Silver Wings, Iron Cross

by Tom Young

  In better times, the U-351 could have sailed into submarine bases in France—at Lorient or Saint-Nazaire—for repairs. The trip would have been shorter, and during refit, the crew would have enjoyed the fine food, wine, and women of Brittany.

  Once when he’d had a few days off, he’d taken the train into Paris. “The City of Light” hummed along, almost as if no war existed. Vegetables grew in formerly ornamental gardens, and sometimes Wilhelm’s uniform with the eagle on the right breast drew glares. But people strolled the Champs-Élysées and gathered in restaurants in a state of normalcy that Wilhelm found surreal—and in stark contrast to battles raging elsewhere.

  In one of the restaurants, Wilhelm indulged in the luxury of good, hot food. After months of moldy bread and putrid sausages that tasted like oil, even a warm poached egg seemed opulent. But Wilhelm started with a bottle of Chablis and a plate of mussels. He pried open the shellfish as if each one were a gift from heaven—and to his navy palate, they were. Then he ordered pan-seared steak au poivre and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. A woman rose from the bar and came over to his table.

  “That’s a lot of wine,” she said, “even for a sailor. Do you need some help drinking it?”

  Her name was Fia. Dark, flowing hair, red lips, and red nails. Said she worked for her country’s diplomatic corps. She could have worked for the French Resistance, for all Wilhelm knew or cared. Didn’t matter. He told her nothing she couldn’t have read in the papers, spent two blissful nights with her, and returned for more hunting.

  But now the Allies had taken France, and U-boats were on the run. Radar, sonar, aircraft, and new tactics by American and British destroyers had turned predators into prey. The future offered little but death. To survive another patrol, the men of the U-351 would have to beat long, long odds.

  3

  Aerial Armada

  As Karl taxied, music flowed into his headset. He recognized the tune: “Only Forever” by Bing Crosby. At first, he wondered if Baker was screwing around with the radios; Karl started to press his talk switch to order Baker to stop that nonsense. Then he remembered the last time he’d barked at his radio operator for playing music. Baker had explained with offended pride that he tuned only official frequencies—but sometimes civilian channels managed to bleed through. Especially on the ground.

  The line of bombers halted momentarily on the taxiway, and Karl held his toe brakes. Bing continued crooning.

  When did I last hear that song?

  Oh, yeah, he thought. Not a good memory.

  * * *

  “Only Forever” had been playing on the radio the night Karl’s cousin Gerhard tried to talk him out of joining the army. They’d been sitting in the bar of the Hotel Bethlehem, a favorite watering hole for Bethlehem Steel execs. Karl’s and Gerhard’s fathers both worked for Beth Steel—but not as executives. Karl respected his dad’s rough job as a Pennsylvania steelworker. Steel would build a modern America, raise skyscrapers, put a car in every driveway. However, Karl had completed a year of business studies at Penn State, and he dreamed of a leather chair and a window office, of becoming a captain of industry. He wanted to work with his mind instead of his back, and his father approved.

  “It iss de American dream,” Dad said in his thick German accent. “The father vorks the blast furnace in coveralls. The son vorks the office in suit and tie.”

  But when it became clear war was coming, Karl decided to get ahead of the draft board. Volunteer now and maybe get to fly, he figured, or wait for the draft notice and carry a rifle through the mud. The family hated to see him leave school, but his logic made sense to everyone. Except Gerhard.

  “Don’t do this, Karl,” Gerhard said over his stein of Rolling Rock. “This isn’t our fight.”

  “What are you talking about?” Karl asked. “It’s our fight if we get drafted. And we’re gonna get drafted. Just a matter of time.”

  Gerhard took a sip of beer. Set down his stein and wiped foam from his upper lip. He picked up his pack of Luckies from the bar, shook out a cigarette, slipped it into his mouth. Looked around as if worried about strangers listening. Struck a match and lit the cigarette. Gerhard exhaled a long plume of smoke, held the Lucky between two fingers, and spoke in a low voice.

