by Adam Makos
He needed one more bomber victory. Since arriving at Wiesbaden, Franz had shot down three bombers, raising the score on his rudder to twenty-two victories. However, his rudder did not reflect the bonus points for victories over bombers. With bonus points added, his score was 27.* One more bomber victory would push him through “magic 30” and qualify him for the Knight’s Cross.
Willi had scored a bomber that day, a B-24, but did not need the points. A month before, Schroer had hung the Knight’s Cross around Willi’s neck. When Willi told Franz he was leading the squadron home, Franz said to proceed without him. Willi was miffed. He knew it was unlike Franz to push his luck. Franz had always been the cautious one in their duo. Alone, Franz landed to rearm, refuel, and keep fighting.
Meandering from his plane, Franz lit a cigarette in a nearby blast pen to steady his hand. It was bitterly cold although no snow had fallen. Over the speaker system, the Air Defense radio channel blared across the field, announcing the location of bombers over Germany, along with the packs of American fighters that were trying to shepherd them home. Every time the rumble of an engine or the sound of a diving plane echoed from behind the treetops, Franz and the ground crewmen scanned the skies.
Alarmed, the portly sergeant ran to Franz and reported that they had found an American .50-caliber slug in his plane’s radiator. The sergeant suggested they wheel the fighter in for repair, but Franz forbid him to, insisting he was going back up. The sergeant looked at Franz as if he was crazy. He had just given the pilot an “out,” a reason to stay on the ground and a guarantee that he could live to see another day—but instead, the pilot wanted to go back up into the shooting gallery of a cold hell. The sergeant returned to his men and shook his head, unable to understand Franz’s obsession. But to Franz, the Knight’s Cross was more than a bragging right. It was a sign of honor that he had done something good for his people. Franz had seen things the sergeant had not. Franz had seen Hamburg from above—eight blackened miles of city where people had once lived. He had seen small villages flattened as if they had mistakenly fallen in the footsteps of a giant. To Franz, his duty was to the people below whom he could never see but who were looking up to him. If he stopped a heavy bomber from reaching England and coming back to bomb his people, it would be a personal triumph. If they gave him the Knight’s Cross for doing so, the victory would be all the sweeter. As the ground crewmen topped off his fighter, Franz watched the skies and listened to the radio, knowing he needed just three more points, one more bomber.
* * *
* His B-17 on fire and under fighter attack, Walt held the plane steady so his crew could attempt to bail out. His radio operator and both waist gunners escaped before the bomber fell into a spin then exploded. Walt and six of his crewmen were killed.
* Doc would remember, “I felt like a one-armed paper hanger trying to figure out the safest heading home which would not take us over many flak areas.”
† “When the first two fighters came at me and opened fire and I saw the twinkling lights, I knew I had made a mistake by volunteering,” Charlie would remember.
* The problem of the frozen guns, Charlie believed, was due to the guns being too lightly oiled before the mission or because they had been given a coating of contaminated oil that the crew, on their first mission, had not noticed.
* Charlie would remember, “I became angry and forgot that many of the crew were not held in place by belts and, in the case of the waist gunners, they could be thrown or could fall from the aircraft through the open windows.”
† “The silence on the intercom was more terrifying than the sounds of the exploding shells,” Doc would remember.
* One of Franz’s three bomber victories had counted as only two points, instead of the usual three points because another pilot had wounded the plane before Franz destroyed it. This is why he had the equivalent of 27 victories, not 28.
15
A HIGHER CALL
MEANWHILE, ABOVE OLDENBURG, GERMANY
THE PUB DROPPED from the sky in a spin, accelerating as she passed through twenty-two thousand feet… twenty thousand… eighteen thousand….
In the cockpit, gravity pulled Pinky’s limp body against the wall and Charlie across the gap between their seats.
The fall continued to sixteen thousand feet… fourteen thousand… twelve thousand….
Some twenty seconds later the bomber spun through ten thousand feet, where its spiral broke into a nosedive. The plane plunged straight down. At low altitude, the cockpit began to flow with oxygen-rich air. Charlie regained consciousness. Shaking his head he saw the German landscape through his windscreen, rushing closer by the second. The ground was barely a mile below. Pressed back into his seat, Charlie strained for the controls. He gripped them and hauled back.
