Eagles at War Read Online Free PDF Page B

engineering and almost zero talent for business. Hadley was usually too enthusiastic to bother to patent his inventions and, strangely enough, didn't seem to resent it when someone else would steal an idea and commercialize it. Bandy trusted everyone, including an accountant who looted their firm.
    Only in the last two years, after Clarice had at last asserted her innate business sense, had they done well. Hadley had invented some special machine tools and Bandy had designed some generic structural aircraft parts—oleo struts and oil coolers. Clarice saw their commercial value and insisted on patenting both tools and parts. She then took it upon herself to hire production managers, honest accountants, and a hardworking plant manager on a profit-sharing basis to run what was left of Roget Aircraft. Hadley and Bandy were too obsessed with flying to interfere in such routine manufacturing operations—how could you test-fly a drill press?—and so they prospered. And none of it mattered to her except that she now had the time and the means to lavish her love on the Bandfield baby.
    But there were hazards—she knew that Patty felt a mixture of relief and resentment at the way Clarice had taken over. Her own feelings were mixed. On one level, she wanted Patty to quit flying, to avoid the risks that seemed to grow with every new venture and to stay home and care for her baby. On another, more primitive level, she wanted Charlotte for herself! Such were her thoughts when Patty came bouncing in, glowing from her regular morning horseback ride.
    Clarice thought for the hundredth time that Patty was the image of her mother, baby Charlotte's namesake. She had the same long blond hair, full bosom, and mischievous grin. Her amethyst eyes, one slightly rounder, one slightly longer than the other, gave distinction to her beautiful face.
    "Good, you've cleaned little Testilencia' up! Hand her over."
    Charlotte shrugged her mother away and clung to Clarice's neck. Patty flushed, annoyed and embarrassed.
    "Can't say I blame her, Patty. Let me show you something."
    A Coca-Cola calendar hanging on the wall showed both Patty's passions and her faults. It featured a glamorous shot of Patty climbing out of the dark green Seversky P-35 racing plane in which she had won the Los Angeles Air Derby. The older woman flipped back to August, saying, "I've x-ed out the days you've been gone." Counting rapidly she said, "You've been away thirty-two out of the last sixty days. It's no wonder Charlotte is shy with you."
    Patty flushed with resentment because she knew Clarice was right—and she knew that she couldn't change. She was her mother's daughter, locked in a campaign to breach the male monopoly on aviation, to open the door to women flyers everywhere. She was willing to risk her life in closed course racing or testing new aircraft to get the public forum she needed.
    Little by little, she was succeeding in filling the vacancy left when Amelia Earhart crashed in 1937. In the last year she had set a women's land speed record, an autogiro altitude record, and an endurance record. But she knew her career was in crisis. Only the week before she'd been halfway across the country, averaging 270 mph in a Northrop Gamma racer leased from her friend and archrival, Jackie Cochran. A new transcontinental speed record was a certainty until the engine blew up. She'd managed to put the plane down in a cornfield, ripping the wings off in the process, wrecking her career almost as much as the airplane. It was the fourth time she'd tried and the fourth time she'd failed. She knew that the men would be saying, "She's bad luck—and she doesn't understand airplanes."
    Patty knew that records in themselves were meaningless—but without them she'd have no base to work from. And she knew very well that but for Clarice her flying career would have come to a halt. Now Clarice was going to use this last accident as a weapon to make her stop flying.
    Clarice went on. "You