Bomber (16 page)

Ten minutes away from Schweinfurt Harry’s headphone crackled. This time it was John Hill. ‘Think I see them coming out the sun.’

The sun had moved round in the sky so this time they were side on: good news for the bombardier and pilots and all the other guys at the front of the aircraft – not so good for the rest of the crew.

‘Definite. Three o’clock high,’ shouted John.

Again the German fighters swarmed around them. Harry thought he heard Dalinsky cheering, and a moment later he saw a Messerschmitt plummet down in a steep dive, thick black smoke spewing from its engine. The canopy flew off and a tiny figure tumbled from the cockpit, his parachute opening a moment later. Mesmerised by the sight, Harry forgot to keep sweeping through his constant circles.

‘Hey, Friedman, Focke seven o’clock low,’ said Corrales. ‘Let’s nail him.’

As the turret swept round, he could see the unmistakable outline of the Focke-Wulf closing fast. It was right in his sight and as Harry began to fire he also saw four distinct flashes in the nose and inner wing of the approaching fighter. A second later the Focke began to trail black smoke and it veered off sharply to the left. Harry continued to fire into the plunging fighter watching his bullets spatter along the length of the fuselage.

But Harry and Corrales had fired a moment too late. Under the plane, Harry noticed a line of black smoke trailing away from the
Macey May
. When he turned his turret he could see the outer engine on the left side was on fire. Seconds later Holberg’s voice crackled in the interphone. ‘Cut number one. Extinguishers on.’ The propeller stopped spinning moments later.

‘OK, fellas. Keep your eyes on the sky. We all still here?’ The crew reported back, one by one from the tail of the
Fortress, apart from Skaggs. Harry shivered. It was awful not to hear that Southern drawl in the crew roll call.

The engine had stopped flaming, but an intermittent trail of smoke still seeped from the edge of the wing. Harry noticed with consternation that the
Macey May
was having trouble keeping up with the others in the combat box. A lone Fortress was almost certainly doomed. A sole focus for flak and a sure kill for a fighter
Schwarm
who might happen upon it. The
Carolina Peach
boys certainly never made it back.

‘Flak ahead,’ said Bortz.

A minute later the Fortress began its shaking and lurching as the sky filled up with dense black puffs of smoke. The familiar terror returned.

‘Clear ahead,’ said Bortz.

There was a sudden rattle of machine-gun fire and Harry instinctively spun his turret through 360 degrees searching for fighters. Surely they wouldn’t attack here? ‘What’s happening?’ he heard himself say over the interphone. Firing seemed to be coming from inside the plane, right above his head. ‘Where are they?’ he said again. Not being able to even see his attacker, especially one this close, was more frightening than having them swarm around you.

‘Friedman, keep it quiet,’ said Holberg, and rattled through the crew. John Hill, Ralph Dalinsky and Jim Corrales did not reply.

Harry felt sick with worry and asked Holberg if he could get out into the waist and help with any injuries.
‘No. Stay at your station. Stearley, go and find out what’s happening.’

Another few shots rattled off above. Almost like fire crackers. Maybe one of the gunners had spotted something. Then a sharp whine made him flinch. A bullet had pierced the thin metal skin of his turret, just above his head. He immediately turned around 360 degrees, scanning the sky for enemy fighters, but he couldn’t see any.

Harry breathed deeply, trying to stop himself shaking after his near miss. He had to wait an age, wondering what had happened and who was alive and who was dead or injured, before Holberg’s voice crackled in his ear.

‘OK. We have casualties. Hill’s down and Corrales. Stearley’s patching them up. Friedman, you’ve got to work extra hard. Dalinsky’s OK but his gun mount is damaged.’ Then he said, ‘Harry – you did a great job on the Focke-Wulf. We’ll be OK as long as you keep your wits about you. Flak’s gone. I can’t see any in front of us. So the fighters will be back soon enough.’

By now the
Macey May
was noticeably lagging behind the other Fortresses. Her three remaining engines were screaming to keep up, but even the loss of a few miles an hour soon showed in a bomber formation.

They were at the tail end of the formation now. Still protected by the guns of the other Fortresses, but an obvious target for a fighter looking for an easy kill.

