Chapter 3

I took off carrying 4 British 4-pound incendiary bombs. These all had very sensitive contact fuses, and I was to drop them before I landed if I did not drop them on the observation balloon. These bombs were filled with thermite, so they could continue to burn as they fell through the hydrogen inside the balloon's envelope. The hydrogen needed outside air to burn, but the thermite did not. It was hoped that somewhere along its path, the bomb would mix enough air with the hydrogen to get it to burn. All we could do was to hope as we ran the experiment.

Our plan was the same as our run with the rockets. John would climb with me while Jack and Bill amused the AAA gunners with their gyrations as they shot incendiary bullets at the balloon. Meanwhile, I planned to dive on the balloon as I had done before and release the bombs at an appropriate height. Frankly, I had no preconceived idea of what that height would be. I would not know until I released the bombs.

I was going to release all of the bombs at the same time to allow me some latitude with my aim. I am in no way an experienced bombardier, and I had no idea how accurately I could aim my diving airplane. Actually, I hoped pointing my craft at the balloon would be all of the aiming that I needed to do. I had only dropped a few bombs in my whole career, and all of those had been dropped by hand over the side from my cockpit. My aim with that technique was lousy, and I was hoping for improved luck by doing it this way. At least, the balloon was stationary, and I was not being directly shot at.

John was overhead looking out for D. VIIs, and I hoped that he would not find any until after I had made my bombing run. I couldn't see Jack and Bill, but that was not important. My main object of concentration had to be the balloon. As soon as I felt that I was in position, I nosed over and went into my dive. This time, I throttled back as I nosed over. That way, I hoped not to be going too fast as I was the previous time. I seemed to have better control of my plane when I slowed down a little bit.

I don't know why I chose that angle, but I was diving about 10° away from vertical. I had the feeling that I was about to fall out of my seat and through the propeller, but that was only an illusion. At about 750 feel above the balloon, I released the bombs. Moments later, I wrenched the plane to the side, and I could see the bombs falling lazily toward the balloon.

It looked like my aiming was a lot better this time as the bombs all seemed to fall directly toward the balloon. Uh-oh, I had waited too long to release the bombs. At least, it seemed that way. The bombs were wobbling from side to side as they fell, and I was afraid that they would not land on the fuse trigger. Well, that turned out to be a non-problem. Whoever had designed these fuses had done an outstanding job. I could see all four of the bombs hit the balloon's envelope and ignite.

There was a problem, though which resulted in another uh-oh moment. The bombs were not heavy enough to penetrate the envelope, and all four were lying in a small depression on top of the balloon. By this time, I was off to one side and could see when one of the bombs burned through the fabric of the envelope. Suddenly, there was an explosion of blue flame as the fabric was penetrated with a hole large enough to allow a large quantity of hydrogen to escape. A moment later, the same thing happened with another one of the bombs, and the balloon became a funeral pyre.

I slammed on full power and got away from the balloon as quickly as I could. Only moments later, John came zooming past me frantically signaling me that he had seen at least 20 enemy planes headed in our direction. Four against 20 was not the kind of odds we wanted to face, so we went after our friends to inform them that it was time to tuck in our tails and head for home. They agreed, and we formed up into formation and lit out for our airdrome.

I couldn't help it—I did a "victory roll" in my first pass over the landing strip. Oh, my God! I caught hell when I landed. Everybody from my ground crew chief, Sgt. Alfred, to the CO, Col. Handly, really laid into me when I crawled from my cockpit. They were all upset because I had endangered the SPAD unnecessarily. Okay, I had to admit that they were right, but I still had some steam that I had to let off.

Col. Handly hauled me into his office as if he really planned to ream me a new asshole, but he changed his tune when he sat behind his desk. "Okay, Lt. Edwards, John, I take it that the experiment was a roaring success. Tell me about it."

"Well, Sir, you were absolutely correct about the effect of the incendiary bombs. Only one would have been enough to take the balloon down, but I still think that the four was a good idea because it did allow me some leeway in my aim. Had I dropped only one bomb, I might have missed the balloon or the fuse might have been defective." From there, I gave him a detailed account of what I had done and just how the balloon looked when it caught fire.

"That sounds great, John, but now I have another question. Are you ready to make another pass at an observation balloon with bombs, or do you want to go back to rockets?"

"Sir, the result with the bombs speaks for itself. I am ready to make another pass with bombs, and I would like to keep everything the same as this time; however, I will forgo the victory roll when I come back."

The CO laughed at that and said that we were going to make another run tomorrow. The observation balloons were giving the ground forces too much of a licking to pause now. He dismissed me, and I went to find my friends at the bar.

The next day was a repeat of the bombing run. I had discussed with Jack the possibility of letting someone else from the flight drop the bombs this time. He jinxed that idea. His reasoning was that I was the one with the experience at the job, and the whole thing was too dangerous to add in extra factors. With that in mind, I had to agree with him, but I didn't want the other guys to think that I was hogging all of the glory.

We took off at the usual time, and I was carrying the four thermite bombs. This time, Bill provided the top cover and John flew with Jack as the distracting force. It looked like the Germans had put in more AAA guns, especially machine guns, than we had seen on the other runs against the observation balloons. We must have been making an impression with our attacks on their observation balloons.

However, they appeared not to realize that it was attacks from above that was making the difference because there were no covering fighters over our target. I guessed that the Germans could not see me because the balloon's bulk was between me and the ground. Besides, they were distracted by the planes making the conventional attack. They must have assumed that it was those planes that had caused the destruction of the balloon. It was a reasonable error under the circumstances, and none of us wanted to disillusion them.

They might have noticed that there were more than two American planes in the vicinity, but they were too busy dodging the falling remnants of the burning balloon to pay much attention to anything else. The D. VIIs were staying back out of their own AAA fire, so they had not seen the bombs fall. Those bombs were quite small as compared to conventional high-explosive bombs, so that could be what kept them from being noticed.

I went into my nearly vertical dive and released the bombs at 500 feet away from the balloon this time. Bill was watching closely, and he noticed something that scared the hell out of me. When I released the bombs, one of them barely missed my left landing gear. Had it hit me, we didn't know what might have happened, but our imagination conjured up some very exciting possible scenarios. That was enough to make me resolve to hold my plane steady during the bomb release phase of the run.