  “Listen,” Gerhard said. “That Jew Roosevelt just wants to help his Communist buddy Stalin. You are a full-blooded German. You and your parents speak German at the dinner table. You have no business fighting your fellow Aryans.”

  The bartender locked eyes with Gerhard, went over to the Philco radio, and turned up the volume on old Bing. Almost as if to cover the conversation.

  Do those two know each other?

  Karl didn’t know what to say. If he had heard such nonsense from anyone else, he’d have gotten up and left. Or told the guy to mind his own damned business. Or told him to go back to Germany if it was so great there.

  But this was Gerhard. Karl had grown up with him. They had played baseball together and caught trout in Pennsylvania’s limestone streams flowing clear as tap water. Maybe Gerhard didn’t really mean it. Maybe he was drunk. Sometimes he said crazy things. Karl knew people who hated Roosevelt so much, they couldn’t think straight. Maybe Gerhard had been listening to them.

  “Gerhard,” Karl said, “anybody can print anything on some silly pamphlet. You can’t believe everything you read.”

  Gerhard took another drag on his cigarette. The bartender lifted a glass from the sink and began drying it. The men down the bar talked of baseball scores and stock prices.

  “I’m not going to be Roosevelt’s cannon fodder,” Gerhard said, “and you don’t need to be, either. If you want to stay out of this draft, I know people who can help.”

  When Gerhard said that, the bartender looked over at Karl. “Only Forever” faded, and the bartender twisted a knob on the Philco to change stations. The radio blipped and crackled until the needle stopped. An announcer intoned: “You can be sure, with Pure. And now, Pure Oil proudly presents America’s most distinguished commentator, H.V. Kaltenborn.”

  Karl ignored the broadcast, but Gerhard listened intently. After a minute or so, Gerhard said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with that man. He ought to be on our side.”

  “Whose side is that?” Karl asked.

  Gerhard spread his arms as if amazed by such a dumb question. Blue smoke curled from the Lucky between the fingers of his left hand.

  “I gotta go, Gerhard,” Karl said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  Gerhard shook his head. Karl drained the last of his beer and left a quarter on the bar. As he left, an attractive couple entered the hotel. The woman wore a fox-fur wrap around her neck and a blue dress that hugged her waist. Normally, Karl would have paid more attention to the woman, but the man wore a navy officer’s uniform with the gold wings of an aviator. The man looked happy.

  I’d be happy, too, Karl thought, with that girl on my arm and those wings on my chest.

  * * *

  That had been just a few years ago. Seemed a lifetime had passed since then. Now Karl had the wings, at least, though they were army silver instead of navy gold. And he had one more mission to fly.

  The lead ship thundered into the air, climbed away as its landing gear retracted. The second aircraft took off thirty seconds later. The 94th was contributing twenty aircraft to the hundred-bomber formation; the rest would come from the 100th, 96th, and 95th Bomb Groups at bases elsewhere in England. With planes lifting off at thirty-second intervals, it would take ten minutes just to get the 94th airborne. Then the formation of all the groups needed to assemble at altitude. The process could take more than an hour.

  Finally, Hellstorm reached the hold-short line near the departure end of the runway. The ship ahead of Hellstorm began its takeoff roll. Black exhaust roiled from its engines. Adrian looked at his watch and said, “Hack.” Karl taxied into the takeoff position. After half a minute ticked by, Adrian said, “Go.”

  With his feet on the brakes, Karl shoved th
e throttles forward. The whole aircraft vibrated with the power of the R-1820s, and the needles inside the instruments began to shudder. When the manifold pressure gauges showed twenty-five inches of pressure, Karl released the brakes. Hellstorm began to accelerate, and Karl pushed the throttles up to forty-six inches.

  “All right, boys,” he said, “she wants to fly.”

  Black tire marks along the pavement slid under the nose. As the aircraft gathered speed, the tire marks melded into a long black streak. When the airspeed indicator reached one hundred miles per hour, Karl eased back on the yoke, and Hellstorm lifted into the air. He tapped the brakes to stop the wheels from rotating, then said, “Gear up.”

