MUSTANG - Man and Machine

The brown machine cut through the thin air like a pencil on a draftsmen chart. At the end of that line was a lanky 31 year old pilot, Major James Howell Howard (above).  

The U.S. Navy had trained him to fly, but he became an combat ace, completing 56 missions over China with the Flying Tigers (above).  After Pearl Harbor he became a Major in the U.S. Army Air Corps. 

And, since shortly before 9:00 am, this Tuesday 11 January 1944, he had been squeezed into the 2 foot wide by 3 foot cockpit of his Mustang fighter. 

After four hours of cold tedium Howard's 356^th fighter group finally caught up with the 401^st bomb group they were assigned to protect. The 137 B-17 and B-24 bombers had just finished their runs over the Focke Wulf fighter factory in Oschersleben, Germany, and were turning for home.

Having divided his command to cover the lead and tailing bomber boxes, Howard was now "jincking" back and forth at 250 miles per hour in the center of the 160 miles per hour bomber formations,  Howard noticed the bombers nearest him “...seemed to be under pressed attack by six single and twin-engine enemy fighters.” Signaling to his wing man on his “six”, Howard released his two 62 gallon drop fuel tanks, pushed his throttle and stick forward, and dived to the attack.

The machine Major Howard was flying was conceived in March of 1940. That month, with German bombers expected any moment over London, British industry produced just 58 front line all metal Spitfire single seat fighters, capable of 370 miles per hour (above). Little could be done to quickly increase its production rates, so desperation drove the British to look to the United States. 

They were disappointed to discover just one American fighter capable of speeds over 300 MPH, the Curtis Hawk P-40 (above), produced by North American Aviation in Inglewood, California. (The U.S. Army had to label their fighters as “Pursuit Aircraft” to placate isolationist politicians.)  But North American's production lines were already running at full capacity with P-40's B-25 bombers and trainers. A new order would require an entirely new plant, which meant added expense and delay.

Major Howard first fell in behind an Me 110 twin tailed night fighter (above). The enemy crew were concentrating on their target, and did not notice the small fighters on their tail. “I waited until his wingspan filled my gun sight and opened up with a four-second burst.” The enemy plane went into a steep dive, and then fell from the sky as the wings broke off. 

With a flick of his control stick and kick at the rudder with his feet, Howard fell in behind an FW 190 single seat fighter (above).  “He pulled up into the sun when he saw me,” remembered Howard. A two second burst put 26 rounds from each of the six wing mounted 50 caliber machine guns into the target. The impact was instantaneous. Said Howard, “I nearly ran into his canopy as he threw it off to bail out”. And lastly Howard shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter.

Legend has it that the 45 year old charismatic President of NAA, James Howard "Dutch" Kindelberger, approached his lead engineer, 41 year old German born Edgar Schmued (above), and asked him, “Ed, do we want to build P-40's here?” Schmeud replied, "We can design and build a better one."  Relying on Schmued, North American assured the British they could deliver a better fighter than the P-40 no later than January. The contract for 320 of the as yet to be designed Mustang Mark 1a fighters was signed on 24 April, 1940.

Returning to his station, jinking at 250 miles per hour between the 160 miles per hour B-17 and B-24 bomber combat boxes, now heading for home, Howard realized he had lost his wing man. Now alone at 26,000 feet above central Germany, still 500 mile from the Dutch coastline, he spotted some 30 German fighters gathering like vultures to feast on the bombers. Howard, confident in himself and the P-51 machine (above) he piloted, decided, as he put it, to “stick around”.

Engineer Schmued had reason to be so confident. In 1938 Federal researchers working in a wind tunnel in Langley, Virginia, discovered that softening the  “hump” on the wing top kept the air flow closer to the surface of the wing, which reduced drag by 50% , while not reducing lift. They called the design “laminar flow”.  The same team also learned that the standard rounded wing tips might look smooth to designers, but they actually increased drag . 

This new plane, with blunt squared-off wings, would the first in the world to benefit from this research. And Schmued had a few ideas of his own. He insisted the aluminum skin on this new fighter be “entirely flush-riveted”, allowing the plane to smoothly slice through the air.

