by Tom Young
With every vibration, Wilhelm now heard a distant rumble. The rumbles turned into distinct booms.
The Yanks had returned for another bombing raid.
“We need to get your men inside,” the ensign said.
That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said today, Wilhelm thought.
7
Bomb Run
Black puffs filled the sky around Hellstorm. When those dark blossoms of smoke appeared, it meant the flak gunners had found you. The formation staggered through a stained sky. Karl reminded himself that the bursts he could see were already spent. They had already thrown jagged, hot metal either harmlessly into thin air, or through the metal skin of a B-17—perhaps into an engine, a fuel line, or a flier’s flesh and bones. If one of those bursts took his life today, it would be the one he never saw.
In Karl’s experience, flak had brought down more bombers than the German fighter planes. Sometimes a battery of guns would use calculated lead and open up together in Continuously Pointed Fire—which the Krauts appeared to be using now.
The key was to make yourself a difficult target. Screw up their firing solution by changing course or altitude, or both. The instructors said twenty-degree course changes at least every thirty seconds could make the difference between escaping the barrage or going down in a ball of fire. That was all well and good when you were en route to the target. But during the bomb run, amid the heaviest flak, you could take no evasive action. For bombing accuracy, you had to fly straight and level, just sit there and take it, for up to ninety eternal seconds.
Shrapnel struck Hellstorm’s underside. Sounded like gravel thrown against the fenders of a truck speeding down a dirt road. An instant later, black smoke bloomed just below the aircraft off the left wing. Karl’s first worry centered on the ball turret gunner, suspended beneath the fuselage in what some guys called “the morgue.”
“Hey, Kid, you all right?” Karl asked on interphone.
“I’m good, sir,” Russo answered. “But I’m gonna need to change my shorts when we get back.”
Karl appreciated the attempt at humor, but he had just seen friends blown from the sky. He could think of no good reply to Russo, so he scanned the flight instruments again, trying to tamp down his emotions. He wished he could turn off his feelings the way he could isolate electrical trouble in an airplane by pulling a circuit breaker.
Adrian was flying now, and he was changing course again to make Hellstorm a more difficult target. Only timing, navigation, and flak told the crew they had crossed into the Third Reich. The land below looked all the same: patches of fields and forests, silver ribbons of rivers, slate roof clusters of villages.
Up ahead, the first B-17s from the formation neared the target. Those ships had flown in the lead combat box. In a few minutes, the squadrons of the second combat box—including Karl’s squadron in the low position—would peel out of formation and move into line at the initial point. They could maneuver to avoid flak for a few more minutes, and then they’d have to hold steady through the bombing run—no matter what came up at them.
“I liked it better when the fighters were coming after us,” Pell said on interphone.
“You and me both,” Anders replied from the tail gun. “At least then we could shoot back.”
The Messerschmitts had vanished before the bombers came into range of the flak guns. The fighters wanted to give a clear field of fire to their compatriots manning the antiaircraft artillery batteries on the ground.
Except for those damned flak bursts, the sky ahead looked perfectly blue, just as forecast. The aircraft had offered no excuse to abort the mission, and the weather wouldn’t, either. The number-two engine still showed weak manifold pressure, but it wasn’t getting any worse. Let’s just get this over with, Karl thought. Let’s just get it done, and pray to God that Pell—and all the other bombardiers—do their best work today.
Adrian rolled out of his turn and held a steady course. All around Hellstorm, the other ships in the formation did the same. The flak bursts drifted off to the left; at least for a moment, the evasive action seemed to work.
“Navigator, copilot,” Adrian called. “Dick, are we good on this turn?”
“Affirm,” Conrad called from the navigator’s station. “Give me twenty more seconds on this heading.”
“You got it.”
The flak bursts stopped altogether. Pure satin blue lay ahead, unsoiled by explosives.
“Damn, copilot,” Conrad called. “You’re so good they just gave up.”
