Sky Ghost

by Maloney, Mack;

  The 12 Mustangs broke away from the bomber pack about 15 miles from the edge of Berlin. Picking up the Havel River, they quickly got down almost to surface level. Leading the way, Hunter was flying no more than 25 feet above the river, the spray kicked up by his plane’s preceding shock wave actually covering his canopy with water. By now the German defense authorities should have sounded the air-raid sirens and all civilians should have been under shelter. But as Hunter and the other Mustangs screeched along mere feet above the river, they could see ordinary citizens lining both banks. Strolling, napping, having an early lunch by the riverside, there were hundreds of them.

  What was this? Hunter thought.

  Then it sunk in. Obviously, the Berlin authorities never gave the air-raid warning. Why? Maybe that old stuff about the impossibility of the Allies attacking Berlin itself. But for whatever reason, Hunter and the others could see large groups of civilians pointing and even waving to them as they flashed by. Morbidly, Hunter and the others waved back.

  About three miles from the city, the Mustangs pulled up slightly and turned east. Here was the first concentration of AA guns. Equally important, located alongside many of the guns, were radar stations, some of which controlled the air defense fighters for all of Berlin.

  The American jets came in so fast, and so low, they caught the AA gunners practically unawares. Lining up in six two-ship formations, the ’Stangs ripped through the gun emplacements and the radar stations, their machine guns tearing into flesh and metal alike. Each formation went around three times. That’s all that was needed. For a quarter mile in each direction, the targets were quickly destroyed.

  Once over the first ring of flak batteries, the planes climbed, but just a little, up to 150 feet. The next line of AA guns was located in the Grune suburb of the city. Hunter picked up the towering snouts of the 288-mm radar-controlled monsters from two miles out. Again their perilously low altitude gave the Mustangs an advantage. Again, they came in quick, guns blazing, and caught the gunners by surprise. They were flying so low and the gunners had been expecting targets so high, there was no way the Germans could depress their gun muzzles quick enough to fire at the Mustangs. Once again the Americans tore a path right through the AA emplacements.

  The third ring of AA guns was centered near the Wilmersdorf Plain, a flat piece of terrain just outside the new city limits of Berlin. Warned in advance, these gunners were waiting for the American jets. They had their guns cranked down all the way and they were loaded up with short proximity fuses on their shells.

  But this is where the Circle Wing’s ability to improvise came into play.

  After attacking the second ring of AA guns, Hunter and his fighters did a strange thing—they began flying around in circles.

  The commanders of the AA guns at Wilmersdorf saw this on their radar screens—and were baffled. What were the Americans doing?

  The answer came a second later. First the AA gunners heard a mighty screech of engines. Then out of the clouds they saw a huge B-24/52 heading right for them. It was coming down so fast, at first the gunners thought the American bomber had been shot down and was about to crash. But that wasn’t the case. This was on one of the bomber gunships from the In-Flight Protection squadron. It had been called on to fulfill a very special mission.

  Knowing the AA gunners would be confused by the Mustangs’ mysterious tactics, the gunship was able to roar right over the main flak emplacement, level off and then go into a low, wide orbit, tilting perilously to the left side. The pilot gave the order for all left-side gunners to open fire, and an instant later their fusillade began. Riding low and slow, the huge bomber resembled a flying dragon now. The waves of tracer fire pouring out of it were frightening, unreal. The stunned AA gunners, with the muzzle barrels deflected all the way down, simply could not fire back at the big plane. Once again, the Germans were cut down like wheat stalks by a sickle.

  The bomber only stayed on station for 20 seconds, one complete revolution around the main gun batteries. Then it screamed for height, clawing its way back up to a safer altitude.

  When Hunter and the other fighters arrived about a minute later—dizzy from their merry-go-round delaying maneuver—there was nothing left. Where once there was as many as 55 AA guns, now was little more than a smoking hole in the ground with no one left alive to fire the flak guns that remained. Hunter just shook his head and chalked it up as yet another strange event in this crazy life he was leading. The idea to use one of the gunships as a mighty ground suppression weapon had come to him the night before…in a dream.

  Meanwhile, German interceptors were taking off by the dozens from bases all around the city.

  The last reported position of the American bomber swarm had them flying due east at 27,500 feet—typical pre-bomb run positioning. The majority of German interceptors were immediately vectored to this height and positioning. But the first ones on the scene found…absolutely nothing.

  Some of the German fighters climbed up to 30,000 feet. Still nothing. Others went up to 35-angels, while some went down to 20,000. Still nothing.

  How was this possible? The German pilots frantically radioed back to base, trying to get radar fixes on the enemy bombers. But intercept information was now very scarce because many of the crucial radar stations had been knocked out along with the flak emplacements.

  It actually took one, long strange minute for the Germans to figure out what had happened.

  Then they looked up—way up—and finally spotted the American bomber fleet. They were up at 65,000 feet! They had all climbed at the exact moment the flak and radar stations were being hit, instead of descending as the Germans had expected them to.

