CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DOGFIGHTING FORTRESS

DOGFIGHTING FORTRESS

DOGFIGHTING FORTRESS

Three days passed without news of any Jap naval maneuvers. That was not surprising, for the weather was frightful. The regular bombing runs from Henderson Field to Rabaul and Gasmata had been called off because of it. Two reconnaissance planes were missing—probably wrecked by those unspeakably fierce South Pacific squalls. It seemed unlikely that enemy warships would be out.

Nevertheless, Colonel Bullock was nervous.

“The Japs have used bad weather as a screen for their movements before now,” he pointed out to Barry Blake. “If they wanted to risk getting off course and piling up on a reef, they could sneak up within striking distance of this coast, and land their troops when the fog lifts.”

“Sweet Rosy O’Gradyis ready to take off the minute you give permission, sir,” Barry responded. “We’ll gladly take the chance of running into a squall. All of us would rather be upstairs fighting the weather than stewing in our own juice down here.”

The colonel met Barry’s eyes, and grinned.

“You mean you’d risk anything for a chance tobomb the Japs,” he chuckled. “All right, Blake! You can take off at dawn tomorrow, wind or no wind. Head eastward toward Rabaul, then swing around by the Admiralty Islands. The Japs might even send a convoy from Truk, their big base to the north.”

Rosy O’Grady’screw was jubilant when they heard the order. The fog, the bugs, the everlasting sticky heat of Mau River made idleness a torture. That night they crawled under their mosquito bars and fell sound asleep without the usual “bull session” of complaints.

The fog had lifted a little when they finished their pre-dawn breakfast and headed for the runway.Rosy’sfour engines were whooping it up as the greaseballs warmed them.

“That’s real music!” Fred Marmon shouted to Barry. “If they run as sweetly as that today, no storm’s going to worry us.”

“She’s bombed up. I saw to that last night,” said Chick Enders at Barry’s elbow. “They’re all half-ton babies. If we should spot a Jap convoy, we’ll be set to slam it.”

“If!” repeated Curly Levitt, the navigator. “It’s a pretty big ‘if,’ even granting that there is a convoy at sea. There won’t be many holes in this cloud ceiling, I’m afraid....”

His voice faded out beneath the thunder of five thousand horses, asRosy O’Gradystrained at her braked wheels. The engine roar died down suddenly,a moment later, and the mechanics slid out of the hatch. The sergeant in charge made a circle with his thumb and finger, indicating “Okay!” Barry Blake nodded, and plunged intoRosy’sdim interior.

The runway was a vaguely lighter strip down the center of the field as they took off. It dropped away, as lightly as a streak of fog. Hap Newton touched the lever that raised the wheels. Suddenly the blanketing mist closed them in completely.

For the first hour Barry flew by instruments. Then, just off the western tip of New Britain, the air about them cleared. No loom of Arabia ever wove such gorgeous colors as the rising sun now spread over the cloud rug belowRosy’sbroad wings. Among deep blue shadows the rolling vapors gleamed with gold and pink.

In the bomber’s transparent nose, Chick Enders gazed at the scene, open-mouthed.

“Fellows,” he said in a voice of wonder. “That’s a sight worth any flier’s life. It’s Heaven’s art work, fresh from the hand of God!”

Nobody else spoke. Chick Enders had expressed the feeling of every man in the plane who had a view of the colors below. Soon, however, the cloud painting changed, the gold growing whiter and more brilliant, the blue and pink fading out.

Fifty miles farther on a gap appeared, and through it the white-capped ocean. For nearly an hour the water remained in sight. A hundred miles fromRabaul the ceiling closed again, and Barry turned his Fortress back on the second leg of a big triangle.

No more breaks appeared until they were halfway to the Admiralty Islands. Here the clouds were higher, with small gaps in them that opened and closed as the winds whipped the masses of vapor along. Below them the ceiling seemed to be several hundred feet above the sea.

“I’m going down, Hap,” Barry Blake announced. “We won’t be able to see as far as we’d like to, but we’re doing no good up here above the ceiling. Besides, I have a hunch....”

“Play it, then,” Hap Newton advised. “In this game a bit of a hunch is sometimes worth a barrel of reasoning. Chick, be ready with that bombsight! We might come out right over a Jap battlewagon!”

