The Peculiar Warrior Origin of D.B. Cooper

I swear, if I ever get out of this, I’m going to make sure I’m a rich man.

           Seattle or no Seattle, I’m going to be rich, rich, rich. Filthy rich. Come to think of it, maybe instead of Seattle, I’ll live in an apartment in Manhattan, or a mansion in Palm Springs.

           Wherever the hoity-toity reside.

           England had been so close. But no way that cratering Flying Fortress was going to make it across the Channel. First Sergeant Daniel Baines Cooper, United States Army Air Force, serial number 19711125, had a very healthy respect for water and indeed had dreamt pre-mission of frigid, salty water entering his lungs. That led to dreams of an inability to scream as he flailed in the B-17’s midsection while it began sinking, those snide kraut pilots in their fancy Messerschmitts far above, enjoying the moment.

           He would not die in the water.

           Therefore, with the Channel growing closer by the moment, coupled with the realization that the bomber was doomed, and German fighters all over the place spraying bullets like angry wasps buzzing outside their hives at Thornton Creek back home, Dan seized the opportunity.

           “Hey! What are you doing, Cooper?”

           Dan had never really hit it off with Captain Walter Marek, a Polak from the south side of Chicago. He was the kind of guy who said that the flight crew of the Lady Loretta—that was his nickname for the dying B-17, exclusively his—was a family, and yet there was little familial treatment within the plane’s figurative four walls. The big idea was similar to Boeing’s prewar command-and-control playbook that was covered over by the corporate “we are one” frosting that always tasted sour.

           Every man for himself, the rank and file assembly line guys always said.

           Dan been one of them before he enlisted and was trained aby the Army as a flight engineer because of his understanding of the structure of a B-17. In other words, he knew more than nothing, and was rewarded for it.

           Some reward.

           But he had a bargaining chip, if only he could get it on the ground and in one piece.

           One thing he knew about the highly complex Norden bombsight was that it was an innovation worthy of protection from the enemy. In that neat, 35-pound case was something called a “computer” that calculated all the factors, like wind direction, airspeed and altitude, that were necessary to drop a bomb into a pickle barrel, or so the saying went in the Army Air Force. It was designed to destroy Germany’s means of making war while, theoretically, reducing human casualties.

           I don’t know about other guys, but I’ll take German casualties over my own, he had thought to himself many times.

           Priority one for flight crews of wounded B-17s was to destroy the Norden, lest it end up in kraut hands and its secrets be used against the Allies. Shoot it with a sidearm, ideally. Ergo, with the Lady Loretta coughing and nursing its fatal wounds, Dan made his way to the bombardier’s compartment.

           The bombardier, Lieutenant Eugene Ross, an Okie who had survived the Dust Bowl, was already dead, slumped over the Norden. Bullet holes made his leather flight jacket look like bloody Swiss cheese. Dan gently pushed him aside—his eyes were still wide open in terror—and loosened the bolts that held the Norden in place.

           He needed collateral for what was to come.

           That’s when Captain Marek hollered at him over the interphone, realizing something was amiss. Dan had no business being in the bombardier’s compartment when the captain had given the order to abandon ship.

           Dan didn’t respond but he figured Captain Marek was unfastening his safety belts to either stop him or bail out, or both. He hefted the Norden, nearly tripped over Ross, but then made his way back toward the belly of the bomber, where the parachutes were located.

           “Cooper!”

           Dan turned in time to see Captain Marek leveling his sidearm, the standard issue Colt .45.

           “I don’t want to, but I’ll kill you, Cooper,” he shouted over the din, bullets still flying outside, though they had abated to a bit of a degree. Maybe the Messerschmitts were moving off, mission complete?

           There was the great and terrible sound of an explosion to Dan’s right. One of the four 1,200-horsepower Wright nine-cylinder air-cooled engines had exploded. The aircraft rocked, causing Dan to collapse to his right and crumple between the super-structure ribs, right next to the exit door.

           He was stunned, yellow goldfinches swirling over his head like in the cartoons, but he was still alive.

           Captain Marek had fallen behind him, but wasn’t moving. Carrying the Norden like a football, which weighed about as much as a medicine ball, Dan grabbed the nearest parachute, threw it on and buckled up, hoping that his weight and that of the bombsight wouldn’t compromise the chute.

           And then…

           He was one with the blue sky. The Messerschmitts had indeed moved off and were headed back to base, dark dots in the distance.

           The chute deployed as advertised and while there was initially a wash from the B-17’s remaining operational engines, it abated as the doomed Flying Fortress continued on its downward arc. Not toward the channel now, but farmland ahead of the sandy beaches that would be a perfect place for an invasion of the continent, Dan absently mused as he swooped down, down, down.

