The Ground Crewman Who Broke Every Rule in the Flight Manual, Taught Mustang Pilots a “Wrong” Way to Push the Throttle, and Gave Them a Fighting Chance Against Germany’s Much Faster Jet Fighters

By the time the first jet screamed over the airfield, Joe Carter had decided he hated the sound of silence.

It was the silence after the engines wound down and the wheels crunched to a stop and the canopy slid back. The silence while the pilot unbuckled slowly, eyes staring at nothing, lips pressed tight.

The silence when you realized three planes had taken off, and only one had come back.

That was the silence that lived in Joe’s bones now, in the damp chill of the English winter and the constant smell of fuel and rain. It was the silence that followed him as he walked down the line of P-51 Mustangs, their noses pointed like silver spears into the gray sky, their paint streaked with oil and exhaust.

“Carter!” someone shouted over the wind. “You seeing this?”

Joe shaded his eyes and turned toward the runway.

Captain “Red” Dalton’s Mustang had just touched down, tires squealing against the wet concrete. The plane rolled to a stop, nose wagging slightly as if it, too, was exhausted. The propeller spun down to a blur, then to nothing.

Joe jogged over as the ground crew chocked the wheels. The canopy slid back. Red pulled off his oxygen mask and helmet in one smooth motion, leaving his dark hair plastered to his forehead. His face was pale under the grime, jaw clenched so tight a muscle jumped near his ear.

Joe had never seen him look quite that way—not after flak holes, not after missing wingmen, not after stories of close calls that left everyone around the stove wide-eyed and grateful.

“Red?” Joe called, catching the wing with one hand as he stepped up on the tire. “You good?”

Red swung one leg over the side and dropped to the ground, landing harder than usual. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stared back at the sky he’d just left, as if something up there might still be chasing him.

Then he turned to Joe.

“They’re faster,” he said, voice flat with disbelief. “A lot faster.”

Joe blinked. “Faster than you? That Mustang of yours is already half rocket. What are we talking about?”

Red’s eyes were too bright. “I’m talking about something that went past me like I was tied to a fence post,” he said. “Sleek thing, twin engines, swept wings. No prop. Just… noise. Like the air being ripped open.”

Joe felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. “Jets,” he said quietly.

He’d heard the rumors. Everybody had. Stories traded in the mess hall and around the coffee pots. New German machines. No propellers. Strange shapes in the sky. Some folks called them fairy tales; others didn’t laugh quite as hard.

“Yeah,” Red said. “Jets.”

He wiped a hand across his face, leaving a streak of oil on his cheek. “We were escorting the bombers over the target,” he went on. “Level at twenty thousand. I spot a speck above us, just a little glint. I’m thinking ‘fighter’ but before I can even finish the thought, it’s already in the dive, and then—”

He snapped his fingers.

“Just like that,” he said. “He’s on us, and then he’s through us, and then he’s past us and gone. I roll in, firewall the throttle, push the nose over, and you know what happens?”

Joe waited.

“Nothing,” Red said. “Nothing fast enough, anyway. He walked away from me. In a climb, in level flight, wherever he wanted. Like I was dragging an anchor.”

“You still flying with that anchor I told you to get rid of?” Joe tried, reaching for a joke to cut the tension. “The one between your ears?”

Red didn’t smile.

“I saw one get hit,” he said instead, voice lower. “Flak got him on the way in. He broke apart in the air. We saw the pieces fall. That’s the only reason I’m standing here. Flak, not fighters. That thing’s got speed nobody’s ever seen before.”

He looked at Joe as if waiting for him to contradict reality.

Joe didn’t. He couldn’t. He’d spent years around engines, watching them push propellers through the air, learning how much you could coax from metal before it complained. He knew how far a P-51 could stretch its legs.

A jet that left Mustangs standing was… something else.

“Command’s going to want everything you saw,” Joe said after a moment.

“They’ll get it,” Red answered. “I’ll tell them. And then they’ll tell us what they always tell us: ‘Do your job. Protect the bombers. You’ve got the best fighter in the world.’”

He shook his head, laughing once without humor.

“Feels funny being told you have the best fighter in the world right after seeing something walk away from you,” he said.

Joe reached up and patted the Merlin engine’s cowling, the metal still ticking as it cooled.

“Best fighter we’ve got,” he corrected quietly.

Red huffed out a breath. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s that.”

They stood there for a moment, the mechanic and the pilot, both staring at the machine between them as if it might offer an opinion.

Up close, Joe could see the small things the quick glance missed. The slight scorch marks along the exhaust stacks. The thin line of fuel seeping from a cap that looked like it had taken a hit. The way the blades were still mostly clean, no mud or grass—Red had brought her home straight and narrow, no off-runway games.

“Anything feel wrong in the engine?” Joe asked, slipping into familiar questions. “Any roughness? Surging?”

“Engine was solid,” Red said automatically. “Did everything I asked, just not fast enough. I slammed the throttle forward and I could feel her thinking about it before she jumped. But by the time she did, he was two miles ahead.”

“Thinking about it,” Joe repeated, eyes narrowing.

He knew that feeling. The split-second lag when you pushed the throttle from cruise to full and the boosted Merlin took just a heartbeat to breathe and then roar. Usually, it didn’t matter. Usually, you had room. But against something that had no prop drag and a tremendous thrust curve?

Half a heartbeat could be the difference between “in range” and “watching contrails disappear.”

Behind them, another pair of Mustangs circled down to land. The airfield bustled with motion—trucks, jeeps, ground crew hustling toward other returning planes. The war did not pause for one conversation.

But something settled sharp and stubborn into Joe’s chest.

They’d been fighting for years now. He’d watched the evolution of everything—planes, tactics, engines, even the coffee. Every time the enemy pulled ahead, they’d found a way to claw back. Sometimes it was a new aircraft. Sometimes it was a trick with fuel mixtures. Sometimes it was a crazy idea from some pilot who didn’t know a thing about how the machines worked, but had a feel for what they could do.

Jets or no jets, Joe thought, there had to be a way to give the Mustangs teeth in the few seconds that mattered.

He just didn’t know what it was yet.

