LUFTWAFFE IN REVERSE
The night was cloudy but there was little low fog. In a dozen scattered flight centers men were busy. Coveralled ground squads swarmed around fighter planes, medium bombers and long-range giants whose lettering B Y 3, painted there by Yank builders, had been smeared over with British lacquer. Exhausts flamed, bomb trucks trundled in and out, while pilots and gunners checked rigging and outfits. The big show was on, the biggest the Royal Air Force had ever planned.
Stan and O’Malley and Allison waited with their gunners near them. They had checked the Hendee Hawks so many times they could see every detail of the ships if they closed their eyes. O’Malley had come near being recommended for court-martial when he battled the O.C. over an order to carry extra gasoline instead of racks of bombs.
“Didn’t we blow up a pocket battleship?” he argued sourly.
“After Jerry serves us up a welcome reception we’ll talk,” Allison said. “I’m expecting it to be hot.”
At that moment the intersquadron speaker began to rattle off clipped orders. Every man was on his feet instantly. The moment had come for them to take off. Number 30 swarmed out on the field. Allison was in command again, Stan had insisted upon that arrangement. Allison was cold and calculating, Stan Wilson was a fighter and wanted action. Anyway, Allison had earned that right to lead. He was the original flight lieutenant of Red Flight.
Stan grinned eagerly as he swung himself into the cockpit and glanced back to see that his gunner got set. He called back over his shoulder. “Tight straps, Sergeant, we likely will be in a few tight spots.”
“Yes, sir,” the gunner answered. He settled back against his shock pad and adjusted his belt.
Strange how a fellow can always take up another notch in his belt, Stan thought. Then he jerked the throttle open and the Hawk roared and strained on the cab rank. He pinched one brake and swung around, heading down the field with a finger of light guiding them.
“Red Flight, check your temperatures. Red Flight, are you set?” Allison’s voice was crisp and metallic.
Stan and O’Malley cleared and the Hawks swung around. The recording officer and the coveralled mechanics had slipped back into the darkness. A mobile floodlight thumped over the black field ahead, took position, and a yellow shaft of light slapped down the field. The adjustment was made on the shadow bar and the three Hawks nosed into the band of black and waited, trembling, ready.
The signal came from the recording officer’s Aldis light and they were off. Screeching into the night, twisting up the glory trail with the hydrogen gorged balloons tugging at their cables, waiting like gloating monsters for their victims, out of the notch and up they went.
“Tight formation,” Allison droned. And Stan in the right-hand slot shoved in closer to the roaring monster in the lead.
“Contacting Liberators,” Allison drawled.
Stan looked out and saw the dull forms of the thirty ton battle cruisers of the air sliding along below. The big fellows were cutting through the night at a terrific pace considering their pay loads and their own weight. Their 4,800 horsepower hurled them on at a pace that made the Spitfires and the Defiants hustle.
Red Flight took its place high above the drifting Liberators. Below would be the Defiants and on each side the Spitfires and Hurricanes. It was a big show and would soon be on.
“St. Omer with the field at Astree Blanche as the objective,” Stan muttered to himself. This was a change in plans made after a careful study of the hunchback’s little book. It would not be so bad as flying deep into Nazi country.
“Heather Raid,” Stan muttered and grinned. The High Command was sending a great flight of bombers and fighters to blast enemy positions and they called it Heather Raid.
“Heather Raid—Heather Raid—rendezvous—zero hour.” That was the Squadron Leader. Stan watched and listened. Nothing more came in and Allison kept flying straight ahead.
They were drifting along above the clouds. There was a moon and plenty of stars. The pale light made the squadron look like a school of fishes swimming through a blue-black sea. The clouds would be fine for everyone but the Jerries. Down below the Hurricanes would be slipping in and out of the clouds, watching, taking bearings, whispering up to the giants above, telling them what they couldn’t see.
“Red Flight, go down. Yellow Flight up.” The Squadron Leader spoke tersely as though he had sighted enemy planes coming up.
Stan peeled off and went down, with Allison and O’Malley trailing into formation. They hit the clouds, punched through and saw lights winking below. They were solitary lights and revealed little. Perhaps they were ship’s lights on the channel. Then they went back up through the clouds and took a place below the Liberators. Stan glanced up at the big ships. The British had changed the name of those Consolidated B Y 3’s to Liberator. It was a proper change, Stan thought.
