by Adam Makos
A short time later, two green flashes streaked from behind the bomber and ripped past Charlie’s window with a roar. Startled, Charlie ducked his neck into his shoulders. “Fighters!” he shouted in alarm, assuming the worst. Pinky leaned forward, wide-eyed, to catch a glimpse. Frenchy turned to run for his turret, then stopped when he remembered he had tossed his guns. He returned to the pilots’ seatbacks and ducked behind them.
The fighters held their course, racing ahead of the bomber. Charlie could not tell whose side they were on because their markings were hidden from behind. Then Charlie saw the fighters crossing in front of the bomber, their olive-colored flanks and wings revealing big white stars set within the blue circles of the American Army Air Forces.
“Little friends!” Frenchy screamed into Charlie’s ear. Charlie turned, perturbed until he saw a wide grin on Frenchy’s tough face and his deep-set eyes alight like a kid’s. Charlie realized Frenchy was still deaf from his own gunfire.
The fighters were P-47 Thunderbolts of the 8th Air Force. They circled and disappeared from Charlie’s sight. The next time he saw them they had pulled up on his left wing, where they flew formation with him.
The planes had sharp spines that led from the cockpit to the tail and gave them another nickname, “Razorbacks.” Their white noses were dirty from oil that streaked their gray bellies and dotted the tall white unit letters on their flanks. Silver metal peeked from weathered spots in the planes’ olive skin. Charlie had never seen such beautiful machines. Through the canopy, Charlie saw the closest pilot smiling. His goggles were tipped up on his forehead and his oxygen mask dangled below his chin. He waved confidently. Afraid to let go of the yoke, Charlie unlocked his left hand, finger by finger, and waved quickly, forcing a timid smile. Charlie grabbed the yoke again as fast as he had let go. Pinky waved, too, with two hands.
The P-47 pilot pointed to his headset, a signal to ask if Charlie had radio communications. Charlie shook his head. The P-47 pilot understood and flashed Charlie a thumbs-up. The fighter pilot looked forward. Turning back to Charlie, he pointed ahead. Charlie looked through the windshield and his jaw dropped. He squinted and leaned forward. There, in the center of the horizon, was a small swath of land catching sun through a break in the clouds. It looked like a small island. Slowly the island seemed to stretch wider and wider as the clouds above it spread open, allowing more sun to reveal the beautiful green pastures of England. Pinky grinned. Frenchy clutched Charlie’s and Pinky’s shoulders. Charlie tapped his Bible in thanks.
The P-47 pilot saluted Charlie and raced ahead with his wingman. Minutes later, The Pub passed over the rugged, stony English coastline at 250 feet, rumbling low enough over a fishing village to see sailors lowering their sails and men in the cobblestone streets headed for drinks after a day at sea.
Inside the bomber’s cockpit, Charlie began to breathe again. But the bomber was still sinking. As it passed through two hundred feet, Charlie told Frenchy to get Doc out of the nose and to tell the others to prepare to crash-land. Frenchy departed as Charlie looked for a soft field. Every field he saw seemed small and laced with stone fences. Frenchy emerged from the nose and said that Doc had refused to leave and was going to find them an airfield. Charlie told Frenchy there was no time for that. Then he saw them. The two P-47s were ahead and to his left, circling at one thousand feet.
“Are they trying to tell us something?” Charlie asked aloud. He did not wait for Frenchy’s or Pinky’s reply. Charlie muscled the sluggish controls and turned toward the fighters. Passing just above a thick grove of trees, he saw what the circling fighters were trying to show him. Below them, lay the smooth gray runway of an airfield.
“Flash them the landing lights!” he told Pinky. He knew the P-47 pilots were watching. Charlie focused on the two-thousand-foot runway, just three miles out to the southwest. Banking to line up his approach, Charlie reached forward and flipped the toggle for the landing gear. He looked to the instrument that showed the silhouette of the bomber and waited for three green lights to appear. But the bulbs remained clear. Charlie tried to lower the flaps, too, but they were frozen. Charlie knew the hydraulics had bled out. Frenchy saw what was happening. “I’m on it,” he said, and departed to crank the gear and flaps down by hand.
