“Glad to see you’re still with us, Lootenant,” Lewis finally said from the tail.
More lines of fighters were separating out toward them from the groups ahead. Bryant registered the formation above him closing up, filling the gaps left by the last passes, and he watched two lines of seven Focke Wulfs and Messerschmitts apiece bear down on them and felt keenly the isolation and helplessness of this kind of war, hanging there in his sling and aluminum capsule, as exposed, as far away from a place to hide his head, as anyone could be.
He could see growing to the left of center in his gunsight the narrower nose and longer wings of a Messerschmitt, the pale blue of the spanner visible even at this distance. The lines came on with the Focke Wulfs echeloned behind and above the Me-109’s, and they all opened fire together. Bryant was reminded of plugging in the lights on a Christmas tree. He was hearing hits on Paper Doll and other rows of fighters were detaching from the mass and coming on, one after the other, and Bryant fired and fired, worrying now about overheating guns, trying hard to keep his bursts short. Paper Doll rocked back and bucked with all the forward firing guns going, the notion of ammo conservation gone forever.
The sky went white from a blinding flash and above him a Fort’s tail flew upward alone from a huge fireball, the concussion shoving Paper Doll down and the explosion audible through their headphones.
The fighters went through ragged and uncertain, disconcerted by the light and the blast. The tail had fallen through the formation without producing a chute and there was nothing else left. Whoever they were, Eddy called, they musta taken a shell in the bomb bay.
Hirsch seemed the first to recover and was shouting in new lines.
“Get your nose up! Nose up!” Snowberry was calling in frustration. “Give me air!” He could see the oncoming fighters but couldn’t fire, with Paper Doll’s nose above him too close to his aiming point. “Give me air!” Snowberry was calling and Bryant was firing and firing and the three-Fort vee in front of them went yellow and white and jerked upward and Bryant was blinded. He could feel the whole ship rock backward violently in the shockwave and when his vision returned with ghostly afterimage colors all three planes that had been flying in the vee ahead were gone. Paper Doll was wallowing stupidly along, nosing around for something to follow. Bryant could see the dorsal gunner in Plum Seed beside them with his hands on his head in a melodramatic gesture of shock and surprise.
“They’re all gone!” Snowberry cried. “They’re all gone! Where are they?”
“Christ amighty,” Gabriel said. “All three of them just like that.”
“What? What?” Lewis shouted. “What happened?” Bryant could imagine his frustration, as tail gunner in an endless series of head-on attacks.
“They got the whole element in front of us,” he told him. “One swoop.”
“Who was it? Who was it?” Lewis called. He had friends everywhere in the formation.
“Banshee. I’se a Muggin’. Training Wheels,” Gabriel said.
Lewis was silent. Eddy was screaming at his guns. Snowberry was crying and asking for air, a clear shot. He said Gabriel was an idiot and they were all going to get killed.
A beautiful and horrible diamond of fighters swam free ahead in a long loop and dropped deftly and in perfect order down toward them, resolving itself into a line staggered upward in altitude, each following plane higher than the one before it. The effect was that of an immense javelin or spear coming through the formation. Bryant’s arms hurt and his eyes hurt and he tracked and sighted and fired with a furious haste and effort as pass after pass became simply horrible and intense work. The casing shells overflowed from the huge metal chutes flanking his legs in the turret and rang and clattered past his feet to the floor of the fuselage, spilling further down the companionway to the hatchway door below to Eddy and Hirsch’s stations.
There were further explosions from ahead and above, and a man went spinning by his turret, a startled look on his face, knees up as if executing something tricky off the high board. A hatch door flipped by, and a flak helmet.
“Four o’clock!” Piacenti cried, “High!”, but when he looked there were no fighters up there but two B-17’s inexplicably together, frozen in contact for a moment as they collided, until they exploded in a long liquid tongue of fire, wings and control surfaces spinning outward.
The fighters behind them were banking around to return. The fighters ahead were circling to gain altitude, a few minutes away. Cooper called in a lightning oxygen check, station by station. Quarterback beyond Archangel was streaming gasoline from its number three engine, the sheets of fuel fluttering into rain as they left the wing. Every so often pieces flew from the shattered dorsal turret.
“Man,” Piacenti said from the waist, evidently getting an eyeful. Quarterback could not keep up. “We’re a losin’ ticket,” he said. Bryant flashed on Snowberry’s journal and its warning about Piacenti.
“Close up! Close up!” Gabriel was calling to Quarterback’s pilot. It drifted further back, and soon hung distantly off Archangel’s tail, Lewis reporting as it slipped still further back. From the belly Snowberry called in other losses in a congested voice. “WAAC Hunter,” he said. “Paddlefoot.”
Bryant looked up and back into the main body of the formation. Prop wash from the massed planes was deflating and collapsing the small parachutes that were drifting downward. He watched one of the white ovals puff and fold and thought, Survival is out of your hands.
“More more more,” Eddy said. “And my fucking gun is shot.”
The fighters ahead seemed to have misjudged the necessary altitude and were hurrying down to them, having wasted precious fuel. There were limitless fighters, Bryant imagined. They were all going to go down, one by one. The question was really the order. They weren’t going to get back. What he wanted at this point was to reach the target.
They came through in waves, steady lines, and in the chaos Bryant and Snowberry and Eddy and Hirsch and Piacenti and Ball and Bean and Lewis lectured and jabbered, shrieked and called out fighters, and hit almost nothing. Something nearby exploded with splintered pieces slashing outward, end over end. A Messerschmitt of a startling green appeared following a palisade of tracers to Bryant’s left. A Focke Wulf came in from abeam and stalled, and falling away raked their belly, and he could feel the hits banging into them. “Son of a bitch!” Snowberry was screaming. “He was right there! Son of a bitch!” And they were gone.
“Comin’ around,” Piacenti called. Someone whimpered.
“They came a long way,” Lewis observed. “I don’t think they got too much juice left.”
They came on loose, every man for himself, maybe without the fuel to form up, some from the side and even the rear, and Lewis finally had something to shoot at. A Messerschmitt side-slipped by upside down, shooting at Archangel, and above them in a higher squadron Bryant saw an engine torn off and tumbling backward, the Fortress wing folding and shearing away. While he was watching, something else — a Messerschmitt? — collided head on with another Fortress, half rolling into its nose and shattering pieces outward before both planes exploded and the belly turret and its mount fell away free like a small barbell or a baby’s rattle.