  Only about half the German fighters could fly to 65-angels; they were the old but rugged Me-362s. These airplanes left the Me-999s and others behind and started putting on the fire to get up to the enemy’s lofty altitude. But none of this was making any sense. Why would the Americans be flying so high? They couldn’t possibly hope for any kind of targeting effectiveness from 13 miles up. Plus, at that height, they would be sitting ducks for the Natters, hundreds of which were located at a base west of the city, their pilots in place, just waiting for the word to launch.

  The ascending German fighters naturally attacked the first bombers they came to—those flying at the bottom of the pack. This was a mistake, of course, because these low fliers were the gunships of the In-Flight Protection squadron. The Germans had not yet caught on that some of the American bombers weren’t bombers at all, simply because everyone who’d come up against the gunships so far hadn’t lived long enough to tell anyone about them.

  Immediately a six-pack of Me-362s were shot down by the gunships and twice that number sent fleeing.

  Another flight of 362s arose and they too battled the gunships, now laid out like a blanket under the rest of the bombers. A third fighter group strained to get up to the nose-bleeding altitude and they began firing on the bombers themselves. But the guns of the tight formation and the rest of covering Mustang fighters chased them away.

  A fourth flight of Me-362s roared in and here the bomber stream took its first casualties. Two B-24/52s were torn up by eight German fighters and were literally blown out of the sky. Their cloak of invulnerability now shorn away, the bomber formation tightened up even more.

  They had to hold this dangerous position for just a few more minutes…

  Meanwhile, Hunter and his group of fighters had circled around the city, dodging flak and small arms fire, heading for Templedorf Airport. This was where the wing of Natters was waiting to take off.

  This time the field commander knew the American jets were coming, so he began launching Natters immediately. The tiny rocketplanes began going off like fireworks. Dozens of red, fiery smoke streams went shooting straight up into the sky in an exercise of controlled pandemonium.

  Hunter and the Mustangs roared through this fire ball, firing at random and hitting Natters by the handful. But these were just a small percentage of
the rocketplanes that were launching; hundreds more were heading up toward the bomber stream which was now passing 13 miles high over the center of the city.

  That was OK. Hunter’s flight was never expected to stop the massive Natter launch—just disrupt it.

  This they did.

  Very quickly the first wave of Natters was closing in on the high-flying American bombers.

  But they found something curious, too. The bombers were no longer staying at 65-angels. They were dropping down from that altitude very quickly. Some were coming down so fast, the Natter pilots were also fooled into thinking the bombers had been shot down and were crashing.

  But this was not the case.

  The bombers were dropping as the Natters were rising making it extremely difficult if not impossible for the German pilots to shoot accurately simply because both sides were going so fast in opposite directions.

  Two bombers were hit—both fatally—in collisions with Natters. But the dive tactic was proving exceptionally effective. For all their speed and firepower, the rocketplanes were still just one-shot charlies. They rose, they shot down bombers, they ran out of gas, they came back down in a glide. They couldn’t do anything else.

  So once these Natters had passed through the storm of diving bombers, they’d shot their load. They were ineffective. Spent. As it was, many would wind up drifting back to the ground with their guns and cannons still full, startled by the outrageous, dangerous, improbable American tactic.

  The bomber force—still more than 1000 planes—leveled off again at 27,500 feet. At this point, Hunter’s Mustangs linked back up with the covering force. The Wing was now over a mostly residential section of east Berlin, which was exactly where they wanted to be. They still had German fighters all over them, but the Mustangs made a good account of themselves, shooting down 12 of them, with the loss of only one bomber.

  At point zero, O’Malley’s lead airplane finally opened its bomb bay doors and began dropping its fire bombs. Stretched out now for 10 miles, more than 700 of the bombers began doing the same thing.

  In seconds, tons of incendiaries were falling over eastern Berlin. The flaming jellied gasoline splattered all over the mostly wooden and plastic structures below. The firebombs came down exactly where they supposed to, in a section of the city where many of the German High Commanders made their homes. Soon enough, this quadrant of Berlin began to burn. The ultraaccurate bombing, especially after all the high jinks and maneuverings of the Americans planes, was aided greatly by having an enormous landmark to drop on: the huge swastika the Germans had painted onto their rooftops so long ago. It turned out to be a mile-long bull’s-eye for the Americans.

  The bombers emptied their loads, turned west and quickly accelerated out of the area. The German fighters stayed with them for a while, hanging on their tails, battling the Mustangs, but claiming only two more American aircraft to 24 of their own.

  But then suddenly the German fighters gave up. Why? Because the German High Command came to believe that another wave of American bombers was approaching Berlin, and the Reichcapital would need every fighter they had to ward it off. But the second wave of bombers was just a ruse dreamed up by Hunter. As soon as they had dropped their bombs, he had many of the withdrawing bomber pilots actually start sending false radio messages to each other, creating the illusion that there was another bombing raid on the way in.

  In the confusion and panic, the Germans fell for it and recalled their fighters. The rest of the surviving bombers got away unscathed.

  Berlin would burn for days.

  Throughout the battle, one man stood watching from a window in the New Reichstag, the headquarters of the German High Command.