---

That night, in the maintenance shack that always smelled like oil and damp wool, the argument began in pieces.

It was the way good arguments often started—not with shouting, but with quiet disagreement that slowly grew teeth.

Joe sat at a scarred wooden table, a grease-smudged copy of the Merlin engine’s manual open in front of him. Around him, men played cards, wrote letters home, or simply stared at nothing. A pot of coffee sat on the hot plate in the corner, its contents long since burned into something that barely deserved the name.

Across from him, Sergeant Mike O’Rourke watched Joe’s pen move down the page.

“You planning to romance that book?” O’Rourke asked. “Staring at it like that, I mean.”

Joe didn’t look up. “Trying to figure out how to make the engine jump faster when you slam the throttle,” he said. “Red says there’s a lag before the power really kicks in.”

“Everybody says that,” O’Rourke replied. “That’s just how it is. You throw that much gas and air at a Merlin that quick, it’s gonna think about it before it obliges. That’s why the manual says ‘easy on the throttle.’”

He reached over and tapped the page with one thick finger. “‘Avoid sudden full-open throttle settings at low altitude or high boost,’” he read aloud. “‘May cause engine damage or failure.’” He grinned. “I can read too, you know.”

“I’m not looking to blow engines,” Joe said. “But there’s got to be something we can do inside the rules. Or… near the edges.”

O’Rourke snorted. “Edge of what? The crater where the engine comes apart?”

Joe ran a hand through his hair, leaving streaks of oil among the lighter strands. “Think about it,” he said. “Those jets Red saw—they’ve got the top speed. Fine. They can outrun us overall. But they’ve got to start somewhere. They’ve got to commit to an attack. There’s a moment where they’re slower than full song. If we could steal a second or two off our own lag when we react…”

“Big if,” O’Rourke said. “And what do you think the bright boys at Rolls-Royce and Packard have been doing all this time? You think they didn’t push that engine as hard as they could?”

“They pushed where they needed to,” Joe agreed. “But they also wrote manuals to keep kids from blowing engines to pieces on training flights. Manuals for people who might never see a jet in their lives. Our reality’s different. We’re not flying Sunday drives.”

He tapped the schematic, finger landing on the section that showed the throttle, the supercharger, and the manifold.

“The book says don’t do this,” he said. “But what if the book is worried about engine life over hundreds of hours, not ten seconds that decide if a pilot sees breakfast again?”

O’Rourke’s gaze sharpened. “What are you thinking, Carter?”

“I’m thinking about how the turbo and the supercharger respond when you slam the throttle,” Joe said slowly. “They spool up, they build pressure, but it’s not instant. There’s that little gap. What if we could trick it into spooling earlier? Or keep it spun up, ready, even when the pilot’s cruising?”

“Trick the engine,” O’Rourke repeated, dubious. “You want to be the one to tell the colonel we’re ‘tricking’ his engines?”

“I want his pilots to come home when jets show up again,” Joe said. “If that means we take a little more risk with metal, well, we can replace metal.”

“Not when we’re already pushing WEP half the time,” O’Rourke countered, using the shorthand for War Emergency Power. “You seen those heads after a long escort? Shiny as a cook’s forehead. We ask more out of these Merlins and they might just lie down on us.”

Joe chewed on that. He wasn’t reckless. He loved engines too much to abuse them for fun. But he also had the weight of that silence in his chest—the empty spots on the field where planes used to park.

“We’ve got one hangar queen,” he said finally.

O’Rourke grunted. “A hangar queen that still runs. Most of the time.”

“Exactly,” Joe said. “We pull her aside. We run some tests. See what happens when you slam the throttle differently. Maybe there’s a pattern. Maybe there’s a sweet spot where the manifold pressure jumps faster without detonation. We take notes, we watch the plugs, we inspect every inch after each run. We’re not stupid.”

“And when she throws a rod through the block and the engineers come looking for the fools who cooked a perfectly good engine?” O’Rourke asked. “You going to tell them it was for science?”

Joe’s jaw tightened. “I’m going to tell them I was looking for a way to cut down that lag Red was talking about,” he said. “So the next time a jet comes screaming down at our boys, they’re not stuck watching it pull away.”

O’Rourke studied him for a long moment, then sighed.

“You’re a stubborn man, Carter,” he said. “Stubborn or crazy. Might be both. But I’ve buried enough kids that if you’ve got even a sliver of an idea to keep one more around, I’m not going to be the one to talk you out of it.”

He leaned back, folding his arms. “You’re going to need a pilot,” he added. “One who trusts you enough to do something the manual calls ‘a bad idea.’”

Joe glanced toward the door, where the wind moaned against the frame.

“I think I know one,” he said.

---

Red Dalton did not say yes right away.

When Joe cornered him near the mess line the next morning, Red listened with his tray balanced in one hand, coffee steaming in the other. His eyes, usually quick to spark with humor or irritation, stayed steady and cool.

“So let me get this straight,” Red said when Joe finished. “You want me to get in a perfectly good airplane, take it up, and deliberately slam the throttle in a way the manual says not to, so we can see if it breaks.”

“Not just see if it breaks,” Joe said. “See if there’s a way to get the boost up faster without breaking it. Carefully. Step by step. It’s not just one stupid shove. It’s about how you time it.”

Red’s smile was thin. “That sounds like what people say right before they do something stupid,” he said. “They add the word ‘carefully’ in front and hope it keeps the engine parts inside the cowling.”

Around them, the mess hall buzzed with the usual chorus—clinking silverware, low conversations, bursts of laughter that came a little too loud and too fast. But at their small table, the air felt tight.

“Red,” Joe said quietly. “You told me yesterday you felt like you were dragging when you tried to chase that jet.”

Red’s jaw clenched. “I did.”

“I can’t bolt rockets onto these planes,” Joe went on. “If I could, I’d be in a different job. All I’ve got is what’s under that cowling. If there’s a way to make that engine jump quicker when you need it most, I want to find it. But I need someone who can feel what the plane is doing. Someone who knows where the line is.”

Red stared into his coffee for a long moment.

“I’ve lost three men in the last month,” he said finally, voice low. “Two to flak, one to a mid-air. I’m not eager to add ‘stupid throttle experiments’ to the list.”

