Barry Blake of the Flying Fortress Page 7

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  RAID ON RABAUL

  The stop at Freetown was brief—chiefly for gas and a bit of rest for_Rosy’s_ crew. Shortly after noon the big bomber took off again, headedfor Accra, six hundred miles to the eastward. There the Pan AmericanLines had everything to do a complete servicing job. Captain O’Gradylanded his ship just before the sudden equatorial night shut down.

  A two-day rest put _Rosy_ in first-class shape. Her engines werethoroughly broken in. Her mighty framework had been tested in action.Now it remained for her guns and gun turrets to be tried out undercombat conditions.

  And her crew! As Captain Tex O’Grady glanced at their keen, confidentyoung faces, he knew he could depend on them. They’d meet danger with agrin of defiance and their cool efficiency would whittle down any oddsthey might meet.

  Six thousand miles still remained between them and the Indianbattlefront to which they had been ordered. The route would lie acrossNigeria to Lake Tchad, then northwest to the Egyptian Sudan and downthe Nile to Cairo. From there they would fly eastward in easy hops overIran and India, till they reached their assigned base.

  That was the plan; but in wartime the plans of mice and men areespecially subject to change. A few hours before his take-off fromAccra, radioed orders reached Captain O’Grady to head for Australia andthe South Pacific. Heavy bombers were more urgently needed there, itappeared. And that meant _Sweet Rosy O’Grady_!

  The new orders involved a greatly changed route. From now on CaptainO’Grady and his crew would be flying below the equator. Headingsoutheast, they would have to cross the great Belgian Congo into EastAfrica before stopping to refuel. As soon as Fred Marmon learned that,he gave his “quadruplets” an extra careful inspection. A forced landingin those all but trackless jungles was something he hated tocontemplate.

  From Accra the Flying Fortress took off with all gas tanks full. Ninehundred miles across the Gulf of Guinea she roared to Libreville, wherethe Fighting French made up her depleted fuel. In the air again, sheswept in a few hours over the vast territory that took H. M. Stanleyyears to explore. Twice she crossed the mighty Congo River. Then thefive-hundred-mile expanse of Lake Tanganyika lay below.

  “Watch out for elephants and giraffes, boys,” came the Old Man’shumorous drawl. “This is the country all the animal crackers come from.I’ll take _Rosy_ down low enough so that you can see them.”

  There was a general laugh, but as Captain O’Grady nosed his ship downto a thousand feet the crew really started to look. Perhaps the Old Manwasn’t kidding after all.

  The dense masses of green forest broke up into small patches. Lushgrazing lands appeared, with here and there a clump of trees. Fartheron stretched a dry plain, spotted with the green of an occasional waterhole. As they neared one of these, Barry Blake gave a shout.

  “There are your elephants, Captain!” he exclaimed. “We interruptedtheir drink. I see a bunch of ostriches on the run, too—”

  “Ostriches—ha, ha!” Tex O’Grady chuckled. “We’re not that near toAustralia, Bub. Those long-necked critters you see are _giraffes_. Wantme to prove it to you?”

  He shoved the stick forward. As the giant plane dipped down to withintwo hundred feet of them, the frightened giraffes scattered like sheep.Barry could see their long, pathetic necks swaying like masts as theyturned this way or that. Seconds later the herd was far behind.

  “When we reach Australia, Lieutenant,” Curly Levitt’s voice murmured inthe headphones, “I’ll buy you a beautiful, big picture book, and youcan learn that G stands for Giraffe, and E for Elephant and M for thelittle Monkey who didn’t know which was which.”

  A howl of merriment from the others who were listening in made Barry’sears tingle.

  “Okay, okay, I asked for it!” he admitted ruefully; and for the nexthour he felt like a high school kid who has pulled the prize “boner” ofthe week in class.

  The sensation wasn’t comfortable. Yet it went farther than anythingthat had happened yet to make him feel at one with the other members ofthe crew. These men, he realized, weren’t simply a detachment ofnon-coms and officers. They were a team, a family, an organism knittogether by closer bonds than their assigned duties. Every last one ofthem was a brother to the rest, regardless of race or rank.

