Rush to Glory

by Robert L Hecker

  Hal watched the low hills sweep close under them, and he inwardly cursed O’Reilly. Standing a four-engine bomber on one wing on take-off was a fast way to get splashed all over the landscape. A takeoff like that in the States would have gotten O’Reilly a reprimand. But over here, maybe you were allowed a little fun before you died. Still, he had to admire the way the Irishman handled the big plane. It was not easy to execute a perfect near-chandelle in a four-engine bomber.

  They rolled out on a northwest heading and began a gentle climb, and Hal felt some of the tension drain out of him. He hooked up his throat mike and clicked the push-to-talk switch a couple of times. The electronic popping indicated an open line. He squirmed around to look at Marshall and Cossel. They hadn’t moved. O’Reilly knew the way without help from the navigator.

  Hal’s earphone popped, and he heard O’Reilly’s metallic-sounding voice: “Bailey?”

  He clicked his push-to-talk switch and said, “Yes, sir.” His amplified voice sounded strange to his ears.

  “We’re going on autopilot. Everything ready up there?”

  “I think so?”

  Fox’s voice cut in angrily, “You ready or not?”

  “I checked the gyro. It’s okay.”

  “Okay. Clutch in.”

  Hal deftly clutched in the directional gyro. Although controls for the Automatic Flight Control System were located on a panel between the pilot and co-pilot, its directional gyroscope was part of the bombsight’s mechanism. It was the link that allowed the bombardier to fly the airplane utilizing the bombsight on a bomb run.

  At five thousand feet, Hal made another wind and temperature check. The outside temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit, colder than he had ever encountered at this altitude in the States in July. He would have to keep close tabs. He could not afford a mistake. Not today. Not ever in combat.

  A moment later, O’Reilly drawled, “Okay, bombardier, we’ll be over the target in ten minutes. Twenty thousand feet.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  The intercom line went dead, and again Hal’s nerves were taut. But this time, it wasn’t fear; it was anger. Maybe they didn’t like him, but that was no reason to treat him like a pariah.

  Hal took another temperature check. The altimeter indicated twelve thousand feet, and he called the crew to go on oxygen. Behind him, Marshall and Cossel hooked up their masks, then dozed again, waking only when Hal made the routine oxygen checks. Hal was careful to make the checks every five minutes. Even at this relatively low altitude, if a man’s oxygen equipment was defective, he could lapse into asphyxia and die within minutes. At twenty thousand feet, the time was reduced to one minute or less.

  At fifteen thousand feet, after Hal entered another temperature check, he had time to look around. The seemingly perpetual ground haze was not deep enough to obscure the kaleidoscopic view, and he could pick up the distinctive razor-edged shapes of small English forests and the ribbons of silver that marked the courses of streams and rivers. Off to the right was Scotland, and just beyond would be the North Sea. And beyond the sea was Fortress Germany, where the crews who had left that morning were even now facing the waiting Luftwaffe and the devastating anti-aircraft guns. A chill shook Hal’s shoulders. Soon he would be facing enemies whose only purpose was to kill him.

  Marshall’s voice came suddenly over the intercom, “There’s the rock up ahead, in that bay.”

  Marshall was squatting beside him, pointing toward an indentation in the coastline ahead. Scarcely visible in the blue water, half a mile offshore, was the hump of a huge rock. From almost four miles in the air, the rock was like a brown pinhead fringed with white rings of foam. “I see it,” he told Marshall.

  “Okay. We’ll make one pass over it so you can get a good look. Then we’ll turn around and start the hot runs. One bomb at a time.”

  Hal said, “Roger.” He made a final temperature check and began calculations with his E-6B computer and bombing tables.

  His earphones clicked again. Marshall said, “You got that, O’Reilly?”

  “Ah, Roger, mein Fuhrer,” O’Reilly drawled.

