In our last episode: She beamed a bright smile at me. "Oh, good! Let's grab some coffee at the café while you tell me what it is you specifically want to see."
According to the sign, the Freedom Fighters Café was closed for the day, but a few folks were dawdling. Moira stepped behind the counter and filled two mugs of coffee from a glass coffee pot. The coffee was strong, but drinkable.
"Now, Mister Coleman, what are you here to see?"
The jury was still out, but I was beginning to think Ms O'Brien might be okay. "Well, how 'bout we get on a first name basis and eliminate some syllables? I'm Matt."
She gave me another of her bright smiles. She seemed to have a never-ending supply. "All right, Matt. I'm Moira."
"Irish, right?"
Moira was still smiling when she said, "Yes. It means rebellious woman, so watch out."
"To answer your question about why I'm here, I'm particularly interested in the American Volunteer Group P-40B in your collection."
She nodded. "Miss Josephine. The restorers did a beautiful job on her. She looks like she just rolled off the assembly line. Now she has the paint scheme of the 14th Air Force after it took over from the China Air Task Force and the AVG. I can assure you from the ship's records, though, she definitely served with the AVG. I assume you know some of the P-40's history in China?"
"I'm familiar with the basic story. I understand the American Volunteer Group ships were P-40Bs, sort of a cross between the P-40 Tomahawk Curtiss-Wright was building for the Brits and earlier versions of the US Warhawk."
Moira nodded and picked up the story where I left off. "From there a hundred fighters were crated up at the Curtiss plant in Buffalo, New York and shipped to Rangoon, where what they called the 'government-furnished equipment'—gunsights, radios, wing guns, and that stuff was installed. Then, the hundred P-40s were delivered to the AVG at Toungoo, Burma."
We were playing a game historians play to show off, and I had one up on her. Either that or she thought she had me.
Doing a little smiling of my own, I said, "Except the AVG only got ninety-nine P-40s."
Moira gave me a puzzled look, and then the light dawned. "Oh, yes. One of the crates fell overboard and a wing assembly was destroyed so the hundredth ship couldn't be assembled." She looked me in the eye, gave me a slightly downgraded version of her smile, and said, "I stand corrected, Mister Colman."
"It's Matt, remember?"
Moira looked down, avoiding my eyes. I also noticed her signature smile was missing. "Yes. I seem to be forgetting a lot of stuff today . . . Matt."
Nice going, Colman, now you've embarrassed her. That surprised me a little. Most historians have thicker skins. Oh well, this wasn't a date, it was work. Plus, she was still new to the world of history.
By this time we were the only ones left in the café, so I said, "Okay if we take a look at Miss Josephine now?"
She nodded. "Sure. It's this way."
I followed her down a hallway and beyond a pair of double doors opening into a dark hangar interior. My footsteps echoed eerily between the tall metal walls and the dark shapes of aircraft were silhouetted against the light coming through the open hall door.
Then, Moira switched on the lights and everything changed. Suddenly I was as close as anyone can come to going back in time. As if I'd been transported to the 1940s, I was surrounded by many of the war birds that helped win World War Two for the USA. These were not recreations—they were the very ships in which brave young American pilots faced our Nazi and Jap enemies.
Even with eight or ten aircraft crowded into the hangar, my eye was immediately drawn to Miss Josephine. She stood proudly between a North American B-25 Mitchell Bomber and a Navy Chance-Vought F4U Corsair. Moira understated the case when she said the restorers had done a beautiful job on the P-40.
Miss Josephine's green and tan camouflage literally sparkled and her shark's mouth nose art looked like it wouldn't hesitate to take a bite out of anything that got too close. Of course when these ships were flying daily missions they didn't stay pretty for long, but it was a thrill to see what they might have looked like to a combat pilot the day his new ship arrived.
I ducked under the yellow wing of an AT-6 similar to mine and walked up to Miss Josephine. I was about to step over the rope intended to keep visitors from getting too familiar with her, but I stopped and looked at Moira.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Story, design & P-40 image © Steve Eitzen
Header graphic & HPO logo © HPO Productions
Freedom Fighters Café image © Palm Springs Air Museum
Character images © 123RF used by license