Read Conquerors of the Sky Online
Authors: Thomas Fleming
Conquerors of the Sky (26 page)
The Bâ17 soared up at least a hundred feet without the bomb load. “Let's go home,” Cliff said, banking the
Rainbow Express
like a pursuit plane to make the tightest possible turn.
Rainbow Express
like a pursuit plane to make the tightest possible turn.
“Bandits at twoâthreeâfourâfiveâsix o'clock,” screamed the radioman. There were at least two hundred of them and they all seemed to be heading toward
the Purple Heart corner. A wave of bullets and shells hurtled into the 103rd Bombardment Group. Tail gunner Mike Shannon shouted reports of Bâ17s burning and exploding all around them. The
Rainbow Express
shuddered and groaned as she took her share of the bullets and shells.
the Purple Heart corner. A wave of bullets and shells hurtled into the 103rd Bombardment Group. Tail gunner Mike Shannon shouted reports of Bâ17s burning and exploding all around them. The
Rainbow Express
shuddered and groaned as she took her share of the bullets and shells.
Shouts from the waist. The radioman was dead, the second top turret gunner to go down. “Shannon, take over those guns,” Cliff said. “You're having a goddamn vacation back there.”
“Fire in the radio room,” shouted one of the waist gunners.
“Number three engine's on fire,” cried the copilot who was on his first mission. The regular copilot had been decapitated by a twenty-millimeter shell on their previous outing.
Smoke swirled through the plane. Dick Stone and the waist gunners used handheld extinguishers to snuff out the radio room flames, standing back as far as they could, praying they did not inhale any of the fumes, which were a deadly poison gas, phosgene.
Cliff used the automatic CO
2
in the wing to douse the number-three engine. That left them with only two engines. Their airspeed dropped below two hundred miles an hour. The surviving members of the formation soon passed them. They were alone in the sky with at least a dozen FockeâWulfs barreling around them.
2
in the wing to douse the number-three engine. That left them with only two engines. Their airspeed dropped below two hundred miles an hour. The surviving members of the formation soon passed them. They were alone in the sky with at least a dozen FockeâWulfs barreling around them.
There were more slamming, tearing, clanking sounds as shells and bullets struck the plane. On the intercom Stone could hear Mike Shannon whooping: “I got one. I got one of the bastards.”
A scream of pain erupted from one of the waist gunners. Stone realized it was only a matter of minutes before they went down. The rest of the bombardment group was on the way back to England, leaving the crippled
Rainbow Express
behind. The other planes were only obeying orders. There was no way to help a cripple. It was survival of the fittest up here in the enemy skies. Stone felt the detachment he had struggled to achieve under Colonel Atwood's tutelage slipping from his mind's grasp. Bombardier Beck's blood oozed from his dead body in a half dozen dark rivulets.
Rainbow Express
behind. The other planes were only obeying orders. There was no way to help a cripple. It was survival of the fittest up here in the enemy skies. Stone felt the detachment he had struggled to achieve under Colonel Atwood's tutelage slipping from his mind's grasp. Bombardier Beck's blood oozed from his dead body in a half dozen dark rivulets.
Death. He was going to die like Beck. He was going to turn into inert flotsam in history's stream. Garbage. Dust. Nothingness. Before he understood what life, history, America, Jewishness really meant. A terrible cry of rage, of pain, almost burst from his lips.
Did Cliff Morris, in the cockpit of the
Rainbow Express,
know this? Or was it only Cliff's hand that knew what Stone was thinking and feeling, what everyone was thinking and feeling in the belly of the
Rainbow Express?
Was the hand protesting that mutual terror, that common dread as it reached for the switch that released the landing gear? Then and for years to come Dick preferred to think of it as an involuntary thing, as impersonal as one of the motor's throbbing pistons. Somehow that made it easier to accept.
Rainbow Express,
know this? Or was it only Cliff's hand that knew what Stone was thinking and feeling, what everyone was thinking and feeling in the belly of the
Rainbow Express?
Was the hand protesting that mutual terror, that common dread as it reached for the switch that released the landing gear? Then and for years to come Dick preferred to think of it as an involuntary thing, as impersonal as one of the motor's throbbing pistons. Somehow that made it easier to accept.
