June '41

By Dick Shead

It's June of 1941. Mike Gilroy, home for the summer from college, meets the girl of his dreams just in time for the two of them to be kidnapped and forced to fly to a desert island. They escape and soon become involved trying to track down a U-boat and protect a British battleship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613093214

Book preview

One

The islands of the Antilles chain form a boundary separating the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean Sea, looping in an arc from Cuba and Puerto Rico clockwise around through the Lesser Antilles to Trinidad and Tobago just off Venezuela and continuing parallel to the Venezuela shore with the Leeward Antilles, not to be confused with the Leeward Islands, which are the northern end of the Lesser Antilles. The Greater Antilles, lying just outside the Gulf of Mexico, form the northern end of the chain. Today I was only concerned with three of the islands: Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba. It never entered my mind that before the day ended I was going to get better acquainted with much more of the Caribbean geography.

I was sitting in one of my favorite places, the cockpit of an airplane. This particular airplane was on the ramp at Isla Grande Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

From the cockpit I could look across the runway and see several new hangars and large buildings under construction; the U.S. Navy was expanding its portion of the Isla Grande Airport. They had brought in a squadron of PBY patrol planes when the airport was built last year. Now, we heard, the Navy was already expanding the facilities to place six squadrons here. It was part of a general buildup to protect the Panama Canal from German submarines. Although no one in power would admit it, the change in squadron numbers was obviously due to Germany’s success with her U-boats and the probability that the U. S. would soon be in the war. Everyone said they didn’t want a war, but everyone seemed to think it was coming.

I had completed my pre-start checklist up to the point of engine start. Punching the starter button, I watched the propeller blades spin past the windscreen as they jerked into motion. When I turned on the magnetos, blue smoke curled around the nose and whipped past the cockpit as the radial engine caught and the individual propeller blades disappeared into a dimly seen disk. Damn! It felt good to be back in an airplane. Of course after nine months sitting in a classroom, anything else would feel good.

The airport, lines of hangars set back on either side of the single runway, was fairly busy. Even so, ramp traffic on our side of the runway was light. A few civilian airliners sat on the ramp along with a scattering of private planes. A DC-3, just landed and slowing down, turned off the up-wind end of the runway onto the taxi way. Across the runway several old Navy biplanes, the F3F fighter now being phased out of service, were parked in front of one of the hangars and a new F4F fighter had just shut down on their transit ramp. Next to the transit area, the PBY seaplanes, parked on their beaching gear, were lined up with military precision. Behind the Navy hangars, out of sight, was the Pan American seaplane ramp, where the flying boats of that airline and the PBYs docked. The Navy had built the airport last year for its own use but allowed civilian traffic into a restricted area on the field. It worked in everyone’s favor.

Isla Grande Tower, nan charlie seven five niner niner easy, at the MAG Airline ramp. Taxi for takeoff.

Niner niner easy, taxi to runway niner. Wind, east at six knots. Altimeter setting is three zero zero two. Call when ready for takeoff.

Niner niner easy, roger. I made the barometer setting on the altimeter and turned to my passenger sitting in the right-hand seat. You all set?

Righto, mate. His cockney accent floated out of a scrawny chest in a deep bass. The clothes were a working seaman’s outfit, clean but with paint and tar stains that would never wash out. He’d had the butt of a cigarette in his mouth continuously since he walked into our office until I made him put it out when we walked out to the airplane.

A little throttle and the Beechcraft Staggerwing started forward. I tapped the brake pedals. Better to find out they don’t work here than when we really need them; we jerked forward and back as the brakes took hold and released. With everything finished on the checklist we taxied on to the end of the runway.

It hit me how much I missed this. This was the first time I had flown since starting my sophomore year at Georgia Tech last fall. Actually, this was my second flight. My partner, Todd Abbin, had given me a check ride yesterday so I could legally carry passengers.

The mechanic I had hired to take my place when I went off to college proved to be a good worker; the airplane was in great shape. The run-up went smoothly and I called the tower for takeoff instructions. The tower operator cleared us for takeoff and gave me the wind directions and altimeter setting again. To my passenger, Here we go.

I gave the Beech some throttle and lined up with the runway. Then, opening the throttle, I settled back and let the horsepower pull us into the air. We were off sooner than I’d expected and I busied myself raising the flaps and landing gear. I was still getting used to the speed and acceleration of the Staggerwing; most of my flight time had been acquired in our Grumman Goose.

Some people might be surprised that a twin–engine monoplane was slower than a single-engine bi-plane, but the engineers at Beech had done a great job of streamlining the Staggerwing. With retractable landing gear, a cockpit skinned in aluminum, linen covering the rest of the fuselage and wings for lightness and a seven hundred fifty-five cubic inch Jacobs radial engine, it was about twenty knots faster than the Goose. Not that I’m knocking the Goose. It was just designed for a different mission. If I needed an amphibian to carry six people, the Goose was the airplane.

