Part 8 (1/2)
I know that the Germans have flight-tested fighter aircraft propelled not by airscrews but by jets of hot air. I know that these aircraft will fly two or three hundred miles per hour faster than our fighters, which means the Germans will be able to just about ignore our fighter escorts. And I know that the best aerial gunner in the world isn't going to be able to hit a small fighter approaching at closing speeds over eight hundred miles per hour. per hour faster than our fighters, which means the Germans will be able to just about ignore our fighter escorts. And I know that the best aerial gunner in the world isn't going to be able to hit a small fighter approaching at closing speeds over eight hundred miles per hour.
And I know that unless we can stop the Germans from getting their jet fighters operational, there is going to be an unbelievable bloodbath up here.
It is for that reason that I can intellectually, if not emotionally, justify sending Eric Fulmar into Germany. If we can find out from the guy he's bringing out what the Germans need to build their jet engines, maybe we can bomb their factories out of existence before they can start turning out engines. In the cold, emotionless logic of my profession, that justifies dispatching an agent, even running the risk that if he is caught, the Sicherheitsdienst will begin his interrogation by peeling the skin from his w.a.n.g, before they get down to serious business.
”Dawn Patrol Leader,” Dougla.s.s's voice came over the air-to-air. ”Dawn Patrol Two. We just crossed the German border.”
Under the black rubber oxygen mask that covered the lower half of his face, Canidy smiled. What seemed like a very long time ago, when he and Doug had been a.s.signed to fly patrols at first light looking for j.a.panese bombers on their way to attack Chungking, they had, feeling very clever about it, chosen ”Dawn Patrol” as their air-to-air ident.i.ty. Errol Flynn had recently played a heroic fighter pilot in a movie with that name.
”If you see Eric, wave,” Canidy said to his microphone. He immediately thought, Now, that wasn't too smart, was it? Now, that wasn't too smart, was it?
”No s.h.i.+t?” Dougla.s.s replied. This time Canidy didn't reply.
Five minutes later, Dougla.s.s came on the air again.
”Blue Group Leader. We have what looks like two squadrons of ME-109s at ten o'clock. Baker and Charley flights, hold your positions. Able will engage. Able, follow me.”
Canidy looked for the German fighters and found them, maybe twenty-five black specks in a nose-down att.i.tude, obviously intending to strike the bomber stream from behind and above.
The Germans preferred to attack from above, preferably from above and to the rear, but from above. Diving at the P-38Fs on their way to the bomber stream beneath would give the Messerschmitts a considerable advantage. With the American fighters between the B-17s and the Germans, the B-17 gunners would have their fields of fire restricted unless they wanted to run the risk of hitting the P-38Fs. And with just a little bit of luck, machine-gun and cannon fire directed at the P-38Fs might strike one of the bombers beyond them.
Canidy waited until Dougla.s.s was out of the way, then tested his guns (he had tested them over the English Channel, but it was better to test them again than to find himself nose up against a Messerschmitt with a bad solenoid and no guns) and pushed the nose up and to the left and stayed on Dougla.s.s's wing.
He felt his hands sweating inside his gloves, and knew that it was a manifestation of fear.
The attacking Messerschmitts split into two groups, one to continue the attack on the bomber stream, the other to engage the American fighters. The tactic had obviously been preplanned.
The P-38Fs had not been able to gain much speed from the time they left their original position to rise to the attack, but the Germans were running with their needles on the DO NOT EXCEED red line, and the closing speed was greater than Canidy expected. He was sure that his three-second burst had missed the Messerschmitt he had aimed at.
Turning outside of Dougla.s.s, he felt the world grow red, then almost black, as the centrifugal forces of the turn drained the blood from his head.
The twin 1,325-horsepower Allison engines, with their throttles shoved forward to FULL EMERGENCY MILITARY POWER indent, were screaming. Full Emergency Military Power was h.e.l.l on fuel consumption, and cut deeply into the operational life of engines, but the extra power, when needed, was worth the cost. When they came out of the 360-degree turn, they were running a little faster than the Messerschmitts. They gained on them slowly and followed them through the bomber stream.
The tracers from the bombers' guns seemed to fill the sky; there was a real possibility that he would be hit, and that prospect was frightening. But the fear was overcome by what Canidy, very privately, thought of as the animal urge to kill. Man-because he fancied himself civilized- liked to pretend he entered combat reluctantly. And he prepared for combat reluctantly. But once he was in it, he was far less removed from the savage than he liked to believe. He wallowed in the prospect of killing the enemy.
The pair of Messerschmitts he and Dougla.s.s were chasing pulled out of their dives. To be sure of a killing burst from his battery of eight .50-caliber Brownings (the mark, Canidy thought approvingly, of the experienced fighter pilot; ”don't shoot until you can see the whites of their eyes”), Dougla.s.s, who had crept ever closer to the German before him, was taken by surprise. His P-38F could not respond in time, and he had lost his opportunity to fire.