The bomber sank through the fluffy cloud mass like a swooping eagle. For a moment her pilots could see nothing outside. Barry kept his eyes glued to the altimeter: a thousand feet, nine hundred, eight hundred—Suddenly they were through, with the rolling ocean so near that its white-topped waves seemed to reach up for them.

Hastily Barry pulled out of his shallow dive, and climbed for the clouds. His hunch had been right, as the shouts of Hap Newton and Chick attested. Spread out over a twenty mile area were a dozen large vessels.

“The Jap convoy!” Hap cried. “No doubt aboutit—they’re heading southwest toward New Guinea. Let’s give ’em all we’ve got—”

CRANG!

The blast of a small-caliber shell insideRosy’sfuselage shocked her crew into grim alertness. Two seconds later her top turret guns chattered. Empty shell cases tumbled smoking to the floor behind Barry, as he zoomed the Fortress into the nearest mass of clouds.

“Where is he, Soapy?” the young pilot asked through clenched teeth.

“Right on the other side of this cloud, last I saw of him,” replied the radioman-gunner. “He’s a big Jap twin-float bomber ... looks like anAichiT98.”

“Two 20-mm. cannon and four fixed wing guns,” stated Barry, recalling what he had learned of the T98’s armament. “Unless he gets in some lucky shots our .50-calibers ought to be a match for him. We’re going after that baby, and blast him out of the air!”

The broken clouds opened out suddenly, revealing the two planes flying almost abreast, and barely a stone’s throw apart. They opened fire together. Now it wasRosy O’Grady’sfull broadside that came into play—nose, tail and side guns, spitting bullets that could chew chunks out of railroad tracks.

Rows of holes like stitching appeared here and there in theAichi’sfuselage, but the “greenhouse” of the Jap plane appeared bulletproof.Rosy’sslugs struck it and bounced away at right angles. Insidecould be seen the Jap gunners, hunched over their weapons, their faces drawn and tense. Smoke drifted from the hot muzzles of their cannon.

Rosy O’Gradywas taking punishment. Her fin and rudder looked like a slice of Swiss cheese. Shell holes gaped in her fuselage. Shell fragments were whizzing about her interior—thin, jagged bits of steel with cutting edges. Every gunner was nicked and bleeding, yet all stuck by their guns.

The Jap was catching plenty of trouble, too. His left hand engine was smoking, and his forward cannon appeared to be damaged or jammed. He made a swift, left hand turn, trying to escapeRosy’sbroadside.

Barry saw theAichi’splay, and countered it. The huge Fortress seemed to pivot inside the Jap’s half circle. The strain of that sudden turn would have broken anything but a fighter or a Fortress in two, butRosytook it. Her deadly broadside kept hammering the now-frightened Jap.

TheAichinosed up, disappearing behind a long streak of cloud. The shuddering racket ofRosy’s.50-calibers stopped. Barry Blake wiped the blood off his forehead, where a ricocheting shell fragment had cut him. He winked at Hap Newton, who smiled back despite a sliced cheek.

“Ball turret from pilot,” he said into the interphone. “Watch out for a trick. That Jap might try to dive below us and rip at our belly....There he goes now!.”

Shell Fragments Whizzed About the Plane’s Interior

Shell Fragments Whizzed About the Plane’s Interior

Shell Fragments Whizzed About the Plane’s Interior

“I see him, sir!” said Cracker Jackson, as his bottom guns opened up.

Barry shoved the wheel forward sharply, diving after the Jap. Smoke from theAichi’sleft engine was drifting back to blend with the powder smoke of her rear cannon. A shell slammed into Chick Enders’ left gun with a crack that resounded through the plane.

Chick lost balance as Barry pulled out of the dive, barely two hundred feet above the water. The little bombardier shook his numbed fingers, grabbed the right-hand machine gun and swung it broadside. Again the two planes were flying side by side, but the Jap was licked.

Flame burst from his crippled engine. A front panel of his “greenhouse” collapsed. He swerved wildly, nosed downward, and struck the water with a terrific splash.

Barry zoomed his ship as steeply as he dared. In that last minute of dogfighting he had flown within two thousand yards of a Jap cruiser. Tracer shells from the warship were streaking the air about him.

In a tight climbing turn the big Fortress dodged, heading for the protecting overcast of clouds. If one of those five-inch naval shells hit her, she would be a dead duck, and every man aboard her knew it.