We took off over the Laguna del Condado and passed over the beach on Peninsula de Condado; a few tourists were already staking out their spots to lie in their cabana chairs and work on their sunburns. Past the beach I started a left turn and finished heading west over the Caribbean Sea.

Conditions were perfect for the flight. The layer of small, scattered, cumulus clouds we climbed through promised fair weather between San Juan and our destination, Santiago de Cuba. No wind to speak of and CAVU—ceiling and visibility unlimited. Actually, visibility was about twelve to fifteen miles, then everything near the water disappeared in the haze.

With the wheels and flaps retracted, I climbed to forty-five hundred feet, adjusted the throttle, propeller, and mixture for cruising, and sat back to enjoy myself. The flat north coast of the island passed just off our left with the central mountains starting their rise about five miles to the south of us. The power and performance of the Staggerwing, not to mention the fact that I was starting summer break from school, made me forget just what I was doing. I felt so happy to be flying I grinned and made a couple of steeply banked turns back and forth just for the hell of it.

My passenger let out a yell and grabbed my arm. What the bloody hell?

I straightened out, chagrined. Sorry, I got carried away.

He gave me a dirty look and settled back in his seat. The green hills of Puerto Rico passed by the port wing as we made our way towards the Mona Passage and Hispaniola. The Staggerwing had the range to make it nonstop to Santiago so we would overfly that island today. The flight would cross the Dominican Republic, passing over the Cordillera Central just north of Pico Duarte, at ten thousand feet the highest mountain peak on the island, and then cross into Haiti and out over Gonaïves and the Golfe di la Gonâve. After crossing the fifty mile wide Windward Passage, we would land at Santiago de Cuba.

Settling into the flight, I lit a cigarette, offered one to my passenger, and thought of the changes in the past three years. Sometimes the outcome of bad things happening can be pretty darn good. In December of ’37, two years out of high school, I thought my flying career was finished when I watched my second-hand, rebuilt race plane come apart on a snowy New Jersey airstrip. The pilot, my high school buddy, and I were washed up in the air racing business (without ever actually having participated in it) after our plane did a ground-loop on landing and tore itself to pieces.

Instead of ending my career in aviation, the crash simply started me on a different path. I got a job as a mechanic for a man buying a Grumman Goose. This led to meeting Todd Abbin, my partner and the ‘A’ in the MAG corporate name, who had just been kicked out of an airline job (it was a slimy deal between our boss and the training director, who were fraternity brothers). Todd was about five years older than me, looked like a young Errol Flynn, and I came to look on him as a big brother. In due course, the two of us were introduced to our employer’s fiancée, Della McClusky, at the time a waitress trying to break into a Broadway career. She, a real looker with brains and brown hair. Looking back on it, it seemed unbelievable that George had been able to fool her long enough to cajole her into marrying what she thought was a rich, sugar speculator and philanthropist. She quickly found out he wasn’t so much a rich, sugar speculator as a drunk with rich parents who cared only for himself with rich parents. Exceptional at details, she held the position of Chief Financial Officer and contributed the ‘M’ in our name. The ‘G’ in our corporate name comes from me; Mike Gilroy. I’m of Irish stock, five foot eight with red hair and now, after two years in the classroom, about one hundred forty pounds.

George Pine had hired Todd as the pilot and me as a mechanic to fly his bride and him from New York to an island he owned in the Grenadines. This was a trip that combined George and Della’s honeymoon and several business deals for George. The trip proved to be a disaster for George, very nearly for all of us. George had stolen some classified plans from his brother, an electrical engineer, and intended to sell them to a German agent. The plans described an electronic device the British were developing, a device that would locate airplanes up to fifty miles away. George was hoping to sell the plans for enough cash to save his sugar import business.

After the first day of the trip, Della, his bride of one day, was surprised and hurt to learn George was an alcoholic who only wanted a wife to show off at parties. At least she found out early. As the trip lurched from crisis to crisis, his drunken deceit cost him his money, his wife, his airplane, and ultimately, his life.

The plans were in turn stolen from George by the Nazi agents he’d hoped would buy them. By the time Della, Todd, and I found out what had happened, the agents were escaping to Natal Brazil, flying in what is now our Beechcraft D-17 (better known as the Staggerwing). The three of us, dragging George along, pursued them to recover the plans. We couldn’t hope to catch the Germans, a one-hundred-thirty knot Goose chasing a one-hundred-fifty knot Staggerwing. But we managed to get to Natal before the weekly flight to Germany arrived to pick up the two Krauts. In the ensuing encounter, George and the Germans wound up dead. When the dust settled, Todd, Della, and I had the plans, the Germans’ money, and their Staggerwing. It’s a long story involving a fair amount of luck.

