CHAPTER FOUR

LIEUTENANT RIP VAN WINKLE

Chick’s actual elimination from basic training school did not occur for a few days. Captain Branch’s recommendation had to be confirmed by the Stage Commander, who first flew with the unhappy cadet in a final test. His report, duly filed with those of Chick’s instructors and his Flight Commander, must be reviewed at the next meeting of the elimination board. All this took time.

On the evening before Chick was to hear the verdict, Barry and Hap made a special effort to cheer him up.

“Being ‘washed out’ is no disgrace, fella,” Barry told him. “It doesn’t mean that you’re kicked out of the Air Forces—only that you can’t be a pilot. You’ll get your officer’s commission just the same, in some other classification. So why worry?”

Chick’s homely face cracked in a wan smile. He had not regained his natural color since the ground-loop that wrecked his plane. The freckles stood out more plainly than usual on his snub nose.

“I hope you’re right, Barry,” he said huskily. “It’s only ‘under the hood’ that I go to pieces. Ever since that time I got the itch in the Link Trainer, instrumentflying gives me the jitters. If it doesn’t carry over to advanced training school....”

“It won’t, Chick,” Hap Newton assured him stoutly. “What course have you picked for a first choice—Photography, Navigation, or Communications? You’re better than most in ‘buzzer’ code. Why don’t you ask for the advanced course in radio?”

“That would be my second choice, Hap,” Enders replied. “Bombardment’s my preference, though. Next to being a pilot, I’d like to dish it out to the enemy in big, explosive chunks. I’ve already told Captain Branch. He’ll put in a good word for me. And, listen, you bums! Don’t think I haven’t appreciated the way you’ve helped. A man’s got no right to be downhearted with a couple of friends like you.”

The next day Chick came into the room with a broad grin.

“Bombardment school for me!” he announced. “I’m leaving tonight. The board didn’t question Captain Branch’s recommendation. Now it’s all settled, I’m almost as happy as if I’d passed all my pilot tests. Only thing I hate is leaving you fellows, and—and the grand bunch of officers that we’ve had here at the Field. They tried to make me feel as iftheydidn’t like to say good-by, either.”

“They meant it, Chick!” Barry Blake exclaimed softly. “Student pilots aren’t just so much grist through the mill—not as our teaching officers see us. They’re real and personal friends of each cadetwho’ll meet them halfway. It’s a big honor to know men like that!”

Parting with Chick Enders was a hard wrench for his roommates. As he boarded the bus for San Antonio that evening, they realized that they might be seeing him for the last time. In a world war of many fronts only a rare coincidence would bring them all together again.

“Happy landings, you goons!” Chick gulped as he gripped their hands.

“Pick your targets, fella—and remember us when you’re dropping block-busters on Tokyo!” Barry replied.

“Yeh, we’ll be right behind you with some more of ’em!” grinned Hap Newton, as the bus door slammed shut.

A few days after Chick’s departure for bombardier school, graduation separated the two remaining roommates. Barry, whose cool, quick brain and steady nerves would have fitted him for either fighter or bombardment flying, was allowed to choose the latter. Hap Newton’s one hundred and eighty-five pounds removed him automatically from the pursuit class. Recommended to twin engine school at Ellington Field, he said good-by to Barry in the Flying Cadets’ Club in San Antonio.

“We’ll keep in touch, Hap,” Barry promised. “And there’s just a chance we’ll meet up before thiswar is over. Keep eager, you stick-mauler! I’m taking off for Kelly Field now!”

“Set ’em down easy, you old sky-jazzer!” Hap smiled. “If you don’t, I’ll come along and lay an egg right on your tail assembly.”

Barry Blake strode away with a lump in his throat. He’d have to get used to parting with good friends, he told himself. The Air Forces were like that. Sometimes a flier had to watch his squadron members torch down under enemy fire. That was a lot tougher than shaking hands for the last time, with a grin and a wisecrack. Time to lay a new course, now—for Kelly Field and a pair of silver wings!

For Barry, the nine weeks at Kelly Field passed even more swiftly than those at Randolph. His acquaintance among his fellow cadets widened considerably. Yet, perhaps unconsciously, he avoided making friends so intimate that good-bys would be painful.

