Chapter 33

As soon as he got back to Doug's Town, he went into a huddle with the appropriate staff and began designing a ground-attack plane that he wanted to call Warthog. Doug wanted to use the basic design of the Kitty Hawk to speed things up, but he wanted to beef the plane up a bit and have it carry both bombs and rockets.

His idea was for one plane to have all of the firepower needed to stop any attack in one load. To that end, he wanted to carry four bombs under the belly and two pods of 12 rockets each on the underside of each wing. To make it easier to use, the plane would have two crew members: a pilot and a gunner/bombardier. They would sit side-by-side for company and mutual support. The controls would be arranged so that either crew member could do either job, in case of an emergency. When they were finally able to make a radio small enough to carry on a plane, the gunner/bombardier would also be the radio operator.

Doug wanted the plane to carry enough fuel to remain in the air for 10 hours at a cruising speed of 275 MPH; that way it could cover a vast area. Of course, he wanted all of this delivered yesterday, but he was not foolish about it. He set a target delivery date of six months. By then, he hoped to have at least three trained crews; they would train on the Kitty Hawk.

Doug started recruiting air crews immediately. A number of young people, both boys and girls, wanted to learn to fly and join his budding air force, so he was not lacking for potential crew members. By now, Joy was an accomplished pilot, so Doug hoped that she could help in the training; however, her pregnancy was far enough along that she could not climb into the cockpit, so Doug was going to have to do the first round of training.

He figuratively lined the candidates up for their first flight with Doug at the controls. He made sure that the potential cadet was firmly strapped into the plane before he took off. They flew out of sight of the people waiting on the ground and, without warning, Doug snap rolled the plane onto its back. He held it in that attitude for about 30 seconds and then rolled upright. He was looking for cadets who did not vomit and did not panic. The first three were failures in this test and, Doug told them not to warn the others about the stunt.

There were 14 candidates on the first day, and six passed the snap roll test. The eight failures were thanked for their efforts, but they were told that they would not be part of the fighter pilot training course this time. Strangely enough, the successful candidates were four girls and two boys. No particular significance was attached to this, it was just a fact.

The eight failures were offered the opportunity to train as Zeppelin crew and seven accepted. The girl who went off to pout was quietly black-listed from possible consideration for a command position, though necessity might push her back into the air force.

Doug spent most of his time teaching the six cadets to fly. It was necessary that both Warthog crew members be qualified pilots. The three crews were ready by the time the first Warthog rolled off the production line. Two more were not far behind. There was a very complex naming system for the new planes, in order of delivery, they were named Warthog #1, Warthog #2, and Warthog #3. Because it was the first one available, Warthog #1 had the honor of being the one used for training.

Since Doug's People so thoroughly enjoyed gambling, he let them cast lots for the order that they would train. His intention was to pick three of the cadets to be pilots and three to be gunners, based on their relative skills. They would all have the rank of lieutenant, but, while aloft, the pilot would be in command. On the ground, they would all be the same rank. He did warn the girls not to become pregnant if they wanted to keep flying. If they did, they would be grounded until after the baby was weaned. At that time, they could return to flying if they wanted to (Doug expected that they all would want to return to flying).

Training began in earnest the day after Doug had taken Warthog #1 up for a thorough wringing out. The plane only had two engines, but these were larger than the pulse jets used on Kitty Hawk, so the heavier plane still performed better than its predecessor. It did not glide as well, though, both because of the added weight and the drag of the weapons pods.

Flight training came first, later, Doug would test the rockets and bombs. He told Charles that he would be surprised if they did not find things they wanted to change once they had a sample to fly.

All six cadets were trained to fly Warthog #1, and they were allowed to solo in all three planes once the planes and the cadets were ready. This was a harrowing experience for Doug, he had no qualms about any of them flying with him in the other seat, but he really sweated while they were up alone. Finally, the great day came and they were presented with their "wings" in a great celebration attended by practically the whole population of Doug's Town.

The next day was declared a holiday, and then they began their training as gunners. Again, Doug was the pilot for the initial training, and he put the cadets through a rigorous program to make sure that they understood how to aim and shoot the rockets. Doug made sure that they all understood that during a shooting or bombing run, the pilot had to take orders from the gunner, NO EXCEPTIONS! It turned out that all of their experience with the crossbow was a big help when it came time to use the rockets: the plane was the crossbow and the rocket was the dart. All six became deadly with the rockets.

The bombs were something of a different story. It was very hard to get through the cadets' heads that the bombs did not fall straight down, but assumed a curved trajectory controlled by the action of the airplane. Doug finally got through to them by having the cadets run along a track while holding out an arm. This hand held a hollow bronze copy of a miniature bomb casing. When they ran past a mark, they were to release the toy bomb and see where it landed.

As part of the exercise, Doug had them repeat dropping the bomb and trying to hit the same place with it every time. Of course they couldn't do that, but some were much more accurate than others; the boys seemed to have a better eye for this. Doug had intended to pick the pilots and then try to make usable bombardiers from the rejects. It turned out to be exactly the opposite, Doug chose the two boys and the best of the four girls as his bombardiers; the rejects were made pilots. The girls were really deflated when they saw the resulting assignments, for they quickly realized the reason for the choices, though nobody was actually teased about his or her job assignment.

Now they were ready to began practicing dropping bombs. The bombs were dummy casings filled to the proper weight with sand. Doug had found a suitable place for a practice range. The cadets flew out to the range in the Warthogs, following Doug in the Kitty Hawk. Doug had made a mark, a horizontal line, on the ground in charcoal and another mark, an X, to be used for the target.

The cadet crews practiced on this range until Doug had a chance to evaluate each crew's performance. It looked like the girl pilot/boy bombardier crew worked well, no matter which person had either job, but the girl/girl pairings just were not working. After a week of trying, Doug just could not find a workable combination of girl/girl, so he stood them down and concentrated on the girl/boy crews. They soon became very good at their jobs and Doug pronounced them ready to graduate to full military status.

A big celebration was held for the final graduation of the teams, and the two non-qualifiers were allowed to go to their rooms and cry without prejudice to their records.

Joy had her child, a boy she named Huyan, without the following syllables, so that the people at Doug's Town could pronounce it. She made a quick recovery and shifted Huyan to a wet-nurse as soon as possible so that she could go back to flying. The moment she was ready, Doug began training her as the pilot of a Warthog.