Call to Duty (28 page)

The men dutifully filed that information away and made no comment. Unknown to them, Operation Starkey was an attempt by the Allies to convince the Germans that an invasion in the Pas de Calais area was imminent and take the pressure off the hard-pressed Russians on the eastern front. But the “boys from Abbeville,” the nickname given to one of Generalmajor Adolf Galland’s Luftwaffe wings that was based at Abbeville, France, were creating havoc among the B-17s. Flying Focke-Wulf 190s, the “boys” had turned the skies over the Pas de Calais region into one of the toughest zones in Europe.

The navigation officer took over and laid out their route. “Please remember,” he said, “the primary rules for daytime—in fast and out fast—don’t go around for a reattack—those who fight and run away, live to fight another day. This will be your area for Intruder so mark the defenses well. You’ll find it’s easier to avoid them at night when the buggers can’t see you.”

Then they emptied their pockets, collected their parachutes, Mae Wests, dinghies, and the rest of their flying kit before going out to dispersal to the waiting aircraft. At the last moment, they were told that their aircraft was u/s, unserviceable, and that they would be flying number 529. “Luck of the draw,” Zack said. Number 529, better known as
Romanita
in the squadron, was the best aircraft assigned to 25 Squadron.

As usual, the two-man ground crew who tended the machine, a fitter for the engines and a rigger for the airframe, were there. The two young men took extraordinary pride in their aircraft. “Please bring ’er back, Mr. Pontowski,” the rigger said as he helped Zack snake his six-foot frame through
the small hatch on the right side of the aircraft located just forward of the navigator’s position. Zack had to crawl across Ruffy’s seat to settle into the pilot’s seat. The sergeant’s grinning face beamed at him from the hatch. “
Romanita
’s like a virgin, sir, hard to get into but lovely once you’re there.” Once he had nestled into the seat, Zack found the small cockpit comfortable enough, except that the rudder pedals were slightly displaced to the right. He heard an “Ouch!” from outside followed by a muttered “Bloody airscrews.” Ruffy had bumped into one of the propeller blades that were close to the hatch before he climbed the boarding ladder.

Ruffy’s head emerged through the hatch as he wiggled his way on board and into his seat which was to Zack’s immediate right and set slightly back. Then the rigger passed his navigation board and chest-pack parachute in after him for storage at the navigator’s feet. Zack sat on his parachute and seriously doubted that he would ever be able to bail out of the cramped cockpit since there was no autopilot and the controls needed constant tending. Then the hatch was closed.

“Whackin’ great engines,” Ruffy muttered, rubbing his head.

Zack’s hands moved over the switches and controls, setting them for engine start. He yelled out the open side window that he was starting, switched on the ignition, and pressed the starter and booster-coil buttons. The left propeller moved suddenly as the starter-motor sent out a thin, discordant wail. Since the ground crew had warmed up the engine earlier, the twelve cylinders of the Merlin 21 roared to life and the three blades of the propeller disappeared in a whirl. They repeated the procedure for the right engine and Zack checked the hydraulic pumps, made sure the right generator was on line and charging, and checked the operation of the constant-speed propeller. He motioned the chocks away and the last physical human contact with the ground was broken. Now only the radio would keep that contact alive.

They taxied out of dispersal, lined up on the runway and ran through the takeoff routine: elevator trim slightly nose-heavy, slight pressure on the right rudder, ailerons neutral, flaps up, prop controls full forward, fuel cocks to outer tanks, superchargers to MOD, radiator switch to open…. Straighten the damn tail wheel, he reminded himself. Now a
green light from the tower. “Let’s go,” he told Ruffy as he inched the throttles forward, making sure the left one was slightly forward to counter the Mossie’s tendency to swing on takeoff. When the rpm were hovering on 3,000, he released the hand brake lever on the control column and they thundered down the runway. At 120 mph, the aircraft wanted to fly but Zack held it on the ground. At 130, he lifted the Mossie smoothly into the air with its two-thousand-pound bomb load.

Ruffy gave him a heading for the coast as the other Mosquito joined on their right. Then they coasted out over their checkpoint two hundred feet above the deck and headed out across the North Sea for Holland at 300 mph.

This was the Mosquito, a flying anachronism of wood that relied on pure speed for defense. It was the most versatile and fastest fighter-bomber of its time. And while the Mosquito was a lightweight, weighing in at less than twenty thousand pounds fully loaded, it was able to carry as much death and destruction to the enemy with greater accuracy and fewer losses than its big brothers flying massed raids into the heartland of the enemy.