“I’m not eager to blow you up,” Joe said. “I like having you around. You tip good at the card table.”

Red huffed a tiny laugh despite himself.

“Look,” Joe said. “We start high. If anything goes wrong, you’ve got altitude to glide. I’ll be on the radio. We push in small increments. If we see the manifold pressure do something spooky, you back off. We pull the plugs after every run. We check temperatures. We’re not going to fire-hose the throttle from idle to WEP at sea level and call it a day.”

Red lifted his head and met Joe’s eyes.

“And if Command finds out we’re messing with their planes like this without asking?” he asked. “You think they’re going to pat us on the head? Or you think they’re going to ground me and have you scrubbing latrines for the rest of the war?”

“I’ll take whatever they throw at me,” Joe said. “I’ll tell them it was my idea. Because it is. But if we wait for the bright boys upstairs to approve a new procedure, and jets show up again in the meantime…”

He let the sentence hang.

Red’s mouth twisted.

“That’s not fair,” he said.

“No,” Joe agreed. “It’s not.”

The silence between them stretched. In it, the war moved on—orders sent, missions planned, planes fueled. The world did not care about two men arguing over a throttle.

Finally, Red sighed and set his tray down.

“High altitude,” he said. “Small steps. You call it off if anything looks strange on your end. And if this works, if there’s anything to it, you tell me straight. No sugar-coating, no wishful thinking. I’m the one who has to trust it with my skin.”

“You’ll know,” Joe said. “I promise.”

“And another thing,” Red added. “If this goes sideways and someone starts talking about court-martials, you don’t try to take the blame alone. I’m a grown man. I got in the cockpit. We did it together.”

Joe opened his mouth, but Red cut him off.

“You got me into enough trouble back in flight school,” Red said. “You’re not taking this one solo.”

Joe felt an unexpected warmth at that—a small, stubborn loyalty that had weathered years and miles.

“All right,” he said softly. “Together, then.”

They shook hands over lukewarm coffee and cold eggs.

Neither of them noticed the way a pair of younger pilots at the next table glanced over, sensing something brewing without knowing what.

The argument, born in pages of a manual and worry over jets, had just taken on a life of its own.

---

The test flights started the next afternoon.

They used an older P-51 that had seen more hangar time than combat lately—a reliable bird whose engine still pulled strong, but whose frame bore enough patches and scars that she’d been relegated to training and errands.

“Lucky girl,” Joe murmured, patting her nose. “You get to be a pioneer instead of a souvenir.”

Red rolled his eyes as he climbed into the cockpit. “Talk nice to her,” he said. “She’s listening.”

“I always talk nice to my engines,” Joe said. “You pilots are the ones who abuse them.”

The ground crew chuckled nervously. Everyone knew what they were doing was… unusual. Not officially forbidden, exactly, but the kind of thing that might make officers raise eyebrows if they heard.

Red strapped in, ran through his checks, and keyed the radio. “Tower, this is Mustard One,” he said, using the unofficial nickname the crew had given the hangar queen. “Request clearance for test flight.”

“Mustard One, you are cleared,” came the reply, tinged with curiosity. “Don’t break anything we can’t fix.”

Red glanced down at Joe, who stood near the wing with a headset clamped over his ears, linked to the radio net.

“You ready?” Red asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Joe said.

The Merlin barked to life with a cough and a roar, settling into a smooth rumble that Joe felt in his chest more than heard. He listened to every note, every vibration, searching for any sign of complaint.

Satisfied, he gave Red a thumbs-up.

The Mustang taxied out, lined up, and then surged down the runway, tail lifting, wheels leaving the ground in a spray of water. It climbed into the gray sky, its silhouette shrinking.

Joe watched until it was a speck, then turned to the small portable set where a crewman scribbled down readings.

“All right, Red,” Joe’s voice crackled in the headset. “Let’s start gentle. Bring her up to fifteen thousand. Level off. We’ll do a standard full-power increase first for a baseline. Smooth throttle from cruise to max, four seconds.”

“Copy that,” Red replied. “Fifteen and level.”

Minutes ticked by, the second hand on Joe’s wristwatch jerking forward in tiny, stubborn clicks. He could imagine the climb—Red settling into his seat, the altimeter unwinding, the engine humming.

“Fifteen,” Red said at last. “Level.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “On my mark, throttle from cruise to full over four seconds. Three… two… one… mark.”

On the pad, the crewman traced the line as the manifold pressure gauge jumped, the tachometer followed, and the time between “start” and “full” was recorded.

“Felt normal,” Red reported. “She thought about it, then picked up. You know the feel.”

“Copy,” Joe said. “Now the fun part.”

They tried it slower. Faster. With different boost levels. Each time, Joe watched the readings and listened to the engine’s voice through the radio static.

Then, after nearly an hour of cautious probing, Joe said the sentence that nudged them over the invisible line between “careful” and “the book doesn’t like this.”

“All right,” he said. “Let’s try something the manual would frown at.”

“Only now?” Red quipped. “What do you call the last forty-five minutes?”

“Foreplay,” Joe said, deadpan.

O’Rourke snorted loudly enough to be heard over the ambient noise.

Joe leaned closer to the mic. “Here’s what I want,” he said. “You’re at cruise. On my mark, I want you to snap the throttle forward fast to just below WEP—not all the way to the stop. Then, half a second later, push it the rest of the way. Like two quick moves instead of one smooth one. Watch your manifold. The instant it jumps to the red line, you hold, don’t go beyond.”

“So… wrong, then,” Red summarized. “We’re doing it wrong on purpose.”

“Just this once,” Joe said. “Just for me.”

Red muttered something under his breath that Joe decided not to ask him to repeat.

“Ready when you are,” Red said finally.

“Three,” Joe counted. “Two. One. Mark.”

In the cockpit, Red pushed the throttle forward in a sharp, quick movement, then again, hitting the stop with a light clunk. The engine responded with a bark, the needle on the manifold pressure gauge leaping faster than before.

“Oh,” Red said softly.

On the ground, Joe watched the scribbled line with the same dawning surprise.