Chick Enders was not satisfied with mere escape. He turned to his pilot with a pleading expression.

“Give me one crack at that warship, Barry,” he begged. “What’s the use of coming out with a full bomb load if we’ve got to take it all back?”

Barry banked his plane, and climbed again. The clouds enfolded the battle-torn Fortress like soft fleece.

“All right, Chick,” he consented. “I’ll give you a crack at something, but not when they’ve got us pinned to the wall. It’s more important to get the report of this convoy back to headquarters than to sink a ship. Soapy, get on the air and let me talk to the base.”

Circling at reduced speed within the sheltering cloud blanket, Barry radioed a brief report of the convoy’s location, direction, and probable size.

“Shot down twin-floatAichiT98 that attacked us,” he concluded. “We’re going back to leave a few calling cards on the Jap’s decks.”

Roaring down through the ceiling, Barry spotted the circle of flame that still marked the grave of theAichi. Two vessels of the convoy were steaming past it on either side. The nearer was a big, troop-carrying destroyer. The farther was a cargo vessel of six thousand tons.

“We’ll take the destroyer first,” yelped Chick Enders, cuddling his bombsight.

They were so near that the Jap gunners had no time to swing their heavier guns. The shots that they aimed flew wild. Already the destroyer’s deck wasalmost beneath. From stern to bowRosy O’Grady’sshadow swept over the doomed warship.

The thousand-pound bomb went through her deck as through paper, and exploded in her bowels. The destroyer broke in two, spewing into the waves shapeless things that had been men and machinery.

“Now for that cargo tub!” cried Chick, his voice high pitched with excitement.

Barry banked around and came at the Jap freighter head-on. It was a dangerous maneuver, for a cruiser scarcely a mile away had opened fire. Flak was coming near enough to make the air bumpy, and there was no chance to dodge while making a bombing run. Barry hugged tight to the ceiling at a scant thousand feet.

“I’ll go over at eight hundred, Chick,” he said quickly. “They’re shooting too close.”

Before he had finished speaking, Chick’s fingers were busy at the bombsight’s knobs, compensating for the intended drop. The Fortress dipped abruptly. The freighter’s deck flashed beneath. Two hundred feet above, the cruiser’s shells burst—whereRosywould have been, had not Barry changed his altitude at the right instant.

The shock of them was almost simultaneous with the wallop of the bomb blast. Chick had laid his half-ton “egg” on the freighter’s stern, blowing it clean off. As the vessel settled in the water a column of smoke and flame poured upward from the torndeck.

“Good boy, Chick!” said Barry quietly. “And now we’ll take that somewhat despised but highly appropriate action known asscramming. The whole task force will be gunning for us now—not to mention whatever planes the Jap cruiser may try to launch.”

Hap Newton turned and waved mockingly astern.

“Don’t worry, Tojo—we’ll be back, with plenty of company,” he said. “You’re going to be honorable shark-meat about twenty-four hours from now!”

Sweet Rosy O’Gradyplunged into the clouds and leveled off for Mau River, three hundred miles away. The wet mist whipped through her gaping wounds. The torn edges of her metal skin hummed and shrieked in the wind, but her four mighty engines thundered in unbroken harmony. She was still fit to fight.

“Speaking of shark-meat,” Fred Marmon’s voice came over the interphone, “would somebody be kind enough to slap a bandage on my back? It feels like a cubed steak.”

“I’ll do it, Fred, if you’ll tie up my right shoulder,” Curly Levitt responded. “I’ve got the first-aid kit here.... Anybody else need patching up?”

“My ear feels like something the cat brought in,” came Tony Romani’s voice from the tail turret. “I think there’s some shrapnel sticking in my ribs, too, but that can wait. You fellows fix yourselves up first.”

All of the crew had some wounds, but none of them were dangerous.Rosy’spilots had escaped with scratches. Chick Enders had a bruised hand and a cut on his leg. Their hurts were just enough to get them “warmed up for a real fight,” as Hap Newton put it.

“When we land, we’ll stick withRosyuntil she’s bombed and serviced for another run,” Chick suggested. “Only the pilots need to report to Colonel Bullock, and he won’t ground them for a couple of scratched faces. That way, we can take off with the other planes for the all-out attack.”

The plan was unanimously approved, but it was doomed to failure.Rosy O’Gradymade a three-point landing, like the perfect lady she was, but as she rolled to a stop, Chick Enders groaned.

