Silver Wings, Iron Cross

by Tom Young

  He climbed an embankment studded with patches of dead weeds. At the crest, Wilhelm came to a paved access road that led from the naval base. No cars moved along the road; the city remained silent. He walked along the road’s edge. With each step, his ribs burned. His hand throbbed where the thumb had been knocked out of joint. The thumb remained in place, but a bruise the color of deep seawater was spreading across his palm.

  A devastated city lay before Wilhelm. The bombers had come many times before, and it was hard to tell which damage had taken place two years ago and which had happened half an hour ago. He stumbled past the remains of a shipyard’s office buildings. Two intact walls loomed over a mound of bricks. A steel desk, twisted and charred, rested atop the rubble. Except for a relatively new Mercedes with tires burned off the rims, the scene resembled photos Wilhelm had seen from the First World War.

  The bombed-out shipyard so riveted Wilhelm’s attention that he failed to look where he put his feet, and he did not see the object that tripped him. Something snagged his boot, and he staggered and nearly fell. Suffered more stabs of pain from his ribs. He looked down and saw a metal bar, painted black except for a yellow tip.

  Wilhelm picked up the object and examined it more closely. From its taper—and the English lettering—he realized he was holding a propeller blade. Evidently, a flak shell had found its mark in the skies above him. At least one Flying Fortress crew was having a bad day. Serves them right, Wilhelm thought, raining explosives on this once-beautiful city. But then he realized the men on the civilian freighters he’d sent to the bottom would say he deserved getting depth charged.

  Professionals, Wilhelm thought. We were all professionals doing a job. Well, some of us were professionals, he considered. Not that motherless goon in the SS uniform. What skill, what study and aptitude, did his job require?

  Wilhelm tossed away the propeller blade. It clanged onto the skeleton of a fallen shipyard crane. The noise startled a stray cat. The calico hissed and disappeared into a tangle of rusting cable. Wilhelm saw the cat hiss, but did not hear the sound; his ears remained dulled. He put one boot in front of the other, continued his journey toward the unknown.

  9

  The Butcher Birds

  Karl switched off the autopilot and racked Hellstorm into a steep left turn. Freed of her bomb load, she weighed five thousand pounds less, and she handled more nimbly. Electric motors closed the bomb bay doors.

  Below, blazes flickered across Bremen. From this altitude, the fires and smoke gave the city the appearance of an inflamed ulcer, septic and bleeding. Pell had reported his bombs on target, and Karl believed him, but the damage wreaked by the formation looked general and indiscriminate. Karl forced himself not to think about Uncle Rainer and Aunt Federica; he still had a hell of a long way to go, and he needed to concentrate. As he rolled the wings level on his egress heading toward the North Sea, he heard Russo calling from the ball turret.

  “Bandits nine o’clock low and climbing fast,” Russo said. “Here they come!”

  Karl peered out the left window. Dark specks moved over the ground, maybe ten of them. Hornets kicked from their nest, armed and enraged. The Luftwaffe intended to exact a price for the raid on Bremen, and Karl felt he’d gotten into a street fight with one arm in a sling. With Baker wounded, there was no one to fire the gun in the radio room. The B-17 carried other guns, of course, but Karl wanted every weapon ready to start blazing. To make matters worse, his aircraft would now have to defend itself alone. The Fortresses had strung out all across the target area, and they no longer provided mutual support from interlocking fields of fire.

  “They’re trying to get ahead of us,” Pell reported.

  Sure enough, the specks were flying parallel to the bombers’ course and pulling ahead. Faster than heavy bombers, German fighters could use their speed advantage to set up for attack. They’d get a few miles in front of the formation and a little above it, then turn and slice through the Forts.

  “Yeah,” Karl said. “They’re going to get on our twelve o’clock and come in. Stay ready, gunners.”

  Karl felt tempted to tell them to use short bursts and keep interphone chatter concise. But he’d already reminded them at least once, and the gunners knew their jobs. In their training, they’d fired BB machine guns at moving targets on an indoor range, and they’d learned to lead targets at various angles by firing shotguns at clay pigeons. Then they’d gone up on training flights to shoot at towed targets. The factors of lead, bullet trajectory, target speed, and angle all came together in a deadly science known as flexible aerial gunnery.