A smattering of flak burst around them as they passed over Dortmund. It came and went so quickly no one
thought to mention it, but soon after it stopped Harry was alarmed to notice another trail of smoke – this time on the right wing outer engine.

‘Captain, there’s another engine on fire,’ he said.

Holberg came back over the interphone. ‘Yeah, we know. LaFitte’s shutting it down.’

The prop stopped revolving but the smoke carried on pouring out, with an occasional burst of flame. There was a lot of fuel in the wing tanks. If that caught, things could turn nasty pretty quickly.

Harry began to feel horribly claustrophobic in his little turret. The outer left engine had stopped smoking now, but this one on the other wing was a crisis that could turn into a catastrophe. He watched that engine far more than he watched the skies. The fire seemed to be spreading.

If it reached the inner engine or started to burn along the whole wing then the Fortress would drop like a stone.

‘Captain, you want me to stay put?’ Harry couldn’t help asking. ‘Maybe John could do with some help.’

Holberg was stern. ‘Friedman, we’ve got it under control. If we’re going to bail out, you’ll see that red light. Until then you keep at your station.’

Harry burned with shame. He knew asking to leave his turret was strictly against flying regulations. The whole crew would have heard his request. He realised more than ever how important it was not to let them down.

The loss of the second engine made everything far more dangerous. Now the
Macey May
was a definite
straggler. She was losing height too – just below the lowest level of the combat box and maybe a third of a mile behind. But the ground was still a long way down. They had bombed at thirty thousand feet – the limit of their capacity. Now they were probably at twenty-five thousand.

‘Here come the fighters,’ said Cain, in the nose.

Harry scanned the sky. Now the
Macey May
was below the bomber formations he could see very little, and none of the other guys were firing or warning of incoming fighters.

Holberg let the crew at the back know what was happening. ‘They’re leaving us alone. Maybe they think we’re not worth the bother.’

Almost simultaneously, Harry could see two flaming B-17s about half a mile in front of them, plunging to the ground. One exploded during its dive, debris tumbling earthward in great flaming chunks, a wing spinning over and over. The other carried on in its relentless trajectory, sure to hit the ground far sooner. There was another smaller shape falling too, obscured by its own flaming plume. That must be a fighter plane.

Dalinsky called over the interphone ‘Four o’clock level, Messerschmitt.’

Harry spun round but he could see nothing. Dalinsky was obviously working both those waist guns. With a sickening feeling Harry wondered what had happened to John. Was he still alive?

‘Can’t see him, probably coming up behind us,’ said Dalinsky.

Holberg called out, anxiety plain in his voice. ‘Dalinsky, get down to the tail gun.’

A few seconds later, Dalinsky’s voice crackled over the interphone. ‘Captain, Corrales is all over it.’

Harry wasn’t quite sure what Dalinsky meant by that, but he could guess. The tail gunner must have been caught by a hail of cannon fire. He thought of Corrales’ face, the way he looked when he made a wisecrack; he felt his gut wrench and had to suppress the urge to vomit.

‘Damn it, Dalinsky. Get down there, or do I have to go myself?’ Holberg was really rattled now.

Then Harry called over. ‘He’s right on our left flank.’

He was too. Flying exactly parallel with the
Macey May
, close enough to see the pilot’s face. For all the world it looked like the German fighter plane was escorting them. It was certainly not a position you adopted if you were about to shoot a bomber down.

Harry thought to shoot, but the Messerschmitt kept bobbing just above his line of fire.

‘Hold fire, everyone.’ That was Holberg’s voice. Harry wondered what on earth had got into him.

Then LaFitte’s voice came over the interphone ‘He’s saluting us.’

‘Probably thinks we’ve had it and we’re not worth wasting bullets on.’ The relief was palpable in Holberg’s voice. ‘Well, I reckon he’s made a mistake. We’ve got
enough fuel to get back over the Channel, and we’re maintaining our height. If nothing else happens, we can do it.’

