Things had come unstuck pretty quickly, and he and his men had failed to rendezvous successfully with the B-17s. Not that he thought it mattered too much; it wasn’t like there was anything out there they needed escort protection from anyway.
But hey, Danny, it looks bad . . . losing the planes you’re meant to be protecting. To lose one is bad luck, but all twelve?
Ferrelli kept his eyes on the clouds above and to the left. ‘I don’t see anything, Smitty, not a damn -’
He saw it.
A single silhouette way above them at about thirty thousand feet. Unmistakably the outline of a B-17, flitting between the tall white columns, and it was heading west. ‘Okay, okay I see it. Looks like these fellas are on their own. If they’re the guys we’re meant to be looking after, I’d say they are totally, one hundred per cent lost by the look of it. They should be heading north, not west.’
The navigator on that plane needs to go right back to school. Jeeez . . . Navigation 101.
He knew it was easy enough for even the most experienced crew to drift off course by dozens of miles. Shit, he even knew of bombers that had drifted into the wrong goddamn country. Dumb-ass stuff like that happened all the time. But getting the wrong heading? No matter how lost you are, no matter where you are, the one piece of kit that’s always going to work just fine is the compass.
‘Okay, boys, let’s go take a look-see what these fools are up to.’
‘Roger that, Lieutenant,’ said Smitty. His response was mirrored by the other ten pilots, most of them bored to distraction by the flight so far and eager for something to see and do.
Ferrelli pulled up and to the left on the yoke and his P51-D swung towards the last place he’d seen the bomber. His squadron followed suit, managing to maintain a recognisable Vee-formation as they veered left and climbed steeply.
Ferrelli checked his altimeter. They were at 25,000 feet. He reckoned that bomber was somewhere around thirty. He studied the sky ahead of him, a forest of immensely tall cumulus. There was surely heavy rain down below; a real roof-rattler as his mom liked to term the sort of passing downpours that hit them without warning in the spring and ceased just as suddenly.
He saw the plane again. It was higher than he’d thought, now maybe 35,000 feet.
Damn.
Either he was losing his ability to reckon altitudes or the plane had just pulled up steeply since he’d seen it last, only seconds ago.
‘You guys see it?’ he called out to the squadron.
The voices crackled back in a chorus of confirmation.
‘Wasn’t that plane at thirty thousand? Or am I losing my touch?’
‘Yeah, sir, looked like that to me too,’ answered Jake Leonard, one of the youngest guys on the squadron. Even the distortion of radio failed to hide the fact at eighteen his voice still sounded like a kid’s. The poor guy hated answering the billet telephones; it got him pissed when people not knowing to whom they were talking referred to him as ma’am.
‘You reckon they just climbed?’ asked Ferrelli.
‘Reckon so, sir.’
Smitty decided to add his two cents. ‘It looks like they’re playing hide and seek with us, Danny.’
Ferrelli nodded.
It does look that way. What’s up with these guys?
‘I’m going to try raising them on the radio.’
He flipped the frequency. ‘Ahh . . . this is Lieutenant Ferrelli, United States Air Force, calling unidentified B-17 due west of me. Are you the guys we’re meant to be escorting this morning?’
He waited for a response.
There was none.
‘Unidentified B-17, west of my position, that’s your seven o’clock. Are you the guys who’ve flown up from Marseilles?’
There was still no answer.
Shit, the radio operator needs to go back to school too.
‘You reckon they got problems, sir?’ asked Jake.
‘Yeah, maybe they have. Maybe they’re all asleep.’ Hell, five minutes ago he’d been ready for a nap. Maybe they were having some technical problems, the radio might be out. He watched the bomber enter a column of cumulus the size of a mountain peak. His eyes followed the predicted course of the plane and half a minute later he spotted it again, but several thousand feet higher. The pilot had just executed a steep climb inside the cloud.
The sonofabitch was trying to lose them.
‘Anyone else here reckon this is a little fishy?’