Back in San Juan, we contacted George’s brother, Paul, to let the family know about George’s death and the electronic plans. Paul met us in San Juan to get his plans back as quietly as possible. He didn’t seem too concerned about George’s death, especially after learning George was the thief.

I’ve been a nervous wreck since I discovered the theft. If the British Government had found out about this, my reputation would have been ruined. Please don’t talk to anyone about this; my father wouldn’t want this news known at his bank, was his only comment. It wasn’t a close family.

Paul agreed to handle all George’s affairs, grudgingly thanked the three of us, and went back to New York to tell his parents what had happened.

Interestingly, George’s parents never attempted to contact Della. A lawyer sent her a letter saying George didn’t have a will, which meant she would inherit all George’s holdings. His father was going to contest the finding and see that Della received nothing. Della told the lawyer to let the father have everything; she wanted nothing from George. She signed some papers formalizing the deal. It turned out to be a smart move financially after the father found out how much in debt George was. We heard no more from the Pines. Della reverted to her maiden name and, after a couple of months, moved in with Todd. Todd kept asking her to marry him and she said, yes. But they never seemed to get around to it.

Granted MAG only had two airplanes, the Grumman Goose and the Beechcraft D-17. But we were making money and the future looked bright.

Our particular Staggerwing started life as a private plane for a German doctor. He bought it before the Nazis took total control of the government. After gaining power, the Nazis took it away from the doctor in one of the Jewish crackdowns and used it as a perk for government officials. One such official had the Beechcraft shipped to Recife Brazil while he and a German fighter ace flew across the Atlantic (Dakar Africa to Recife Brazil) in a Focke Wulf Condor. In a lucky, bordering on unbelievable, series of events, we took it away from the Germans. It’s now registered as a U.S. airplane, NC7599E.

The Goose was our airline’s first airplane. Todd won the Goose playing gin rummy with George Pine. George was a drunk. When he was intoxicated, all of his venom would come out as he told us how much he detested us. He directed his anger mainly at Todd; I was too far down the pecking order. Della said he saw how well we did our jobs and it made him realize how poorly he did his. Anyway, one evening after trying several times to get the asshole to stop playing while he was shit-faced and spewing his hatred at us, Todd took the Goose away from him. That was three years ago in ’38. Shortly after the gin rummy game, George died in a gun battle with the Krauts. We were left with the Goose and the Staggerwing, along with a pile of cash.

Della, Todd, and I had no reason to go back to the States. Todd, just out of the Navy, could have tried to get his airline job back, but they had already screwed him once. Della had left a dead-end job as a waitress to marry George. I had no job prospects in the states and my parents were in the Philippines. My dad is an Army officer stationed in Manila. We decided to stay in the Antilles and start MAG Airline. Todd has the president’s job; I’m vice-president and in charge of maintenance. Della keeps the books and keeps us honest. Throw in our mechanic, Geoff, and an office girl, Viola, and I have mentioned the entire workforce of MAG airlines.

Shortly after starting the airline, Della contacted Beech Aircraft and, after several back and forth letters, managed to get the name and address of the original owner. We couldn’t return the airplane to him, but Della thought we should make some attempt to compensate him for his property. She sent a letter off to the address we had and asked him to get in touch with us. After a couple of months of speculation, it came back marked, "Adressenunbekanntes." Address unknown. If we ever located the man we would work out compensation.

We worried that the Krauts would come after us, in some way, for the Beechcraft and the money, not to mention the loss of two spies. When we registered the airplane, we made a bill of sale showing the previous registration was Panamanian. No official had actually seen the airplane before we had the new registration number painted on the wings and fuselage. The cash had the advantage of being anonymous. After three years we had stopped worrying.

We started with a business model involving some scheduled trips and doing charter work. Most of the Goose’s trips were between San Juan and the Virgin Islands, usually Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas or Cruz Bay on St. John. Christiansted on St. Croix became a popular destination. The Staggerwing stayed busy flying between Cuba and Puerto Rico. Della learned to fly once we got the business going and was making most of the flights in the Staggerwing. Todd and I switched off flying the Goose, although he got more time than me because I had to handle the maintenance on both planes. Surprising all three of us, the enterprise was profitable from the start. Once people found out about the service, they really took advantage of it. It surprised us how many folks have crises that require travel. These people, along with folks that just don’t like the travel time required by a boat trip, made us the popular choice. It seemed everyone needed to get to someplace or, once in a while, away from someplace.

The Beech had the usual Beechcraft-yellow paint with a black lightning stripe. The Goose, a conservative cream color, had a red stripe along the fuselage. We left both airplanes in the same paint scheme they had, just adding MAG Airline on the rear of the fuselage on both sides. Our uniform became a little more professional looking. Instead of khaki pants and leather jackets, we wore dark blue trousers and short-sleeve, white shirts with epaulettes, and we gave up our fedoras for dark blue, billed uniform hats.