From training planes he graduated to handling the steady, reliable B-25 bombers. Taking off, flying and landing these medium bombers presented problems quite different from those he had met at Randolph Field. Barry caught on quickly. Gathering every scrap of skill he had ever learned, his mind “sensed” the right maneuver, the correct touch on each control.

Barry Learned the Correct Touch on Each Control

“You’re cut out for a Fortress pilot, Blake,” his instructor told him. “You’re naturally methodical. At the same time you’re as quick to grasp a new emergency as any cadet I’ve ever seen. Tomorrow you’ll shift to the old B-17. She has no tail turret, but for training purposes she handles like the newer types.”

Barry was more thrilled than he cared to show. Since pre-flight school, he had envied the pilots who flew the big flying forts—the famous B-17F’s. When the hour came that he actually sat at the controls of his Fortress, he knew beyond all doubt that these were the ships for him. The quadruple thunder of the bomber’s 4,800 horses was sweeter in his ears than a pipe-organ fugue.

First, in the co-pilot’s seat, he learned the exact touch needed on the throttles, the turbos, the r.p.m. adjustment, to keep the winged giant’s airspeed constant. This, for accurate bombing, would be a most important factor. Next, he learned exactly how to follow the Boeing’s P. D. I., or pilot director indicator, which kept the ship straight on her course with not the slightest change of altitude, while the bombardier sighted his target.

His final lessons included setting down and taking off on small, rough fields. Under war conditions many a bomber pilot has escaped destruction by knowing just what his ship can do in a pinch. Barry Blake was now as ready as any training school could make him.

What he longed for now was actual combat—the take-off before dawn on a real bombing mission—the swift descent on the enemy city, camp, or convoy—the blasting of his bombs on the target—the sight of enemy fighter planes falling apart before his ship’s guns.

But where would it be? Europe, Africa, the South Pacific, or the Aleutian chain?

Barry had hoped for a few days’ furlough after receiving his commission. A week at home would be like a taste of paradise after these seven crowded months. Even five days with Dad and Mom and the kid sister would be worth the heartache of saying good-by again. Yet, at the last moment, he learned that this was not to be.

Like a flooding tide the mighty crest of America’s war effort was sweeping everything before it. More planes than ever were needed at the fighting front. More planes were going there—and that meant more pilots. Twenty-four hours was the limit of Barry Blake’s time at home.

It was all like a dream. Walking up Craryville’s old main street, Barry felt like a beardless Rip Van Winkle. He had left there a green kid of eighteen. Now, an inch taller and ten pounds heavier, he passed neighbors who didn’t know him—until he spoke. And, speaking to them, he hardly knew himself. Professor Blake’s gangling offspring, who’d been the high school valedictorian, who had jerkedsodas on Saturdays in the corner drug store—what had that self-conscious kid in common with Lieutenant Barry Blake, pilot of multi-engined bombing planes?

There was Mom and Dad. He’d never be different to them, or they to him. To the kid sister, he was a hero, of course, but Betty was only fourteen. She’d changed, too, in the past seven months. Barry wondered what in the world she’d be like when he came back again, after the war ... if hedidcome back. There wasn’t time for such thoughts, though. Half of his twenty-four hour visit was gone already!

When the train pulled out of Craryville next morning, Barry the high school kid was only a dim memory in the mind of Lieutenant Blake. His orders were to report at Seattle, Washington, where he would join the crew of a new B-17F as co-pilot. It was better, far better, to keep his thoughts fixed on that. Otherwise, recalling the good-bys just ended would be a bit too much to bear.

SWEET ROSY O’GRADY

His pulses pounding with excitement, Barry Blake gazed across the long runways of Boeing Field at his first fighting ship. The great Flying Fortress seemed to perch lightly on the ground, despite her twenty-odd tons. Her propellers were turning slowly, glinting in the sun like the blades of four gigantic sword dancers.

Despite her drab coat of Army paint Barry thought her beautiful. The slim, torpedo-like profile, the high, strong sweep of her tail assembly—even the fishy grin produced by her bombardier’s window and forward gun ports—thrilled her young co-pilot to the core. This was the ship of his dreams. Her name,Sweet Rosy O’Grady, was painted just above her transparent nose.