  “Gear up,” Adrian said. The copilot reached for the gear handle, and the wheels retracted and locked in the up position.

  Below, the English countryside spread in late-autumn glory. Though past peak color, trees still splashed gold and burgundy along roadways and fence lines. Sheep grazed in a pasture—white dots sprinkled across a green carpet. Haystacks studded fields. Church spires anchored villages. A mule and cart plodded along a dirt path; the farmer looked up and waved.

  Karl could not enjoy the view. The job of forming up required as much concentration as the bomb run over the target. Scores of bombers droning around in close proximity presented a constant danger of collision; more than one crew had died that way. Sweat moistened Karl’s back as he started the assembly procedure.

  He pulled back the power to thirty-five inches and pitched for 150 miles per hour. Rolled into a left turn and climbed at exactly three hundred feet per minute. Hellstorm followed her sister bombers ascending a spiral staircase through the sky.

  With constant glances at the needle of his radio compass, Karl kept the airfield beacon off his left wing as he made several climbing revolutions. Above him, aircraft began to level off.

  “Anybody got the lead ship?” Karl asked on interphone.

  “Two o’clock high,” Pell called from the bombardier’s seat in the nose.

  “There he is,” Adrian said, pointing up and to the right.

  Karl looked where Adrian was pointing. Sure enough, one of the B-17s, tiny at this distance, was firing flares. The flares meant form up on me. Incandescent dots of fire trailed arcs of smoke until the flares burned out and disappeared.

  At ten thousand feet, Karl rolled out of his climbing turn and flew straight and level for a few minutes. “Everybody on oxygen,” he ordered. He clipped on his mask, watched the blinker on his oxygen regulator change from black to white each time he inhaled. Through the interphone, each crew member checked in to confirm he was on oxygen, too.

  Six-plane squadrons formed the basic elements of a combat formation. A formation consisted of lead groups, high groups, and low groups, with each group made up of lead, high, and low squadrons. The aircraft maintained assigned positions to provide mutually supporting fire from their guns. A good tight formation, flown with discipline and precision, made it harder for enemy fighters to attack without getting shot. Many got through, anyway.

  A few miles of straight and level flight gave Karl a breather, but not for long. At a specified bearing on his radio compass, he turned again to continue droning around the beacon. All the while, he watched the location of other aircraft. Fortresses swarmed the English sky, ten lives aboard each machine. One by one, the bombers assembled into squadrons, and squadrons assembled into groups.

  “A lot of steel in the air,” Karl said.

  “Do you suppose your dad poured some of it?” Adrian asked.

  “I’m sure he did. Beth Steel makes most of the military’s airplane cylinder forgings.”

  “Hey, your manifold pressure’s low on engine two.” Adrian pointed to the engine instruments, which were on the copilot’s side of the panel. Karl had just set his power for twenty-eight inches of pressure. He placed his hand on the throttles; they all lined up evenly. But, sure enough, pressure on engine two had crept down to twenty-five inches. Typical of Adrian to catch that; the guy never missed a thing. From all his studying, he knew the airplane almost as well as Fairburn, the flight engineer.

  “Engineer,” Karl called on interphone. “Can you take a look at something for me?”

  “Yes, sir.” Joe Fairburn climbed down from the top gun turret and stood behind Karl and Adrian. The engineer had already donned his heavy leather B-3 jacket against the cold temperatures of altitude.

  “Number two’s running a little weak,” Karl said.

  “Yeah, I heard.” Fairburn peered at the instrument panel. “Let’s see, you got all your mixtures in auto lean. You got all your cowl flaps closed. Fuel pressure looks good, too.”

  “So it’s not anything we’re doing wrong?” Adrian asked.

  Fairburn shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir. The wastegate could be sticking, or maybe the pressure relief valve’s dicked up.”

  “Is it gonna get worse as we climb?” Karl said.

  “Probably.”

  “All right,” Karl said. “Stay right there for a minute. Let me join up, here.”

