Operation Airfoiled Again
Part 1

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Higher for Hire
November 1942
Late Evening

Baloo, his pilot’s cap pulled down over his eyes, reclined in his favorite easy chair after a long day of hauling cargo.  His fingers tapped the arm of the chair, keeping time to the slow dance favorite that floated from the radio on Rebecca’s desk. When it ended, K-CAPE radio announcer Broadcast Sally purred, “That was this month’s most requested song: ‘I’ve Heard That Tune Before’.  And now, the eleven o’clock news.”

“The Worldwide News, Wednesday, November 11th.” Dog Rather’s no-nonsense voice pushed its way through the crackling static. “Once again, this station prepares to call on its correspondents in various world capitals by short-wave radio to bring you up-to-the-minute reports on the war. But first, here is the situation in brief. On the eastern front, Thembrians continue their efforts to drive back Hounslandian troops at Stallingout.  Allied convoys from Aridia have relieved the besieged island of Malto.  In the Pacific theater, the Zapanese have created a jungle fortress on the island of New Guinea Pig…”

“Turn it off, Becky,” Baloo growled, pushing back his cap and squinting at the lamplight. “Why don’t those reporters give us some good news for a change?  Like ‘The war’s over.  Go on back to your lives?’  That sorta thing.”

Rebecca paused in adding up numbers in a ledger to flip off the radio. “A lot can happen in a year.”

“A lot better happen in a year.  If not…”

“We promised we wouldn’t worry about that until the time came, remember?” She gave her husband an encouraging smile that attempted to conceal her own anxiety about the future.

“Yeah, but the time’s comin’ awful fast.”  With a sigh that came from his toes, Baloo glanced up towards Kit’s bedroom.

Upstairs, seventeen-year-old Kit was trying to do homework, but his mind kept wandering. For the third time in as many minutes, he erased the sentence he had just written. He threw his pencil down on the desk with a growl of frustration. How could he be expected to write a history paper when young men barely older than himself were currently making history?  

That old familiar restlessness possessed him. He wanted to see new places, do new things, but most of all, he wanted to fly.  He knew the Sea Duck was tied up at the dock, but he also knew his parents wouldn’t allow him to take it joyriding this late at night.

What he needed was his own plane. He had his pilot’s license and thanks to the wages he’d earned as a navigator, he had a tidy sum saved up. He just couldn’t understand his parents’ reluctance. Their reasoning seemed, well, unreasonable. Time and again he had proven that he was responsible and level-headed when it came to flying.  

Of course, there had been that one little incident…

Three Weeks Before
The Sea Duck

Kit and Baloo were flying up the coast to New Fedora to deliver a shipment of pinball machines for the Patriotic Pinball Playoffs and war bond rally.  Or rather, Kit was flying while Baloo snoozed in the navigator’s seat.

They were ahead of schedule, the weather was beautiful, and there wasn’t anything around for miles.  In other words, it was a boring flight. Kit, tired of listening to the mesmerizing hum of the Superflight 100s, flipped on his portable pocket radio.

Amid the airplane sound effects, a male actor shouted, “We're surrounded by Swatzi planes, Captain Gumption!  Which ones should I take?"  

A very confidant, very masculine voice answered, "You take the second from the left. I'll handle the rest, lieutenant."

"But, captain, that's got to be ten-to-one odds.  You'll never make it, not with a broken arm."

The captain laughed heartily. "It's just a scratch.   Set the bone myself.  No, it'll be those dirty Swatzis who won't make it."

“Watch it now. Here they come!”

"Let ‘em have it, Lieutenant Dan."

The announcer said, "Captain Gumption, the bravest flyer in the Usland Army Air Force, clenched his teeth and broke through the Swatzi line, barrel rolling and spraying bullets all the way.  Before he was done, half of the Swatzi fighters were going down in fiery nosedives and the others were fleeing for their lives."

Turning off the radio, Kit said to himself, “Barrel roll? Piece of cake for the guy who aced his flying exams.”  He slowly revved up the throttle, pulled back on the stick, then nudged it to the left at precisely the right moment.