Hurrying forward, he saluted the long-legged, lean-faced pilot who stood by theRosy’sarmed tail.

The lengthy captain looked up from the postcard he was scribbling. He lifted a nonchalant hand.

“You’re Lieutenant Blake?” he said with a Texas drawl. “The rest of our crew are all here, getting acquainted with the ship. I was just dashing off a card to the real Rosy O’Grady—my wife. It’s finished.Come in and meet the others. Then we’ll be ready to take off.”

Inside the big bomber, Captain O’Grady introduced Barry to the six other members of the crew.

“Meet Lieutenant Aaron Levitt, better known as Curly,” the skipper invited. “He’s the smartest, and probably the handsomest, ex-lawyer in the Air Forces. Born in Manhattan.”

“Lower East Side,” Levitt added, giving Barry a cordial handclasp and a keen look. “Happy that you’re going to be one of us, Lieutenant.”

“... and this gent is our bombardier, Sergeant Daniel Hale. He’s of the old time Texas breed, in spite of hailing from Arizona and looking more like a shorthorn bull. His great-granddad died fighting in the Alamo.”

Barry pulled what was left of his hand from Sergeant Hale’s bone-crushing grip and turned to “Sergeant Fred Marmon of Glens Falls, New York—the head nurse in charge ofRosy’sroaring quadruplets.” The red-haired engineer-gunner chuckled as he acknowledged Barry’s greeting.

“Boy!” he exclaimed. “And do those 1200 horsepower babies keep a man busy! Some of ’em, that is. One engine will run like a dream for fifty or a hundred hours. Another will develop more ailments than a motherless child. I’m hoping these new engines will be the first kind, Lieutenant. If not—well, here are Sergeants Cracker Jackson and Soapy Babbittto help me out. They’re our top-turret and belly gunners, but they know a lot about aerial power plants, too.”

Last of all, Barry Blake met Tony Romani, the pint-sized tail gunner. The little corporal was as friendly as could be, but his sad, Latin eyes seemed to hold all the cares and worries which his crew mates laughingly discarded.

He was already hurrying back to his turret when Captain Tex O’Grady said, “Okay, boys! We’ll take her upstairs! I’ll mail this postcard to Mrs. O’Grady from Salt Lake City. If you have any letters to send you can drop them there. We’re heading west to the Orient.”

TheRosy’sfour big engines deepened their song of power as she rushed down the runway. She was a living, throbbing organism, but her personality was yet to be learned. Newly fledged from Boeing’s great hatchery of warbirds, she had still to get acquainted with her crew, and they with her.

Barry Blake sat alert in his co-pilot’s seat, checking the instruments, as the runway dropped away below him. At the skipper’s nod, he touched the lever that retracted the landing gear. He heard the wheels wind up with a smooth mechanical whine, and noted the time it took in seconds. Again he moved the lever, letting the wheels down and raising them back in place. He tested the action of the flaps, the engines’ response to their throttles, the revolutions-per-minuteof the props. In everything theRosy O’Gradybehaved as sweetly as any lady with such a name should do.

At Salt Lake City there was a short stop; then on they flew to San Antonio. Again Barry glimpsed the familiar countryside over which he and Chick Enders and Hap Newton had flown. The perfect green pattern of Randolph Field, with three or four flights of planes swinging over it, brought a homesick pang.

“We’ll never forget that scene, Mister,” the voice of Captain O’Grady broke into Barry’s thoughts. “I graduated from Randolph ten years ago, but it’s just like yesterday when I look back.”

“Those were the happiest weeks of my life,” Barry replied with a choke in his voice. “I know it now, though at the time it seemed a tough grind.”

Captain O’Grady turned one of his warm Irish grins on the young co-pilot.

“The real, tough grind,” he said, “will come when we reach our South Pacific base, I reckon. Barring accidents, the life of a fortress is about five or six months on the battlefront. Before it’s over we’ll all feel like graybeards, kid.”

TheRosymade one more stop at Tampa, Florida, where her engines were thoroughly checked and her tanks filled. Ahead of her stretched the long hop to Trinidad, off the northern coast of South America. If anything should go wrong, there were island bases in the Caribbean Sea where an emergency landingmight be made. But in aviation, an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of cure.