  In the distance, the fighters began to turn. As they banked, Karl recognized them as Focke-Wulf 190s. That angle revealed the Balkenkreuz markings—the black crosses on the fuselages and wings. The 190s also bore swastikas on their vertical stabilizers. Each fighter carried a pair of machine guns synchronized to fire through the propeller arc, along with twenty-millimeter cannons mounted in the wings. According to Eighth Air Force intel reports, German pilots nicknamed the Fw 190 the “Butcher Bird.”

  “Anybody see any friendlies?” Adrian asked.

  “Negative,” Fairburn called from the top turret.

  “Wait,” Anders responded from the tail gun. “I got four Mustangs coming down from five o’clock high.”

  “How far out are they?” Karl asked.

  “I don’t know,” Anders said. “Maybe four miles.”

  The 190s were closer, and they continued to turn. In a few seconds, the attack would begin. Karl could almost sense his gunners watching the Butcher Birds through their sights. He prayed the Mustangs would intercept the enemy planes in time.

  Karl’s oxygen regulator blinked black and white faster and faster as he breathed more rapidly. Flying Fortresses had a reputation for being hard to shoot down, so the Germans tended to concentrate their fire toward the flight deck. Though Karl had always considered himself a strong man, at the moment he felt frail and squishy. In the cockpits of those 190s, drawing closer by the second, sat highly skilled and motivated young men determined to put sharp, hot metal through Karl’s body.

  The Butcher Birds banked more steeply, maneuvering in front of the B-17s.

  “They’re at twelve o’clock and closing,” Karl said. Tried to keep his voice as even as possible.

  From above Hellstorm, the Mustangs appeared in Karl’s field of view. They dived and turned to meet the 190s. Tracers began spitting from their wings. Some of the Butcher Birds turned to engage the Mustangs. But others held course and pressed their attack.

  The oncoming Butcher Birds grew larger in the windscreen. Some aircraft veered to hit other bombers in the scattered formation, but one bored directly at Hellstorm. Flashes began to blink on the leading edges of its wings: cannon fire.

  Karl banked to begin an evasive turn, but it was a token effort. The Fort could never outmaneuver a fighter. With a mere flick of its ailerons, the German aircraft stayed on Hellstorm and closed fast.

  Hellstorm’s gunners opened up. Rips of fire erupted from the ball turret, the top turret, and one of the cheek guns in the nose. Tracers cut parabolas toward the German aircraft, but the Focke-Wulf seemed to absorb them without effect. Perhaps the rounds impacted without inflicting fatal damage. Empty casings from Fairburn’s twin fifties clanged and clattered behind Karl and Adrian.

  The German aircraft began firing. Bangs sounded from Hellstorm ’s left wing. The aircraft shuddered as if stomped by a giant boot.

  The fighter headed right for the windscreen; Karl pushed down on the yoke and began to dive. At the last instant, the 190 pulled up. It screamed over the top of the Fortress, just feet away. Anders opened fire with the tail gun; Karl felt its thumping, quieter and more distant than the turret guns just above his head.

  The yoke began to vibrate, and when Karl looked out his window, he saw why. Half the left aileron had been shot away. What was left hung ragged and torn, fluttering on its hinges. Worse, the number-two engine was smoking and burning. Spas
ms of panic twisted his gut, but Karl forced himself to focus.

  “Feather number two,” Karl ordered. He wanted to shut down the stricken engine and stop its propeller. A motionless, feathered prop presented less drag than a windmilling prop.

  Adrian put a gloved finger on the center console.

  “Confirm two,” Adrian said, asking Karl to double-check he was shutting down the correct engine. Bad time for a stupid mistake to leave them with two dead engines.

  “Confirm,” Karl said.

  Adrian flipped switches to close the fuel valve and shut off the boost pump for the stricken engine. Placed his middle finger on the feathering button for number two.

  “Confirm two,” Adrian repeated. His voice sounded strained from inside his oxygen mask.

  “Confirm.”

  Adrian shoved the button, and the number-two propeller slowed to a stop. He opened the cowl flaps on the bad engine and switched off its magnetos. The smoke trailing from number two thinned, but did not stop. Karl advanced the throttles for the three remaining engines to max continuous power. Now he’d have a tough time maintaining speed and altitude, and he prayed the Butcher Birds would content themselves with one pass.

