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resenting it—he’d wrap his safety lecture in a waving flag.
    Harry was obviously intrigued by the L-133 design. “It’s weird, all right, straight out of Buck Rogers, but it looks right. It should fly well and be very fast.”
    “Well, boys, let me make a prediction. Hap Arnold is going to get one of the jet engines from the RAF, and he’ll send it back to the United States for some big company to build. And he’ll pick some outfit that’s getting short on war work to build the plane for it. It won’t be Lockheed; they can’t do much more than they are doing right now.”
    Harry was always the more empathetic. “That’s pretty tough on Lockheed, eh? And it’s tough on Mr. Price and Mr. Johnson, too.”
    “Well, this is just the first olive out of the bottle. If jet engines work, they will revolutionize flying, and therewill be plenty of work to go around. But this is too radical to be the first American jet.”
    Vance checked the papers as Harry handed them to him, carefully putting them back in and inserting the L-133 model in its case like a sword into a scabbard.
    “Look, boys, you know I’m always talking flying safety—”
    They groaned, and Tom said, “Lecture number twenty-nine.”
    “No, no lecture, but you are both at a dangerous time in your careers. How much military flying time do you have, Tom?”
    “About four hundred and fifty hours.”
    “And Harry?”
    “Maybe five hundred.”
    Vance went on. “Well, that’s the dangerous time. You are proficient, and you are feeling your oats. That’s when most accidents happen. But now, with the war coming on, you’ve got to really live up to your responsibilities. You can’t be fooling around, buzzing, rat racing, doing low-level acrobatics, not when you are going to be needed in combat.”
    Both boys laughed. They knew exactly what their father was doing and loved him for it.
    “Dad, we’ll be good. We promise.”
    July 21, 1941, fifteen miles due west of Marine Base, Naval Air Station, San Diego
    Cruising at 7,000 feet, Harry Shannon closed the canopy of his P-40, cinched his seat belt and shoulder harness tight, and watched the tiny speck on the horizon hurtle toward him, growing larger by the second until a gorgeous gray Grumman Wildcat pulled up on his wing, flown by his brother, Tom, a big grin on his face.
    They flew for a moment, wing to wing, each drinking in the other’s airplane; if there had been a way to exchange seats they would have done it in an instant. They had always been competitors, from fighting for positions on the high school football team, to shooting baskets in the backyard, to seeing who could get the fastest times out of their dad’s cars. But this was the ultimate competition, each one flying fifty thousand dollars of hot machinery provided by Uncle Sam.
    The brothers had briefed each other that morning in the Marine Base flight operations room. Harry could afford to spend only about fifteen minutes out here before cutting up to Hamilton Field. If the winds were good, he’d have no problem—if they were not, he would have some explaining to do.
    They planned for about ten minutes of mock dogfighting before breaking off to return to base. Once in the air, they couldn’t talk to each other—the frequencies of their radios were not compatible. They wouldn’t have done it anyway, because what they were doing was officially forbidden, if unofficially condoned, and someone might pick up their transmissions.
    Tom saluted, closed his canopy, and kicked his Grumman into a vertical bank, pulling away for the first encounter. Harry turned in the opposite direction, applying power cautiously to the P-40, letting his speed build slowly. His engine was brand-new and the last thing he wanted was an engine failure fifteen miles off the coast. Yet his airplane had at least a 20 mph speed advantage over his brother’s, and Harry intended to use it.
    The two fighters roared at each other again, thin black streams of exhaust