That evening in Tampa the crew had their last big restaurant meal for months to come. The following afternoon they took off despite storm warnings. There was no long last look at their native land. A few moments after theRosy’swheels had left the runway she was climbing through a heavy overcast of clouds.

As they roared over the southeastern tip of Cuba the weather cleared. Below them the Windward Passage lay, deep blue in the sunlight. Ahead rose the rugged mountain tops of Haiti.

Barry Blake felt a strange thrill as he gazed down into the jungle-clad valleys where not so many years ago United States Marines had hunted murderous voodoo worshipers. Somewhere in those dark gorges bloody voodoo rites were probably being performed at this very moment.

Invisible from the air the Haitian border was left behind. The dark green ranges of the Dominican Republic flowed past beneath theRosy’swings. Again the blue Caribbean stretched ahead of her.

Crossing the long thousand miles between Haiti and Trinidad they struck the worst weather yet encountered. At ten thousand feet the Fortress slammed into a black storm front.

It was worse than anyone had expected. The tumbling masses of air were like giant fists pummelingthe big ship. She bucked like a frightened horse, reared, stood on her nose, and shuddered.

Something struck the right wing from beneath, flipping theRosyover on her side, and off course. It was only air, though it felt to Barry like a collision with an express train. Tex O’Grady fought the controls with every ounce of strength in his big body. Muscles stood out in bunches on his lean jaw. In a flash of lightning Barry saw sweat streaming down the pilot’s face.

He glanced behind him. Lieutenant Levitt’s teeth showed in a fixed smile below his little moustache. In the lightning flashes the whites of his eyes showed clearly. Sergeant Hale’s big mouth was closed like a steel trap. Only Fred Marmon, the red-headed engineer, seemed to be enjoying himself. Meeting Barry’s eyes he winked, and waggled his fingers in a mocking gesture.

At that moment lightning struck the ship. Every light went off. The fuselage might have been the belly of a blasted submarine, pitch dark and battered by ceaseless depth charges. A beam of light touched the instrument panel. Barry Blake felt the cool barrel of a flashlight pressed into his hand.

“That will help you keep a check on your instruments!” Fred Marmon’s shout sounded in his ear.

Barry was grateful for his first chance to do something, however small, to help Tex. He watched the altimeter register a drop of five hundred feet, asteady climb of eight thousand, then another drop. In this fashion an hour passed.

All at once they were out of the storm. Clear moonlight shone through the plastic windows of the cockpit. The crew raised a hoarse cheer.

“Take over, Barry,” drawled Tex O’Grady’s voice. “I want to find out if I am still in one piece. WhenRosystarts bucking like that she’s tougher than any bronc I ever forked on my daddy’s ranch in Texas!”

Unfastening his safety belt, Captain O’Grady heaved his lanky frame out of the seat and went back to talk with the navigator. Barry swept his glance over the instrument board. He tried the controls, to feel out any possible storm damage. Satisfied that there was none, he looked below.

A sea of rolling, silvery clouds lay in every direction. It was beautiful, but menacing. The ceiling below that overcast, Barry judged, would be zero. It might hide either land or sea, hills or marshes, for all that anyone knew. The storm had carried theRosy O’Gradya number of miles off her course.

The four big engines’ steady drone of power sounded reassuring, until Barry remembered the last reading of the gas gauge before the lightning had knocked it out. There wasn’t enough left for fooling around, while theRosyfound out where she was.

After a few minutes, Captain Tex O’Grady loafed back to the cockpit.

“The radio’s out,” he told Barry. “That means wecan’t get cross bearings to find our position. Curly Levitt is getting a fix now on some stars. Trouble is, he’s afraid his octant may have been knocked out of kilter when it fell off the navigation table, back there in the storm. Why don’t you go back and cheer him up?”

Barry thanked the lanky pilot and unfastened his safety belt. He suspected that O’Grady was just giving him an opportunity to stretch his legs. If a fellow needed cheering up, nobody could do a better job of it than “Old Man” O’Grady himself.

Lieutenant Curly Levitt was up in the top turret sighting through his instrument when Barry stepped back.

