The Aviatirx's Dawn: A Wasp Story
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 4: Flying the Beasts
Weeks 9-12, September 1943
The BT-13 Valiant had a nickname: the Vultee Vibrator.
Ellie understood why the moment she climbed into the cockpit for the first time. Everything rattled. The canopy shook. The instruments trembled. The whole aircraft buzzed with a frequency that made her teeth ache.
“She’s loud, she’s ugly, and she’ll kill you if you’re not paying attention,” Dutch said from the rear cockpit. “But she’ll also teach you to fly a real airplane. The Stearman was a gentle teacher. The BT is not gentle. Treat her with respect or she’ll bite you.”
Ellie ran through the pre-flight checks with extra care. The BT-13 was more complex than the Stearman—retractable landing gear, variable-pitch propeller, more powerful engine. More things to manage, more things that could go wrong.
“Clear!” she called, then hit the starter.
The Pratt & Whitney radial engine coughed, wheezed, and roared to life in a cloud of blue smoke. The whole aircraft shook like it might come apart.
“That’s normal,” Dutch said, reading her mind. “She always sounds like she’s dying. Taxi out.”
The BT-13 was heavier than the Stearman, less responsive. The nose blocked her forward view completely, forcing her to S-turn during taxi to see where she was going. When she reached the runway, she went through her final checks with methodical precision.
“Run-up complete. Ready for takeoff.”
“Take her up.”
Ellie advanced the throttle, and the BT-13 accelerated down the runway with surprising speed. The tail came up, the nose dropped to reveal the runway ahead, and then they were airborne, climbing steeply into the September sky.
“Gear up,” Dutch reminded her.
Ellie reached for the gear lever and pulled. The hydraulic system groaned, and she felt the aircraft shudder as the wheels retracted into the wings. A green light confirmed they were up and locked.
“Good. Now let’s see how you handle her. Give me a steep turn to the right. Sixty degrees of bank, maintain altitude.”
Ellie rolled into the turn, and immediately felt the difference. The BT-13 was heavy, solid, demanding. She had to lead with rudder to prevent adverse yaw, had to add power to maintain altitude in the turn, had to watch her airspeed carefully because the aircraft would stall faster in a steep bank.
“You’re losing fifty feet,” Dutch said. “Add power. More rudder. There. Better. Now reverse it. Steep turn to the left.”
They flew for an hour, drilling maneuvers. The BT-13 was less forgiving than the Stearman—it demanded precision, punished sloppiness, and had little tolerance for pilot error. But there was something satisfying about mastering it, about learning to muscle this heavier, more powerful aircraft through the sky.
When they landed—Ellie remembered the gear this time—she was exhausted but exhilarated.
“Not bad,” Dutch said as they taxied in. “You’ve got the touch. Some pilots fight the airplane. You’re learning to work with it. Keep that up and you’ll do fine.”
Coming from Dutch, that was high praise.
Not everyone transitioned as smoothly.
That afternoon, Ellie was in the ready room when she heard the crash alarm—a harsh klaxon that made everyone’s head snap up. Through the window, she could see smoke rising from the far end of the field.
“Ground loop,” someone said. “BT-13 on landing.”
Everyone rushed outside. In the distance, a BT-13 sat at an awkward angle on the grass beside the runway, its landing gear collapsed, its propeller bent, smoke pouring from the engine cowling. Fire crews were already there, spraying foam.
The student pilot climbed out, helped by her instructor. Even from across the field, Ellie could see she was shaking.
“Who was it?” Sofia asked, appearing beside Ellie.
“Can’t tell from here.”
They found out at dinner. The pilot was a woman named Catherine Brennan from Bay F. She’d come in too fast, bounced the landing, overcorrected with rudder, and ground-looped the aircraft—spun it around on the runway until the gear collapsed and the wingtip hit the ground.
“Is she okay?” Pearl asked one of the Bay F women.
“Physically, yeah. But she’s done. Automatic washout for destroying an aircraft.”
“That’s not fair,” Ginny protested. “It was an accident!”
“Doesn’t matter. The rule is absolute: if you destroy an aircraft through pilot error, you wash out immediately. They can’t afford to keep students who wreck fifty-thousand-dollar airplanes.”
Catherine was gone by that evening. Her bay mates said she’d barely spoken after the crash, just packed her bags in numb silence and left.
Bay A was subdued at dinner that night.
“That could have been any of us,” Jackie said quietly. “One moment of inattention, one mistake, and you’re done.”
“Which is why we don’t make mistakes,” Marta said. But even she looked shaken.
The AT-6 Texan arrived in week ten.
If the BT-13 was a step up from the Stearman, the AT-6 was a leap. It was bigger, faster, more powerful, and more complex. It had a 600-horsepower engine that could push the aircraft to 200 miles per hour. It had a two-position propeller, flaps, and flying characteristics that more closely resembled a fighter than a trainer.