  The city was beginning to melt all around him. The glare of the fires, the scream of jet fighters above, the distant pounding of the antiaircraft batteries—war had returned to the Reich. Yet he could not take his eyes off the enemy planes, especially one American jet fighter that seemed to be everywhere at once.

  The man recognized the almost impossible maneuverings of this particular Mustang. It ripped through the German interceptors, firing wildly yet hitting targets every time. Unconsciously, he licked his lips and tasted the salt from the Atlantic where he’d been plucked by the German Navy almost a year ago.

  Strange, how things turn out, he thought.

  He kept his eyes on the Mustang until the American bomber force had finally passed over. The jet fighter was the last one to leave, trailing behind the others, watching the rear.

  That’s when the man wiped his thin, bearded face, and started talking to himself.

  “A thousand-plane raid. Firebombs. Gunships protecting bombers. Outrageous fighter tactics. I know these things. I know the thoughts behind them…”

  Then as that last jet fighter finally disappeared over the horizon, he added: “And I know who that man is, too.”

  Two hours later, the bombers began returning to the Circle Bases.

  Some were badly shot up, some were carrying wounded. Some were so low on fuel, they were forced to glide in. Two crashed on landing. Eight others were damaged beyond repair. Thirteen didn’t come back at all.

  But 1103 did, along with every fighter. They were all home by 1200 hours straight up. Behind them they’d left six cities in Germany burning.

  And the next day, the planes took off, went back, and did it again. This time they bombed Dresden, Bonn, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Berlin again. Like before, they stuck together. Like before, they fought off the increased enemy interceptors and destroyed AA batteries on the ground. They lost 17 more airplanes.

  The day after that, they did it again. And the day after that, and the day after that. For seven straight days the Circle Wing rained fire and death on Germany. By the eighth day, when they finally rested, nearly 40,000 tons of incendiaries had been dropped, more than 22 cities had been hit, many more than once, including Berlin, which had been hit every day. Follow-up reconnaissance flights proved it: in one week, more than half of Germany had been set on fire.

  On that eighth day, very late in the afternoon, after a special recon plane had been sent over the targets and insta-film from its cameras had been processed, Major Allen Payne, acting CO of the Circle Wing, walked into the darkened office of General Seth Jones.

  Slowly, respectfully, Payne held the photos showing the widespread scorching of German targets up to the General’s eyes. Then he read, very precisely, the combat report for the week, noting the number of airplanes put into the air, the number of miles traveled, the number of timely turn-arounds for the bombers, the tonnage of bombs dropped, and lastly, the relatively low number of crews and planes lost.

  The general sat there, absolutely still as usual, and listened. And at the end of it, Payne saw two tears drop from the old man’s eyes. Then the man came back to life again. He looked up at Payne, weakly shook his hand, then uttered two words: “Thank you.”

  Then the old man leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and finally died.

  Chapter 24

  Washington D.C.

  One week later

  THE CAB PULLED UP to the unassuming brownstone in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., at precisely 5 P.M.

  It was raining, but just a shower, and the air was thick with the scent of leftover cherry blossoms.

  A man in a black suit and trenchcoat got out of the cab, threw the driver a $20 bill and then went through the front door of the building.

  He took the elevator down no less than 16 floors, finally arriving in the subsection of the basement.

  This was yet another secret briefing area for OSS agents. One that was used when absolute top security was needed. Its location was known to less than 100 souls. This man was one of them.

  It was Agent Y.

  He went to a door marked 87 at the end of the corridor and entered without knocking.

  It was dark within, as usual. One light at the end of a very long table was the only illumination. Two men were already in the room,
smoking cigarettes and murmuring to one another. It was X and Z. They hardly acknowledged Y’s presence as he came in, closed the door behind him and joined them at the far end of the table.

  “Why do you guys always insist on sitting in the dark?” Y asked them. “We’re sixteen floors under the ground. Isn’t that dark enough for you?”

  They continued to ignore him. Y just shrugged.

  “Well, cheer up, my friends,” he said, mocking them. “I have some very encouraging news.”

  He removed a yellow envelope from his briefcase and slid it over to the two agents. They languidly picked it up and read together the single sheet it contained.

  “Those bomber boys plastered Germany for the fifteenth time today,” Y announced proudly, essentially telling the men what they were reading. “They hit Bonn, Dresden, Hamburg, Essen, and Berlin again. Their only problem seems to be that they’re running out of firebombs—finally. They’ll go dry in about a week. The Air Corps is scrambling to resupply them and if all the planes don’t blow up trying to take off from Gander, they should be in good shape.”

  X and Z simply put the paper back down and stared at the ceiling.

  “Again, let’s see some smiles, my friends,” Y urged them. “We’re not quite winning this thing again, but the Huns are feeling—how shall I say it?—a tad warm this Spring?”

  Though X and Z weren’t aware of it, Y had every right to feel cheery. He knew that things had started to change back in America’s favor the day Hunter landed at the Circle Air Wing, just as things had changed in Germany’s favor the day the man they’d scooped from the ocean landed there.

  True, the U.S. still had a long way to go, but it really did seem that Agent Y’s great perception, that Hunter was a man whose very presence could alter the course of the war, had been dead-on correct. And the facts were there to back it up.