Six turning and four burning. The noise and vibration in the cockpit was beyond anything anybody could image. The big piston engines cycled up, picking up power and creating a moaning wail from the propellers as they went in and out of synchronization. The jets under the wings were screaming as they picked up power. Texan Lady was being held on her brakes yet the nose was tilting down with the pressure from her engines and Dedmon could feel the aircraft begin to slide forward as sheer engine power overrode the locked brakes. There was no hope of speaking on the flightdeck, noise drowned out everything and the intense vibration made hand signals hard. What worked now was training. As Texan Lady began to slide, Dedmon and his co-pilot, Major Pico, released the brakes and Texan Lady was free to hurtle down the runway.
And hurtle down she did. Texan Lady was born to fly and did not intend to allow something as stupid as gravity to stop her. The noise from the racing engines and the flailing tires made the flightdeck sound like hell itself had opened. To the tearing high-pitched vibration from the engines was added a deep base thundering as the concrete runway added its imperfections and harmonies to the satanic opera. Dedmon couldn't see properly and couldn't move. This was one of the SACs better kept secrets - at this point on a full-power takeoff, a 200 ton bomber carrying the equivalent of 140,000 tons of TNT was hurtling down the runway almost completely out of control. Dedmon felt the hammering diminish slightly and the view out the cockpit change to sky. Texan Lady had lifted her nose and the flight deck crew had the strange experience of being 30 feet in the air while the main wheels were still on the ground. From outside, the huge bomber looked like a demented waterskier, charging down the runway, nose in the air with plumes of spray and water vapor forming arced clouds behind her.
Then the hammering stopped and even the engine noise dropped to tolerable levels. The main wheels were off the ground and resonance was no longer amplifying the noise and vibration from the engines. Dedmon felt the thumps as the wheels retracted and the noise dropped still further. Looking back out of the bubble cockpit, Dedmon checked on the other members of his Hometown. Barbie Doll was half way down the runway, nose up and straining to go, Sixth Crew Member had finished her Vandenburg shuffle and was just starting her roll forward. It was SAC-standard, one B-36H leaving the runway every 15 seconds. Slowly Dedmon's hearing returned to normal and his eyes stopped shaking in their sockets. Gordon had cut the jets now and reduced power on the piston engines to cruising levels. At this point, the big bomber would take an hour and a half to get up to 35,000 feet. Behind her. Barbie Doll and Sixth Crew Member slotted into their position to right and left of Texan Lady.
“That was a rare experience” Major Pico said with a degree of awe. He'd never done a maximum performance takeoff before - which wasn't surprising, Metal fatigue meant the number that each B-36 could do was strictly limited, and that limit wasn't very far into double digits. “OK sir, lets head for the Azores.
Cockpit Go-229 Green 8 +, Over Western France
The Fledermaus rolled out at the top of its climb. Schumann once again gave thanks to the Horten Brothers for designing a fighter where the pilot could really see what was going on around him. That was rare with German fighters. The older types had heavily-framed cockpit canopies that blocked out large areas of sky, even later types with bubble cockpits suffered from large blind spots due to their size and design. The Fledermaus was different; the pilot sat well forward almost over the leading edge. View behind was superb as well, almost like an American aircraft. Schumann had sat in a repaired Lockheed once and been amazed by the all-round vision from the big bubble cockpit and the high seat. The Fledermaus wasn't that good but it was better than older types. The one weak spot was to the sides; the big engine intakes blocked vision there. But up and-down, the pilot could see what was happening. That had a tactical impact, Schumann reflected. The Fledermaus pilots tended to fight in the vertical, diving on their targets and zooming away again.
So let's do it he thought. The Ami raids had started at dawn and their carriers were filling the air with fighters. Even more that usual and there were some new twists. The McDonnell fighter-bombers had been around before, not much but they'd been seen. This morning, they'd taken down a radar station near the cost and hit a couple of bridges. Some of the pilots had reported a new bird. A portly-looking single-engined job that was as fast as a thief and could turn on a wingtip. But most of the aircraft up were the familiar Lockheeds. Their very presence was a challenge to the German pilots, come up and fight or get strafed on your bases. The result were these air battles. Schumann's head snapped down. Far below him a Ta-152C was behind an Ami Goodyear, trying to get a hit before the Ami fighter pulled away. The kid flying the 152 hadn't seen the pair of Lockheeds coming in behind him. In a few seconds it would be too late, if he broke right or left one of them would get him. Time to score.
Schumann pushed over into a dive and rammed the throttles to the max. This bit took care, the Fledermaus was aerodynamically excellent and could easily accelerate past 1,000 kph in a dive. Unfortunately, at that speed, the controls locked solid and the aircraft would dive straight into the ground. Just hold the speed below the critical point and line up on the right-hand Lockheed. Get him and the chances were his wing-mate would break right straight into Schumann's line of fire. Down, behind the Lockheed try get close in. The pilot was making the same mistake as the kid in the Ta-152, so fixated on his target that he was forgetting to check his six. Just a few more seconds.
Damn it to hell. He'd been spotted, the Lockheed pilot must have seen him, he was racking his aircraft around to the right and pouring fuel into the engine, Schumann could see the black smoke from inefficient combustion. Bad move Ami, the Lockheed had good speedbrakes, hit those and I'd have overshot giving you a chance with your .50s. But I can out-turn you and you're going through my line of fire. Schumann pressed his finger on the fire button and felt the steady thumping of his Mk-108 cannons. If this was a movie he knew he'd see tracers floating out in front of him but that was movies, no real fighter pilot used tracer. The trajectory was different so if the tracers hit, nothing else would and anyway why tell an enemy he was being shot at? Only idiots did that and they deserved a boot to the head.
Damn it again. The Lockheed had flown straight through the German line of fire without a damned scratch. Once again, Schumann cursed his Mk-108s. Slow-firing low velocity bits of crap what damned idiot had put them on a fighter. He and all the other Fledermaus pilots had been demanding the high-velocity Mk-103, even though it fired more slowly, its trajectory was better and its flight time less.