audible and intense. Looking up in the direction of the Northwest, from where the noise came, Kenji felt his hair rise on his head when he saw two dozen or so planes who had just jumped over the ridgeline and who were now diving for an attack. Their distinctive twin-tails made them easy to recognize for an anti-aircraft gunner like him.
‘’AMERICAN P-38S DIVING ON US! ALERT! ALERT!’
As he was running towards his gun to take his position as loader, he didn’t see the fifteen B-25 medium bombers which jumped over the ridgeline after the P-38s, to then diving towards the ground at high speed. Kenji’s comrades, stil half asleep, did their best to run to their gun and man it but didn’t have a chance to fire a first shot before the first of the eight P-38Ns diving on the Lakunai Airfield opened a devastating fire with its eight .50 caliber heavy machine guns, strafing the 24 Japanese Mitsubishi Ki-21 medium bombers lined up on the taxiway, ready to fly out on a raid against the American Henderson Field, in Guadalcanal. With the concentrated fire of its machine guns, which had a combined rate of fire of 4,600 rounds per minute, the P-38 pilot shredded the lined-up bombers to pieces and made many of them blow up or explode into big fireballs before zipping over the airfield at top speed and low altitude, thus making it a very difficult target to the Japanese anti-aircraft gunners now trying to react to the attack. The seven P-38Ns following Captain Virginia Luttrell then opened fire as well, aiming at the Japanese aircraft still parked in their earth protective revetments or lined up along the taxiways of the airfield. All eight P-38Ns had time to complete their first strafing passes before the first Japanese gun was able to fire its first shot, which missed by a wide margin due to the high speed and low altitude of the American fighter-bombers. Those eight P-38Ns then turned around for a second pass in order to destroy the remaining surviving Japanese aircraft and to strafe the barracks where the Japanese aircrews lived.
While another eight P-38Ns led by Captain Nancy Batson were diving to attack the Vunakanau Airfield, Ingrid led the five other P-38N pilots of her command flight, composed of her most experienced pilots, in a high-speed dive on the Japanese heavy cruisers and two light carriers anchored. That dangerous task, pitting her and her command flight against the firepower of the Japanese heavy cruisers and light carriers, had as its main goal to distract the Japanese anti-aircraft gunners into concentrating
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their fire on her flight and thus help her fifteen B-25 medium bombers, which were now speeding just above the surface of the water towards the Japanese heavy units and preparing to deliver torpedo attacks. While the Japanese gunfire was at first rather light and inaccurate, with most of the gunners still running to man their guns, it quickly became quite intense. She replied to that anti-aircraft fire by first firing off her ten five-inch S.S.H.V. rockets at the heavy cruiser HAGURO, then following with a long burst from her heavy machine guns, which caused many ghastly casualties among the HAGURO gunners before her salvo of ten rockets impacted the superstructures and hull of the heavy cruiser. Raising her aircraft nose just enough to jump over the heavy cruiser’s forward superstructures while copiously peppering the ship’s bridge, Ingrid zoomed over the cruiser and flew away for a few seconds before reversing course and diving to only twenty meters above the water, heading back towards the heavy cruiser and firing her machine guns at the starboard side anti-aircraft gunners of the HAGURO.
Her five command flight pilots imitated her, each concentrating on a particular cruiser or light carrier. Teresa James ended up firing at the light carrier SHOHO, which had little to no armor and thus suffered much more comparatively than the armored heavy cruiser.
Teresa shouted out in joy when her bullets shred a number of Japanese aircraft parked on the flight deck of the SHOHO, starting intense fires there. Then, seven of her ten five-inch rockets hit the hull of the carrier, with some of them penetrating into its aircraft hangar and exploding inside. With a few of its aircraft fuel lines sectioned, the SHOHO
erupted into a giant fireball as Teresa was turning around for her second attack.
Deciding that her job on that light carrier was done, she switched targets and flew towards one of the light cruisers anchored in the harbor. Tracer shells from 25 mm automatic cannons then started zipping uncomfortably close past her aircraft. Her stomach gripped with fear but resolved to continue her attack, she pressed her gun trigger again, sending some 75 .50 caliber slugs per second at the light cruiser and turning its superstructures and hul into Swiss cheese. Teresa didn’t know it at the time but her firing against the light cruiser NAGARA saved Captain Ann Baumgartner’s B-25, which was being fired upon by the cruiser as Ann was about to launch her torpedo against the SHOHO. Letting out a breath out of relief at having completed alive her torpedo run, Ann Baumgartner fired for a couple of seconds both her eight fixed forward
.50 caliber machine guns and her fixed nose 75 mm cannon at the port side of the SHOHO’s hul , causing serious damage inside its aircraft hangar. Jumping over the carrier and zooming over the shaken Japanese sailors on its flight deck, Ann flew away
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for a few seconds before turning around for her second attack. As she was lining up her guns at the light carrier, her torpedo hit the port side of its hull, under the waterline, creating a huge water geyser and shaking the whole 14,200-ton warship. A second torpedo, launched by Lieutenant Barbara Erickson’s B-25NG, then hit the SHOHO some five seconds after Baumgartner’s torpedo, sealing the fate of the light carrier. Seeing that, Ann shouted out in her radio microphone.
‘’HELLRAISER RED TWO, TIME TO SWITCH TARGETS TO THE CARGO
SHIPS!’
‘’HELLRAISER RED TWO: ACKNOWLEDGED! I’M BEHIND YOU.’
As the P-38Ns and B-25NGs were conducting their second attack pass, young Rosa Lea Ful wood’s P-38N was peppered by shrapnel from a 75 mm shell exploding near her aircraft. Rosa Lea screamed with pain as a number of pieces of hot shrapnel pierced her right lower leg and also put her right-side engine on fire. Nearly passing out from the pain, Rosa Lea nonetheless managed to keep control of her damaged aircraft but quickly realized that her poor aircraft would never be able to return to Port Moresby and would probably crash quite soon. During the last pre-mission briefing given by Ingrid Dows to her and the other aircrews of the air group, Ingrid had made very clear that being captured by the Japanese would only result in tortures, followed by execution, citing examples from her fighting in the Philippines to support her assessment. Rosa Lea, on hearing that, had promised herself then to never allow that to happen to her.
‘’This is your last flight, old girl.’ she said to herself while evaluating her situation.
Seeing that her damaged aircraft was roughly flying in the direction of the heavy cruiser MOGAMI, which was already seriously damaged, Rosa Lea took a decision and pointed her P-38N at the command bridge of the MOGAMI, then pressed the trigger of her machine guns until their breaches clicked on empty. Her last thoughts were for her parents, seconds before she smashed into the cruiser’s bridge, kil ing everybody in it and enveloping it in a big fireball.