“There,” he said. “You see that? The boost jumped faster. Not a lot, but faster. And it stabilized clean. No overshoot, no wild swing.”

“Felt like she was already halfway there before I finished the push,” Red said. “Like she was coiled up.”

“Exactly,” Joe said, excitement threading into his voice. “It’s like you’re kicking the supercharger awake before you really lean on it. Doing it too slow, you never jolt it. Doing it all at once, you risk shocking it. But that—what you just did—that’s like a nudge and a shove combined.”

“Skip the romance,” O’Rourke muttered. “Tell me if the plugs stay inside.”

They ran more tests. Different altitudes, different mixture settings, slight variations in timing. Each time, Joe watched the numbers and listened to the engine. Each time, the “wrong” double-push shave a sliver off the lag.

Sometimes a fraction of a second. Sometimes more. It didn’t sound like much when written on paper. But in combat, seconds were everything.

When they finally brought the plane back down, Joe’s hands shook slightly as he reached for the cowling.

“Let’s see what you’re hiding,” he murmured.

They pulled panels, checked plugs, examined the exhaust, ran fingers over lines and hoses that had survived rougher treatment. They took their time. The lieutenant in charge of engineering walked by once, raised an eyebrow, and kept walking when he saw the care being taken.

When they were done, Joe straightened, oily rag in his hand, and looked at Red.

“Well?” Red asked.

“Everything looks good,” Joe said. “That throttle trick… it’s dirty, but the engine doesn’t seem to mind. As long as you’re not already red-hot and half out of coolant, she’ll take it.”

Red wiped his own hands on a rag, though he’d barely touched anything.

“So we’ve got a little snap trick,” he said. “How much difference do you really think this makes against something like what I saw yesterday?”

Joe met his gaze. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Not until you try it when it counts. In the air, with somebody shooting at you. But on the bench, it gives you a faster jump. That’s what we were aiming for.”

Red was quiet for a long moment. The hangar echoed with the distant rumble of other engines starting, the clatter of tools, the voices of men doing a job that never ended.

“You know Command is going to hate this,” Red said finally. “They don’t like anything that sounds like ‘ignore the manual.’”

“It’s not ignoring it,” Joe said. “It’s… reading between the lines.”

“You realize that sounds exactly like what someone says right before a safety lecture,” Red replied.

Joe spread his hands. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Say we do nothing? Pretend the jets don’t exist? Hope they never come back?”

Red’s jaw flexed.

“I want my men to survive,” he said. “If that means teaching them a ‘wrong’ trick that works, then we do it. And if the brass doesn’t like it, they can peel me out of the cockpit long enough to yell at me.”

O’Rourke cleared his throat.

“You’re not going to tell them first?” he asked. “Maybe… ease them into it before you start spreading this around like the latest card trick?”

Red looked at Joe. Joe looked back.

And this was where the argument, which had been mostly between mechanics and pilots and the laws of physics, stepped squarely into the realm of rank and orders and responsibility.

“We tell our squadron,” Red said slowly. “We brief them. We make it clear this is a tool, not a toy. They use it when they have to. They respect the engine, watch their temps. We gather results. Then, if it proves itself, we go to Command with something better than ‘I have a feeling.’”

“And if they hear about it before that?” O’Rourke pressed.

Red shrugged. “Then they can be mad that we’re trying to stay alive,” he said. “If that’s a crime, they can pin a medal on me for stubbornness and call it even.”

Joe felt a strange mix of dread and determination.

“This is going to get loud,” he predicted.

Red’s smile finally showed teeth. “Good,” he said. “Maybe they’ll hear us over the engines.”

---

The squadron briefing room was a long, drafty space with a chalkboard at one end, maps covering the walls, and a smell of coffee, chalk dust, and damp wool.

That evening, Red stood at the front, a piece of chalk in hand, a rough sketch of the P-51’s throttle quadrant and engine system on the board behind him. Joe leaned against the side wall with O’Rourke, arms crossed, listening.

“So,” Red said, facing the men sitting on wooden chairs. “We’ve all heard the stories about jets now. Some of you have seen them. Some of you think they’re fairy tales. I’ve seen them. They’re not fairy tales, and they’re not magic. They’re machines. Fast machines. Faster than us overall. But not from zero. Not at every point in the fight.”

The pilots shifted, expressions guarded but attentive.

“What Carter’s been working on,” Red continued, nodding toward Joe, “is a way to shave some of the lag off what happens when we go from cruise to full power. A way to make the engine jump quicker when you push the throttle. It’s not in the manual. In fact, the manual would probably write a strongly worded letter about it. But we’ve tested it, and we think it could mean the difference between staring at a jet’s tailpipes and actually getting a shot off.”

He turned, pointing at the drawing.

“Normally, you go from cruise to full over a few seconds. Nice and smooth. The supercharger and boost come along, everything’s happy. But that smoothness also means the engine takes its sweet time waking up. If we do it like this instead—”

He made a quick motion with the chalk, two short dashes.

“—you give the engine a jolt before you settle in. A quick snap to almost full, a half-heartbeat pause, then the rest. It tricks the boost into jumping faster. Carter and I tried this up high. The gauges show a quicker surge, and she holds steady without blowing her guts out.”

“Sounds like something we were told not to do in training,” one pilot muttered.

“That’s because in training you weren’t facing jets,” Red said, his tone sharpening. “You were learning not to burn up engines on routine hops. This isn’t routine. I’m not asking you to do this every time you want to look cool in front of your buddies. I’m telling you that if a jet dives through and you roll in to chase, this might be one of the few things that helps you cut the corner.”

A hand went up.

“What about engine life?” Lieutenant Harris asked. “We’re already running WEP more than we’re supposed to. You add this… trick on top, we’re going to be changing engines every week.”

“If we’re alive to change them, that’s a good problem,” someone else muttered.

Joe stepped forward slightly.

“We’ve pulled the plugs and checked everything after the test runs,” he said. “No signs of detonation, no scary temps, as long as you’re not already cooking. I’m not saying there’s zero risk. There’s always risk when you lean on an engine. But from what we’ve seen, done right, this isn’t as abusive as some of the things you already do without thinking about it.”

