Lone Eagle by Philip Kaplan

Author:Philip Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2017-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

THE SHOOTIST

357FG pilot John England, in cockpit of his Mustang Nooky Booky IV on the group’s Leiston base, having just returned from a bomber escort mission.

I know that I shall meet my fate / Somewhere among the clouds above; / Those that I fight I do not hate, / Those that I guard I do not love. / My country is Kiltartan Cross, / My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor. / No likely end could bring them loss / Or leave them happier than before. / Nor law nor duty bade me fight, / Nor public men nor cheering crowds, / A lonely impulse of delight / Drove to this tumult in the clouds; / I balanced all, brought all to mind, / The years to come seemed waste of breath / A waste of breath the years behind / In balance with this life, this death.

—An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by William Butler Yeats

“It isn’t always being fast or accurate that counts, it’s being willing. I found out early that most men, regardless of cause or need, aren’t willing. They blink an eye or draw a breath before they pull a trigger. I won’t.”

—John Bernard Books, title character in The Shootist

“WHEN YOU’VE GOT A GOOD HOLD on the enemy’s tail and are clobbering him well, it seems then he never will die. Each part of a second doesn’t feel like time at all, but is slow, so very slow and so endless. Armor-piercing incendiaries hit him all over. They cloud him up all over and go all over him like snake tongues. That’s what they look like—little red snake tongues, hundreds of them, flicking him poisonously all over. That goes on and on, each little flick quick as a twist, but the whole thing so slow, so endless.

“Then black smoke starts out of him and goes slowly and endlessly out of him. At first it comes as if you’ve squeezed it out of him and then a cloud of it appears. Glycol is the fluid that keeps the motor from overheating. You can’t fly more than a minute or so without it. It comes out into the air looking white, and when you see it coming out well, in a pour, then that’s the end.

“The wind of death blowing up to storm proportions in him. It’s a small pour at first, usually thin, like a frosty breath, then bigger, bigger, bigger and always slow and endless and stuck into your eyes and stopped there like a movie held still.

“And after that, sometimes when you’re really clobbering him and are really all over him, hammering his guts out, pieces start coming off him. It’s nuts-and-bolts stuff at first, then bigger things, big, ripped-off-looking things as if you’re tearing arms and legs off him and arms and legs and the head of him are going slowly, endlessly over your shoulder.”

—Major Don Gentile, formerly with the 4th Fighter Group, Eighth USAAF

Thomas J. Moore flew Mustangs with the 361st Fighter Group at Bottisham, Cambridgeshire,

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