“Don’t count on it,” Karl said. He wanted to believe it, but it didn’t make sense. The Germans would never let scores of Forts waltz into airspace over an industrial center like Bremen this easily.
Fifteen seconds passed as peacefully as if Hellstorm were flying a training mission over Texas. Then a dirty rag unfurled in the sky directly in front of the second combat box. Then another, and another. Instead of appearing at random, the bursts now kept pace with the formation.
The flak gunners had fine-tuned their lead, Karl realized. Two of the aircraft ahead of Hellstorm already appeared damaged. One had a smoking engine, and another was missing part of its rudder.
“Huns got us dialed in,” Adrian said. “Those guys in the front are getting chewed up pretty bad.”
“Just keep those turns coming,” Karl said. “Wait for the flight leader to call a climb.”
During that blissful break in the flak bursts, the Germans had recalculated. They could pick you up on an optical sight and use a stereoscopic range finder to get your altitude. That information got fed down an electrical cable to a director that automatically computed lead. It worked much the way an expert shotgunner could shoulder his weapon, place his cheek to the stock, and swing the barrels ahead of a speeding grouse. When the lead looked just right, he’d touch the trigger and watch the bird crumple and fall.
Something struck a glancing blow to Karl’s windscreen, like a single grain of sleet. Left a gouge in the glass. An instant later, another black stain smeared the sky in front of Hellstorm.
“This is gonna get ugly on the bomb run,” Conrad called over the interphone.
“I know it,” Karl said.
Ahead, the lead squadron’s ships began a turn. The Fortresses banked steeply, revealing the white stars on their left wings. Karl consulted his plotting chart. This turn wasn’t evasive action; the lead bombers had reached the initial point and were turning toward the target.
“Here we go,” Adrian said.
“Welcome to the main event,” Karl said.
Karl tried to convey more enthusiasm than he felt. He wanted, needed, to serve his country, his dad’s adopted country. Except right now, he wanted to be anywhere but here.
A loud bang sounded just to his left. Startled by the noise, he ducked instinctively. He turned to see his side window shattered by shrapnel. Cracks spiderwebbed across the pane.
Settle your nerves, boy, he told himself. Settle your nerves.
“Copilot, navigator,” Conrad called. “Coming up on the IP. I’ll call the turn.”
A pencil mark on Karl’s plotting chart showed the initial point: a railroad crossing, barely visible from this altitude. Radio compass bearings backed up the visual reference. Karl held up the chart for Adrian and indicated the pencil mark with his thumb. Adrian nodded.
“Ready, ready, turn,” Conrad called.
The horizon tilted as Adrian banked the aircraft thirty degrees to the left. In the turn, the combat box dissolved and the planes reassembled into one deadly line for the bomb run. The flak bursts disappeared behind and to the right. Adrian rolled out on his new heading just as a command came from their squadron’s lead ship:
“Fireball, climb, climb now.”
Adrian shoved the throttles and put Hellstorm into a thousand-foot climb. We just threw the flak gunners a change in both heading and altitude, Karl thought. Maybe that will screw them up for a few minutes. Pretty hard to hit a grouse that’s climbing and turn
ing at the same time.
Karl checked his watch and monitored the minutes, then the seconds. By now, he knew, bombs would be falling from the Forts up ahead. Moments later, a call from the group commander—in the lead ship from the first combat box—sent Karl scrambling for his target charts.
“Fireball squadrons, be advised we have good hits on the primary target,” the commander announced. “But there’s not any wind at ground level, and you’ve got smoke obscuration over the primary right now. Proceed to the secondary. Acknowledge with your call signs.”
Several bombers checked in while Karl waited. When his turn came, he radioed: “Fireball Able Five.”
The secondary target charts showed the location of submarine pens at the edge of the River Weser. Paper-clipped to the charts were photos taken days ago by high-altitude P-38 reconnaissance planes. In the photos, the sub pens appeared as rectangular masses of gray concrete.
“Navigator, pilot,” Karl called on interphone. “You copy our new target?”
