...Our B-17, Fanny's Fortune, was one of the most successful bombers and perhaps the luckiest bomber in the squadron. We had flown twenty-two missions into the very bowels of enemy territory and survived virtually unscathed. As I looked out over the expanse of cloud cover below us at ten thousand feet, I couldn't help but think, how much longer; how far could we push the envelope.
My co-pilot, Paul Goodhue, was busy computing our time and fuel for the run as I, for a moment, transformed the bumpy clouds below into moguls going down the slopes of Mt. Sunapee in New Hampshire. The disheartening reality was that we were three thousand miles away, twelve thousand feet over the English Channel, and climbing toward our cruising altitude with fourteen other Flying Fortresses. The task at hand was not a sunny afternoon downhill run.
I had flown with Paul and most of this crew for the past ten months. Our right waist gunner, Bill Atkins, was new to the crew as was our tail gunner Jamie Decker, a young kid I still couldn't believe was old enough to drive, let alone go off to war stuffed in a tube behind twin 50 caliber machine guns. Rick Fields, our top turret was a seasoned veteran having knocked out five German Messerschmitts in the ten months we had been together. The rest of the crew were all pros too, men I was proud to serve with -- men, that was laughable, these were boys, barely out of high school. Hell, most of these guys still probably woke up waiting for Mama to come roust them for school. Al Lawson, our bombardier always kept us loose with his ribald stories on the first leg of the mission; that's when nerve endings tend to pop clean out of your skin and connect with the buddy closest to you. As we continued climbing, I instructed the crew to go to auxiliary air.
We were at 20,000 feet now and we'd be approaching resistance soon. I hoped that intelligence was wrong about the weather over the target, but so far, there was no break in the cloud cover, which was a mixed blessing for us. When we approached the target, we wouldn't be visible to ground support or aircraft spotters, but to make our bomb drop we'd probably have to drop to about 6,000 feet and be particularly vulnerable to flak from the German ground artillery. And that wasn't the worst of it; we'd be locked in to our bomb run from the moment the bombardier took over until the final drop. This meant for five minutes we'd be at a fixed altitude locked on target, sitting ducks for their fighter pilots. Our payload on this mission was a batch of five-hundred pounders, twenty-six of them, to be exact.
I knew when I had opened the mission envelope in the pre-dawn briefing that the bomb ordnance was destined for a target with strong fortification requiring the 'big boys' to 'crack the nut'. It was obvious the intel boys had strong reasons for wanting this drop, but it always left me with an empty feeling, not really knowing what we were trying to take out. I, like my crew, had long ago given up trying to figure out in advance what our mission would accomplish. But it was always rewarding when, after a successful run, the announcement would come down that we indeed stopped production in a tractor factory that had been retrofitted as an armored car producer or an agricultural plant that had been transformed into a manufacturing plant for grenade production. The flip side of that rejoicing was coping with the losses on the mission, whether successful or not.
I had only lost two men on our ship in ten months. Ray Olsen, a young guy from Hartford, CT had taken flak from the ground and had probably never even realized that the piece of white hot shrapnel had penetrated the flesh below his jaw severing the major veins and arteries in his neck. Ed Galt, the waist gunner opposite Ray, had been face to face with a bogie, its wings emitting the choppy fire which meant lead coming in his direction and the only course of action had been to return fire.
As the enemy pilot had nosed up to fly over our midsection, the top turret continued the response and when the German was over us and traveling away on the opposite side, Ray had not continued the relay. Mike had turned instinctively and saw immediately, Ray slumped in his harness, the top right side of his flight suit black with his own blood.
Ray had not suffered, but I had agonized when I sat to write his folks back home in Connecticut. I couldn't relate the circumstances of his death, that was unnecessary, a reality they didn't need to know. He had died bravely under enemy fire and they could know that he did not suffer. I had also included a photograph and letter that Ray had left with his personal effects in his locker. Many of the men had left similar letters to loved ones, in the event they did not return from a mission, a sad reality that afflicted many of the boys that went out on the unpredictable missions.
We began our descent, the ride getting bumpier as we lost altitude, and slipped below the cloud layer. I didn't need to take a survey to know that tension was causing each man to breath in shallow staccato gulps within their tightened chests. And there would be no relaxing for the next thirty minutes until our job was done and our fighters greeted us near the channel. Everyone knew the routine, if we survived the bombing run, we could expect to be chased all the way to the channel and statistically, we knew, there was a strong likelihood that some of our planes would not make it back to the channel.
