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Golden Gate Bridge. Dyess, like many of those gathered on the ship’s afterdeck watching the ocean darkness swal ow San Francisco, had no idea where he was leading his squadron. His orders gave his destination as “PLUM.” Some pilots were certain that the Coolidge would drop anchor in Trinidad. Jack Donohoe, a mechanic in the 21st Pursuit, firmly believed that the squadron was headed to Jamaica. At Pearl Harbor, the Coolidge coupled with another transport and a Navy cruiser escort to resume its journey. The blacked-out convoy had wended along its westward course for several days when the men final y learned their secret destination; someone had correctly deciphered PLUM as an acronym for Philippines-Luzon-Manila.
    As the Coolidge ’s smokestacks poured smoke into the air across the Pacific, several pilots, Sam Grashio included, sat in on discussions headed by recent graduates of the National War Col ege. The Japanese, declared the officers, would not be so stupid as to start a war they would surely lose within a few weeks. The pilots were convinced that the Japanese were Lil iputians who could not hope to prevail over the industrial might of the United States.
    The reasons by which Americans had assured themselves of a quick victory were numerous and absurd: Japanese pilots possessed poor eyesight and could not fly their shoddy planes proficiently; the Japanese soldier’s standard-issue .25 caliber rifle couldn’t stop an American adversary; Japanese ships, with their pagoda superstructures, could barely float. A victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 had heralded Japan’s arrival as a world power, but the U.S. military establishment, as wel as Americans in general, remained unimpressed. Few knew that Japan had never lost a war and that the sacred home islands had not been threatened since a pair of failed invasions in the late thirteenth sacred home islands had not been threatened since a pair of failed invasions in the late thirteenth century by Kublai Khan’s Mongol hordes.
    As Colonel George explained in his Nichols Field briefing, the AAF pilots were in peril. He concluded with an estimate of the number of planes that would be necessary to defend the Philippines—five to eight pursuit groups , of which Nichols Field had only one. “We were shocked,” Dyess would say. Everyone, that is, except for Sam Grashio. Grashio sidled up to Dyess as the latter strode urgently toward the hangars. He had a mischievous smile on his face and a betting proposition for his commanding officer.
    “I’l bet you five pesos that there wil be no war with Japan,” said Grashio, echoing the smug words of the officers he had listened to traveling on the Coolidge . “What do you say, Lieutenant?”
    “I say you’re on, Sam, and I’l lay another five down that the war wil begin within a week.”
    At 0445 on Monday morning, Grashio had just fal en back asleep when he heard the officer of the day banging on the doors again. The pilots of the 21st Pursuit had been roused from their bunks a little more than two hours earlier, only to rush to Nichols Field where an enigmatic Ed Dyess spoke of an emergency, then ordered them back to their quarters. This time, the knocks were fol owed by a command: “Get dressed! Pearl Harbor has been attacked!”
    Within minutes, Grashio and the other groggy, half-dressed pilots assembled in the operations tent at Nichols Field. Silhouetted by the glow of a blacked-out gas lantern, Dyess confirmed the sensational news of Japan’s surprise attack on the other side of the International Dateline and then ordered them into their new P-40Es—so new that none of the eighteen planes had logged more than two hours of flying time. Four, in fact, had never even been in the air.
    With throbbing hearts and dry mouths, they clambered into their cockpits. As the sounds of whirring propel ers and clicking parachute harnesses floated along the flight line in the predawn darkness, Grashio somberly reflected