Eagles at War (33 page)

The intercom silence was broken by someone saying, "A total snafu." Lee wondered what would happen now that the two principal navigators were gone, for the disobedient second B-24 could never catch up.

As the mission moved on, the formations began to drift apart, as if the personalities of their leaders were opposite magnetic poles. Instead of the stately tight boxes of the European theater, where each ship was protected by the guns of the others, the Vs began to separate. Then, like squibs of toothpaste smeared on a mirror, billowy cumulus clouds appeared over the first geographic barrier, the nine-thousand-foot-high spine of Pindus mountains that ran from Albania down through Greece. The leading 376th group began a climb through the clouds to sixteen thousand feet. Behind them the rest of the formation bored in at twelve thousand, accepting the danger of flying in cloud rather than using the fuel and oxygen that would be needed to climb.

Lee saw the split, remembered that the tailwinds were considerably higher at altitude and would widen the gap between formations, and murmured to himself, "Snafu is
right!"

*

Fighter Command Headquarters, Otopenii/August 1,
1943

The first warning came from the Wurzburg-type radar station on Mount Cherin, near Sofia: "Many aircraft, bearing thirty degrees."

As the Luftwaffe airwomen began making their first marks on the glass screen, Pitcairn turned to Josten. "This is it. The bastards are coming. The Bulgarians will have first crack at them, but all they've got are old Czech biplanes. I'm putting everyone on immediate alert."

Josten left to go to the field where his 262 was fueled and armed, just as the second report came in from Mount Cherin. "Lost contact. The aircraft have disappeared." It puzzled Pitcairn until a telephone report came in from a Rumanian ground station declaring that the target had to be Bucharest.

At Mizil, pilots full of an early lunch of soup, eggs, and fried potatoes ran to their Messerschmitt Bf 109s. In five minutes, fifty-two of the spindly-legged fighters had raced across the dusty field, joining formation even as their gear clanked into the wheel wells on the climb toward the incoming bombers.

Josten waited until the 109s made contact, deciding in the process that he would make as many tail-on attacks as he could, then pull out and try to pick off stragglers for as long as he had fuel and ammunition. He talked to himself as if he were briefing a
Staffel:
"Spread the shooting out, try to damage as many as possible. They've got a long way to go back, and if I can just shoot out an engine, they probably won't make it. Don't worry about kills, just cut them up and let the Rumanians finish them off."

The Liberators slid down mountain slopes, like kids on a banister, to race along at ground level, lifting a wing to go over trees, enjoying a
National Geographic
view of neatly laid out villages, beautiful fields, and horse-drawn hay wagons. A cheer went up on the interphone as they swept over a river where girls were bathing; there was instant consensus that they were bare-ass naked.

Lee thought, Maybe it's not a snafu after all; maybe we'll get away clean. The signs were looking good to him as the countryside unfolded beneath, checkpoints showing up on the ground just as they were marked along the red course line on the map he had folded at his side, a contingency in case the navigator, Fred Pola, was wounded. Lee could just see the lead ship of the first formation, miles ahead. He hoped there wouldn't be many fighters; they had lost most of their formation integrity, and things would get worse when the flak opened up.

He ran his finger down the map; the first Initial Point, Pitesti, sixty-five miles from Ploesti, was coming up. Fifty miles after Pitesti was the second IP, Floresti, the final turn point for the thundering thirteen-mile, four-minute charge down the valley to the refineries. So far it was textbook perfect.

He was humming to himself when the lead formation began a turn. He called down to Lieutenant Pola, crouched in the nose of the B-24.

"Navigator, what's going on?"

"They're turning short; that's not the IP, it's a little town called Targoviste. They're heading straight for Bucharest!"

The two bomber formations soared majestically apart; Lee hoped his radio call hadn't been picked up by the Germans; they were low, maybe the mountains had blocked it out.

Mistakes even out. The German fighters had climbed through the mixed clouds, dirty gray on the bottom, silvery white on top. They sought the bright piercing sun canyons as they turned around the thunderstorms building up on the mountainsides. Breaking out on top at two thousand meters, they found the heavens empty.

The Messerschmitt fighter leader called, "Hallo, Otopenii, we're in Cancer sector now and there's not a damn Ami furniture van in sight."

"They must be above or below you; you are merged on the radar." Helmut Josten, monitoring the radio chatter at Mizil, ran to his aircraft to take off.

Below the circling Messerschmitts, screened by the clouds, the lead B-24s looked ahead in confusion as the smokestacks and towers of the Ploesti they were looking for dissolved into the buildings and churches of a major city.

"Christ, it's Bucharest! We must have turned early."

On board the lead B-24 the pilot was suddenly aware of his ghastly mistake. Without hesitation, he threw his aircraft into a stately ninety-degree turn that gave them an attack heading directly into the teeth of toughest batteries, parallel to the track of the flak train, as if he were following
Generalmajor
Gerstenberg's battle plan. Half of the formation turned with him; the rest thundered on toward Bucharest, adding their little bit to the billowing balls-up.

But at Otopenii, Major Pitcairn watched the course of the plots splitting on the glass map, thinking, Damn clever attack; they're sending one force in a feint on Bucharest, and hitting the refinery from two directions. Marvelous planning!

He turned to a busy
Leutnant
next to him and roared, "Where are the fighters now, damnit?"

"They should be making contact; the plots are overlapping."

Someone handed Pitcairn a telephone; he listened for a moment, then screamed in rage: "It's a low-level attack! Call the fighters and tell them to get below the clouds. Tell them to ignore the flak, to attack!"

