Maria, Pull the Trigger and Kill (a World War II adventure)

Getting Shot Down

In January 1945, the German Luftwaffe was largely destroyed. It did pose little threat to our bombers anymore. However, the German army had secured their cities with a lot of Flak. They were operated by kids, 17, 18 year old boys who had gotten dragged out of school and one experienced artillerist per unit. At first, we underestimated the skills of those boys. However, they proved to be a big threat to our bomber units. If they had caught sight of a bomber within range, either day or night, they did shoot it down. The way, General Arthur Harris, alias Bomber-Harris, countered it, was to have so many bombers in one raid, that the Flak capacity was simply overwhelmed. Well, what a nifty strategy. 15000 bomber aircraft and over 100.000 allied airmen got shot down by German Flak in WW2. Especially, the 8th Air Force suffered under the German Flak. 100.000 lost allied airmen is just a number, but it was a whole lot different, if you were a member of the crew in an aircraft going down. Once the pilot realized, that he cannot bring the aircraft home anymore, he gave the bail-out command. Then it was mostly everyone on its own. The bombardier might or might not open the bomb shafts to ease evacuation of the gunners. The rear gunner and the ball turret gunner had the least chances of bailing out. They first had to bring the turret into a specific position in order to being able to leave their seats. For that, the engines still had to be running and the generators still had to provide sufficient electric power. Next came extracting themselves from the seat with all their heavy clothing on. It was a task of its own and took 1-2 minutes. After that they had to put their parachutes on and finally leave the aircraft. If the B17 was still in stable, level flight, then it was all manageable, but when it was not ... Due to that, our bomber crews were entirely fond of Bomber-Harris' nifty strategy and gave him a new nickname --- Butcher-Harris. From that perspective, reconnaissance, identifying Flak, was ever more important. My task was to find all the Flak and mark their position on aerial maps so that the bombers could avoid them. Needless to say that that task was very dangerous. I had to fly low in order not to get spotted early on and once I discovered Flak, I had to make my escape. Luckily, the A-29 was very agile for its size.

Beginning of February 1945, Captain Fairbanks came to me: "You know that I believe, it is a waste of resources, what they are doing to you, but my hands are tied down. However, I organized a plane for you, which is a lot more suitable for the task. Having gotten me antsy, he led me outside where the planes were parked and there was a brand new P-51. It was the latest version of Mustangs, the P-51H, equipped with a 2200 HP Packard Merlin engine. It was lighter and more powerful than its predecessors thus even more agile. The engineers were able to further reduce drag by making surfaces ever smoother. Apparently, it was one of a few prototypes delivered to the Air Force at the time. How Fairbanks got his hands on it, was a mystery to me though, but I did not mind, not mind at all. The plane, was almost evil. If I was not careful in turns (means I took the turn too sharp), I blacked out. Top speed was 480mph and there was no faster plane on the globe (at least, at the time I knew no faster one). In a top speed nosedive, it got so fast, that it could stall, meaning the laminar airflow over the wing broke. This due to the supersonic shockwave effect starting to kick in with around 0,8 Mach. Thus, that plane was my badass chick. That P-51H was a reconnaissance conversion. Instead of 6 MGs in the wings it only had 4. The slots of the other 2 were taken by the cameras and lights.

The P-51H was so fast that I could approach Flak and they were incapable of shooting accurately. The Kommandogerät of the Flak, an analog calculator based on watch mechanics was simply too slow. When they did shot, then based on visual aim and their explosive bullets saw my tail only. This in low altitude of course. What I had to be careful about was a complete Flak battery firing curtain fire. As such, I needed to watch out, that I approached a battery from the side rather than from the front or back.

In Le-Bourget, we had a couple of soldiers, who were real artists and they painted pictures on our aircrafts. On my Mustang, one painted a picture of Wonder Woman throwing her magic lasso. Below he painted "Badass Chick". Very suitable I had to admit.