  No such luck.

  The 190 that had just put cannon rounds into Hellstorm’s wing and engine cut a wide, smoking arc around the formation and headed for home. Karl’s gunners had done some damage, after all. But another fighter circled and climbed, searching for prey. Wounded and burning, Hellstorm made an obvious target. The German pilot would want to finish her off, record her death with his gun camera, and claim a confirmed kill.

  “Here comes another one,” Karl said. “Ten o’clock high.”

  The Butcher Bird steepened its bank while it gained altitude, as if performing a chandelle in an air show. An elegant move in a lethal ballet. At the zenith of the maneuver, the German pilot let his nose drop until his guns lined up with Hellstorm’s forward fuselage. The 190’s cannons began to wink. Fairburn and Russo started blasting from their turrets.

  Karl banked hard to the left and began a descending turn. He hoped it might throw off the fighter’s aim—but the German pilot needed only to nudge a rudder pedal to adjust fire. The Fort’s tracers cut spears of light toward the enemy, while the 190’s muzzles strobed with cannon rounds.

  The Butcher Bird dived so near that Karl saw the pilot’s eyes inside his goggles. Three impacts jackhammered somewhere out on the right wing. The yoke lurched in Karl’s hands.

  The windscreen exploded.

  Cold air blasted Karl with such force that it slammed the breath from his lungs. Glass shards peppered his cheeks. Hellstorm spasmed and trembled. Steepened her dive. The needles inside the gauges shook so hard that the instruments became unreadable.

  Karl pulled back on the yoke. The aircraft did not respond. The nose fell through the horizon, and Hellstorm pointed toward the ground.

  “Pull with me,” Karl said to Adrian.

  No response.

  Karl glanced to his right and saw why.

  The cannon round that had punched through the windscreen had struck Adrian square in the chest. His flak vest was meant to stop shrapnel, not high-velocity projectiles. Frothy blood from the copilot’s lungs bubbled through a wound the size of a softball. He hung in his harness, head lolled to one side. Streamers of blood, driven by windblast, tracked across the sleeves of his leather jacket. The blinker on his oxygen regulator stood motionless.

  With no time to process the horror beside him, Karl pulled hard on the yoke. The aircraft continued its plunge. The howl of the slipstream rose to a scream, and acceleration pressed Karl against his seat. He couldn’t read the airspeed indicator, but he knew Hellstorm had to be nearing VNE—its never-exceed velocity. Beyond that speed, the aircraft might start coming apart.

  With so little pitch control, Karl guessed cannon rounds must have ripped away part of the tail surfaces. He braced with his left boot and hauled back with all his strength. Felt something release. Maybe a control cable had come unsnagged. The nose began to rise.

  “Right wing’s on fire,” a voice called on the interphone. Sounded like Fairburn, but Karl wasn’t sure. Frigid air blasting through the broken windscreen nearly drowned out conversation.

  “How bad?” Karl shouted.

  When he spoke, he heard no sidetone in his headphones.

  “Crew, pilot,” he called. “Anybody hear me.”

  No answer. The interphone had just gone out.

  Karl pulled hard on the controls. Brought the aircraft back to level flight—more or less. The instruments still bounced in their cases, but now he could see the altimeter needles well enough to read fifteen thousand feet. Hellstorm had just lost six thousand feet.

  And she flew alone. Karl saw no other aircraft, friendly or enemy. Both sides had probably given Hellstorm up for dead.

  They had guessed correctly, too. The nose kept pitching up and down despite Karl’s best efforts to hold altitude. An attempt to turn to the north, back onto the egress route, produced no results. Aileron control gone. Karl leaned forward to examine the right wing. Flames enveloped the number-four engine and threatened to spread. He punched the feathering button to stop the propeller. This mortally wounded aircraft would not fly much longer.

  One of the most common causes of death for aircrew members was a delayed decision to bail out. Karl had seen it, too: Flying Fortresses wreathed in flame, dropping out of formation like meteors burning through the atmosphere, no parachutes unfurling. The aircraft commander undoubtedly thinking, We want to go home, not to a POW camp. Karl had always told himself he’d never do that to his men; if an emergency demanded it, he’d act decisively and quickly. But the choice came hard. His crew had completed their final bomb run. They’d earned the freedom of civilian life, the status of honored veterans. The doorway to home lay just a few hundred air miles away in England.

