Free Bomber by Paul Dowswell Page A

Congressional Medal of Honor. Lieutenant Stearley and I would both have gone down with the Macey May if you and Friedman hadn’t come to rescue us.’
    He turned his gaze to the rest of the crew.
    ‘Well, we all screwed up in our separate ways. Even Stearley and I. We were so caught up in landing the Fortress level we didn’t even tell you when we were about to make contact.’
    ‘Hey, chief,’ said Skaggs. ‘You saved our lives. I heard B-17s can disintegrate if you don’t get that landing right.’
    ‘Well, I’ll level with you. I don’t want any of this to get back to Kittering. If the colonel finds out how bad we messed up, we’ll all be on the next transport back to the States. So are you with me?’
    They all nodded, even LaFitte, although he was looking pretty sour about it. Harry suspected some of them might relish the opportunity to get out of this, but no one said anything.
    At that moment, the MO came into the waiting area. ‘You can all go back to your huts and rest for the day. You’ve had a lucky escape.’
    Holberg called them together again, outside the hospital entrance, and spoke quietly. ‘OK. Good. I’ll have a word with Lieutenant Stearley when I go and visit him. As far as I’m concerned, we blame this on exceptionally rough weather and faulty equipment. That, and the lightning strike. Assuming they buy it, and assuming they keep us here, I want you all to read up on oxygen failure and how that makes you feel. And as soon as we’re back on duty we’ll be running those ditching drills until we can do them blindfolded.’

CHAPTER 8
    Kittering was due to see Holberg at three that afternoon. He wasn’t looking forward to the encounter. He liked Holberg. He had a fresh-faced openness, almost an innocence, and the idea of sending a man like that to face almost certain death gnawed at the colonel in the dead of the night. He’d been a junior pilot himself, back in the first war, flying with the American Air Service over Flanders.
    That had been a fiasco right from the start. For every pilot killed in combat, two were killed in training. And the ones who lived long enough to fly in an operational squadron rarely lasted more than a month. The only thing that held them together, that kept them flying, was that they were more frightened of their commanding officer than they were of death itself.
    Kittering modelled himself on that man – Colonel Carl Bufford. The airmen had hated him at the time, and everyone on the base called him ‘Iron Ass’. But afterwards, when it was over, and Kittering was the only one of his intake to survive, he began to think Bufford was just the kind of man you needed to lead a bomb group in wartime.
    The planes were safer now, but combat was just as dangerous. In the First War Bufford had flown with his men, shared their danger, and that was something that had really impressed Kittering. He would have liked to do the same now, but the Eighth Air Force commander-in-chief, General Eaker, had expressly forbidden him to do so. Some bull about being too valuable to lose. He should have felt flattered, but he thought it made him look like a coward to the men.
    Kittering decided he was going to have to give Holberg a roasting. He might like him, but he seriously doubted he had the mettle to command a B-17.
    There was a knock at the door.
    ‘Come the hell in,’ he bellowed.
    Holberg put his head round the door. He looked unsure of himself, almost sheepish.
    ‘I hear things are a bit slack on the Macey May , Captain,’ said Kittering. ‘How else can I account for the loss of a quarter-million-dollar airplane on a training exercise?’
    ‘My crew did their best in difficult circumstances, sir,’ said Holberg. ‘We lost out way in a storm on our return from Edinburgh. Our Fortress was also hit by lightning, which affected our navigational instruments. And I have very strong reasons for suspecting Lieutenant Cain had a faulty oxygen supply.’
    The colonel listened in