Thunk.
The wheels came down and the
Rainbow Express
almost fell out of the sky as her airspeed faltered with the sudden increase in drag. Did Cliff know
what his hand was doing? Dick wondered. Lowering your wheels in enemy skies meant you were surrendering. You were agreeing to fly your plane to the nearest German airfield.
The wheels came down and the
Rainbow Express
almost fell out of the sky as her airspeed faltered with the sudden increase in drag. Did Cliff know
what his hand was doing? Dick wondered. Lowering your wheels in enemy skies meant you were surrendering. You were agreeing to fly your plane to the nearest German airfield.
No one in the 103rd Bombardment Group had done this. But planes in other groups had done it. The Germans had captured enough Bâ17s to fly some into formations and cause chaos by opening fire just as the Americans were starting to bomb.
“What the hell's happening?” the copilot said.
“Shut up,” Cliff Morris said.
“Like hell I'll shut up,” the copilot said. “We've still got two engines and plenty of ammunition. Why the hell are we surrendering?”
“Yeah, Cliff. Why?” Mike Shannon said over the intercom.
Dick Stone did not say a word. He was paralyzed there in the navigator's compartment face to face with death and the realization that Colonel Atwood's solution was balderdash.
The FockeâWulfs had stopped shooting at them. One of them pulled alongside the
Rainbow Express's
right wing tip. A second one appeared off to the left. The first pilot hand-signaled Cliff to head northeast. He banked in that direction and Cliff followed him. The other FockeâWulf stayed on their left wing-tip.
Rainbow Express's
right wing tip. A second one appeared off to the left. The first pilot hand-signaled Cliff to head northeast. He banked in that direction and Cliff followed him. The other FockeâWulf stayed on their left wing-tip.
“Listen to me,” Cliff said. “I'm trying to save our goddamn asses. When I say go, I want you to blast these two bastards out of the sky. Shannon, you take the guy on the right. Byrd, the guy on the left.” Byrd was the ball turret gunner, curled in his glass sphere underneath the belly of the plane.
The other FockeâWulfs were specks in the distance, pursuing the rest of the Bâ17s. Did fighting Germans justify this dirty double-cross? Dick Stone wondered. Were these two pilots who had accepted their surrender Jew-baiters and Nazis, out to rule the world? Or had they been in their second year of college like Dick Stone, more interested in literature than politics when the war exploded in their faces?
Still, Dick did not protest. No one protested. No one wanted to sit out the war in a German prison camp. Dick did not want to put his fate in the hands of something as murky as the Geneva Convention, which supposedly protected everyone, even a Jew, as a prisoner of the Nazis. Dick waited in silence, barely breathing.
“Now!” Cliff shouted.
The Browning machine guns clattered above and below the navigator's compartment. Dick saw the FockeâWulf pilot on the right clutch his throat. The plane dropped into a spin, gushing smoke. Dick whirled in time to see the plane on the left spin in the opposite direction, afire. The pilot bailed out and hung there in his harness as Cliff retracted the
Rainbow Express's
landing gear and dove for the cloud cover. The German shook his fist in rage as they roared past him.
Rainbow Express's
landing gear and dove for the cloud cover. The German shook his fist in rage as they roared past him.
The clouds remained thick all the way to the North Sea, a remarkable piece of luck. But when they emerged over the water, they found a half-dozen Messerschmitt
109s waiting for them. Cliff ordered the engineer to man the tail guns and they fought off a furious ten-minute attack, living up to their flying fortress nickname for once. Mike Shannon shot down another plane and Dick Stone, manning the nose gun in his compartment, amazed everyone, including himself, by getting a second as he pulled up after a head-on attack.
109s waiting for them. Cliff ordered the engineer to man the tail guns and they fought off a furious ten-minute attack, living up to their flying fortress nickname for once. Mike Shannon shot down another plane and Dick Stone, manning the nose gun in his compartment, amazed everyone, including himself, by getting a second as he pulled up after a head-on attack.
Cliff dove to less than 100 feet and let the Germans decide whether another attack was worth the possible cost. They tried one more pass and Mike Shannon got his third plane of the day. The 109s cut for home, probably reporting the
Rainbow Express
would never make it to England.
