Bomber (15 page)

They quickly cleared the fog, and after a minute or two the Fortress levelled off and began to circle. This part of the mission was always tense and Harry admired the cool way Holberg and Stearley managed to ease their bomber into the complex combat box formation that was supposed to offer the best protection from Nazi fighters.

‘OK, Friedman. Down you go,’ said Holberg. Harry unplugged his interphone and Dalinsky and Hill came to help him wriggle into his turret.

‘We’ll see you over Schweinfurt,’ said John.

Harry peered around 360 degrees. Fortresses filled the sky – too many to count. They were halfway down the top box of the combat formation. That was fine. It was the guys at the top and bottom who were always supposed to be most vulnerable, but Harry thought that was bull. He figured blind luck was the only thing that protected you up here.

Skaggs patched in the BBC Home Service. They’d have the music until they were halfway across the Channel. That was a good hour away. Schweinfurt was a long haul, down south over England rather than out east over the North Sea.

Harry continued to make regular sweeps round the whole panorama of the sky as the formation rose to its operational height.

‘Oxygen on,’ came the command from the cockpit as they passed ten thousand feet. Harry shivered and double-checked his heated suit was plugged in. It was easy to forget these things, or accidentally detach the switches and plugs that kept you alive at twenty-five thousand feet.

That was it for now. The next hour would be eye strain and just those regular ten-minute checks from Holberg or Stearley, making sure their oxygen supply was functioning properly and they were still all conscious. He wished Holberg allowed them to chat at this stage of the mission, just idle banter to make him feel less isolated, but the captain was very strict on that point. Only operational talk was permitted. It was the only way to make sure they all came back alive, he told them. Harry knew other crews chatted because they’d told him, but he liked Holberg too much to argue the point with him.

They were supposed to meet up with their fighter escort just as they reached the outer fringes of London. The Thunderbolt and Lightning fighter planes would be flying with them until they reached the limits of their range.

‘Can’t see those fighters,’ said Harry over the interphone. ‘Anyone else spot ’em?’

‘Bad news, boys.’ Holberg sounded matter-of-fact. ‘We heard from control that the fighters missed the rendezvous because we were so late taking off.’

There was a chorus of disappointed moans and even some swearing.

‘What a screw-up,’ spat Corrales. ‘Why didn’t they tell them to wait? Take off a bit later?’

‘Ours is not to question why,’ said Holberg. ‘But you’ve got to be extra vigilant now. Expect Fritz to come down on us any time over the Channel.’

The bomb group thundered south-east, but all of the
Macey May
’s crew were disconcerted to see a steady stream of bombers leaving their combat boxes and heading for home. No one said anything, until Holberg spoke, his scepticism clear in his voice. ‘What the hell? There can’t be that many mechanical failures in just one mission.’

That was an excuse for all the crew to voice their resentments.

‘Captain, I gotta broken nail.’

‘My coffee’s gone cold in my thermos – we gotta go back.’

‘Hey, guys, I got something in my eye. Can’t we turn back, please?’

‘All right, guys, keep it down,’ said Holberg. ‘I’m going to have to tighten up our formation here. Keep your eyes open and let me know if we get too close to our buddies.’

It was alarming flying these tight formations. You could see the men in the other planes, as they sat in the cockpit or at the waist firing positions. Harry wished they could move a little further away. He could see how easy it would be for a panicked gunner to fire an accidental stream of
bullets into one of their own planes, and how dangerous it would be for the adjacent aircraft if one of them had a direct hit from flak.

Despite the grey sky Harry could see the landmarks of London, tiny from this great height but just about recognisable. There was that big loop in the river not long past Tower Bridge. He remembered seeing a great formation pass over high in the sky when he was there a few days before, little silver specks with long vapour trails. The kids on the sidewalks had all pointed. He wondered too what the Luftwaffe used to think as they came over to destroy this great city during the Blitz a couple of years before. So far, the Eighth Air Force had only been asked to bomb industrial targets. He’d heard the Brits dropped tons of bombs on big cities, the only way they could be sure to hit anything important in the dark. They called it carpet-bombing. He didn’t like the sound of that. He accepted that sometimes civilians would be killed by American bombs, but he didn’t know how he would feel if they sent them to carpet-bomb those big civilian centres.

