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“Maybe you better go back and get on oxygen, Commander,” Ester said. “We just passed through 11,000.”
Bitter returned to his gun position and put on an oxygen mask, and then a set of headphones.
A five-plane V of P-51s appeared on their left, apparently throttled back to keep pace with the much slower B-17s. The flight leader of the P-51s raised his hand and waved.
That’s where I belong, in the cockpit of a fighter plane, not as supercargo on a B-17.
There was nothing to be seen below them but clouds. He wondered where they were. From what he understood of the briefing, and from the quick glance he’d had at the map before D’Angelo took him out to the flight line, they were to fly a northeast course that crossed the Thames Estuary twenty miles southeast of Southend-on-Sea, then took them seventy-five miles on a more easterly course to a point in the North Sea where a Royal Navy destroyer was stationed. From there the route turned right, nearly due east, to Dortmund.
They were likely to be attacked by German fighters from two bases in Holland (Zwijndrecht and Hertogenbosch) and three in Germany (Duisburg, Essen, and Recklinghausen). The big map had shown known and suspected antiaircraft emplacements and German fighter bases; and it was marked with arrows indicating where Intelligence believed they would be first attacked, where they would be attacked later when the Germans computed their target, and later still en route home.
After dropping their bombs on Dortmund, they were to turn right and fly a straight course back to England, a course south of the attack course that passed nearly over Eindhoven and north of Antwerp and left the European coast at Knokke on the Dutch-Belgian border.
Ester’s voice came over the earphones, answering his question: “We’re approaching the coast, test your guns.”
Bitter worked the action of the Browning, chambering a cartridge, then put his hands on the handles, aimed above the B-17 to their left, and pressed the trigger. The noise and recoil were startling.
Ester and his crew seemed to be taking the whole thing very calmly. Bitter wondered if this was a reflection of their courage, or whether they had grown used to what he was doing. Or whether it was a carefully nurtured facade.
Five minutes later, holes appeared in the cloud cover. He was trying to peer through one of these when he became aware of puffs of black smoke in the sky. That was antiaircraft. As he looked around the sky to see how much of it there was, an antiaircraft shell struck the port wing of a B-17 flying behind and below “Danny’s Darling.”
It exploded between the engine nacelles, taking off the outer portion of wing and the outboard engine and detonating the fuel tanks. The B-17, in flames, fell off to the right, went into a spin, and then disappeared from sight.
Bitter felt sick to his stomach.
Five minutes later, German fighters appeared; long before Air Corps Intelligence thought they would. There was a running air battle, first between the P-51s and the Messerschmidts, and then between the B-17s and the Messerschmidts that, inevitably, made it through the P-51s.
Bitter began to fire at a German fighter as it approached, and then he watched a double line of tracers from an aircraft behind him trace the path of the P-51 chasing the Messerschmidt through the bomber formation.
The P-51 seemed to stagger, and then blew up.
Bitter turned his attention to another Messerschmidt making a diving pass from the rear. He saw his tracers going where he wanted them to, but the enemy plane was out of sight before he could see any signs of having hit it.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, the skirmish was over. “Danny’s Darling” droned on and on in straight and level flight, waiting for something else—antiaircraft or fighter—to try to knock it from the sky. The feeling of helpless terror returned. And despite the cold of their altitude, he was sweating.
As they approached the outskirts of Dortmund, where their target was the Krupp steel mills, the antiaircraft fire resumed. It seemed to be much heavier than it had been the first time. There were far too many black bursts to count.
The three-minute bombing run was the longest period in Ed Bitter’s life. He was desperately afraid that he was going to lose control of his stomach, if not his bowels. He had been afraid, and often, flying against the Japanese, but nothing like this. Here, it was like being tied to a stake before a bull’s-eye target on a rifle range. You could neither dodge nor fight back.
His sense of relief was enormous when he felt the B-17 shudder as it was freed of the weight of the bomb load, a moment before the bombardier’s voice came over the earphones: “Bombs away!”
“Close bomb-bay doors,” Ester ordered as he moved the B-17 into a climbing turn to the right.
In the middle of the turn, Bitter looked back at the still-oncoming bomber stream. They seemed to be suspended on the black puffs of smoke the exploding antiaircraft shells made. As he watched, two planes fell out of formation: One exploded violently a second after he noticed it. The second fell into a shallow spin.
Five minutes later, Ester’s composure left him. There was not just excitement but unmistakable fear in his voice as he cried on the intercom, “Bandits, dead ahead. Christ, there’s four of them.”
Bitter watched in terror as one after another, four Messerschmidt fighters flashed past the B-17, their unbelievable closing speed moving them much too fast for him to get a shot at them.
He could hear the belly gunner’s and the tail gunner’s twin fifties firing as they went away, but somehow he knew that was futile.
Then there was a strange whistling noise, a wave of icy air, and the B-17 made a steep diving turn to the right. Bitter thought it was high time Ester made an evasive maneuver, then he remembered that bombers were trained not to make evasive maneuvers but to hold their formation, to preserve their “box of fire” at whatever cost.
And then the flight engineer, his voice hollow with horror, came on the intercom:
“Navy guy,” he said,“can you come to the cockpit?”
Supporting himself against the centrifugal force of the steep turn, Bitter made his way forward.
