Second Schweinfurt, 1943

At first it seemed the Germans would pull their old trick of timing their attack right when the Little Friends turned for home, but they held back. We led the low squadron, usually the first and hardest hit. I watched as a dozen 110s flew up to meet us. They stayed well out of range. I made out the tubes slung beneath their wings just as they began firing long-range rockets.

The lead plane in the middle squadron was hit amidships, a blossom of flame like a blowtorch, but it kept flying as though nothing had happened. More rockets flashed past us. I wondered if our pilot would break formation in panic, but he stuck with it. This was the second time we’d attacked this target, and if we fucked this one up they’d probably send us back for number three.

Then it was over. Most of the bombers seemed to have escaped the rocket attack, but I could see the ominous specks of enemy fighters climbing to meet us. It looked like there were hundreds.  We flew on in the tight box formation, the tail of the nearest plane bobbing sixty feet from my face. I could see the tail gunner’s wide eyes as he searched the sky.

The Section Eight shook as the ball turret opened fire. “Cut that out,” the co-pilot said over the intercom. “Wait until you can hit them.”

“Sorry,” said the ball gunner. He sounded like he was twelve.

I saw a 109 peel off and head toward me, its wing guns flickering, the tracers tearing toward me like phosphorescent fingers. I fired the big fifties, swinging the chin turrent around to track him as he screamed past. My guns were amazingly loud even in the tremendous din of the aircraft. Another 109 appeared from nowhere, head-on and firing. A huge hammering sound and I saw holes appear in the metal skin by my knee.

All around us the other bombers poured on defensive fire. We kept going and the attacks thinned out. There and gone, just like always. The oxygen in my mask was rank-smelling, the rubber frozen to my face. Thirty-below wind whistled through the jagged holes, but I was drenched with sweat, heart pounding like I’d run up a flight of stairs. My flak jacket and helmet felt like they weighed a hundred pounds.

The navigator slapped my arm and pointed down. I leaned into the Norden and looked through the lens, recognized the landmark twenty thousand feet down. “IP acquired,” I said into the intercom.

“Roger that,” said the co-pilot. “Transferring control.”

The B-17 just ahead of us opened his bomb bay doors. I reached down and pulled the lever, opening ours. “Bomb bay doors open,” I said into my mask, and looked into my bombsight as I’d done twenty-one times before. All around us now were the explosions of flak, yellow flashes and greasy puffs of smoke that hung there a long time afterward.

The factories of Schweinfurt looked the same as the last time I’d seen them. Whatever damage we’d done seemed to have been repaired. The flak bursts buffeted us as the gunners got the range. It sounded like kids throwing gravel on a barn roof. More holes appeared in the plane’s skin, smoke and dust motes illuminated in the slanting beams.

I toggled in the airspeed and twisted the dials as I stared into the scope, drifted the crosshairs onto the biggest building and reached down to throw the switch. “Commencing bomb run,” I said. I sat back and waited.

This was the worst part, flying straight and level until the bombsight’s computer automatically dropped the bombs. The rattle of shrapnel grew more intense. There was a bang and the navigator screamed. He fell forward, his face covered with blood.

I got up and knelt over him. He had a large gash on his forehead, messy but not serious. I reached over and opened the first aid kit, unwrapped a compress and handed it to him. I pulled him over and yelled in his ear. “It’s not bad! Stick this to the wound. It will freeze to it in a couple seconds.”

The plane shot upward as the bombs were released. The engines screamed as the pilot dove out and away from the murderous flak. I looked around and saw a sky filled with burning aircraft. It seemed every plane in the squadron had been hit. Smoke rose from the exploding bombs below, adding to the chaos.

Our right wingtip exploded, ripping off the outer edge. The plane twisted violently and the navigator flew backward, a gaping tear in his neck that jetted an arc of bright blood across the cabin. His gloved hands tore at the wound as I knelt in the gore and tried to loosen his oxygen mask. The blood spurted, then oozed. His white face froze in a rictus of terror as he died in front of me.

I grabbed my throat mic. “Bombardier to crew. Navigator is dead. Somebody check the bomb bay.”

Silence.

I saw my intercom wires ripped out of their jacks. The plane crabbed in a sharp diving turn, the broken wing burning, the engine pouring smoke. 

