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vera-keller · 1 month

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switchblade | masters of the air | taster

Coming here is functionally a grounding. That much is clear. The B-17 is a metal coffin that, by some aeronautical miracle, has managed to attain the gift of flight despite everything – poor defensive coverage, inadequate range, weak nose structure – that suggests this should not have been the case.

Olivia Mariner looks up at the B-17s sitting obliviously in the hangar at Thorpe Abbotts and thinks about what it might be like to shoot one of them down.

It would be an easy target. B-17s are not intended for aerial combat, and their one singular, solitary tactic is apparently to fly continuously in formation even when being shot at, because performing evasive manoeuvres runs the risk of disrupting the formation and causing collisions. Mariner imagines herself in her P-51, armed with its two fifty-calibre nose-mounted machine guns and four thirty-calibre wing-mounted machine guns, the only conceivable match for the Luftwaffe’s fire-spitting death machines that she isn’t afraid of as long as she’s facing them down in her Mustang. She imagines herself as the enemy. How would she approach a Flying Fortress? How would she bounce it? It wouldn’t be difficult at all: she could outmanoeuvre a B-17 without breaking a sweat. She would move into its blind spot and break into a steep spiralling dive downward so the B-17’s Brownings – for which they do not carry sufficient supplies of ammunition that could last them over a minute of continuous gunfire – wouldn’t be able to maintain a target lock on her. Then she would pull her aircraft back up, sharply, abruptly, until she’s below the body of the B-17, where she has the perfect vantage point to shoot out the unprotected fuel tanks within the wings.

That’s all well and good, a strategic manufacturing error that could be fixed, without a doubt, throughout the Flying Fortress’s production run that will last until the end of the war. Until Mariner remembers that, in this scenario, she will no longer be the one in the fighter plane but rather the one getting burned to a crisp in the B-17 because the fuel tanks just exploded and eviscerated the fuselage before anyone even had the chance to bail.

Perhaps the situation would be less grim if she knew how to fly a B-17 at all.

How did she even end up here?

Fighter squadrons come before bombers. That is the standard principle of air warfare. Once air supremacy has been gained by more aerodynamic single-engined high-speed fighters – P-51s and P-40s and P-47s that require only a light touch to manoeuvre, the deft hand of a skilled pilot who knows their plane and its operational mechanisms as though it is an extension of their own body – that is when larger, long-range bombers come in to deliver their payloads of air-to-ground weaponry to strategic targets. Bombing raids cannot take place without the prerequisite of air supremacy as bombers, sufficiently implied in their name itself, are not themselves intended for aerial combat against enemy aircraft.

And therein lies the problem. To Mariner, it’s difficult to see the B-17 as little more than a large and defenceless flying flak-magnet. A warplane that cannot roll on its longitudinal axis, cannot pull into vertical climbs, cannot dive or loop or fly at steep angles or allow for aerobatics without disembowelling itself, is hardly a warplane at all, at least not in the sense that she defines what should constitute a warplane. She understands that heavy bombers are an entirely different grade of aircraft, one that requires a different series of skills that are no less demanding than that of a fighter pilot, one requiring the ability to work with a team, first and foremost, the idea of which she finds herself thinking of with a pit of tension in her lower stomach. She understands that this is necessary because a war cannot be won with fighter planes alone, as much as she would like to think that is a possibility. What she does not understand, however, is why she has been presently chosen to fly a bomber.

So that was what she told her squadron leader, word for word, when she first learned of her reassignment.

“I understand your concerns, Mariner,” was what her squadron leader, Tillotson – a thirty-something USAAF officer who had been in the Eagle Squadrons with her, primarily because he knew her father for some reason or another that she never bothered to find out – said in answer. “But it is an operational need. The 100th has a shortage of pilots and they can’t continue flying missions at the volume they’re expected to if this shortage continues. We’ve reached a point in the war where our strategic focus must shift toward bombing campaigns. You have the relevant flying experience that qualifies you for retraining and reassignment toward where the war effort needs you most. Repurposing you as a bomber pilot now, of all times, makes every sense to me.”

Mariner blinked in disbelief. She didn’t like the suffix makes every sense to me, the finality of it, the implication that this was now a non-negotiable and non-retractable decision already made by her superiors, a decision that centrally concerned her yet one she had no part in making.

“Sir,” she began, “heavy bombers require escort fighters. Our squadron can do that. I’ve been asking for it in my sitreps since we first started strategic bombing. Wouldn’t it be more practical to keep me here and deploy us as escorts as I recommended, rather than retrain me from the ground up?”

