Bomber

by Paul Dowswell

  That was an excuse for all the crew to voice their resentments.

  ‘Captain, I gotta broken nail.’

  ‘My coffee’s gone cold in my thermos – we gotta go back.’

  ‘Hey, guys, I got something in my eye. Can’t we turn back, please?’

  ‘All right, guys, keep it down,’ said Holberg. ‘I’m going to have to tighten up our formation here. Keep your eyes open and let me know if we get too close to our buddies.’

  It was alarming flying these tight formations. You could see the men in the other planes, as they sat in the cockpit or at the waist firing positions. Harry wished they could move a little further away. He could see how easy it would be for a panicked gunner to fire an accidental stream of bullets into one of their own planes, and how dangerous it would be for the adjacent aircraft if one of them had a direct hit from flak.

  Despite the grey sky Harry could see the landmarks of London, tiny from this great height but just about recognisable. There was that big loop in the river not long past Tower Bridge. He remembered seeing a great formation pass over high in the sky when he was there a few days before, little silver specks with long vapour trails. The kids on the sidewalks had all pointed. He wondered too what the Luftwaffe used to think as they came over to destroy this great city during the Blitz a couple of years before. So far, the Eighth Air Force had only been asked to bomb industrial targets. He’d heard the Brits dropped tons of bombs on big cities, the only way they could be sure to hit anything important in the dark. They called it carpet-bombing. He didn’t like the sound of that. He accepted that sometimes civilians would be killed by American bombs, but he didn’t know how he would feel if they sent them to carpet-bomb those big civilian centres.

  They left the landmarks of London behind and the Channel came into view. Then they headed out over the open sea.

  ‘OK, Skaggs, let’s have that radio off,’ said Holberg.

  Within minutes they would be in range of enemy fighters, and once again their lives would be dangling by a slender silver thread.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Macey May was half an hour over France when they came.

  ‘Eleven o’clock high.’ The voice was Bortz’s. ‘Right on the edge of vision. There’s hundreds of them.’

  ‘OK. Thank you, Lieutenant,’ said Holberg. ‘They’re just getting in position so they can come down out of the sun, so expect them any minute …’

  The German fighters always did this – dived down with the sun right behind them, so it was difficult to see them coming without dazzling yourself.

  The next thing Harry heard froze his blood. ‘What the hell is this?’ It was Bortz again.

  Cain had got up from his seat at the navigator’s table in the nose, to peer through the Plexiglas cone. ‘There’s trails of smoke coming towards us at speed,’ he told them all. Then his voice quickened. ‘I’d guess they’re rockets.’

  In a flash a rocket passed by the Macey May’s right wing and continued through the formation. There was a flash, and a grotesque boiling cloud of flame formed a few hundred feet below. Harry could see it all in his turret.

  ‘Fortress hit, four o’ clock low,’ he reported. One second it was there, the next the whole plane was a mass of fire and flying fragments.

  There were further explosions around them and the Macey May bucked in the sky.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Dalinsky. ‘The whole wing’s gone.’

  Harry immediately swung his turret round. Their wings were fine. Dalinsky had been talking about another Fortress. He saw it a moment later, nose down and dropping like a brick below them. He couldn’t imagine anyone getting out of that. The whole right wing was ablaze and falling behind the rest of the bomber.

  Holberg came on. ‘Here they come. Don’t waste your ammo. Fire within range and watch out for ours.’

  Then Stearley spoke. ‘They only hit two with those rockets.’ That was something to hold on to.

  All at once the sky was full of targets. It was difficult to hit anything that sped past faster than the human eye could track it. It was like hurtling through a train station at speed and trying to read its name on the platform signs – almost impossible.

  On that first pass Harry barely fired his guns. But when the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs came back for a second time, his job was easier. All around now, he could hear or sense the crew firing their weapons. Down to the left he noticed a Focke-Wulf lining up for a shot at the bomber beneath them.

  Harry waited for the fighter to fly level, then he let off a long stream of bullets. He could see shards of metal dance along the top of the fuselage and the cockpit canopy shattered. He knew in an instant he must have killed the pilot. Flames burst out from the engine and the plane started to dive, trailing a thick plume of flame and smoke.

