Wot a Way to Run a War!: The World War II Exploits by Ted Fahrenwald

Author:Ted Fahrenwald [Fahrenwald, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
Published: 2013-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

“So there I was …” A post-mission debriefing. Third from the right is Mac, Ted’s best pal and flight mate.

Last night four or five of us sat around the fireplace in the club shootin’ the breeze about some of the incidents that happened back in the States. The best of all was the time that four of us were flying over Long Island. Below us we spot a light twin-engine Army ship cruising along, so we dive it one by one, and each of us does a barn roll around this ship. We zoom away and looking back we see that our prop-wash has flipped this ship over on its back. So we fly around for a while and land back at Farmingdale and laugh and laugh about it. But soon the phone rings in Operations and some Big Wheel wants to know who it was that buzzed a C-78 and flipped it upside down … on account of because it wuz a Staff plane and inside of it was highly upset Brigadier General. They never did nail the right people for that deal. Seems to me they pinned it on some jockeys from Norfolk … And then there was the time we buzzed Central Park; and the day we did steep turns around the Empire State building and waved at all the people inside. There were the many times we buzzed the Sound and caused various fishermen and socialite yachtsmen to leap wildly from their boats into the water. There was the time we buzzed so low that McKibben hit the water, ricocheted, and crashed in a little bay. I wuz sole witness to that one. There was the night my engine cut out and blew up over Mitchell Field and I had to set her down dead-stick and all covered with oil. Another gay night I buzzed Coney Island good and proper, and another night when I chased an observation ship in and out of the searchlight beams over NYC. There were the many minor accidents: the day that Ed Heller or Joe Gerst forgot to drop his tow target cable and dragged it (heavy rope with heavy lead weight on the end) thru the parking lot at the Republic plant … beat up forty cars, tearing hoods and tops off and smashing in their windows. Then he drags it thru a little wooden guard shanty and tears it down over the terrified sentry’s head. The night Harker landed thru the hi-tension lines. The day I hit a snowbank and flipped over. The day Joe Gerst ran into three seagulls and busted his airplane all to hell … and so on into the night, reminiscing and popping corks at high speed.

The stove from which we removed the firebrick, having been red-hot ever since, is melting down gradually so we’ve been shopping around the field looking for a new one to swipe.

Set up a volleyball court outside the hut the other day and after the first flurry of violent activity all pilots retired to the lounge and their cases of ale.

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