And neatly printed below:
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.
Frederick L. Steinhammer
Eastern Sales Manager
It took the still-startled lieutenant several seconds until he remembered the commander of the reserve C-141 crew he had met on the ramp well before the last airlift off the ice cap.
As he stood and looked at the wonderful new tires, and smelled their freshness, he realized that a major uncertainty and been overcome. He had planned to use the thirty-year-old tires because he had no alternative, but he had known in his heart that they might be dangerous. Now that hazard had been swept away.
Sergeant Stovers was not there to share his elation — he was in the mess hall talking with the crew of a Canadian C-130 that was scheduled out to Alert in the morning. “Since you are a communications station,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “I presume that you have an electronics maintenance capability.”
The very tall captain who headed the crew answered. “Yes, of course we do. Our lads are quite good at it, really.”
“Is your bench time fully taken up?”
“I wouldn’t say so. Let me put it this way, Sergeant: we’d be delighted to overhaul the B-17’s radios for you if you’d like. In fact, we’ve already talked about it. But we didn’t want to be forward, particularly since its your project. So we were rather waiting to see if our assistance would be welcome.”
Sergeant Stovers raised his coffee cup. “At this point, sir, I’d say that it’s close to essential. The only man we had who was really qualified to do the job just left on the rotator.
The captain smiled. “Actually, we’d be quite proud to be part of the program. If we can have the sets to take with us, we may be able to get some of them back down to you within the next two weeks or so.”
“We have a lot of good parts in Supply,” Stovers said.
“So have we, and the commander is a noble citizen; he’ll be for it, I’m sure. Any chance of getting a ride later on?”
“You’re a cinch,” Stovers declared. “Get an approval from your CO and we’ll fly her up and visit you. Then we’ll hop everybody that wants to go.”
His Canadian counterpart lifted a hand. “Let’s finish our coffee first,” he said.
In two weeks’ time The Passionate Penguin stood in Hangar 8 on her own landing gear, her three brand-new tires filling the whole area with an aroma of freshness. Once more her wings reached out over a hundred feet in span and it is doubtful that they ever shone as brilliantly as they did then. On the flight bridge the overhauled control yokes had been reinstalled. They moved easily with the precision of fine machinery, and as they did, the control surfaces responded with microscopic accuracy.
Colonel Kleckner himself tried them out personally and could not restrain a wide smile. “That’s a remarkable job,” he declared. “It would pass any inspection anywhere.”
Lieutenant Ferguson, who was his guide at that moment, responded. “We know it, sir. We want you to be fully aware that nothing is being done casually. Everything is being checked three times, at least, and the final inspection team is demanding perfection. This is going to be the best B-17 that ever took to the air.”
“You aren’t writing home about this are you?” the colonel asked.
“No, sir!”
“Well don’t; it might be better to keep this entirely to ourselves. In fact, Captain Tilton got an inquiry through the PR office in the head shed asking about the B-17 we were building up here.”
Ferguson felt a sudden taste of shock. “How did he handle that, sir?”
“I believe that he reported something about a model building project that someone had dreamed up. The size of the model was not specified.”
“Sir, he’s a helluva good man.”
“I’m fully aware of that, Scotty. How about the instruments? If they can be salvaged, they’ll need complete overhauls.”
“The guys up at J Site offered to do that for us, sir; they have full facilities. In fact, the artificial horizon’s back already. The vacuum system hasn’t been overhauled yet, so it’s still out on the bench — under cover, of course.”
“Batteries?”
“Supply has them.”
“How about the wiring?”
“Every bit of it is being replaced, sir, and we have new bulbs for all of the lights. Using an outside power cart, we’ve cycled the landing gear more than fifty times without any trace of a malfunction.”
The colonel looked around him. “You’re going to end up with a virtually new airplane.”
“That’s exactly what we have in mind, sir. She will have zero time on everything.”
“I’ll drop in again,” the colonel promised.
“Do that, sir — we’d like to have you.” He would have said more, but his mind was fully occupied with the fuel-cell tests that were the next thing on the program.
For the next three weeks the normal work of Thule Air Base went forward. Ferguson made several trips out to Camp Century, both with his own crew and with Boyd’s to be sure that everyone was fully checked out on ice cap operations. Otherwise, he spent each spare minute in Hangar 8, following every step of the operation and doing as much himself as he could possibly manage to fit in.
The biggest single event, at the end of that time, was the remounting of the number three engine. The crane lifted it easily into position and the actual installation work, in the relative comfort of the hangar, was comparatively simple. All of the controls were hooked up and all of the plumbing was meticulously recoupled. By all reasonable theory, the engine should run. It would have been well to try it out on a test stand first, but that had presented too many problems and the decision had been made to run it in, if possible, in position on the airframe.
The propeller that went onto the end of the shaft appeared to be brand-new. It was far from an easy job to reinstall all of the prop controls, but the work was done with the same enthusiasm and care that had characterized every accomplishment along the way. When at last the job was finished, it was past 2400 hours and everyone was exhausted.
The following morning was Saturday, which meant that most of the personnel would be off work; by 1000 hours the grapevine had produced an audience of more than two hundred gathered around the closed door of Hangar 8. At 1012 hours the main door was opened and the Penguin was pushed out. With her single restored engine once more facing a point somewhere above the horizon, she was grotesquely incomplete, but to the men who had been working on her for so many weeks, she was the most beautiful aircraft that had ever challenged the sky.
His palms wet with perspiration, Ferguson sat in the left-hand seat, using the original cushion that had been the first thing he had personally recovered from the hopeless wreck on the ice cap. When the twenty-man ground crew had pushed the plane into the position that he wanted, he pushed against the brakes and got an immediate response. He tested the controls for the hundredth time, just for the joy of feeling them move so smoothly. Then he sat still while the battery cart was wheeled up and plugged in.
Andy Holcomb appeared on the ramp in front of the nose. “Anytime,” he called up.
Ferguson heard him through the open window. In response he checked visually and then called out, “Clear!”
He pumped the prime and then activated the starter. The freshly rebuilt unit responded immediately; for the first time in three decades the heavy propeller began to turn. The crowd on the ground was still — waiting to see what, if anything, was going to happen. When he judged that the time was right, Ferguson turned the ignition switch to BOTH and held a deep breath in his lungs.