I haven’t been around much for the last two years. When the airline proved to be a success from the get-go, and it was apparent we wouldn’t have to dip into the savings, Todd, unknown to me, talked it over with Della and decided I should use some of the money to go to college. At first I thought it was a crazy idea but Todd convinced me that I would be much more valuable to the enterprise with a degree in aeronautical engineering.

I thought my formal education was finished after high school, but during the time I had known Todd I had started to wish I had a degree. My parents had pushed me towards college but at that point, during and right after high school, I wanted to go into air racing. A couple of years of living out of a suitcase and bumming around with a friend knocked that idea out of my head.

So now I had just finished my sophomore year at Georgia Tech, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautics. My mother was thrilled that I was going to college and my dad was working out how to get the leave time to come back to the states for my graduation.

Surprisingly I found, unlike in high school, I enjoyed the classroom. My high school algebra now made sense and trigonometry suddenly snapped into understanding when a fellow student, a Navy first-class petty officer going back to school for a commission, told me, It’s just a fuckin’ right triangle, three angles and the ratio of lengths of the sides to each other. This last school year, winter of ’40 and spring of ’41, had been interesting with classes finally starting to apply to aircraft performance. Still, I was looking forward to my summer off. June of ’41 looked to be the start of an exciting summer.

Crossing the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba always reminded me of the first time I saw this stretch of water. It was the day I met Malcolm (Mac) Bruce, skipper of a topsail schooner named Bluehorse. Mac formed his crews from high school and college students, mostly from England. We met in the middle of the Windward passage when Mac lost a mast in a gale; the broken mast had ripped a crewman’s leg open, cutting the artery. Mac didn’t have the skills or materials aboard to repair the artery, so he broadcast a radio call for medical help.

We were crossing the passage on George and Della’s ill-fated honeymoon flight and were the only ones to hear the call. Todd made an open-sea landing in very rough conditions, picked up the crewman and carried him to Port-Au-Prince. We got the boy to the hospital in time and the leg was saved. Mac had vowed to thank us in person somewhere down the line.

After the airline was up and running, Mac showed up in San Juan to thank us and offer a business proposition. The Bluehorse’s home port was Tortola, British Virgin Islands. He was attracting lots of people who wanted short cruises starting and ending at odd times with relation to the cruises. With MAGA’s help, he could schedule long cruises around the Caribbean and MAGA could meet the Bluehorse in port or at sea to shuffle his clients between the boat and the airlines in Cuba. The arrangement had worked well for all parties.

It was amazing that Mac was still running cruises, what with England being at war. England had declared war on Germany in March, 1939. At the end of May, the following year, France fell to the Germans and England went on the defensive that summer and fall, impressing the rest of the world with their RAF fighting and winning the Battle of Britain. Todd, Della, and I followed the news and argued about how the Messerschmitt stacked up against the Hurricane and Spitfire, not to mention the Army Air Corps’ P-40 and the Navy’s F4F. Todd had been a dive-bomber pilot in the Navy and remained in the Navy reserve; he was interested in the Junkers JU-87 Stuka. The dive bomber had been a major weapon in Germany’s advance into Poland and the USSR.

The big news lately was the sinking of the German battleship, Bismarck. For eight days in May, the battleship had held the attention of the world as she sank HMS Hood and escaped the search by the British fleet. Todd and I cheered when an old British biplane, a Swordfish torpedo bomber, managed to find the ship and put a torpedo into the stern, jamming the rudder and allowing the English battleships to catch up and sink the Bismarck. Judging from the headlines from the English newspapers, the Brits were very happy to have this horror out of action.

Anyway, Mac was still in business and still had students and crew coming and going. That’s what I was doing now... delivering one of Mac’s people to Santiago and picking up another. I would fly the new person back to San Juan and Todd would take him to meet the Bluehorse somewhere off the coast of Montserrat in the Goose. The student would transfer directly from the airplane to the boat along with some supplies ordered by Mac.

My present passenger didn’t fit the student category. He was older than a high school student and didn’t seem like the university type. His clean but paint and tar-stained dungarees marked him as a crewman. I asked him, Were you one of Mac’s students?

In his cockney accent he said, Not me, mate. I been Mac’s boatswain for the last couple’a years. Just called up for the Royal Navy.

You seem a little old to be going through bootcamp.

I won’t be, will I? I already did a hitch in the Andrew. I’ll go back in as a Petty Officer.

The Andrew?

A nickname for the Royal Navy. In the old days, a press gang manager named Andrew pressed so many men that they said it was Andrew’s Navy, or, the Andrew.

Boats wasn’t much for small talk and my attempts to engage him petered out. We made the rest of the trip in silence (as much as