To Kingdom Come (10 page)

Once they were on the ground, Jimmy inspected the plane with James Flynn, his ground crew chief. Hundreds of brass shell casings covered the steel flooring of the fuselage. The metal skin was peppered with shell holes. The cartoon figure of Sad Sack had been almost obliterated by cannon shells. Flynn told him the Fortress was no longer flyable. It was a miracle they had made it back.

At the edge of the hardstand, Jimmy found Walter House, his radio operator, sitting on the ground and sobbing uncontrollably. At twenty-eight, House was the oldest and steadiest hand among the enlisted men in the original crew. Jimmy went over to talk to him.

“Sir,” House began, his lips trembling, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I can’t take it anymore.”

Jimmy didn’t know what to say. According to regulations, a crewman was required to fly unless the plane commander thought he might endanger the rest of the men. If it had been one of the officers, Jimmy would have just told him to buck up and keep flying. But he knew that Walter House had a wife back in Kentucky waiting for him.

Putting his arm around the older man’s shoulder, the twenty-year-old Jimmy said, “Walter, you need a change of scenery. I’ll ask the squadron commander to give you a few days at a rest camp.”

House thanked him through his tears.

The next morning, Sergeant Deibert, the machine gunner who had replaced the frostbitten Herrera, told Jimmy that he wouldn’t fly anymore. He went to the hospital, where a doctor decided he was suffering from battle fatigue and could stand down.

Maybe it was something he was doing wrong, Jimmy thought. A few days later, he received a letter from the 384th’s group leader, Colonel Budd Peaslee. It read:

Lieutenant Armstrong,

It is an honor and privilege to be able to commend you for your extraordinary achievement on the bombing mission over Germany, 17 August 1943. Your performance of duty on the most important penetration bombing mission yet conducted by this Wing over Germany was superior. In spite of the heaviest enemy fighter and flak opposition yet encountered by any formation, you coolly accomplished your duties as pilot. By your skillful airmanship and courage, you enabled our group and wing to deal a vital blow to the enemy inside his strongest defenses. I, as well as the entire 384th Bombardment Group, am proud of you. Budd J. Peaslee, Colonel, Air Corps, Commanding

The letter restored Jimmy’s morale, if not the crew’s. Stuttgart would be his tenth mission. At the predawn briefing, he looked up at the planned formation for the group that was chalked on the blackboard, and saw that they had made him an element leader of three Fortresses. Colonel Peaslee, the group commander, made a point of stressing the need for close defensive formations.

For the first time, it would be his responsibility to keep the element tucked into as tight a formation as possible to protect his two wingmen, Faulkner and Higdon, while providing enough distance from the higher elements to avoid getting hit by their falling bombs.

With
Sad Sack II
at a maintenance facility, he and what remained of his crew had been assigned to fly a B-17 named
Yankee Raider
. He wasn’t familiar with the plane, but hoped it was one of the newer models equipped with Tokyo tanks to extend its range.

After the intelligence briefing ended, Father Nethod Billy, the Catholic chaplain of the 384th, invited those officers in the flight crews seeking general absolution to receive it on the stage of the briefing room. A small group of officers knelt together to receive his blessing.

As Jimmy left the briefing hut to drive out to the hardstand, he saw that Rocky Stoner, who was his third copilot, was still carrying his leather satchel. Rocky had begun bringing it aboard the plane before each mission and stowing it in the cockpit behind his seat. Jimmy finally asked him what was in it, and Rocky showed him the contents: socks, underwear, razor blades, candy, toothbrush, and cigarettes.

When they arrived at the hardstand, Jimmy was shocked at his first glimpse of
Yankee Raider
. The plane was a battle-scarred heap. Row after row of yellow bombs were painted on the nose of the fuselage, signifying that it had flown dozens of combat missions. The crew was already there, and he could tell they were angry and disheartened. The plane reminded Jimmy of the jalopies his teenaged friends patched together from junk cars.

His ground chief, James Flynn, gave him the maintenance reports. It was one of the B-17s that had come over in 1942 at the start of daylight bombing. The top turret had been replaced after being blown off on one of the raids. A week earlier, the
Yankee Raider
had returned to the base without completing its mission, the pilot reporting that its left outboard engine was running very rough, and the inboard engine on the right had suddenly lost forty pounds of oil pressure.

Since the plane had just come back from the repair shop, they had presumably given the aircraft a thorough inspection before declaring it ready for service again. He hoped so, since he didn’t have any choice in the matter.

To bolster the crew’s confidence, he decided to do a quick stem-tostern inspection. As he went through the plane, Jimmy kept reassuring each man, telling them that it must be a lucky ship to have survived so long.

Up in the nose compartment where the bombardier, Wilbert Yee, would hunch over his Norden bombsight, a single .50-caliber machine gun should have been protruding through the Plexiglas nose. It wasn’t there.

Behind the bombardier’s station was the navigator’s lair, with its desk, compass, drift meter, and instrument panel. Creighton Carlin, the navigator, was responsible for firing another machine gun that poked through an aperture on the left side of the fuselage. It wasn’t armed.

A hatchway behind the navigator’s desk led up to the cockpit, where Jimmy would be sitting in the left seat, Rocky Stoner in the right. Behind them would stand the crew’s engineer, who was a new replacement named Bruno Edman. It was his job to monitor the instruments and engines in the cockpit, while also manning the top turret if they came under attack. The turret’s twin .50-caliber machine guns spun in all directions except straight back along the fuselage to avoid shooting off the plane’s tail. Jimmy introduced himself to Edman, and they shook hands. Edman reported that his heating unit didn’t work. Jimmy asked Sergeant Flynn to look into it.