Charlie told Pinky to cut engine four just before touchdown so it would not run wild and careen the plane out of control. The aim was to try to land a four-motor plane on an engine and a half. Charlie slipped off his gloves to better grip the yoke. Ahead the runway seemed to swell. From his window, he watched the left landing gear slowly descend and lock down. Frenchy popped back into the cockpit to report that the gear on both sides was down but the flaps were frozen. Charlie told Frenchy to fire the emergency flare and then get everyone into the radio room to brace for a crash.
AT THE AMERICAN air base of Seething, the airmen of the 448th Bomb Group formed a crowd around the tower. They had poured from their quarters and hangouts when they heard the P-47s circling overhead. Now they watched the damaged B-17 shakily descending from the distance.
The men of the 448th had been in eastern England just a month and had yet to enter combat. Their green B-24s ringed the base in hardstands where mechanics stopped their work and stood atop the planes’ high-mounted wings. Alerted by the P-47s’ radio calls, the base’s fire trucks and “Meat Wagon” ambulances pulled up along the runway. Everyone was somber and quiet as they listened to the bomber laboring toward the earth.
FROM THE CEILING window in the radio room, Frenchy fired red flares, alerting the emergency responders that the bomber contained wounded men. The Pub wobbled, drifting faster with her gear down, passing below seventy-five feet then fifty feet. Charlie told Pinky “Now!” and Pinky cut engine four. Charlie gently pulled on the yoke, keeping the bomber’s nose up as she settled to earth.
The bomber flared then stalled as her front tires kissed the concrete with a breath of smoke. The Pub raced along the runway, her tail up and wings level with the ground, as if trying to show the onlookers that she had landed on her own accord and undefeated. Finally the bomber’s tail wheel dropped to earth and slowed her roll. The emergency vehicles chased the bomber. From the tower, airmen and officers boarded jeeps and raced after the ambulances.
Charlie and Pinky mashed the plane’s spongy brakes, and The Pub graciously complied, coasting to a slow stop, her propellers still wheeling. Charlie and Pinky pulled back the throttle and turbocharger levers. They flicked off the fuel switches and the engines stopped. Charlie leaned back and put a hand over his Bible. Pinky leaned forward and buried his head on the yoke. Frenchy entered the cockpit and saw the pilots sitting in silence. He left them alone. It was nearly 3:30 P.M. The crew and The Pub had completed their first mission together.
PINKY DEPARTED THE bomber first, swinging his feet through the hatch in the nose. Charlie followed him. The seasoned pilot who dropped down to the tarmac was different from the nervous boy who had boarded The Pub that morning. Charlie’s hair was matted and his eyes were glassy. Blood from his nosebleed covered his mouth and yellow life preserver. He looked ten years older.
When Charlie’s feet hit the concrete, he found that his legs were wobbly. Unable to support his own weight, Charlie staggered a few steps and collapsed under the bomber’s nose. Seething smelled like the nearby ocean, and he sat on the tarmac, breathing in the cool sea air. Charlie knew his men were being cared for. He had seen dozens of people congregating around the bomber’s rear door. His mind turned fuzzy. His eyes focused ahead, but he saw nothing. A tall, lanky second lieutenant who resembled a young Gary Cooper approached and knelt at Charlie’s level. He wore a leather jacket like a pilot’s, but he was not a flyer. His name was Second Lieutenant Bob Harper and he was the base’s assistant intelligence officer.
“Lieutenant? You okay?” Harper asked, shaking Charlie’s arm.
Charlie turned to face Harper. “What a hell of a way to start a war,” Charlie said.
Harper nodded.
“What a hell of a way to start a war,” Charlie repeated.
Harper hollered for a medic. When the medic came, Harper moved rearward to help the more seriously wounded men. Pinky and Frenchy stood behind the medic, concerned about Charlie. The medic wanted Charlie to lie on a stretcher, but he protested.
Shaking himself from his stupor, Charlie wiped the blood from his face and slowly stood to convince the medic he was not wounded. He told the medic he had been hit by fatigue, nothing more.
The medic noticed the blood on Charlie’s shoulder from the bullet fragment. Charlie knew the rule that a wound meant he would be grounded for at least three days. Pinky and Frenchy knew it, too, and realized they might get stuck flying with a lesser pilot if Charlie acknowledged his wound.