Suddenly a bank of cloud on the right and above was lighted with a red glow. A second later a Messerschmitt One-Ten came flaming down, tossing away parts as it spun. A broken Defiant followed it down in a wide, agonizing spiral.
“What goes on up there?” Stan called back to his gunner.
“Upper level defense units in contact, sir,” the gunner answered. He had been on thirty-six raids across the channel and knew what to expect.
“And they pulled us down to let the Defiants have the fun,” Stan muttered.
“Have a look, Red Flight,” Allison’s voice snapped.
Down the Hawks went for a look at the ground. They saw a band of light swing across the ground, then steady.
“Landing field lights located, port a few points,” Allison droned.
Almost at once the Liberators changed their tone. They began to growl and roar. Positions were taken and the Hawks slid up to be above the bombers, out of their way and into the path of diving Messerschmitts and Heinkels. But the lone fighter seemed to be the only enemy ship in the air.
As Stan watched the action he realized that bombing wasn’t just releasing a stick or two of bombs. Its complications were apparent. Far below them the earth had suddenly begun to erupt fire and flame. They were clear of the clouds and their objective was below, a circle inside a ring of flaming guns all pointed at the bombers. And the Liberators were going down with feathered propellers.
Twelve thousand feet below lay their objective. The bombers were in a big hurry to catch the rows of black planes on the ground, to spot the oil reserves and to smash the surface of the runways. They slipped away in screaming dives and left Red Flight to watch from above.
Tracer bullets trailed threads of fire upward and the muck of bursting shells was thick below. The Liberators were knifing straight into it. Red Flight went down to 8,000, there to stay on the alert. Stan saw a Liberator smack into a bursting shell that exploded against her understructure. The Liberator slid off to the side and burst into flames. Grimly Stan noted that no parachutes blossomed out below her as she shot to earth. The other bombers were through the muck of fire and down upon their targets.
“Red Flight, strafe ground planes,” ordered the voice of the Squadron Leader.
That was why they had been pulled down. The Hendee Hawks with their sixteen-wing guns would deal terrible destruction to ships on the ground.
“Sure, an’ ’tis about time,” O’Malley roared.
Down went the three Hawks, straight at the muck of flame below. The wind whistled above the din of bursting shells. Stan took a deep breath. It was great, if you didn’t meet one of those shells on its way up.
The AA shells were bursting close under their noses. It seemed certain death to dive any farther, but they kept on diving. The sea of flames leaped up to smack them in the face. It roared around them, then vanished lighting the sky above them. Stan saw rows of planes on the ground. He saw them clearly. A hangar was blazing and a row of oil tanks was sending up a pillar of smoke and flame thousands of feet into the air.
As Stan looked toward the flaming tanks he saw a circle of them lift and vanish into the air as a big bomb landed in their midst. Pulling the nose of his ship up he reached for the gun button, and swooped upon the lines of planes. On his left Allison and O’Malley were already raking those bombers. Stan’s Brownings drilled a swath of lead across the field as he swept over.
Up went the Hawks and over and back again. They saw the destruction their first dive had wrought and set about adding to it. The Liberators had circled and were down again, the roar of their dive shaking the earth and the air above it. The field where the rows of Junkers bombers had stood was heaving and rolling and exploding.
“Up, Red Flight,” came a command from Allison. “There’s a real show going on up there.”
Up they went, nosing through the flaming muck. This time they had little trouble in breaking through. Great holes and spaces in the barrage showed where the bombers had spotted gun placements. O’Malley was on Stan’s left now and Stan was flying the center slot. There had been no time to take regulation position. Stan saw O’Malley’s Hawk lift and shear away from a blasting burst of steel as a shell exploded under her. An instant later he knew the Hawk had picked up a package of death. It was twisting and wobbling, but going on up.
“Go in, O’Malley! Go in O’Malley,” Allison was droning. “Get back across. Get back across.”
Before Stan could do anything at all, he was up through the muck, and then through the clouds, into a real battle. The sky was full of twisting, diving planes, all spitting at each other in deadly fashion. He was so busy keeping Messerschmitts off his tail that he lost track of Allison and O’Malley. He noted that there were only a few Spitfires and Defiants near him, though the air was literally filled with Jerries. It dawned on him that they might wish to force down this new plane so as to have a look at it. And he wasn’t able to get a single swastika inside his sight circle. Suddenly he heard a familiar voice calling:
“Heather Raid, come in. Objective successfully attacked. Heather Raid, come in.”
