SCOUTING MISSION
Stan and O'Malley had a visitor that night. Allison drove over to see
them. Looking around the Nissen hut, he grinned broadly.
"Sure, an' I'll call the butler," O'Malley said. "He just stepped into
the drawin' room."
"Sit down, pal." Stan motioned toward one of the cots.
"Homey spot you have here," Allison observed.
"How did it go today?" Stan asked.
"You fellows did a swell job, but why only six fighters?" Allison's
smile had faded.
"The brass hats knew I was goin' along," O'Malley replied.
"One of those little experiments," Stan explained grimly.
"Pretty expensive try, I'd say," Allison answered.
"O'Malley spotted a big fighter base all equipped with vanishing
planes." Stan got to the point he wanted to discuss at once.
"There must be dozens of them, but we have never been able to spot any
of them to knock them out. Those Me's and FW's just sprout out of the
ground as we go along." Allison frowned and shook his head. "If we could
spot the fields, we could send out separate missions ahead of a raid and
knock off those fields."
"O'Malley says they snap the planes out of sight in less than a minute.
He slipped in over one of them, circled, and when he came back there
wasn't a plane in sight."
"I figure there were at least seventy planes parked when I popped in
over the field. When I came back over they were gone." O'Malley shook
his head.
"Think anyone would believe such a yarn?" Stan asked.
"Every bomber pilot and crew member would believe it," Allison said
grimly. "Why don't you report it and ask for a chance to check up?"
"I've already gone over the head of Sim Jones once and got socked for
it," Stan said. "But O'Malley ought to report it."
"Sure, an' I'll be after seein' Colonel Holt meself." O'Malley ran his
fingers through his mop of red hair. "I'd as soon have this Jones bird
after me as not."
After that the talk got around to the raid on Huls. Allison's ship had
come through with only a few bullet holes. His bombardier had laid their
eggs squarely on a factory building. It had been a good show for the
Forts and Libs.
"What I'm worried about," Allison said as he got ready to leave, "is
that the Wellingtons and Lancasters will blow Berlin off the map before
we are able to penetrate that far."
"Them nighthawks?" O'Malley showed his scorn by frowning savagely.
"Flyin' boxcars!"
"They haul a lot of TNT and they get through, to their targets, but
there'll be a lot of stuff for the precision sights of the Forts and
Libs," Stan said. "You notice when they want important targets like
locks or sub pens or carefully placed factories they send you boys to
get them."
"I know, old man," Allison said with a grin. "But I'd like to make the
Berlin run."
"With those hidden fighter fields out of the way you could go in and out
alone," Stan pointed out. "The way it is now, they keep sending up
fighters all along the route."
"I have to run for it," Allison said. "Pilots meeting."
After he had gone Stan and O'Malley headed for Colonel Holt's office.
Bugs and Splinters came in just as they were leaving. They were both
highly excited. They had been assigned to active duty. Stan smiled at
them but he was thinking that they were taking the places of the men who
had been in his flight.
The boys were waiting for the colonel when Sim Jones came out of a side
door. He paused for a moment. Stan eyed him coldly; O'Malley walked on
into the colonel's office without speaking.
"I suppose you think I deliberately tricked you, Wilson. You're headed
for the Old Man." His lips pulled tight. "I don't blame you, but I
didn't pull that stunt to get you cut out. It was a boner on my part."
"It was," Stan agreed dryly. "And I'm not squawking to the colonel."
Sim looked Stan in the eye; he flushed a deep red. "I figured I was so
good I could cut back and take out all three Jerries."
"Forget it," Stan said and grinned. "We all pull 'em."
Sim turned and hurried away without another word. Stan was still smiling
as he entered the colonel's office. O'Malley scowled up at him.
"Did you bop him one?" he asked.
The colonel was seated at his desk. He looked from Stan to O'Malley and
lifted his eyebrows.
"No," Stan said. "I made a date to have lunch with him."
O'Malley's eyes opened wide. The colonel leaned back. "Go ahead with
your story, Lieutenant," he said.
O'Malley finished his story and the colonel considered the matter for a
few minutes.
"It sounds fantastic," he finally said. "But it fits in very neatly with
what we have been able to learn about German fighter tactics. I think we
should look into it. I'll let you men know what I plan to do."
"Could we have any special assignment growing out of this?" Stan asked.
"You will get the special assignment," the colonel promised.
"Thank you, sir," Stan answered as he got to his feet.
They saluted and left the office. O'Malley was still in a sour mood.
"You made up with that Jones bird?"
"I did," Stan said. "Now let's head for the mess."
When they entered the mess, the boys greeted them warmly and crowded
around. There was no trace of resentment or jealousy. The fellows were
eager to know what had happened over Huls. Stan and O'Malley were the
only two pilots to get back. Sim sat at a table alone.
Stan talked with the boys a while, then walked over to where Sim was
seated. He pulled out a chair and sat down.