  At the controls of a heavy bomber, Karl did not have the luxury of focusing on one problem at a time. An aircraft commander constantly prioritized, and Karl’s instructors had drilled into him the top priorities: aviate, navigate, communicate. In that order. Right now, he had to focus on flying the airplane. Assigned to the low squadron’s position number five, he needed to slide in just aft and to the right of ship number four.

  “I think this gaggle’s starting to come together,” Adrian said.

  Ahead, the three nearest bombers had formed up on one another. Aircraft number two flew behind and right of the squadron lead ship, with number three behind and to the left. Though ungainly on the ground, in the air the Fortresses took on an aura of majesty. Guns jutted from the turrets, and fuselages sloped smoothly upward into the vertical stabilizers of the tails. Wings wide like avenging angels, with four whirring propellers that appeared as translucent discs.

  The tail of aircraft number four drew Karl’s attention now. Like all ships of the 94th Bomb Group, it carried a square A on the vertical stabilizer. Karl had a technique for keeping in position: Put that A just behind the forward edge of his side window.

  “Fireball Able Four,” Adrian called on the radio, “Fireball Able Five’s ready to join on you.”

  “You’re cleared in, Five.”

  Karl goosed his throttles for a little more speed. All the manifold pressure needles moved up, with number two still lagging. Fairburn groaned his disapproval at the engine’s performance.

  Suddenly Hellstorm began to bounce and rattle. The ride went from silky smooth to that of a pickup truck on a washboard dirt road. Karl felt himself thrown against his harness straps. Standing behind the pilots’ seats, Fairburn nearly fell. The flight engineer cursed and gripped the seat backs with both hands.

  “There’s the wake turbulence,” Adrian said.

  Yep, Karl thought. It’s probably from the lead ship or from number two. In formation flying, prop wash and wingtip vortices presented an ever-present hassle. Karl pulled back on the yoke slightly, using only his fingertips. Hellstorm climbed forty feet. Enough to smooth out the ride.

  “Thanks, boss.” The Southern-accented voice of Morgan Anders, back at the tail gun. In rough air, the tail gunner had it worst.

  Karl fine-tuned his position as best he could. Descended just a hair and cracked the throttles. The A on Four’s tail slid into its proper place in Karl’s window. He flew close enough that he could see the faces of Four’s tail gunner and right waist gunner. The tail gunner waved.

  “All right, Adrian,” Karl said, “take the plane for me.”

  “Copilot’s aircraft,” Adrian said. He placed one hand on his yoke and the other on the throttles.

  “Talk to me about this engine, Joe,” Karl said.

  “It’s running good, sir. It’s just not making full power. No way to know more until the grease monkeys tear into it.”

  T
hat stubborn number-two manifold pressure needle stayed about three inches lower than the other engines. Karl had a decision to make. Some malfunctions gave you no choice: a runaway prop, a leaking oxygen system, a jammed gun. You never flew into combat with one of those. But this problem fell into a gray area. Worst case, the engine would fail. The Fort could still fly on three engines, but you didn’t want to lose an engine in enemy airspace.

  Some crews had turned back for less—but that was no way to win a war. And you never, ever wanted the other guys to think you were yellow. Still, Karl did not want to fly to Bremen today.

  He looked through the windscreen at the aerial armada gathering around him. Bombers stacked themselves above and below him; he counted thirty airplanes, and those were just the ones he could see. Seventy others would make up this formation: a hundred airplanes and a thousand men, representing the height of American technology and industrial power. Who was he to put his own desires first?

  “Okay, guys, you heard us talking about the engine problem,” Karl said. “Anybody got any input?” The decision was Karl’s alone, but he sought advice from his men whenever possible, if only to gauge their mood.

  “I’d hate to waste these bombs,” Pell called.

  The bombardier had a point. If Hellstorm aborted the mission, it could not land back at base with live bombs on board. Karl would have to fly to the jettison area and drop the bombs in the English Channel.

  “We get this thing done,” navigator Conrad said, “our war ends today.”

  “Y’all gon’ make my fiancée real mad if you keep me here too long,” Anders said. “I got a wedding date. In six weeks.”

  “I got a date, too,” Fairburn said, “in less time than that.”