Zack and his wingman coasted in over the Dutch coast south of Haarlem and headed straight for Hilversum. They wanted to make it look as if they were going after the antennas and communications facilities clustered around that city. Both Zack and Ruffy kept a constant lookout for enemy fighters, confident that they could only be intercepted by a fighter diving down on them from above. At low level, they could outrun anything the Germans had flying. At one point, Ruffy slapped Zack on the back and pointed to four Messerschmitts on patrol to the north. “Me-One-oh-nines,” Zack told him. “I don’t think they’ve seen us.”

Zack pushed the throttles up and increased their speed to 320 on “the clock” as they arced around the southern edge of Hilversum. Ruffy picked out a landmark and gave Zack a new heading, pointing them directly toward the Luftwaffe base at Soesterberg. Squashed flies and dust had smudged the windscreen and Zack was hard-pressed to see the field.

“The city on your left is Amersfoort,” Ruffy told him. “The aerodrome should be on the nose in that wooded area.” Like Zack, Ruffy could not pick out the camouflaged German
air base and was navigating from checkpoint to checkpoint. “Climb now,” he said as the last checkpoint flashed by underneath their right wing. Zack honked back on the stick and climbed to fifteen hundred feet for a low-angle bomb run. His wingman would go in straight and low at fifty feet above the ground and drop bombs fused with an eleven-second delay. He would toss them straight ahead much like a rifle bullet—and with the same accuracy. Zack would be coming down the chute and release his bombs from a shallow dive angle. But his timing had to be perfect and he had to be off target before the bombs from the first Mosquito exploded. The maneuver called for extreme precision but the results were devastating.

When Zack rolled in, he saw the runway and the other Mossie at the same time. His partner was going to put his bombs right into the entrance of an underground command bunker. Then he saw the noses of three JU-88s hidden in the trees. It was pure luck, the right combination of sun angle, shadow, and the fact that he was looking more out the side window than straight ahead—thanks to the smashed bugs. His feet twitched on the rudder pedals and he sighted on the trees where he had seen the snouts of the JU-88s. Ruffy counted off the altimeter as it unwound. He mentally calculated the lag in the instrument and when he figured they were at the release altitude of eight hundred feet, he shouted, “Pull out!” over the intercom. Zack’s thumb flicked on the bomb button and they were off, running to the south at treetop level. Ruffy twisted in his seat in time to see a huge secondary explosion mushroom into the sky behind them.

“Tallyho!” Zack shouted as he threw the Mossie into a hard left turn and then skidded it across the treetops. He jammed the throttles full forward and set the rpm at 3,000. Crossing directly in front of him was a Junkers 88 with its gear down. The exploding bombs had discouraged the pilot from making a landing and he was circling the field. The German pilot saw Zack and accelerated as Zack zoomed up behind him, ninety degrees off the Junkers’s heading. The Junkers’s gear was coming up when Zack pulled down behind him. They closed and Zack concentrated on the GM-2 gunsight the Mossie shared with the Spitfire, lining up on the wildly gyrating Junkers. His thumb mashed the cannon trigger and the four 20-millimeter Hispano cannons under the
floorboards erupted, shaking the Mosquito. Pieces flew off the Junkers and it careened to the right, crashing into the center of the city of Amersfoort.

“Oh my God,” Zack groaned.

“Set course two-three-five degrees,” Ruffy snapped, all business. Zack did as he said and tried not to think about what he had just done. How many innocent Dutch did I kill? he thought.

“Not your fault,” Ruffy said, knowing what his pilot was thinking. “We’re only doing our job.”

They only encountered one patch of light flak on their way out of Holland.

The two men could feel the tension from the mission slack as they raced across the North Sea, alone now as they had lost contact with their number two man coming off the target. “No time for get-home-itis,” Zack mumbled as he scanned the skies, looking for trouble.

“Beg pardon?” Ruffy replied.

“Get-home-itis,” Zack told him, “is the head-for-the-barn complex when you forget about business. Horses get it.” Then he saw the trail of smoke far to his left and slightly above them. “Someone’s in trouble.” He studied the smoke trail. “It’s going in our direction. Must be one of ours. Let’s check it out.” The old tingling feeling scratched at him, sending its vague warnings. He had learned not to disregard it and climbed into the sun, gaining altitude.

“It’s a Flying Fortress,” Ruffy said, making out the heavily damaged B-17. “Bandits! Two Focke-Wulfs! They’re on the Fort.”