"Mind if I join you?" he asked.
"Glad to have you," Sim said and meant it.
After a bit O'Malley came over. He had noticed that Stan and Sim were
laughing over something and he did not know what to make of it.
"Sit down," Stan greeted him. "Have a pie on me."
"Sure, an' I'll do that," O'Malley said. He sat down and waited to hear
what he could.
Stan and Sim laughed and talked and finally O'Malley joined in. It was
clear that the boys had buried the hatchet, so he saw no reason for
being grumpy. Besides, the cook had just made some blueberry pies and
they were extra tasty.
After mess Stan got a call from Colonel Holt and hurried off, leaving
O'Malley and Sim together. The colonel had two officers with him when
Stan went in to see him.
"General Ward and Major Kulp," the colonel said. "This is Lieutenant
Wilson."
The men shook hands and all sat down. The colonel passed several papers
across to Stan.
"You are on special detail. You'll be equipped with P-51 ships and have
a flight of three. General Ward suggests you do a bit of rhubarb
raiding."
"Thank you, sir. These 51's are the new long-range fighters?"
"They have the same range as the Libs and Forts." The colonel smiled.
"But we have only a few of them. Later, perhaps, we'll have a great
many."
"Check carefully on location and construction of fields. Each ship has a
camera to record the details of any fields you locate." General Ward
spoke in a Texas drawl.
"Don't trust the cameras entirely. Get down low and see all you can,"
the major added.
"The third pilot, who is he?" Stan asked.
"Did you have a man in mind?" Colonel Holt asked.
"Yes, sir."
"I should have consulted you, but I already have promised a man the
job."
"Who is he?" Stan asked, trying not to show his disappointment.
"Lieutenant Jones."
Stan began to grin. "The same man I had in mind," he said.
"Good. Now take over."
Stan hurried away. He found the boys listening to the radio in the rest
room. At his nod O'Malley and Sim joined him at a reading table.
"We get special rhubarb detail," he said.
"Foine," O'Malley said eagerly. "Only we'll never be able to fly far
enough into Kraut territory to see anything."
"I get to go along?" Sim asked.
"Colonel's orders," Stan said and grinned. "And we get P-51 ships with
the same range as the Forts."
"Sure, an' we'll fly to Berlin," O'Malley said.
"You better be thinking about locating that airfield," Stan answered.
"There was a general at the meeting I just left."
"As long as he won't be askin' to go along, it's all right," O'Malley
said.
"Now let's get some shut-eye." Stan got to his feet.
In the operations room the next morning, their papers were ready and
they headed out on the field where three big Mustangs stood ready and
warmed up. They were powerhouses with wicked armament and plenty of
wingspread. In addition to wing guns, they had bomb racks which were
fitted with extra gasoline tanks.
"Sure, an' they're one-man bombers," O'Malley crowed.
"They weren't built for hedge-hopping, but the major said they could do
about four hundred miles per hour on the treetop level," Stan explained.
Sim whistled. "Wait until the Eighth gets a flock of these," he said.
"You plot the course, O'Malley," Stan said. "We'll stay in close until
we start down over Germany, then we'll keep within striking distance to
cover each other. We're camera equipped but we have to use our eyes,
too."
The boys climbed up and got settled. Control gave Stan clearance and he
called to his flight.
"Rhubarb Raid, check temperatures. Sim, take off first. Rendezvous at
twenty thousand."
Stan leaned back and checked his instruments. He watched Sim slide away
and shoot skyward. The 51's were plenty fast. O'Malley went off next and
was in the air almost at once. Stan kicked his throttle open and roared
after his pals. The Mustang hopped off as though she weighed only a few
pounds instead of three tons or more.
The three P-51's slipped into close formation and headed out across the
channel. The day was a good one for reconnaissance, because there were
many banks of clouds at high level with a very high ceiling. Stan kept
his eyes open for enemy interceptors. He half hoped a few Me's would
spot them so that they could try out the new ships. No fighters were
seen until they reached the mouth of the Rhine.
Below them they could see Rotterdam and beyond, Gorinchem. O'Malley was
wagging his wings, signaling to go down. The fighters they spotted,
three in number, did not try to intercept them.
Stan signaled back and they all peeled off. The P-51 went down smoothly
but with a swift rush that set Stan back against the shock pad. He had
to ease on a bit more power to stay with O'Malley who was trying his
ship out.
At five thousand feet they flattened out a quarter mile apart and
stalled in toward a line of trees and a windmill. O'Malley brushed the
sails of the mill as he swept over it. They were close to the ground
now, flipping along like cotton dusters on a Texas plantation. O'Malley
was hugging the ground, popping over trees and sliding between
buildings. Stan saw the white faces of people as they looked up. Most of
them waved to the ship with the United States insignia. They were Dutch
farmers.
The three ships hedge-hopped on over the low country. O'Malley held a
speed that made the ground blur and waver. It also made dodging power
lines and missing church steeples exciting business. Stan raked a
pennant off the top of a building without seeing the building at all.