Rainbow Express
would never make it to England.
The plane was practically scrap metal. Mike Shannon counted over 200 holes in the fuselage. The horizontal stabilizer was hanging in shreds, giving them no elevator control. The ailerons were equally shredded. When Cliff tried to climb to a safer altitude, they almost stalled out. “Get rid of everything you can tear loose,” he ordered.
They jettisoned the ammunition, the machine guns, their bulky flying gear, their boots, the fire extinguishers. Finally, at Dick Stone's suggestion, they dumped the dead bodies of Bombardier Beck, the radio man, and the top turret gunner out the bomb-bay doors. Coaxing maximum rpm's out of their two engines, one of which was making ominous noises, Cliff reached the Norfolk coast at treetop level.
There, almost under their wings, was RAF Bedlington. “Let's hope Sarah's saying her prayers,” Cliff said. There was another, more realistic reason for landing at Bedlington. If that gasping engine quit now, it would not be a water landing, it would be on top of apple orchards, thatched roof cottages, it would be fire and explosions frying and rending their flesh.
“Hello Bedlington, this is
Rainbow,
do you read me? We've got a Mayday here. Request permission to land. Over,” Cliff said.
Rainbow,
do you read me? We've got a Mayday here. Request permission to land. Over,” Cliff said.
“Hello
Rainbow,
this is Bedlington,” said a liquid feminine voice. “Receiving you poorly. Strength two, over.”
Rainbow,
this is Bedlington,” said a liquid feminine voice. “Receiving you poorly. Strength two, over.”
“Need wind direction. Airspeed down to one hundred and ten,” Cliff shouted into the microphone. “Designate runway immediately!”
“Wind from the west at ten. All runways open. Fire trucks spraying foam. Good luck!”
“We're going to make it, guys. We're going to make it!” Cliff shouted over the intercom.
In ten minutes they were over the field. The fire trucks had just finished spreading foam on the runway that ran southwest. The wings wobbled. Cliff fought them back to horizontal as they turned into the approach. Dick Stone saw a slim WAAF standing outside the Watch Office, her hands clasped together before her lips.
It was Sarah Chapman, praying them in. For a fleeting moment he felt a strange, wild gratitudeâand a regret for his unbelief, which prevented him from sharing her plea to the faceless baffling God who held them in the palm of his omnipotent hand.
The runway rushed up at them. “Full flaps!” Cliff yelled and they pancaked in, skidding down the foam-covered runway to a shuddering, smoking stop.
Fire trucks clanged toward them. The smell of scorched metal filled the plane. “Didn't I tell you guys this was one hell of a plane?” Cliff said.
Fire trucks clanged toward them. The smell of scorched metal filled the plane. “Didn't I tell you guys this was one hell of a plane?” Cliff said.
As Cliff and Dick helped the vomiting copilot off the plane, Sarah ran toward them. “Oh, oh, oh!” she cried. Tears were streaming down her face. She flung her arms around Cliff and kissed him wildly. Standing to one side, watching the romantic spectacle, Dick Stone felt an odd, painful regret. Did he simply want those no-longer-innocent lips on his mouth? Or was he deploring the probability that she and Cliff would be inseparable now?
The surviving members of the crew were pounding Cliff on the back. Only the copilot, still green, and Dick Stone declined to join the celebration. Cliff's eyes explored the circle of faces with an almost preternatural wariness. For the first time Dick sensed something or someone trapped inside Cliff that he was trying to conceal.
For the moment they had a more immediate problem to conceal. What they had done over Schweinfurt was a violation of the rules of war, not to mention morality. In the circle of faces Dick Stone saw mutual guilt, heightened, somehow, by the adulation in Sarah Chapman's innocent blue eyes.
Bless 'em all! Bless 'em all!
Bless the needle, the airspeed, the ball;
Bless all those instructors who taught me to flyâ
Sent me up solo and left me to die.
If ever your plane starts to stall,
You're in for one hell of a fall.
No lilies or violets for dead strafer pilots,
So cheer up, my lads, bless 'em all!