The American bombers' propellers were harvesting wheat, the prop blast cutting shimmering waves through the fields. As they raced in, their shadows flashing ahead of them, a furious sheet of flak spewed from the defending 88s, the gunners firing with contact fuses over open sights.

The B-24s, specially fitted with four forward-firing machine guns for the pilot, their turrets trained ahead, dueled with the flak, trying to shoot their way through the defenses to bomb the refineries now just two minutes away. A balloon barrage loomed ahead—the pre-mission briefing had said, "We think the B-24 is strong enough to fly right through the cables." They were, but not strong enough to resist the contact-fused explosives strung like sugar dots on a licorice strip.
Umbriago
was the first to go, a victim of a balloon's cable, the wing blowing off and the fuselage breaking up in its few-seconds fall toward the ground, its crew trapped and immobilized by the centripetal G forces.

More B-24s fell to flak; an 88 shell blew the cockpit out of
Detroit
Maid
and the bomber crashed into a field, plowing through a village schoolhouse to drop into a creek, sending blazing gasoline floating downstream. Another 88 shell clipped the rudder of
Pretty Baby,
sending it into a skidding turn that took it into the side of
Oshkosh
ByGosh,
both planes vaporizing in a pink-black blast of bombs and fuel.

But most got through, dropping their bombs and pressing on, the roar of exploding storage tanks lost behind them as they dove to the deck, seeking refuge in the scant curvature of the earth, thankful for a copse of woods, a line of hedges.

Approaching on the preplanned course, in the opposite direction of the mixed-up first wave, Lee's throat tightened as the initial flurry of flak bursts, individual black puffs, suddenly roared into a wall of flame and smoke the length of Ploesti.

"They're hitting it from the south."

"Bomb doors open."

Lee held the airplane steady, waiting for the release, heading directly toward the boiling inferno. He started as the mass of smoke was ripped apart by pink and sandy wings as two groups of B-24s plunged out, some with props feathered, some burning, all of them firing. He heaved back on the control wheel to avoid the lead B-24, then plunged back down into the fray.

Ahead, he saw Westerfield's plane,
Satan's Darling,
take a hit in the fuselage; flames erupted from it as his bombs spilled out. The stricken B-24 staggered into a climb, two bodies dropping out of the back, no chance at all for their chutes to open. Westerfield's plane rolled and crashed directly into an oil storage tank, disappearing in flaming, fan-shaped spray.

The call "Bombs away" came as 20-mm flak shattered the cockpit windows of Lee's aircraft. The new Flight Officer glanced at him and signaled a thumbs up as Lee led them out of the inferno, the airplane hurt but still flying. They had been briefed to turn right to escape the target area; there was nothing but fire and flak in that direction and Lee hauled his airplane around to the left, leading the formation toward Campina in the north.

"I just counted them, sir, we came out with all seventeen. We really plastered the target, we won't be coming back here."

Always a comedian in the crowd, Lee thought. He cranked his wing down and saw that the smoke and flames were now reaching twenty thousand feet into the air; he wondered how many of the other bombers had gotten through, if the tail gunner was right about not having to come back.

At least it proved his theory: even with a major navigational error, they had gone in low, blasted the target, and all eighteen in his formation had gotten away. He decided to stay low for another hour, hugging the side of the mountains, then begin his climb.

A low-level attack; the worst possible thing for Josten's fuel-gulping jet. Even if he found them now, he'd only have time for one or two attacks—he couldn't stay airborne more than forty minutes at low altitude.

As he turned he caught the silver glint of Lee's formation streaking north.

"Achtung.
Liberators heading off to the north. Attacking."

It was not a pell-mell, hell for leather attack like the old days. The thoroughbred 262 needed careful handling. In a 109 he could have rolled over and pulled back on the stick, letting the airspeed build as fast as possible. Not with the 262—a steep dive could compress the very air, stiffening the controls and perhaps leading to a breakup. Instead he swung around in a wide circle, throttle just slightly retarded, planning to arrive just below and behind the bombers. Still talking to himself, he said, "God, I wish I had the others with me. Can't fire until I'm sure of a hit."

Like a single hound in pursuit of a run of foxes, his 262 gobbled the distance as he went through the ritual arming of his guns.

In the lead B-24, Lee recognized panic in his tail gunner's voice.

"Skipper, we got company. A fighter, fast as anything, coming up behind." He paused and said, "I don't believe it! This bastard ain't got no propellers!"

Oh, my God
—
it's the jet, at last!

Josten took one last look at his fuel gauges and concentrated on the attack. The B-24s were not beautiful like the B-17s; they had fat bellies and too thin wings, and the big double tails looked vulnerable. He let the first Liberator fill the Revi 16B reflector gunsight and pressed the firing button; the B-24 seemed to break up instantly from the three-second rumble of his guns. It burst into flames, the left gear falling from its well as the wing folded up and back. He skidded to the right, took another Liberator in his sights, and exploded it in a brilliant red ball.

Josten almost felt sorry for the Americans, to be so vulnerable, to fly an airplane so slow and so fire prone! He'd made a steep climbing turn and now dove back to the attack.

One of the Liberators was falling behind. He fired and the B-24 pulled up in a violent stall, then began to break up, parts shredding from it even as it turned over for the last dive.

The rest of the Americans were already diving even closer to the ground, sending a screen of machine-gun fire in his direction. He checked his gauges once again, then dove after the fleeing bombers, now heading for the cloud-masked mountaintops. Good enough—a rock-filled cloud could kill even better than a cannon.