Diving again, Howard lined up behind another ME-110, this one throwing rockets into the bomber formations. A single burst sent the twin engine fighter,spiraling down, trailing smoke. Then, remembered Howard, “It wasn’t long before I saw another Bf 109 (above)  tooling up behind the formation.” But this time the German pilot saw the brown fighter, and headed for the deck. Howard followed. “He stood out very clearly, silhouetted against the snow that covered the ground...” After another pair of short bursts the 109 began to smoke, and at 3,000 feet Howard was forced to pull back on the stick. “  The fellow went down in a cloud of black smoke and fire and hit the ground.” 

As the P-51 climbed at 4,000 feet per minute, Howard grunted while “G” forces drove him into the seat. But the same forces were pushing the bullets in the ammunition belts on three of Howard's machine guns out of their sleeves.

Basing the design on the P-40 saved time and retooling, as did using the liquid cooled Allison V-1710 engine from the P-40. The prototype, labeled the NA-73X , rolled off the production line just 102 days after design started, on 9 September. And it displayed yet another major innovation. 

The radiator on P-40 sat behind and below the engine. But the Mustang carried it's heat exchange below and behind the cockpit, where it could be fed fresh air via a ventral scoop. To the engineer's amazement, a minor alteration compressed the hot air escaping at the rear of the scoop, so it would function as a rudimentary ramjet, boosting speed even further.

“I climbed once more to the port side of the bomber formation,” remembered Howard. “I saw an 

ME 109 over on the starboard side getting into position...just underneath and a few hundred yards ahead of me. He saw me at the same time and chopped his throttle...It's an old trick. He started scissoring underneath me but I cut my throttle...Then we went into a circle dogfight...I dumped twenty-degree flaps and began cutting inside him, so he quit and went into a forty-five degree dive...I got on his tail and got in some long distance squirts from 300 or 400 yards.... I got some strikes on him but I didn't see him hit the ground.”

The first 95 of the new Mustangs arrived in October of 1941, but the Brits were not impressed. The Allison engines had no supercharger, which emasculated the planes at anything over 15,000 feet. So the British allocated the disappointing Mustangs to reconnaissance and ground attack. It was not until six months later, in April of 1942, that Ronnie Harker, chief test pilot for Rolls-Royce, spent 30 minutes flying the Mustang. It was Harker who pointed out to the Air Ministry that “...with a good engine, like the Merlin 61, it's performance could be outstanding, as it is 35 mph faster than the Spitfire V at roughly the same power.” But it was August before Harker was allowed to install 5 Rolls-Royce engines as an experiment.

“On the next trip up,” Major Howard explained, “I saw a Dornier 217, I think it was coming alongside the big Friends (the bombers), probably to throw rockets. I had to work fast but when I dived on him he just left and I never did fire a shot at him.”

The high altitude performance of the Mustang was now described as “spectacular”. The Mustang could now operate at up to 40,000 feet, at up to 432 miles per hour, making it the fastest propeller driven fighter plane in the world. It's aerodynamics gave the plane an amazing 3.3 miles per gallon, increasing its range to 1,650 miles with a pair of 62 gallon external drop tanks.

North American now installed the 1,450-horsepower Packard V-1650-3 Merlin engines, being built under contract by the Packard Motor Car Company out of Detroit. The P-51 was now lacking only one minor modification, which would make it the best fighter in the world. 

For another 10 minutes Major James Howard made repeated feint attacks on a Junker 88 bomber, forcing the blitz bomber to break off and dive away again and again.  Howard's P-51 had only one working machine gun now, the other 5 having jammed. Eventually the frustrated German pilot gave up and banked away. Seeing no more fighters, and being dangerously low on fuel, Howard gave a farewell waggle of his wings,  collected three stray P-51s, and headed for his home base at Boxted, England. When he landed it was discovered Howard's plane had a single bullet hole in his left wing. “I don't know where I got it, or when.”

After the raid, the commander of the 401^st Bomber Group called Howard's defense  “...the greatest exhibition I've ever seen. It was a case of one lone American against what seemed to be the entire Luftwaffe. He was all over the wing, across and around it. They can't give that boy a big enough award." Howard was dubbed a “"One-man Air Force".  Andy Rooney, correspondent for the Army's Stars and Stripes newspaper called his feat “the greatest fighter pilot story of World War II.”

