wings. But four of _Rosy’s_ .50-caliber machine guns were talking
back—the twin weapons of her bottom and tail turrets. Seconds later
she had swept out of range.
“Well, whaddyuh know about that?” Hap Newton blurted. “New Guinea
Gardens Grow Grass-skirted Gunners. Who’d ever believe that headline?”
“Why didn’t they throw any flak at us?” Curly Levitt asked. “A field as
big as that ought to be protected by more than machine gun fire.”
“The airport isn’t completed yet,” Barry pointed out. “The Japs
probably haven’t had a chance to bring in heavier installations. There
wasn’t even a camouflaged plane in sight—nothing but those steel-mat
runways dressed up to look like vegetable gardens. Of course it’s
possible that there were some bigger guns but no time to man them,
before we were past.”
“It’s worth risking them to give the field a thorough pasting,” Chick
Enders said. “Let’s go back at about five thousand and give it every
bomb in our racks.”
No shellfire greeted them as they made their run over the Jap airfield.
Even the machine guns were silent. The grass-skirted gun-crews were
fleeing through the surrounding grass and scrub like scared rabbits
when the first stick of bombs whistled down.
They left the runways looking like a raw, black wound in the earth,
with a thick cloud of dust hanging over it. All their bombs had struck
with the accuracy of rifle bullets, five-hundred-pounders that flung
the twisted steel matting high in the air.
“Get the exact position of this spot, Curly,” Barry Blake said, as he
climbed into the hot blue sky. “The sons of Nippon won’t be using their
little mountain playground as long as our fliers can keep an eye on it.”
“That’s right,” agreed the _Rosy’s_ navigator. “We’ve wiped out an air
base from which the Nips could have raided Queensland, Port Moresby,
and any of our northeast airports with equal ease. And we’ve discovered
some of their latest tricks of camouflage, thanks to Chick Enders.
Headquarters will be glad to know about it.”
For the rest of the trip _Rosy O’Grady’s_ pilots and bombardier kept
their eyes peeled for suspicious looking “market gardens,” but none
appeared. An hour after they crossed the height of land the ocean was
again in sight. Soapy Babbitt contacted their new airport on the Mau
River and received the answer to come in.
As the field came in sight, Barry noted that it was scooped out of the
tropical forest, not far from the sea. A United Nations transport
vessel lay just beyond the beach. It was unloading by means of
lighters. In this manner the new airdromes all up and down the coast
would be quickly furnished with equipment and defenses. The danger, of
course, was that the Japs might send warships to shell the fields at
night. They might even land troops a short march from the field itself.
All this passed through Barry’s mind as he circled for a landing. He
had experienced one shelling from warships, and a worse one from
air-borne artillery. No base, he decided, was safe from a sneak attack.
In any war the main strategy must be to “dish it out” to the enemy in
heavier quantities than he could return.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
No familiar faces greeted _Rosy O’Grady’s_ crew at the Mau River
airport. A new bomber command was based there. Three more forts, Barry
learned, were due to join it within the week. Until they arrived there
would be no mass raids on enemy targets.
_Rosy’s_ first job was a reconnaissance flight to the northwest. There
had been signs of enemy concentration among the islands west of Point
D’Urville. Headquarters wanted to learn what it meant.
_Rosy O’Grady_ took off with the first faint dawn light. Her bomb racks
were full. In addition, she carried a few score of four-pound
incendiary bombs. She was “loaded for bear,” and eager for a fight.
At 10,000 feet, Barry Blake turned westward. As they flew along the
coast, the gunners in the top and tail turrets watched the sky for Jap
planes. The pilots and the bombardier scanned air and sea ahead.
Suddenly Chick Enders leaned forward on his perch in the nose, with a
shout of discovery.
“What do you see now, bombardier?” Barry asked. “Some more grass
skirts?”
Chick Enders ignored the gibe.
“Look at that little island, just offshore,” he said sharply. “There’s
a white streak stretching north from it, like the wake of a ship.”
“It is, at that!” cried Hap Newton. “A boat of some kind must have put
into a hidden cove there.”
“That island isn’t big enough to shelter any vessel that could make
such a wide wake,” Barry Blake declared. “Could the island itself be
moving, Chick?”
“It is!” the _Rosy’s_ bombardier yelped. “The thing is a Jap vessel
camouflaged with palm fronds. Give me a run on it, Skipper ... _now_!”
Barry’s touch on the controls did not shift. Without altering its
course by a single point the flying fort kept straight on up the coast.
Chick groaned.