“There’s Colonel Bullock coming out to us in the jeep!” he exclaimed. “He’ll never let us take off without a real inspection. And that means we’ll miss the big fight!”

SLAUGHTER FROM THE AIR

SLAUGHTER FROM THE AIR

SLAUGHTER FROM THE AIR

Chick Enders’ prediction was only partly right. Colonel Bullock did orderSweet Rosy O’Gradyand her fighting crew grounded for temporary repairs. But it was only for the rest of that day and night. To smash the Jap task force utterly, every bomber that could fly would be needed.

“Get those wounds dressed at once,” he ordered the eight bloodstained ragamuffins who faced him nearRosy’sshell-torn fuselage. “Then report to the mess shack. Fill your stomachs and hit the hay. If you’re all fit for duty tomorrow morning I’ll let you fly. And—er—congratulations on spotting that Jap task force, Blake! You’ve probably saved us a lot of ships and fighting men.”

Barry took the officer’s proffered hand, with an embarrassed smile.

“I was just playing a hunch, sir,” he murmured. “Chick—I mean, Lieutenant Enders—did the real job. He sank a big destroyer and blew the stern off a cargo vessel before we had to clear out. And the other boys knocked thatAichiT98 out of the sky—simply chewed her to junk!”

“My congratulations were meant for all of you,Lieutenant,” the colonel replied with a twinkle in his eye. “And so are the orders I just gave.Dismissed!”

As Barry and his friends moved wearily toward the hospital tent, a squadron of Mitchell bombers passed over, heading out to sea. The ceiling had lifted to three thousand feet. If it stayed there, Barry thought, the planes would have little trouble in spotting the Jap convoy.

The field, he noted, was almost empty of planes. Evidently they had taken off right after his radioed report. The Japs would catch plenty of grief before darkness shut down, but the real pay-off would be tomorrow. By that time Allied airfields from all over eastern New Guinea as well as Australia and the Solomons would be sending planes to the attack. The Japs would meet them with swarms of their own land-based fighters. A gigantic air-and-sea battle would be on, with the outcome impossible to guess.

Much the same thing was passing through the minds of all the crew, but they were suddenly too tired to talk about it. The tension of battle had broken. Now they were conscious chiefly of stiffening wounds and the deep, physical craving for food and sleep.

The night passed in dreamless oblivion. It seemed to Barry that he had just closed his eyes when the bugle routed him out of bed. He glanced unbelievingly at his watch. Yes, the hands stood at five-fifteen—halfan hour before dawn!

“Roll out of it, Chick, Hap, Curly!” he called. “This is our big day. If we’re not out there in time, I bet youRosy O’Gradywill take off without us!”

Groans and yelps answered him, as the tent mates moved their sore bodies and found them more painful than the night before.

“Come on!” urged their young pilot. “Snap out of it or I’ll report the whole crew on the sick list. We’ll miss our crack at the Japs, but—”

He saw a boot come sailing from Hap’s side of the tent, and ducked just in time.

“All right, all right!” he laughed. “I’ll see you lazy birds on the runway, if you’re too late for mess call. So long!”

Hap Newton’s other boot caught him as he hurried out of the tent. He picked it up, but paused in the act of throwing it back.

“Setting up drill at this time of the morning, Lieutenant?” said Colonel Bullock’s voice behind him.

“No, sir—getting-up drill is more like it,” Barry replied. “My crew slept too hard last night, and they’re still in a fog.”

“Harrumph! I envy them!” grunted the colonel. “Couldn’t sleep at all myself, last night.... But I have good news for you, Blake. Your ship has passed every quick test for serious damage, and except for the holes that there wasn’t time to patch, she’s fit to fly. That damaged machine gun in the nose has beenreplaced. She’s been bombed up and serviced. I’m counting on her—and you men—to give the Japs a very special pasting today.”

“We’ll do that, sir, and—er—thank you for giving us so much of your time and thought,” Barry responded. “Are we taking off with the squadron this time?”

“Yes. Extreme right wing position,” Colonel Bullock told him. “The take-off is in thirty minutes.”

Barry saluted and watched the officer’s tall, still youthful figure stride away in the twilight. Behind him the crew were piling out of the tent.

“Just time to eat and run, fellows,” he said, turning toward the mess shack. “The squadron takes off at six.”