  It was dark when the Flying Fortress reached Dar-es-Salam on the eastcoast. The next day, after servicing, the _Rosy O’Grady_ hopped offacross the Mozambique Channel. That same afternoon she landed atTananarivo, Madagascar’s mountain capital, where the Fighting Frenchhad recently improved the landing field to take care of heavy planes.

  “This is the last land we’ll see for three thousand-odd miles,” O’Gradyinformed his crew. “Next stop will be Broome, Australia. Marmon andJackson, you will make an especially close check on the engines. Takeyour time about it. Better to spend an extra day here than a month onrubber rafts somewhere in the Indian Ocean.”

  By noon of the third day, Fred and Cracker had checked and re-checkedeverything. Some of the care they took was really unnecessary. Whenthey had finished, however, the bomber’s power plant was as perfect ashuman skill could make it. The fuel tanks were full. Food and water fora thirty-hour trip were aboard, but no bombs. To allow a safe margin incase of bad weather, the ship must fly as light as possible and saveher gas.

  They took off just at dawn. Soon they were out of sight of land, andfrom then on the trip became a long fight against boredom. Half of theway they flew on two engines, to economize on gas. The big bomberloafed along at five thousand feet, except on two occasions when shesighted squalls and had to dodge them. Before the trip was ended mostof the _Rosy’s_ crew would have welcomed a storm to break the monotony.

  They landed at Broome, on Australia’s southwest tip, with plenty of gasto spare. The next day they headed northeastward, across the continent.Stopping at an American base in northern Queensland, they gassed up andhopped off on the last leg of their long flight to the battle zone.

  Their base, when they found it, was still being carved out of the NewGuinea jungle with the help of native labor. On the dirt runway Old ManO’Grady set his ship down like a cat on velvet. The moment she stoppedhe let out an old-time “rebel” yell.

  When Barry and Fred Marmon climbed out last, after making their finalchecks, the _Rosy’s_ red-haired engineer looked scornfully around him.In mock disgust, he stared at a group of men filling in a big, raw holewith shovels.

  “Look, Lieutenant!” he snorted. “This is what we came three quarters ofthe way around the globe to find—a potato patch in the back woods!”

  “Yes?” retorted Barry with a grim smile. “Those boys aren’t plantingspuds, Fred; they’re filling in a new shell hole. The Japs must havedropped a few of Tojo’s calling cards just a little before we landed.”

  The Japs called again that night. This time the “cards” that theydropped were shells from a cruiser that had sneaked close to the shore,in the dark hours. Five miles away, she let loose with her heaviestguns. Her aim was surprisingly accurate. To the _Rosy O’Grady’s_ crew,the stuff seemed to be exploding all around their tent.

  The screaming of shells, each followed instantly by an earth-shakingblast, produced a nightmare of horror for the unseasoned men. Not oneof them gave way to fear, however. The most upset man in the tent wasTex O’Grady, who paced up and down between the cots, worrying about hisship and fighting mosquitoes. He couldn’t get _Rosy_ into the air,because the field had no lights as yet.

  “If I knew this confounded field better,” he fumed, “I’d take off andget her safe upstairs. But except for those shell flashes it’s as darkas the inside of a cow. I’d only ground loop—”

  WHANG!

  A shell burst, nearer than any before it; tossed chunks of earththrough the open flap. Some dirt must have struck O’Grady in the mouth,Barry guessed, from the way the Old Man sputtered and spat.

  “Better get your head down, Captain,” Curly Levitt spoke up. “You’renot as big a target as _Rosy_, but you’ll be safer on your
cot.”

  The shelling stopped as suddenly as it had started. Later Barry learnedthat a pair of motor torpedo boats had routed the Jap cruiser, with twogaping holes below her waterline.

  The damage to ships on the flying field was comparatively light. Onebomber had received a direct hit. Three more were damaged by shellfragments. _Sweet Rosy O’Grady_ had escaped without a scratch. Theworst tragedy was the killing of a twin-engined bomber’s crew when ashell exploded in their tent. Seven men had been sleeping there. Allthat was found of them was buried the next day in a single grave.

