Whip (17 page)

The two hours after landing came and went. Tension heightened as men's eyes kept returning to their watches. Idle conversation petered away. With the passing minutes they began to take stock of where they were, of what the hell Kanaga Field was all about. It was as if they were seeing for the first time the extent of the preparations, the hundred and forty Papuans who had to be ready at any one moment to roll trees and brush from the airstrip. If they screwed up the takeoff it was into the trees on the south side of the mountain and they'd kill only themselves. If an airplane got away from its pilots on a landing and ran loose there was only one place for it to go — straight into the caves where they lived.

At least the mechanics would do everything in their power to be sure all brakes on all airplanes worked…

Three hours now since landing. Whip had been right about the weather. Broken clouds and scattered showers. The wind picking up. Now they had scud and it swept low overhead, bands of gray sheep fleeing the wolf of wind. The clouds were barely five hundred feet above the ground.

First Lieutenant Paddy Shannon held down the left seat in the tenth aircraft. "The colonel was right." He stood up and stretched, looked into the ominous sky. "For sure we ain't about to be going anywhere on this day."

At chow that evening, a mixture of iron rations and local food the natives had brought in, Goodman gave them the latest poop. "General Smyth has laid on the mission for us.

A PBY picked up a concentration of invasion barges working down from New Britain.

They want us to hit them as early as possible. They're anxious to see how our fancy new guns work out. You'll roll out of the sack at zero four four five."

At three that morning the bottom fell out of the sky. They got it all. High winds, a cannonading of lightning and thunder, a downpour that would have done credit to a monsoon. Normal rain for New Guinea. No one slept well the rest of the night. Too many lingering thoughts about a soft, muddy runway.

Their first takeoff from Kanaga would have to wait. First light came clammy, cold and thick with fog. They were in the midst of clouds. The morning was gray and dismal and got worse. New Guinea mosquitoes haven't read the book of instructions. They like to do their work in rain
or
sun, and they followed the men everywhere.

The caves went from tolerable to damp, soggy, clammy, soaked with perspiration.

Condensation ran down the walls. Strange insects swarmed to the caves simply because it was better than continued exposure to the relentless downpour. The men took to sleeping in the bombers. At least there they were free of water collecting about them.

Parachutes and flying gear and personal equipment made up lumpy beds. Better than none.

It rained for three days and three nights and Kanaga Field disappeared under a layer of water. Goodman cursed his inability to put his drainage program into effect before the rains chained the 335th to the ground. The men grew listless, bored to frustration.

Headquarters didn't help matters any. The Japanese were already landing their forces along the northern coastline. Fighters had staged down from various fields, flying low, and were reinforcing the garrisons at Lae and Salamaua. A bunch came down to Moresby and turned Seven-Mile and two other fields into a shooting gallery. Thirty-two men were killed, eighty more wounded, four bombers destroyed and a dozen other airplanes shot up.

The 335th walked in mud and cursed.

The rains ended on the fourth day. Still no flying. The field was sticky mud. Pilots, crewmen, mechanics, natives, everyone worked to get the field ready. The sun came out to help them.

Not Moresby and not Seven-Mile. A flotilla of bombers came down from Rabaul and worked over the airfields and port with devastating effect. The plans to hammer the invasion barges had turned into a mockery. The killers of the Death's Head Brigade stayed on the ground, the reinforcements all got through where the Japanese had sent them, and the Americans were getting clobbered from all sides.

Goodman gave no orders to his men to be ready on their fifth morning at Kanaga. By four o'clock the crews were at the airplanes, running up engines in the dark, fretful, pissed off mightily at the whole world. At five o'clock Goodman got the new orders.

Forget the barges; they were empty. But the pick of the Japanese fighter crop was now at Lae Airdrome.

"Your orders are simple," Goodman told the men. "Get Lae."

Whip was the first. He waited at the end of the strip, the big Cyclones ticking over. Dark outside, but the eastern sky showing the first signs of the earth rolling on its side to meet the sun. He glanced through his side window. Ten more bombers fanged, tusked, emblazoned; all ready to move.

