groaned.
âIsnât this weather something?â Piacenti cried. He sounded stuffed up. âSun for the tail and rain for the nose.â Their chatty informality over the interphone was not official operating procedure, but among the crews a certain amount of radio sloppiness was considered masculine.
Bryant climbed into the padded sling in the dorsal turret for a look around. Across the tarmac he could see shining water, broken by birds.
Above them a green flare arced rapidly and crookedly away and immediately the cockpit was furious with activity, Gabriel taking Cooper quickly through the checklist: Alarm bell/ Checked, Master switches/On, Carburetor filter/Open, and Bryant slipped back to his panel to check the engine status. From there Gabriel ordered him back to the bomb bay to the manual shut-off valves of the hydraulic system, so they could check the hydraulic pressure. âNo hydraulic pressure, weâre back to Lewisâs Law of Falling Tons of Metal,â Gabriel liked to say. Lewisâs Law of Falling Tons of Metal was simple: the B-17, Lewis said, was not lighter than air, and when it came down for the wrong reason, it came down hard.
He could hear the whine of the inertia starter in the wing and the engines caught and fired, and the plane shook with the sound and the concentrated horsepower and Tuliese yanked the chocks away. They began to inch forward. His last glimpse up through the dorsal Plexiglas before resuming his takeoff position behind the pilot was of the mist lifting obligingly like a gray theater curtain.
They taxied behind the other Forts, a long parade of dull green ships, along the perimeter track to the end of one of the short runways, and waited, locking the tail wheel. Four thousand or so feet away were hedges, and a low fence. The planes were nose to tail, foreshortened enough from Bryantâs vantage point to seem an awesome and comic traffic jam.
The ship ahead of them throttled up, hesitated, and began to roll, the grass on both sides of the tarmac flattened by the propeller wash, and gravel and bits of paper flashed up to make gritty sounds against the windshield.
It disappeared into the haze throwing up big wings of spray and they followed its lights, edging up and to the side. Gabriel set the brakes and advanced the throttles all the way. The engine sound created a physical overpressure on the ears and the plane strained and shivered against its locked wheels. Bryant kept an eye on the oil pressure and rpmâs. Gabrielâs hand played over the brake release knob as if refining the drama, and then he released the brakes.
They did not rush forward, they never did, and Bryant hated the disappointment of the fully loaded 17 simply rolling slowly forward after all that straining and racket. He hunched and unhunched his shoulders hoping to affect the acceleration. The tarmac began to wheel by and Cooper called the airspeed in increments of ten, his calls coming more quickly, and Bryant caught a glimpse of a black-and-white-checkered runway control van disappearing along a side panel window and began to feel the great pull of acceleration on his shoulders, and at Cooperâs call of 90, 100, the enginesâ sound changed, and they could feel the tail come up, and at 120 Gabriel pulled them off the ground, the hedges and fence rolling softly past the nose, and they bucked and swayed but gained power and swept high over some trees.
They broke out of cloud near their assembly altitude, and Bean gave a fix on the radio beacon of their assembly plane. All around them B-17âs were popping from the clouds trailing mist and carving into the blue sky above, looking for their colored squadron flares. Group leader ships at higher altitudes were firing yellow and green flares in graceful parabolas. Each squadron circled in its section of sky waiting for completion, a horizon of small groups at play, and Bryant watched in wonder from his turret the planes sweeping
âIsnât this weather something?â Piacenti cried. He sounded stuffed up. âSun for the tail and rain for the nose.â Their chatty informality over the interphone was not official operating procedure, but among the crews a certain amount of radio sloppiness was considered masculine.
Bryant climbed into the padded sling in the dorsal turret for a look around. Across the tarmac he could see shining water, broken by birds.
Above them a green flare arced rapidly and crookedly away and immediately the cockpit was furious with activity, Gabriel taking Cooper quickly through the checklist: Alarm bell/ Checked, Master switches/On, Carburetor filter/Open, and Bryant slipped back to his panel to check the engine status. From there Gabriel ordered him back to the bomb bay to the manual shut-off valves of the hydraulic system, so they could check the hydraulic pressure. âNo hydraulic pressure, weâre back to Lewisâs Law of Falling Tons of Metal,â Gabriel liked to say. Lewisâs Law of Falling Tons of Metal was simple: the B-17, Lewis said, was not lighter than air, and when it came down for the wrong reason, it came down hard.
He could hear the whine of the inertia starter in the wing and the engines caught and fired, and the plane shook with the sound and the concentrated horsepower and Tuliese yanked the chocks away. They began to inch forward. His last glimpse up through the dorsal Plexiglas before resuming his takeoff position behind the pilot was of the mist lifting obligingly like a gray theater curtain.
They taxied behind the other Forts, a long parade of dull green ships, along the perimeter track to the end of one of the short runways, and waited, locking the tail wheel. Four thousand or so feet away were hedges, and a low fence. The planes were nose to tail, foreshortened enough from Bryantâs vantage point to seem an awesome and comic traffic jam.
The ship ahead of them throttled up, hesitated, and began to roll, the grass on both sides of the tarmac flattened by the propeller wash, and gravel and bits of paper flashed up to make gritty sounds against the windshield.
It disappeared into the haze throwing up big wings of spray and they followed its lights, edging up and to the side. Gabriel set the brakes and advanced the throttles all the way. The engine sound created a physical overpressure on the ears and the plane strained and shivered against its locked wheels. Bryant kept an eye on the oil pressure and rpmâs. Gabrielâs hand played over the brake release knob as if refining the drama, and then he released the brakes.
They did not rush forward, they never did, and Bryant hated the disappointment of the fully loaded 17 simply rolling slowly forward after all that straining and racket. He hunched and unhunched his shoulders hoping to affect the acceleration. The tarmac began to wheel by and Cooper called the airspeed in increments of ten, his calls coming more quickly, and Bryant caught a glimpse of a black-and-white-checkered runway control van disappearing along a side panel window and began to feel the great pull of acceleration on his shoulders, and at Cooperâs call of 90, 100, the enginesâ sound changed, and they could feel the tail come up, and at 120 Gabriel pulled them off the ground, the hedges and fence rolling softly past the nose, and they bucked and swayed but gained power and swept high over some trees.
They broke out of cloud near their assembly altitude, and Bean gave a fix on the radio beacon of their assembly plane. All around them B-17âs were popping from the clouds trailing mist and carving into the blue sky above, looking for their colored squadron flares. Group leader ships at higher altitudes were firing yellow and green flares in graceful parabolas. Each squadron circled in its section of sky waiting for completion, a horizon of small groups at play, and Bryant watched in wonder from his turret the planes sweeping
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