“Pinky!” Charlie yelled to his unconscious copilot. Pinky still wore his oxygen mask, one that ironically now prevented him from breathing. Charlie reached over and tore the mask from Pinky’s face.
“Damn it, wake up!” Charlie shouted. Pinky began to breathe but remained unconscious.
Charlie toggled the bomber’s flaps to create drag and slow the plunge. Vibrations rattled the bomber, threatening to shake it to pieces. Ahead, Charlie saw that he was diving straight toward a German city.
The altimeter wound backward: 7,000 feet… 6,000… 5,000… Charlie strained with all his might. The trees and homes of the suburbs of Oldenburg came into focus. At three thousand feet, The Pub did something that no B-17 missing a stabilizer should have done. She stopped diving. For reasons inexplicable, her wings began to flutter. The plane flirted with the idea of lift.
Charlie dug his heels into the rudder pedals and pulled back on the yoke with his whole body. The bomber’s wings took bigger bites of the air and surged at the taste. Passing beneath two thousand feet, after falling nearly five miles, the bomber’s wings began flying again. But the plane was still dropping. Charlie’s arms shook.
Just when Charlie was sure The Pub was going to scrape the houses below, her nose lifted to the horizon and she leveled out, blowing leaves from trees and shingles from homes. Charlie had not flown so low over a town since buzzing Weston. The German people below him gazed up in awe, forgetting to run from the green bomber that thundered overhead, rattling their windows.
Charlie took a deep breath and looked over at Pinky. Pinky held his head and glanced out the window at the treetops passing beneath him. “Are we in England?” he asked, groggily.
“Germany,” Charlie said, uninterested in explaining what Pinky had missed. Charlie scanned the skies around the bomber for enemy fighters, expecting them to have followed him down. He saw only emptiness. They’re probably at the bar lifting steins of beer and singing, Charlie thought.* With trepidation, Charlie raised the flaps, afraid the bomber would drop out of the sky without their lift. But she surprised him and kept flying.
Charlie called into his throat mic, “Pilot to navigator.” Then he remembered the mics were out. “Get Doc,” Charlie told Pinky. Pinky unstrapped himself, leaned into the tunnel that ran under the cockpit floor, and shouted for Doc.
Doc emerged in the cockpit. Charlie told him to figure out where they were and establish a course for home. As Doc departed, Charlie shouted behind him, telling him to fetch Andy. Charlie shouted for Frenchy.
Frenchy slowly dropped from his turret and poked his head into the cockpit. He moved shakily and held a gloved hand over his temple where he had smashed his head against his gun butts. Because Frenchy was the plane’s fix-it guy, Charlie had a job for him. “I need a damage report,” Charlie told him.
Frenchy disappeared to check on the plane as Andy climbed into the cockpit. Charlie told Andy to check on the crew.
Frenchy returned shortly. “We’re chewed to pieces,” he said. “The left stabilizer is all but gone. The hydraulics are bleeding from the wings. There’s holes in the fuselage big enough to climb through, and up front the nose is open to the sky. I don’t know how Doc can work with his
charts whipping all over the place.” Charlie saw Frenchy wincing and barely able to stand, so he told him to go lie down in the waist with the others. Frenchy insisted on staying near his guns. He sat down against a bulkhead beneath his turret.
Doc came up from below and handed Charlie a map. Pointing, Doc showed Charlie that they were northwest of Oldenburg. The fastest way out of Germany, he explained, was to fly north thirty-five miles to the sea. Charlie looked up and saw turbulent, billowing clouds rising ahead, where Doc’s map said the coast should lie. Doc had drawn the course in red pencil. The route was fine by Charlie, but he saw a new problem. Along the coastline, the map showed countless concentric red rings, each identifying a flak battery. They were strung along the entire coast.
“Is there any gap through the guns?” Charlie asked.
“Nope, they overlap,” Doc said. “It’s one of the heaviest-defended flak zones in all of Germany.”