“Three stars is enough for a fix,” he shouted above the engines’ thunder. “Just wait till I shoot Venus.”

“Better not—it might really be Sirius!” punned Barry. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Thanks,” replied the navigator, as he prepared to step down, “Just open your mouth again and I’ll put my foot in it.”

Barry dodged, just in time to tumble over Fred Marmon who “accidentally” happened to be crouched just behind him. As he picked himself up, even sad-eyed Tony Romani laughed. The crew’s tense nerves were relaxing. Whistling a few bars fromPagliacci, the mustachioed navigator went back to his desk.

Curly Levitt was still a bit worried, however. On the accuracy of his reckoning depended the life ofevery man on board. If he failed, the chances were excellent thatSweet Rosy O’Gradywould plunge to a watery grave the moment her gas supply gave out. At best she would crash in the Venezuelan jungle—unless, of course, the clouds broke up farther on and showed her crew a landing field.

“Check this reckoning with me, will you, Blake?” Levitt invited. “Then if there should be an error we can blame it on the wallop my octant took in the storm.”

“Okay!” Barry agreed. “If your octant is off, we’ll probably find it out too late to help ourselves. So don’t worry.”

Reckoning the fix is really a simple matter. At a given time only one point on the earth’s surface can be directly under any star. Using his octant, the navigator “shoots” or measures the elevation of two or more stars, and then figures out just where each “substellar” point is on the earth’s surface.

His next step is still easier. With his substellar points located on the map, he draws circles around them. One of the places where these circles intersect is the place where his plane was at the time the stars were “shot.” There is no real difficulty in guessing which intersection is the right one: the others are apt to be thousands of miles from his last known position.

Everything, of course, depends upon the accuracy of the star-shooting octant. This expensive and delicateinstrument will not always stand abuse such as Curly Levitt’s had taken. There was reason for the young ex-lawyer to be worried. He slipped on his headset and switched on the interphone. The click in his ears told him that it still worked.

“Pilot from navigator,” he said. “If I’m right we’re fifty miles due north of Cayo Grande. Our present compass course would take us just past the southern tip of Trinidad. That checks pretty well with my dead reckoning. I haven’t had an accurate drift reading since we banged into that front.”

“Navigator from pilot,” came the drawling reply. “Rosysays she’ll take your word for it. She likes your style, hombre, even if youarea lily-fingered product of the effete East. A man who can keepanysort of dead reckoning in a storm like the one we just rode through will do to cross the river with.”

For the next hour Barry flew the big bomber, while her “Old Man” dozed in his seat. Below them the clouds continued unbroken. The moonlight on their gleaming crests and ridges gave the young co-pilot a queer sensation. It was hard not to believe that he was guiding a fantastic ship over the surface of a strange planet, thousands of light-years from Earth. In the lightless cockpit nothing seemed real.

“You fool—snap out of it!” Barry found himself muttering. “You’re heading into dreamland with your throttles wide. And that blur on the window isn’t imagination—it’s oil!”

SUBMARINES TO THE RIGHT

“A cracked cylinder!” was Fred Marmon’s verdict, the minute he saw the oil spray on the window. “How near are we to landing, navigator?”

“Less than an hour,” Lieutenant Levitt answered, “provided there’s enough ceiling under those clouds.”

“I think there will be,” Captain O’Grady told them. “See! There’s a break in the overcast, dead ahead. We’ll go downstairs for a look.”

Taking over the controls, he nosed theRosydownward through the black hole in the clouds. A moment later Barry could see moonlight glinting on the wave crests.

At a thousand feet the Fortress leveled out. Above her the cloud scuff was breaking up rapidly.

“Got that radio damage located yet, Babbitt?” O’Grady asked through the interphone. “We really ought to let Trinidad know that we’re on our way in, so they won’t be throwing up a lot of flak at us.”

“I’ll have the trouble fixed in about five minutes, sir,” Soapy replied. “Good thing we have plenty of spare parts. What that freak lightning bolt did to us was a caution!”

Just ahead a dark land mass rose out of the sea.

“That’s the upper jaw of the ‘Dragon’s Mouth,’” O’Grady remarked. “Trinidad is just beyond. I’m going upstairs again, until Soapy gets our radio working.”

