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The words were out of his mouth before he noticed the three silver oak leaves—one on each shoulder and a third on his collar point—pinned to the uniform of the guy who had the bright unlined face of a newly commissioned second lieutenant.
“Shit!” Cronley said.
“I have been led to believe, Captain,” Lieutenant Colonel William W. Wilson said, “that you have had some experience with Storch aircraft.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sufficient experience for you to be able to get into the backseat without assistance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please do so.”
Cronley climbed into the backseat and closed the window-door. He had just located the seat belt and was putting it on when the Storch began to move.
Moments later it was airborne.
Jimmy looked around where he was sitting. The rear seat had the basic controls—stick, rudder pedals, throttle, airspeed indicator, altimeter, and artificial horizon. There was a small panel holding an Army Air Corps radio of a type he had never seen. A headset and a microphone hung to the side.
Suspecting that the colonel was anxious to use the intercom to say a few words about the unusual greeting he had received, Cronley put on the headset.
He rehearsed his reply, drawing on his military courtesy training at Texas A&M. “Sir,” he would say. “Sorry, sir. No excuse, sir.”
Nothing but an electronic hiss came over the earphones for perhaps ten minutes.
Cronley became aware that they were at an altitude of about 2,000 meters, making, according to the airspeed indicator, about sixty knots.
That was cause for concern. In his lengthy flight training in the Storch—almost two hours—Willi Grüner had told him that the Storch tended to stop flying somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five knots.
Unless the colonel watches himself, he’s going to put us into a stall.
The engine coughed and stopped.
Jesus Christ, now what?
The airspeed needle rapidly unwound.
As the Storch stopped flying and went into a stall, the earphones came to life.
“You have the aircraft, Captain,” Lieutenant Colonel William W. Wilson announced.
Cronley saw that the colonel was demonstrating this by holding both his hands above his head.
“Holy shit!” Cronley said, and then Pavlovian reaction took over.
He shoved the stick forward.
If I can get this sonofabitch back up to sixty, maybe it’ll fly!
When he first felt a little life come into the controls, they were at 500 meters, and the needle was indicating 350 when he felt confident enough to try to pull out of the stall.
He came out of the stall moments later and was desperately looking around for someplace where he could—very quickly—make a dead stick landing when the starter ground, the engine started, and the propeller began to take a bite out of the air.
“Why don’t you pick up a little altitude,” Lieutenant Colonel William W. Wilson suggested conversationally over the earphones, “and take up a heading of two-seventy?”
Five minutes later, they were indicating 150 knots at 3,000 meters on a heading of 270.
Cronley took the microphone from its hook.