The Germans had given a name to their fortified coastline that stretched from France to Germany then up to Norway: “the Atlantic Wall.” Its defenses were especially strong where they guarded the homeland, to prevent an amphibious assault. Charlie shook his head. On one good engine, two rough ones, and a nose full of drag, the bomber was lucky to be pulling 135 miles per hour, just above its stall speed.
As Doc departed, Charlie stopped him. “Tighten your chute,” Charlie said. Doc nodded.
Andy found Jennings seated against the fuselage wall by the left waist gun, cradling Russian in his lap with Pechout at his side. Russian’s eyes were closed. His mangled lower leg jutted at a right angle to his thigh. Blood was everywhere on the walls and covering the floor.
“Is he dead?” Andy asked.
“No, the freezing air stopped the bleeding,” Jennings said. “But I need help putting a tourniquet on him.”
Andy saw the pine trees of northern Germany through holes in the right fuselage wall, where the shells had entered that hit Russian.
Andy knelt by Pechout, who muttered an incoherent greeting.
“Where’s Blackie?” Andy asked.
Jennings said that Blackie was back in his turret, checking if his guns had thawed.
Andy moved toward the rear of the bomber.
“Don’t go there,” Jennings told him. “Ecky’s dead.”
Andy heeded his advice. Wheeling, he hurried to the cockpit to report to Charlie.
“It’s like an operating room back there,” Andy said, as he described the casualties. “Everyone’s out of it.”
Charlie instructed Andy to go back and ensure that the others were wearing flak jackets, helmets, and parachutes. Andy looked confused. “We’re approaching the coastal flak,” Charlie told him. “We’re going to try to barrel through it.” Andy started to say something, but no words came out. Pinky’s cheeks could not have sagged further with a look of dread. Andy hurried from the cockpit to retrieve his flak vest.
But there was an error in Doc’s course that neither he nor Charlie had spotted. When Doc drew their course on the violently convulsing map, he was so fixated on the flak rings that he had failed to see that the course he drew would dodge the village of Jever, but not its German airfield.
FRANZ HEARD THE bomber before he saw it. The ground crewmen had just strapped in a fresh belt of 20mm cannon shells and slammed shut his fighter’s engine cowling when a low drone emanated from south of the field, drawing everyone’s attention. There, several miles away, a B-17 flew toward them, so slow and so low it looked like it was coming in to land. The drone grew louder and deeper, like the thundering of a thousand bass drums. The sergeant’s eyes lit up. Franz flicked away his cigarette and climbed up the wing into his plane. The ground crewmen yanked the fuel lines. Tossing on his straps, Franz made a twirling motion with an outstretched finger, and two crewmen cranked the engine over. As the revolutions climbed, Franz tugged the starter lever and ignited his fighter’s engine.
Franz and the others watched, their mouths agape, as the bomber skirted the base and disappeared behind the trees. Franz knew the bullet was in his radiator and could have caused the engine to overheat at any minute. He did not care. Franz throttled forward and the ground crew scrambled out of his way. Franz saluted the portly sergeant. Without stopping for clearance from the tower, Franz fast-taxied to the runway and blasted off toward the bomber, in pursuit of his Knight’s Cross.
PINKY HAD BEEN stewing ever since Charlie told Andy to gather parachutes for the men. Finally, Pinky blurted, “You know we’re never going to make it!” Charlie focused impassively on the horizon. He knew Pinky was right. One hit from a flak shell or even a near miss would shake the bomber from the sky.
“Should we jump?” Pinky asked.
“Russian won’t survive if he lands in the woods,” Charlie said.
Pinky nodded.
“There’s another option,” Charlie said. “Go deliver a message to the men. I’m going to try to fly back to England but anyone who wants to bail out has my permission.”
Pinky agreed. Charlie and Pinky both knew that a P.O.W. camp would be preferable to being blown apart by flak or ditching in an icy sea. As Pinky departed, Charlie put a hand onto his copilot’s shoulder. “I’m going to give us some altitude,” Charlie said. “If anyone wants to jump, it needs to be right now.”