“Why did you pass up such a chance, Barry?” he asked. “We could have
laid an egg right in the middle of that floating brush heap.”
“Two reasons,” the young skipper replied. “First, there are four ships
at least in that floating island, and two or more may be cruisers.
Splitting their formation would only prolong the job.... Second, I want
a better look at their scheme of camouflage before we blow it to
pieces.... Sergeant Babbitt, you will radio the airport what we have
seen, and say that we are about to attack.”
He swung the Fortress a few points to the left and nosed down.
“Tail gunner from pilot:” he said through the interphone. “Let me know
as soon as that fake island is out of sight.”
A few minutes later Tony Romani’s voice came through.
“Pilot from tail gunner: Floating island has dropped below the bulge of
the coastline.... Are we going back, sir?”
“Right now, Tony!” the skipper told him.
Keeping the land mass of New Guinea between him and the Jap vessels,
Barry turned his plane around. Lower and lower he took her, until
_Sweet Rosy O’Grady_ was skimming only a few hundred feet above the
sea. Tree tops nearly grazed her belly turret as she swept over a blunt
headland, into sight of the camouflaged ships.
“We’re going over ’em at two thousand feet, Chick,” Barry warned. “Be
ready to drop a whole stick of bombs on the target.”
“Look!” yelled Hap Newton. “There’s a swarm of landing barges between
the fake island and the shore. They’re crammed with Jap troops.”
“We’ll take care of them later,” Barry said grimly. “Here we go,
bombardier.”
“Roger!” Chick’s answer came back ... and an instant later: “Bombs
away!”
Hard upon his words came the blast—a multiple explosion so terrific
that it tossed the great Fortress like a feather. Later her crew found
that it had torn all the fabric off her ailerons and elevators.
Barry climbed his ship, and came back. There was no more “floating
island”—only three burning Jap transports and the two broken halves of
a fourth, just settling into the waves.
A puff of smoke blossomed just beyond _Rosy O’Grady’s_ right wing-tip;
another, to the left and rear. The gun crews of the stricken transports
were only now reaching their weapons. _Rosy’s_ sudden re-appearance,
close at hand, had taken them entirely by surprise.
Barry Blake swung his ship shoreward and nosed down.
“We’ll risk the shell-fire,” he said briefly. “Our first job is to
destroy those Japs landing on the beach. Be ready to fire all guns.”
At a thousand feet the big bomber roared between the burning ships and
the shore. Her nose and tail and belly turrets spat .50-caliber death.
Beneath her the Jap soldiers in thirty landing barges fired their
rifles upward in frantic reply. Through the side gun-port Fred Marmon
hosed lead at the deck of the nearest transport.
Twice more the flying fort swept back over the same course. Shells from
the Jap ships missed her narrowly. Some of the bursting antiaircraft
fragments struck her fuselage and rudder. But the Jap landing force was
practically wiped out.
Sinking barges drifted aimlessly, filled with dead men. Some of the
soldiers jumped overboard, only to die in the water. Curly Levitt with
his side-gun mowed down the one bargeful that made the beach.
After that run, Barry did not turn his ship until well beyond the range
of Jap shell fire. At ten thousand feet he swung back. The three Jap
transports were much farther apart. The nearest one was drifting and
burning more fiercely than ever. The others were zig-zagging.
A sudden sheet of flame shot up from the drifting vessel. In a space of
seconds her superstructure went to pieces.
“She’s done for,” Chick Enders said. “Give me a run on the farthest
one, Skipper. I’ll try to drop an egg right down her stack.”
“Hap and I will do what we can to help you,” Barry answered, “at ten
thousand feet. We have those last two ships in the bag. There’s no need
to risk _Rosy O’Grady_ at point-blank range.”
Chick’s first attempt was a near miss—the Jap helmsman was too good at
dodging. On his run over the second transport he scored a hit. The
five-hundred-pound bomb struck her stern, crippling her steering gear.
“Nice work, bombardier!” Barry applauded. “Now we can concentrate on
the last target.”
A shell burst from the stricken craft slammed chunks of jagged metal
through _Rosy’s_ tail assembly. The big bomber lurched.
“Tail gunner from pilot:” Barry spoke into the phone. “Are you all
right?”
“That flak missed the turret, sir,” Tony Romani answered. “But I can
see daylight through the fuselage just behind me.”
“The rudder and elevators still work,” Barry told his crew. “That’s as
near a hit as I want, though. Let’s get this job done.”
On his next run Chick Enders accomplished the nearly-impossible. His
bomb plunged down the transport’s stack and exploded in her bowels. The
Jap ship simply crumpled up and sank, like an old tin can.
