How It All Goes Down
"This Is It, Boys"
- The crew is stationed in Kahuku, Hawaii, and Louie and Phil spend their days drinking, wrestling, and decorating their barracks with nudepinups, calling it the "pornographic palace" (2.7.3).
- Moznette, the copilot, is transferred and replaced by Charleton Hugh Cuppernell, a "jovial ex-football player" (2.7.4).
- Everyone is pretty much a badass at training. Their accuracy rate is three times the squadron average.
- When they're not kicking butt, they're playing pranks on each other, like clogging up the "piss pipe" (2.7.10) with chewing gum or attacking one another with fire extinguishers.
- Three days before Christmas, they get their first dive bombing mission. They're headed for Midway, and from there ordered to bomb a Japanese base on Wake Atoll that night. It would take sixteen hours, "the longest combat flight the war had yet seen" (2.7.18).
- In honor of his friend Payton Jordan, who just wed, Louie writes "Maggie and Payton Jordan" on a bomb, because what is a better wedding gift than the explosive death of hundreds of people?
- They bomb Wake, not knowing that there are ninety-eight American POWs on the base.
- The mission is a success and, surprisingly, all the American captives survive.
- Louie and his crew feel pretty cocky, thinking that the war will be over soon.