Behind the turret, a narrow steel catwalk led through the bomb bay, where ten five-hundred-pound bombs sat snug in their racks. As he moved through the fuselage, he could see that the plane had been hit many times. Metal patches, one of them as big as a manhole cover, covered the fuselage like scabs on a wound.

A door at the end of the catwalk led to the small radio compartment in the middle of the ship. His radio operator, Walter House, had returned from the rest camp, and had volunteered to fly again. He seemed all right, and thanked Jimmy for allowing him time off after the Schweinfurt mission.

Aft of the radio room was a floor hatch that led below the fuselage to the electrically powered ball turret, in which twin .50-caliber machine guns could spin and fire in any direction, principally at attackers from below. Sergeant Redwing, the little Hindu ball turret gunner, was waiting for the plane to take off before climbing inside.

Behind the radio room was the waist compartment, which housed the plane’s waist gunners. Two more .50-caliber machine guns poked through large openings on both sides of the fuselage.

Jimmy had lost a number of waist gunners since the crew had first been formed. One new replacement had just come aboard. His name was Eldore Daudelin, and he was from New Hampshire. Jimmy welcomed him to the crew. The other new waist gunner still hadn’t arrived.

In the tail compartment of the B-17’s fuselage, which extended beyond the base of its vertical fin, another pair of .50-caliber machine guns protected the Fortress from any attacker coming at them from behind. Sergeant Cliff Hammock, the tail gunner, was an original member of the crew, and hailed from Arabi, Georgia.

He was very calm in battle.

“Fahhghter cummin in at six o’clock,” he would report laconically on the intercom in his molasses-thick Southern accent.

The crew was standing around the
Yankee Raider
and waiting for the go signal when a military police jeep pulled up next to the hardstand. It had a single passenger. He was dressed from head to toe in cold-weather flying gear. As Jimmy went forward to meet him, he wondered what the man might have done to require a police escort.

“Sergeant Olen Grant reporting,” said Reb as they shook hands.

The man smelled like a brewery, but there was no time to find out his situation.

“Get up in the nose and arm the bombardier’s and navigator’s guns,” he told Reb.

It was stifling hot in the nose compartment. Reb was wearing a blue heat suit over his long johns, and the sheepskin-lined flying outfit over all that. By the time he was finished installing the guns, he was soaked with boozy sweat. The navigator glared at him as Reb squeezed by.

It wasn’t a good beginning.

Outside, Jimmy pointed to a stack of crated ammunition on a tarp behind the plane. Put two more aboard, he said, telling Reb that they had run out of ammo on the Schweinfurt mission, and he didn’t want it to happen again.

The wooden crates of belted .50-caliber ammo weighed almost two hundred pounds. Daudelin, the other replacement waist gunner, helped him carry the two crates into the compartment, where they stacked them in front of the door to the tail compartment.

Shooting flares erupted across the airfield, which signaled the pilots to begin taxiing out to the runway. Reb sat down next to his gun mount in the waist compartment as the
Yankee Raider
moved off the hardstand.

Just before takeoff, he always felt an unreasoning fear that the bomb-laden plane wouldn’t lift off the runway into the sky. As the plane gathered speed, he couldn’t help but think what a mess they would make if they blew a tire.

Then they were airborne.

Reb watched the little Indian guy climb into the ball turret. You had to be small to fit inside the plastic bubble under the ship. Even so, Redwing had to sit with his knees practically up to his chest.

Reb yelled over to Daudelin to ask where they were going.

“Stuttgart,” Daudelin said.

Reb had no idea where it was, but he realized he was very hungry, and hoped it wouldn’t be a long mission. He hadn’t eaten anything since the fish and chips he had wolfed down the previous evening in Leicester before meeting Estella. He hadn’t slept much, either.

Pulling out a plug of his favorite tobacco, he took a bite as the
Yankee Raider
circled the airfield with the rest of the formation. After chewing it thoughtfully, he spit a wad of tobacco juice onto the steel deck.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” demanded Daudelin. “You’ll have to clean that mess up when we get back.”

“Who says we’re coming back?” said Reb.

THE MISSION

Juggernaut

Thurleigh, England
306th Bomb Group
Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti
First Lieutenant Martin “Andy” Andrews
0420

T
he black sky over Thurleigh had bared its first hint of dawn when Andy Andrews emerged from the 306th’s briefing hut with his copilot, Keith Rich, and got into one of the jeeps waiting to ferry the flight crews out to their planes.

The reek of exhaust fumes filled the air, along with the deafening racket of airplane and truck engines. It was pungent enough to sting the eyes. As on all mission mornings, the air base was a frenetic scene of activity, with headlight-dimmed vehicles crisscrossing the field in every direction.

Low-belly tankers were coming back from the hardstands after delivering aviation gas. Smaller trucks hauling trailers loaded with five-hundred-pound bombs crisscrossed in both directions, along with deuce and a halfs carrying ammunition, flanked on both sides of the concrete paths by flight-suited crewmen heading out to their Fortresses on bicycles.

Andy was approaching the hardstand where
Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti
was parked when his driver suddenly stopped short. Ahead of them in the murky light, another jeep had overturned into a ditch, throwing its passengers out onto the concrete apron.

One man was lying on the pavement and screaming in pain as Andy ran toward the jeep. It was Sergeant Leo Liewer, Andy’s top turret gunner and crew chief. Because Liewer was always steady in combat, Andy considered him the most important enlisted man in the crew. Another crewman, Corporal Kenneth Rood, the ball turret gunner, had been in the jeep, too, but appeared to be just shaken up.

Liewer had suffered a horrific fracture in his right leg. One of the bones was protruding through his pants. He had already lost a lot of blood, and Andy used his white silk scarf to fashion a tourniquet around Liewer’s thigh before injecting his shattered leg with an emergency vial of morphine he carried in his flight suit.