The one ship left afloat was burning fiercely from stem to stern. No
boats or barges had been lowered. Those Japs who had survived the
flames were now swimming in the shark-infested water.
“Here come three of our forts from Mau River!” Hap Newton cried,
pointing to the east. “Boy! Will they be sore when they see what we’ve
left!”
“Just a few bones on a broken platter!” Barry exulted. “We had all the
cold turkey and cranberry sauce. Switch over to the radio and let’s
hear what they’re saying, Soapy!”
Few of the other crew’s comments were cheerful, but Barry soothed their
disappointment.
“You might possibly find a force of Jap warships farther up the coast,
sir,” he told the commanding officer, Major Browne. “My guess is that
they were landing troops for a night attack on our airport. In that
case they’d be expecting some naval units to come after dark and
‘soften up’ the field for them with shell fire.”
“That’s good reasoning, Lieutenant Blake,” the major agreed. “We’ll
search the coast toward Point D’Urville. _Sweet Rosy O’Grady_ looks to
me as if she needs a little patching before she goes hunting more
trouble.”
“_Rosy_ needs bombs, too,” Chick Enders remarked, as they headed for
home. “She’s had a pretty good day’s hunting, even if she didn’t finish
her patrol. By the way—how do you think those Japs rigged their
camouflage, Skipper?”
“With rope nets, I’d say,” Barry replied. “I noticed some of the stuff
drifting alongside the ships, after the first bombs struck them. I
think they strung their nets over the masts and superstructures and
fastened the tops of jungle trees to them. They used bushes to cover
the sides. The one thing they couldn’t hide was the ship’s wake.”
“They’d planned to have all their troops ashore a little after
sunrise,” Curly Levitt put in. “If we hadn’t come along, they would
have left a force here strong enough to take over our airfield and
perhaps two or three more.”
Five minutes after landing, Barry Blake and his crew were making their
report to the officer in command of the airport, Colonel Bullock.
“You men have written a great page in Fortress history today,” the
officer declared when they had finished. “Four transports and thousands
of enemy troops sent to the bottom within a few minutes! That would
have been a nice bag of game for a whole squadron. I have an idea that
decorations will be coming to all of you for this feat. You’ve earned a
few days’ rest, too, but I’m afraid you won’t get it.”
“We shan’t mind that, sir,” Barry said with a smile. “We like action
better than sitting around and fighting mosquitoes. Is there some
special mission for us?”
Colonel Bullock’s gaze shifted to the slice of blue sky framed in the
tent door.
“No, not yet,” he replied, frowning. “But the enemy is massing his
strength for another big land, sea, and air attack. Our steady gains in
the South Pacific have cost him too much. He is due to strike back,
hard.”
There was a brief silence. Glancing at his crew, Barry saw their faces
tighten with eagerness.
“The sooner they come the better, sir—so far as we’re concerned,” he
said.
The colonel rose to his feet, smiling.
“That spirit will win this war for us, son,” he said. “It’s won every
war we Americans have fought. But here at Mau River we’re still short
of planes and men. I shall see to it personally that _Sweet Rosy
O’Grady’s_ repairs are rushed through. In a day or two we may need
her—badly!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DOGFIGHTING FORTRESS
Three days passed without news of any Jap naval maneuvers. That was not
surprising, for the weather was frightful. The regular bombing runs
from Henderson Field to Rabaul and Gasmata had been called off because
of it. Two reconnaissance planes were missing—probably wrecked by
those unspeakably fierce South Pacific squalls. It seemed unlikely that
enemy warships would be out.
Nevertheless, Colonel Bullock was nervous.
“The Japs have used bad weather as a screen for their movements before
now,” he pointed out to Barry Blake. “If they wanted to risk getting
off course and piling up on a reef, they could sneak up within striking
distance of this coast, and land their troops when the fog lifts.”
“_Sweet Rosy O’Grady_ is ready to take off the minute you give
permission, sir,” Barry responded. “We’ll gladly take the chance of
running into a squall. All of us would rather be upstairs fighting the
weather than stewing in our own juice down here.”
The colonel met Barry’s eyes, and grinned.
“You mean you’d risk anything for a chance to bomb the Japs,” he
chuckled. “All right, Blake! You can take off at dawn tomorrow, wind or
no wind. Head eastward toward Rabaul, then swing around by the
Admiralty Islands. The Japs might even send a convoy from Truk, their
big base to the north.”
_Rosy O’Grady’s_ crew was jubilant when they heard the order. The fog,
the bugs, the everlasting sticky heat of Mau River made idleness a
torture. That night they crawled under their mosquito bars and fell
sound asleep without the usual “bull session” of complaints.