They left the landmarks of London behind and the Channel came into view. Then they headed out over the open sea.

‘OK, Skaggs, let’s have that radio off,’ said Holberg.

Within minutes they would be in range of enemy fighters, and once again their lives would be dangling by a slender silver thread.

The
Macey May
was half an hour over France when they came.

‘Eleven o’clock high.’ The voice was Bortz’s. ‘Right on the edge of vision. There’s hundreds of them.’

‘OK. Thank you, Lieutenant,’ said Holberg. ‘They’re just getting in position so they can come down out of the sun, so expect them any minute …’

The German fighters always did this – dived down with the sun right behind them, so it was difficult to see them coming without dazzling yourself.

The next thing Harry heard froze his blood. ‘What the hell is this?’ It was Bortz again.

Cain had got up from his seat at the navigator’s table in the nose, to peer through the Plexiglas cone. ‘There’s trails of smoke coming towards us at speed,’ he told them all. Then his voice quickened. ‘I’d guess they’re rockets.’

In a flash a rocket passed by the
Macey May
’s right wing and continued through the formation. There was a flash, and a grotesque boiling cloud of flame formed a few hundred feet below. Harry could see it all in his turret.

‘Fortress hit, four o’ clock low,’ he reported. One second it was there, the next the whole plane was a mass of fire and flying fragments.

There were further explosions around them and the
Macey May
bucked in the sky.

‘Oh God,’ said Dalinsky. ‘The whole wing’s gone.’

Harry immediately swung his turret round. Their wings were fine. Dalinsky had been talking about another Fortress. He saw it a moment later, nose down and dropping like a brick below them. He couldn’t imagine anyone getting out of that. The whole right wing was ablaze and falling behind the rest of the bomber.

Holberg came on. ‘Here they come. Don’t waste your ammo. Fire within range and watch out for ours.’

Then Stearley spoke. ‘They only hit two with those rockets.’ That was something to hold on to.

All at once the sky was full of targets. It was difficult to hit anything that sped past faster than the human eye could track it. It was like hurtling through a train station at speed and trying to read its name on the platform signs – almost impossible.

On that first pass Harry barely fired his guns. But when the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs came back for a second time, his job was easier. All around now, he could hear or sense the crew firing their weapons. Down to the left he noticed a Focke-Wulf lining up for a shot at the bomber beneath them.

Harry waited for the fighter to fly level, then he let off a
long stream of bullets. He could see shards of metal dance along the top of the fuselage and the cockpit canopy shattered. He knew in an instant he must have killed the pilot. Flames burst out from the engine and the plane started to dive, trailing a thick plume of flame and smoke.

‘Got one,’ he said, trying to suppress his excitement. This was his first certain hit. He was surprised at how little he cared that he had just killed a young pilot.

German fighters continued to buzz around them like angry hornets. Then, in an instant, they were gone. Harry rotated his turret straight ahead. The reason was plain enough. A mile or so in front of them was a dense field of flak. No sooner had one ordeal ended than another began.

The
Macey May
started to jolt and jerk around. Harry felt sick and simultaneously hot and cold. Inside his flying suit he was bathed in sweat.

Holberg had had a change of mind about when Harry should come out of his turret. Now it was only when they were over the target. Flak was usually at its worst then, but he should stay put at all other times apart from take-off and landing.

‘It’s looking clear up ahead,’ Holberg told them. ‘Another minute of this and we’re through. Hold tight.’

Hold tight. Every part of Harry was scrunched up tight. His fists, his eyes, his toes … This was the worst flak he had ever been in. Flak burst close to the
Macey May
and he could hear its shrapnel shards whine around. Some
struck the plane with a dull thump. He didn’t worry too much about that. Everyone seemed to come back from Germany with holes in the fuselage or the wings.

The flak died down and all of a sudden they were riding through clear air, plain sailing in level flight, the patchwork fields of occupied Europe stretching beneath them.

‘Schweinfurt ETA ten minutes,’ said Cain.

Holberg came on. ‘Let’s make sure you’re all here.’ He ran through the crew.