‘What’re you thinking, sir?’ asked Jeff Thomason, a college kid from Boston, as far he could recall.
‘I think these boys have tried to shake us off. I reckon it’s time we pulled in real close and tried having a talk with them.’ Ferrelli smiled and his facemask rustled against his sandpaper chin. All of a sudden today felt like it had just got a little more interesting.
‘With me, boys, let’s keep the Vee tidy.’ He pulled back on the yoke and began to climb. His squadron followed suit. This time the flying formation was a little tidier, as they rode 7000 feet in just under two minutes to match the current altitude of the bomber. He checked the altimeter; it showed 37,000. Their P51-Ds had a ceiling of 41,000, there wasn’t much headroom left for them. But then he was pretty sure the ceiling altitude for these brutes was less than their Mustangs. He vaguely recalled the Mustang had about four or five thousand on them.
The only way is down, big fella, no way you’re going to out-ceiling us.
The B-17 maintained its course ahead of them, now no more than a quarter of a mile away. It hadn’t changed direction now that they were behind it. Neither had it decided to drop. He wondered whether the earlier evasive manoeuvres were because they thought the Mustangs were Krauts. But then you’d have to be one hell of a jittery pilot these days to be worrying about Germans. Those guys were an endangered species, like buffalo.
Ferrelli had been hoping, since his posting to England, to chance across one of their Luftwaffe boys in the skies over Germany. But then he’d arrived at the party way too late to see any of that kind of action. Those poor bastards had been pounded out of the skies of Europe months ago. He had lived in hope though, occasionally fantasising an encounter with a lone rogue ace and duelling to the death in a clear blue sky.
Just one kill, that isn’t a lot to ask for, is it?
‘You going to try the radio again, sir?’ asked Jake.
‘Err . . . yup, might as well, I guess.’
Ferrelli flipped the frequency again. ‘Unidentified B-17 west of my position, at thirty-seven thousand feet . . . hey! Can you fellas hear me?’
There was still no answer. He found himself wondering once more what the hell was wrong with these guys. Either they were the USAAF’s most incompetent bomber crew, ever, period. Or there was some trouble aboard, perhaps multiple equipment failures, or . . . ?
Or that’s Adolf Hitler flying a stolen plane and making a run for it.
Ferrelli smiled dreamily like a kid, like some junior league scruff assembling a fantasy baseball team.
‘Danny? What do we do now?’ asked Smitty.
‘Okay, listen up, guys,’ he announced. ‘I’m going to close in on them, see if I can establish visual contact with the pilot. I want you guys to stay in formation behind them. I’ve got a real funny feeling about these boys.’
‘You reckon they’re escaping Nazis, sir?’ asked Jake hopefully.
‘Don’t let’s get too excited here, son, I’m just being thorough is all. So let’s ease those little thumbs away from the triggers shall we?’
He heard a few of them laugh nervously. They were all as wired as he was. This had to be about the most exciting thing that had happened to them since they had commenced flying as a squadron. Weeks of patrolling empty skies and needlessly escorting cargo planes and bombers, and here they were squealing like kids at a tea party just because some dumb radio operator was probably sleeping on the job.
Chapter 37
Mission Time: 4 Hours Elapsed
6.05 a.m., 300 miles from
Nantes
Hans watched the Mustang slowly approaching through the plexiglas of the tail-gunner’s blister.
‘It’s an easy shot, Max; he’s coming straight up behind us. One burst and I can put half a dozen shells straight into the canopy.’
His voice was loud with excitement, and Max’s headphones crackled from the volume. Max shook his head. Hans had a hair-trigger manner about him; fire first, think later.
‘We should see if we can bluff our way out of this, before we give ourselves away. They don’t look too worked up, they’re just curious . . . so we’ll play along with them for now.’
Pieter turned to look at him. ‘How are we going to do that? You speak English all of a sudden?’
‘I’ll think of something, just give me a minute.’
