The German jets had flown a wide circle away from the airfield and then back, drifting lower while slowing down in preparation to land. As they came out of the orbit and headed straight for the runway, Tommy and Dugan were right where they wanted to be—slightly above and with a bit more speed—so they could pounce on the Messerschmitts during their final approach to the runway.
The Germans passed obligingly before them, flying right to left across the jugs’ noses. Remembering their encounter with the Arados, Tommy told Dugan, “Hang way back. He may break hard on me trying to get away. That should give you a chance to take him.”
They turned hard left to close in on the Germans’ tails.
Tommy waited as the trailing 262 quickly filled his gunsight reticle. It would be an easy kill…
Provided the German kept flying straight ahead.
And it would have to be a quick kill, too. Both P-47s were getting low on .50-caliber bullets. A few short bursts apiece were all they’d have.
Confident the German had no tail armament, Tommy allowed himself to get closer. As the distance between the two planes shrank, a corrupted line from a childhood fairy tale popped into his head, somehow seeming strangely relevant:
The better to eat you with, you bastard.
His gloved fingers tensed around the trigger switch on the control stick.
Just another second or two…
Trailing hundreds of yards behind, Eddie Dugan waited and wondered why Blue Leader was taking so long to fire. But like a good wingman, he kept scanning left, right, behind, and then doing it all over again, protecting Tommy’s tail.
He saw it from the corner of his eye while scanning right, something moving rapidly toward their jugs from four o’clock. A plane overtaking you from an oblique angle at greater speed always appeared to be flying sideways, and that’s exactly what this one seemed to be doing.
He screamed into the radio, “TOMMY, BREAK RIGHT.”
Dugan had milliseconds to make his own evasive maneuver. But it wasn’t enough; he felt the collision more than heard it. His body recoiled as if it—and not his aircraft—had taken the blow.
Tommy did as Dugan told him. As Eclipse rolled hard right, he felt the strong buffeting of wake turbulence. An aircraft had passed beneath him—and it certainly wasn’t Dugan’s. He didn’t think anyone had fired at him; the thunk-thunk-thunk of bullets striking aluminum was impossible to forget. He’d heard it too many times before. If someone had shot at him, he missed.
He reversed his ailerons and came out of the hard break, putting his ship on roughly the same heading as before but offset well to the right of his original course. He took a good look all around; he was sure there were no aircraft behind him.
In front of him was a different story. The two German jets were still there, holding course for the runway. Between them, though, was a third aircraft, this one propeller driven. She was beginning to climb away, as if having just made a gun pass at one or both of the jets.
The third aircraft was unmistakably Russian. As it turned, the big red stars on her wings and fuselage were plain to see. But unlike the few Russian aircraft Tommy had seen, this one wasn’t sporting mottled green camouflage. She was as white as a wedding dress.
Along the fuselage were words painted in red as vivid as her stars but too far away to be seen clearly…
And probably written in the Cyrillic alphabet, anyway.
The Russian son of a bitch nudged me out of the way and went for the kill. Doesn’t look like he got one, though.
The jets would touch down on the runway in less than a minute. But they were the least of Tommy’s problems. That rogue Russian pilot was loitering off to his right. And he’d lost track of Dugan.
Behind him, over his left shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Dugan’s ship. It was headed in the opposite direction…
And it looks like Eddie’s flying awfully slow. Too damn slow.
If Dugan had sounded panicky a few moments ago when he’d called for Tommy to break, it was nothing compared to the shriek his voice was now:
“MAYDAY, MAYDAY. Blue Four calling Mayday.”
“Hang on, Eddie,” Tommy replied, turning his ship hard left in a half-circle. “I’ll be coming up on your right side real quick.”
He kept an eye on the Russian now off to his left.
As he closed on Dugan’s ship—named Marcy Jo—he realized how right he’d been about him flying slowly. Unable to bleed off speed quickly enough, Eclipse rocketed right past her. But the close, quick view gave Tommy enough of an idea what had happened: there were about four feet missing from Marcy Jo’s right wingtip. What remained of the right aileron wasn’t faired with the wing; its trailing edge was deflected upward a few degrees.