I hooked up to a portable oxygen bottle, staggered back through the passage into the area aft the flight deck. The pilot struggled to control the dive, trying to extinguish the burning engine with the suction. I staggered back to the bomb bay. Bitter wind screamed through the open bay doors as we dove. Two of the thousand-pound HE bombs still hung in the rack, their noses pointing down, the plunger fuses were completely extended. The bombs were armed and the slightest touch of those fuses would set them off.

Terror flooded through me. I swore, stepped back. The plane rocked sickeningly for a few seconds, then leveled off. One of the bay doors was shot to hell, flapping in the slipstream. The bombs clanked together like church bells, the severed release cables tangled around their tails and pinning them to the bay. I had to get back to where the cables were tethered to cut them free.

I searched around for the massive box containing the engineer’s tools. It was usually bolted to the deck, but it was gone. Through the bay doors I saw the fighters had returned, swarming in among the planes, attacking the stragglers.

The top turret spun round and round, the machine guns firing, a rain of brass casings rattling down on me. The deck bucked like a ship in a storm and three sharp explosions blasted the rear of the plane, likely 20mm cannon fire from a fighter. It seemed every gun in our plane was going off.

The tool box was lying on its side near the front, riddled with holes. I pounced on it, wrenched it open and grabbed the big yellow-handled bolt cutters. Another terrific bang and the plane jolted sharply downward and filled with white smoke.

Over the immense noise I heard a high keening shriek. The engineer lay beneath the jagged wreck of the turret, both of his arms gone. His head was a bloody pulp, his open mouth moving like a hideous fish. 

I staggered back to the bomb bay to release the bombs before we blew up in midair. I gathered my strength and vaulted between the bombs, the gaping void below me, skidding on the ice and almost falling. I steadied myself, thrust the head of the cutters into the slot that housed the cable anchors, frozen wind shrieking all around me. 

I cut first one, then the other, using the roll of the ship to time it so the bombs wouldn’t smash into each other as they fell. As they cleared the bomb bay, we lunged upward. I fell back on my ass. Behind me the radio compartment been hit by cannon, a huge rip in the wall where the operator had sat. I hadn’t even known his name.

Just behind, both waist gunners squatted back to back, swinging their guns and firing nonstop at the attacking fighters. I tried to get their attention. “Bail out!” I shouted. They ignored me and kept shooting.

I had to tell the pilot to give the bail out order. I skidded back across the catwalk and the plane yawed hard to the left, throwing me against the dead engineer lying stiff in a pool of frozen blood.

I stepped over him and crawled up to the flight deck. A huge thump and blinding warmth lifted me backwards, slammed me into the remains of the turret as the plane pitched violently downward in a howling dive. 

The cockpit was engulfed in flame, the copilot’s body torn in half. The pilot lunged toward me, his leather jacket smoldering, half his face a blackened rag of burnt flesh. His smoldering parachute dangled by its straps. He leapt at me, knocked me back over the engineer’s body.

The plane began to spin, engines wailing, flames billowing back from the cockpit like an angry dragon’s mouth.  The pilot grabbed me, his knife slashing at my arm, slicing my jacket. He got the blade under a strap of my parachute, pulled up and sliced through.

I kicked at his head, caught him in the burned side of his face. He yelled and skidded backward into the burning nose.  I crawled up the blood-slick deck toward the bomb bay. The plane spun faster and faster, plummeting toward the ground in a howling rage.

The pilot crawled toward me again and reached out. I kicked him again, using the kick to propel myself out through the bomb bay. I smashed against the flapping door and flew out into the howling noise. 

Silence. I watched as the Section Eight spiraled slowly down in a trail of smoke and flame. I extended my arms to stabilize myself. My parachute smacked against my face, one strap cut clean through by the pilot’s knife. No helping it. I grabbed the ripcord and pulled. 

The nylon chute tumbled out and caught the wind with a tremendous jolt, cracking my body like a whip. I cried out with the shock, spinning crazily beneath the canopy, falling too fast.

I reached up to grasp the shrouds and try to steady myself when the ground rushed up. I smashed into a tree and felt my left leg twist.

Red fog of pain. 

Blackness.