Transcribed from U.S. AIR SERVICES, Feature Aeronautical Magazine, Commercial and Military, March 1943, by Johan Visschedijk, June 30, 2024

Little Known Flights by Workaday Airman in Boeing NB-2 "Mosquito Bomber", Circa 1932, by Capt. Fred Smith

Seldom does it come to mind, these days when scorching dispatches and communiques are the rule, but the Marines at Quantico, Virginia, about ten years ago were pretty busy at various tasks. In addition to flying daily tactical missions that kept flying-teamwork and gunnery in tiptop fettle – and their dive-bombing grazing perfection – the pilots of the Sixth Marine Observation and Ninth Fighter Squadrons were assigned to varied operations of an experimental and utilitarian sort that exhibited their true versatility. They flew the Presidential Mail for President Hoover from Washington-Hoover Airport to the famous retreat at Camp Rapidan, opened up new airports for Congressmen and Senators with superb exhibitions of formation aerobatics; they fed the inhabitants of flooded, distressed cities whose groceries and medicine had gone submarine. . . . Once – when the Post Baseball Team learned of a crack first-basemen's appearance at Parris Island, South Carolina – the Corps' recruit (boot) training station, a plane out on a cross-country training flight was landed there, and the player flown pronto to Quantico in time to help win a tight one against the Coast Guard nine. One situation that was aggravating, unhealthful, and not so well in hand at that time was the mosquito problem in the marshland adjoining Quantico – and northward to Accotink. The Navy's Medical Department was advised, Commander Noble of the Department had a formula for a fine powder that would kill the insects when it was dusted on neighboring swampland – and soon the airmen at Brown Field had a dusting plane. It was an old Boeing NB-2, relic of many hours of student training at Pensacola and a Navy warehouse, with wings square-tipped as an Oklahoma outhouse, and a Wright J-5 in the nose. In place of the usual primary-flight student in the after cockpit there appeared a dust-bin whose bottom side terminated in a dispersing venturi hung out of the fuselage in the airstream. This was the crock that went whizzing up, down and around the marshes subsequently at seven in the morning every time the calendar read Monday and Friday in the operations office – its barndoor airfoils shrieking and scaring the daylights out of the marsh-birds, the J-5 singing its nostalgic song in all the low places. In the front seat sat something quire unhuman, resembling a tinted scarecrow more, perhaps, than a first edition of the Green Hornet; a defiant chap, un-wind-shielded, with a parachute on his transom, the ιlan of the trapese-artiste in his eyes and a mixture of Paris Green and powdered soapstone truly plastered over his unrecognizable face. Between the loose lid on the dust-hopper and the highly unscientific airflow around the venturi he arranged to gather more dust than did the mosquitoes. Because it tasted awful, and was also poisonous, the dust was kept from the pilot's breathing by a dampened kerchief, worn plainsman style over the lower face so that the wrong purpose would not be accomplished. The scheduled efforts of this man and his machine soon saw the mosquito-menace subdued, but there were those on the post who at times wished that in preference the insects rather than the green madman were back. It sometimes happened that a strong surface wind would blow from swamp to Officers' Country while the dust was still pendant, and one's Dress Whites, hung to dry in the Virginia sunshine, would take on a vivid Killarney tint too late for re-working before the Saturday shindig at the club. Also, some of the natives who lived up at the dry ends of the marshes would call the Sergeant of the Guard come reveille and report the noisy disruption of their morning ablutions by "that geddem airplane!" To say that the young pilot of the dusting-plane knew his local geography is grievous under-statement; his was the knowledge of the resident possum and the beavers, gained through flying the unknown reaches as did the herons and canvasbacks. Colonel Rogers and his pre-Revolutionary Rangers never possessed the careful intimacy-with-contours that was this pilot's; certainly none ever knew the abandon that was his, or was so steeped in early-morning swamp lore. This young man for months on end never read more than 200 ft (60 m) from his altimeter, and this great height was only gained in an evasive and flourishing chandelle or a slithering wingover at the end of a sweep. His working knowledge of the operating limits of his ancient steed, and the fine points of aerial mosquito-dusting was a precise and lovely thing to behold, an art and a science – scientific within the aerodynamic scope of the greybeard plane; artful beyond comprehension when he steamed up and down river, creek, and brook banks – here lifting a lazy wing over a buoy or telegraph pole, there fishtailing the fuselage down between two trees so that the dust would gently lay on the slackwater and muck at the very ends of the weeded areas. Legally excused and freed from the regulations that prohibited low-flying near the Post he straffed, zoomed, clipped the taller grasses, executed breath-taking reversements at the necks of the valleys, and . . . rid the area of mosquitoes. The dust settled on the stagnant waters and clogged with poison the breathing tubes of the resident anophylae. A Second Lieutenant billeted in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters on Quantico Hill, this man learned much that never appeared on the official report. Some of this knowledge was even of value socially, as his was the most widely publicized flying activity on the station. How could it help being, when one could look out one's bedroom window of a fine June morning, and see the old Boeing streaking low between the tennis courts and the water tower, or roaring through the shrubbery just back of the Colonel's quarters? Many of the lovely Marine Corps Juniors bestowed a kind of haloed-glamour on this noisy knight who wore a mask to his day's work and who was always rubbing his eyes when on the ground. Green-eyed were his rivals, but not so literally as he. One early morning at three o'clock he was awakened by the telephone's ringing, only to hear that another bachelor lieutenant had just discovered a lone mosquito on his bathroom's wall. 1932 Being one of the latter years of the Volstedian Era, the local and suburban locations of Tidewater whiskey-stills were useful additions co mounting local lore. Indeed, until the neighborhood's moonshiners recognized his friendly intent they were wont to cook a mess of mash only at eventide, when dusting operations were neither convenient nor advantageous. This condescension toward illegality of ten years ago will no doubt be excused and overlooked today, since our pilot's dexterity in hunting down one kind of Yellow Fever then has presently proved its worth in hunting another kind – perhaps at Guadalcanal?