John Howard's Medal of Honor Citation reads, in part, “For conspicuous gallantry...above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy near Oschersleben, Germany, on 11 January 1944....he chose...to attack single-handed a formation of more than 30 German airplanes. With utter disregard for his own safety he immediately pressed determined attacks for some 30 minutes, during which time he destroyed 3 enemy airplanes and probably destroyed and damaged others...Major Howard continued his aggressive action in an attempt to protect the bombers from the numerous fighters. His skill, courage, and intrepidity on this occasion set an example of heroism which will be an inspiration to the U.S. Armed Forces.”

 Lieutenant Colonel Tommy Hitckcock , the U.S. Army Air Force attache in London, described the new Mustang as “Sired by the English out of an American mother...” In common parlance the new fighters would come to be labeled, “The Cadillac of the skies”.  Newly promoted Colonel Howard himself had one suggestion - improve the canopy of the P-51, to give the pilot a better view of the sky. Thus was born the final classic outline of the P-51 - the famous bubble canopy.   

Between 1942 and 1945 15,469 Mustangs were built by North American Aviation. They destroyed 4,950 German fighters in air to air combat, against 2,520 Mustangs lost. Born out of desperation, inspired by genius and technical innovation, the Mustang was the greatest, and the last,  piston engine, propeller powered fighter aircraft ever built.

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PASSION AND OTHER SINS - PART THREE

“Love is often gentle, desire always a rage.”

Mignon McLaughlin

I suppose, if Leland Stanford had his way, the little village of Lathrop would have been one of the most important cities in California. Stanford was one of the Big Four who built the California half of the first trans-continental railroad, supposedly completed in the summer of 1869. Except the rails did not reach unbroken to the western sea until November, when Leland’s own California Pacific Railroad finished a bridge over the San Joaquin River, just south of Lathrop.  Only then could you travel by rail all the way from sea to shinning sea. That bridge is still in use. But despite Stanford's best efforts, Lathrop never grew beyond a village. And the hamlet’s only historical claim to fame, other than the bridge, is that Lathrop is where the insanity of Althea ne Hill and her husband David Terry played out its dénouement.

“Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.”
Samuel Johnson

After their arrest and conviction for the courtroom outbursts of 1888, Althea and David Terry (above) were not shy about expressing their hatred of Supreme Court Judge Stephen Joseph Field.  During transport to Alameda county jail, Althea repeatedly said she intended to kill the judge. And David went so far as to invite a newspaper man, Thomas Williams, to conduct an interview from his prison cell, in which he announcing his intention of slapping the judge, and “…if Judge Field resists, I will kill him.” That interview, published in the San Francisco papers, and subsequent letters David Terry wrote other newspapers, made the couple’s rage unambiguous.

That is why, when Justice Field came back to California in the spring of 1889 to help out in the court, he was assigned to Los Angeles, far away from Terry’s old haunts in San Francisco, and he was given a body guard.

 The man chosen by Field’s friends was William Neagle (above), an ex-Marshall of Tombstone, Arizona, and the very same man who, as a United States Marshall,  had disarmed David Terry in the courtroom confrontation. But after an uneventful summer, on Tuesday, 13 August, 1889, when Justice Field left Los Angeles on the afternoon train bound for Sacramento, where he was to connect with the transcontinental train, Marshal Neagle was still traveling with him.

As the train headed north, at each station, Marshal Neagle would step off to observe who was boarding the train. At about 3:00 a.m., when the train paused in Fresno, California, Neagle saw Althea and David Terry boarding.  The Marshal immediately awoke Judge Field, who was asleep in his compartment. The cantankerous old judge grunted, “Very well”, before adding, “I hope they have a good night.” With that Judge Field went back to sleep, and Neagle sent a telegram ahead to Lathop, to notify the railroad agent there, that there might be trouble in the morning.

“It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lathrop was where the rail line from Los Angles and the Central Valley of California, joined the line from Oakland, on San Francisco Bay. Here in Lathrop, in 1871, Stanford's California Pacific Railroad had opened the largest hotel in California, built for the astronomical sum of $50,000, with an enormous dinning room, to handle the 12 passenger trains a day that paused in tiny Lathrop to switch engines and crews. In 1886 the original hotel had burned down but it was quickly rebuilt, and dozens of independent hotels and restaurants sprang up to compete for the new tourist business. And that was why it was in Lathrop that Althea and David Terry made their final stand.

