Eagles at War (37 page)

The light flak started at the coast, but opposition was light until Aachen, when the P-47s, at the absolute limit of their range, apologetically dipped their elliptical wings and headed back to England. The Fortresses were now on their own, and the formations, already tight, shrank closer together as if the twenty-below-zero temperature outside was contracting them.

Caldwell chafed at: having to sit and watch, unable to fly. On an ordinary training mission, they would have swapped seats to let him at the controls, but this was combat. The radio discipline was good. There had been little chatter on the intercom and absolutely no interplane communication. His unit formed the low box of the lead division, and he could see planes of both the lead and the high box through the right cockpit windows.

The Germans were ready and waiting. The first attack came from a distance, twin-engine fighters—mostly Messerschmitt Bf 110s, with a few Ju 88s mixed in—lobbing their 21-cm rockets into the formation. The first salvo missed, but the second blew off the tail of a B-17, sending it tumbling down, the first of many. Caldwell realized with a twinge just how much the P-51 pilots would love to slaughter the twin-engine jobs, burdened as they were with the stove-pipelike tubes under their wings.

"109s, twelve o'clock, level."

The call was from the lead plane; Caldwell picked them up on the horizon, waves of wiggling crosses, a dozen at a time heading directly into the guns of the lead formation.

Schmidt's voice came on the intercom: "Guns, they'll be diving through the lead formation at us; watch the two o'clock high position."

The Messerschmitts charged in echelon directly into the bombers' guns. Caldwell watched them, their nose and wings alight with cannon fire, admiring their discipline as they closed, fired, then rolled insolently to dive under the first group of B-17s. He saw one Fortress buck, then slowly side out to the left, flames already roaring from its center section as the black commas of the crew, turning end over end, bailed out.

Other ranks of Messerschmitts came on, hitting the lead elements and diving down, ignoring the return fire. They were putting on a first class air show—too bad it was so goddamn frightening to watch!

There was a lull in the attack. From his position he could see that they'd already lost at least four B-17s; how many more were down behind him? The Germans returned to attack, mottled gray-green hyenas pulling down gazelles. They formed up in pairs, sometimes two pairs together, nervously wriggling to dodge the hail of .50-caliber bullets. They bored in from all angles, slicing down to hit the top formation, their cruciform constantly altering as the bank angle and the deflection changed, then suddenly shooting by so close that Caldwell could pick out details: a pilot wearing a white scarf, the streamlined gondolas for the underwing 20-mm cannon, nitrous oxide exhaust stains down the fuselage. Then they were gone, and the next batch was coming in.

He did not see the one that hit them; 20-mm shells suddenly exploded in the cockpit, metal ricocheting everywhere in a cacophony of sound he'd dream about for the rest of his life. It was terrifying to have no job to do, no gun to fire, and at the height of his panic he was surprised, later, to find that his thoughts had been of his wife, Shirley, rather than of Elsie.

No one had been wounded, but now the bomber sang a different note as wind whistled through holes left by the cannon shells. God, those Germans had guts, and they could fly, too.

There was a brief respite and he noted that the sky was filled with terrifying scents, sights, and sounds: rank cordite from their own guns, huge blossoming belches of oil and gas from the exploding B-17s. The worst smoke of all came from the endless, filthy flak-clouds, black deadly puffs studding the sky in a pointillist painting, resonating waves of turbulence accompanied by the rain-on-a-tin-roof patter of shrapnel against the B-17s' aluminum skins. Yet the heavy flak afforded some relief, for it meant the fighters would not attack for a while.

He turned to check
Carolina Cutie,
framed in his right upper cockpit window. It was flying in the number two slot of the lead division and he had checked on it all the way from form-up, neatly tucked into formation, an olive-gray shell with ten bright young men in it, the yellow triangle
K
of the 379th Bomb Group on the tail glinting in the sun. As he watched, an 88-shell scored a direct hit on its bomb bay, the tremendous explosion stopping
Carolina Cutie
in the sky. Caldwell's mouth dropped at the incredible scene. A fifty-thousand-pound aircraft, moving at 160 miles per hour, had been instantly transformed into a splotchy expanding shadow of white, black, and red from which fell debris, no piece larger than an entrance hatch. No parachutes, of course.