“Got ’em,” Zack said. He pushed the nose over into a steep dive and slashed down on the two Focke-Wulf 190s, still hiding in the sun. The airspeed climbed to 460 mph. “Too fast,” he grunted and pulled the throttles back. Now he was stabilized at 450 as the trailing Focke-Wulf filled his gunsight ring. His right thumb pressed the gun camera button and then moved over to the button that fired the machine gun. He hesitated before mashing it. The four Browning .303 machine guns mounted in the nose cut loose and he walked the stream of bullets across the 190’s cockpit. The German fighter pitched over in a steep dive and crashed into the sea. He pulled off straight ahead and zoomed, trading off his airspeed
for altitude, clawing for every bit of height he could gain before turning back into the engagement.

“Jerry’s running for it,” Ruffy told him. The other Focke-Wulf had seen his wingman crash and, not being able to find the cause, had turned tail and run. It was exactly what Zack would have done. They pulled alongside the stricken Flying Fortress and looked it over. The pilot gave them a wave and pointed to his mouth and ears before making a slashing motion. “They must have lost their radios,” Ruffy said.

“I think they’re going to ditch,” Zack said. The B-17 was slowly descending toward the sea. “Call Manston and tell them what’s going on,” Zack said. Ruffy checked his list for Manston’s call sign and made the radio call.

Manston, the emergency recovery base located on the eastern coast of Kent near Ramsgate, acknowledged the call. They would notify Air-Sea Ops for a pickup. “Coastal Command,” Manston warned them, “reports an E-boat operating in the area.”

“We’ll fly cover as long as we can,” Zack told Manston. They watched as the B-17 settled into the water and, for one sickening moment, Zack was certain that its nose was going to dig in and it would pitch-pole onto its back. A huge cascade of spray hid the B-17 and then collapsed over it like a falling curtain. In the mist, they could see the B-17 at rest in the water, still right side up. “Lucky bastards,” Zack muttered, remembering when he and Ruffy had ditched in the North Sea. Three dinghies popped out and they counted four men as they scrambled out of the aircraft. Then two wounded were passed out, followed by four more men. “They all got out,” he said.

They loitered over the dinghies until Ruffy said, “Fuel.” They had to go. Zack flew one last turn over the men and wagged his wings. Then he saw it. A lone gray silhouette in the water was moving toward the men in the dinghies. “Oh, Jesus,” he moaned as they flew closer. “It’s an E-boat.”

“Fuel” was all Ruffy said.

“One pass,” he promised. “We’ve got to discourage that bastard.” He headed for the E-boat, turned the gun camera on, and walked a string of twenty-millimeter cannon shells across the boat. He pulled up and headed for England.

Zack and Ruffy were walking into the anteroom of the mess the next afternoon when they were told to report to their squadron commander at station headquarters. “He’s probably read our combat report by now,” Zack said. Ruffy gave him a worried look.

The squadron leader who commanded 25 Squadron was a no-nonsense, thirty-two-year-old from Yorkshire and he came right to the point. “The bomber chaps reported that not much was going on over Holland last night, probably due to the dents you made at Soesterberg.” It was the closest thing to a compliment they had ever heard him utter. “Impressive,” he continued. “Two kills. I hope the film from your gun camera bears that out.” Now they were hearing absolute praise. Zack was certain the film would catch up with him in a few days and support his claim. After attacking the E-boat, they had run dangerously low on fuel and had made an emergency diversion into Manston. They had de-briefed Intelligence while the ground crews refueled their aircraft and developed the film. But they had been ordered back to Church Fenton before the film was processed.

“But”—the squadron leader glared at them, not about to let them off the hook—“if you ever land on one engine again because you’ve run out of petrol and then have to be pushed off the runway because there is absolutely nothing left in the tanks, I’ll have your guts for garters.”

Both men relaxed. This was more like it. “Manston didn’t seem to mind refueling us,” Zack said. “And it was only a short delay.”

“Fortunate for you there was no damage to Five-twenty-nine,” he grudgingly admitted. Zack buried his smile. His squadron commander had been as worried about
Romanita
as he had for the crew. “There’s an Intelligence type up from London…flew in twenty minutes ago…who wants to talk to you about your mission. They must have discovered something important in your report or on the film.” He tried to fix them with his sternest look, but his pride in what they had done wouldn’t allow it. “Dismissed,” he muttered. Then he added, “And well done, lads.”