One day they're 20-something aviators, spending hundreds of hours together, helping each other get a B-17 warplane through training and World War II missions and safely from the U.S. to Europe and back.

The next time they see each other, they're still in one piece. But the pieces - and the hair color and smooth faces - have changed.

Em Swanson, 80, of Bismarck, and Ernest Mabe, 86, of Georgia, got together again for the first time in almost 60 years when Mabe got off an airplane in Bismarck on Tuesday afternoon.

Mabe was wearing dark navigator sunglasses and casual sportswear crisp enough to pass inspection. Swanson, a retired Bismarck High School principal, had a similar fashion look. But the hair is gray, and someone's hearing is failing.

Long before Swanson spent a lot of his life here as an educator and city commission member, a few chapters before all that, he was a dark-haired 20-year-old navigator, navigating by the stars in the days before modern methods to help his pilot, Mabe. The two had a mutual admiration society.

But after the war, they lost touch. For decades.

Enter the Internet.

For years, Swanson had talked about Mabe, said his wife, Ardys Swanson. So about a year ago, Ardys Swanson typed Mabe's name into the Internet and found a message that Mabe was looking for his B-17 crew members.

Of the dozen or so crew members, so far, they've only found each other.

Swanson had great admiration for Mabe, a pilot with the ability to skin his way through any problem, it seemed. Off the plane, Mabe, his superior, became just another buddy in the off hours.

"He was just a prince of a fellow, very dependable," Em Swanson said. "We had situations, he got us out of problems."

Swanson recalled the day that an engine caught on fire, then a second engine. The nearest runway, too short for a B-17, had to be used for a landing. Mabe's skills made the runway work. He used about every inch of it, but got the plane down safely.

Mabe remembers his navigator Swanson, about age 20, with so much responsibility for such a young lad.

"He did his job perfectly," Mabe said. "He got us halfway around the world."

Mabe, who left his war-time duties to become a businessman and family man, had a surprise for Swanson. He had kept Swanson's navigational watch all these years, the one that helped them get to England, get them through missions and back. Set to Greenwich Standard Time, if it was off a second, they were off a mile.

But it was still ticking Tuesday like it meant business - in its shiny cared-for black shell.

Just like the two men who once depended on it.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com)