Hauptmann Heinz Frey’s Messerschmitt had flown parallel with the cockpit close enough to see the Fortress’s name on its nose –
Macey May II
. To him, the bomber looked mortally wounded. As well as the smoking engines, there were great chunks missing from the fuselage, you could see the supporting struts of the interior, like a skeleton beneath the skin and muscle of an animal, and the rear of the tail was in tatters. The gunner in there couldn’t possibly have survived that. Frey could not see the point in wasting any more of his precious bullets. He could even see the faces of the two pilots. They were young men, just like him. He was going to give them a chance, let them parachute to safety. To attack them now would be cold-blooded murder.

Frey banked away and flew south-west until the B-17 was out of sight.

Between the
Macey May
and an uncertain landing at an airbase in the south-east of England lay 250 miles of enemy territory and almost certain annihilation. The outer right engine continued to burn. There was obviously a fuel leak somewhere that couldn’t be isolated. Sometimes the flames flared out and started to burn along the wing edge, then they would retreat back to the engine housing. Harry tried to take his eyes off the fire and continued to sweep the sky.

‘Flak ahead,’ said Bortz. Harry tried not to think about what a sitting duck they were, now the main formation was several miles ahead of them. They would present a single irresistible target to the anti-aircraft gunners on the ground.

A minute later a bust of flak shook the Fortress. But there were no more explosions and Holberg came over the interphone. He sounded jubilant. ‘We’re still pretty high up. It’ll be like finding a needle in a haystack for those flak crews. But keep an eye out for fighters.’

Then something happened to turn Harry’s blood to ice.

All around the top of his trousers was stained red. He thought he must have been hit by that flak burst and not even realised it. He went hot and cold, and started to shake. Somehow a bullet had gone through him and he didn’t even feel it. Sometimes that happened in combat. He had even heard of gunners losing fingers and not even noticing until afterwards. With another shiver, he wondered when it was going to start to hurt and when he was likely to lose consciousness.

‘I’m hit,’ he called over the interphone. No one responded.

For a moment he stopped. Maybe if he remained in that fetal position, all hunched up in the ball, he’d be OK. He began to dread the stretching and contortions necessary to get himself out of the turret. They said stomach wounds were the most painful, and that was when he would find out exactly what they meant.

A blood-red blob dripped down above him and landed on his trousers. He looked up. There was a pool of red liquid spreading over the top of the turret. In an instant he realised this was hydraulic fluid – an essential part of the mechanism that made his turret slide around and up and down so gracefully. No wonder he didn’t feel any pain. He hadn’t been hit at all.

His relief was short-lived. If the hydraulics were leaking, then did the turret still work? He pressed down on the foot pedal. Nothing happened. Almost certainly a projectile had pierced the mechanism.

As he tried to fight down his panic, there was a jolt and a burst of flame. The fire had now spread to occupy the whole wing between both the right engines.

‘Captain, the turret has stopped working,’ he called.

There was a silence. Had his interphone stopped too? Or maybe Holberg didn’t believe him.

Then the captain’s voice came over the interphone. ‘OK, Friedman. You can come out.’

Harry began frantically turning the levers and cranks that manually operated the turret. Under hydraulic power it operated with swift and smooth efficiency. The cranks and levers were stiff from underuse and they moved the turret in barely discernible increments.

The
Macey May
lurched in the sky and the working right wing engine gave a loud bang, like a car backfiring, and there was a further belch of flame and thick black smoke.

‘Oh God, somebody help me,’ said Harry under his breath. He was drenched in cold sweat now. The
Macey May
banked to the left, flying ten degrees down from the horizontal. Harry’s heart was in his mouth and he prayed that this wasn’t the moment Holberg lost control and the Fortress went into a steep terminal dive.

The bomb bay doors sprang open and Harry saw two bodies drop, too fast to see who they were. His red light – the signal to bail out – was still not on. Had two guys at the front decided they were going while they could? Was he the only one left? Had Holberg and Stearley abandoned ship and forgotten to let him know?

He kept turning the handle to crank the turret into the straight-down position he needed to open the hatch and get out, but it was getting increasingly difficult. Then he heard banging above his head. There was shouting too. ‘Come on, Friedman.’ It was Stearley.

The turret stopped and would not move further. It was almost in position but not quite. He was trapped.

‘Hey, Friedman, watch your head.’ Harry could hear the lieutenant easily enough; with two of the engines down, the noise inside the
Macey May
was not so intense.