The big bomber nosed sharply upward. For a few moments she clawed her way in almost pitch darkness through a cloud. Then the moonlight shone clear through the windows.

Suddenly a shaft of brilliant light burst through a rent in the scuff below them. Other searchlights stabbed upward. A sharp detonation jarred the Fortress.

“Antiaircraft shell!” gruntedRosy’sOld Man. “Evidently they don’t like unidentified planes cruising over the airfield. We’d better spin off.”

WHAMM! BLAMM!

Two shells, still closer than the first, made the big plane rock. Tex O’Grady pulled the stick back between his knees and gave the engine full throttle.

“Guess those hombres mean business, Blake,” he chuckled. “How do you like being under fire for the first time?”

“I don’t know,” replied Barry with a forced grin. “Somehow it doesn’t seem quite real, being shot at by your own ground forces. The trouble is that those shells would hurt just as much as Jap flak.”

“Radio’s Okay, Sir!” Came Soapy Babbitt’s Voice

“Radio’s okay, sir!” came Soapy Babbitt’s voice. “What’ll I send?”

“Identification signals first,” the Old Man replied. “Explain what happened to our radio and lights. Then tell ’em to switch on the floodlights, so we can land before the oil from that cracked engine cylinder drowns us.”

Soapy was still talking into his radio when the searchlights behind them switched off. O’Grady nosed down. In a moment floodlights lighted up the field a few miles distant. TheRosylanded lightly for all her massiveness, and braked to a smooth stop.

“Yahoo!Me for some hot coffee!” whooped her Old Man, reaching for the entrance hatch. “Last man to the office buys for the whole bunch!”

Six days were spent in Trinidad, replacing the cracked cylinder and repairing the lightning’s damage to the electrical system. On the seventh dayRosyhopped off on her long trip across the Atlantic to Freetown, Africa.

This time she carried a few bombs. It was Sergeant Hale’s hope that they might sight a Nazi U-boat on the crossing. The chance, of course, was one in a million. However, watching for a target would help to dispel the monotony of the trip.

The weather was perfect—not a single bump in the air. With “George,” the automatic gyro, taking care of their flying, the pilots had little to do. By turns, they napped, lunched, listened to the radio, played games with the others of the crew. Even Fred Marmon had a soft snap, forRosy’shungry “quadruplets” were sucking their gas without a whimper.

Only Sergeant Hale, the bombardier, refused to join his crewmates in killing time. Stretched at full length in the plane’s transparent nose, he stared fixedly at the sea.

“Danny is a born hunter,” the Old Man observed. “Reckon he learned his patience from the Texas Apaches. They’ll lie ten hours in one spot without moving, waiting for a deer to pass a runway.”

They were just six hours out from Trinidad when Hale gave a bellow of discovery. Gazing down and ahead, Barry saw a convoy of twenty merchant ships, escorted by two destroyers and three corvettes. The intensified Nazi submarine attacks had made heavy protection necessary, he reasoned.

“We’ll go down and say hello to them,” said the captain, fastening his safety belt. “Maybe it will cheer them up to seeSweet Rosy O’Gradydropping them a curtsy, even if she can’t stick around.”

With engines throttled down, the bomber dropped toward the crawling convoy. Fascinated, Barry Blake watched the toy-like ships grow larger. Now he could make out the British flags and the tiny figures of the antiaircraft gun crews in their tin nests on the superstructures.

“I hope no cockeyed gunner takes us for an enemy and cuts loose,” he thought. “That wouldn’t be any fun at all—”

“Submarines to the right!” yelled Sergeant DannyHale. “I can see their shadows just under the surface, Captain. And look—they’ve just fired two torpedoes! Let’s smash ’em!”

“You bet your sweet neck we will!” answered the Old Man. “Take over the throttles, Blake. Watch your r.p.m. We’ll give Hale a target he can’t miss.... Sergeant Babbitt, signal the convoy that we’re not bombingthem!”

The Fortress leveled out at 500 feet. Glancing down, Barry saw the deck of a freighter immediately beneath him. He could almost catch the expressions on the upturned faces of her crew. His eyes came back to his instruments and clung to them.

“Bombs away!” yelled Hale’s voice in the interphone. “Give me a run at the other one, Captain.”