  ‘Got one,’ he said, trying to suppress his excitement. This was his first certain hit. He was surprised at how little he cared that he had just killed a young pilot.

  German fighters continued to buzz around them like angry hornets. Then, in an instant, they were gone. Harry rotated his turret straight ahead. The reason was plain enough. A mile or so in front of them was a dense field of flak. No sooner had one ordeal ended than another began.

  The Macey May started to jolt and jerk around. Harry felt sick and simultaneously hot and cold. Inside his flying suit he was bathed in sweat.

  Holberg had had a change of mind about when Harry should come out of his turret. Now it was only when they were over the target. Flak was usually at its worst then, but he should stay put at all other times apart from take-off and landing.

  ‘It’s looking clear up ahead,’ Holberg told them. ‘Another minute of this and we’re through. Hold tight.’

  Hold tight. Every part of Harry was scrunched up tight. His fists, his eyes, his toes … This was the worst flak he had ever been in. Flak burst close to the Macey May and he could hear its shrapnel shards whine around. Some struck the plane with a dull thump. He didn’t worry too much about that. Everyone seemed to come back from Germany with holes in the fuselage or the wings.

  The flak died down and all of a sudden they were riding through clear air, plain sailing in level flight, the patchwork fields of occupied Europe stretching beneath them.

  ‘Schweinfurt ETA ten minutes,’ said Cain.

  Holberg came on. ‘Let’s make sure you’re all here.’ He ran through the crew.

  No fighters appeared in the last interminable ten minutes, and as they approached the target, Holberg told Harry he could come out from his turret as soon as the flak started to burst around the plane. It was inevitable, of course, that there was flak around a target. It wouldn’t be worth attacking if there wasn’t flak.

  The first bursts of explosives started to bloom around the combat box like dirty flower heads. Harry was all set to go when he heard something over his headphones that turned him cold with fear.

  ‘Bortz, do you copy?’ said the captain. ‘Are you set to take over?’

  The flak was getting worse by the minute.

  Bortz did not respond. Holberg asked again, more urgently.

  There was still no response.

  ‘Cain, can you hear me?’ said the captain. ‘What’s happening with Bortz?’

  There was no reply and Harry felt in desperate need of water. His mouth was bone dry.

  Then Cain came on. ‘Bortz is OK. I’ll speak to him directly.’

  Harry breathed again.

  There was another pause.

  ‘His headset’s not working.’

  ‘Lieutenant, get Bortz up here,’ Holberg said. ‘Bombardier’s got to have a headset.’

  Then Harry heard him say, ‘Go to the midsection and see if there’s a spare with Skaggs. If he can’t help, then take one off Hill or Dalinsky.’

  Harry had heard enough. He unplugged himself and set up the complex mechanism to get himself out of the turret.

  Harry got to the radio compartment just as Bortz burst through the other door. They both sa
w Skaggs at once. He was slumped face forward and they thought him asleep, or maybe passed out from a faulty oxygen mask. Bortz shook him, but he remained inert.

  The Fortress jolted in the air as flak exploded nearby and Skaggs slid brusquely off his chair to lie face up on the floor. His eyes stared into nothing. He was dead.

  Bortz and Harry picked him up and propped him against the side of the fuselage. As they did so, Bortz pointed to a small cut in Skaggs’s windpipe. As he slumped forward exposing the back of his neck they saw the entry wound. A bullet or a piece of flak had gone through a vertebra in his neck. It must have killed him in an instant.

  Bortz plugged his interphone cord into the compartment jack box. ‘Captain, Skaggs is dead,’ he said. There was no reply.

  They hauled Skaggs back on his chair, holding him in place with the seat straps. Thank God it was a clean death, Harry thought.

  ‘Gotta have one of these,’ said Bortz, and carefully detached Skaggs’s headset from his lolling head. ‘Jesus, it’s warm.’ He shuddered.

  Then he was gone, back to the front of the plane.

  ‘Right. Target five minutes,’ said Holberg. ‘Bortz, handing over to you.’