Based on our calculations, it was time to look alert. "Gentlemen, check your weapons and cut the chatter please." Within 30 seconds everyone had sent a few rounds through their machine guns.
"Bombardier, we are approximately 9 minutes from target."
"Right Captain."
A shout came across everyone’s headsets from Dennis, our bottom turret, "BOGIES at 5 o'clock!"
There they were, climbing toward us, maybe twenty or twenty-two Messerschmitts, it didn't take long for their spotters to relay the message to the always alert and waiting squadrons.
The fighters were quickly flying all about our squadron like troublesome bees, but with a much nastier sting. The bogies always made us feel as though we were standing still, unable to get out of their sights, not a pleasant experience.
"All right gunners, this is where you earn your keep." But I didn't have to tell them what they already knew.
Our bottom turret went immediately into action, as did the waist gunners. There had to be closer to thirty fighters; everyone would be focused on their job and survival for the next half hour. The whine of enemy engines and the chatter of weapons, ours and theirs, made me cringe every time, my knuckles turning white on the controls. The next five minutes would be an eternity as enemy fire sprayed the air and ripped away at our aircraft. In two minutes I'd turn it over to Al and his bombsights, that's when I felt most helpless, out of control.
…………………………………………………
The clank, clank, clanking came through the cockpit like a jack-hammer. The enemy rounds impacted the aircraft's skin spraying a fine metallic dust as they ripped through metal creating a familiar odor that I couldn't quite identify, but I sensed damage and we'd have to do a quick preliminary check to vital systems. I barked out quickly to Paul to check the starboard wing as I glanced quickly out the port window. I turned my head back and around to Paul and I quickly realized that Paul had not responded to my damage check.
Paul was limp in his harness, leaning back, shoulders sagging and from the spreading discoloration on his suit; I knew he had sustained a bad hit. The large caliber slugs of the German fighter's wing guns had done more than just rip through metal. Paul's situation would be critical; I didn't have to be a medic to know that quick actions on my part might be the only chance Paul would have to survive this trauma.
I cried out in desperation for Al to take control for the bomb drop and without waiting for a response, released my harness and quickly pulled Paul from his harness and laid him out on the cabin floor. I only had precious seconds to stanch the flow of blood from his thighs. There was no time to do a thorough assessment of damage to Paul's legs, the right one appeared to be broken, but the most I could do for him right now was apply compression bandages where I could see blood flow and a tourniquet to the right leg which appeared to have the most serious wound. I nailed him with a quick shot of Morphine even though he was clearly going into shock and probably wouldn't feel the pain right now. I felt helpless, but that was all I could do for him under the circumstances.
I lost little time strapping in again and before I could even get my headset on I felt the plane's surge as bombs were released, which meant Al had already bellowed out 'bombs away'. A quick check with Al confirmed that all bombs were in fact falling from the sky and hopefully on target. Impact would only be seconds from now and Al would give us an accounting from below. My gunners were still swatting at the enemy and I knew we had damage, but I could only react to one situation at a time. I took over from Al and immediately applied full throttle to all engines, not knowing if they would all even respond.
As we started to climb, I knew I'd have to assess damage quickly and hope nothing vital had been hit to keep us from making it home. I knew immediately from the struggle with the control yoke that one of our right engines was out. I quickly looked at my RPM gauges and knew I had to feather the prop on number 4 to relieve some of the drag that I was struggling with. The strafing from the German Messerschmitt had done damage to man and machine.
A glance at Paul told me he was fully in shock, looking pale as the Dover cliffs I was hoping to see again. My hope was that Paul could hang tough for the next thirty minutes. He and I went back to another time and place, he had grown up in the same town with me and while we shared nothing in common during our school years, we had both run full tilt to enlist after graduation finding common ground in the tragedy of the day. It was during our flight training after basic that we came to know one another. Paul had been the jock in high school, not a star, but accomplished in football, basketball and baseball. I had gone a different path, involved with more cerebral activities, envious and jealous of the athletes like Paul. Funny, we developed a bond based on the here and now, with nothing from high school even seeming significant now. We had both felt the necessity to support our country as young men, maybe just idealistic kids, but nevertheless determined to serve our country as best our talents would allow.
Since my childhood I’d had an affinity for flight and had now realized a sub-conscious dream to soar unnaturally, as if I were meant to have wings. Paul had confided that while he enjoyed the training and wanted to serve as a pilot, he wasn't the zealot that I was.