  As the uneven coastline slid closer, Hal took another temperature and wind reading, although he wasn’t sure he was wasting his time. Most people, even the B-17 crewmen, thought that the famous Nordon bombsight did all the work, and the bombardier was pretty much along for the ride. They failed to realize that, from twenty or twenty-five thousand feet, the bomb, after it left the bomb bay, would have many factors affecting its flight during the long fall to the target: changes of temperature, various wind shifts, and their densities, its inertial speed when it left the aircraft, etc. If the pilot failed to hold the aircraft’s speed and altitude exactly where the bombardier directed, the bomb could miss the target by hundreds of feet, no matter how carefully he had gathered data, entered it into the sight and steered the ship to keep the crosshairs riding on the target. With the bombsight, he controlled the direction of the B-17, but he had no control of the plane’s altitude or airspeed. If O’Reilly wanted to sabotage him, all he had to do was change the plane’s speed or altitude a couple of seconds before the bomb left the bomb bay and the bomb would miss the target by hundreds of feet no matter how well the bombardier made his calculations and controlled the plane’s course.

  Hal pushed the trepidations aside. O’Reilly had no reason to sabotage him. And besides, Marshall would probably sense what he was doing.

  Keeping his mind centered on his work, he finished setting the ‘trail’ value and ATF disc speed into the bombsight and reset the gyro bubbles. Setting of the bubbles was critical. If the gyro was off true vertical by even a fraction of a degree, a bomb falling in its long ballistic flight could be hundreds of yards off target, just another of the many variables that could cause a wide miss.

  By the time he had finished and re-caged the gyro, they had passed the rock, and O’Reilly was beginning to swing around for the turn back.

  Hall quickly set the bomb interval timer for single release and told O’Reilly he was opening the bomb bay doors. He felt the ship lurch slightly as the open bay grabbed at the passing air. Almost instantly, O’Reilly swung the big ship in a hard-tight bank, standing it on a nearly vertical wing.

  “O’Reilly! What the hell are you doing?” Marshall’s voice crackled. “This is supposed to be a hot run.”

  “That’s right,” O’Reilly said. “A nice short one. Just like on some missions.” And as the wings abruptly leveled off, he added, “Take it away.”

  Marshall shot a look over Hal’s shoulder at the rapidly approaching rock. He quickly snapped loose his oxygen mask and bellowed in Hal’s ear, “Want to try it?”

  Hal’s mind raced. O’Reilly was sabotaging him; the rock was too close to make a good run. At most, he would have fifteen seconds, not enough time to make an accurate drop from this altitude. He felt quick despair. He had desperately wanted to make this first run good. But he was keenly aware that O’Reilly knew all this as well as he did. Well, the hell with it. If he failed, he could go back to be a nobody. What did he have to lose?

  “Okay,” he said abruptly. “I’ll try it.”

  Hal hit the arming switch and swung the sight into position, visually lining it up with the tiny rock they were rapidly approaching. He quickly engaged the locking pin, un-caged the gyro, re-set the bubbles and set the trigger. Thank God he had leveled the bubbles early. A stiff wind from the left was rapidly blowing them off course, and he gave the “course” knob a hard twist, forcing the autopilot to rack the big plane up on one wing in a hard turn upwind. Then, even before he leveled the big ship, he was peering through the optical of the bombsight, moving the “rate” hair into place on the target.

  He pulled back from the eyepiece for a glance at the two moving indices of the bombsight. Already the gap between them was a
lmost closed. When they came together with the trigger up, the bomb would automatically drop. He had at the most five seconds . . . maybe four. They were crabbed into the stiff wind and upwind of the target, but they were still drifting downwind. A bomb dropped now would not even come close. He estimated he had less than a second, not enough time for another turn to completely kill the drift. O’Reilly had known this when he had made the quick turn. He wanted him to miss. Well, screw him! He spun the “course” knob a split second before the indices came together, forcing the ship to lurch violently up on one wing. At that instant, he heard the click of the trigger. Bomb away!

  “Jesus!” he heard Fox exclaim. “What the fuck was that?”

  “Bomb’s gone,” Hal said matter-of-factly.