           Aaaand…

           He hit the ground and rolled as he was taught in training, losing the Norden in rows of some unidentifiable crop. A shooting pain engulfed his right ankle. Easily a sprain. Maybe even a break. Sprains were supposedly more painful than breaks, but what the hey. To his left, he could hear the muffled sound of the Lady Loretta’s fiery collision with the surface.

           Dan considered standing, but instead lay prone. He pulled and pulled on the chute to draw it to him, but more importantly, get the silk to capsize its air, so as not to attract the attention of a nearby kraut patrol. He’d have to find some way to bury it.

           He looked to his right, and there was the Norden. He couldn’t tell if it was damaged; he wouldn’t know that until he had closely examined it, but it was as intact as could be and on the ground.

           He had his collateral. His way out of trouble. Maybe.

           Hopefully.

           The minutes turned into hours. Dan sweated the entire time under his peak cap, which somehow had stayed on during his descent to earth. Will wonders never cease?

           At some point, you’re going to have to move, boyo, he thought. In front of him was a glowering tree, thick with leaves, maybe an oak? Behind it was a green hedgerow that snaked across the far perimeter of the farm field. The tree was closer, but didn’t provide the protection the hedgerow would. The hedgerow was much further away, though, at least 300 yards, maybe more. Tough to cover that kind of ground, especially with a bum ankle, and the Norden, which seemed to glow like a pot of gold between him and the hedgerow.

           So he waited, resisting the urge to become a moving target, easy enough for any teenage conscript to kill.

           Darkness now began to trickle down. The pain in his ankle had softened some, but Dan was determined to get the hell out of there and into the hedgerow. There, he would assess his situation and figure out what to do next. If he could rise, he could book it to the tree, and then scamper across open farmland and into the hedgerow. But he’d have to do all this while holding the ungainly Norden, which now lay like a dark lump in the soil.

           That was the dangerous part, especially if there was a kraut patrol nearby. Rumor was the Germans would have no compunction about executing American flyboys because of the terror they were raining upon the Fatherland, with the help of the Norden.

           Hence its value. Explaining exactly what it was and why it was so valuable to the German cause would be challenging, since Dan only knew the kraut he had learned in training, such as, Ich spreche kaine deutsch, or “I don’t speak German.”

           That wouldn’t help much. But he ventured to believe that an officer would have at least a working knowledge of English, and with that he could negotiate for his life.

           At least he wasn’t at the bottom of the English Channel. He pushed his dreams of drowning to the perimeter of his mind.

           Now it was fully dark, and the half-moon above provided just enough light that Dan could see the shadow of the tree, and beyond that, the dark wall that was the hedgerow. Time to move.

           He heaved a sigh, half expecting his ankle to shatter under his 180-pound frame, but was delighted when he crouched and the pain was negligible. Maybe there wasn’t a sprain. Certainly there wasn’t a break. Dan had played football during high school, so he once again, he viewed the Norden bombsight as a fumbled football.

           Go!

           Still crouched, he stepped gingerly to the Norden, gathered it in his arms and then began to walk-limp toward the tree, covering the 100 or so yards in about a minute and a half. So far, so good. He lay underneath the tree and an owl high above hooted, questioning his presence, probably because he was scaring potential prey away.

           Never mind. Two hundredish yards to go. But what was beyond the hedgerow, assuming he could breach it with his hands somehow? Best-case scenario was a French farmhouse with a barn where he could hide.

           He tried to dismiss the worst-case scenario, but found that difficult because of the increasing weight of the Norden.

           Here goes nothing.

           Dan couldn’t sprint, but instead hobbled as fast as he could through the crops, his boots crunching underfoot, probably ruining whatever was growing there.

           Come on, boyo. Come on.

           The dark wall of the hedgerow grew closer, and then closer.

           He was going to make it.

           “Halt!”

           There are sentinel moments in life, Dan’s mother had preached to him since he was a child, sentinel moments where your entire life’s experience would either save you, or doom you.

           This was one of them.

           Dan stopped and sank to his knees, a bead of sweat rolling from his forehead past his right eye. The Norden slumped to the ground next to him with an unceremonious thud.

           Name, rank, serial number. Name, rank, serial number.

           He pondered the latter in his mind, 19711125. Like a date far in the future. November 25, 1971.

           Maybe the war would be over by then, and he’d be rich, rich, rich. Filthy rich, living the high life in Manhattan or Palm Springs.

           There were footsteps coming toward him, dozens of them, it felt like.

           Sounds of that filthy pig-Latin German filled the air. He couldn’t tell what was being said, but it didn’t seem to bode well.

           This is it.

           This is where life experience matters.

           Three helmeted men with rifles emerged from the darkness, their boots moving a skip and a half faster than it took Dan’s to get to the hedgerow. Dan went through the proper protocol in his mind.

           Name: Daniel Baines Cooper.

           Rank: First Sergeant, United States Army Air Force.

           Serial number: 19711125.