“And what does Command say about this new magic?” Harris asked.

The room quieted.

Red’s jaw tightened. “Command doesn’t know yet,” he said. “Because we don’t have enough data to bring them more than ‘this feels better.’ I’m not going to walk in there and say ‘let’s teach every pilot in the theater to slam the throttle this way’ on a hunch. We’re going to use it carefully, in specific situations, and see if it makes any difference. Then we talk to them.”

“So we’re breaking the rules until we have enough proof to ask if we can break the rules,” Harris summarized dryly.

“That’s one way to put it,” Red said. “Here’s another: we’re doing what we’ve always done—figuring out how to survive with what we’ve got, and sharing what we learn with each other before the paperwork catches up.”

Another hand went up. “What about the jets themselves?” asked a young pilot with a crew cut so short his scalp showed pink. “You said they’re faster, but clumsier in turns maybe? Does this throttle trick only help in a straight chase, or…?”

“It helps anywhere you need instant acceleration,” Joe said. “You’re rolling in front of a jet that’s overshot? You slam it this way, you get more punch right when you need to tighten that lead. He’s in a climb and you’re trying to cut across? Same thing. You’re not going to win drag races with them. But you might win the drag race that matters in the two seconds where his path intersects yours.”

They talked for nearly an hour.

Questions flew—about temperatures, about altitude bands, about what to do if the engine coughed when you tried it. Joe answered as best he could. Red weighed in with what it felt like, his words carrying the authority of someone who’d already faced the new threat.

By the end, there was no unanimous cheer, no shouted agreement. But there was something else—an understanding that they had something, however small, to try.

And there was, simmering under the surface, the beginning of a larger disagreement.

Because word of what they were doing did not stay in that room.

It never does.

---

It took precisely two days for the fight to reach the brass.

It arrived in the form of Major Collins, the operations officer, standing in the hangar with his arms folded, his cap pulled low, and a look on his face like a man about to deliver either bad news or a lecture.

Joe saw him coming and exchanged a quick glance with O’Rourke.

“Storm’s here,” O’Rourke muttered.

“Could have told them ourselves,” Joe murmured back. “Would’ve been less like being caught with our hand in the cookie jar.”

Collins stopped in front of them.

“Sergeant Carter,” he said. “Lieutenant Dalton. My office. Now.”

Red appeared almost out of nowhere, wiping his hands on a rag. He must have seen the major too.

Together, they followed Collins across the field and into the low building that housed operations. The air inside was warmer, the smell of coffee stronger, but the temperature in the hallway felt suddenly chilly.

Collins closed the office door behind them and gestured at two chairs. He remained standing, as if energy would leak out of him if he sat.

“I hear,” he said, without preamble, “that some of my pilots are being taught to ignore the engine manual.”

Joe felt his shoulders tighten.

“With respect, sir,” Red began, “we’re not ignoring it. We’re—”

“Working around it creatively?” Collins suggested, eyebrow arched. “That’s what Harris called it. I believe his exact words were, ‘They want us to slam the throttle in two jumps instead of like we were taught, because some mechanic thinks it makes the plane leap faster.’”

His gaze flicked to Joe.

“That would be you, Sergeant?” he asked.

Joe swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said. “That would be me.”

Collins stepped closer, bracing his hands on the desk, leaning forward.

“Do you know why the manual says what it says, Sergeant?” he asked. “Do you think those pages were written by men who’ve never seen an airplane?”

“No, sir,” Joe said. “I know they were written by people trying to keep an engine alive over the long haul and keep kids from blowing themselves up before they even left the pattern.”

“Exactly,” Collins said. “Those manuals keep our machines running. They keep us from wasting engines we can’t easily replace. They keep pilots from doing something that feels good in the moment and gets them killed ten seconds later.”

He turned his gaze to Red.

“And you,” he said. “You thought it was a good idea to take this ‘wrong throttle trick’ and teach it to your men before bringing it to me. Why?”

Red held his stare.

“Because I saw a jet outrun me like I was standing still,” he said. “Because I came back here and told Carter about it, and he spent hours in the manuals and in the hangar trying to find a way to close even a little of that gap. Because we tested it carefully, and it worked. And because the next time a jet dives through a bomber stream, sir, I don’t want the only tool my pilots have to be wishful thinking.”

Collins straightened slowly.

“You think I don’t understand the threat?” he asked, voice cooling. “You think I haven’t read the reports? Haven’t seen the photos from reconnaissance? I know exactly what we’re up against. And I know that engines are scarcer than you think. I’m already rationing hours, already pushing maintenance past the point I’d like. You add higher failure rates because some squadron decided to play engineer, and you put everyone’s missions at risk.”

“Sir, we’re not trying to replace the people who designed the Merlin,” Joe said quickly. “We’re trying to adapt. That manual was not written with jets in mind. It can’t cover every situation we’re in now.”

“And you think a few test flights give you the right to rewrite it?” Collins asked sharply.

“No,” Red said. “We think a few test flights give us enough to try something in combat, under strict guidelines, before we bring it to you with more than just a theory. We were going to tell you, sir.”

“When?” Collins demanded. “Before or after an engine let go at takeoff with full fuel and ammo?”

The room crackled with tension.

Joe opened his mouth, then shut it. This was Red’s world now—rank and responsibility and the thin line between initiative and insubordination.

Red took a breath.

“We know the risk,” he said. “We’re not pretending there isn’t any. But I’ll tell you the other risk, sir. The risk of doing nothing new. Of telling our boys to fly the same way they did last year, when our opposition didn’t have jets. Of watching more and more of them come back saying, ‘I couldn’t catch him. I couldn’t close.’”

He leaned forward, his own hands braced now.

“This ‘wrong throttle trick’—it’s not magic,” he said. “It doesn’t turn a Mustang into a jet. It’s a sliver. A small edge in a tiny window. But I’ll take slivers when the other side has the bigger knife.”

Collins stared at him.

“You’re very good with words, Dalton,” he said finally. “You ever think about using them on a stage instead of in my office?”

“Not much call for it these days, sir,” Red replied.

