HEDY LAMARR<br/><br/><strong>"I know it won't happen again Mister Steele, two chances is all you get around here. When you have the watch, you call me if there is a significant change to the flight plan. Normally rising out of cloud or steering around bad weather would be part of an everyday flight and you'd have no need to call me but today we have new pilots approaching for a landing on and I am trying to test their navigational skills. Staying hid in the cloud was my way of making it harder for them to find us hence my annoyance that we came out of cover and gave away our position. I should think some of them are nearly here by now."</strong><br/><br/>I patted his shoulder,<strong>"You did right to get us away from a storm, but wrong, in the circumstances to not tell me. If it's critical for us to remain hidden in cloud you can always turn away from the storm on the same altitude and attempt to go around."</strong><br/><br/>I stopped berating him, adding more probably wouldn't be helping.<br/><br/><strong>"Alright. Back to your post, you are still in command of the ship. I am going down to the hangar bay to await the pilots arrival. There's almost no view from there so when your watch men see anything, phone through to me there. That's all."</strong><br/><br/>I gave him a nod then went to the elevator. Benson closed the outer and inner folding steel mesh doors and we clunked up one deck to get out at the hangar deck. We walked aft hundreds of feet down a wooden boarded gangway with lightweight bracing either side. At intervals there were side gangways off to the ten motor pods, these gangways were used by the maintenance boys and the gunners. We finally came out in the hangar deck one deck above it's floor and I led us down a wire mesh starircase that zig-zagged down the side of the cavernous space. Here and there a few men worked but the place was mostly quiet as most of the crew were out tending the motors, sitting in the gun turrets or crawling about in the rigging watching the huge gasbags billow and shift against their guy wires.<br/><br/><div class="floatleft">(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk137/HaibaneR/HangarBossBobJurczyk.jpg)</div>A round oil-smeared figure came out of a lean-to office at the foor of the steps.<br/><br/><strong>"Good afternoon Bob."</strong><br/><br/><strong><em>"Auy-up, Ma'am, hear we's gonna be a-busy thisn afternoon?"</em></strong><br/><br/><strong>"Indeed, Bob, at least five planes landing on, six if a latecomer shows. I'm looking to hire some new pilots to defend us from more attacks and I'm going to check these people out. You're ready to take them?"</strong><br/><br/><strong><em>"Huh. Readyn as I'll iver be. Got the barrack rooms kinda built, at least we got bunks and screens up to separate gals from boys and each has got a shower stall an' john, so'n they should be okay. Need ta build somethin' proper laters. Crane's all workin', powered up now and ready."</em></strong>Bob waved a gloved hand across at the huge spoked launcher and retriver crane with its several long steel spokes. It hung like a vast cartwheel without a rim above the hangar floor at the far end of the room opposite to the way we'd entered, that is the stern end. It was lowered in a mechanical slide down the wall so that one of it's arms projected out of the launch bay (the bay doors were presently closed). The arm itself then extended and an arrestor hook was carried for the pilot to fly his plane onto for hoisting aboard. Once one plane was in the wheel rotated one spoke and extended a second arm to collect the next plane. The first one meanwhile was hoisted up and around as the wheel rotated. The pilot climbed out onto a steel walkway as the arm rose. When all six planes were rapidly recovered they were lowered in turn to the hangar deck for servicing and rearming and refuelling. The vast central area of the deck was the service bay where all the heavy work was done; the arms of the launcher crane were useful during maintenance to lift engines out and other jobs. Tight against the walls were the individual aircraft pens, steel-walled to contain any blast or fires should there be accidents with the pilots barracks against the front wall beside Bob's office and below the entry stairs. It was a crude but effective setup.<br/><br/>Under the steel deck was the magazine, protected heavily by the thickest armour in the ship. Bullets and rockets were fed up through chutes into storage bays to either side of the main room and from there the belts of ammo were loaded into the planes in their individual bays.<br/><br/>And Bob Jurczyk was in charge here, like a steam-punk Prince of his small domain, he ruled this room with an iron fist. He wasn't a tough man or one to cause trouble but he let everyone know that on the hangar deck he was Boss. He liked to be called Boss by his mechanics and the pilots. A pilot might own his plane and his sleeping cot but while they were here Bob owned both. I had known Bob four years, he was one of the first people I'd recruited. He must be in his sixties by now and for twenty years had worked on the Okeefenokee and Chatantauga Railroad wherever the hell that was and even today he always wore a steam engineers blue bib and brace with a blue and white cotton ticking engineers jacket, a red neckerchief and a railroaders hat. He had white whiskers and a wrinkled face but he smiled a lot and his face still showed the babyish good looks he'd had as a young man.<br/><br/>The thing with Bob was, he was good. He knew aero engines and airframes inside and out, he wasn't any drafting table boy, hot with paper and pencil but he knew his angles of attack and things like that through sheer accuracy of eye. He was from somewhere down south, it might have been Alabama or Georgia and I knew he was no fan of Clyde Benson. They simply didn't talk at all. Of course Bob would never cuss the negro in my presence but I knew he was no fan of niggers. I enjoyed bringing Benson with me to the hangar just to reinforce to Bob that while he was Boss in here I was boss of him. He got the picture.<br/><br/><strong>"Good work Bob. They should be here any time. We're just waiting for them to show up."</strong><br/><br/><strong><em>"Huh. Ah'll'n get the boys ready theyn, ma'am."</em></strong><br/><br/>Bob always started his sentences with a 'huh', it wasn't a question or a note of disapproval, it was just how he was. I left him to do his job.