A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II by Makos Adam & Alexander Larry

Author:Makos, Adam & Alexander, Larry [Makos, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101618950
Publisher: Berkley Hardcover
Published: 2012-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

15

A HIGHER CALL

MEANWHILE, ABOVE OLDENBURG, GERMANY

THE PUB DROPPED from the sky in a spin, accelerating as she passed through twenty-two thousand feet… twenty thousand… eighteen thousand….

In the cockpit, gravity pulled Pinky’s limp body against the wall and Charlie across the gap between their seats.

The fall continued to sixteen thousand feet… fourteen thousand… twelve thousand….

Some twenty seconds later the bomber spun through ten thousand feet, where its spiral broke into a nosedive. The plane plunged straight down. At low altitude, the cockpit began to flow with oxygen-rich air. Charlie regained consciousness. Shaking his head he saw the German landscape through his windscreen, rushing closer by the second. The ground was barely a mile below. Pressed back into his seat, Charlie strained for the controls. He gripped them and hauled back.

“Pinky!” Charlie yelled to his unconscious copilot. Pinky still wore his oxygen mask, one that ironically now prevented him from breathing. Charlie reached over and tore the mask from Pinky’s face.

“Damn it, wake up!” Charlie shouted. Pinky began to breathe but remained unconscious.

Charlie toggled the bomber’s flaps to create drag and slow the plunge. Vibrations rattled the bomber, threatening to shake it to pieces. Ahead, Charlie saw that he was diving straight toward a German city.

The altimeter wound backward: 7,000 feet… 6,000… 5,000… Charlie strained with all his might. The trees and homes of the suburbs of Oldenburg came into focus. At three thousand feet, The Pub did something that no B-17 missing a stabilizer should have done. She stopped diving. For reasons inexplicable, her wings began to flutter. The plane flirted with the idea of lift.

Charlie dug his heels into the rudder pedals and pulled back on the yoke with his whole body. The bomber’s wings took bigger bites of the air and surged at the taste. Passing beneath two thousand feet, after falling nearly five miles, the bomber’s wings began flying again. But the plane was still dropping. Charlie’s arms shook.

Just when Charlie was sure The Pub was going to scrape the houses below, her nose lifted to the horizon and she leveled out, blowing leaves from trees and shingles from homes. Charlie had not flown so low over a town since buzzing Weston. The German people below him gazed up in awe, forgetting to run from the green bomber that thundered overhead, rattling their windows.

Charlie took a deep breath and looked over at Pinky. Pinky held his head and glanced out the window at the treetops passing beneath him. “Are we in England?” he asked, groggily.

“Germany,” Charlie said, uninterested in explaining what Pinky had missed. Charlie scanned the skies around the bomber for enemy fighters, expecting them to have followed him down. He saw only emptiness. They’re probably at the bar lifting steins of beer and singing, Charlie thought.* With trepidation, Charlie raised the flaps, afraid the bomber would drop out of the sky without their lift. But she surprised him and kept flying.

Charlie called into his throat mic, “Pilot to navigator.” Then he remembered the mics were out. “Get Doc,” Charlie told Pinky.

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