Bombs Away

by John Steinbeck

  The Commanding Officer of a Bombardment Group

  “The squadron is the air unit corresponding to the battalion in ground arms. It is commanded by a major and is the basic flying combat unit. Squadrons of various types have different composition. For instance, a fighter squadron is composed of twenty-eight officers and 150 men and has for equipment 28 planes, while a bomber squadron has 21 officers, 180 men, and 13 planes. The squadron is deemed essential as is the battalion in the infantry, in order to have a unit sufficiently small in size to receive personal supervision, direction and control of one experienced officer and in order to provide for detailed training and first-hand direction of supply, discipline and combat methods. Squadron commanders are always flying officers of long experience and are selected for executive ability in the supervision of training and combat leadership. There are six types of combat squadrons with slightly different organization and personnel strength, dependent upon the type of aircraft they fly. These are transports; fighter; light; medium and heavy bombardment and reconnaissance.”

  To the member of the bomber crew, the squadron is the personal and familiar unit. He knows his squadron leader and his squadron leader knows him. It is in the squadron room where flight plans are made and where experiences are retailed after the mission. Group and wing are as remote as regiment and brigade are to the common soldier. The squadron leader has a very close and personal contact with his men, and being a flying officer he has their respect, for it is obvious that he knows a little more about operations than they do. In most cases the squadron leader is more than a military leader to his squadron. He is the source of advice and in many cases the custodian of the secrets of many of his men. The squadron leader is the pivot of liaison between the higher command and the units of the Air Force. He must have genuine administrative ability, but in addition to this he must have the common touch and the genuine force of leadership to weld the complex personalities of all of his unit men into a unit squadron. The squadron is movable. It keeps the records of individuals, it issues the orders, it recommends promotion, and prescribes punishment. From the standpoint of the men, the squadron is the most important unit in the Air Force.

  Baby’s pilot and copilot, bombardier and navigator went to the squadron room under orders and they found the crews of five other ships there. The squadron leader, a major of forty-two, sat behind his desk. “You’re going on a night mission,” he said, “a bomber flight of six planes. The target is a barge anchored in the Gulf. Now, here are the maps.” The pilots leaned close over the operations table and studied the position of the target. They worked out their flight plans as they had been taught.

  “The only thing there won’t be is anti-aircraft and enemy fighters, but make sure your gunners are alert and that they keep their sights warm. Better get some sleep now. The start is eleven exact.”

  It was not a nice night. Loose, low clouds hung at 1,200 feet and sent down a warm drizzle. The airfield was dark. One had to go close to see the sentries about the ships. The men drew their sheepskin clothes, loose pants, and jackets of lambskin with the fleece inside and they drew oxygen masks and parachutes and fleece-lined boots. Containers of hot coffee went aboard the ships and boxes of sandwiches. At 1055 Bill went to the ship with his guarded bombsight. The ground crews were working on the motors, filling the gas tanks, and the bomb crews were loading 100 lb. bombs into the open bellies of the ships and locking them in the bomb racks. Allan looked nervously at his map. The gunners were in the ship checking their ammunition. At 1058 Joe and Allan and Harris went out to Baby. Abner was hovering about with the ground crew. Bill checked the bombs and inspected the bomb latches in the racks. Then the engines started and idled in the darkness. At 11 sharp the flight leader moved out to the runway. His ship roared down the asphalt, shooting sparks from its exhaust, and it took the air. Baby was right behind. Joe looked at the second hand of his stop watch. When it crossed the one minute mark he pushed his throttles ahead, roared down the dark runway, and lifted into the air. The other ships came behind, each one a minute behind the other. Baby bounced up into the clouds and lost sight of everything till at 10,000 feet she burst out into a clear dark night littered with stars. Allan called the course. They were to rendezvous at 1145 at a spot over the ocean to be found in the dark, by instruments. Time, speed, altitude, all were calculated. Baby had to be there within a very few seconds. Bill lifted the ship to 15,000 feet. The radio was dead on this mission. Harris had his set open but he was not talking. Abner moved sleekly about testing the de-icers, turning the valves of the oxygen tubes. They were to rendezvous at 18,000 feet.