“It’s just a scratch,” Charlie told the medic. But the medic insisted he could see a hole in Charlie’s jacket. Charlie cut him off and told him to go look after the crew. Pinky and Frenchy grinned with relief. Charlie whispered that one of them would have to help fish out the bullet shard later.
His strength renewed, Charlie stumbled under the bomber’s nose and back toward its rear exit. He stayed out of the way as medics steadied Pechout and Blackie and helped them into the back of an ambulance that whisked them away. Four airmen carried Russian out on a stretcher and slid him onto the floor of another ambulance. Charlie looked inside and saw that Russian was unconscious. “Will he make it?” Charlie asked a medic who hunched over the gunner. The medic made no promises but indicated that they had stabilized him.
At the bomber’s rear door, airmen reverently passed the stretcher containing Ecky’s body to waiting hands outside the plane. A blanket covered Ecky, but not his small flying boots that pointed skyward. The stretcher bearers loaded Ecky into the ambulance with Russian then slammed the vehicle’s double doors. Charlie watched the ambulance drive away.
One of the stretcher bearers wore a leather pilot’s jacket and wiped his bloody hands on his pants as he approached Charlie. He was an older man with silver hair and a small mustache that gave his strong face a dashing quality. He introduced himself as the 448th’s commander, Colonel Jim Thompson. Thompson asked Charlie if he was the pilot, and Charlie said he was. The colonel laid a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Son, your men are okay, you did your job. What can we do for you?”
Charlie saw Pinky, Frenchy, and the others tossing their flight gear into jeeps. He knew he had to call Kimbolton and probably attend a debriefing. But something more important was on his mind.
“Sir, I’d just like to use the bathroom,” Charlie said. “I’ve been holding it for eight hours.”
ACROSS THE NORTH SEA, JEVER AIRFIELD
Some twenty minutes after his encounter with the B-17, Franz landed at Bremen Airport to have his radiator changed. He wanted to get home to Wiesbaden but also knew he could not risk catastrophic engine failure on the flight there. He had chosen Bremen Airport over Jever Field to avoid questions about his encounter with the American bomber. Franz knew from the moment he had peeled away from the bomber that he had committed a dangerous act. He could not tell anyone the truth—he had helped the enemy escape. If anyone pinned him to that act, he knew he would face a firing squad. People in Germany had been killed for far less. The prior June, a woman had been executed for telling a joke during a break from work at a munitions factory. Her crime was to say:
“Hitler and Goering are standing atop the Berlin radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on Berliners’ faces. So Goering says: ‘Why don’t you jump?’”
That was it. Someone overheard her tell that joke and turned her in. The fact that the woman was a war widow made no difference. Hitler’s “Blood Judge,” Roland Freisler, ordered her to be killed for violating the Subversion Law. 1
Franz wanted to get as far from the scene of his crime as possible. He asked a mechanic to get to work on his plane so he could fly home that night.
“You won’t be going anywhere,” the mechanic said. “This will take hours.” Reluctantly, Franz prepared to stay the night. If the Gestapo came looking for a pilot who had let a B-17 escape, Franz would play dumb and pray for the best. His fate, he knew, was in God’s hands.
Franz headed for the tower to call Wiesbaden. On the way he saw a small Fieseler Storch observation plane in a hangar, its high wing and ungainly long landing gear giving it the look of an insect. Franz was eager to escape the base, even for a few hours. After reporting his status to Wiesbaden, he got permission from the Storch’s pilot to borrow the plane. He lifted off and flew northwest of Bremen. There, he scanned the countryside, looking for the crash site of the B-17 he was sure he had downed earlier. He spotted the bomber in a farmer’s field. Franz wondered what had happened to the pilots—did the farmer have them in his barn waiting for the military to pick them up? Or worse, had he called the Gestapo? Franz decided to investigate, to ensure that the men had been treated with civility.
Franz knew the Storch could operate from rough, unfinished airstrips, so he assumed the farmer’s field would be no problem. He eased the plane down toward the earth, aiming to land alongside the crashed B-17. But Franz’s mind was back at Jever, wondering if the Gestapo would be waiting for him when he returned to the base. He failed to notice that the farmer’s field was deeply furrowed. The Storch touched down, caught a furrow, and nosed over, its wooden propeller snapping away. Franz emerged unhurt and shook his head as he looked over the wrecked plane, cursing his luck.
