Air Service Boys Flying for Victory/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
FLYING FOR VICTORY
Both Tom and Jack could look back to previous experiences in bombing the enemy. They had taken part in excursions that occupied a part of a moonlight night; trips that sometimes had carried them across the border, and to Metz; once they had gone even as far as the Rhine up in the region of Coblenz, where later on Pershing's army was fated to be posted as a guard over the beaten Huns.
But on those occasions their work had been of a different character from that now given to them. They had seen munition plants go up in masses of flames after their bombs struck; watched important bridges being shattered under the same gigantic force; felt a thrill of triumph when a lucky shot exploded some huge munition dump, on which the enemy depended for his reserve store; exhausted their stock of bombs in demolishing an important railway junction, so as to paralyze the transportation of reinforcing bodies of German troops.
All those things they were familiar with, but from the great secrecy that had been maintained in connection with this enterprise they could understand that it far exceeded them all in importance.
Their speed was such that they would be likely to reach their goal shortly, when all the suspense must be over. Jack wished that time had come. He was already trying to figure out just how Tom would plan so as to seem to become lost on the homeward flight, and thus be left to his own resources for a time.
From this reverie he was aroused by seeing the signal flash from the pivot of the spearhead. It gave him an electrical sensation, though that was only to be expected.
Tom, too, knew the crisis was near at hand. He stared ahead, and believed he could even make out spectral objects moving this way and that, like monstrous, though dimly seen, dragonflies, such as all country boys have watched many a time while on a warm summer day, lying at rest on the bank of the "swimming hole."
From this it was evident that news of their probable coming had been sent on ahead, warning the defenders of the German fortress.
Still was the night as yet, but it would not be for long with those opposing air forces ready for a death grapple. While the ten battleplanes, each piloted by a Yankee ace with a splendid record, engaged the flotilla of enemy aircraft, the bombers must be at their more humble but equally important business.
All had been arranged so that there might be the least possible friction, and no confusion. Each pilot and observer knew exactly what he was to do, and every possible situation had been taken into consideration.
Then came the initial firing.
It seemed that one ambitious Boche airman, unable to wait until the oncoming Americans reached the formation arranged to resist the onslaught, had flown ahead and was now exhausting his puny reservoir of missiles against the solid phalanx.
The clatter became a roar as several of the raiders turned their guns on the incautious Hun. Immediately his voice was stilled, and the flittering light dropping earthward, after the manner of a falling rocket-stick, told what had happened to him.
Before he landed his machine had burst into flames, as the escaping petrol caught fire. Jack considered that a good omen for their side.
"Fritz seems to be getting a rough deal on this particular night," he told himself. "Already three of his planes have been destroyed, and several others have gone down out of control, with never a single loss on the side of the Americans. Bully!"
But now the advance had reached the marked line where the rest of the Huns waited to engage the invaders. If they were dismayed by the tragic fate that had overtaken that rash pilot they did not show it, for they attacked with a viciousness that Tom had never seen equalled in all his experience as a flier.
It was undoubtedly desperation that spurred the Boche on. He knew that these wonderful Americans, who his leaders had ridiculed in the beginning, were foes not to be despised; that they had almost taken the entire Argonne; that they had actually threatened to commence the long-talked of march on to Berlin.
So they attacked with fury, and the engagement soon became general. Right and left there was continual firing going on, as the giant planes wheeled and circled, shooting out flaming tongues like so many blast furnaces in action.
The formation was not broken even then, each battleplane continuing to cover its individual bombing plane with the shelter of its wings, so to speak, though at the same time fighting off the aggressors.
Of course the bombers were also fitted to ward off attack, each being armed with two machine-guns, one forward, and the other aft where the man who handled the bombs could manipulate it Slower and much less agile than the fighting planes, they were expected to defend themselves but not to attack.
The advance had slowed up, but not entirely stopped while the battle was joined. As yet no bomb had been slipped from its leash, for the right moment still held off.
Looking down Jack could see where the searchlights that sent such broadening streamers aloft were stationed. He could also make out a dim pile that must be the German fortress, strengthened particularly to hold up the Americans, even as that at Verdun had held up the Huns.
Let the "Archies" bark below and the shrapnel burst all around them as it pleased, no one in all that vast armada of the air was paying the slightest attention to such things. They all, in their carelessness of danger, seemed to themselves impervious to the storm of flying missiles.
The slower-moving bombing machines bore the brunt of this furious onslaught, and Jack could tell that the wings of their plane were being cut by the bullets.
It was almost a miracle that so far no one aboard any of the ten big planes seemed to have been struck; or if such a thing had happened the injury did not appear to be serious. They continued to move forward as if all the Huns in Northern France, backed by every sort of gun that could hurl shrapnel aloft, would not be sufficient to stay their progress.
Presently, however, the formation was broken at a signal. To try to maintain it any longer would be little short of suicidal, for the gunners below were getting their range better, and the bursting shells came alarmingly close now.
Tom kept his eyes constantly about him. Each bomber tried to keep at a given altitude in making the evolutions, since in that way they were better able to avoid a collision that would be fatal to both machines.
At last Tom caught his signal and as he headed straight for the spot over the fortress he gave Jack the sign. The bomb slipped from its sheath, and was instantly lost to sight in the smoky atmosphere below.
Already they had had their ears shocked by numerous discharges, as others among the Americans shot their missile earthward. It was terrible to look down at that crisis in the attack. The whole world seemed on fire beneath them, what with the exploding bombs and the myriad flashes coming from the German guns at work.
Jack was disappointed because in this vast inferno he found it utterly impossible to tell where his special messenger struck. He knew, though, that he had been in a fair position for a hit when given the word, and on that account never found any reason to doubt but that it had given a good account of itself.
After delivering his fire Tom swept off to one side so as not to interfere with another bomber who might occupy a higher level, and be advancing to the attack.
Presently when the turn of the air service boys came again they would be ready to send down the second "bundle of concentrated destructiveness"; and later on there might be a "clean-up call" that would exhaust the stock carried by each plane.
Meanwhile, given a chance to look hastily around at other factors connected with the extensive engagement, Tom discovered that there had been at least one victim besides the initial one.
A plane was dropping swiftly, swinging this way and that, turning over and over, and showing signs that the pilot's hand no longer controlled the levers. He was unable to make out whether it was an enemy plane or one of their own convoy; but the doom of those who happened to be belted to the seats was undoubtedly sealed.