The American’s voice crackled through their headphones again, a long sentence, entirely unintelligible to them. Pieter was still looking at him. Max knew he wanted to call in Schröder and his men to make a quick clean kill out of this. It wouldn’t be hard - these Yanks were probably all green, and it was unlikely that they had seen much action. Schröder and his squadron of seasoned vets would make mincemeat of the poor bastards.
But then the game would be up, and they would end up having to fight the rest of the way across.
Max switched from interphone to radio. ‘Schröder? What’s your position now?’
Schröder came back almost immediately. ‘We’ve swung in position behind and below their formation, you want us to move in on them?’
Positioned below . . . that was good. Schröder knew his squadron tactics. The Mustangs would be blind beneath the wing; more importantly, if they were planning to mount an attack on them from behind, they would need to be either coming down or rising up on them to avoid catching the B-17 in their crossfire.
‘Not yet . . . I just want to know you’re ready in case we need you in a hurry.’
‘We’re ready.’
‘All right, only on my command, is that clear?’
‘Absolutely.’
Hans’ voice came over the interphone. ‘He’s closing in, Max, pulling up alongside us on the left.’
‘Can you see the pilot?’ asked Max.
‘Yup.’
‘Well that means he can see you, Hans, for Christ’s sake smile, or wave at him, or something.’ Max turned in his seat and looked out of the left-side cockpit window. After a few seconds he could see the nose of the Mustang slowly edging into view.
‘What’s the plan, Max?’ asked Pieter.
The American’s voice could be heard again. From his tone the man was obviously asking them a question. He was probably after their bomber group designation, or enquiring what formation they were meant to be with. Surely at this stage the American fighter pilot could only suspect that they were simply lost. The cloud cover below was complete; it was easy enough in these conditions for a plane to lose its way.
Bluff it.
The Mustang’s cockpit slid into view and Max found himself staring directly at the American fighter pilot, only a hundred yards away. The fighter pilot waved, and spoke again. Max responded by waving back at him and tapping the earphone of his flying cap.
He heard Pieter muttering over the interphone. ‘That’s your bluff? Jesus . . . we’re in bloody trouble if that’s all you’ve got.’
The American pilot spoke once more, his voice again sounded like he was asking a question.
Max responded with the same gesture, he backed it up with a shrug of his shoulders. The American didn’t say anything more, he studied them, it seemed with a renewed level of suspicion.
‘I don’t think he’s going for it, Max, I really don’t.’
Pieter was right.
Max could sense the American was considering the next move. There were perhaps two things he could do next, either report a sighting of them, or attempt to shoot them down. Max had no idea what the state of alertness was amongst the Allied air forces. He knew by now a communication had been sent demanding a surrender. Whether that had trickled down to a heightened state of alertness for their airmen over Europe, he couldn’t guess.
If he pulls back into formation behind us, then they’re preparing to attack.
The American tried to contact them once more over the radio, this time Max didn’t even bother to respond with a gesture. He looked at Max and nodded courteously and then the P51-D gracefully slid backwards out of sight.
‘Hans, Stef, man the waist-guns, I think we’re going to have to engage these boys.’
Ferrelli eased away from the bomber, wondering what to do next.
‘What’s up, sir?’ asked Jake.
‘I got a bad feeling about these guys . . . this ain’t one of the planes up from Marseilles, that’s for sure.’
‘We’re not going to shoot ’em down, are we, Danny?’ asked Smitty.
‘I don’t know yet . . . lemme see . . . lemme see . . .’
‘Maybe their radio’s shot, that’s why they weren’t answering you,’ added Smitty.
‘Or maybe they’re Polish or something?’
‘Guys . . . guys! . . . Shut up a second and let me think, will you?’ said Ferrelli. He slid back into the leading position of the Vee-formation.