“Working on it, sir. I’ll have you a new heading in a second.”
“How about you, bombardier?” Karl asked.
“Got the photo out now,” Pell said. “Get me there, and I’ll blast it.”
That would require some luck, Karl realized. Pell would probably display his usual accuracy—but Hellstorm carried ten five-hundred-pound general-purpose bombs. Adequate for an aircraft plant built before the war, but not the tool of choice for hardened submarine pens. Still, the GP bombs would at least give the Kraut shipyard workers a rough day—and maybe even do a little bit of actual damage. Karl and his crew would fight with what they had.
“Pilot, navigator,” Conrad called on interphone. “Come left heading three-four-zero.”
“Three-four-zero,” Karl said. “Let’s go bomb some U-boats.”
“Three-four-zero,” Adrian said as he began the turn.
The sky ahead remained clear of flak bursts for several minutes. But then the black puffs reappeared, walking along ahead of the aircraft. The flak gunners’ tracking capability reminded Karl of a hateful Doberman that lived on his paper route when he was a kid. Young Karl could pedal hard on his Schwinn, turn off his route, and cut down a side street, and that damned dog would still catch up, nipping at the cuffs of his jeans.
The first four puffs blossomed silently, unaccompanied by the sound of shrapnel striking the airplane. Then something hit the fuselage so hard, Karl felt the shock through his seat.
“What’s happening, guys?” he asked. “Everybody all right?”
Long seconds without an answer. Karl thought he heard shouts from behind him, off interphone.
“Baker’s hit,” Ryan called. “Big chunk of steel came right through the radio room.”
“How bad?” Karl asked.
Karl wanted to get up and go see for himself, but this close to the target and under fire, he dared not leave the command seat. The momentary silence on the interphone was maddening.
“How bad?” Karl repeated.
“It’s his arm, sir,” Ryan said.
That told Karl little. Was the arm scratched or severed? Despite his impatience, he understood the reason for the slow answers. The guys probably couldn’t see the wound at all through the radio operator’s heavy flight clothing. At the very least, they needed to get his jacket sleeve off.
“You want me to go back and have a look?” Fairburn asked from the top turret.
“Negative,” Karl said. “Stay on your guns. I don’t think fighters will come up through this flak, but you never know.”
As an experienced aircraft commander, Karl had become used to making those kinds of decisions. As much as he wanted to give Baker extra help, he had to think of the entire ship and crew. There wasn’t a lot of room back there, anyway, and the waist gunners could handle it by themselves.
Adrian followed new headings provided by the navigator, and the flak bursts scattered to the right of the airplane. After a few minutes, Baker himself spoke up on the interphone. His voice sounded weak, but his words remained clear:
“Pilot, radio. I’m still with you, sir. Arm’s tore up, though. They put a tourniquet on it.”
“Good to hear your voice, Baker. Let ’em give you some morphine.”
“Don’t need it right now. Arm’s just numb. I’ll save the morphine in case I need it later. We got a long way to go.”
“Good man.”
“Oh, and, sir, the liaison radio’s dead. Shrapnel busted it.”
That meant Hellstorm had lost her long-range communication. Not good, but at the moment, the least of Karl’s problems. Now he concentrated on getting the aircraft over the target, dropping the ordnance, and flying the egress route. At this point, turning for home to get the radio operator to a doctor sooner was not an option. A lone B-17, especially one with an engine acting up, would make easy prey for the Luftwaffe.
With Baker’s arm in a tourniquet, Karl thought, he’ll probably lose it. He might face a lifetime of disability because we wanted to get this mission done.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, guilt tugged at Karl. He’d always felt ashamed of his cousin’s membership in the German American Bund. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Gerhard lit out for Mexico and hadn’t been heard from since. The FBI was waiting for him if he ever came back. The Eighth Air Force knew about it, too, and Karl had faced a grilling before he could enter flight training. Eventually the military had satisfied itself about Karl’s loyalties, but he’d always felt he had something to prove.