I looked at him now and said a quick, silent prayer for the young man that I hoped would still be alive and a friend long after the horror of this war was behind us.
I took the time to get on the radio with the crew for a casualty and damage check. They knew without my asking to be brief. When I didn't hear from our tail-gunner, I had a sinking feeling that Jamie had been hit, maybe fatally. I ordered Bill to leave his station at the waist gun to check on Jamie before the next onslaught. I knew from experience that the fighters would regroup and hit us again within the next five minutes.
Bill quickly responded that it was over for Jamie and he was headed back to his station to await the next wave of gunfire. It came sooner than expected.
We were limping along, losing altitude and separating from the main squadron. I briefly scanned the field of vision from my cockpit seat and noticed two other ships in distress, one with a smoking trail leaving its port outside engine, the other flying minus half its tail rudder. We would, all three, be prime targets in our weakened conditions; the Germans would give up the main group for three highly likely kills. True to form, eight fighters broke from their formation and then split into two groups to pursue the wounded birds. I wouldn't have time to keep track of, much less think about, anything else in the sky except our immediate surroundings.
I knew everyone was tensed and ready for the worst; we had four fighters bearing down on us and with Jamie gone, we were without any protection from behind. Our reduced airspeed made evasive maneuvers out of the question. It would be stand and fight; there was no choice. We were ten minutes from any help; our fighters could only venture perhaps twenty-five to fifty miles beyond the coastline and still have enough fuel to do battle for twenty to thirty minutes and still make the trip home.
I yelled to Jay Leanard, our navigator, over the radio “How far?” He came back quickly, confirming my suspicions; we were just over fifty miles from the northern tip of the French coast. We were on our own for at least nine more minutes.
They hit us hard, swooping down on our starboard side, ripping away at the metal skin of 'Fanny's Fortune'. I wasn't sure how, but we had lost our inside port engine and even with the remaining two engines at three quarter throttle we were having difficulty maintaining altitude. The only plus was the cloud cover below us, but once down at nine thousand feet we'd never be able to climb again. It seemed it was a forgone conclusion, the engines were getting hot and I'd have to back off on the throttles or seize up the engines and plummet from the sky.
We immediately began losing altitude, a signal to our adversaries that we were all but done. We were twenty-five miles from being able to ditch in the channel and our chances were only a best guess from Jay as he ran the numbers and came up with maybe ten minutes of air time left if we kept our airspeed at one-fifty.
Just when I felt it would be impossible to sustain another strafing run from the Germans, our guys came up on the horizon. They were loaded for bear and the Germans would be low on ammo by this point. One encounter by our guys and my guess is they'd run for home quickly. But that wasn't something I could even ponder now. As fighters started diving, twisting and turning above us, we knew we were out of the fray, but now we were still in our own struggle to keep Fanny’s Fortune in the sky for a few more minutes.
Our chances by now had greatly diminished; we were six minutes from the coast and our best case scenario was ditching in the cold waters of the channel and a hopeful pickup by our Limey friends in a cutter. We were losing precious feet with every second that passed; we probably had fifteen miles to go and our altitude had dropped to five hundred feet. I had called on Al to calculate our rate of descent now that I had stabilized the RPM of our two remaining engines. We were dropping from the sky at a rate of one hundred feet per minute with five and a half minutes to the coast. Do the math. I’d probably seize the engines, but I knew the only chance we had would be to go ‘balls to the wall’ with the throttles as soon as I could see the coast.
As the altimeter hit and dropped below the 150 foot mark, the French countryside passed under us with incredible clarity; we could almost reach out and touch the treetops. Then I thought I was surely hallucinating; the sound of a barking dog was coming through clearly from below us. I didn’t dare take my eyes from the horizon, so I yelled to Al to find out what in blazes was going on below us. Before he could respond, there was a loud shrill whistle from outside the cockpit, one long blast. After five seconds, it came again. I’d heard that piercing whistle many times in the past -- I knew what it meant. I told Paul to come out of his coma and take the controls.
I jumped up from my pilot’s perch.
“Al, Rick let’s go, that’ll be supper.”
My brothers and I climbed down from the crabapple tree to the excited yipping of our mixed pointer-beagle, Spot (really). I bid the crew farewell. My brothers and I jumped the stone wall that separated the neighborhood from the farm next door and the three of us headed for the house in response to my dad’s curled tongue, high-pitched whistle.
The ‘Gerry’s’ would be there again tomorrow, waiting for the crew of Fanny’s Fortune to fight the good fight.