WHOOM! BR-ROOM!

As the Fortress zoomed sharply, the two bomb explosions buffeted her. She staggered, gained altitude, banked, and turned.

WHAMM! A torpedo had struck. Flame blossomed from the sides of the freighter. Another ship was dodging the second “tin fish.”

Searching the water for the submarines’ shadows, Barry spotted one, but it looked misshapen, seen through the spreading ring of the bomb burst. Then he found the other. It was less distinct, evidently diving at top speed. That was the next target.

Between it and the convoy, a destroyer was circling like an excited hound. She was waiting, Barry realized,forRosy’snext run. The corvettes were threading their way through the mass of slower freighters, to be in at the kill.

“Steady, Blake—here we go again!” warned Captain O’Grady. “If that Hun is too deep for our bombs to hurt him, the explosion will spot his dive for the destroyer. Her depth charges will get him for sure.”

WHR-R-ROOM! BOOM!

TheRosy’ssecond run was still lower. The explosions made her aluminum skin crackle like an empty oil can. Suddenly Barry glimpsed the mast of a freighter spearing up at the bomber’s nose. He gave her full throttle. The mast flashed beneath—seemingly with mere inches of clearance.

“Upstairs” again, the fortress’s crew had a grandstand view of the submarine’s finish. The destroyer raced toward the mark left byRosy’slast bombs. She dumped a depth charge off her stem. Her Y-guns pitched two more “ash cans,” bracketing the spot. A fourth and last depth charge completed the square.

Behind her, the corvettes darted to the oil slick that now spread over Sergeant Hale’s first target, and dropped two more charges for good measure.

“Pilot from radioman,” Soapy Babbitt’s voice crackled on the interphone. “The destroyer’s commander sends us his congratulations and thanks. He thinks we bagged the second sub, too. Wishes we could stay with him for the rest of the voyage.”

“I reckon he’s telling the truth,” chuckledRosy’sOld Man. “Those undersea wolves have been hanging right at the heels of every convoy lately. They hunt in packs. We’ll just swing around the outskirts of this floating freight train and see if Danny Hale can spot any more suspicious shadows.”

The Fortress banked slightly in a slow turn, describing a twenty-mile circle around the convoy. As she swung back again, Barry could see the result of one torpedo hit.

The freighter had been struck on the starboard side near the bow. She was slightly down by the head. Smoke was still rising from her forecastle, but she still kept her place in line. Her life-boats were in place, with nobody near them. Evidently her crew had no other thought than to take her to port.

“There’s the second oil slick, Captain!” Hale called. “We got both those U-boats. Yip-yip-yippee!”

As the bombardier’s coyote howl shrilled in his earphones, Barry Blake laughed outright. Like every man on board he felt pretty cocky. Already their ship had been under fire. Now she had drawn first blood, sinking at least one enemy submarine without help. The world was their oyster, waiting to be cracked wide open when they reached the battlefront.

With a final waggle of their broad wings,Sweet Rosy O’Gradyturned her back on the convoy and headed eastward on her course. A chorus of grateful whistles followed her. Owing to the thunder of herown engines, her crew could not hear the freighter’s salutes, but Tony Romani in the tail turret reported seeing the puffs of white steam.

The sinking of the subs provided conversation to last Barry and his companions for most of the trip. They were still comparing notes when the sun set. That put an end to Sergeant Hale’s sea-gazing.

Supper was supplied from thermos jugs and a box of sandwiches. Afterwards, Curly Levitt took a fix from the stars, and made a slight correction in their compass course. The engines were behaving so beautifully that their red-headed nurse, Fred, began to be bored. He roamed from tail turret to cockpit playing small practical jokes on everyone, until the Old Man told him to spin off.

By midnight everyone but Captain O’Grady was dozing. His co-pilot was sound asleep in his seat. He was waked by the first red beams of the sun rising over Africa. That was another thrill for Barry Blake—watching the shoreline of a foreign continent loom up out of the horizon. He slapped on his earphones in time to hear Curly Levitt giving the Old Man another change of course—this time to the north.

A few minutes later the deep harbor of Freetown took shape beneath them. Soapy Babbitt, contacting the RAF field, received permission to come in and land. The first of their long, transoceanic hops was safely ended.