The farmer who owned the field ran to his aide. He informed Franz that the entire crew had been taken prisoner by the German Air Force. Franz breathed a sigh of relief. He knew the Air Force would treat the American pilots fairly. A captive Allied airman made a tempting candidate for a lynching by mobs of civilians displaced from their cities, or German farmers if their livestock had been strafed by fighters. Worst of all were the SS, whose capacity for mercy was epitomized by the death’s head insignia on their black caps.
In seeking out his enemy to guarantee their safe conduct, Franz’s actions were not exceptional. Somehow, even during the destruction of their homeland, many pilots of the German Air Force continued a style of chivalry similar to that of the desert. No longer did they seek out their downed opponents to talk with them; now they sought them out to save their lives. Since German pilots often did battle over their bases, they would often land, grab a driver, and hurry to locate their downed opponents to ensure their protection before their countrymen could reach them.*
Using the Storch’s radio, Franz called Jever Field for a ride. Franz explored the downed B-17 as he waited for his lift. As Franz sat on the wing of the downed bomber, his thoughts raced to the bomber he had escorted out of Germany. He wondered if its crew were alive, kissing the tarmac and hugging one another in relief. Or were they floating in a raft in the North Sea, or on the bottom of the ocean in their Four Motor tomb? Their fate mattered to him. He could not get the thought out of his mind: Was it worth it?
AT THE SAME TIME, SEETHING AIRFIELD
After a bathroom break and nap in the tower, Charlie asked Colonel Thompson for permission to visit The Pub. Thompson agreed. He told Charlie he had notified Kimbolton of the crew’s predicament. The 379th was sending a B-17 in an hour or two to take them home.
The sun was setting behind withered trees when Thompson drove Charlie west across the field to a hardstand where ground personnel had towed the bomber. Airmen milled around the plane, examining its damage with awe, some snapping pictures. Charlie and Thompson circled the bomber, marveling in the same way. In the soft, waning glow of the sun behind her, The Pub looked defiant as she stood on her own legs.
A mechanic walking the plane’s wing drew Charlie and Thompson’s attention to the number three engine. He had made a discovery. A 20mm round had blown off the top of the fuel tank but never ignited the fuel. At the tip of the right wing, Charlie looked up through the hole where the 88 shell had passed through, leaving a gap the size of a softball. Charlie and Thompson stoppe
d at the tail section. Someone had draped a tarp across it to hide the sight of the deceased gunner’s blood. Charlie told Thompson that his gunner, Ecky, had been looking forward to the base Christmas party that night.
Circling farther, Charlie saw the stub of the horizontal stabilizer and shook his head. Looking up at the remaining half of the rudder, he saw that all but one of the rudder’s control cables had been severed.*
Their inspection completed, Thompson told Charlie he was going to recommend medals for the entire crew, including Charlie.
He said he had one last question.
“Why didn’t you hit the silk over Germany?”
“Sir, I had a man who was too injured to jump.”
“So you and your crew stayed for just one man?”
“Yes, sir,” Charlie said and nodded. To him it was that simple. They had fought for one another from a Texas bar to the skies of Bremen. They knew they were stronger together than apart.
THOMPSON DROVE CHARLIE to Lieutenant Harper’s office, a brick building south of the tower. There, Harper was set to debrief Charlie. Charlie and Thompson shook hands and parted alongside Thompson’s jeep. Charlie had come to quickly admire Thompson, who was fatherly in his leadership style, compared to Preston, who was more like a big brother or a big man on campus.†
Harper welcomed Charlie into his cozy office. The room’s brick walls had been freshly painted white, and the windows had been covered with tan paper to block light from escaping. A potbelly stove sat in the room’s corner. From the ceiling hung small black airplane models that Harper said he used in teaching aircraft recognition to bomber and anti-aircraft gunners.
Harper sat behind his desk and motioned for Charlie to sit across from him. He opened a file and admitted that the interrogation would be his first, since his unit had yet to see battle. Charlie asked if Harper would be calling in the others, and Harper said there was no time because their ride was due shortly. “You can speak for your crew,” he told Charlie.