  He re-caged his gyro, unclutched the directional gyro, and used the clutch handle to right the big plane, then felt O’Reilly take over the controls. “What the hell kind of bomb drop was that?” O’Reilly asked.

  Hal didn’t answer. He leaned over the bombsight, craning to stare down through the Plexiglas nose at the target far below. From this altitude, it would be roughly thirty seconds before the bomb hit the water. The intercom was silent as the other crewmen watched for the minute puff of smoke that would mark the impact point.

  When the speck of smoke did appear, it was downwind just as Hal had known it would be; but the hit was only a couple of hundred feet from the target. Without the tossing action of the violent turn, the strike would have been off by a quarter of a mile.

  “Hey, hey!” The Flight Engineer’s voice sounded loud in Hal’s ears. “They sent us a live one.”

  “Where did you learn that trick?” Marshall said over the intercom. He sounded surprised, but Hal couldn’t tell whether he was pleased or not.

  “Tried it a couple of times at Carlsbad,” Hal explained. “If you catch it just right, you can toss them quite a ways.”

  “You damn well better not try that on a mission,” O’Reilly growled. “You’d have every ship in the group wrapped up in a nice big ball.”

  “Quit your bitchin’, O’Reilly,” Marshall said. “You tried to louse him up, and he damn near shacked one anyway. Now let’s see if you can drive this wagon well enough to give us a good run.”

  Hal waited for the reply, but there was none. Marshall punched him lightly on the shoulder, and his eyes over the oxygen mask indicated he was grinning. He sat down behind Hal with his back against the bulkhead and closed his eyes. Hal glanced back toward Cossel and saw him settle back in his chair, his eyes noncommittal.

  The remainder of the practice mission was routine. O’Reilly kept his mouth shut and gave Hal straight and level runs, with plenty of time to line up on the target. After every run, Hal marked down his C.E. and made an oxygen check.

  When the ten bombs were gone, they dropped quickly down to five thousand feet and took off their oxygen masks. Marshall got up and looked at Hal’s score sheet. He had no actual hits on the rock, but a couple of the marks were within a few feet, and except for the first one, the hits were scattered within a two-hundred-foot circle.

  “Not bad,” Marshall shouted above the drum of the engines. “You’ll do okay.”

  Hal would have liked to know what was going through O’Reilly’s mind as they skimmed the fields of England on the flight back to Thorpewood. But O’Reilly was silent.

  With “O’Reilly’s Mongrel House” parked on its hardstand and their equipment checked in, they were grabbing a late lunch when Hal noticed that the ground personnel were hurrying out of the mess hall. Cossel explained, “Mission’s due back. Want to watch them come in?”

  Hal quickly stood up. “Yeah.”

  Cossel turned to O’Reilly and Fox, “You guys coming?”

  O’Reilly shook his head. “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.”

  “Can’t,” Fox said. “Got a date in the village.”

  Cossel laughed. “Fox, you could find a girl on a desert island.”

  Fox grinned. “It’s a gift.”

  “Gift hell,” O’Reilly said. “It’s a curse. Fox is cursed by every husband and father in England.”

  “Yeah,” Fox agreed, “But the women all love me.”

  “Are you bringing her to the party tonight?” Cossel asked.

  “Hell no. She’d cramp my style.”

  “What style?” O’Reilly said. “All you do is asked if they want to get laid?”

  “Saves a lot of time,” Fox said.

  Cossel was chuckling as he and Hal went out into the afternoon sunlight. Hal wondered how they could so easily pretend that death was not waiting. Could he ever be so indifferent?

  CHAPTER 4

  The runways of the 401st Bomb Group had been constructed in the center of a sea of vivid green grass. One long and two short concrete-paved runways crossed in the shape of an off-centered triangle. The ‘control tower’ was a square two-storied building with a small glass-windowed cupola perched on top. Turn-offs from the runways led to a perimeter taxi strip that circled the field, leading to oil-streaked hardstands of squadron dispersal areas.

  Typically, the nearby cluster of operations buildings were Quonset huts, augmented with several wooden shop buildings and one large repair hanger.