Bless the needle, the airspeed, the ball;
Bless all those instructors who taught me to flyâ
Sent me up solo and left me to die.
If ever your plane starts to stall,
You're in for one hell of a fall.
No lilies or violets for dead strafer pilots,
So cheer up, my lads, bless 'em all!
The young American voices were bellowing these words offâkey when Frank Buchanan emerged from Major General George C. Kenney's tent into the humid twilight of the New Guinea jungle a few miles from Port Moresby. “Thanks for dragging your ass out here to the end of the earth on such short notice, Frank. I wish I could give you something more concrete, like money. Or at least a medal,” Kenney said.
“There's one thing you could do, George,” Frank Buchanan said. They were old friends from World War I days. “Let me fly with the kids tomorrow. I always like to see how my planes perform under stress.”
“You know as well as I do those bombers can't handle passengers. They've got enough weight problems.”
“My nephew's copilot is down with malaria. They're going to give him some green kid who flew in yesterday.”
“My ass will be in a sling with Richard K. Sutherland stamped on it if you get shot down.”
Sutherland was General Douglas MacArthur's overbearing chief of staff. When he tried to browbeat Kenney the way he had intimidated other generals, Kenney had taken a blank piece of paper and drawn a tiny black dot in the corner. “The blank area represents what I know about airplanes. The dot represents what you know,” Kenney said. Sutherland had not bothered him since that exchange.
Tomorrow the whole world would find out if Kenney knew as much as he claimed. He had taken over the Fifth Air Force with its reputation at zero and its morale at zero minus. Bombing from twenty thousand feet, their planes had hit almost nothing. Occasionally they attacked American ships by mistake. Kenney had fired five generals and a dozen colonels and totally revamped their strategy.
He had summoned Frank Buchanan to the Pacific to redesign the Samson light bomber, another plane Frank had created from the SkyRanger II configuration. It had more armor and more powerful motors than the Nelson version they had shipped to the British. Buchanan Aircraft was building hundreds of them at a new plant they had opened in the Mojave Desert.
Working with the crudest tools, but with dedicated mechanics, Frank had put eight fifty-caliber machine guns in the nose and bolted four more on the outside of the fuselage. All were fired from a button on the pilot's control wheel. Nose-heavy and loaded to the limit of their weight ratio, the Samsons required maximum skill from their pilots to keep them in the air.
Kenney added another requirement for his pilots: fearlessness. He announced the days of high-level bombing were over. They were going to come in at 150 feet or lower. For three months they had been practicing on a sunken ship in shallow water off Port Moresby.
Last night coast watchers and reconnaissance planes had reported a Japanese fleet carrying a full division of reinforcements heading for New Guinea, the key to the South Pacific. There was not a single U.S. Navy ship close enough to stop them. Kenney's strafers were the only available weapons.
“Come on, George,” Frank said. “I want to see if Billy Mitchell was right when he said planes could sink a fleet.”
Kenney could not resist this appeal to the hero of every U.S. Army airman. “Okay. Just don't tell anyone about it when you get back to the States.”
Frank limped off to the tents of the 345th Bomb Group's 499th Squadron, better known as Bats Outa Hell. His right leg had still not entirely recovered from the crash of the Nelson bomber three years ago. He had wanted to die that day. The pain had been unbearable. Now he was volunteering to fly in what was basically the same plane at a near-suicidal altitude. But the pain had led to the miracle of regaining Amanda's love. Perhaps this flight, even if it
ended in another crash, would reestablish a link with another person he loved.
ended in another crash, would reestablish a link with another person he loved.
He and Amanda seldom met in his house in Topanga Canyon now. He was away so often on overseas assignments such as this one. When he was in California, the pressure of work was all-consuming. Buchanan Aircraft had expanded a hundred, a thousand times. Proposals for patrol planes, heavy bombers, transports, poured in from Washington D.C.
But there was always the future, that almost mythical world of tomorrow, when the war was over and a victorious America was at peace again. What would he and Amanda do? Even before the war exploded, Frank had started to hate the furtive element in their love. He found it harder and harder to confer with Adrian Van Ness, to eat lunch and dinner with himâand on that very day, perhaps, make love to his wife.