“It is something we thought of, yes. But having enough pilots is crucial for whether the 100th can remain operational. If they can’t fly missions, you’ll have nothing to escort. Now is when we need our best and brightest to step up and fill in for the shortage of pilots capable of flying those missions that a complete novice coming out of flight school cannot.”

Best and brightest. The sudden compliment took Mariner by surprise, filled her momentarily with a glow of pride radiating from that little hollow at the base of her throat that warms up every time she receives some kind of validation. She cleared her throat self-consciously.

“Who else is getting reassigned? Smith? Heppell?”

Tillotson paused briefly. “We decided that you alone would be the best fit for the transition.”

Apart from the fact that it made no sense to single out one member of a squadron for a reassignment, there was almost no chance that she would be the best natural candidate. Mariner thought for a brief half-second that she would not pick herself to be reassigned to a bomber unit if she had the choice of other members in her squadron, members who would indubitably be more patient and longsuffering when it came to flying a heavy bomber, both of which she was not.

And then the realisation dawned on her, like the awful downward shudder of the blade of a guillotine. The previous glow of pride disappeared, replaced immediately by a simmering indignant rage that bubbles to the surface. “You’re bumping me out of the squadron!”

“Mariner—”

“That is exactly what you’re doing! Best and brightest my ass. You think I don’t fit in with the rest of your squad because of how I fly. Because you think I’m going to collide with my wingman every time when I so much as move my aircraft a centimetre to the left. Because that one time on patrol, when I was guarding your tail, I said your call sign when I wasn’t supposed to and broke formation, and that was because I saw three 109s above us on our six about to pulverise us and you hadn’t even seen them yet!”

Another thought came to her then, one that sent a fresh wave of anger coursing through her as though her dam of restraint – which admittedly was never a particularly robust structure – had broken. She was aware that she was losing her temper. She was aware that she was not to lose her temper around her superior officers under any circumstances. But that awareness was purely academic now, and at any rate it was disappearing quickly out the window.

“You can’t trust me in a single-seat fighter, is that it? You think I need a whole team of people behind me to make sure I don’t fuck up?”

It was less of a question and more of an accusation, and the very idea of it was absurd to Mariner. Saying it out loud only cemented its absurdity. Who in their right mind wouldn’t trust her in a fighter? She’d been in combat with Bf 109s since before Pearl Harbour and America’s formal entrance into the war. It was indubitable fact – one that seemed to be obvious to all except Tillotson and the others responsible for making this ill-conceived decision – that she was one of the most competent fighters in the squadron. Three years of flight experience with the No. 71. Seven aircraft destroyed. An ace by the end of the Battle of Britain. Such accomplishments were not coincidental. Mariner knew it. And unless you have some kind of malfunction, she thought bitterly, then you don’t transfer a pilot with those accomplishments under their belt out of your squadron as petty punishment. You’re supposed to keep them and hold onto them and deploy them on high-risk missions that accurately reflect the value of their skill set!

“Lieutenant Mariner,” Tillotson said, raising his voice now, in a way that brooked no argument. “I was hoping to save both of us from this conversation and let you accept your reassignment amicably, but it appears you’re determined to have this conversation, in which case I’ll be clear with you. You’re not a good fit in my squadron. You take unnecessary and ill-calculated risks that endanger not only yourself but also your wingmen and the outcome of the mission as a whole. On our last sortie, you completely disregarded formation and went off on that solo chase of yours after an enemy fighter, leaving your leader’s tail vulnerable to attack. And what is most alarming is the fact that this incident is not an isolated one, nor is it the first time you’ve flagrantly disregarded orders to do what you think is clever. We’re lucky nothing catastrophic has happened so far, but luck won't always be on our side, as you seem to believe it will always be on yours.”

He paused for a moment, his brow low and creased, his eyes fixed upon Mariner’s, as though examining her closely for her reaction.

“You’re rough on the stick, Olivia, but I’ve seen potential in you. Even so, talent alone won’t cut it and your consistent lack of discipline is compromising the overall effectiveness of our unit. I’ve seen pilots like you – good pilots capable of exercising mathematically precise command of their aircraft – shot down for less. You should know better than anyone that, up in the air, in a Mustang, split-second decisions can mean the difference between life and death. I need to be able to trust every member of my squadron to make those decisions, and make them correctly. And right now I can’t trust you to do that.”

