Five minutes later, Dougl
ass came on the air again.
"Blue Group Leader. We have what looks like two squadrons ofME-109s at ten o'clock. Baker and Charley flights, hold your positions. Able will engage.
Able, follow me."
Canidy looked for the German fighters and found them, maybe twenty-five black specks in a nose-down attitude, obviously intending to strike the bomber stream from behind and above.
The Germans preferred to attack from above, preferably from above and to the rear, but from above. Diving at the P-38Fs on their way to the bomber stream beneath would give the Messerschmitts a considerable advantage.
With the American fighters between the B-17s and the Germans, the B-17 gunners would have their fields of fire restricted unless they wanted to run the risk of hitting the P-38Fs. And with just a little bit of luck, machine-gun and cannon fire directed at the P-38Fs might strike one of the bombers beyond them.
Canidy waited until Douglass was out of the way, then tested his guns (he had tested them over the English Channel, but it was better to test them again than to find himself nose up against a Messerschmitt with a had solenoid and no guns) and pushed the nose up and to the left and stayed on Douglass's wing.
He felt his hands sweating inside his gloves, and knew that it was a manifestation of fear.
The attacking Messerschmitts split into two groups, one to continue the attack on the bomber stream, the other to engage the American fighters. The tactic had obviously been preplanned.
The P-38Fs had not been able to gain much speed from the time they left their original position to rise to the attack, but the Germans were running with their needles on the do not exceed red line, and the closing speed was greater than Canidy expected. He was sure that his three-second burst had missed the Messerschmitt he had aimed at.
Turning outside of Douglass he felt the world grow red, then almost black, as the centrifugal forces of the turn drained the blood from his head.
The twin 1,325-horsepower Allison engines, with their throttles shoved forward to full emergency military power indent, were screaming. Full Emergency Military Power was hell on fuel consumption, and cut deeply into the operational life of engines, but the extra power, when needed, was worth the cost. When they came out of the 360-degree turn, they were running a little faster than the Messerschmitts. They gained on them slowly and followed them through the bomber stream.
The tracers from the bombers' guns seemed to fill the sky; there was a real possibility that he would be hit, and that prospect was frightening. But the fear was overcome by what Canidy, very privately, thought of as the animal urge to kill. Man--because he fancied himself civilized--liked to pretend he entered combat reluctantly. And he prepared for combat reluctantly. But once he was in it, he was far less removed from the savage than he liked to believe.
He wallowed in the prospect of killing the enemy.
The pair of Messerschmitts he and Douglass were chasing pulled out of their dives. To be sure of a killing burst from his battery of eight.50caliber Brownings (the mark, Canidy thought approvingly, of the experienced fighter pilot; "don't shoot until you can see the whites of their eyes"), Douglass, who had crept ever closer to the German before him, was taken by surprise. His P38F could not respond in time, and he had lost his opportunity to fire.
Canidy was two hundred yards behind him. Without thinking of what he was doing, he moved the nose of his P38-F from the Messerschmitt he had been following to the one that had gotten away from Doug. The plane vibrated for a moment from the recoil of eight heavy machine guns, then he aimed at the first plane, this time firing a three-second burst.
He saw his tracer stream move from just in front of the Messerschmitt to the engine cowling, then to the left wing. There was a hint of orange, and then the wing tank exploded.
Canidy pulled up abruptly and looked around for the other fighter. He couldn't find it for a moment, and then he saw it, smoke pouring from its engine nacelle as it spun toward the cloud cover below. He looked for a parachute but didn't see one.
And then Douglass was on his wing.
"Two more, "Douglass voice came over the air-to-air.
"How the hell are we going to explain that?"
"That'll make seventeen for you, won't it, Colonel?" Canidy replied.
"Bullshit!
"Douglass said, then switched frequencies.
"Blue Group Able, this is Blue Group Leader. Form on me in Position
A."
The P-38Fs scattered all over the sky began to turn and to resume their original protective positions over the B-17 stream.
Canidy reached inside his sheepskin jacket, then inside his uniform jacket and came out with a Map, US Army Corps of Engineers: Germany.
It wasn't an aerial navigation chart, but rather one intended for use by ground troops. It could also be used by a pilot who intended to navigate by flying close enough to the ground and following roads and rivers. Canidy had taken it with him to the final briefing, and copied onto it the course the bomber stream would fly. Once they had joined the bomber stream, over a known location, it was not difficult to plot from that position and time where the head of the bomber stream would be at a given time.