Jet Plane Mystery

Excerpt.......Ensign Jack Steel sat on the edge of a life raft whittling a stick. A strange place to whittle, one might say, on the deck of a great U. S. aircraft carrier in mid-Pacific. But Jack loved to whittle. “What do you make when you whit ... Read more

Excerpt.......Ensign Jack Steel sat on the edge of a life raft whittling a stick. A strange place to whittle, one might say, on the deck of a great U. S. aircraft carrier in mid-Pacific. But Jack loved to whittle. “What do you make when you whittle?” someone once asked him. “Shavings—just shavings—that’s all,” had been his prompt reply. Then, feeling that this was not a real answer, he went on to say, “I whittle and think. Thinking is what really counts.” Jack was thinking now, not thinking hard—just letting thoughts drift in and out of his mind. There was enough to think about, too; they were in Jap waters right now. Something was bound to happen soon, perhaps at dawn. Jack would be away before dawn, for his was a scout plane. Back at the faraway training base at Kingsville he had put in his bid for a dive bomber. “Ah! A dive bomber!” he had said to Stew, his buddy. “There’s the plane for me! You climb to twelve thousand feet, you get near the target, you come zooming down at four hundred an hour, you let go your bomb, and—” “Wham!” Stew had exclaimed. “Yes,” Jack had agreed. “Then you get out of there fast, as if Old Nick himself was after you.” Less