Amanda belonged to him, not Adrian. Frank was absolutely certain of that on the spiritual plane. But in the everyday world of legality and custom she belonged to Adrian. Frank could not adjust his mind to a future of endless liaisons, perpetual deception. But he recognized Amanda's dilemma. Although she had talked bravely about risking Victoria's affection, she flinched from demanding a divorce from Adrian. Frank also had a dilemmaâa deep reluctance to leave the company he had founded, to abandon the designers and engineers who had him helped create his planesâand would, he hoped, help him build even better ones after the war.
In front of the Bats Outa Hell tents, Frank listened to a short, slim hatchet-faced Texan describe his week's R&R in Sydney, Australia. “You go back and forth between satchel fever and sweet ass.”
“What the hell are you talkin' about, Patch?” asked his younger more naive copilot.
“Satchel fever's like you and me gettin' us a couple of gals in Sydney and goin' to Mansion's Bar or some other pub and drinkin' and just sayin' anythin' in front of 'em. Then hustlin' the women back to our apartment for some more drinkin' and fuckin' and maybe in the middle of the night we switch women.
“But sweet ass. That's somethin' else entirely. That's when you think you've found the virgin, the one and only woman who hasn't been touched by any other male member of the human race. Then you take her to Bondi Beach the next day for a swim, and she sees McCall stretched out on the sand with two or three dames just as virginal breathin' perfume on him and you find out from the expression on your sweet ass's face that this California son of a bitch was there first!”
Captain Billy McCall had propped himself against a palm tree. His canteenâand all the other canteensâwere full of Scotch from a case Frank Buchanan had brought with him. Billy smiled at Patch's complaint and Frank thought his heart would stop. He was remembering the fourâyearâold, the eleven-year-old, he had visited at Buzz McCall's mother's house in Laguna Beach.
Now Billy was wearing a hat with a fifty-mission crush and Frank could easily imagine the swath he cut through the women of Sydney. He had been cutting quite a swath through the girls of Santa Monica until he joined the air
force. Women fell into his arms the way men had gone crazy over his mother.
force. Women fell into his arms the way men had gone crazy over his mother.
“What's the word from the big brass, Pops?” Billy said.
“I'm flying with you. But it's a military secret.”
“How come I don't get a copilot with five thousand hours' experience?” Patch groused.
A siren awoke them at 4:30 A.M. Frank sat in the operations tent looking at the sleepy young faces, remembering the haphazard briefings of World War I. This briefing was far more complex. They were going to fly almost five hundred miles down the coast to hit the Japanese fleet as it turned into a strait between New Guinea and New Britain.
Billy's bomber, named
Surfing Sue
after one of his Santa Monica girlfriends, awaited them inside the dirt revetment. She was black from nose to tail, with an evil-looking bat's head on the fin. Frank joined Billy in the walk-around to make sure nothing obvious was wrong with the plane. “Oh-oh,” Frank said and pulled a screwdriver from the nacelle of the left engine.
Surfing Sue
after one of his Santa Monica girlfriends, awaited them inside the dirt revetment. She was black from nose to tail, with an evil-looking bat's head on the fin. Frank joined Billy in the walk-around to make sure nothing obvious was wrong with the plane. “Oh-oh,” Frank said and pulled a screwdriver from the nacelle of the left engine.
“Jesus,” Billy said. “Braun!”
His scrawny crew chief came running. “You forgot this,” Billy said, handing him the tool. “Tomorrow Braun, I want you to get drunk and stay that way for twenty-four hours.”
They climbed into the plane. “Braun got a Dear John letter yesterday. He hasn't slept for two nights,” Billy said. “Imagine letting a chick bug you that much?”
“Sure. I felt that way about your mother.”
He had given Billy a sanitized version of his love for Sammy.
“There's one thing I can't figure out in that story, Pops. Why she preferred my old man. It doesn't say much for her judgment.”
The navigator, a chunky Tennessean named Forrest, informed Billy that he and the three gunners were ready to take off. The 1,700âhorsepower motors split their eardrums as they burst into life. Many people swore they were the loudest engines in the world. “Any instructions for the copilot?” Frank shouted.