What now? There was something wrong about that bomber. Nothing singularly told him that, just a host of little things. They weren’t responding to radio contact. They were on their own in an area of sky that didn’t normally get B-17 traffic. There seemed to be hardly any crew. He’d seen only the two pilots and the tail-gunner, no belly-gunner, upper-turret-gunner, no bombardier or navigator, neither waist-gun seemed to be manned. Then there were the earlier evasive manoeuvres. It was all suspicious, but Ferrelli wasn’t sure he wanted to be the author of a mistake that might cost the lives of at least three of his compatriots.
And what if it is escaping Nazis? You want to be the dope who dropped the ball?
That decided him.
‘Okay, boys, here’s what we’re going to do . . . we’re going to wing this bird so she has to ditch. If I’ve made a stupid mistake here, then at least nobody’s killed; on the other hand, if there are Krauts hiding inside, well then I’m sure they’ll get picked up quick enough. You guys understand me?’
A chorus of ‘Yes sirs’ crackled over his earphones.
‘You guys with me on this? Because if I’m wrong, I’m going to have to do some explaining why I decided to shoot down one of ours when we land. It’s gonna help with the paperwork if you boys can vouch I didn’t go all crazy on you.’
Ferrelli’s men voiced their support. ‘We’re with you, Danny,’ said Smitty.
‘Okay, then let’s do it,’ said Ferrelli. ‘Listen up, boys, I’m going to aim a burst of fire at engine one, then move on to engine two, then three, then four, so she’s got no power and they’re forced to bail. If the tail-gunner starts popping at me, you have my permission to concentrate fire on that . . . but only if he fires first, you got that?’
The men confirmed the instruction.
‘Right . . . here I go.’
Ferrelli swung his Mustang to the left and lined up with the outer port engine of the bomber with his gun sight. His thumb slid onto the trigger on his flight stick and he readied himself to press down.
‘Schröder, come and get them,’ said Max over the radio.
‘Right. We’ve jettisoned our drop tanks and we’re moving in now. When we start firing, dive and pull right so you’re well clear of the crossfire,’ Schröder responded calmly.
‘Understood.’ Max turned to Pieter. ‘You want to take the roof turret?’
‘You bet,’ he answered, smiling. He unplugged himself quickly and scrambled out of the cockpit towards the back, eager not to miss the start of the imminent show-down.
‘Hans and Stef . . . Schröder and his boys are coming in any second now, when they open fire I’m going to push us into a steep dive and pull out to the right, so be ready to hang on to something.’
Both men confirmed t
hey’d understood.
Chapter 38
Mission Time: 4 Hours, 5 Minutes Elapsed
6.10 a.m., 300 miles from Nantes
Ferrelli looked up at the B-17 in front of him; a last, hasty assessment before committing to his decision to bring her down.
‘If I’ve made a mistake, I’m real sorry, guys,’ Ferrelli muttered.
His thumb rested on the trigger and he was preparing to release a short burst of fire when he heard the thud of half a dozen bullets impact the underside of his fuselage.
‘What the fu—?’
A Messerschmitt Me-109 roared upwards just in front of him and continued in a steep climb several hundred feet above.
‘Where the hell did that come from?’ he shouted.
He saw eleven more Me-109s either side of the first rocketing up in front of the Vee-formation and watched as they banked around for another pass.
‘Ahhhhh! shit-shit-shit!’ he heard one of his boys shouting.
The P51 to his immediate left lost a wing amidst a shower of fragments and bullets and swerved violently towards him. He had to pull up hard, out of the formation to avoid it. ‘Break! Break! Engage targets at will!’ he heard himself bellowing.
The Vee-formation instantly disintegrated as each of the Mustangs pulled out of the formation and attempted to find a valid target, meanwhile the B-17 suddenly dropped into a steep dive leaving the skirmish behind it.
‘Bastards! You goddamn Krauty bastards!’ he heard Smitty screaming angrily.
Ferrelli’s evasive action put him up on the same level as the Me-109s, now curling around to descend on the disorganised P51s below.