  Harry strapped himself into his seat in Skaggs’s compartment. It was awful sitting there with a dead man. Skaggs’s mouth was hanging open and sightless eyes were staring at the ceiling. Sometimes Harry had found it hard to like him, but he was still his buddy, and now he was gone he felt a terrible sadness.

  The flak was really intense now, and Harry wondered whether to just sit tight or watch out of the top window of the radio compartment. He decided his best bet was to curl up into a ball and listen to Bortz going through his bomb-aiming routine. ‘Two minutes … Target in sight …’

  Immediately to his side Skaggs flinched and jerked upright. Harry nearly jumped out of his skin. Another piece of flak had pierced the plane and hit the radio operator right in the middle of his forehead. Skaggs was dead twice over. If his first injury hadn’t broken his neck, the second one would have gone straight through his brain. Harry began to shake uncontrollably and was grateful no one else was around to see him. He fought back tears of sheer terror and began to pray under his breath.

  Over the interphone Bortz sounded icy calm. ‘Steady, Thirty seconds …’ That brought Harry back to earth.

  Flak continued to burst all around the ship, and when Harry dared to look from the small window in the operator’s compartment, he was amazed that anyone and anything could fly through it and survive. At four o’clock low there was another Fortress going down in a ball of flame. At any second that could be them. Harry bit his lip hard and tried not to think about it.

  All at once the Macey May lifted in the air and Holberg came over the interphone.

  ‘Job done. Let’s go home.’ The Fortress banked sharply to the west and once again the flak disappeared from the sky.

  ‘Harry, back to your turret,’ said Holberg, but Harry never heard him; he was already halfway there, stopping for a brief second to pat Hill and Dalinsky on the shoulder.

  Ten minutes away from Schweinfurt Harry’s headphone crackled. This time it was John Hill. ‘Think I see them coming out the sun.’

  The sun had moved round in the sky so this time they were side on: good news for the bombardier and pilots and all the other guys at the front of the aircraft – not so good for the rest of the crew.

  ‘Definite. Three o’clock high,’ shouted John.

  Again the German fighters swarmed around them. Harry thought he heard Dalinsky cheering, and a moment later he saw a Messerschmitt plummet down in a steep dive, thick black smoke spewing from its engine. The canopy flew off and a tiny figure tumbled from the cockpit, his parachute opening a moment later. Mesmerised by the sight, Harry forgot to keep sweeping through his constant circles.

  ‘Hey, Friedman, Focke seven o’clock low,’ said Corrales. ‘Let’s nail him.’

  As the turret swept round, he could see the unmistakable outline of the Focke-Wulf closing fast. It was right in his sight and as Harry began to fire he also saw four distinct flashes in the nose and inner wing of the approaching fighter. A second later the Focke began to trail black smoke and it veered off sharply to the left. Harry continued to fire into the plunging fighter watching his bullets spatter along the length of the fuselage.

  But Harry and Corrales had fired a moment too late. Under the plane, Harry noticed a line of black smoke trailing away from the Macey May. When he turned his turret he could see the outer engine on the left side was on fire. Seconds later Holberg’s voice crackled in the interphone. ‘Cut number one. Extinguishers on.’ The propeller stopped spinning moments later.

  ‘OK, fellas. Keep your eyes on the sky. We all still here?’ The crew reported back, one by one from the tail of the Fortress, apart from Skaggs. Harry shivered. It was awful not to hear that Southern drawl in the crew roll call.

  The engine had stopped flaming, but an intermittent trail of smoke still seeped from the edge of the wing. Harry noticed with consternation that the Macey May was having trouble keeping up with the others in the combat box. A lone Fortress was almost certainly doomed. A sole focus for flak and a sure kill for a fighter Schwarm who might happen upon it. The Carolina Peach boys certainly never made it back.

  ‘Flak ahead,’ said Bortz.

  A minute later the Fortress began its shaking and lurching as the sky filled up with dense black puffs of smoke. The familiar terror returned.

  ‘Clear ahead,’ said Bortz.

