Chapter 32

Megan got suspicious. Bill would be 'unavailable' for minutes at a time. He just wasn't home when he had been seconds ago. The watch, remember, returns the user to the time they left plus a second or so, regardless of the time spent in the past.

Several times Megan watched pasty white Bill retire to his room and emerge windblown and sunburnt a couple of minutes later ... or, he'd go for a 'test flight' and show up days later with engine hours unexplained ... windblown and sunburnt.

He was beginning to look 'stretched' and stressed. It was from trying to dodge himself in the late Forties. When he took his Arado off to Oklahoma and came back with a nice 1940 Ford coupe ... with 1946 plates ... Megan wanted answers.

Rather than trying to explain it ... he took her to Clinton, landed and taxied to the hangar he had rented and now owned. Entering through the side door, Bill turned on the lights.

"This is what I've been doing."

Megan was dumbfounded. In the hangar, a little dusty, were six Grumman F-8 Bearcats ... arguably the best propeller driven carrier fighter ever built. There were also two F-6-F's and two F-4-U's.

"Megan, you need to finish up with Sharpe Field. I need a place to put these. I'm running out of room."

"Ok ... where did these come from?"

"Clinton."

"We're at Clinton."

"In 1945."

"Oh ... yeah ... sure."

Bill wound his watch.

Now, the Bearcats were pristine ... perfect, as only brand new aircraft can be.

"Step outside with me."

It was really pretty spectacular ... when you get right down to the nitty gritty ... a just post war former B-29 repair and rework depot with all that went with it ... huge hangars, many long runways, heavy lifting tools and stands.

Once, this was a mighty big place. The War Department built airfields where cows ran and corn grew. Airfields in the middle of nowhere ... with no access and no towns for support. The men came, trained and towns were built and roads routed.

When Megan flew in with Bill, the evidence was noticeable. There were the remains of many hardstands and old, overgrown runways and taxiways. Now ... in 1945 ... the rot hadn't had a chance to set in.

This was a country that couldn't get shed of the trappings of a war industry that was the sole occupation of every American for three highly industrious years fast enough. People lived, breathed and ate the war. Almost every back yard was a victory garden ... every boy, a scrap collector ... every girl, a can crusher ... every worker, a war worker.

The industrial might of a highly motivated country determined to beat the Axis Empire ... and they did it!

It's over ... bring the boys home and get on with living. In May, 1945, there were over 100 B-29's sitting on these hardstands and in these hangars being brought up to standard. In July, 1945, they were already on the way to Kingman Arizona, there to be turned into duralum ingots, and rows of engines.

Brand new planes were finished and flown from Washington state to Tucson, Arizona to be chopped into pieces and pitched into the white hot furnaces. Brand new junk. Aircraft the War Department paid one hundred eighty-six thousand dollars each were being scrapped for one hundred and fifty dollars.

In shipyards and seaports all over the country men turned off the welders and fired up the cutting torches. That seam they had finished the day before? Today they were cutting it out. Admittedly, it wasn't THAT fast ... but damn near it.

All that marvelous teak and mahogany used for carrier decks ... that oak, walnut, cherry and maple cut into slabs and fed into gunstock lathes? Send that stuff to ChrisCraft and Larson ... pleasure boats!

Those thousands of newly constructed military model steam locomotives? Ship them to Germany, France and Japan ... we destroyed so much rolling stock during the war.