After that he called to O'Malley.
"Hey, you. Get up a bit!"
"Sure, an' the scenery is foine down here," O'Malley called back. But he
did take a little more altitude.
They roared in over Germany and headed for Huls. Twice they were blasted
by machine guns, but they were flying so low the German detector system
had not spotted them. They were put down as Mosquito bombers out hunting
locomotives and trains:
"We're coming in now," O'Malley called.
He had swung wide of Huls and was headed for some low hills. Knifing
over the the nearest hill, with their bellies scraping the tops of a row
of trees, the three P-51's nosed into a little valley.
Suddenly Stan saw the airfield O'Malley had spotted. In a snap guess he
placed the number of planes lined up at one hundred. They were in a
long row at the base of a hill. Runways led out to a wide flight strip.
"Strafe them!" he shouted.
The order was not necessary. O'Malley and Sim were going straight down
the line of planes, their guns blasting flame and lead. The target was
so narrow that Stan had to stall and slip a bit to drop behind in order
to get a shot at the line.
The Mustangs went over so fast the Germans did not have time to fire a
shot at them. Not a plane moved, except those which blew up or burst
into flames under the withering fire from the Yank guns. Up the P-51's
went and over the ridge. They were roaring along at such a pace that it
took a long zoom and bank to get lined up for a return trip.
When they came back over, the Germans were ready for them. Smoke makers
were billowing thick haze over the scene and every imaginable sort of
gun was slamming lead and steel into the sky. The air above the field
was thick with flaming muck. O'Malley was out in front with Sim close
off his port wing. He went into the muck low down. Stan came in a bit
behind his pals.
Looking down into the flaming muzzles of the guns Stan stared hard.
There wasn't a plane in sight! Not even the burning ships or those
blasted to bits could be seen. There was nothing but the green slope of
the hill and the smooth runways leading to the flight strip.
"Well, what do you know!" he muttered.
At that instant the muck enveloped him along with the pall of smoke from
the edges of the field. Just ahead of him he saw something that looked
like a huge rocket lift toward Sim's ship. It exploded with a blinding
flash directly under the P-51. Sim's ship shot upward and a wing swirled
away like a dark strip of paper torn from a wall. Then the P-51 nosed
into the ground and exploded. Cold sweat broke out all over Stan's body
as he pulled his ship over and up.
At five thousand feet up and well away from the hot spot, Stan took
stock. He tried to call O'Malley and found his radio was shot out.
Looking through his spattered hatch cover, he saw that his port wing
had three gaping holes in it. But the engine was singing sweetly. His
first thought was to locate O'Malley, but he had another when he spotted
three Focke-Wulf fighters roaring in on his tail.
"We'll see what you have to offer, sister," he said softly as he kicked
the Mustang wide open and laid her over.
The big ship responded with a surge of power that yanked her into the
sky and over in a perfect roll before Stan could decide what was going
on. Leveling off, Stan looked for the FW's. They had missed him by a
wide margin. Stan grinned.
"You don't need a pilot, lady," he said.
Coming over he tried a burst on one of the FW's. It was a long shot, but
the Jerry was lined up neatly in his sight. The heavy guns of the P-51
roared and bucked. Up ahead the FW wobbled and dived. The other two went
up for altitude. Stan went up, too. The P-51 was a high-altitude lady
and would do better up where she had rare air and plenty of space.
Stan eased away from the FW's and did not challenge them. They circled,
taking a good look at this new type of fighter. They had learned from
sad experience that any new Yank ship might prove to be deadly. The
Forts had taught them that.
Stan was well up now where he could look down on the flight strip below.
He saw nothing of O'Malley but he did see two wrecked planes at the far
edge of the field away from the hill. Nosing down Stan dived toward the
field. The two FW's dived after him, but he soon eased away from them.
Sweeping in a few yards above the runway, Stan laid over just a little.
He checked the wrecks and saw that one of them was Sim's ship. The other
was an FW fighter minus one wing. The Germans behind their hidden
batteries opened up with a savage burst of fire. Stan went straight
toward the hill, flying low to keep out of the flak. As he shot up off
the runway he stared hard at the hillside ahead, then blinked his eyes.
"So," he said softly. "So that's the way it is."
He went up and over the hill, spiraling into the sky in a climb steeper
than any ship had ever carried him. The FW's had been joined by five Me
110's, but the Jerries did not close with him. Stan headed for home as
fast as the P-51 could travel, which topped four hundred miles per hour
by a wide margin.
He was roaring along with no opposition in sight and a clear sky around
him when he suddenly spotted a plane in his mirror. It was overhauling
him rapidly. Suddenly Stan grinned. He eased back on the throttle and
waggled his wings as O'Malley roared over him. Picking up speed, he
dropped in beside his pal and signaled that his radio was dead. They
roared on home, wing to wing.