  There was a sudden rattle of machine-gun fire and Harry instinctively spun his turret through 360 degrees searching for fighters. Surely they wouldn’t attack here? ‘What’s happening?’ he heard himself say over the interphone. Firing seemed to be coming from inside the plane, right above his head. ‘Where are they?’ he said again. Not being able to even see his attacker, especially one this close, was more frightening than having them swarm around you.

  ‘Friedman, keep it quiet,’ said Holberg, and rattled through the crew. John Hill, Ralph Dalinsky and Jim Corrales did not reply.

  Harry felt sick with worry and asked Holberg if he could get out into the waist and help with any injuries. ‘No. Stay at your station. Stearley, go and find out what’s happening.’

  Another few shots rattled off above. Almost like fire crackers. Maybe one of the gunners had spotted something. Then a sharp whine made him flinch. A bullet had pierced the thin metal skin of his turret, just above his head. He immediately turned around 360 degrees, scanning the sky for enemy fighters, but he couldn’t see any.

  Harry breathed deeply, trying to stop himself shaking after his near miss. He had to wait an age, wondering what had happened and who was alive and who was dead or injured, before Holberg’s voice crackled in his ear.

  ‘OK. We have casualties. Hill’s down and Corrales. Stearley’s patching them up. Friedman, you’ve got to work extra hard. Dalinsky’s OK but his gun mount is damaged.’ Then he said, ‘Harry – you did a great job on the Focke-Wulf. We’ll be OK as long as you keep your wits about you. Flak’s gone. I can’t see any in front of us. So the fighters will be back soon enough.’

  By now the Macey May was noticeably lagging behind the other Fortresses. Her three remaining engines were screaming to keep up, but even the loss of a few miles an hour soon showed in a bomber formation.

  They were at the tail end of the formation now. Still protected by the guns of the other Fortresses, but an obvious target for a fighter looking for an easy kill.

  A smattering of flak burst around them as they passed over Dortmund. It came and went so quickly no one thought to mention it, but soon after it stopped Harry was alarmed to notice another trail of smoke – this time on the right wing outer engine.

  ‘Captain, there’s another engine on fire,’ he said.

  Holberg came back over the interphone. ‘Yeah, we know. LaFitte’s shutting it down.’

  The prop stopped revolving but the smoke carried on pouring out, with an occasio
nal burst of flame. There was a lot of fuel in the wing tanks. If that caught, things could turn nasty pretty quickly.

  Harry began to feel horribly claustrophobic in his little turret. The outer left engine had stopped smoking now, but this one on the other wing was a crisis that could turn into a catastrophe. He watched that engine far more than he watched the skies. The fire seemed to be spreading.

  If it reached the inner engine or started to burn along the whole wing then the Fortress would drop like a stone.

  ‘Captain, you want me to stay put?’ Harry couldn’t help asking. ‘Maybe John could do with some help.’

  Holberg was stern. ‘Friedman, we’ve got it under control. If we’re going to bail out, you’ll see that red light. Until then you keep at your station.’

  Harry burned with shame. He knew asking to leave his turret was strictly against flying regulations. The whole crew would have heard his request. He realised more than ever how important it was not to let them down.

  The loss of the second engine made everything far more dangerous. Now the Macey May was a definite straggler. She was losing height too – just below the lowest level of the combat box and maybe a third of a mile behind. But the ground was still a long way down. They had bombed at thirty thousand feet – the limit of their capacity. Now they were probably at twenty-five thousand.

  ‘Here come the fighters,’ said Cain, in the nose.

  Harry scanned the sky. Now the Macey May was below the bomber formations he could see very little, and none of the other guys were firing or warning of incoming fighters.

  Holberg let the crew at the back know what was happening. ‘They’re leaving us alone. Maybe they think we’re not worth the bother.’

  Almost simultaneously, Harry could see two flaming B-17s about half a mile in front of them, plunging to the ground. One exploded during its dive, debris tumbling earthward in great flaming chunks, a wing spinning over and over. The other carried on in its relentless trajectory, sure to hit the ground far sooner. There was another smaller shape falling too, obscured by its own flaming plume. That must be a fighter plane.