There was a long agonising pause. Mariner’s expression remained unchanged, though she thought her stomach had vanished. She was suddenly conscious of how she was standing up very straight with her body held up at her sternum, and of the tachycardic rhythm of her heartbeat that for a brief moment she irrationally feared Tillotson might hear it.

It is a rare thing for words from a superior officer to cut so deep, though Mariner doesn’t like the idea that any words might be able to cut her at all. She has gone through flight training like everyone else and made her share of mistakes in every plane she has learned to pilot – Mustangs and Warhawks and Thunderbolts alike – and she has grown accustomed to the stony visages of instructors, their crushing expectations and the feeling where you irrevocably begin to question your own strength of character and purpose and worth whenever you fail to meet them. Yet she came through with top marks and everyone who has ever been disappointed by her has eventually been proven wrong. She would have thought that, by now, her skin has already thickened into something comparable to steel.

Yet, when she stood there in Tillotson’s office, being told that she could not be trusted to fly, Mariner felt utterly reduced. It was a humiliating kind of reduction. And humiliation made her angry, a unique cornered anger of its own kind that seethed all the way down to the bone.

Tillotson seemed to sense this. His voice softened slightly, becoming conciliatory, in the way only a victor acutely aware of his own impending victory could afford to do.

“This is not an exile, Mariner,” was what he said. “This is when you prove yourself. Maybe a change of perspective will help you understand the gravity of your actions and teach you some restraint. It is an opportunity. Don’t squander it.”

“It’s an opportunity?” Mariner’s jaw clenched. She knew now the reassignment was inevitable. She knew that the decision had indeed been made on her behalf without any of her input and she had, somehow, been played so well that she happened to be the last to figure it out. And if she was to start learning restraint on her reassignment, she supposed that she didn’t need to begin now. “It’s not a goddamn opportunity, and you know it. It’s punishing me for something I haven’t even done. Yeah, I went after that enemy fighter on my own. And you know what? I shot it down. I saw an opportunity and I seized it instead of waiting around for the 109s to regroup. Isn’t that what we’re trained to do? Adapt, improvise, overcome, all that?”

“There’s a stark difference between adapting, improvising and overcoming, Olivia, and putting the rest of your squadron at risk,” Tillotson replied firmly. And then, what really pissed her off: “You have to learn, one way or another, that the USAAF is an ecosystem where every element, down to the individual fighter, must depend upon command structure to function. It’s not a place for young Turks wanting to prove themselves and be a hero. Don’t worry. I’'ll make sure no one else takes up the Switchblade call sign when you’re gone.”

At this Mariner felt her blunt fingernails digging pink crescent moons into her palms. That was an extraordinarily low blow. It was not merely the complete misconstruction of her character – as a willful contrarian who thinks only of their own glory, apparently – that incensed her, but beyond that it was the fear that thrummed at a deeper sub-cellular level, a fear that this may be how she was truly seen by her superiors, how her efforts and achievements were being interpreted by those who disregard her as little more than an ordinary pilot who likes to think of herself as extraordinary. And the placement of the command structure meant that she could not rectify this mistake or defend herself against this obvious besmirching of her name and reputation without risking a dishonourable discharge from the military altogether.

So she did what she does best.

“Fine. You want discipline?” she said, her voice lowering into something hard and cold and stubborn. “I can do that. I’ll get into a bomber. I’ll drop a few bombs. But mark my words, sir, you’re making a mistake. Both you and I know exactly what I can do and what I should be out there doing, whether I’m in a Mustang or a tin can with wings. And when the time comes, when you need someone with enough balls to fly through hell and back under twenty-millimetres and flak, don’t be surprised when you come back to me because there’s no one else up for the job.”

She did not resign herself to waiting around for Tillotson’s reaction. Instead she saluted him sharply in a way that suggested an obvious grudge, pivoted on her heels and marched out of the room. She refused to even attempt to try and understand Tillotson’s reasoning as there could be no possible reasoning on God’s green earth that could justify this decision. Perhaps an attempt at figuring out his reasoning, however unfounded it may be, could come later, when she has spent enough aimless months with the 100th to supposedly have learned her lesson and earned a place back on her former fighter squadron. But the embers of rage were still very much scorching hot in her hands, hissing and spitting and burning wherever they touched her skin, and she refused out of pure spite to put them down, so she carried them with her all the way until she reached Norfolk, England.

#series: switchblade #oc: olivia mariner #masters of the air #meet your local cocky flyboy #or flygirl #olivia mariner is an unreliable narrator

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