“And you, Sergeant,” Collins went on, turning back to Joe. “Did it cross your mind that if everyone starts yanking throttles around this way, we might see an uptick in engine failures that affect missions without jets? That for every pilot who uses your trick to maybe cut across a jet once, we might lose three engines on routine hops because they liked the way it felt?”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said. “That’s why we’re not telling everyone. That’s why we briefed it as an emergency measure, not a new normal. We told them to use it only when they’re reacting to that specific threat.”

“And you think they’ll listen?” Collins asked. “You think kids in their twenties, full of adrenaline, won’t decide this is just the new way to feel like hotshots?”

Red answered before Joe could.

“They’ll listen to me,” he said. “Because I’ll be watching. And because I’ll nail anyone who abuses it to the wall. You know I will, sir.”

The air between the three men was thick with stubbornness—Collins’ fear of losing engines and control, Red’s determination to keep his people alive, Joe’s conviction that the manual, while sacred, was not scripture.

Finally, Collins let out a long breath.

“I should shut this down,” he said. “I should write it up, make an example out of both of you, send a message that we don’t tinker with things we don’t fully understand in the middle of a war.”

He looked at the map on the wall, at the lines drawn between airfields and target cities, at the tiny notes marking sightings of jets.

“But I’m not blind,” he went on quietly. “I know those jets are real. I know they’re going to show up more. And I know that, on most days, you two work miracles keeping these planes flying as hard as they do.”

He turned back to them.

“So here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “You are not going to be teaching this throttle trick to every pilot who strolls through here. You are going to limit it to Dalton’s squadron for now. You are going to keep meticulous records—who uses it, when, at what settings, with what results. You are going to watch those engines like hawks.”

He pointed a finger at Joe.

“And you,” he said, “are going to put this in writing. Not as a new procedure, but as an observation. Something for the engineering section to chew on. Something that says, ‘Under certain conditions, this throttle movement appears to improve acceleration response, with these risks.’ Not ‘I have discovered the secret of chasing jets.’”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said, relief and tension mixing.

“And if I see engine failures spike, if I hear one more whisper about ‘ignore the manual, Carter’s got a better idea,’” Collins continued, “I will shut this down so hard you’ll think the throttle froze in your hand. Am I clear?”

“Crystal, sir,” Red said.

Collins’ gaze softened, just a fraction.

“And Dalton?” he said.

“Sir?”

“You’d better bring me back a story that justifies this headache,” Collins said. “Because if jets show up again and this trick of yours helps, I’ll need something to tell my own superiors when they ask why I didn’t put you on report.”

Red’s smile, this time, held genuine warmth.

“I’ll do my best, sir,” he said.

He didn’t say it aloud, but Joe heard the rest in his tone.

If I get the chance.

---

The chance came sooner than any of them expected.

Three days later, the morning broke cold and clear, the kind of high-altitude crystal that made contrails draw perfect white lines across the sky. The briefing board showed a familiar pattern: bombers inbound to a target deep in enemy territory, Mustangs tasked to ride herd.

Red’s squadron took off in a roar of Merlin engines, climbing in a staggered formation, silver wings glinting in the pale sun.

On the ground, Joe and O’Rourke and the rest of the crew watched them go, helmets pressed to their ears, listening to the radio chatter as the planes checked in and sorted themselves.

“Looks like a painting,” O’Rourke said quietly, watching the formations shrink. “Like someone drew them up there with a pencil.”

“Let’s hope the artist’s in a good mood today,” Joe replied.

Hours passed in the slow, taut way of men waiting for news they couldn’t control. They worked on other planes, checked tools, drank coffee that grew weaker as the morning wore on.

By midday, the first scraps of tension began to creep into the radio net.

“Bandits at two o’clock high,” someone called.

“Escort, tighten up,” another voice added.

Joe found himself drifting closer to the radio table, a rag forgotten in his hand.

Then Red’s voice came through, clipped and cool.

“This is Dalton. I’ve got fast movers, eleven o’clock high, above the bombers,” he said. “Small, sleek, no props. We’ve got jets.”

Joe’s heart thudded.

“Copy, Dalton,” came Collins’ voice from the controller’s seat. He sounded calm, but Joe knew tension when he heard it. “Remember your brief. Don’t chase them into the flak.”

“Easier said than done when they’re already coming down,” Red replied.

Joe closed his eyes for a second, imagining the scene—the big bombers, plodding along on their tracks, contrails smeared behind them, and above them, small shapes turning, aligning, beginning their dives.

Red’s voice came again, more urgent now.

“Lead jet diving on the lead box,” he said. “Speed’s unreal. He’s going to cut right through them.”

There was a burst of static, then another pilot’s shout.

“He’s in! He’s in!”

Joe could hear the distant rumble of anti-aircraft guns over the radio, like thunder from a far-off storm. He heard the raw edge in a younger pilot’s voice as he swore under his breath.

“Dalton, report,” Collins demanded.

“Jet just slashed the lead box,” Red said. “Looks like one bomber hit. He’s leveling out. I’m rolling in.”

Joe felt every muscle in his body go tight.

He imagined Red pushing the Mustang over, wings biting into the thin air, nose dropping as the plane rolled to chase. He imagined the jet ahead, already streaking level, the distance between them closing—slowly? Quickly? Not quickly enough?

On the radio, Red’s voice shaved down to its fighting edge.

“All right, Carter,” he muttered, not realizing the ground could hear him. “Let’s see if your trick’s worth the trouble.”

Joe’s breath caught.

He could picture every movement in his mind now, as if he were in the cockpit himself.

Red’s right hand, wrapped around the throttle.

The familiar decision point: keep it smooth, or…

Red slammed the throttle forward, not once, but twice in quick succession—first to just below full, pause barely long enough for a heartbeat, then all the way to the stop.

In the cockpit, the Merlin responded with a roar and a lunge.

“Whoa,” Red breathed.

The manifold needle jumped faster than it normally did, surging toward the red line. The P-51 shuddered slightly as the power hit, the airframe translating horsepower into forward drive.

Out ahead, the jet skated level, its exhaust leaving a smeared trail of haze.