Clear sunlight gleamed through the bottle-green crests of the big combers that tossed and battered the Jap task force. Gone was the protecting blanket of clouds. Gone, too, was any hope in the mind of the Jap admiral that he could sneak up on the Allied bases without a costly attack from the air. Yet his words were confident as he issued his orders to the flotilla.

A second convoy of fourteen vessels had joined his ten during the night. With their added strength he felt certain of success.

“Inform the honorable captains that they will close the intervals between their ships to five hundredyards,” he told his chief executive officer. “Our massed antiaircraft, plus the umbrella of our land-based fighter planes, will beat off any air attack our enemies may make. In fact, we shall utterly destroy them.”

The executive bowed and hissed politely.

“We shall destroy them utterly,” he repeated. “Banzai!”

Green water crashed on the forecastle as the flagship buried her bow under a giant comber. The cruiser shuddered, heaved, and shook herself free. The bow rose higher, higher, until the steel warship seemed to those on deck as if she were going to stand upright on her propellers.

Again her foredeck dipped, rolled, plunged into the trough of a mighty sea. The antiaircraft crews balanced themselves calmly on sea-trained legs. Their eyes never left the reeling sky above them. They breathed deeply, fingering the cold steel of their weapons, waiting for the targets they knew would soon appear.

It was a different story below the wave-washed decks of the troop transport ships. There, packed in the stifling holds like sardines, eighteen thousand Jap infantrymen gagged and groaned. The throes of seasickness gripped officers and men alike. It was not deadly, they had been told, but it made them long for death. Only their inbred habit of obedience had kept them from shooting themselves or committinghara kirithrough the past week of inglorious suffering.

Suddenly the flotilla’s antiaircraft opened fire with a concerted roar. The transports’ long range guns joined it. Their barking reports made the thin steel hulls quiver. Then came the bombs.

One struck an 8,000-ton troopship aft of the bridge. A thousand Jap soldiers died in the flaming inferno it made. Live steam from the wrecked engine room cooked fifty other men alive.

A second bomb blasted the stricken vessel. Its superstructure leaped into the air and fell overside in twisted pieces. The ship itself rolled, broke apart, and sank.

That second bomb was a credit to Chick Enders’ marksmanship. From a three-mile height he had hit the wave-tossed Jap ship with the accuracy of a sharpshooter. He had done it, flying through air that was bumpy with antiaircraft bursts, ignoring the darting Zero fighters that stabbed at his ship from above.

Soapy Babbitt in the top turret and Tony Romani in the tail were not ignoring the hornet-like Jap Zeros. While Barry, Hap and Chick were concentrating on their first bombing run, they knocked down a plane apiece.

The Flying Fortress squadron had dispersed, and its members were making individual runs over the flotilla. Now, however, the Jap flak was forcing them to fly higher. One bomber already was down in thesea. Several others had been nicked by shrapnel.Rosy O’Grady’sstabilizer showed ragged holes, and Cracker Jackson had been stunned by a direct hit on the ball turret.

“We’re going upstairs, too,” Barry Blake decided. “We won’t make so many hits, but we’ll make the Japs disperse, so their flak won’t be so concentrated.”

“That suits us gunners, Lieutenant,” Fred Marmon spoke up. “We’ll pick off a few more Zeros up there where our Lockheed Lightnings are dogfighting.”

The Jap “cover” of fighting planes certainly looked as if a tornado had struck it. The deadly but unarmored little fighters were torching down all over the sky. Others were fleeing back toward their New Guinea bases, glad of an excuse to return for gas. The reason was simple: plane for plane and pilot for pilot, our forces were better. When the Fortresses got “upstairs” there was not much opposition to deal with.

Rosy O’Gradymade three more runs before the first wave of AustralianHavocbombers arrived beneath her. Skimming the sea at mast-height, the twin-engined attack bombers strafed the Jap decks with a terrible hail of bullets. They passed over, from stern to stem, and dropped their bombs at point-blank range—sometimes down the enemy’s smokestacks.

On their heels came the North American B-26Mitchells, repeating the same tactics, with even greater effect. Back and forth like a great broom of destruction they swept across the Jap flotilla. Enemy gunners withered and died under blast after blast of hot lead. Those who survived tried desperately to swing their heavier guns into action, but that was like trying to shoot mosquitoes with a pistol.

