Chapter 8

The next morning, we took off at our scheduled time and headed for a balloon located in a region that we had never been to before. This had its advantages and its disadvantages. On the good side, the Germans did not know what we could and would do, so we had a better chance to get my bombs off without being shot down. On the bad side, we had no idea what sort of defense or terrain that we would be facing, so we were going in just as blind as the enemy was.

As usual, Jack and Bill did the standard attack scheme with them roaring in and firing incendiary bullets at the balloon and drawing the attention of the antiaircraft machine guns and cannon. Eddie was flying the top cover and feeling like he was left out of the game, while I was to make my usual bombing run.

I lined up with the long axis of the balloon and dove in as slowly as I could manage. At the right altitude, I released my first set of bombs. These were the two bombs that were the greatest distance from the fuselage. In other words, it was the right bomb of the right pair and the left bomb of the left pair. That would make damned sure that they did not strike anything on the way down.

I pulled away in time to see both bombs land on top of the observation balloon and hold their position. A few seconds later, there was the large plume of blue fire erupting from the envelope, and I knew that we could scratch another balloon. I was pulling for altitude when I caught sight of Eddie, and I nearly panicked.

He was fighting with two D. VIIs. Thank God that they must have been even more of a beginner than he was! Had they both attacked at the same time, Eddie would have been a goner, but each one held back while the other took his turn at Eddie. I couldn't imagine any reason for doing that except inexperience, and I sure as hell was not going to fall into that trap.

I could see which plane was next to make a pass at Eddie, and, by coincidence, he was going to pass right over me. I wondered if he even knew that I was there? I had a full load of ammunition for my two machine guns because I never used them during the bombing run, so I had plenty to fire at the D. VII. He was concentrating on a head-to-head pass at Eddie and didn't have any idea of what kind of mess he was about to run into.

I used every moment of my experience as a fighter pilot to estimate where my bullets would be when they reached the altitude of the D. VII. I pointed my SPAD in that direction in front of the attacking D. VII and fired. The German flew right through my stream of bullets, and I don't know how many hit him, but there were enough to set his plane on fire. It burned for a few seconds before it exploded, and Eddie was forced to fly right through the smoke cloud. That caused him no harm, but I knew from experience that it was a scarey thing to do.

The other German must have seen me about that time and realized that he was now facing two SPADs instead of one. Whatever the reason, he took off away from us as fast as he could go. He had altitude on both of us, so I doubt that we could have caught him if we had tried. In any case, we just formed up and flew in a circle waiting for Jack and Bill to join us.

Jack led us home, and we did not take time for any further excursions. Bill had signaled that he was out of ammunition, so there was no point in putting him in more danger than necessary. We landed, and there was the usual grousing by the ground crew about the number of holes they had to patch in their beloved airplanes, but we had heard that so many times already that we did not pay any attention. Instead, we headed for debriefing and the bar for our medicinal booze.

As usual, we grabbed a shower and changed clothes before Jack drove us into town. Most of my clothes were in my apartment in town, but I still had access to my locker on the base, and I kept a change of clothes there to allow me to clean up after a mission. I had no doubt that Connie appreciated that.

Naturally, our first stop was at the Red Cross canteen where I met Connie, and the other guys found dates for the night. We danced for a while, but I was glad to escape when Connie's shift was over. Eddie had spent most of the evening telling everyone about how I had saved his bacon that morning, and I found it a little bit embarrassing.

I had pointed out to Eddie that he should now know that he was flying top cover for a reason, and I would have been in serious trouble if he had not distracted the two D. VIIs. His action to keep them off my back was what made the mission a success, so he deserved as much praise as I did for bringing down the balloon. Eddie seemed to agree with my argument, but that did not stop him from talking up the whole affair. What complicated his tale was that he had to be careful not to mention that I had dropped the thermite bombs on the balloon.

Connie and I finally escaped, and we headed to our apartment. We never left there until it was time for me to report to base for my next mission. I was very happy not to be the flight leader because that would have meant that I had to be at the base an hour earlier for the mission briefing. Jack just gave us a short-form of the briefing just before we climbed into our SPADs.

This time, I was carrying regular bombs. I had talked to Col. Handly about dropping bombs on a German airfield. I had been put off because the observation balloons were considered so important. However, the Germans were having more success with their observation planes, so Col. Handly had finally been able to get the upper echelons to agree to give my idea a try. Bombing was nothing new in the War, but it was done from the behemoths specifically designed as bombers. Nobody had tried using fighters this way. As we got into our planes, Jack handed me a couple of photographs of the target with two specific hangers outlined in red.

I was supposed to dive bomb the two hangers while the other three members of my flight flew cover. There were a number of D. VIIs at the airfield where they flew cover for the observation planes stationed there. We were really flying this mission more on guess than on hard knowledge, so it was an experiment from several points of view. We didn't know if the observation planes would be in the hangers when we attacked and we didn't know how many D. VII fighters there would be on hand to oppose us. Oh, well, live and learn. I just hoped we all did live through this adventure.

We left a little later than our usual takeoff time because we were hoping to catch the German planes while they were being serviced after their morning patrol. If we did catch them that way, we might not even have to worry about planes. We would "only" have to worry about the antiaircraft fire. Ha, that was no consolation!

We flew as if we were on a regular patrol, but the other guys had to adjust their speed to match my slower speed. I was carrying four modified 16-pound British RL bombs, and that extra 64 pounds of weight really put a load on my engine. I had a full load of gas and ammunition because we really did not know what to expect, and I was not going out with less that a full load of either one.

We had to add nearly half an hour to our flying time because of the reduced speed, so we were really very late when we finally reached our target. We used pretty much the same kind of division of labor for this run as we had for all of our balloon busting runs. Jack and Bill did a strafing attack on the parked planes and Eddie did the high cover while I looked for the two hangers that I was supposed to hit.

These were the third and fourth hangers in a line of five, so I should be able to pick them out without too much trouble. I climbed to 5,000 feet and nosed over into my dive. As usual, I wanted a slow diving speed, but I had the added problem of picking out my target after I was nose down. With a balloon, that was no problem. There was only one thing around the target area that looked like a balloon. This situation was very different. I had to pick out the two specific hangers that I was to hit, and I had to do that on my way down. Therefore, I wanted to give myself plenty of time to be sure of my target before I released my bombs.