“This is what you’ll be ferrying when you graduate,” Lieutenant Morrison told them during the ground school briefing. “P-51s, P-47s, P-40s—they all handle like the AT-6, just faster and meaner. If you can master the Texan, you can fly anything the Army throws at you.”
Ellie’s first flight in the AT-6 was humbling.
The aircraft was fast—breathtakingly fast. When she advanced the throttle on takeoff, the acceleration pressed her back into the seat. The nose rose steeply, and suddenly they were climbing at 2,000 feet per minute, the airspeed indicator winding up past 150 knots.
“Level off at five thousand,” Dutch said. “Then show me some air work.”
But the AT-6 didn’t respond like the BT-13. It was more sensitive, more responsive. When Ellie rolled into a turn, the aircraft snapped over faster than she expected. When she pulled back on the stick, the nose rose sharply. Everything happened faster, demanded quicker reactions.
“You’re over-controlling,” Dutch said. “Light touch. The AT-6 responds to pressure, not force. Relax. Feel the airplane.”
By the end of the flight, Ellie was starting to get it. The AT-6 required finesse, not muscle. It required thinking ahead of the aircraft, anticipating what it would do before it did it.
But it was exhausting.
“Good first flight,” Dutch said after they landed. “You’ll get the hang of her. Most students take five or six flights before they’re comfortable. Give it time.”
Sofia struggled with the AT-6 from the beginning.
Her artistic, feel-based flying style—which had finally adapted to the BT-13’s demands for precision—clashed with the AT-6’s need for anticipation and finesse. She kept over-controlling, fighting the aircraft instead of working with it.
After her third flight, Lieutenant Graves pulled her aside. Ellie saw them talking near the flight line—Graves gesturing sharply, Sofia standing rigid.
That night, Sofia was quiet at dinner.
“What did Graves say?” Pearl asked gently.
“That I’m flying like I’m trying to beat the airplane into submission.” Sofia’s voice was tight. “That I need to stop being so aggressive and learn to be subtle. Which is rich, coming from him.”
“He’s not wrong, though,” Hazel said. Everyone turned to look at her. “The AT-6 doesn’t respond well to force. You have to seduce it, not dominate it.”
“Seduce it?” Sofia raised an eyebrow.
“Think of it like dancing. In a waltz, if you try to force your partner to move, you both stumble. But if you lead gently, suggest the movement, the dance flows naturally.” Hazel’s voice was matter-of-fact. “The AT-6 is the same. You’re trying to force it. You need to suggest what you want it to do.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Then I’ll show you.” Hazel stood up. “Come on. We’re going to practice.”
In Bay A, Hazel had Sofia stand with her eyes closed, hands positioned as if holding a control stick.
“Small movements,” Hazel said. “Tiny pressures. Don’t move the stick—just think about moving it. The AT-6 is so responsive that thought is almost enough.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s not. When I fly, I barely move the controls. I think the aircraft into doing what I want. Try it.”
For an hour, Hazel coached Sofia through visualization exercises. Imagining the aircraft responding to minute control inputs. Feeling the feedback through the stick. Learning to anticipate rather than react.
“This is very Zen,” Sofia said finally. “And kind of weird. But I think I get it.”
“Try it tomorrow. Report back.”
The next day, Sofia’s flying improved dramatically. Not perfect—she still had moments where she reverted to old habits—but better. She was learning to work with the aircraft instead of against it.
“Hazel’s a miracle worker,” Sofia told Bay A that night. “I don’t know how she does it, but she just ... understands how aircraft think.”
“Aircraft don’t think,” Marta pointed out.
“You know what I mean. She understands the relationship between pilot and machine. It’s almost spiritual for her.”
Hazel, sitting quietly in her corner, didn’t respond. But Ellie thought she saw a small smile.
Week eleven brought formation flying.
“This is where it gets dangerous,” Dutch told Ellie during the pre-flight briefing. “Formation flying requires absolute precision and constant vigilance. You’re flying three feet from another aircraft at 180 miles per hour. One mistake—one moment of inattention—and you’ll collide. And at that speed, a collision is fatal.”
Ellie felt her stomach tighten. She’d watched formation flights from the ground—tight groups of aircraft moving as one, wingtips almost touching. It looked beautiful. It also looked terrifying.
“You’ll fly as number two,” Dutch continued. “Your job is to maintain position on the lead aircraft no matter what. Lead turns, you turn. Lead climbs, you climb. You don’t look at your instruments—you look at the lead aircraft. You become his shadow. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
The lead aircraft was flown by an instructor named Captain Walsh, with Hazel as his student. Ellie took some comfort in that—if anyone could fly smooth and steady, it was Hazel.
They took off in sequence, Ellie following ten seconds behind. Once airborne, she maneuvered into position on Hazel’s right wing—close enough to see the rivets on the fuselage, close enough that a gust of wind could push them together.
“Closer,” Dutch said. “You’re too far out. Tighten it up.”
Ellie eased the throttle forward, and her aircraft crept closer. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten. At five feet, she could see Hazel’s face through the canopy, calm and focused.
“Good. Now hold it there.”
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