Normally, this was where the Mustang would feel like it was always half a step behind—a dog chasing a car that could always pull away.

This time, Red felt something different.

The Mustang jumped.

“Come on, girl,” he murmured. “Come on.”

On the ground, Joe leaned over the radio set, knuckles white on the edge of the table.

“Talk to me, Red,” he whispered, though the pilot couldn’t hear him.

The radio crackled with overlapping voices—warnings, curses, clipped reports. Above it all came Red, focused and steady.

“Dalton in pursuit,” he said. “He’s fast, but so am I. Closing… closing just enough…”

He wasn’t lying to make anyone feel better. He didn’t have the breath to waste. He could see it—numbers unwinding on his airspeed indicator, the jet ahead not growing tiny as quickly as before. The gap still existed, but in that critical moment when both planes were transitioning from dive to level, the Mustang had clawed back a few precious yards.

It wasn’t enough to sit on the jet’s tail and ride it home. But it was something.

The jet pilot, perhaps surprised to find anyone still in his rear hemisphere, jinked left. Red anticipated, cut across the turn, his Mustang biting into the maneuver with all the agility that had made it a legend.

Normally, he’d be just out of reach.

This time, his gunsight glass flashed with a shape.

“Got you,” he whispered.

His thumb squeezed the trigger.

In the sky above the bombers, eight fifty-caliber machine guns spoke at once, tracers reaching out in a brilliant, deadly line. The distance was still long, the shot far from easy.

But it was enough.

The tracers stitched across the jet’s wing root, sparks blossoming.

“He’s hit!” someone screamed over the radio. “Red, you tagged him!”

The jet shuddered. For a second, it looked like it might shrug it off. Then smoke poured from one engine. The sleek machine rolled, trying to right itself, then broke off the attack.

“I’ve got him leaking,” Red said. “He’s turning away. I’m not chasing. Not into their flak. But he’s not diving back through the box, either.”

Joe let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

On the radio, another voice cut in. “Another jet diving!” Harris shouted. “Same angle. I’m rolling. Using the trick.”

Joe’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

He listened as more pilots called their moves, some cursing that they still couldn’t close, others shouting with surprise that they were closer than before.

The sky was chaos—a mix of old and new, of propellers and jets and flak and the relentless plod of bombers.

Hours later, when the Mustangs finally limped back to the airfield, the silence Joe hated so much threatened at the edges again.

Not all of them returned.

But more did than might have otherwise.

Red’s Mustang touched down with a tired squeal of tires, rolled to a stop in its familiar spot. The canopy slid back. He climbed out, moving slower than usual, but with a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there since the jets first appeared.

Joe was already there, hands reaching for the wing.

“Well?” he demanded.

Red stepped down and grabbed Joe by the shoulders, hard enough to make him wince.

“It worked,” Red said, voice rough. “You crazy, rule-breaking magician. It actually worked.”

Joe stared. “You got him?” he asked.

“I got him enough,” Red said. “Put holes in him, made him break off. He didn’t come back through the formation. Neither did his friends, not the way they wanted. Harris almost got one too. Said he’d never felt the plane jump like that when he shoved the throttle.”

He let go of Joe’s shoulders and smacked the side of the engine cowling affectionately.

“This girl can move when you wake her up right,” he said.

Joe’s knees felt weak.

“We’ll check the engine,” he said automatically. “Make sure she’s still happy.”

“You do that,” Red said. “But before you bury yourself in wrenches, you might want to talk to Major Collins. He was on the radio. He heard everything.”

Joe’s stomach flipped.

“Oh,” he said.

“Yeah,” Red agreed. “Oh.”

---

They didn’t have to go to Collins’ office this time. He came to them.

The major arrived in the hangar still wearing his headset around his neck, his flight jacket unzipped. There was grime on his face and something complex in his expression—exhaustion, worry, and something that looked suspiciously like reluctant admiration.

He walked straight up to Red and Joe.

“Report,” he said.

Red straightened.

“Four jets sighted,” he said. “Two made attacks on the lead bomber boxes. One was hit by flak early. One broke off after my pass. Others got chased more aggressively than before. We still lost bombers, but not as many as I expected, sir. And our guys felt like they could actually do something instead of just watching.”

Collins grunted.

“And the throttle?” he asked.

Red didn’t hesitate.

“It made a difference,” he said. “Not a miracle, but a difference. I used it twice. First time, closing on that jet. Second time, rolling away from flak when I was a little too low. Both times, the engine snapped to attention quicker than usual. Felt like she was already halfway there.”

He glanced at Joe.

“Carter can show you the numbers,” he said. “But I can tell you what it felt like in the seat. It felt like the plane was less surprised by hard throttle than she normally is. Like she was tuned for it.”

Collins turned to Joe.

“Engine status?” he asked.

“We’re about to tear into her now, sir,” Joe said. “But so far, temps look within limits. Oil pressure’s good. No roughness reported. If she’s upset, she’s hiding it well.”

Collins was quiet for a moment.

“I heard Harris on the net too,” he said finally. “He said something about ‘Carter’s trick’ saving his hide when a jet tried to circle back. I don’t like my pilots inventing colorful names for procedures I haven’t signed off on.”

Red grinned despite the tension. “You’ve got to admit, ‘Carter’s trick’ sounds better than ‘that thing the manual hates,’ sir.”

Collins pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You two are going to be the end of my peace,” he said. “Such as it ever is.”

He dropped his hand and looked at them, his gaze sharper.

“But I can’t argue with results,” he said. “I heard the way those jets had to work harder today. I heard the difference in your voices when you had something to throw at them besides curses.”

He nodded once, reluctantly.

“All right,” he said. “We keep this contained, we keep it disciplined, but we keep it. I’ll send a report up the chain, with your data and your observations. The engineers can decide how much they want to formalize it. In the meantime, your squadron can use it when they judge it necessary. No hot-dogging.”

He pointed at Joe.

“And you,” he added, “keep those engines healthy enough that I don’t regret this. I don’t want to see a single cylinder burned because someone fell in love with the feeling of extra jump and decided to hammer it coming off the runway.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said.

Collins’ gaze softened again, just a little.