The fog had lifted a little when they finished their pre-dawn breakfast
and headed for the runway. _Rosy’s_ four engines were whooping it up as
the greaseballs warmed them.
“That’s real music!” Fred Marmon shouted to Barry. “If they run as
sweetly as that today, no storm’s going to worry us.”
“She’s bombed up. I saw to that last night,” said Chick Enders at
Barry’s elbow. “They’re all half-ton babies. If we should spot a Jap
convoy, we’ll be set to slam it.”
“If!” repeated Curly Levitt, the navigator. “It’s a pretty big ‘if,’
even granting that there is a convoy at sea. There won’t be many holes
in this cloud ceiling, I’m afraid....”
His voice faded out beneath the thunder of five thousand horses, as
_Rosy O’Grady_ strained at her braked wheels. The engine roar died down
suddenly, a moment later, and the mechanics slid out of the hatch. The
sergeant in charge made a circle with his thumb and finger, indicating
“Okay!” Barry Blake nodded, and plunged into _Rosy’s_ dim interior.
The runway was a vaguely lighter strip down the center of the field as
they took off. It dropped away, as lightly as a streak of fog. Hap
Newton touched the lever that raised the wheels. Suddenly the
blanketing mist closed them in completely.
For the first hour Barry flew by instruments. Then, just off the
western tip of New Britain, the air about them cleared. No loom of
Arabia ever wove such gorgeous colors as the rising sun now spread over
the cloud rug below _Rosy’s_ broad wings. Among deep blue shadows the
rolling vapors gleamed with gold and pink.
In the bomber’s transparent nose, Chick Enders gazed at the scene,
open-mouthed.
“Fellows,” he said in a voice of wonder. “That’s a sight worth any
flier’s life. It’s Heaven’s art work, fresh from the hand of God!”
Nobody else spoke. Chick Enders had expressed the feeling of every man
in the plane who had a view of the colors below. Soon, however, the
cloud painting changed, the gold growing whiter and more brilliant, the
blue and pink fading out.
Fifty miles farther on a gap appeared, and through it the white-capped
ocean. For nearly an hour the water remained in sight. A hundred miles
from Rabaul the ceiling closed again, and Barry turned his Fortress
back on the second leg of a big triangle.
No more breaks appeared until they were halfway to the Admiralty
Islands. Here the clouds were higher, with small gaps in them that
opened and closed as the winds whipped the masses of vapor along. Below
them the ceiling seemed to be several hundred feet above the sea.
“I’m going down, Hap,” Barry Blake announced. “We won’t be able to see
as far as we’d like to, but we’re doing no good up here above the
ceiling. Besides, I have a hunch....”
“Play it, then,” Hap Newton advised. “In this game a bit of a hunch is
sometimes worth a barrel of reasoning. Chick, be ready with that
bombsight! We might come out right over a Jap battlewagon!”
The bomber sank through the fluffy cloud mass like a swooping eagle.
For a moment her pilots could see nothing outside. Barry kept his eyes
glued to the altimeter: a thousand feet, nine hundred, eight
hundred—Suddenly they were through, with the rolling ocean so near
that its white-topped waves seemed to reach up for them.
Hastily Barry pulled out of his shallow dive, and climbed for the
clouds. His hunch had been right, as the shouts of Hap Newton and Chick
attested. Spread out over a twenty mile area were a dozen large vessels.
“The Jap convoy!” Hap cried. “No doubt about it—they’re heading
southwest toward New Guinea. Let’s give ’em all we’ve got—”
CRANG!
The blast of a small-caliber shell inside _Rosy’s_ fuselage shocked her
crew into grim alertness. Two seconds later her top turret guns
chattered. Empty shell cases tumbled smoking to the floor behind Barry,
as he zoomed the Fortress into the nearest mass of clouds.
“Where is he, Soapy?” the young pilot asked through clenched teeth.
“Right on the other side of this cloud, last I saw of him,” replied the
radioman-gunner. “He’s a big Jap twin-float bomber ... looks like an
_Aichi_ T98.”
“Two 20-mm. cannon and four fixed wing guns,” stated Barry, recalling
what he had learned of the T98’s armament. “Unless he gets in some
lucky shots our .50-calibers ought to be a match for him. We’re going
after that baby, and blast him out of the air!”
The broken clouds opened out suddenly, revealing the two planes flying
almost abreast, and barely a stone’s throw apart. They opened fire
together. Now it was _Rosy O’Grady’s_ full broadside that came into
play—nose, tail and side guns, spitting bullets that could chew chunks
out of railroad tracks.