Now, all over a forty-mile area, Jap ships were blazing. Barry saw three of them sink before Chick emptied the bomb racks with near misses on a dodging destroyer.

“We’ll go back for another load,” he said, turning the Fortress’s nose homeward. “How’s Cracker Jackson?”

“Coming out of it,” was Curly Levitt’s reply. “His right arm’s broken above the elbow, and his nose is banged up. The ball turret took an awful wallop from that ack-ack shell.”

“Better our ball turret than our bomb bay!” Hap Newton remarked grimly. “We could have gone out in a blaze of glory if that shell had hit a few feet forward.”

Much to Cracker Jackson’s distress, his friends took him to the hospital tent the moment they landed at Mau River.

“Have a heart, Lieutenant!” he begged Barry. “This bum wing feels fine in a sling, and I could shoot my left gun with my left hand. Please let me go along this trip.”

Barry shook his head.

“That’s a compound fracture, man!” he replied. “If you don’t get proper treatment now, it may gangrene. Besides, your nose is swollen so big that you couldn’t see around it to shoot. Lieutenant Levitt will man your turret if necessary.”

They left him, still protesting, in care of the field doctor.

“As a matter of fact,” Curly Levitt said when they were out of hearing, “Jackson’s turret is so banged up that it’s useless. It won’t turn, and only one gun will fire. I didn’t tell him, because he would worry about our going back without belly protection.”

No more than six Jap vessels were still in the fight whenRosy O’Gradyreturned with a fresh bomb load. One cruiser, four destroyers and a small cargo ship made up the half dozen. They were scattered many miles apart, each trying to make good its own escape. Between them the sea was covered with rafts, landing barges, lifeboats and wreckage of every description, but they made no attempt to take aboard survivors.

For the moment, the sky was fairly clear of planes. Two other Flying Fortresses, a PBM flying boat, a few Grumman Wildcats and Lockheed Lightnings on the hunt for Zero fighters—these were all that Barry Blake could see. The enemy had been definitely shot out of the air.

“We’ll go after that cruiser,” the young pilot toldhis bombardier. “Before she gets our range, I’ll dive to three thousand, level off there for a quick run, and then climb for a cloud. Ready, Chick?”

“Roger!” answered the little man inRosy’snose. “It’s risky but it will give me a swell target. You never learned this stunt out of a rule book, Barry!”

In the co-pilot’s seat, Hap Newton sat nursing the throttles, changing the bomber’s air speed from moment to moment. Barry worked the wheel to keep her constantly shifting altitude—foiling the ack-ack gunners on the Jap warship. Abruptly he shoved the wheel far forward.

The Fortress headed down as if out of control. Then, at three thousand feet she pulled out of it. For a matter of seconds her run at the Jap cruiser held true and level.

“Bombs away!” cried Chick Enders. “Let’s get out of here in a hurry!”

Barry put his Fortress into a steep, climbing turn that strained her to the limit. Zigzagging, banking, spiralling, he made the big bomber climb like a cat in a fit.

Far beneath, a sheet of flame was rising from the enemy cruiser. Chick Enders’ bomb had opened her oil tanks. Some of her antiaircraft were still firing, butRosy’sunorthodox actions fooled them completely.

“Great stuff, Barry!” yelled the little bombardier. “We’ll pull the same stunt on that destroyer to theeast of us. Let’s go!”

“We will not!” Barry Blake retorted. “I feltRosygroan too many times in that last crazy climb. If I did it again she might really come apart. From now on we’ll confine our bombing attacks to a reasonable altitude. It’s better to waste a bomb than a bomber, even if you don’t believe it.”

As they headed for their new target at ten thousand feet, more bomb bursts tossed up white fountains of sea water around the farther warships. Seven or eight Fortresses were now on the scene. The flotilla’s fleeing remnants were doomed.

It had been a ghastly slaughter, Barry reflected. Nearly twenty thousand enemy troops, not to mention the crews of the Jap vessels, were either dead or floating among the wreckage. An army and a task force blotted out in two days!

Mechanically he guidedRosy O’Gradyon her run. He was sick of killing. Even Chick’s jubilant, “Bombs away!” failed to thrill him as it had before.

Another hit! The thousand-pound bomb burst the thin-hulled destroyer apart like a paper bag. Swiftly she settled, stood up on her nose, and slipped out of sight. There was no time to launch a boat.

