Bombs Away (21 page)

So, to the assembly field come the men and they are fitted together. The commissioned officers live together and the non-commissioned officers live together. At present there are no privates in a bomber crew. When they have learned enough to be there, rank and pay have been increased. Gunners, radio men, crew chiefs are sergeants drawing specialist’s pay and flying pay. Pilot and copilot, bombardier, and navigator are commissioned officers. The men live together, go out together, eat together. They fly individual missions, flight missions, squadron missions. If an animosity should arise, here in final training is the place to root it out. Here develop close associations, friendships that are permanent; and it must be that way, for rigid discipline can never take the place of mutual liking and respect. There are more musketeers here than the original three, but the motto of a bomber crew might well be the familiar “All for one and one for all.” Men who know what they are doing are the best fighting instruments in the world. Nothing manufactured can take their place. Men are the true weapons of the Air Force and it is an understanding of this that makes our bomber crews what they are. It is an understanding of this which goes into the careful choice of candidates, the careful training of individuals, and finally, the careful grouping of the men in the crew.

The men graduate from the schools and they get their orders and usually a little furlough, for they have worked long and hard. Before the furlough is up they are restless. A place without airplanes is no longer a good place to them. They do not rest well if the sound of ships on the runway is not in their ears. They are trained for a job and with very few exceptions they want to get to their job.

This final phase of training will simulate battle conditions in every possible way. The crews will bomb targets in the water, they will be given patrol missions, and if they are lucky they may get a submarine. Each man has been thinking in terms of his specialty, but now each will begin to think in terms of the mission. The word mission will change its meaning. Mission is the end toward which they have been working. A mission will be the most important thing in the world to them. On the field they will get to know men of more advanced squadrons and then one day these squadrons will be gone giving no destination; but the crews that are left will read newspapers and sometimes an oblique piece of information will tell them where their friends are.

Training, bombing, getting used to the ship and to their duties in the ship go on and on. The group will be a unit. And then one day a stir of excitement will run through the squadron—the orders are in. It is time to pack up. It is time to go. They do not yet know where. They may go any place toward which the compass can point. The men move about quickly. The ships are packed. Squadron records are boxed. Then final orders come and quietly the men take their places, the engines turn over. The ships rumble out to the runway. Then the ground shakes under the spinning wheels and the air roars with the motors. The mission has begun.

It happened that Bill the bombardier, Joe the pilot, Al the gunner, Harris the radio man, Abner the engineer, and Allan the navigator all finished their training at the same time. Hundreds finished at that time and received their orders to proceed to their final training, but these were ordered to a field in Florida. They came in on the train and shortly were assigned to their squadrons and flights. The commanding officer had observed the men carefully. In case he made a mistake in building the crews it could be changed but it is better not to make a mistake. He assigned the men to a crew together with a copilot and two other gunners. This was the crew and it was to be permanent.

It was hot at the field and damp, and millions of mosquitoes hummed about day and night. The men slept in shelters open all the way around but tightly screened. But even then some mosquitoes got in and many little black bugs walked through the meshes of the screen at will. Fanciers of bugs that bite favor the black bugs over the mosquitoes as unpleasant visitors. For a mosquito must find an exposed place to bite, but the black bugs go right under the covers with you. For a few days the new men fought and slapped the bugs and finally they gave up and relaxed and the bugs bit them and they didn’t suffer so much.

The field had been built quickly, leveled quickly. Shelters were still going up. The air was thick and humid and pools of water were everywhere. If it was a toughening process in discomfort it was successful. The nearest town was five miles away. It was not the Florida that the Chambers of Commerce talk about. The field itself had been torn and chewed by the bulldozers out of a palmetto swamp, leveled, and the asphalt runways laid down, and around the field, well spaced, stood the brown B-24’s like giant mosquitoes.

In the operations room the new crew stood about a little diffidently. Their shirts were sweated through, their faces ran with perspiration. They had been told to get acquainted. They examined one another secretly. They were a little embarrassed and then outside and on the other side of the field a motor turned over and caught and another and two more. The new crew moved as one man to the open door and looked across the field to where a bomber was warming up. They could see the crew of that ship climbing in, taking their sheepskin clothes, their masks, and their parachutes with them. And Bill said “They’re going high.”

“It will be cool up there, anyway,” said Allan.

The strangeness wore off in a very few days and when the nine of them got into a ship together for the first time, it disappeared. On their first flight they tried to do their best. Abner went over his motors on the ground and hovered about like a worried hen. He hesitated to report the engines ready for fear he might have missed something. Joe took his place. Harris was working at his radio set, sitting in his swinging chair behind the copilot. The gunners were in the section behind the bomb bays for the take-off and Allan and Bill had their seats on the left side. They would both go into the nose of the ship as soon as she was in the air. Abner came aboard through the open bomb bay and as soon as he was on, the doors rolled shut. Joe leaned out of his window, “Clear number one.”