RAID ON RABAUL

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

A two-day rest putRosyin first-class shape. Her engines were thoroughly broken in. Her mighty framework had been tested in action. Now it remained for her guns and gun turrets to be tried out under combat conditions.

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

Six thousand miles still remained between them and the Indian battlefront to which they had been ordered. The route would lie across Nigeria to Lake Tchad, then northwest to the Egyptian Sudan and down the Nile to Cairo. From there they would fly eastward in easy hops over Iran and India, till theyreached their assigned base.

That was the plan; but in wartime the plans of mice and men are especially subject to change. A few hours before his take-off from Accra, radioed orders reached Captain O’Grady to head for Australia and the South Pacific. Heavy bombers were more urgently needed there, it appeared. And that meantSweet Rosy O’Grady!

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ostriches—ha, ha!” Tex O’Grady chuckled. “We’re not that near to Australia, Bub. Those long-necked critters you see aregiraffes. Want me to prove it to you?”

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

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

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

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

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

It was dark when the Flying Fortress reached Dar-es-Salam on the east coast. The next day, after servicing, theRosy O’Gradyhopped off across the Mozambique Channel. That same afternoon she landed at Tananarivo, Madagascar’s mountain capital, where the Fighting French had 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’Grady informed his crew. “Next stop will be Broome, Australia. Marmon and Jackson, you will make an especially close check on the engines. Take your time about it. Better to spend an extra day here than a month on rubber rafts somewhere in the Indian Ocean.”

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

They took off just at dawn. Soon they were out of sight of land, and from then on the trip became a long fight against boredom. Half of the way they flew on two engines, to economize on gas. The big bomber loafed along at five thousand feet, except on two occasions when she sighted squalls and had to dodge them. Before the trip was ended most of theRosy’screw would have welcomed a storm to break the monotony.

They landed at Broome, on Australia’s southwest tip, with plenty of gas to spare. The next day they headed northeastward, across the continent. Stopping at an American base in northern Queensland, they gassed up and hopped 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 New Guinea jungle with the help of native labor. On the dirt runway Old Man O’Grady set his ship down like a cat on velvet. The moment she stopped he let out an old-time “rebel” yell.

When Barry and Fred Marmon climbed out last, after making their final checks, theRosy’sred-haired engineer looked scornfully around him. In mock disgust, he stared at a group of men filling in a big, raw hole with shovels.

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

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

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

The screaming of shells, each followed instantly by an earth-shaking blast, produced a nightmare of horror for the unseasoned men. Not one of them gave way to fear, however. The most upset man in the tent was Tex O’Grady, who paced up and down between the cots, worrying about his ship and fighting mosquitoes. He couldn’t getRosyinto the air, because the field had no lights as yet.

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

WHANG!

A shell burst, nearer than any before it; tossed chunks of earth through 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’re not as big a target asRosy, but you’ll be safer on your cot.”

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

The damage to ships on the flying field was comparatively light. One bomber had received a direct hit. Three more were damaged by shell fragments.Sweet Rosy O’Gradyhad escaped without a scratch. The worst tragedy was the killing of a twin-engined bomber’s crew when a shell exploded in their tent. Seven men had been sleeping there. All that 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 friends ready 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 a bombing mission that day, theRosy’screw cheered like maniacs.

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

BeforeRosyhad taken her last five-hundred pound egg on board the squadron commander was racing his Fortress down the runway. The other ten followed. Last of all, Old Man O’Grady took his ship up to her assigned position at the end of the right wing.

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

As the 600-mile distance to Rabaul narrowed, a tense expectancy gripped pilots 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 of enemy 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 there from other fronts, in the past few weeks.

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

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 bunch of Zero fighters will be taking off to bother us on the way in.... How do you feel about it, Blake?”

“As if I’d like a gun in my hands—or the lever that releases the bombs,” 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 Zerosmaynot 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 the interphone.

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

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

Glancing up and to the right, Barry caught sight of still another enemy flight arrowing down at the Fortresses. He nudged O’Grady and pointed with his finger. The Old Man merely nodded. KeepingRosyin her place in the tight protective formation was his only task for the moment.

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