THREE
JEFFERSON PROVING GROUNDS was a brand-new state-of-the-art facility situated near the banks of the Ohio River. It was designed for the testing of conventional iron bombs, rockets, fire bombs, and howitzer shells—heavy ordnance that was fired from big guns or dropped from aircraft. A one-hundred-square-mile reservation, the base employed about 950 civilians from the neighboring towns and transferees from Aberdeen Testing Grounds in Maryland. Fifty ordnance officers and enlisted men ran the firing and drop ranges. The ordnance officers were all reserve officers who had been commissioned during the 1920s and 1930s. The captain in charge of the airborne testing was recall reserve. He was about forty-five years old and had served in the army air corps during World War I. He was a fine fellow, but, to put it politely, he was out of touch with the advances in aircraft, not unlike most of the army in 1942. He would be replaced by Major John Waugh, who was a career pilot officer.
Jefferson was under the overall command of Colonel Cabell, a West Pointer from a distinguished military family. He had supervised the construction of every detail of the proving grounds. As part of the general buildup of the military, the army had purchased the land in this area long before Pearl Harbor, and Colonel Cabell had been directed to build a modern facility to supplement the famous Aberdeen Testing Grounds. The newest and best equipment and the latest safety features were incorporated into every detail of the reservation.
Because the army had bought not only the land but everything that stood on it, there were several beautiful houses scattered about the base. Colonel Cabell selected thirty of the more outstanding homes and moved them to a part of the reservation that would become the residence area for its officers. He laid out the houses in a horseshoe design and created a perfectly manicured neighborhood that could have rivaled any exclusive neighborhood in the country.
This was a comfortable place to be. Five other officers and I shared one of these homes. Our accommodations were vastly different from the conditions most of our friends and classmates were experiencing. But as a second lieutenant, I had no choice of assignment. In fact, I was glad to have an assignment that meant I could do my part for the war effort. Someone had decided this was where I belonged.
Bob Van Dusen, of Rochester, New York, my classmate from Advanced Training, and I were the only test pilots at Jefferson. This meant we were about to get a lot of flight time in advanced aircraft—B-24s, B-25s, A-20 bombers, and P-47 fighters, and Major Waugh left it mostly up to us to run the tests. His only command was, “So you boys know what you’re doing?” We assured him we did and went on our way.
The procedure for testing was simple. Random samples of munitions were taken from the production lines at the factories by government inspectors and were shipped to us. Civilian technicians assigned to the proving grounds or representatives from the manufacturers briefed us about the specifications and characteristics of what we’d be testing. The samples were then loaded into the appropriate aircraft or racked under the wings, depending on the nature of the ordnance. The civilian technicians would proceed to the observation area adjoining the drop range. Bob or I took up the load and dropped or fired it as briefed.
The flight testing ensured proof of function of ordnance already extensively tested prior to full-scale production. Our job was to demonstrate that, straight off a mass-production line, the ordnance would perform as intended, detonate when expected, and produce a blast yield within specification. Of special concern was premature detonation in or under the aircraft, which might signal a design or manufacturing defect. Fortunately, that never happened at the proving grounds while I was there.
Given our rigorous and thorough testing of every type of bomb that might be used by an American pilot, it would have been incomprehensible to me in 1942 that in three and a half years, on an island in the Pacific, I would take off in an airplane carrying the largest bomb ever dropped in a free fall by the United States military that had never once been tested from an airplane prior to its planned detonation.
When we weren’t testing ordnance, I would take every opportunity to get into an airplane and just fly. For a pilot there are two states of being—when he’s flying and when he’s not. In the air, all things are possible. There’s a sense of invincibility. You seem at times to be free of the laws of gravity. You live to challenge yourself and take your machine to the limit. This may appear reckless to the uninitiated. And it is reckless to be careless, or to make mistakes because of a lapse in judgment. But it is not reckless to push the envelope in a calculated way. Like an artist, a pilot not only uses the necessary physical and mental skills for his craft, he is also driven by intuition.
I guess it was intuition that drew me under the Madison Milton Bridge. The air corps’ main matériel depot was located in Dayton, fifty miles north of the Ohio River. I flew there regularly. On the hundred-mile stretch of the Ohio between Cincinnati and Louisville, I would see a single bridge crossing the river at Madison, Indiana. It stood out like a beacon. One afternoon, as I approached the bridge from five thousand feet on my way to Dayton, I took my A-17 into a dive. My airspeed picked up nicely to 170 miles an hour. Approaching the bridge, I gauged there was maybe a fifty-foot clearance above the water, give or take a few feet. I flew under the bridge with room to spare, and immediately took the airplane into a sharp climb to about three thousand feet. That bridge had been just calling out to me. Joy is the only word to describe my response.
But one man’s joy can be another man’s terror. The civilians who were on the bridge at the time didn’t experience the same life-affirming thrill I did, and they made that clear to the base commander.