  A ‘control truck,’ painted with large black and white squares, was parked at the beginning of the long runway. Two olive-colored ambulances with big red crosses on their sides waited near the control tower. Next to them was a crash truck, its driver sat behind the wheel, its idling engine adding a smudge of white exhaust to the haze. Nearby two fire trucks also waited with their engines idling. Their crews were already attired in asbestos suits, ready to charge into blazing wreckage fueled by high-octane gasoline. Another fire truck was stationed at the opposite end of the runway near the flight-control truck.

  In scattered groups, men stood or sat on the absurdly green grass near the dispersal areas, talking quietly, occasionally glancing toward the sky, their faces anxious. They were the ground personnel: armoires, mechanics, crew chiefs, cooks, engineers, weather personnel, administrators, and intelligence. While they could not experience the pain and the fear of flight crews, each felt as though he was a part of the mission. In their minds, they were out there, and, while their voices were quiet as they waited for the warriors, the air was charged with silent prayer.

  Cossel led the way toward a group of officers standing near the operations building. They shielded their eyes from the afternoon sun as they stared into the sky. Most of the officers wore regulation pinks with green shirts and no jacket. A few wore flight coveralls. Luke was in the group, looking as though he belonged.

  Someone in the group moved, and Hal was startled to see the girl, Miss Axley, standing next to an officer who wore a full colonel’s chickens on his collar. That had to be Colonel Sutton, the group’s commanding officer. Like yesterday the girl was wearing an expensive skirt, blouse, and jacket. She looked very business-like except that an officer’s pink garrison cap hanging on the side of her head gave her a rakish look. Talking with the colonel, she appeared to be enjoying herself.

  Hal didn’t want to be close to the girl, nor Luke. He didn’t want to think about her relationship with the colonel. And he certainly didn’t want to answer questions about the practice mission. However well he had done; he knew that it would not be good enough for Luke.

  When they stopped near the group, the girl recognized Hal and acknowledged him with a smile and a tilt of her head. But Luke hardly glanced at Hal and Cossel. He was intently studying the sky, his forehead creased with worry.

  “What’s the poop?” Luke asked a middle-aged, overweight major.

  “We lost four according to the last report. Three from your squadron.”

  Luke cursed. “Why in hell is it always my squadron? Stutzman hasn’t lost a crew in four days. Who were they?”

&
nbsp; “Gobrickt, Strickland, and Watts.”

  “Well, that’s not so bad. They’re all new.” Surprisingly, because Hal was not aware that Luke knew he was even there, Luke added, “George, I want you to meet my brother. Hal, this is Major Deering, our Intelligence Officer.”

  Major Deering shook Hal’s hand. “Luke’s brother, eh? I hope you aren’t the same blood-hungry bastard he is.”

  Luke laughed and slapped the major on the back. “You’re a smartass, Deering. Only trouble is you take yourself too serious.”

  Colonel Sutton turned from watching the sky. “Luke,” he said, “you got clobbered again.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I hear. You’re gonna have to get me some of Stutzman’s bulletproof airplanes.”

  Everyone chuckled except Hal. He couldn’t see anything humorous about losing forty men on one mission.

  Luke nodded his head toward Hal. “Colonel, I want you to meet my kid brother, Hal.”

  As the colonel shook hands, he studied Hal’s face. “Welcome to the 401st.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad to be here.”

  The colonel was young—probably no more than thirty. But the look of youth was deceptive. His pale blue eyes looked tired, dejected. His lean face had already set into hard, unyielding lines. Still, there was something in his hardness that didn’t ring true. It was as though he was trying to hide his youth behind a mask of maturity. Except that it might not be a deception, being in command of a combat group and responsible for the welfare and lives of three thousand men could age a person rapidly.

  He released Hal’s hand and glanced at Luke. “I didn’t know you had a brother. I sometimes doubt you even had a mother.”

  Luke and Major Deering chuckled at the colonel’s remark, and Hal felt that some response was expected from him. “She’s not sure herself. She said she had a dream one night about a bulldozer. Nine months later, there he was.”