“Remember to flip the toggle switch that turns on the camera as we go over the target,” Billy bellowed.
As squadron leader Billy led the other five planes to the runway. Ahead of them another squadron was taking off at thirty-second intervals. Billy's planes paused, roaring, belching, backfiring, as each pilot tested his engines one last time. “Kit Bag Leader to squadron,” Billy said. “I'll circle a half turn to the left at two thousand feet. Follow me.”
Thirty seconds after the other squadron's last plane took off, the green light in the ramshackle control tower flashed and Billy pushed the throttles to the wall. They hurtled down the runway toward a green mass of jungle five thousand feet away, bouncing wildly through chuckholes and dips in the dirt strip. Frank, who had his hands on the copilot's controls, could feel the elevators and rudder coming to life. At the halfway mark they reached the point of no return and it was up to Billy to get this seventeen tons of plane and bombs off the ground.
As the airspeed hit 120, he pulled smoothly back on the yoke and they cleared the trees by twenty feet. But they were by no means safe. The prop wash of the planes ahead of them had stirred the air like a giant eggbeater. Frank could feel the plane trying to fall off on her left wing, a common reaction to such turbulence. A novice pilot would try to right the plane with his aileronâan instinctive reaction, but one that would be fatal in this situation. The prop wash was momentary and when it vanished, the down aileron would throw the plane onto its side at virtually zero altitude. Good pilots like Billy repressed instinct and kicked the laggard wing up with the opposite rudder.
Frank was tempted to say nice going. Billy grinned at him, making it clear that he knew exactly what he had done right. They were both pros now. This was no boy sitting beside him.
They climbed laboriously to 2,000 feet to await the rest of the squadron. Forming up in a tight V formation they headed down the coast. Other squadrons of Samsons, Australian Beaufighters, and A-20s, designed by Douglas Aircraft's resident genius, Ed Heinemann, joined them. In an hour there were over a hundred planes around them, with the Bats Outa Hell in the lead. In another hour the navigator told Billy they were within fifty miles of the strait where they hoped to find the Japanese fleet.
“Let's ride some waves,” Billy said. He switched on the intership radio. “This is Kit Bag Leader. We're going down to attack altitude.”
Down, down Billy slanted
Surfing Sue
's black nose until she was only 150 feet above the water. The other planes joined them, forming a wide arc, each squadron flying in a tight V behind its leader.
Surfing Sue
's black nose until she was only 150 feet above the water. The other planes joined them, forming a wide arc, each squadron flying in a tight V behind its leader.
“There they are!” Billy shouted.
Ahead Frank saw at least two dozen ships, a mix of troop transports and destroyers, spread across several miles of sea. “This is Kit Bag Leader,” Billy said over the radio. “We'll take the ones at the end of the line. Good hunting.”
Billy increased the propeller pitch to 2,100 rpms and moved the fuel mixture control from cruising lean to rich to give them maximum power. “Kosloski, watch for bandits out of the sun,” Billy told the top turret gunner, as they headed for the transport that was bringing up the rear of the convoy.
They achieved almost total surprise. The guardian destroyers fired only a few rounds at them as they came in. Far above them, the Japanese air cover waited for the usual high-level attack.
Surfin' Sue
roared toward a black-hulled transport. Its decks were crowded with men. “Hang on!” Billy howled and pressed the button on the twelve fifty-caliber machine guns.
Surfin' Sue
roared toward a black-hulled transport. Its decks were crowded with men. “Hang on!” Billy howled and pressed the button on the twelve fifty-caliber machine guns.
A stream of fire spewed from
Surfin' Sue's
nose. Each of the twelve guns was firing 750 rounds a minute. That added up to the firepower of a battalion of infantry. The plane shook so violently, Frank would not have been surprised to see one of the engines fall off.
Surfin' Sue's
nose. Each of the twelve guns was firing 750 rounds a minute. That added up to the firepower of a battalion of infantry. The plane shook so violently, Frank would not have been surprised to see one of the engines fall off.
The blast of bullets from Billy's guns and the guns of the other planes in the squadron literally melted the superstructure of the transport before Frank's eyes. Most of the men on the deck never knew what hit them.
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