Pinky departed as Charlie pulled back on the stick to climb. The Pub resisted at first, content to fly level and low. Charlie tugged harder. The bomber climbed, slowly, straining through two thousand feet, where Charlie felt the plane begin to shake. Leveling off, he saw the cold, gray coastline in the distance.
Charlie knew his odds had been better down along the treetops. At least there the flak gunners would have had a tougher time aiming at him. But he had made his choice, to sacrifice himself and Russian if need be, to allow seven men to jump.
Charlie held the bomber steady and waited for his men to hit the silk. To Charlie his decision was not heroic—it was his job as their leader. In his mind, the rest of his men still had a chance to live.
BEHIND THE PUB, Franz’s 109 appeared, a small black spec racing above the forests. Climbing up from the treetops, Franz began his attack run.
In his ball turret, curled around his guns, Blackie eyed the coast ahead, a finish line and invisible fence he longed to clear. He never considered that a firing squad of flak guns lay there. Nor did Blackie have any idea that his buddies in the fuselage above him were debating whether or not to bail out. Instead, he worked the triggers of his frozen guns, squeezing them, hoping the guns would thaw. They made a dull clicking sound.
Remembering his duty, Blackie spun his turret to watch for enemy fighters. He planned to bluff them if they attacked. He stopped his spin when his guns faced the tail.
“Dear Jesus,” he muttered. There, a mile away, a 109 was climbing straight for him.* Soon the 109 had climbed above Blackie’s line of sight. Blackie wanted to shout, but his microphone was dead. He wanted to slap his turret to summon his buddies’ attention, but no one would have heard him. He was alone.
Franz saw the bomber’s ball turret aim toward him so he climbed even with the bomber’s tail, above the ball turret’s line of sight. Because the bomber was alone, without the overlapping guns of a formation to protect it, Franz decided to attack it from behind. He throttled back to steady his approach and avoid overflying the slow, wounded machine. He worked the rudder and settled his Revi gun sight on the bomber’s tail, where he knew a tail gunner sat with two guns aiming back at him. He hovered his gloved index finger ahead of the trigger. Whoever fired first and straightest, Franz decided, was the man meant to live.
Franz squinted and aimed through his gun sight. He lowered his finger onto the trigger, a pound of pressure away from igniting the guns. When the bomber’s thin wings spread past the ring of his gun sight, Franz narrowed his eyes on the tail gun position, looking for the blink of his opponent’s guns. But nothing happened.
Something’s wrong, Franz thought when he saw the tail guns pointing lifeless
ly to earth. His eyes fixed on the bomber’s left stabilizer. He realized it had been shot away. “My God,” he muttered. “How are you still flying?” When the bomber’s wings filled his windscreen, Franz knew it was time to shoot. His finger arched on the trigger, ready to squeeze. But still the tail guns pointed silently downward.
From a hundred yards away, Franz saw the tail gunner’s position and knew why the nearly four-foot-long guns had never been raised. Shell fragments had obliterated the compartment. The glass was missing from its windows. Nursing his throttle back to match the bomber’s speed, Franz settled in behind the tail. He saw fist-sized holes on one side of the tail gunner’s position where 20mm shells had entered. On the other side, he saw where they had burst, peeling the bomber’s skin outward.
Then Franz spotted him, the tail gunner. With the rudder’s frayed fabric silently flapping overhead, Franz saw the gunner’s fleece collar red with blood. Inching closer to a plane’s length from the bomber, Franz saw the gunner’s blood frozen in icicles where it had streamed down the barrels. Franz lifted his finger from the trigger.
There, floating behind the B-17, Franz looked at the bomber with the curiosity of his boyhood, a time when he would run from his house at the sound of an airplane. In a rush of long-dormant emotions, Franz forgot he was a German fighter pilot.
Franz had seen planes come back from battle shot to pieces. But he had never seen anything like this. Every foot of the bomber’s metal had silver holes where the bullets had entered and flaked away the paint. Franz became entranced with wonder. Kicking his rudder pedal and nudging the throttle forward a bit, Franz swung his 109 past the tail and flew along the bomber’s right side, parallel to the fuselage.