roared Captain Jis-Tikkar, commander of Flight Operations for the 1st Naval Air Wing, as SMS Amerika got underway and began moving toward the distant, smoke-crowned harbor. His Nancy had been idling along, wallowing in the growing chop alongside the big steamer, waiting to be refueled and rearmed. Now his and several other planes had been left bobbing and spinning in the rising wake. “What the goddamn hell!” he bellowed again when another clearly leaking Nancy pirouetted dangerously close to his. He spun to face his backseater. “Get on the wireless and find out what they think they’re doin’! They tryin’ to kill us all?” “I try!” the backseater yelled back. “They’s too much traffic!” “Stomp on it,” Tikker ordered, meaning for his observer-copilot to hold the transmit key down, essentially jamming all other messages on the frequency. A few moments later, the ’Cat reported. “Amer-i-kaa says they is ordered to move closer to the harbor, to turn planes around quicker!”