It looked to be a textbook perfect barrel roll until the aircraft was upside down.

That’s when a plane-shaking thunk followed by ding, ding, ding, ding, ding came from the cargo hold as twenty crated pinball machines crashed against the ceiling at the same time.

“Whoa!  What’s goin’ on?” Baloo exclaimed, jolting awake.  He took the situation in at a glance – the plunging altimeter, the rising ocean, the wide-eyed young pilot – and grabbed the control yoke in front of him. “Leggo of the stick, Li’l Britches!”

“No!” Kit stubbornly tightened his grip. “I’m a pilot now, and I don’t need your help!”

Hours Later
At Higher for Hire

The sun was sinking behind the cliffs surrounding Cape Suzette when Baloo, Rebecca, and Kit stood on the dock beside the soggy crates containing the busted pinball machines.  There was a strained silence between father and son as they watched Wildcat hooking up the crane to the upside-down Sea Duck.

“Oh, Kit, how could you?” Rebecca said quietly, her voice heavy with disappointment.

That comment hurt the teenager more than the loud, long lecture he’d endured from his father on the tugboat ride as it towed the Sea Duck all the way home.  

“All set, Mollycat!” The mechanic hopped off the seaplane’s belly onto the dock.  “Push the green button.”

“Can I push the button?  I wanna push the button!” Cassie implored.  Her purple hair ribbons bobbed up and down as she tugged on the older girl’s pink grease-stained overalls.

Molly lifted her three-year-old sister up to the crane’s control panel so she could punch the green button, causing the plane, metal protesting under the tension, to start to flip wing-over-wing.

Kit cringed guiltily when the Sea Duck splashed back onto its pontoons, spraying the dock and its occupants with salt water mist. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Sorry?” Baloo scoffed. “Sorry? Flying’s a dangerous business!  You can’t pull those kinda stunts, ‘specially with a full load of cargo!”

Fed up with the lectures, Kit snapped, “You do it all the time!”

“That’s ‘cause I know my plane inside-out an’ upside-down, which is where we were today no thanks to you, kid.”

“I’m not a kid anymore.  I’m a pilot, and I need my own plane!”

Baloo and Rebecca simultaneously shouted, “No!”

Present Day
Kit’s Bedroom

But that was ancient history.  Nearly three weeks ago!  Besides, Wildcat could fix anything.  The repaired pinball machines had been delivered the next day in plenty of time for the Patriotic Pinball Playoffs and war bond rally, and the Sea Duck’s dents barely showed now.

Kit propped his chin in his hand and gazed longingly at a picture of a P-51 Stallion tacked to the wall above his desk like it was a pin-up girl.  The sleek, single-seat fighter, equipped with a powerful propeller-driven engine, was an important tool in the Allies’ arsenal.  He let his imagination soar as he asked the question: “What would it be like to fly one of those babies?”

Meanwhile...
Halfway Around the World

A squadron of red-and-blue trimmed silver P-51 Stallions sliced through the skies over Hounsland.  Their job was to distract enemy planes, giving the heavy bombers they were escorting a chance to drop their payloads on key Swatzi targets.

Flying one of those planes was young panther pilot on his first mission. He squinted into the rising sun, his hands sweating on the stick, his ears filled with the drone of planes, his eyes peeled for enemy fighters.

Suddenly, his entire body tensed when he heard a burst of gunfire followed by a large greenish-grey blur that looked vaguely like an oversized boomerang hurtling across the horizon.

In his earpiece, the squadron leader commanded, “Incoming!  Incoming!  All fire!  All fire!” just as the plane off his port wing went down in a blazing ball.

A split second later, the blur was back, sending two bombers spiraling into the clouds below, the white parachutes of the crews billowing in its wake.    

The novice pilot, frantically turning his head this way and that in an effort to spot the adversary, stuttered, “C-can you see 'em, sir?”

“Them?”  The seasoned squadron leader sounded shaken as well.  “More like him.  I think there’s only one.”

Whoosh!  The mystery aircraft streaked past the window again, then boom! It seemed as if the entire sky exploded in front of the young

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