“Clear,” the ground sergeant said. The three-bladed propeller turned jerkily, once, twice, fired and caught and Joe idled it back. “Clear number two,” and number two caught. Three and four started. Abner sighed with nervous relief. Bill put on his earphones and lifted his microphone. He got his clearance from operations. He taxied the ship to the runway, set the brakes, and reversed each engine while the ship strained at the brakes. Then Joe called the tower and reported himself ready and was cleared. His hands pushed the four red-headed throttle handles forward, the engines strained to get away and could not, so they took the ship with them. The great ship thundered down the runway, 60, 70, 80 and at 90 Joe pulled back gently and the great brown bomber lifted into the air. Abner came forward and pulled the levers which lifted the wheels into the slots in the wings.

Now Allan and Bill climbed through the narrow passage from the bomb bay to the nose. The navigator’s table was there and a swinging chair for the bombardier. Bill leaned over his bombsight and glanced up at his instrument panel. Allan laid out his maps on the table and took the cover off his compass. Now the gunners took their places. Al crawled into the tail gun turret and the second gunner stepped across the catwalk and took his place in the glistening, transparent top turret. The third gunner stayed close to the belly turret. If he could put the cross hairs of his sights on an enemy and pull his trigger, two streams of steel would pour from his guns into the enemy ship. This was their first flight together. They made a short navigational flight out over the Gulf of Mexico.

They were to get used to their ship and to each other. Below them on the smooth sea they could watch the cargo ships moving and they knew that submarines were waiting somewhere. Their orders were to fly a hundred miles out to sea and then to turn and make twelve bombing runs over a floating target. The position of the target was given, but Allan had to find it with his instruments. He sat at his table looking worried and now and then calling a direction into his microphone to Joe.

The ship flew easily without much noise. The copilot was leaning forward watching the gauges. The altimeter showed 10,000 feet and that was on their orders. Suddenly in the earphones came Bill’s excited voice.

“Joe, look down about 127 degrees and see what you think that is.”

Joe put the ship into a turn so he could look down from his window. Far below he could see a little trail of white water and under it a long, thin shadow. Joe lifted his microphone. “Harris,” he said, “get the tower, report a submarine.” The little wake was far behind now. Joe cut his motor and he began to lose altitude. He heard the voice of the squadron radio operator saying, “Hold it, one moment,” and then his squadron leader.

“We have no submarines in the area. If you’ve got live bombs go after it. What’s the position?” Joe gave him the position. “Okay, we’ll send the depth charges, you try them with bombs.”

Joe said, “Wilco,” but his voice was tight. “Did you hear that, Bill?”

“I heard it.”

“You better come in as low as you can, I’ll drop a salvo.”

Joe said, “You better hit him, we’ve only got one chance. He can get down like a flash.” He called the tail gunner, “We’re going after a submarine, watch as we go over. You might give him something if we miss.”

“Okay,” said Al.

The ship made a turn, and with motors idling dropped quietly towards the little splash of wake in the distance. From the nose Bill directed the flight.

“A little left now, hold it, hold it.” Then he cried, “I think they’re coming up.” The copilot leaned forward tensely. Abner stood holding on to the structure of the top turret.

“Get down,” Bill called. “Get down another thousand feet.”

The ship settled fast. They could hear the bomb bay doors slide up like the top of a roll-top desk. Bill’s voice was cracked with excitement.

“Two points left, hold it steady right there now.”

Then they heard the metallic spit as the salvo went out and Bill shouted, “Bombs away.” And it was hardly shouted before the explosion came and the ship lurched under the air pressure. The tail gun was banging away behind. Joe whirled the ship up on its side to see. There were pieces of superstructure still in the air when he looked and Bill was shouting:

“He was coming up! We got him!”

Joe speeded his engines, gained altitude, and continued the circle. The spot on the sea was still torn with white water and a spread of shimmering oil was edging out from the disturbance.

Joe lifted his microphone. “Bill,” he said, “if you’d missed, we’d have killed you. Harris, call the squadron and report a direct hit and the submarine sunk and repeat the position.”

A moment later he heard the squadron leader, “Good work. Continue on your mission. Any bombs left?”

“No, sir, we dropped both racks.”

“Well, make four dry runs over the target then.”

“Roger,” said Joe, and he hung his microphone on its clamp. His hands were steady but he seemed to be jumping and pulsing inside. In the nose Bill turned and smiled happily at the navigator and then he leaned over and kissed the bombsight.

When they came in—when Joe let the ship down on the squalling wheels and dropped in the protesting nose wheel—they had gotten themselves in hand enough so that they could be nonchalant. It had been pure luck, they knew, but they liked pure luck. So many people speak of luck disparagingly, as though it weren’t a good thing to have. This crew was quiet about the submarine. Each one of course under pressure would tell about it, would tell his version of it, but the most important thing of all was that this crew was now a crew. In one action it had welded together. Very strange ties had been established. These men would not be apart again. On the surface the pilot knew he had a good bombardier; the bombardier knew that he had the best of pilots. But beyond this there were bonds of relationship extending through the whole ship. The submarine belonged to the crew. The team was a unit.