“Good work,” he said quietly. “Both of you. Don’t let it go to your heads.”

He turned and walked away, the weight of his own responsibilities settling back on his shoulders.

Red watched him go, then looked at Joe.

“You hear that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “I think that was a compliment. Hidden under all the scolding.”

“He’s got a point,” Red said. “We’re walking a thin line. One busted engine at the wrong time and this whole thing looks like madness.”

Joe nodded.

“I know,” he said. “But for a minute up there, when you shoved that throttle and she jumped… did you feel like you had a say again?”

Red’s eyes grew distant, seeing the sky instead of the hangar.

“For the first time since I saw those jets,” he said slowly, “I didn’t feel like I was chasing a ghost. I still couldn’t catch him for tea and cookies. But I could reach out and touch him. That matters.”

He clapped Joe on the shoulder.

“You gave us a sliver,” he said. “And out there, slivers count.”

---

Word spread, as it always does.

Over the weeks that followed, other pilots in the group began to hear about “the throttle trick” from Red’s men. Some wanted to try it right away; others were wary.

Officially, it stayed limited. Unofficially, it slipped into the quiet conversations on cold mornings, into the hand-to-hand passing of survival tips.

“Don’t jam it like an ape,” Harris would say to a new arrival. “It’s not about brute force. It’s about timing. A tap and a push. Listen to the engine. She’ll tell you if she doesn’t like it.”

Some pilots used it rarely, treating it like a flare gun—only for emergencies.

Others, especially the ones who’d looked a jet in the eye and come away feeling helpless, treated it like a tiny talisman, a thing they could control in a sky full of variables.

Engines failed sometimes. They always had. A few did so after rough handling in the heat of battle, with or without the new trick in play. Every time a plane went down, Joe felt a spear of worry—Was that because of what we taught them?—until the forensic work, such as it was, pointed to other causes.

The war rolled on.

Jets appeared more often, but never in the numbers people feared. Fuel shortages, production bottlenecks, a dozen other problems hamstrung their impact. But when they did show, the men who’d practiced the “wrong” throttle found themselves just a little less behind the curve.

Sometimes that little was enough.

Months later, when the war finally lurched and groaned toward its end, when maps were redrawn and bombers sat quiet on their hardstands, the story of the throttle trick became one of many small tales that veterans told in quieter times.

Some told it as a footnote—a minor thing, overshadowed by larger strategies.

Others told it differently.

They said it was a story about a mechanic who had stared at a manual and decided that, in a world where jets could outrun Mustangs, the rules on the page weren’t the whole truth anymore.

They said it was about arguments—between caution and necessity, between officers and men, between “this is how we’ve always done it” and “this is what we face now.”

They said it was about the stubborn insistence that, when faced with something new and frightening, you didn’t just throw up your hands and call it unbeatable. You tinkered. You tested. You listened to the way the engine coughed and roared. You argued in cold hangars until your throat was raw. And then you took that argument into the sky where only seconds mattered.

Years later, in a small garage behind a modest house back in the States, Joe Carter would sometimes sit with his hands resting idly on a car engine, listening to it tick as it cooled. The world was louder now—cars and radios and television—but sometimes, late at night, he still heard the particular note of a Merlin spooling up.

His grandchildren would ask him about the war, their eyes wide and curious.

“Were you a pilot, Grandpa?” they’d say. “Did you fly the famous planes?”

“No,” he’d answer, with a smile. “I made them go.”

He’d tell them about muddy airfields and long nights and the way metal could come to feel like something you understood better than your own heartbeat. He’d talk about friends lost and friends who made it. He wouldn’t dwell on the darkest parts. Some stories were better left half-told.

But sometimes, when they were a little older and the house was quiet, he’d tell them about the jets.

He’d describe the first time Red had walked into the hangar and said, “They’re faster.” He’d describe the silence that followed. The manuals spread open on the table. The test flights in the gray English sky. The tense conversation in the major’s office that had become more than just about throttle—it had become about trust, and risk, and what it meant to fight an enemy who kept changing.

“So you broke the rules?” one of the kids would say, eyes shining with delighted scandal.

He’d chuckle.

“We bent them,” he’d reply. “Purposely. Carefully. And we argued about it the whole time. Your Captain Dalton, he and the major, they went at it pretty hard. Voices raised, faces red, the whole deal. That argument got serious. It got tense. Because it wasn’t just about metal. It was about lives.”

He’d fall quiet for a moment, hearing in his mind the echo of those voices in the drafty little office, the clash between fear of breaking engines and fear of losing pilots.

“But in the end,” he’d say softly, “they both wanted the same thing. They wanted more of their boys to come home. And they decided that a little ‘wrong’ in the throttle, done right, was worth the trouble.”

“And did it really help?” a grandchild would ask. “Did your trick really make a difference against the jets?”

He’d look at the framed photograph on the shelf—a faded shot of a young man grinning from the cockpit of a P-51, his helmet pushed back, his hand resting on the canopy rail. “Red” written in pencil on the bottom.

“It helped enough,” Joe would answer. “Sometimes that’s all you get. Enough.”

In another house, on another street, Red Dalton would be telling his own version of the story.

He’d talk about the day he first saw a shape in the sky that didn’t belong to the old rules. He’d talk about the feeling of shoving the throttle the “wrong” way and feeling his Mustang leap like it had been waiting its whole life to be asked that way.

He’d laugh about how the manuals probably shook in their binders at the thought.

And when someone asked him, “Weren’t you scared the engine would quit on you when you did that?” he’d nod.

“Sure I was,” he’d say. “But I was more scared of not being able to do anything at all.”

He’d raise his glass then—of coffee, or something stronger—and say quietly, “Here’s to Carter, who taught me how to be brave in front of a throttle as well as in front of a jet.”

Somewhere in Europe, on a field that was once crisscrossed with contrails, the wind would blow over grass that had grown where runways used to be. No one walking there would hear the echo of Merlins or jets anymore.

But if they listened very hard, in the spaces between the gusts, maybe they’d catch the faintest trace of an old argument carried on the air—about rules and risk and the stubborn, human refusal to give up, even when the enemy seemed to move faster than the world itself.

THE END