Heading on a collision course with Caldwell's bomber,
Oberstleut
nant
Helmut Josten tucked the wing of his brand-new Messerschmitt Bf 109G-6 next to that of Major George-Peter Eckerle,
Kommodore
of
]agdgeschwader
3.

The B-17s were formed up ahead, stately, almost majestic, silver contrails streaming, thousands of guns pointed at them. Eckerle had devised a new tactic, a hell-for-leather, line-abreast formation that met the oncoming Fortresses head on. Josten heard Eckerle's calm voice call "Attacking," and they streamed in, twelve fighters flying into the steel teeth of the bombers.

Josten now fought with an absolute awareness of the whole situation. Just as a champion billiard player plans one shot to lead to the next, he knew instinctively how much fuel he had, how much ammunition was left, who had been shot down, and from where to make the next attack. And amid this calm comprehension he knew that, for the first time in his life, he was going to funk it.

Ahead the sky lit up with . 50-caliber bullets, the tracers leaving an arcing curve, every line seeming to drive directly at him. Fear squeezed him down in his seat, trying to hide behind the thundering Daimler-Benz DB 605A-1 engine, sneaking glances to his right to maintain formation.

He felt his fighter shudder from hits, saw Eckerle begin his roll as they dove through—and he had not even fired!

As the remaining Messerschmitts—there were only nine in their flight now—began to form up, Josten knew why he had failed. It was the baby, of course. He had not been in combat since the jet fiasco at Ploesti. Since then Ulrich had been born. When word had come from Stockholm that Lyra had delivered a baby boy, things had changed. Before he'd gone into combat with a reckless abandon, certain that he would prevail. This time all he could think about was surviving for Ulrich's sake.

As they struggled for altitude he felt sick—if he had fired he might have gotten one of the gunners who had killed his comrades. And what about Lyra? Why hadn't he felt the same way about surviving for her? Was he some kind of freak, that the thought of having a son could suddenly be so important, could affect him so?

The next attack went better. He concentrated his fire on the cockpit of a Fortress and saw it pitch forward, as if the pilots had fallen on the controls, plunging directly into another B-17 in the formation below.

Josten and Eckerle landed at the same emergency field. While they were refueling, he spoke to his
Kommodore.

"Major Eckerle, sorry about that first attack. I funked it, forgot to fire. No excuse."

Eckerle pulled the acrid wartime cigarette from his lips. "Happens to me all the time. Don't worry about it; you caught an Ami on the second pass, and got two for one."

He flipped the cigarette away, and they leapt back into the cockpits of their fighters, canopies slamming down as the hand cranks spun the inertial starters. Within seconds they were climbing again to the attack, Josten feeling as if he were being sucked up an inverted funnel of danger into another duel with the Fortresses.

Twelve hours later and five hundred miles away, Henry Caldwell woke up from the sleep of exhaustion, the hysterical laughter of his dreams turning into a choking fit. Red-faced, veins purpling, he was barely able to light his cigarette as he tried to recall what he'd been dreaming of—then it hit him and he roared again.

There had been damn little to laugh about on the mission, but whatever there was had been provided by the smart-ass copilot, McLean. Schmidt and the rest of the crew could barely tolerate him.

The man was nervous, no question. Some experimental flak gear had been put on board to see if it would be effective in warding off shrapnel. McLean had managed to secure an extra flak vest to sit on, joking uneasily about preserving the "family jewels," and had put his flak helmet on early in the flight. With a veteran's disdain, Schmidt had laid his own flak helmet between them on the floor behind the control pedestal.

En route the copilot had kept up his jabbering about the rough war in the Pacific, especially the flak over Rabaul. Then, just before they turned in on the Initial Point, McLean had looked ahead at the black clouds over Schweinfurt and said, "Looks like a thunderstorm over the target."

Shooting a quizzical glance at him, Schmidt turned in on the bomb run, saying, "Shit no, Major, that's just the light flak opening up."

McLean, green-faced and unbelieving, scanned the billowing black clouds multiplying like raindrops on a window. He half turned in his seat, picked up Schmidt's helmet, and vomited into it. Then, gutsy enough, he wiped his lips, refastened the A-8B oxygen mask, and went back to his copilot's duties.