Colonel Cabell cut straight to the point. “If you kill yourself that’s a loss for the army, which invested a good amount of money and time in training you. But we’ll get over that loss. If you kill Mom and Pop and the kiddos driving over a heavily traveled bridge in Ohio, your death will pale in comparison. Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant?”
It was, under the circumstances, a mild reprimand. Nothing went into my service record, and I was still flying. And for a time I did stop. But the temptation would occasionally overcome me and—whoosh—I’d be under that damn bridge again. After a while, either the townsfolk got used to it or the colonel accepted this idiosyncratic behavior of one of his pilots.
I believed that our work with all of the bombers and fighters at our disposal was making a significant contribution that would save the lives of airmen. That was until Bob Van Dusen came in one afternoon to tell me he had heard that one of our classmates had been killed in a B-17 over the Pacific. It wasn’t certain whether Frank Sullivan had died in combat or in an accident. There were no details. Frank had been from the Bronx, a great fellow. We’d bunked next to each other at Barksdale. He’d been a natural flyer—outgoing, fun-loving. Although I had been aware of the mounting casualties in the Philippines as MacArthur tried vainly to blunt the Japanese assault, I could now put a face and a name on the finality of it. My pal Frank Sullivan was dead.
Living and working in Indiana didn’t seem enough anymore. It didn’t feel right. I had been at the proving grounds for three months. And even though second lieutenants are the lowest form of life in the military food chain, I decided to petition my immediate superior, Major Waugh, for a combat assignment. He listened patiently to my request for reassignment to a combat wing and to the reasons why I thought it was a wise use of my skills. He promised me he would look into it. A week later he called me back in and told me I had been promoted to first lieutenant. Everyone at the proving grounds thought I was doing a superior job. They couldn’t afford to lose me. As for a transfer, now was not a good time. With that, he dismissed me.
I’m not sure to this day if my promotion was related to my request for reassignment, but eight months later I made the same request and was promoted to captain.
I concentrated on my duties. My experience with aircraft and the subtle techniques required to milk the most out of each of them grew daily. The flying business is always dangerous. But if I made a mistake in flight, chances were I could learn from it. For my friends and classmates overseas, a mistake could be fatal. Casualties among our air crews in Europe were approaching staggering proportions, among them more and more of friends and airmen I knew and cared for.
Fate stepped in. During my eighteen months at Jefferson, I had become friendly with the major. He was being reassigned to Eglin Field in Florida to become director of operations for the Aircraft Weapons System Testing Grounds. Eglin was a busy, bustling central command. Pilots and crews getting ready to go to Europe, and many of those returning, were cleared through it. I figured that if I could get to Eglin as a test pilot, I would have more opportunities to turn that role into a combat assignment.
Major Waugh said he understood completely and would let me know if an opening presented itself. Within two months he called me. “Chuck,” he said, “they need a base operations officer. You want it?” It took me one second to say yes.
In June 1943, as the war raged on in Europe and the Pacific, I drove down to Florida in my 1929 Studebaker, which I’d bought from Major Waugh for fifty dollars, and discovered a place that dwarfed Jefferson in every way. Eglin Field sprawled from horizon to horizon. Its scale was immense. It sat on what had once been a vast swampland, which the Army Corps of Engineers had filled in. I learned later that a powerful congressman from that district had been instrumental in convincing the military that this was valuable real estate, even though most of it then sat under several feet of water.
I was in command of the main field and the nine auxiliary fields that ringed it. All aircraft not assigned to a specific section were under my direct control. I had at my disposal a huge staff to handle the administrative duties of managing the operation. At the age of twenty-three, I had been given a great deal of authority.
I struck up a friendship with Major Bernie Swartz. Bernie had been around for a while and was in command of the maintenance subdepot. This may not sound impressive, but believe me, he held the keys to the kingdom. Under his direct control were what the military classifies as “third-echelon aircraft.” These are aircraft that need substantial maintenance beyond the skills and tools of the flight line crew chief, or repairs requiring a machine shop. You name it, Bernie had it: B-17s, B-24s, B-25s, P-51s. If it was in the army air corps inventory, it eventually found its way to Bernie’s shop.
I negotiated a little bargain with Bernie. Someone would have to test the aircraft after the repairs were completed—a test pilot assigned to him for that purpose. I heard he had a girlfriend down in New Orleans he liked to visit monthly. I’d arrange for him to be on one of my airplanes going that way whenever the spirit moved him, and he’d give me carte blanche to test any aircraft that came off the maintenance line before it was returned to service.
It was always the same greeting: “Bernie, what do ya have today?” He’d hand me his inventory list and I’d look for an aircraft I hadn’t flown before. I never bothered with any lengthy instructions. The prescribed procedure before any pilot could take the controls of an airplane would be for him to be checked out by someone qualified to fly that particular airplane. I dispensed with the formal checkout. All I needed was someone to tell me where the throttle was and I’d figure out the rest.
