in all the excitement.’
If the fighters come . Judging by the canteen talk, there was never a mission when the fighters didn’t come. Harry continued to roll his turret around the sky, up and down, all angles. Sometimes he’d see little black dots and wonder if it was just eye strain.
This waiting for the fighters was terrible. Harry almost began to wish they would show up so he could stop worrying about them coming.
Holberg came on to tell them they were an hour away from Münster and then things would get a lot rougher.
The hour passed so slowly Harry checked several times to make sure his wristwatch hadn’t stopped. There wereseveral alerts, when members of the crew thought they could see enemy fighters in the distance, but none of these turned out to be the real thing.
‘OK, here comes trouble,’ Holberg said over the interphone. ‘Hold tight, boys. Flak looks pretty heavy couple of miles ahead. Bortz, five minutes, then it’s over to you.’
In less than a minute the Macey May started to buck again. Harry kept waiting for the captain to tell him when he could come out, but Holberg had other things on his mind. So Harry did what he was supposed to do and swung the turret round a constant 360-degree rotation in case any Kraut fighter pilots were mad enough to engage them in the middle of their own flak field.
Ahead in the combat box, Harry saw the leading bombers open their bomb doors. Through the clouds he could see the grey shape of a conurbation below – houses, office buildings, hospitals … and the scar of a great railway marshalling yard. The sun caught on a large body of water to the centre west of the city. It didn’t seem real, what they were about to destroy.
Then the Macey May ’s own bomb doors opened in front of him. Holberg came over. ‘Bortz, the ship is yours.’ That was standard procedure. On a bomb run the bombardier took control of the plane from his station at the nose and could make his own minor corrections to the flight path.
The flak grew to a crescendo and Harry realised he actually felt safer curled up in his little ball, especially whenhe thought of John and Ralph, standing up in the waist above him.
The leading bombers began to drop their loads. There was something animalistic about it – as though they were emptying their bowels – shitting over enemy territory. He watched those little green bombs whistle down, wobbling as they did in deadly clusters of ten. This was something he had never seen before, and what shocked him the most was the sheer violence of their detonation. As each cluster landed, the ground would disappear at random moments microseconds apart. Even from twenty-five thousand feet up he could see the shock waves as they exploded and the plumes of smoke and dust that erupted around them.
Just ahead in the combat box to the left of them there was a sudden flash – bright enough to make Harry flinch. He saw a Fortress explode in an instant into great clouds of yellow and red flame and tendrils of black oily smoke.
‘Jesus Christ,’ came a voice over the interphone. Harry didn’t know who it belonged to, but they sounded utterly terrified.
The explosion hung in the air for a moment, as pieces of debris arced through the sky. Apart from the tail section, which was still intact, there wasn’t anything else recognisable as a Flying Fortress.
‘Bortz, drop those bombs, for Chrissakes.’ That was Dalinsky, crackling in Harry’s earpiece. He was utterlywrong to speak and Holberg rapidly admonished him with a curt ‘Silence in the waist’.
But Harry could see why he was so concerned. A direct hit by flak on a plane full of bombs was a catastrophe none of them would survive. In training they had been told they always stood a chance if their Fortress went down. Not with a full payload they didn’t.
Another Fortress to the right of them began to trail smoke from both right engines. Then the whole wing caught – a dense yellow and black stream of
If the fighters come . Judging by the canteen talk, there was never a mission when the fighters didn’t come. Harry continued to roll his turret around the sky, up and down, all angles. Sometimes he’d see little black dots and wonder if it was just eye strain.
This waiting for the fighters was terrible. Harry almost began to wish they would show up so he could stop worrying about them coming.
Holberg came on to tell them they were an hour away from Münster and then things would get a lot rougher.
The hour passed so slowly Harry checked several times to make sure his wristwatch hadn’t stopped. There wereseveral alerts, when members of the crew thought they could see enemy fighters in the distance, but none of these turned out to be the real thing.
‘OK, here comes trouble,’ Holberg said over the interphone. ‘Hold tight, boys. Flak looks pretty heavy couple of miles ahead. Bortz, five minutes, then it’s over to you.’
In less than a minute the Macey May started to buck again. Harry kept waiting for the captain to tell him when he could come out, but Holberg had other things on his mind. So Harry did what he was supposed to do and swung the turret round a constant 360-degree rotation in case any Kraut fighter pilots were mad enough to engage them in the middle of their own flak field.
Ahead in the combat box, Harry saw the leading bombers open their bomb doors. Through the clouds he could see the grey shape of a conurbation below – houses, office buildings, hospitals … and the scar of a great railway marshalling yard. The sun caught on a large body of water to the centre west of the city. It didn’t seem real, what they were about to destroy.
Then the Macey May ’s own bomb doors opened in front of him. Holberg came over. ‘Bortz, the ship is yours.’ That was standard procedure. On a bomb run the bombardier took control of the plane from his station at the nose and could make his own minor corrections to the flight path.
The flak grew to a crescendo and Harry realised he actually felt safer curled up in his little ball, especially whenhe thought of John and Ralph, standing up in the waist above him.
The leading bombers began to drop their loads. There was something animalistic about it – as though they were emptying their bowels – shitting over enemy territory. He watched those little green bombs whistle down, wobbling as they did in deadly clusters of ten. This was something he had never seen before, and what shocked him the most was the sheer violence of their detonation. As each cluster landed, the ground would disappear at random moments microseconds apart. Even from twenty-five thousand feet up he could see the shock waves as they exploded and the plumes of smoke and dust that erupted around them.
Just ahead in the combat box to the left of them there was a sudden flash – bright enough to make Harry flinch. He saw a Fortress explode in an instant into great clouds of yellow and red flame and tendrils of black oily smoke.
‘Jesus Christ,’ came a voice over the interphone. Harry didn’t know who it belonged to, but they sounded utterly terrified.
The explosion hung in the air for a moment, as pieces of debris arced through the sky. Apart from the tail section, which was still intact, there wasn’t anything else recognisable as a Flying Fortress.
‘Bortz, drop those bombs, for Chrissakes.’ That was Dalinsky, crackling in Harry’s earpiece. He was utterlywrong to speak and Holberg rapidly admonished him with a curt ‘Silence in the waist’.
But Harry could see why he was so concerned. A direct hit by flak on a plane full of bombs was a catastrophe none of them would survive. In training they had been told they always stood a chance if their Fortress went down. Not with a full payload they didn’t.
Another Fortress to the right of them began to trail smoke from both right engines. Then the whole wing caught – a dense yellow and black stream of
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