Kid Sampson and McWatt

Kid Sampson and McWatt are two pilots in Yossarian's squadron whose fates are intertwined by McWatt's reckless flying. Kid Sampson is sliced in half by McWatt's propeller during a low-altitude buzz of the beach, and McWatt, overwhelmed by guilt, deliberately flies his plane into a mountain. Their deaths, along with the subsequent raising of the required missions, deepen Yossarian's trauma and despair.

Kid Sampson and McWatt: The Reckless Pilot and His Victim

McWatt is a short-legged, wide-shouldered, smiling young pilot who whistles show tunes and loves flying. He is described as the craziest combat man of them all because he is perfectly sane and still does not mind the war. He gets a big boot out of buzzing his plane over Yossarian's tent or roaring in so low over the bathers at the beach that the fierce wind from his propellers slashes dark furrows in the water. Kid Sampson is a twenty-four-year-old fighter-pilot captain with a sparse golden mustache and an angular, comical face. He had been shot into the Adriatic Sea in midwinter and not even caught cold. He is a pilot in Yossarian's squadron, and Yossarian once flew with him on the mission to Bologna, where Yossarian faked an intercom failure to force Kid Sampson to turn back.

The Accident: McWatt's Propeller Slices Kid Sampson

One day, McWatt is flying a training flight with two new pilots. He edges the belly of the plane just over the crest of mountains and then, instead of maintaining altitude, follows the falling land down as fast as the plane will go, skimming over each rocky rise and dip. Later, he buzzes the beach, where Kid Sampson is on the raft. McWatt's plane comes blasting suddenly into sight out of the distant stillness and hurtles mercilessly along the shore line with a great growling, clattering roar over the bobbing raft. Kid Sampson, his naked sides scrawny even from so far away, leaps clownishly up to touch it at the exact moment some arbitrary gust of wind or minor miscalculation of McWatt's senses drops the speeding plane down just low enough for a propeller to slice him half away. There is the briefest, softest tsst! filtering audibly through the shattering, overwhelming howl of the plane's engines, and then there are just Kid Sampson's two pale, skinny legs, still joined by strings somehow at the bloody truncated hips, standing stock-still on the raft for what seems a full minute or two before they topple over backward into the water. Kid Sampson has rained all over. Those who spy drops of him on their limbs or backs draw back with terror and revulsion.

McWatt's Suicide: Flying into a Mountain

Back at the squadron, everyone already knows. Men in uniform are screaming and running, or standing motionless in one spot, rooted in awe, like Sergeant Knight and Doc Daneeka as they gravely crane their heads upward and watch the guilty, banking, forlorn airplane with McWatt circle and circle slowly and climb. McWatt keeps climbing higher and higher, nosing his droning airplane upward evenly in a slow, oval spiral. He is soon up over five thousand feet. A white parachute pops open suddenly in a surprising puff. A second parachute pops open a few minutes later and coasts down. The plane continues south for thirty seconds more, following the same pattern, familiar and predictable now, and McWatt lifts a wing and banks gracefully around into his turn. Yossarian understands suddenly why McWatt won't jump, and goes running uncontrollably down the whole length of the squadron after McWatt's plane, waving his arms and shouting up at him imploringly to come down, McWatt, come down; but no one seems to hear, certainly not McWatt, and a great, choking moan tears from Yossarian's throat as McWatt turns again, dips his wings once in salute, decides oh, well, what the hell, and flies into a mountain.

Aftermath: Trauma and Escalation

Colonel Cathcart is so upset by the deaths of Kid Sampson and McWatt that he raises the missions to sixty-five. Yossarian is haunted by the memory of Kid Sampson's skinny legs bloating and decaying in the icy rain and wet sand. The accident deepens Yossarian's trauma, adding to the roll call of dead men he knows: Kraft, Clevinger, Orr, Dobbs, Kid Sampson, McWatt, Snowden. The deaths of Kid Sampson and McWatt, along with the subsequent raising of the required missions, contribute to Yossarian's growing despair and his eventual refusal to fly more missions.