“Good idea,” Stan agreed. He laid over and sliced into a mass of Messerschmitts ahead of him, opening his throttle wide and cutting in his booster. As he bored into the formation it opened to let him go through. Only one ME failed to give way. It roared straight at him as though bent upon ramming him. Stan’s lips pulled into a tight line and he reached for his gun button.
“Sorry, feller,” he muttered. “But you don’t ram me.”
He pressed the button but no burst answered. He was out of ammunition. With a yank he pulled the Hawk up, then twisted her over. The hair at the back of his neck lifted as his understructure raked across the hatch cover of the Jerry. Lead streamed below him as he flashed past.
Stan kicked off his booster and headed for home. The Messerschmitts gave chase but they slipped away from them as easily as a swallow would outdistance a plover. Behind him he heard his gunner laughing.
“What’s up?” he called back.
“I touched up that Jerry who tried to ram us, sir,” the sergeant answered. “Potted his rudder and you should see him do stunts.”
Stan had completely forgotten he carried a gunner. The man had been silent all of the time. Now Stan knew he must have been giving an account of himself.
“How did you make out?” he asked.
“Fine, sir. I believe I made several hits.”
A short while later they circled above their home field and came in. Lights blazed on the field for the first time since Stan had been flying from it. Number 30 would be lighted up for an hour at least, in spite of raiders. This was by way of celebrating their victory.
Stan climbed out of his plane. He saw Allison coming across the field. They met and Stan could think of nothing to say. O’Malley hadn’t come in.
“Tough, O’Malley missing that big fight after the raid,” he finally said.
Allison looked at him. A slow smile came to his lips. He pointed out across the field. Stan looked and saw a mass of twisted wreckage. What certainly was the tail assembly of a Hendee Hawk was sticking out of the twisted mass.
“He parked that mess there, then climbed out and walked into the briefing room,” Allison said. “We’ll find him in there grousing because they called us in before we got all of those Messerschmitts.”
Stan’s laugh rang out and he made for the briefing room. Sure enough, O’Malley was there and he was fuming.
“’Tis time I quit this job,” he shouted at the briefing officer. “When a man can’t stay an’ settle an argument like a gentleman, ’tis time to quit.”
The officer grinned at O’Malley. Stan slapped his pal on the back. “I’ll buy you a pie, and darned if I don’t eat one myself.”
O’Malley considered this for a moment, then said: “If a man can’t fight, then the next best thing is to consider a bit of food.”
Arm in arm the three fliers of Red Flight walked into the mess.
The next morning Allison and O’Malley and Stan were eating breakfast at a side table. Allison had been over to headquarters and he had learned a few things. Over bacon and hot cakes he told them what he had heard.
“Garret was the man on the spot, but they got a fellow who was way up, they wouldn’t give his name. He kept Garret from getting tossed out of the service and worked it so he was made a Squadron Leader. They planned to get a man like Garret into every squadron if they could.”
“’Tis black, the likes of such a man is,” O’Malley said with a scowl.
“Garret admitted bleeding Stan’s gas tank and leading Moon Flight off the trail. I asked him how he found out Stan was a Yank and he said the information was sent him from the Nazi secret service.” Allison leaned back and smiled. “I have an idea our Intelligence will do a lot more snooping from now on.”
“Sure an’ ’tis a nice tale, but one we already had figured out,” O’Malley said.
“I got a real raking for not turning over Stan’s record to Farrell as soon as we were transferred,” Allison said with a grin. “I now tender my apologies but, after the first spoofing I did, I clean forgot about those reports. They didn’t seem important. Stan is one of the best pilots in the Royal Air Force, and what we need is fighters.”
“It’s all over now, and I accept your apology,” Stan said.
O’Malley scowled suddenly. “Do you gents think we’ll ever get to see any more action? I bet we won’t.”
He was answered by the intersquadron speaker. It began rasping:
“Red Flight, all out. Red Flight, all out. Bandits sighted over the Dover coast. Heavy fighter escort of Messerschmitt One-Tens.”