Our arrangement fell way outside the usual organizational chart, but it worked great for Bernie and me. He spent time with the love of his life, and I spent time doing what I loved—flying everything I could get my hands on. It was unheard of that a pilot could accumulate substantial flight time in all kinds of aircraft—two- and four-engine bombers and fighters—and be rated to fly them, but by the summer of 1944, I was rated to fly every airplane in the army air corps inventory.
I also made myself available to the fighter section, which was short of pilots. As problems, either real or expected, with a particular airplane were identified, it was necessary to stress the aircraft, that is, take it up and fly it for a prescribed number of hours to push the airplane and its systems to their specifications. I volunteered, and so I got to accumulate even more time in these airplanes. The experience was priceless, and the word got around: If you need someone to fly something, call Chuck Sweeney. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it has wings.
One of my duties was to assemble and deploy crash investigation teams when an airplane went down in our sector. What most civilians don’t realize is that even during peacetime the military is a dangerous place. Thousands of men are in close proximity to weapons and explosives. With airplanes, the daily risks are greater. War only exacerbates the state of that risk. I witnessed a test P-38 go into a vertical dive, lose its tail, and plunge straight into the earth, leaving nothing but a crater filled with an indistinguishable mix of human remains and metal debris. I saw explosions in midair kill an entire crew in a flash. I witnessed crashes on takeoff and landing. Sometimes we learned why, sometimes the reason remained a mystery. But the first time I went to a crash scene left the most lasting impression.
It was July 1943. A call came into my office. A twin-engine Lockheed had gone in shortly after takeoff from one of our auxiliary fields. Fire trucks and ambulances were en route. No details of casualties were available.
I ordered my aide to alert the emergency team—Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer, chaplain, photographer, maintenance chief, and technical officer. A small airplane was parked right outside, and I flew it directly to the crash site.
Fire and ambulance personnel were there when I arrived, but there was little for them to do. I was immediately struck by the smell of burning flesh. The airplane had come down in a grove. The left wing had been shorn off and lay next to a tree. It appeared that the airplane had then skidded sideways for about sixty or seventy yards through a clearing. The fuselage had come to rest in a heap of rubble in a stand of cypress.
I walked through the clearing, noting bits and pieces of the aircraft strewn around. Here and there I saw a flight bag, a cap, unrecognizable dismembered bodies of men thrown from the airplane. Smoke was rising from the wreckage. I reached the fuselage, which had been blackened by the fire. Its left side had been sheared back like the lid of a sardine can. I looked directly into the cockpit. The pilot, copilot, and flight engineer were still strapped in. The pilot’s hands were contracted in a tight grip on the wheel. All the bodies were charred and smoldering, the smoke and stench of their burning flesh drifting toward me. But the true horror was that they had not been burned beyond recognition. I could still make out their features. The pilot’s head was tilted back oddly, at a forty-five-degree angle. His face was taut, his teeth bared, his eyes still open. I couldn’t move.
A voice broke in behind me. “Captain, the manifest shows six passengers. The controller at the tower said after takeoff they went into a violent left turn and then a stall.”
I had to fight my nausea and try to reconstruct the crash. I peered again into the cockpit and scanned the interior. A violent left turn before the crash. It was too obvious to be right. But there it was. The trim tab setting on the center post was set all the way to the left. The trim tab assists the pilot in steering the aircraft. On takeoff, the setting must be in the neutral position. With the trim tab set to the left, once the plane is airborne it will veer sharply left regardless of what the pilot does. It will fail to gain altitude and airspeed. It will stall and crash. The ground chief is supposed to check the trim tab before turning the airplane over. But the final responsibility is always with the pilot.
The investigative board determined that the trim tab was the cause of the crash. An experienced combat pilot who had survived countless missions over Europe made the fundamental mistake of not using his checklist. This mistake killed him and his crew.
In the summer of 1943 a two-star general arrived from Washington. He was forming a B-25 wing to go to India, and he needed pilots. The British and Chinese were anxious for the United States to fulfill its commitment to intensify a campaign from India to harass the Japanese in Burma and Thailand. It was no secret that within the overall scheme of things this mission had a low military priority. The real action was in Europe.
I suspected that the war couldn’t last that much longer and that it was now or never. I met with the general, explained my desire to volunteer, and was accepted. Orders were cut for me to transit to India by troop ship via the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal, to my new base. The trip would take two months. I wasn’t used to this type of slow transport, and the thought of being crammed onto a troop carrier did not suit me at all. But I would finally get into the war. I was to report to Newport News, Virginia, for debarkation at the end of the year.
I would have a few months to wrap up my duties at Eglin and prepare to depart, but fate would step in again. Out of the blue, my military career was to veer in a totally unexpected direction.