           In a moment, he was surrounded by the three grim-faced kraut troopers, possibly a component of a larger force patrolling somewhere nearby. Weapons leveled, the de facto leader of the group, a man slightly taller than the others with a ruddy face and a jutting chin, spoke in lightly accented English.

           English is good, Dan thought. Or better than German, anyway.

           “Do you have cigarettes?” he asked.

           Dan didn’t smoke.

           Dan said nothing.

           “Where did you come from?”

           Dan chose protocol—name, rank, serial number. No more.

           “Are you a pilot?”

           Protocol.

           “What was your mission?”

           Protocol. This time, Dan placed vocal emphasis on his rank, in order to make it sound more important than it really was.

           Could that work? It was doubtful at best, a death sentence at worst.

           “What is this device?” the trooper said, pointing to the Norden bombsight.

           Collateral, Dan thought. Now, in this moment, a hundred scenarios presented themselves, all outside of protocol. The big question was whether he had the stones to break pro…

           “It’s a bombsight,” he responded in a voice that could only be characterized as forced confidence.

           The kraut considered this, and lowered his weapon just a hair. Dan spoke again.

           “It’s something that will be very valuable to your kommandant.”

           “Why?”

           “That’s a secret.” Technically, not a lie. Dan hoped that wouldn’t result in a bullet to his forehead.

           The trooper’s eyes widened just a bit, and he turned to his counterpart to his left. His words in his native language, that filthy pig-Latin, included something that Dan had to fight to mask his emotions and maintain a poker face that he had learned while playing the game on lunch breaks during his time at Boeing.

           Norden.

           How could the rank and file know about that?

           “His brother is a pilot in our Luftwaffe,” the lead kraut said. “The Norden bombsight is most prized. You will give it to us, now.”

           There was a cone of silence, then, and Dan fought to resist the urge to run. If he did, he was outgunned, and would be meeting Saint Peter in short order.

           Therefore, he pivoted.

           “Your English is pretty good,” he said. “Where did you learn? In school?”

           “I lived in your state of Montana for many years as a child, before I answered the Fatherland’s call.”

           Now Dan fought the urge to smile, because there was an opening.

           “I’m from Seattle,” he replied, “in Washington. Next to Montana.”

           Now the kraut cracked a smile. Just a bit.

           “I have been to your city many times. You are familiar with the Seattle Rainiers base ball club, ja?”

           Of course. Dan had wanted to play for the Rainiers as a kid.

           “I enjoy base ball, though I am much more a fussball supporter,” the trooper said, almost wistfully, as if he was remembering games on his school’s playground. Maybe, Dan thought, he’s wondering if he’ll return home, either the conquering hero or the defeated dog.

           Like me.

           The trooper adjusted his helmet, lowered his rifle, and said, “Now, what shall we do with you, Herr Seattle?”

           Dan chose not to respond, but instead glanced at the Norden, once again virtually shining golden in the moonlight.

           “If you were able to recover this, and present it to your superiors, then you’d probably get a hefty promotion,” he said. “With that comes the perks of being an officer…money. The best food. Trips home.”

           And almost as an afterthought, he added, “Women.”

           That caught all three krauts’ attention.

           Clearly, it had been a long, long time. Dan sensed an opening and drove further into the gap.

           “This…thing will even the score between you and us, right…?”

           The lead trooper smiled again and replied, “Hans. Though in your country, I went by the name Hank.”

           “Good to know you, Hank…er, Hans.”

           “Why are you willing to surrender the device to us? After all, we are your enemy.”

           Here Dan had to be honest.

           “To save my ass.”

           All of these things Dan reminisced as he settled into his seat on Northwest Orient Flight 305, Portland to Seattle, a 25-minute flight. Up and down. But Dan wasn’t going home.

           It was his anniversary, of sorts, November 25, 1971. The day before Thanksgiving.

           If all went well, today would forever be his Thanksgiving.

           I’m going to be a rich man. I’m going to live in Manhattan, or maybe Palm Springs, Or Hawaii?

           How about Mexico City?

           Yes, that was the one.

           He threw a twenty on his fold-down tray and motioned to the attractive stewardess, about his age, maybe a tad older, a brunette that was well endowed. He wanted a bourbon and 7Up.

           As she took the cash, he pulled out a folded note from his suit coat’s pocket, and handed it to her.

           Probably thinks it’s a pickup try, Dan thought, as the stewardess—nametag said Florence—departed for the drink. A moment later, she was back, but without the drink.

           “Are you kidding?” she said, clutching the crumpled note.

           “No, miss, this is for real.”

           Dan motioned to Florence to sit next to him.

           “Take this down,” he said. “I want two hundred thousand dollars by five p.m., in cash. Put it in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel.

           “No funny stuff.”

           I’m going to be a rich man, he thought, as Florence sauntered off toward the cockpit.

           Rich, rich, rich.