  Hellstorm could no longer take them there. Karl just hoped to keep her stable long enough for the crew to get out. Instead of a joyous homecoming, his closest friends now faced interrogation and internment—if they were lucky. And with the interphone out, he had only one way to communicate his order. Karl flipped the switch for the bailout bells.

  Thank God, at least the three electrically powered bells still worked. They clanged a long, one-note dirge. Bailout procedures called for the navigator and bombardier to exit through the forward hatch. The pilots, engineer, and radio operator would drop through the bomb bay, and the ball turret gunner, waist gunners, and tail gunner would leap through an exit on the side of the fuselage. The bomb bay doors yawned open again. That meant Pell, at the bombardier’s station, had heard the bailout signal and reopened the doors.

  The rush of the wind changed pitch as someone opened the forward hatch. Good—that meant Pell and Conrad were wasting no time getting out of the airplane. Karl intended to stay at the controls until everyone else exited; then he’d put the B-17 on autopilot—if the autopilot would engage. Maybe that would keep the wings level long enough for him to reach the bomb bay.

  Fairburn dropped from the top turret and stood behind Karl’s seat. The engineer buckled his leather flying helmet and zipped his fleece-lined jacket. Placed his hand on Adrian’s shoulder. Looked at the dead copilot, then at Karl.

  “He’s gone,” Karl shouted over the windblast. “Get out.”

  Without a word, Fairburn turned and vanished. Karl thought he heard shouts from the aft section of the plane, though the wind noise made it hard to tell. He hoped that meant the gunners were helping Baker get to the bomb bay. Maybe even pulling the wounded man’s rip cord for him just as they pushed him out.

  The shouts and thumps lasted for a few seconds. Then Fairburn reappeared on the flight deck. Karl turned to him and yelled, “I told you to get out!” Fate had given Hellstorm’s crew precious time to escape—a luxury not always granted to stricken Fortresses. Karl didn’t want to waste a moment of it.

  “Going now, sir,” Fairburn shouted. “Just wan
ted to tell you everyone’s gone but us.”

  Damn, that’s a good man, Karl thought. With the interphone shot out, I needed another way to make sure the entire crew bailed, and Fairburn read my mind.

  Karl nodded to his engineer. Fairburn slapped Karl’s shoulder, then disappeared into the bomb bay.

  For several seconds, long enough to make sure Fairburn got out, Karl did something few men had ever done: He flew alone in a B-17. Then he released the buckle on his harness. Reached down and flipped on the autopilot. The yoke rocked as the servos engaged—or tried to. Karl let go of the controls. Hellstorm started a descending turn to the right. Her ailerons and elevator were too damaged for the autopilot to hold her steady.

  Get moving, Karl told himself. He popped the quick-disconnect on his oxygen hose, pulled a drawstring to shed his flak vest. Yanked out his interphone cord. Placed the heel of his hand on the center console and pushed himself up from his seat. Glanced one last time at Adrian. The blood on the copilot’s clothing and gear was beginning to freeze. It seemed so very wrong to leave him here.

  Your aircraft, buddy, Karl thought. May it fly you to a better place.

  Karl made his way aft, stumbling as the airplane banked. He balanced on the bomb bay catwalk. An icy blast whipped at his pants legs. Thousands of feet beneath him, the German landscape scrolled by. The River Weser came into view, along with the smoking city on its banks. Karl realized Hellstorm had made a full turn and crossed back over Bremen. The autopilot lost what little control it ever had, and the airplane banked more steeply.

  Karl realized that any second now, the flak guns would open up again or the airplane would overbank and stall. Or both. He placed his hand on his rip cord and stepped off the catwalk and into the void.

  A tumbling rush overwhelmed Karl’s senses. Earth and sky blurred and swapped places. Vertigo brought such delirium that Karl felt propelled upward toward a ceiling of land. For several seconds, he gave no thought to pulling his rip cord. Finally enough reason gathered in Karl’s mind: He jerked the D-ring.