Am I so afraid of getting tarred by Gerhard’s nonsense, Karl wondered, that it skews my judgment? Is that why Baker’s back there bleeding right now?
Forget about it, Karl ordered himself. Don’t be a Hamlet. Concentrate. You’ve got a job to do.
A smudge appeared on the horizon at the two o’clock position. The primary target, Karl realized, with a pall of smoke hanging over it.
“Looks like the other squadrons pounded the Focke-Wulf plant pretty good,” Adrian said.
“You got that right,” Pell said from the bombardier’s station. “Glad I don’t have to bomb through that smoke.”
The aircraft droned nearer to Bremen, and the river hove into view. Karl searched for anything that looked like a submarine bunker. A heavy concentration of flak bursts polluted the sky across the entire city; the Germans were not going to make this easy. From the navigator’s station, Conrad called up two more heading changes, and the crew began to set up for the bomb run. At the side of the river, Karl spotted what looked from this distance like a big rectangular rock.
“Target in sight,” Pell called. “Follow the PDI.”
The Pilot Direction Indicator displayed a needle that swung left or right to tell the pilots which way to steer toward the target. Easy enough on a training mission, but a lot harder with flak in the air, and with cold, tired aviators at the controls. The autopilot offered more precision than hand flying, and Karl needed maximum accuracy. Uncle Rainer lived somewhere in the urban landscape below.
“I got faith in my copilot,” Karl said, “but I want to do this on autopilot.” He glanced at Adrian, who nodded. No further explanation required. By now, Karl believed, he and Adrian could almost read each other’s thoughts.
Karl had already turned on and warmed up the AFCE, Hellstorm’s Automatic Flight Control Equipment. He flipped a bar switch to engage the AFCE. The control yoke rocked slightly as the autopilot’s servos kicked in. To fine-tune the autopilot’s inputs, Karl twisted the sensitivity knob until the ailerons chattered, then backed the knob down just a hair. When the plane drew closer to the target, Karl placed his thumb on the control transfer switch and clicked the switch to the Second STA position. Second station meant the bombardier. Through the autopilot, synchronized with the gyros of the Norden bombsight, Pell now steered the aircraft for maximum accuracy.
“All right, bombardier,” Karl called. “Your airplane.”
“ ‘Captain Norden’ has the plane,” Pell said.
In concert with the wind, flak bursts multiplied across the sky, a danse macabre to the slipstream’s crescendo. Pockmarks fouled the air above Bremen from the northern edge of the city to the south: This was Curtain Fire. No need for the antiaircraft gunners to calculate lead when they know exactly where you’re going. Just put up a wall of hot steel and let you fly into it.
Invisible claws raked at Hellstorm. Karl heard shards puncture the plane’s aluminum skin from nose to tail, but at least for the moment, they hit nothing vital. The bomber continued flying normally, and the crew reported no new injuries. The plane directly in front of Hellstorm, Crescent City Maiden, appeared undamaged as well—but then she took a hit in the number-three engine. Black oil splashed over the cowling, and flames licked past the leading edge of the wing. Two heartbeats later, heavy smoke trailed from the engine. Maiden’s pilots feathered the prop; Karl watched the propeller spin down to a stop, blades turned into the wind for minimum drag.
“That ain’t good,” Adrian said.
Crescent City Maiden began to lose airspeed, and Hellstorm started catching up to her.
“Careful not to overrun them,” Karl said. Adrian eased the throttles back.
Maiden’s wings rocked. The number-four engine began to burn, and flames wrapped around the entire cowling.
“Fireball Able Four’s on fire,” a voice called on the radio. Sounded like Rawlings, Maiden’s aircraft commander.
“Don’t push your luck, Four,” Karl radioed. “Get out while you can.”
Maiden began a wide, smoking turn to get off the bomb run. She began to descend: Rawlings was trying to build speed and blow out the flames. The fires only spread farther.