Now or never. Enough light. He flashed his position lights. At the far end of the strip Lou Goodman caught the signal, answered with three flashes of green from a handheld light gun.

Whip nudged the power, lined up, went on the brakes with Alex. He started forward on the power. "Thank God," Alex murmured. That's all he said, needed to say. They had begun to doubt their own justification for being.

Full power, everything full forward, and they were rolling. The ground was firmer than they'd hoped. Whip held back pressure on the yoke to keep the nose wheel light. The bomber accelerated steadily, wings rocking along the uneven ground. But the engines were sweet and he felt the wings grabbing air. He held her down until the air speed read eighty. With her continuing acceleration the takeoff was a piece of cake. She eased into the sky and the gear thumped into the wells and Jesus Christ but it felt good to have flight again at your fingertips. Whip flew a slow climbing circle, watched the ten other bombers rolling down Kanaga and easing into the air, forming up on his plane. By the time all eleven planes were in the air they had plenty of light.

This mission wouldn't take long. The distance between Seven-Mile and Lae was about one hundred and eighty miles, and they'd started a lot closer than that. Even if the Japanese had a sub off the southern coast, or watchers in the hills, they'd have no word of the takeoff from Kanaga. Surprise was going to be theirs.

They went up the slopes of the mountains in formation, holding it in tight, strict radio silence between the bombers. No one needed to talk anyway. Lae had become personal to them all.

Whip didn't waste any time making his approach. He could have come into Lae from the northwest, over land, but he wanted a first shot at the powerful Japanese field from over water. On the deck. That meant flying directly between Salamaua and Lae, but they'd be cutting it so close the Japanese wouldn't get more than the briefest warning.

Just enough time to get some Sakae engines started in those Zeros. Whip grinned to himself. He liked that idea. Some of the fighters might even be clawing into the air by the time they boomed out of the southeast and came right down their single runway.

That meant he could get in a few licks with that madhouse of firepower against a Zero that was flying. He needed some more flags on the side of his airplane, anyway.

They crested the mountain range and started running downhill, staying tight to the trees, twin-engined sharks knowing where their prey waited for them. Faster and faster, taking the gravity ride down the slopes, and then a sweeping, tight-formation turn over the waters of Huon Gulf, and there was Lae waiting for them.

Probably the best antiaircraft crew the Japanese ever had stood watch on the end of the Lae airstrip. They'd been knocking the crap out of bombers and fighters for months.

They'd chewed up the 335th before. Everyone making a strike into Lae always took a whack at the AA crew, but the Japs were smart. They moved it around and they heaved sandbags all around it, and the crew always managed to zero in on the bombers coming into the Japanese field. No one argued that this flak outfit was far and away the winner in the competition between the AA gun and the attacking planes.

Whip intended to change the game. The B-25s eased into a strung-out formation, two planes to an element, spacing themselves carefully for the most effective bomb drop. But Whip wasn't playing the game according to the rules the Japanese knew.

From the cockpit the water directly before the B-25 flashed with terrifying speed at the lead airplane. Far ahead, Lae itself grew slowly in size, that slow-motion expansion of things and space that was so contrary to the rushing speed of a bomber down on the deck. Whip and Alex searched for the flak gun. Lae swelled in size with tremendous speed now and they found the flak position barely in time. The Japs got off the first round. A mistake. Whip saw the flash, eased in rudder. Behind and to his right Czaikowicz followed every move. The bomber plunged forward and Whip had a fleeting thought as to what the Japanese might be thinking.

The first shot was theirs; they never had time for a second. Whip held the flak position in his sights. He opened fire with a single burst to test his aim. Tracers flashed in glowing blobs and sped away from the airplane. A touch of rudder, a hint of pressure on the yoke. Then, a long burst. It all poured directly into the antiaircraft position.

"My God…" That from Gall, watching behind them to see what it would be like.

Twelve fifty-caliber machine guns were dead on their target. The flak position
erupted
. A shattering swarm of steel-jacketed and incendiary hornets tore into the gun, the sandbags, the crew. The heavy gun itself was hurled from its mounts. There was no need for a second burst.

