american-4

looped over, the pilot was blinded by the oil streaming over his windshield and thus did not see how close he was to another B-17. His fighter hit the port wing, snapping his own wing clean off between the two engines before exploding in a flash of orange-smeared smoke. The stricken bomber shuddered, but commenced a gentle dive to a lower altitude under a form of control, as the two men in the cockpit fought to save their lives, and those of their crew. The bomb-bay doors opened wide, and the bomb load was jettisoned. This gave the pilot a little lee-way, but not a lot, as the big aircraft was giving all the signs of a mortal wound. Both engines on his port wing were down, the wing itself had developed a wavy motion which must have told the pilot only one thing, it wasn't long now! The bomber levelled off, and China then saw the figures erupt from the hatch one by one. He counted ten and his fingers uncrossed once he realized that one more crew was down, but alive. The B-17 flew on for maybe another thirty seconds, but the wing commenced to tear off, then the bomber slowly tipped over and gravity claimed her for it's own. Harry Ryan spotted gun flashes from the stern sector of the invading force, but as suddenly as they had arrived, the fighters had disappeared once more. The formation cruised on and the flak rose once more as they transited the skies over Stuttgart, the contrails giving the marker for their enemies, but the force knew that there would be other attacks, having suffered the loss of seven aircraft before they had even reached the approach to their target. They had to face the onslaught over their target, but the dice had been cast a long time back, and theirs was just the latest throw. The lead bomber's pilot's voice came over the command radio net, "Liberty Belle, I repeat, Liberty Belle, execute Alpha Delta, repeat, execute Alpha Delta." The cryptic order meant that the huge formation would now transit, as agreed within the pre-flight briefing, a gentle correction from an almost easterly course to a northerly one, but spread over the next fifteen minutes, while climbing to a staggered altitude around thirty-one thousand feet, so as to try and give minimum warning to the massed anti-aircraft batteries around the target city, Schweinfurt.