“Sir?” someone asked. “Doesn’t anybody know?”
“Intelligence is sketchy on that score,” the major said. “All we have is our best guess.”
Lewis was in the blackest despair. “Shithouse mouse,” he said. “Look at that line. You know how many Gruppen that has to be? Every Kraut in the West has to have a shot at us. We’re going to fly over everyone but the Red Baron.”
“Now there’s plenty of fighter support, as far as that goes,” the major said. “Eight Spitfire squadrons from the RAF will take us as far as Antwerp and then turn us over to two P-47 groups that’ll take us all the way to Eupen.”
“All that way,” Lewis muttered. “Isn’t that a big deal.”
“They’ll pick us up around Eupen on the return. Questions?”
“What’re you worried about?” Piacenti whispered to Lewis. “We get fighter escort the whole way. Ours all the way to Eupen and theirs all the rest of the way.” Lewis snorted.
The room was quiet. The entire row of gunners ahead of Bryant had their arms crossed, and their heads sunk down into the fur collars of their jackets.
The major looked through his notes. “Because of the importance of the strike, we’ve ordered a maximum effort. That means whatever individual extra planes are available will be added to existing formations whenever possible. The availability status for the 1st Bombardment Wing, including our group, is 238 Forts. We’re planning on sending 231 of those.” The crews gave a surprised “whoa!” “And using the other seven as ‘air spares’ to replace those aircraft forced to turn back early on with mechanical problems.”
The formation and squadron position charts were then unveiled. There was a roar of disapproval. Their group was in the lead low position of the formation, which meant the lowest part of the front of the giant arrowhead the twelve groups and 231 planes would form in the sky. Lead low and lead high, because of the head-on nature of the German interceptor strategies, were the coffin corners.
The crews gradually stopped making noise and sank into a profound depression. “As you can see, we drew a hard ride,” the major said. He was clearly frustrated with the atmosphere. He continued with the route briefing, taking it in stages: from point A to point B, there were these things to consider. “Now from point E to point F,” he said, “the force—”
“Them that’s left,” Skrink or Strink said behind Bryant.
A different weather officer took over, poor Stormy left in the wings, even more useless than usual. Whether he was on someone’s shit list or this was just standard operating procedure for such a big mission, they didn’t know.
“You guys’ll recognize this,” the new officer said, pointing to the weather chart. “A low pressure system went through Denmark last night and is heading north and east up the Baltic. An associated cold front is swinging eastward right across the map, north to south. That’s why it’s so foggy right now.”
He hit the lights from a switch near the front and a projector beamed upon a screen to the left an oversimplified diagram of cumulus clouds piled layer upon layer. There were conflicting wind arrows with velocity figures aimed at one another and a series of temperature and visibility estimates at all possible flying altitudes. Hirsch scribbled everything down on a little white pad, though later they’d be picking up mimeographed summaries of all of this, and it looked less than helpful to begin with.
They were told that this mission would take place exactly one year after the first 8th Bomber Command mission, when twelve B-17’s had made the run to a marshaling yard at Rouen. The information was intended to boost morale. The men clapped glumly.
They were given some final instructions: Fly their formations like it was a Presidential Review. Conserve ammo. Fill holes that appear in the formations as quickly as possible. Keep your guns loaded and stay alert all the way back — remember the Ju88’s. The major finished up with a joke about Nazis slipping and sliding in droves for days after this on scattered ball bearings. Ball smiled. Lewis said, “That’s the Nazis, boy. Kings of comedy.”
They were given a final exhortation: If they were successful, what they had done would significantly shorten the war. The briefing ended.
Bryant fell in behind Gabriel filing out. Gabriel touched with his finger the small airplane representing their squadron on the squadron position chart, and traced a path closer to the defensive box of the others, like a small boy attempting voodoo. They were on the far end of the low group, a position they could safely term the worst draw of the worst draw. Their major hope, as far as Bryant understood it, was to minimize vulnerability by making sure the planes ahead of them and in the center maintained a tight formation. If the formation strung out, they would be left fat and inviting and alone on the extreme edge of the “wheel,” overworking their engines to hold position with each formation turn of two or three degrees.
Gabriel grabbed a guy ahead of him Bryant recognized as the pilot of Lucky Me! and warned him about dragging his ass this time. “You don’t stay tight, I’m gonna go around you,” he said. “You remember that.”
They filed by Stormy at the door and turned their watches over to him. Hirsch kept his and a spare besides. Stormy was visibly suffering. They understood he hurt but found it difficult, considering their situation, to generate major league sympathy. Snowberry gave him a tight smile and pumped his hand.
“I wish I could go instead of you guys,” Stormy said.
“I’m with you,” Snowberry said. Ball gave Stormy the last watch and he slipped it into an open spot on his arm, and ran his forefinger from wrist to elbow over watchbands.
“Boy, if we go down, Stormy’s rich,” Ball murmured, eyeing the arm over his shoulder.
“What’re you, kidding?” Hirsch said. “Some of those watches, I think they came out of cereal boxes.”
They picked up their exterior flight clothing, parachutes, and oxygen masks. They went to the armament shops to be issued their fifty-caliber guns. They looked their individual guns over with agitation, some breaking them down right there and reassembling them. Any jams or sticking, anything less than smooth operation, was cause for bitter arguments with the armorers. Bryant checked his on the canvas engine tarps the line crews had left on the grass beside the hardstand, remembering Favale and the Texas sun at Harlingen. There were fights of near-riot intensity over ammunition: everyone wanted as much as possible, to hell with conservation, and some crews were stealing from the next plane over if the other crew was late arriving. There were extra supplies coming by truck, they were assured, and it was up to the individual captains to decide how much extra weight to take on. Gabriel decided by one-man committee on ten thousand rounds per station, which they loaded in huge wooden boxes all over the plane, like haphazard cargo. Bryant had expected Lewis to argue passionately for limitless ammo, but he had not.
There was no point, he explained, when Bryant asked about it. They were watching the crew of the plane next to them skirmish with another crew further down the flight line over a box of ammo left under the tail. Someone was brandishing a piece of cable like a whip and it snapped and cracked authentically. The plane they were fighting beneath, it occurred to Bryant, was startling and incontrovertible proof of a maximum effort: a real lemon that had aborted every mission flown so far, and had never dropped bombs on its target. It had been renamed No Way. They had assumed before it had appeared next to them looking shaky and ready to go that it was to be cannibalized for spare parts.
“We got the 2,780 blues,” Lewis said. He had apparently not finished with the topic of extra ammo; 2,780 was the number of gallons of fuel the B-17 held. “We got the fuel. We got the bombs. We got all this ammunition, we got the ten of us. Takeoff in that situation is a real interesting proposition. It’s like I strap twenty-seven gallons of fuel to your ass, fill your pockets with lead sinkers, and ask you to jump that fence.”