Five miles beyond, a number of tiny waterbugs were leaving zigzag wakes in the water. They were probably Jap landing barges, Barry thought, crammed with armed soldiers from one of the troop transports that had gone down. Now he saw thecause of their erratic dodging—a flight of Mitchell B-25’s diving at them, with tracer bullets streaking from their guns.

“Those Nips haven’t a chance, even if they’re lucky enough to shoot down a plane or two,” Hap Newton observed. “Their barges must look like sieves already. More meat for the sharks!”

“More butchery!” muttered Barry Blake. “It’s necessary, of course. If those armed Japs ever made land, they’d soon be killing our own men. That’s what they were sent here for. But I’ve seen enough slaughter today to make me feel rather sick.”

Chick Enders didn’t say so, but he may have felt the same way, after thinking it over. At any rate, he seemed to have lost his uncanny marksmanship for the rest of that day. His remaining bombs scored nothing better than near misses on a desperately zig-zagging destroyer. Another Fortress sank that vessel as Barry turned his plane homeward.

“Looks like some sort of a weather front, over toward the coast,” Hap Newton remarked. “I hope our base isn’t shut in by it. We’d have to find another field or bail out....”

“Tony can’t bail out, Lieutenant,” Fred Marmon’s voice interrupted. “He’s bleeding to death fast, from a leg wound. I’ve just found him unconscious in the tail turret, and put on a tourniquet.”

A moment of shocked silence followed Fred’s statement. Each man of the crew felt as if he himselfhad received a deadly hurt. The fortress crew was like a single body, its members knit inseparably together by weeks of common danger, duty, thought and feeling.

“Tie that tourniquet tight, Fred,” Barry Blake said huskily. “Keep Tony alive, and I’ll manage to setRosy O’Gradydown somewhere, ceiling or no ceiling.... Soapy! Contact Mau River, will you, and ask what the weather is there.”

Leaving his position in the top turret, Sergeant Babbitt sat down at his radio. In a few minutes he had the field’s weather report.

“Closed in,” it said briefly, “and so are all near-by airfields. Better try Buna—or Port Moresby if you have enough gas.”

“That’s the tough part of it,” said Hap bitterly. “We used up our gas hunting down the Jap Navy. Buna and Port Moresby are out! Our only hope is to hit the silk.”

Groans sounded over the interphone. Not their own danger but that of Tony Romani, brought unanimous protest from the others.

“There’sgotto be some place for us to set her down, Skipper,” Fred Marmon declared. “You’ve always been able to figure a way out. We can’t let Tony down.”

“Curly!” exclaimed Barry Blake. “Get out your charts and see if there aren’t some atolls or small islands somewhere this side of that weather front.If one of them had a beach long enough and smooth enough—”

“I see what you mean,” Curly spoke excitedly. “I’ll tell you in two shakes, Barry. There’s a sprinkling of little islands between us and the western tip of New Britain.... Here they are! Two or three of them ought to be clear of fog right now. I’ll give you the compass course....”

A new spirit pervaded the bomber’s crew. Despite battle weariness, their still painful hurts and their worry over Tony, they crowded around Curly’s map like a bunch of eager kids.

“Don’t get your hopes too high,” their levelheaded navigator warned them. “None of these islands may have a beach big enough to land a fighter plane. If that’s so, we’ll loseSweet Rosy O’Gradyanyway.”

“And if we can land,” Barry added, “the place may be swarming with Japs. Personally I’m for taking the risk, but if there’s one man who doesn’t like the idea, we’ll turn back and bail out over Mau River. Tony would have a bare chance to live if we pulled his ripcord and chucked him out.”

Silence answered him. It was broken finally by Curly Levitt’s voice giving Barry the compass course for an unnamed islet that they might hope to reach ahead of the fog.

“Okay, Crusoes, you asked for it!”Rosy’sOld Man said cheerfully. “We’ll be in sight of Islandnumber one in about twenty minutes.”

In twenty minutes to the dot they sighted the first white-and-green bump on the ocean’s surface. The islet rose to a central peak about three hundred feet high, covered completely with jungle. As the Fortress swept over it at two thousand feet, her crew voiced their disappointment. Such beaches as the place possessed were narrow and rocky. A helicopter might have found a landing place, but not a bomber with a 90-mile-per-hour landing speed.