And her propeller arc had lost a foot or two of its diameter.
“I’m pretty damn sure I just got rammed,” Dugan said, his voice trembling. “Real hard to hold her level. The stick feels like it’s in molasses or something. And the engine’s acting like it’s gonna shake itself apart any time now. Only getting about eighteen hundred revs out of her.”
“I copy,” Tommy replied. “Can you bring her to a heading of two-three-zero?”
“Yeah, that should be easy. She wants to turn right all the time, anyway.”
Not surprising, with that aileron sticking up like that.
“Where are we going, Tommy?”
“Frankfurt.”
“But that’s like a hundred miles.”
“Not near as far as A-90 is, that’s for damn sure. We’ll make it. Just keep that engine turning.”
“I don’t know, Tommy. I think she’s gonna drop out of the sky long before that.”
“Have a little faith, Eddie. I’ll be with you the whole way.”
Marcy Jo slid around to the new heading as Eclipse kept orbiting above her.
“Tommy, what the hell hit me? Some Kraut?”
“Not a Kraut, Eddie. Some Russian bastard in a big white Yak. He’s still off to our left. Looks like he’s sliding closer, too. I don’t know what’s on this clown’s mind.”
This guy can’t be alone, Tommy thought. Gotta be somebody else around here somewhere.
He craned his neck in every direction—even straight up—and finally noticed two sets of wings in close formation thousands of feet above.
That isn’t any wing shape I’m used to seeing, so they must be more Russians. They don’t seem in any hurry to get involved down here, though. They look real happy zigzagging over our heads like that. They’re probably doing top cover for their leader.
Their leader: the man in the white Yak, who was now passing behind Dugan to take position off his damaged right wingtip. Tommy broke off his orbit, slowing his ship to get between Marcy Jo and the Russian.
The three planes were now wingtip to wingtip: Tommy in the middle, Dugan to his left, and the Russian to his right. The ships bobbed up and down, independently gaining or losing a few feet of altitude as they struggled to hold position and not kiss again. Each vertical gyration yielded a more detailed view of the plane alongside.
The Russian’s left wingtip was mangled—the leading edge severely dented, the lower skin torn—but the Yak seemed to have no handling problems. Her pilot was confident enough to hold her just feet from Eclipse’s wingtip. If Tommy could’ve read Russian, he might have understood the words that adorned the Yak’s fuselage.
It’s got to be a slogan, he told himself. It ends with an exclamation point, for cryin’ out loud.
They could see the Russian’s face clearly. He wore no oxygen mask; there was a smile on his face that seemed more of a smirk than a greeting.
And he was making a gesture: his black-gloved hand was giving what GIs called the thumbs up. He was moving the hand up and down in a short, jerky motion, as if miming that thumb being energetically stuffed into something.
“What’s he trying to tell us?” Dugan asked. “That he’s okay…or we’re okay?”
“I don’t think it means that a
t all, Eddie. From what I’ve heard, to the Russians, a thumbs up is the same as fuck you.”
“Oh yeah?” Dugan replied. “Well, here’s your answer, Ivan.”
He pressed a raised middle finger against the side of Marcy Jo’s bubble canopy.
Within seconds, the Russian ship nosed up, beginning a steep climb toward his comrades high above.
“You think he’s coming back?” Dugan asked.
“Not unless he’s got a lot more gas left than we do,” Tommy replied.
Together, Tommy and Dugan plodded their way toward Frankfurt. Although they never saw them, Blue Two and Three had checked in over the radio. Tommy sent them back home to A-90. They never saw anything more of the Russians, either.
At Frankfurt, Marcy Jo would be given landing priority, since she was damaged and would probably be a handful—maybe several handfuls—as she slowed even further to landing speed. The only thing that might delay her landing would be if another ship had wounded on board.
“You think I should use flaps?” Dugan asked Tommy.
“Let’s try them first while we’re still a couple of mistakes high,” he replied. There was a chance the flaps might be jammed, just like that aileron. Or cause bizarre control problems when extended with that modified wing.