Rows of holes like stitching appeared here and there in the _Aichi’s_
fuselage, but the “greenhouse” of the Jap plane appeared bulletproof.
_Rosy’s_ slugs struck it and bounced away at right angles. Inside could
be seen the Jap gunners, hunched over their weapons, their faces drawn
and tense. Smoke drifted from the hot muzzles of their cannon.
_Rosy O’Grady_ was taking punishment. Her fin and rudder looked like a
slice of Swiss cheese. Shell holes gaped in her fuselage. Shell
fragments were whizzing about her interior—thin, jagged bits of steel
with cutting edges. Every gunner was nicked and bleeding, yet all stuck
by their guns.
The Jap was catching plenty of trouble, too. His left hand engine was
smoking, and his forward cannon appeared to be damaged or jammed. He
made a swift, left hand turn, trying to escape _Rosy’s_ broadside.
Barry saw the _Aichi’s_ play, and countered it. The huge Fortress
seemed to pivot inside the Jap’s half circle. The strain of that sudden
turn would have broken anything but a fighter or a Fortress in two, but
_Rosy_ took it. Her deadly broadside kept hammering the now-frightened
Jap.
The _Aichi_ nosed up, disappearing behind a long streak of cloud. The
shuddering racket of _Rosy’s_ .50-calibers stopped. Barry Blake wiped
the blood off his forehead, where a ricocheting shell fragment had cut
him. He winked at Hap Newton, who smiled back despite a sliced cheek.
“Ball turret from pilot,” he said into the interphone. “Watch out for a
trick. That Jap might try to dive below us and rip at our belly....
_There he goes now!_.”
[Illustration: _Shell Fragments Whizzed About the Plane’s Interior_]
“I see him, sir!” said Cracker Jackson, as his bottom guns opened up.
Barry shoved the wheel forward sharply, diving after the Jap. Smoke
from the _Aichi’s_ left engine was drifting back to blend with the
powder smoke of her rear cannon. A shell slammed into Chick Enders’
left gun with a crack that resounded through the plane.
Chick lost balance as Barry pulled out of the dive, barely two hundred
feet above the water. The little bombardier shook his numbed fingers,
grabbed the right-hand machine gun and swung it broadside. Again the
two planes were flying side by side, but the Jap was licked.
Flame burst from his crippled engine. A front panel of his “greenhouse”
collapsed. He swerved wildly, nosed downward, and struck the water with
a terrific splash.
Barry zoomed his ship as steeply as he dared. In that last minute of
dogfighting he had flown within two thousand yards of a Jap cruiser.
Tracer shells from the warship were streaking the air about him.
In a tight climbing turn the big Fortress dodged, heading for the
protecting overcast of clouds. If one of those five-inch naval shells
hit her, she would be a dead duck, and every man aboard her knew it.
Chick Enders was not satisfied with mere escape. He turned to his pilot
with a pleading expression.
“Give me one crack at that warship, Barry,” he begged. “What’s the use
of coming out with a full bomb load if we’ve got to take it all back?”
Barry banked his plane, and climbed again. The clouds enfolded the
battle-torn Fortress like soft fleece.
“All right, Chick,” he consented. “I’ll give you a crack at something,
but not when they’ve got us pinned to the wall. It’s more important to
get the report of this convoy back to headquarters than to sink a ship.
Soapy, get on the air and let me talk to the base.”
Circling at reduced speed within the sheltering cloud blanket, Barry
radioed a brief report of the convoy’s location, direction, and
probable size.
“Shot down twin-float _Aichi_ T98 that attacked us,” he concluded.
“We’re going back to leave a few calling cards on the Jap’s decks.”
Roaring down through the ceiling, Barry spotted the circle of flame
that still marked the grave of the _Aichi_. Two vessels of the convoy
were steaming past it on either side. The nearer was a big,
troop-carrying destroyer. The farther was a cargo vessel of six
thousand tons.
“We’ll take the destroyer first,” yelped Chick Enders, cuddling his
bombsight.
They were so near that the Jap gunners had no time to swing their
heavier guns. The shots that they aimed flew wild. Already the
destroyer’s deck was almost beneath. From stern to bow _Rosy O’Grady’s_
shadow swept over the doomed warship.
The thousand-pound bomb went through her deck as through paper, and
exploded in her bowels. The destroyer broke in two, spewing into the
waves shapeless things that had been men and machinery.
“Now for that cargo tub!” cried Chick, his voice high pitched with
excitement.