  At 15,000, Joe spoke into his microphone to the crew. They slipped into sheepskins and boots and adjusted the oxygen masks, fitted the rubber tubes to the copper supply tubes. It was cold in the ship, a little frost began to form on the edges of the wings. Abner started the de-icing pumps. The rubberwing edges pulsed, shook off the first ice. Allan at his little table worked on the course. A small shaded globe threw a round spot of light on his table. He called into his microphone and the copilot raised the ship’s nose for more altitude. Joe was out of his seat slipping on his sheepskins. When he was back and strapped in, Abner brought him a paper cup of hot coffee. It was very cold in the ship. The only light on Baby was a dim running light arear and on top of the fuselage. Joe could not see any of the other ships. At 1143 Allan began to lean forward and peer out of the nose of the ship. Joe checked his watch.

  At 1145 exactly he saw a flash of wing lights ahead, a quick flash, and he said quietly into his microphone, “Good work, Allan.” Allan heaved a great sigh of relief. It is something to find a spot that doesn’t exist except on your instruments.

  The other ships were there at the same moment. The last ship had come in at an advanced speed. He had come just six minutes quicker than the flight commander. Baby took her place to the right and above and behind the leader. There was another ship to the right above and behind Baby. On the other, the left leg of the vee, were two more ships, while the sixth ship flew behind and between the spread legs of the vee. Each ship watched the dim light of the ship ahead. The pilots carefully maintained the intervals. The flight went up to 25,000 feet now and the men needed the oxygen. The ships flew on and on into the dark night. Below, the clouds thinned and they could see patches of dark ocean. The men sat quietly in the darkened ships.

  Only a little glow came from the instrument panels where the dials were lighted. At 1 o’clock the flight leader’s wing lights flashed. Joe leaned forward. The signal came then to attack. Joe pulled back his throttles and the roaring motors quieted. The ships dropped back in a line about a mile apart and began to lose altitude. In the nose, Bill took the cover from his bombsight, cleaned his eyepiece with a handkerchief. The bomb bay doors rolled up and the ship dropped slowly. They could not see the leader’s lights now. Allan, with the target spotted on his map, called the course. The oxygen masks came off now. The gunners sat up straight in their stations. Bill strained his eyes forward into the darkness.

  Allan said into his microphone, “Nearly there,” and then below them and far ahead there was a flash of light and another and another. Three flares dropped by the leader floated down on parachutes and ahead and below on the surface of the water, Bill could see the target barge with a white cross painted on it. He leaned low over his bombsight and his fingers worked busily at the knobs. The barge was on the cross hairs. He pressed the release and sat back. Five seconds, ten, fifteen, and the whisking sound as the bomb train went out, not in salvo all at once but each one a fraction of a second behind the other. Bill looked down and back now. He could not see his bombs falling but he saw the line of flashes as the train marched over the target, and the flashes had hardly stopped before a second line of bursts from the ship behind trooped over. Four trains were released and the last ship took the photographs of a wrecked and sinking target.

  The bombardier at his post for a night flight

  And now the signal came from the leader
to go home. Joe looked at his watch. The return was just as carefully plotted but it was a scattered return and the ships must land at one-minute intervals at the field from which they had taken off.

  Allan still worked at his table. It was just as hard getting back as going out. The runway of an airfield is a very small place to find on the surface of the earth. They landed at last and saw that the propellers of the leader’s ship were still turning on the flight line. Joe brought his ship in and taxied off the runway just as the third ship came in. The crew climbed out. They were tired from the strain of trying to do the job perfectly, and although they did not know how they knew it, each man knew that the last practice flight was over. The apprenticeship was done. Their next flight would be a battle station somewhere in the world.

  Bill and Joe and Allan talked it over the next morning. They were frying eggs and ham for their breakfast. The night flight meant they did not have to report until 3 o’clock in the afternoon. They knew their training was over. They were a bombardment unit now. This crew gathered from so many places, from so many different backgrounds, was a crew now, molded and trained to do a job. They had no patriotic sentiments. Those were for politicians. They were workmen, specialists. If the safety and future of the country depended on them, you could not learn that from them. They thought in terms of distance and of course and of demolition. They thought in terms of calibers and horsepower, of lift and range, and right now they thought in terms of ham and eggs and coffee. But the great mission was in their heads.

  Bill said, “Hey, Joe, you got any idea where we’ll go?”