Almost before the little peak had passed beneath, Curly was laying the course for Island number two. It lay a little farther to the north, and away from the weather front. Its length, however, suggested better landing possibilities, and it was barely fifty miles away.

Ten minutes later Chick Enders pointed it out. As its low-lying shape became more distinct, the crew’s hopes rose. The south beach, they saw, was wide and free from stones, and the tide at this hour was out. The only fault of this natural runway was its slight curve, and the tiny brook that broke its length.

“I’ll chance it,” the young skipper decided. “As a matter of fact, it’s going to be a lot easier to set down on that beach than to take off—even supposing we can get more gas.”

Climbing to a safe height, he turned and came in for his landing. In order to make the most of thebeach’s length, he broughtRosy’swheels down just at the farther edge of the brook. The Fortress bucked a trifle in the wave-packed sand, and rolled to a smooth stop. Within her, six men cheered like maniacs.

“Hold it down, men,” Barry advised. “We don’t know what we’re up against yet. Our first job is to dress Tony’s wound. Then we’ll explore the island, if there’s time to do that before dark.... Curly, pass me the first-aid kit and a bottle of water, will you, please?”

Tony was still unconscious when they carried him to the plane’s cockpit. His wound had evidently been made by a piece of flak that had ripped through his thigh like a dull knife. The arteries were bleeding slowly despite the tourniquet.

With small silver clips from the first-aid kit, Barry managed to close the severed blood vessels. He dusted a handful of sulfanilamide powder into the wound, removed the tourniquet, and used most of the kit’s gauze in a snug bandage.

Straightening up, he pointed to the windows in the nose and overhead.

“Open up and give him some fresh air,” he directed. “The minute Tony comes to, we’ll make him swallow some salt tablets and sulfadiazine, with all the water he can drink. That’s all we can do.... Chick, you and Soapy will stay with him now, while the rest of us look over the island. We’ll be backbefore dark if we don’t run into any Japs.”

“Okay, Skipper—we’ll hold the fort,” Chick answered. “If you should meet trouble near by we can cover your retreat withRosy’smachine guns. Maybe you’d better demount one of them and take it along for an emergency.”

“Our pistols and the tommy-gun will be enough,” Barry said, as he left the cockpit. “Those fifty-caliber babies are too heavy to carry far, or to use without a tripod. See you soon, fellows.”

A five hour search of the island revealed no human inhabitant. On the farther side from their plane the Fortress men found the burned remnants of a native village and a few unburied corpses. The Jap butchers had evidently come and gone a few weeks before.

Barry and Hap downed a half-wild pig with their pistols. On their return to the Fortress, they frightened a number of scrawny island chickens that flew squawking into the jungle. It was plain that they need not starve, Fred Marmon remarked, even if escape from the island should be delayed for a month.

“I’ve no idea of waiting that long, Fred,” Barry laughed. “As soon as it’s dark, we’ll radio the base to send a supply ship here. With a runway of steel mats on the beach we should have no trouble in taking off. That is, if the Nips don’t spot us!”

Reaching the plane they found Tony Romaniconscious again. He had been swallowing salt and water in quantity to make up for his loss of blood. Despite the pain of his wound he greeted his friends with a plucky grin.

“All I want is a juicy beefsteak,” he told them. “And mashed spuds and apple pie and—”

“You’ll have to be satisfied with pork chops,” Barry interrupted. “Beef won’t be on the menu until we’re back at Mau River. The same goes for potatoes. Dinner tonight will be roast wild pig, palm cabbage, and cocoanut milk—with a vitamin pill for dessert.”

Ravenous appetites made the jungle dinner a success, even though Tony dropped off to sleep in the middle of it. The others literally cleaned the bones of their little roast porker. There was no campfire to enjoy, however: the light would have betrayed them to any scouting Jap plane within twenty miles. The moment the sun set, they kicked sand over the coals and finished their meal in the dark.

Contact with Mau River was made quickly by radio. A brief message, not likely to mean much to listening Japs, gave their location. Barry added a request for supplies, and arranged radio and ground signals to guide the approaching planes to a moonlight landing.

“The next thing,” Barry announced, “is to camouflageRosyso that she’ll be invisible from the air. As soon as the moon rises, we’ll begin cutting vines and leafy bushes. With only four pocket knives, it may take us most of the night, but that just can’t be helped.”

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