  The attack was the last thing needed to make Barry and his friendsready for a raid of their own. Every man in the field was fighting mad.When O’Grady brought them the news that they were scheduled for abombing mission that day, the _Rosy’s_ crew cheered like maniacs.

  “We’re going with the squadron to lay eggs on Rabaul,” the Old Man toldthem. “High-altitude stuff. You gunners will probably get your chanceat a few Zero fighters, so make sure you load up with ammunition beforewe leave. Here come the carts to bomb us up now.”

  Before _Rosy_ had taken her last five-hundred pound egg on board thesquadron commander was racing his Fortress down the runway. The otherten followed. Last of all, Old Man O’Grady took his ship up to herassigned position at the end of the right wing.

  Looking ahead, Barry Blake thrilled at the sight of the other mightyFortresses flying in a perfect V of V’s. To his mind they spelledirresistible, smashing power—force which must, in the long run, blastall the little yellow invaders out of the Pacific.

  As the 600-mile distance to Rabaul narrowed, a tense expectancy grippedpilots and gunners. The squadron was flying at high bombing altitude,25,000 feet. Every man was in his place, for at any time now a swarm ofenemy planes might appear.

  The Japs were struggling grimly to keep their grip on New Britain,Barry knew. Many of their best fighter squadrons had been shifted therefrom other fronts, in the past few weeks.

  “Sixty miles still to go!” Curly Levitt’s warning came over theinterphone.

  O’Grady turned his head to glance at his co-pilot.

  “The Nips’ aircraft detectors have heard us by now,” he drawled.“They’re manning their guns, and sweating some, too, I reckon. A bunchof Zero fighters will be taking off to bother us on the way in.... Howdo you feel about it, Blake?”

  “As if I’d like a gun in my hands—or the lever that releases thebombs,” Barry laughed. “I feel just a little useless.”

  Tex O’Grady’s smile faded out. He gazed straight ahead.

  “You won’t be useless if anything happens to me, son,” he replied,gravely. “Keep your eyes peeled on every side now.... Those Zeros _may_not show up until after we’ve made our run, but you never can tell.”

  Sergeant Hale in the bomber’s nose began counting aloud through theinterphone.

  “—thirteen—fourteen—fifteen Zeros dead ahead, and a flight of threemore just above them. Here they come!”

  “Flights two, three and four, pull in closer!” barked the commandradio. “Wing men will step up—the others down—ready to repelattacking planes.”

  Glancing up and to the right, Barry caught sight of still another enemyflight arrowing down at the Fortresses. He nudged O’Grady and pointedwith his finger. The Old Man merely nodded. Keeping _Rosy_ in her placein the tight protective formation was his only task for the moment.

  _Sergeant Hale Counted Aloud Through the Interphone_]

  BR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R!

  With a chattering roar that cut through the engines’ thunder, _Rosy’s_nose, top turret, and side guns went into action. From the squadron’s.50-caliber machine guns burst a storm of white tracer bullets. Thesemingled briefly with the fire of the diving enemy. Then most of theZeros were below the flying forts.

  _Rosy O’Grady’s_ belly turret opened up, followed by Tony Romani’s firefrom the “stinger” turret in the tail. As it ceased, the thought cameto Barry Blake: “We’ve knocked them out of the sky! I thought thoseJaps were tough fighters, but this was like shooting clay pigeons.There’s nothing in sight but three Zeros torching down below—”

  A slamming explosion jarred the fuselage. Then the side gun manned byCurly Levitt chattered harshly. Out of the corner of his eye, Barry sawthe nearest Fortress stagger out of place in the V.

  “Pilot from top gunner!” Soapy Babbitt’s report came through thephones. “Turret damaged by enemy shells. Machine guns still fire, butcan’t aim.”

  “Are you hurt, Soapy?” the Old Man asked.

  “My left shoulder won’t work right,” came Babbitt’s reply. “Nothing toworry about. I’ll keep watch for more diving Zeros.”

  “Ready, Blake!” O’Grady spoke sharply. “Watch your throttles—we’renearing our targets now.”

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