“I’m gonna find that Russian bastard and clean his clock,” Dugan broadcast, to no one in particular. A few seconds later, he said, “Okay, putting the flaps down just a little bit. Opening the valve now.”
Tommy watched Marcy Jo’s wings. He knew before Dugan said it that the flaps were jammed.
“They ain’t moving, Tommy.”
“Yeah, I can see that. You’re just going to have to land hot, that’s all.”
“How hot is hot, boss?”
“I’m thinking about one-forty. But you’ll be fine. You’ve got a nice long runway at Y-94.”
Y-94: Eschborn Airfield, once a Luftwaffe fighter base just outside the Frankfurt city limits and recently captured by 3rd Army. Tommy had only seen it from the air, but the concrete runway looked comfortably wide and lengthy. True, that runway had been damaged by 9th Air Force bombs—despite standing orders from Headquarters not to tear up runways soon to be in US hands—but Army engineers had already used Marston Mat planking to repair it.
Even better, it was rumored Y-94 was about to become the next home of the 301st Fighter Squadron. “You may like it there so much, you can start setting up housekeeping,” he told Dugan, trying to ease the tension with a little optimism. “Save yourself some time when we relocate.”
Dugan was far too worried about the challenge at hand to think about moving bases. He asked, “You ever landed that fast, boss?”
“Yep. A couple of times. Just stay calm and hold her off as long as you can. Let her land herself. Otherwise, if you try to force her down at that speed you’re going to get one hell of a bounce. And remember—if you do bounce, keep the power up and keep flying the airplane, or she’s going to keep bouncing until she runs out of airspeed and goes on her nose.”
The buildings of Frankfurt loomed into view. They passed over the city, turned right at the Main River, and flew north to Eschborn. The tower cleared Dugan to land straight in, with Tommy coaching while flying a low pass right above the damaged Marcy Jo. Together they made the turn to final approach.
Dugan let her drift down to the runway. The first contact of wheels on concrete was brisk and firm; she bounced as predicted. Not a vicious bounce, maybe five feet back into the air, but Dugan played it well. Keeping a little bit of throttle, he retained full control and began the process of letting her settle to the runway all over again, adding a little back pressure on the stick to keep her nose up and gradually bleed off speed without the ship climbing. Half of the 4,800-foot runway still stretched ahead of Marcy Jo.
The second contact was much softer. Only a bounce of a few inches that time. Her wheels returned to the runway with no coaxing from Dugan. This time, they stayed put. Easing the throttle to idle and gently applying the brakes, Marcy Jo decelerated to taxi speed with a thousand feet of runway remaining.
“Sweet job,” Tommy told him. “Piece of cake, right?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I start breathing again, boss. But thanks a lot for the help.”
Chapter Seventeen
With Eddie Dugan safely down, Tommy joined the holding pattern for Eschborn, waiting for his turn to land behind a flight of C-47 transports. He’d already rejected the idea of continuing back to A-90 alone; all that circling above the crippled Marcy Jo had whittled his fuel down to the point where going all the way home was now a very risky proposition.
And if I run into the Luftwaffe along the way while I’m by myself, I’m doubly screwed.
But he still had plenty of gas for holding over Frankfurt. The leisurely circling at 2,000 feet above the sprawling city gave him a bird’s-eye view of what American bombers had done to it. The heart of the old town on the Main River had been leveled; only its cathedral still stood amidst the rubble of buildings centuries old, its walls and roof shattered but its spire still reaching to the heavens.
Seeing the devastation saddened him. It made him feel somehow culpable, too.
God knows I’ve probably bombed civilians, he told himself, and God knows that was never my intent. But I’ve got to believe that no matter what hooey the brass fed them about “targets of military value” and all that shit, the bombardiers in those heavies knew exactly what they’d been ordered to do. I’ll bet there wasn’t one German soldier anywhere near where those bombs landed.
I just hope and pray we can all forget everything we did when it’s over.