  And Joe said, “Sure, England or India or Africa or maybe China or Alaska.”

  “No, seriously Joe, don’t you know?”

  “No,” said Joe, “but I’ll be awful glad to get going. I used to run in school. You get down on your mark and you wait for the gun. That’s a funny time while you’re waiting for the gun.”

  “Well, I hope they shoot her pretty soon.”

  Bill said, “Suppose we will get any leave before we take off?”

  “How do I know?” Joe went on mumbling into a mouthful of ham.

  The crew knew they were going and the whole field knew it although there were no orders yet. Baby’s crew belonged to the senior squadron on the field. New squadrons were behind them now and they had seen other squadrons go ahead of them.

  In the newspapers there were constant reports. A flight of B-24’s had bombed Tobruk. Another flight had reduced German shipping to wreckage in a port of Greece. They wondered if these could be men they knew. They might be the men they had eaten with in town and had played pool with in the B O Q. Abner went out that morning with a can of white paint and he freshened the name Baby on the ship and he went over the outlines of the insignia, a bathing girl built like a bomb plummeting downwards.

  The time was coming. The squadron knew it. Daily, nightly, the missions went out over the Gulf, but the big mission was coming. The mission toward which all the training had aimed—contact with the enemy, a well-armed, well-trained desperate enemy. That was why the men looked so carefully at the newspapers and what they found in the newspapers reassured them. Our ships are as good or better than anything in the world. Our crews are better. They found in the papers that when forces were equal, our force won.

  The major called the pilots in and fifteen minutes later they came out of the squadron room.

  Bill said “We going?”

  “Yes,” said Joe.

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “You know where?”

  Navigator, bombardier, and pilot of a bomber crew

  “No. You want to get your things together,” Joe said.

  “That won’t take half an hour.” And then Joe said, “You can write some letters. They’ll be posted after we go.”

  And each man wrote his letters home. They were not the kind of letters they could have written six months before.

  Bill wrote, “I’m sorry I won’t be able to go quail hunting this season, but I guess we’ll be going hunting all right.”

  And Joe wrote, “And now might be a good time to buy a few sows. Pork will probably bring a good price this year. I’ll write when I know where we are.” They wrote quiet, matter-of-fact letters and they put them in the box to be mailed after they had gone. The men felt matter-of-fact. It is always like that just before action. All the churning and expectations and the tremors go away and, well, there is a job to do, a ship to fly, bombs to drop. Baby’s crew got ready quietly. They packed their bags, shirts, socks, and underwear, toothbrushes. There wasn’t much besides these things. They had not had time to accumulate things. Accumulation takes leisure.

  On the field they met men from other squadrons. “I hope we’ll join you before long,” they said. It was a very quiet time that afternoon. This cross section, these men from all over the country, from all the background of the country, had become one thing—a bomber crew. They were changed but they had not lost what they were, they were still individuals. Perhaps that is what makes our crews superior. The split seconds where a man’s judgment is the most important thing in the world. They did not think how important they were to the nation. It is doubtful that they even knew it.

  In the afternoon they shaved and cleaned up and went to dinner all together and when they sat down Joe lifted his beer glass, but all he could think to say was “Well, here’s luck!”

  In the dark they went out to Baby where she stood in the line. There were no lights. The crew clambered in through the open bomb bay. Joe, the pilot from South Carolina, and Bill from Idaho and Allan from Indiana and Abner from California. Their luggage was stowed in the big compartment back of the bomb bays. They buckled on their parachutes, snapped their safety belts. Allan waited in his take-off seat with his map case in his hand. The squadron leader’s motors started. Joe leaned out of his window. “Clear number one,” he called, and from the darkness “number one clear” came back. The engines started. Abner cocked his head, the better to hear them. Bill sat in his take-off seat and his bombsight was between his feet in its canvas case. The leader gunned his motors and taxied down the runway and Joe looked around into the darkened cabin. He could see the faces of the men, quiet and ready.

  In the late evening the bomber sits quietly waiting for its crew

  “Here we go,” he said. He pushed the throttles a little forward and taxied behind the leader.

  The thundering ships took off one behind the other. At 5,000 feet they made their formation. The men sat quietly at their stations, their eyes fixed. And the deep growl of the engines shook the air, shook the world, shook the future.