“The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless.”
Dorothy Sayers

In the morning of Wednesday, 14 August, 1889, the Los Angeles train pulled into Lathrop (above). Judge Field was determined to have breakfast.

Judge Field and Marshal Neagle were the first two admitted into the dinning room, escorted to their seats by the restaurant manager, Mr. Stackpole. A few moments later, Stackpole guided Althea and David Terry to seats at a nearby table. Under Stackpole’s nervous eye, there was a moment of tension, before Althea whispered something to David. She then proceeded to quickly leave the restaurant and return to the train.

As she did this, Mr. Stackpole, who had been warned by the earlier telegram, stepped forward to David and asked if the lady was about to do something “indiscrete”. David asked, “Why? Who is here?” Stackpole answered “Judge Field”. Was it possible they had not seen the Judge and his bodyguard as they came in? The big man stared at the judge for a moment and then urged Stackpole, “Go and watch her! Go and watch her.” Stackpole rushed out of the room after Athea. Judge Terry's s way was now clear. The 66 year old strode up and stepped forward until he stood behind Judge Field.

“Subdue your passion or it will subdue you.”
Horace.

Judge Terry slapped the seated Judge Field across both cheeks, as if intending to precipitate a duel. But Marshal Neagle had no intention of observing social conventions. As he stood,  he shouted, identifying himself as a police officer, and ordered Terry to stop.  Instead, Terry reached inside his jacket, where Neagle knew from personal experience, that Terry carried his bowie knife.  It had been Neagle who had disarmed Terry in the courtroom a year earlier. Without waiting to see the knife,  Marshal Neagle drew his pistol and shot David Terry directly in the heart. 

The old fool dropped dead so fast that Neagle’s second shot, fired immediately after the first, only clipped Terry’s ear as he went to to the floor.

Right on cue, while the smoke still hung in the air, and the witnesses’ ears were still ringing, Althea reentered the dinning room. She shrieked and Stackpole, who was following her closely, grabbed her handbag.  In the bag the manager found a loaded pistol. Althea began to scream for vengeance, and fell upon her husband’s body. Marshal Neagle was convinced she used her body to shield her removal of David’s bowie knife.  But whether she did or not, when Terry's body was examined later by local police, no weapons were found.  It appeared the Marshal had shot an unarmed man.

“Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.”
Carl Sandburg

The dead man had lived most of his life in Stockton, the next stop north on the rail line. And when the train reached that town, local officials, dragged Judge Field and Marshal Neable off the train and  arrested them both for murder. The governor immediately ordered Justice Field released without bail, before his arrest became a “burning disgrace” to California. The marshal however was transported to jail in Stockton.

Judge Fields telegraphed the Marshals’ office in Stockton, which immediately notified the U.S. Attorney General,  Fields missive read, “David A. Terry grossly accosted Justice Field at Lathop station this morning and was shot dead by my deputy.” Shortly there after, Sheriff Thomas Cunningham of San Joaquin County was served with a writ of habeus corpus, to deliver Marshal Neagle to the Federal Court in San Francisco, where his life could be protected.

The California Attorney General appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for a ruling, which was required because Marshal Neagle had not been officially assigned to protect Judge Field. And the court, sitting with Justice Field abstaining, decided “…any duty of the marshal to be derived from the general scope of his duties under the laws of the United States, is ‘a law’ within the meaning of this phrase.” In short, defending judges is the duty of officers of the court, and does not require a specific statute. Althea would get nothing for her efforts except the life’s blood of the man who had defended her.

"In her first passion, a woman loves her lover. In all the others, all she loves is love.”
Lord Byron

Justice Field hung onto his position after his colleges were aware he was senile, merely because he wanted to set the precedent as the longest serving justice on the court. Evidently, being known as the best did not interest him. Having achieved his goal, he finally stepped down in 1897, and died in 1899.

In 1892, four years after David Terry’s death, Sarah Althea Hill (Sharon) Terry was committed to the Stockton State Hospital for the Insane. She was 33 years old, just about the right age for the full onset of schizophrenia. Althea lived within that institution’s walls for the next forty-five years. She died at the age of 80, appropriately enough on Valentine’s Day, 14 February, 1937.  And then they got her name wrong on the tombstone. If I was the guy who carved  that, I would keep looking over my shoulder.

“Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.”

George Lichtenberg

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