I’m still with you, Sergeant.
(Laughter) Okay, I’ll try to keep it simple. We flew across town at about the level of Ninety-sixth Street, and we hovered at sixteen hundred feet directly above the Central Park Reservoir.
At what time did you reach that point?
Four forty. Craycroft was doing his little ballet over Brooklyn at that point. We could see him quite clearly-the air wasn’t very hazy. Of course, that meant he could see us, too.
Go on. What happened next?
We’d timed his circuits, of course, we knew it took him about three minutes from the time he crossed the East River into Manhattan to the time he made his turn at the top of Central Park. I started the stopwatch when he was crossing over above the Williamsburg Bridge.
That gave you a three-minute countdown to attack him?
Right. The jets were throttled down to three hundred miles art hour. They started in from a point fifteen miles due west of that point.
“That point” being his turn over Central Park?
Yes. In other words, starting from where they were, the jets would intercept Craycroft at a point roughly above Ninety-sixth Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Their run was timed to coincide with his.
I’ve got that. Proceed, please.
In the meantime the crop duster had a maximum airspeed of about a hundred and sixty miles an hour. It was a converted Piper Apache, by the way. Anyhow, it started from a point above Queens, some eight miles due west of that same interception point. The crop duster had to intercept him just ahead of the jets.
Of course.
Harris and I had our hands on the radio transmitters, ready to broadcast our jammer signals. Of course, we could see what was happening, and we’d push the buttons at the exact second when the crop duster went into action.
Now, let’s establish the exact purpose of this complicated maneuver, shall we?
The purpose was simple. To blind him and confuse him as to his location and bearings. The execution wasn’t so simple, of course.
And the jets were to deflect him from his course, is that right?
Two of them were. The third one was waiting to pounce on him.
All right. Go on with your narrative, Sergeant.
It all happened simultaneously, as I said. That’s what makes it hard to describe clearly. But I’ll do my best. Craycroft came up the East Side. He started his leftward turn, cutting across the Germantown area, slicing off a northeast corner of the park, reaching the apex of the turn right over the northern tip of the park at Lenox Avenue. At that point the crop duster had also crossed the East River and was about fifty feet above the bomber. The crop duster was flying parallel to him, a bit to his left. The crop duster passed him and was perhaps thirty feet ahead of him when the bomber, making its leftward turn, passed under the tail of the crop duster.
Meanwhile the jets were where?
Just crossing the Hudson River, a bit south of the bomber and a mile to the west.
The bomber flew under the tail of the crop duster. Then?
The crop duster dumped its load. Eighty gallons of thick white paint in a high-pressure spray.
The spray hit the nose of Craycroft’s bomber?
It covered it completely. Painted the nose of the plane white and dappled the fuselage halfway back its length. The paint completely covered Craycroft’s windshield and side windows Windows which were sealed, so that he couldn’t open them to look out.
That’s right. Our intention was to blind him. We succeeded. Now, as soon as we saw the paint spray issue from the tanks of the crop duster, Harris and I hit every button in sight. This activated the three transmitters and the electromagnet. The transmitters jammed his radiocompass and his LORAN navigation system. The electromagnet deflected his magnetic compass.
So the effect on Craycroft was He abruptly found himself blinded. His instruments were going haywire-needles spinning all over the place. He no longer knew where he was or what direction he was heading.
Then the jets The two Starfighters hit him in tandem. They swept directly over the bomber, about twenty feet above his tail, and as they crossed above him they made steep banking turns to the left.
What was the effect of that maneuver?
The jet exhausts from both planes struck Cray-croft’s bomber at point-blank range. The bomber was pushed-literally pushed-nearly half a mile off its course.
Straight out over the Hudson River.
Yes, sir. That was where the third Starfighter hit him. Slammed him full of twenty-millimeter cannon fire. Knocked him straight down into the river. The B-17 came apart in several pieces before it hit the river.
And the bombs?
Well, that was the crux, wasn’t it? He’d reacted the way you’d expect. He pushed the bomb-release lever.
When?
A lot faster than we’d expected. Incredibly fast reaction. I mean he had to absorb what was happening to him, and then he had to understand he was being attacked, and then he had to decide what to do about it, and then he had to hit the bomb-release lever. He got all that done in not more than three seconds flat. It was fantastic. There was no way to have predicted he’d have reacted so fast.
Give us your eyewitness recollection, please.
The bombs seemed to fall from the plane just a split second after he’d been hit by the jet exhausts from the fighters. Long before he was over the river. Of course the bombs arched outward. He’d been in a steep turnfl when we hit him, and his forward momentum had been accelerated by the crashing blow of the jet exhausts. But just the same, he was still over Manhattan when he released the bombs. That was what we hadn’t anticipated. It was my fault. Mine and Harris’. We just hadn’t counted on him being so goddamned fast.
Go on.
We could see the bombs weren’t going to hit anywhere near the middle of Harlem. But at first-as the bombs fell away, for several seconds that were real agony-we couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t hit those high-rise buildings west of Broadway. The angle of our viewpoint was flat and we couldn’t really make out the trajectory. It looked like half of the Upper West Side was going to blow up, though.
And in the end…
They’re building a new sewage-treatment plant on the river side of the Henry Hudson Parkway. There are dozens of very tall cranes there. Construction machinery. The parkway itself has been closed for repairs, so there was no traffic on it. The bombs dropped in sticks on the highway overpass and about four of them crashed into that high tangle of construction cranes and booms. It was earsplitting. The shock wave knocked us around-in the air like a kite. A good deal of shrapnel went up, but because of the slant of the bomb fall, it all went out toward the river. It was a hell of an explosion-series of explosions. Incredible wreckage up there, as you know. The highway’s been buckled for nearly a quarter of a mile, and that sewage plant’s a complete ruin. But there were no casualties. That was the miracle. A watchman was stunned on the construction site, but he was inside the shack and it saved him. He’s recovered. There wasn’t anybody else there-they’re union workers, they’d quit work at four thirty.
Then none of the bombs actually went into the river as you’d intended?
Only two of them. They went in just offshore. The two explosions were still making incredible geysers of water when Craycroft’s plane was shot down.
How did you feel at that moment? Can you recall?
Scared shitless, Mr. Skinner. If those jets had been two seconds later, every last one of those bombs would have blown up an apartment house.
Azzard (Cont’d)
We didn’t tumble to what he was up to until it was almost too late. Don’t forget, we weren’t eyeballing him. I had a surveillance team tracking him by radio-the bleeper in his belt. We thought he’d gone into a hideout. Finally the signal started to move very slowly. When my team reported that to me, I told them to get the hell over there in a hurry. I realized what it was. He’d gone aboard a boat.