Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

The Vee-formation instantly disintegrated as each of the Mustangs pulled out of the formation and attempted to find a valid target, meanwhile the B-17 suddenly dropped into a steep dive leaving the skirmish behind it.

‘Bastards! You goddamn Krauty bastards!’ he heard Smitty screaming angrily.

Ferrelli’s evasive action put him up on the same level as the Me-109s, now curling around to descend on the disorganised P51s below.

Oh my God, my boys are going to be shot to pieces.

He pulled his plane round to follow the banking German fighters and found himself lining up nicely behind one of them.

‘No-o-o-o — ’

The voice sounded like Jeff’s. It cut off suddenly and he saw in his peripheral vision one of the P51s erupt into a ball of fire. Ferrelli let his cannons fire in anger for the first time, and the tracers whipped forward, clipping the right wing of the Me-109 ahead of him. A twisted sliver of metal broke away from the wing and spun towards him, clattering noisily off his canopy and thankfully not shattering it. The Me-109 feinted to the left and then pulled sharply to the right. Ferrelli acted quickly enough to keep on the German pilot’s tail, but the German had extended the distance between them.

‘Fuck! Oh Jesus!’ The voice of one of his boys.

‘Give us a goddamn chance, you shits.’ That was Smitty’s voice.

‘You okay, Smitty?’ he shouted instinctively. There was no answer back, but that probably meant the guy was too busy to talk right now.

He let off a second burst. This time, despite the increased range, some of the bullets found the body of the plane and he was rewarded with another spinning shard of metal hurtling perilously close to the canopy, and a spray of oil that spattered against his glass like greasy rain. The Me-109 was now leaving a faint trail behind it, not smoke unfortunately, but oil.

‘Got you, you sonofabitch!’ he shouted so loud his throat rasped painfully.

The German dived and broke left, pulling away from the skirmish. Ferrelli decided not to follow him. ‘Damaged’ was as good as ‘out’ in this ball game. Instead he decided to see whether he could help any of his boys out. He quickly scanned the sky around him.

Jeeez, it’s a fucking massacre.

He could see three planes from his squadron descending away from the epicentre of the battle, trailing thick columns of smoke. Another was being tailed by two Me-109s and as he watched, the combined firepower of both planes disintegrated the tail fin and stabilisers. The Mustang spun along the length of its fuselage and quickly dipped down into a dive, continuing to spin furiously, shedding debris like a wet dog shaking off water, as it began its two-minute journey towards France. He heard a protracted scream over the radio that quickly became a high-pitched whimper of despair and eventually faded into a wash of static.

He hoped that wasn’t young Jake, but it had sounded like the kid.

In the distance he saw the B-17 levelling out, at a quick guess, three or four thousand feet below.

These Me — 109s are protecting it. Ferrelli decided that his unlikely suspicion had been right, the plane had to be carrying something or someone important. Perhaps carrying some high-ranking Nazis to safety, perhaps even Hitler himself.

I was right, goddammit!

‘Who’s alive, for fuck’s sake? Call in, call in!’ he shouted angrily into his radio.

‘I’m still here, sir.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Wally, sir.’

‘Me too!’

‘Jake?’

‘Yessir. I’ve taken some damage, but I’m okay.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Joe here, sir.’

‘Smitty? Smitty?’ Ferrelli expected the cheeky fella to answer. But the radio remained ominously silent. Eight of my boys out of action, just like that, in the space of half a minute.

Ferrelli looked around the sky above him, now smudged with smoke and fading trails. He could see three P51s holding tightly together above the area in which the skirmish had commenced; they reminded him of three little pigs huddled together waiting for the big bad wolf to rip them to shreds.

He leaned over and peered down at the cloud carpet below. The Me-109s were hungrily pursuing two more of his squadron, both of them trailing black cords of burning oil. He watched them all disappear into the clouds, leaving the bomber defended now by only two fighters. The other Me-109s would be back in less than a minute, having finished off those poor bastards.

‘Listen… guys, these fighters are defending the bomber. I reckon there’s somebody real important inside… so that’s what we got to go after, capiche?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘All right, let’s do it quickly before those other Krauts realise their mistake.’

Max watched the Messerschmitts dive past them in pursuit of the two Mustangs. ‘Where are they going?’

‘Stupid bastards. Think they’re hunting deer,’ said Pieter over the interphone, still manning the roof turret.

Max switched from interphone to radio. ‘Schroder! What the hell are you doing?’

‘Don’t worry, I’m right here, look out of your left window.’

Max did so and saw Schroder sliding into position seventy feet off their left wing tip. ‘Erich’s on your right-hand side.’

He leaned forward, craning his neck and looked out of the right window to see Erich Kottle waving back at him from a similar flanking position.

‘I sent the others after those two… we should try and prevent anyone we encounter making it away and raising the alarm… yes?’ Schroder said.

Max nodded, it made sense.

‘Fine. I counted six or seven destroyed. Those two your boys are chasing makes eight or nine, that leaves us a few unaccounted for. Where the hell are they?’

‘I’m looking for them,’ Schroder answered quickly.

Pieter’s voice came through on the interphone, loud, alarmed. ‘Max, four coming in on our six, high!’

‘I see ’em too!’ answered Hans.

Max heard the guns in the top turret rattle angrily and brass shell cases cascaded down the ladder from the turret onto the floor just outside the cockpit. Pieter was whooping with joy, or fear.

Seconds after Pieter had started firing he heard a deafening drumming of bullets impacting the fuselage, running from the rear to the front, as if some giant wearing hob-nail boots was sprinting heavily down the spine of the plane. Glass from the roof turret shattered and he heard Pieter yelp in shock.

The machine gun went silent.

With a deafening roar, four P51s swooped low over the bomber’s cockpit and out in front. Max found himself instinctively ducking. Two of them banked left, the other two right, climbing up and to the sides, preparing for a second pass.

Schroder and Erich automatically took the opportunity to break their flanking positions and run in pursuit.

‘Shit,’ Max muttered under his breath. He heard boots on a rung of the ladder leading down from the roof turret. ‘Pieter, are you okay?’ The regulator on his oxygen mask prevented him from fully turning round to see if that was him. ‘Pieter?’ He heard the shuffling of boots at the bottom and then felt a hand grip the back of his seat. He turned to look up; it was Pieter. His face was darkened by soot and several small cuts, and Max noted his leather flying jacket was ripped and slashed in several places.

‘You okay?’

Pieter nodded. ‘I’m fine… those bastards have wrecked the roof turret. Shit, I manage to fire — what? — twenty, thirty rounds, and then they bloody well break my gun.’

Max, relieved, allowed himself a grin. ‘I think they were just trying to tell you you’re a shitty gunner.’

Pieter slumped into the co-pilot’s seat and plugged himself in. ‘Four years I’ve waited to have a go, and I get to fire one bloody burst,’ he grumbled to himself.