Two Hawks felt dismay, although he did not say anything to Andrews. The planes were coming in from the wrong direction, so that all the weeks of intensive briefing on identification of targets was wasted. Approaching from this angle would make everything unrecognizable.
The road to Ploesti was twenty-five miles long and took five minutes to cover. Long before the end of the goal was reached, the Germans sprung the trap. Sides of haystacks exploded to reveal 20 mm. and 37 mm. guns. The freight cars on the railway sidings fell apart, and the 37 mm. cannons previously hidden began to flash. The fields themselves suddenly exposed pits containing madly firing machine guns. Ahead, 88 mm. and 105 mm. monsters, firing pointblank with short-fused shells, made the air a white-and-black gauntlet. The red business for which the attackers and defenders had prepared so long was now begun.
The Hiawatha shuddered at the burst of the great shells and then trembled as her own gunners opened fire on the AA batteries with their twin .50s. The air was woven with a drunken pattern of tracers and poignettes, so thickly intertwined it seemed that no aircraft could get through without being struck many times. The uproar was ear-shattering with the bellow of 134 14-cylinder motors, explosions from 88s fired only a few yards away, the shock of shrapnel blasts, and the insane chatter of the two hundred and thirty machine guns in the B-24s themselves.
Roger Two Hawks kept formation and the fifty-foot height from the ground, but he also managed sidelong flicks of his gaze. To one side, on a crossroad, the muzzle of an 88 flashed, and he could see the dark blurred bulk of the projectile flying towards its rendezvous. He pushed the wheel forward and dived a little, dropping to within twenty feet of the hurtling ground. The shell went harmlessly by.
Refinery tanks exploded ahead, Himalayas of flame arose, and he eased the Hiawatha back to fifty feet. It shook as a shell struck the tail but kept steadily on course instead of diving as he had expected. The tail gunner called in to report that the left aileron and left rudder were gone. The ship to Two Hawks’ right looked as if a huge sword had slashed at it, but it was maintaining formation. The one on the left suddenly staggered, its nose enveloped in smoke, probably from a hit by an 88. It dropped like a hammer, slid burning into the ground, rose upwards in many pieces, and then was enveloped in a huge ball of fire.
Pieces of aluminium and plexiglass, bright in the sun, rode by him. The smoke ahead parted to reveal tanks and towers shrouded in flames; a bomber, on fire, headed towards an untouched tank; another plane began to turn over, its two port engines flaming; a third, also aflame, rose to gain altitude so that its crew could try to parachute. A fourth, to the right, released its bombs, and these plumeted down striking several tanks, all of which exploded into flame; one took the bomber with it. The huge ship, splitting in two, and also cartwheeling, soared out from the smoke and smashed into an untouched tank. This went up with a blast that seized the Hiawatha and hurled it upwards. Two Hawks and Andrews fought the grip of the wind and regained control.
There was a maze of tanks, pipes, and towers ahead. Two Hawks pulled hard on the wheel and sent the Hiawatha upwards to avoid striking the towers. He yelled at Andrews, “Dump the bombs!”
Andrews did not question his decision to make the release instead of waiting for the bombardier. He obeyed, and the plane rose up with increased power as the weight of the great bombs was gone. The end of a tower tore a hole down the center of the Hiawatha’s belly. But she flew on.
O’Brien, the topturret gunner, reported in his thick Irish brogue. “Gazzara’s gone, sir! He and his turret just went down into the smoke.”
“Tail-End Charlie’s gone,” said Two Hawks to Andrews.
“Hell, I didn’t even feel the hit!” Andrews said. “You feel the shell?”
Two Hawks did not reply. He had already sent the Hiawatha down to avoid the murderous barrage above the fifty-foot level. He drove the ship between two tanks which were so close together that only a foot or so of space existed between each wingtip and a tank. But he was forced to bring her up again so fast she seemed to stand on her tail to get over a radio tower, the tip of which was wagging like a dog’s tail from the flak bursts.
Andrews said, “God! I don’t think we can make it!”
Two Hawks did not reply. He was too busy. He banked the plane to lift his right wing and so avoided collision with the top of the tower.
The ship shuddered again; an explosion deafened him. Wind howled through the cockpit. A hole had appeared in the plexiglass in front of Andrews, and he was slumped forward, his face a blur of torn flesh, sheared bone, and spurting blood.
Two Hawks turned the Hiawatha east but, before the maneuver was completed, the ship was struck again in several places. Somebody in the aft was screaming so loudly that he could be heard even above the cacophony outside and the air shrilling through the holes in the skin of the craft. Two Hawks pulled the Hiawatha up at as steep an angle as he dared. Even though he had to go through the fiery lacework ahead, he had to get altitude. With his two port engines on fire and the propeller of the outermost starboard engine blown off, he could not stay airborne much longer. Get as high as possible and then jump.
He had an odd feeling, one of dissociation. It lasted for only two seconds, then it was gone, but during that time he knew that something alien, something unearthly, had occurred. What was peculiar was the sensation that the dissociation was not just subjective; he was convinced that the ship itself and all it contained had been wrenched out of the context of normality—or of reality.
Then he forgot the feeling. The spiderweb of tracers and stars of flak parted for a moment, and he was above it and through it. The roar and crump of the exploding shells were gone; only the wind whistling through the hole in the shield could be heard.
From nowhere, a fighter plane appeared. It came so swiftly, as if out of a trapdoor in the sky, that he had no time to identify it. It flashed by like black lightning, its cannon and machine guns spitting. The two craft were so close that they could not avoid each other; the German flipped one wing and dived to get away. The ship staggered again, this time struck its death blow. The left wing was sheared off; it floated away with the right wing of the German fighter.
A moment later, Two Hawks was free of the Hiawatha. The ground was so close that he did not wait the specified time to pull the ripcord but did so as soon as he thought he was free of the plane. He fell without turning over, and he saw that the city of Ploesti, as he knew it, was no longer there. Instead of the suburbs that had been below him, there were dirt roads, trees, and farms. Ploesti itself was so far away that it was nothing but a pillar of smoke.
Below him, the Hiawatha, now a globe of flame, was falling. The German craft was turning over and over; a hundred yards away from it and a hundred feet above it, the parachute of the flier was unfolding, billowing out. Then his own chute had opened, and the shock of its grip on the air had seized him.
To his left; another man was swinging below his semi-balloon of silk. Two Hawks recognized the features of Pat O’Brien, the topturret gunner. Only two had escaped from the Hiawatha.