But c’mon, Tommy…you’re only kidding yourself. You’ll never be able to forget. Nobody will.
On his last run around the holding pattern, he got a good look at another airfield on the south side of the city: Rhine-Main.
I hear the engineers just about got that field fixed up for us to use after Ninth Bomber command blew the crap out of it, too.
Heard some rumors the guys in Fifth Infantry Division inside the city are mopping up some kind of civil servant militia made up of nothing but cops and firemen. Any real Kraut soldiers beat it out of there…or just surrendered.
Everything’s moving so damn fast now. I don’t have any idea where my brother is anymore…or where Sylvie is, either.
It’s got to be over soon, right? I mean, at this rate, we’ll be in Berlin in a couple of weeks, tops.
Oops, the tower just cleared me. Time to put this girl on the ground.
In just a few minutes, her tires kissed the runway softly in what some might call a textbook landing. Eclipse decelerated smoothly, her tailwheel settling gently to the pavement. It was all so graceful, so routine…
Then there was a noise—a jarring, metallic CLANK more akin to a steel mill than flying an airplane—and Eclipse veered hard right, heading for the tall grass lining the runway. Another noise—this time a sharp SNAP. She leaned over, her right wing falling just as she began to plow through the grass. Twirling like a pinwheel, she turned nearly a full revolution around the grounded wingtip. All Tommy could do was cut the engine, ride it out, and be ready to get out quickly in case she began to burn.
Eclipse came to rest in an unsettling quiet, a stillness that seemed completely out of context with the calamity that had just occurred. Tommy threw back the canopy, popped the straps of his harness and tried to lift himself from the cockpit. But he could hardly move; his left foot was stuck in the footwell, jammed in place by an unyielding rudder pedal. A fierce pain in that knee stopped him from trying to yank the foot free.
This’ll be a hell of a way to burn to death.
Bracing himself, he tried to wiggle the foot out of its trap. The pain stopped him again.
Maybe if I can hook my good foot behind the other rudder pedal and pull it aft…
He tried, but the pedals were well jammed, and the pain prevented him from exerting the leverage to free them.
Bu
t I’ve got to get this foot out if it’s the last thing I do.
A crash truck pulled alongside, the men on board jumping off and running to the stricken plane before their vehicle had come to a full stop. Two GIs with fire extinguishers positioned themselves by the forward fuselage, squatting to look for fuel leakage below her belly.
“Guns safe and battery off, sir?” a tech corporal who looked about fifteen years old asked Tommy.
“Affirmative, Corporal.”
“How much gas on board?”
“About seventy gallons.”
“Good. We’re gonna get you out of there, sir. Are you hurt?”
“My knee,” Tommy replied, pointing to it. “And my foot’s stuck behind the pedal. I must’ve been trying to keep her on the runway so hard that it slipped off…and wrenched the knee doing it. Now, the whole damn mechanism’s jammed up.”
The corporal called out, “Sanchez, you and Miller get on that rudder. Try pushing it left.”
They gave the stuck rudder a shove—gently at first, and when it didn’t budge, they threw their full body weight against it.
Still the rudder wouldn’t move.
“It ain’t going,” Sanchez said. “It’s jammed in this rut.”
“Then push it with the fucking vehicle,” the corporal replied.
“What’s your name, Corporal?” Tommy asked.
“Tapper, sir.”
“Well, Corporal Tapper, looks like I’m going to owe you guys a beer when this is all over.”
Tapper shrugged. “Just part of the job, sir.”
Sanchez maneuvered the front bumper of the three-quarter-ton truck up to the right side of Eclipse’s rudder. Miller produced a worn-out jeep tire from the bed of the vehicle and placed it between the bumper and the rudder’s skin.
Tommy couldn’t turn around to watch the work going on at her tail; his painful knee prevented it. Tapper provided a running commentary instead.
“You guys think of everything,” Tommy said, “even that tire for padding.”
“Well, we’ve had lots and lots of practice, Captain…and the C.O. gets a little testy when we tear up a ship worse than necessary.”
Our Ally, Our Enemy (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 3) Page 14