Canidy was two hundred yards behind him. Without thinking of what he was doing, he moved the nose of his P38-F from the Messerschmitt he had been following to the one that had gotten away from Doug. The plane vibrated for a moment from the recoil of eight heavy machine guns, then he aimed at the first plane, this time firing a three-second burst.
He saw his tracer stream move from just in front of the Messerschmitt to the engine cowling, then to the left wing. There was a hint of orange, and then the wing tank exploded.
Canidy pulled up abruptly and looked around for the other fighter. He couldn't find it for a moment, and then he saw it, smoke pouring from its engine nacelle as it spun toward the cloud cover below. He looked for a parachute but didn't see one.
And then Dougla.s.s was on his wing.
”Two more,” Dougla.s.s's voice came over the air-to-air. ”How the h.e.l.l are we going to explain that?”
”That'll make seventeen for you, won't it, Colonel?” Canidy replied.
”Bulls.h.i.+t!” Dougla.s.s said, then switched frequencies. ”Blue Group Able, this is Blue Group Leader. Form on me in Position A.”
The P-38Fs scattered all over the sky began to turn and to resume their original protective positions over the B-17 stream.
Canidy reached inside his sheepskin jacket, then inside his uniform jacket and came out with a Map, US Army Corps of Engineers: Germany.
It wasn't an aerial navigation chart, but rather one intended for use by ground troops. It could also be used by a pilot who intended to navigate by flying close enough to the ground and following roads and rivers. Canidy had taken it with him to the final briefing, and copied onto it the course the bomber stream would fly. Once they had joined the bomber stream, over a known location, it was not difficult to plot from that position and time where the head of the bomber stream would be at a given time.
It wasn't precise, but Canidy had had experience in China navigating with a lot less. He looked at his watch, then scrawled some arithmetic computations on the map. He put a check mark on the map. The way he had it figured, the lead aircraft of the bomber stream was now pa.s.sing over a relatively unpopulated area of Germany, southeast of Dortmund. He made some more marks on the map, then touched his air-to-air microphone switch.
”Dawn Patrol Two,” he called.
”Go ahead,” Dougla.s.s replied a moment later.
”There's something I want to see,” Canidy said.
”Say again?”
”I say again, I'm going to have a look at something I want to see,” Canidy said. ”I'll be back in about two zero minutes.”
”d.i.c.k, are you all right?” Dougla.s.s asked, the concern in his voice clear even over the clipped tones of the radio.
”Affirmative,” Canidy said.
”Permission to leave the formation is denied,” Dougla.s.s said.
Canidy ignored him. He dropped the nose of the P-38F and headed east. He knew that Dougla.s.s could not simply ignore his responsibilities as fighter escort commander; so Dougla.s.s would not follow him.
Canidy dropped through the bomber stream, more than a little surprised that at least one gunner didn't get excited and take a shot at him. In a P-51 or a P-47, that probably would have happened. But the twin-engine, twin tail boom shape of the P-38F was distinctive. There was no German plane that looked even remotely like it.
When he pa.s.sed through 11,000 feet, he took the oxygen mask from his face and rubbed the marks it had made on his cheeks and nose, and under his chin. He loosened the snaps of the sheepskin jacket. It was cold, but not nearly as bitter cold as it had been at 25,000 feet, nearly five miles up.
He dropped to 2,000 feet and trimmed it up to cruise at 300 miles per hour. If the air were still, that would have moved him across the ground at five miles per minute. The air wasn't still, of course, but it still helped to have that stored in the back of his mind. He was making, roughly, a mile every twelve seconds.
His chronometer showed that he had left the formation thirteen minutes before when he found what he was looking for. The River Eder had been dammed near Bad Wildungen, making a lake with a distinctive shape. He pa.s.sed east of it, far enough so that if there was antiaircraft protecting the dam, he would not be in its range.
He reset the second counter on the chronometer.
Almost exactly six minutes later, which would put him thirty miles from the dam, he spotted what had to be the River Lahn. Right, he thought, where it should be.
He banked sharply to follow the river south, and dropped even lower toward the ground. He would be very vulnerable if he was attacked from behind and above. He was counting on not being detected until he had seen what he had come looking for. He was also counting on the probability that whatever Germans were airborne would be directing their efforts toward the bomber stream and its escorts, rather than trying to look for one lone fighter on the deck.
He saw first the medieval castle on the hill in Marburg, then he dropped his eyes just ahead of him and to the right.
And there it was, the Marburg Werke of Fulmar Elektrische GmbH.
He r.e.t.a.r.ded his throttle and extended the flaps, and when it was safe, lowered his wheels. Technically, lowering the gear was a sign of surrender. But in order to surrender, there had to be someone to surrender to, and there was no German in sight. He lowered his wheels to slow the P- 38F down. He wanted as good a look as he could get.