They hardly dared believe what they saw. Zero fighters everywhere. So many of them the Japanese hadn't been able to disperse them all in revetments. At least thirty fighters lined up on each side of the runway. Whip and Psycho bored in, pounding out short bursts with their batteries of machine guns. The bomb bays were open and they let go with 250-pounders. Even as he was flashing by Whip was changing his plans for the strike. He went to his radio.

"Make it one pass only, troops," he called to his men. "Break to the right and form up over the water. Kessler, you take the lead and I'll pick up. Head straight down the coastline and we'll pay those other people a visit. Over."

"Three to Leader. Wilco."

"Psycho, you read?"

"Roger from Two."

"You got the play?"

"Got it. I'll fall back a bit."

"Roger."

Czaikowicz already knew what had formed in his mind. The first two bombers thundered low over Lae, their bombs creating carnage behind them. Nine more B-25s sledgehammered in their loads, the pilots snapping out short and devastating bursts from their massive nose armament.

"Jesus, will you look at that…"

A long burst from one bomber slammed into a row of fighters. The first three airplanes whirled crazily into the air as the rivers of steel and incendiaries from the B-25s smashed into their midst.

The bombs walked along the runway, into revetments, plowed up trees and buildings and airplanes. The B-25s howled their song on the deck, too fast, too quick for the Japanese to do much about it. Nine airplanes broke right over the hills at the far end of the runway, going wide, out of range of what guns were still firing, easing out over the waters of the gulf, and taking up a heading to the south.

No one would ever fault the Japanese for not giving it everything they had. On the smoking, cratered runways and taxiway, four Zeros were doing their best to get into the sky. One went into a crater and cartwheeled out of control, snapping the gear. But three more made it into the air, and took up pursuit of the nine bombers.

Exactly as Whip wanted them to do.

The two B-25s, Whip leading, Psycho just the right distance behind, came out of the northwest, catching the Zeros racing away over water. Whip lined up his sights on the first fighter, still punching for speed. At this moment the B-25 had it all over the Zero, coming in from better altitude, the engines wide open, with an advantage of a hundred miles an hour. Whip pressed the gun tit from two hundred yards.

No more Zero. Whip and Alex gaped. The screaming hose of firepower from the bomber simply blasted its way
through
the Japanese fighter. One moment it was there, the next it was gone, and pieces of wreckage whirled through the air.

Whip walked rudder and skidded. The second fighter was in his sights but only for a moment. The Zero went up swiftly on one wing, the pilot ready to come down again in a beautiful arc and catch the speeding bomber as it went by.

It worked.

Except for Psycho who came in without warning. His slugs went into the fuel tanks and a ball of fire arced through the air, and began its death fall.

The third fighter pilot didn't know what was happening. His first reaction was that an unseen fighter escort was coming after them and he hauled back on the stick, horsing the Zero into a sudden zoom climb. It saved his life, for the two bombers raced away at full speed, fleeing to the south.

"Coming up behind you," Whip announced on his radio. By now Psycho was in tight, and the gunners of both planes were keeping that last Zero in sight. Still far behind them. A brave son of a bitch back there. He was alone and coming on like a tiger.

They ignored him. Directly ahead of the eleven-bomber force waited Salamaua. The auxiliary base was alive and Zeros were scrambling down the runway and into the air.

"One pass only, troops," Whip ordered. "Spread out and pick your targets. Keep it straight and true. I don't want any turns."

They went through the Salamaua airstrip with blinding fury. No bombs, but everyone lining up targets on the ground. The last two bombers eased back to hold their Tail-End Charlie positions. A couple of fighters came around in steep banks to hit the B-25s as they went by, were baffled by the explosive punch of the bombers. Shannon in Number Ten picked off one Zero and Captain Dusty Rhodes in the last bomber damaged two more. He was too eager; no kills.

Salamaua disappeared behind them. More Zeros were in the air now, and Whip decided it was time to quit pressing their advantage. He eased into a steady climbing turn and they pushed into broken clouds. They stayed in the climb, the formation easing apart for more room, until they had enough altitude to clear any peaks below.