Schmidt hadn't noticed. He was concentrating on the bomb run, keeping the airspeed constant, the plane straight and level, and following the bombardier's instructions until the PDI locked in, giving the bombardier control of the aircraft.

The bombardier called "Bombs away," and Schmidt rolled trim in to keep the aircraft from bounding up, lighter by three thousand pounds. The turn off-target took them into an even thicker wall of flak ahead. Schmidt, concentrating on the turn, reached down and put on his flak helmet, letting out a scream of rage as McLean's breakfast cascaded down over his ears.

After landing, Schmidt hurled himself out of the airplane and was wiping himself clean when McLean walked up and said, "Sorry, Captain, about the flak helmet. Must have been something I ate."

Without a word, lines from the oxygen mask pressed into his haggard face, Schmidt punched him in the belly so hard that McLean doubled up on the ground, puking again. Schmidt watched him, then reached back into the plane, pulled out a flak helmet, and tossed it down beside him.

"Use your own this time, you loudmouth son of a bitch."

Remembering, Caldwell wiped laughter tears from his eyes and lay back, now wide awake. Adrenaline pumped, driving him to relive some of the less amusing bits of the raid, assessing the effect of battle on the B-17s. He'd watched too many of them go down, each separate victim's tableau a distorted vector of time and space, as the shattered aircraft turned into freshly minted flotsam slowly decelerating into the void.

The first reports after they landed indicated that sixty planes had gone down over Germany, with another twelve written off after landing. Six hundred dead or captured, many more wounded. No matter how badly they had hurt Schweinfurt, the Eighth Air Force couldn't go on like this without long-range fighters. He'd have to accelerate the P-51 every way he could. The Thunderbolt was never going to have the range it needed, even with auxiliary tanks, and the P-38 wasn't suited for dogfighting in Europe. He had to get Mustangs over here fast, if it was the last thing he ever did for the air force. If they'd had Mustangs today, the Germans would have been beaten to the ground, and they would have lost only a dozen or so B-17s.

He knew he had to talk to Eaker and Spaatz. The only solution now was to concentrate on destroying the Luftwaffe on the ground, to bomb the factories and shoot up the airfields. It was too costly to try to eliminate them in individual aerial combat. As soon as the Mustangs arrived, they'd have to begin smashing the Luftwaffe in its lair, to hold off the jets.

He felt purged by the danger of the mission, realizing that there would have to be a showdown with Elsie. She'd have to admit to what was bothering her—he knew it was Hafner!—or he'd drop her. And she'd have to quit her work at McNaughton—that damn Troy was a bad influence on her. Hell, he made good money! If it wasn't enough, the hell with her. She could go back to her stupid dreams of Hafner.

The thought came to him that if they court-martialed him, he wouldn't even have a general's pay.

A knock on the door summoned Josten to a telephone call from Galland. Aching with fatigue, stomach still upset from combat, he padded down the dimly lit hallway in his stocking feet, confident that he was the senior officer in the building and wouldn't be called down for his informality.

"Josty, how'd it go today?"

"I was off my form personally, but the rest of the
Geschwader
did well—we probably had fifteen heavies among us."

"You'll get back in the swing of it; it's always tough after a layoff. Flying the 109 after the jets is a terrific comedown, I know. But it shows what we can do if we get enough planes in the air at the same time. We've got to have
mass;
it's no different than the cavalry days."

"We had mass today. What's up?"

"It looks like we shot down a total of sixty heavy babies. I want a personal estimate from you, right now, can't wait, of how many bombers we would have finished off if we'd had 262s instead of piston-engine fighters."

Josten thought for a moment. "That's easy. Given the same weather conditions, same number of fighters, we'd have shot down at least two hundred of them, maybe more. But you know that yourself."

"Right—but it'll carry more weight if a pilot from one of the successful units says it. Between us, the idiots at Messerschmitt are going around in circles. Now they've got a dozen different experimental variations of the 262 in the works—pressure cabins, rocket boost, more sharply swept wings—and still no production articles! It's as if Hitler's orders meant nothing."