No fighters appeared in the last interminable ten minutes, and as they approached the target, Holberg told Harry he could come out from his turret as soon as the flak started to burst around the plane. It was inevitable, of course, that there was flak around a target. It wouldn’t be worth attacking if there wasn’t flak.

The first bursts of explosives started to bloom around the combat box like dirty flower heads. Harry was all set to go when he heard something over his headphones that turned him cold with fear.

‘Bortz, do you copy?’ said the captain. ‘Are you set to take over?’

The flak was getting worse by the minute.

Bortz did not respond. Holberg asked again, more urgently.

There was still no response.

‘Cain, can you hear me?’ said the captain. ‘What’s happening with Bortz?’

There was no reply and Harry felt in desperate need of water. His mouth was bone dry.

Then Cain came on. ‘Bortz is OK. I’ll speak to him directly.’

Harry breathed again.

There was another pause.

‘His headset’s not working.’

‘Lieutenant, get Bortz up here,’ Holberg said. ‘Bombardier’s got to have a headset.’

Then Harry heard him say, ‘Go to the midsection and see if there’s a spare with Skaggs. If he can’t help, then take one off Hill or Dalinsky.’

Harry had heard enough. He unplugged himself and set up the complex mechanism to get himself out of the turret.

Harry got to the radio compartment just as Bortz burst through the other door. They both saw Skaggs at once. He was slumped face forward and they thought him asleep, or maybe passed out from a faulty oxygen mask. Bortz shook him, but he remained inert.

The Fortress jolted in the air as flak exploded nearby and Skaggs slid brusquely off his chair to lie face up on the floor. His eyes stared into nothing. He was dead.

Bortz and Harry picked him up and propped him against the side of the fuselage. As they did so, Bortz pointed to a small cut in Skaggs’s windpipe. As he slumped forward exposing the back of his neck they saw the entry wound. A bullet or a piece of flak had gone through a vertebra in his neck. It must have killed him in an instant.

Bortz plugged his interphone cord into the compartment jack box. ‘Captain, Skaggs is dead,’ he said. There was no reply.

They hauled Skaggs back on his chair, holding him in place with the seat straps. Thank God it was a clean death, Harry thought.

‘Gotta have one of these,’ said Bortz, and carefully detached Skaggs’s headset from his lolling head. ‘Jesus, it’s warm.’ He shuddered.

Then he was gone, back to the front of the plane.

‘Right. Target five minutes,’ said Holberg. ‘Bortz, handing over to you.’

Harry strapped himself into his seat in Skaggs’s compartment. It was awful sitting there with a dead man. Skaggs’s mouth was hanging open and sightless eyes were staring at the ceiling. Sometimes Harry had found it hard to like him, but he was still his buddy, and now he was gone he felt a terrible sadness.

The flak was really intense now, and Harry wondered whether to just sit tight or watch out of the top window of the radio compartment. He decided his best bet was to curl up into a ball and listen to Bortz going through his bomb-aiming routine. ‘Two minutes … Target in sight …’

Immediately to his side Skaggs flinched and jerked upright. Harry nearly jumped out of his skin. Another piece of flak had pierced the plane and hit the radio operator right in the middle of his forehead. Skaggs was dead twice over. If his first injury hadn’t broken his neck, the
second one would have gone straight through his brain. Harry began to shake uncontrollably and was grateful no one else was around to see him. He fought back tears of sheer terror and began to pray under his breath.

Over the interphone Bortz sounded icy calm. ‘Steady, Thirty seconds …’ That brought Harry back to earth.

Flak continued to burst all around the ship, and when Harry dared to look from the small window in the operator’s compartment, he was amazed that anyone and anything could fly through it and survive. At four o’clock low there was another Fortress going down in a ball of flame. At any second that could be them. Harry bit his lip hard and tried not to think about it.

All at once the
Macey May
lifted in the air and Holberg came over the interphone.

‘Job done. Let’s go home.’ The Fortress banked sharply to the west and once again the flak disappeared from the sky.

‘Harry, back to your turret,’ said Holberg, but Harry never heard him; he was already halfway there, stopping for a brief second to pat Hill and Dalinsky on the shoulder.