Excerpt from THE SAVAGE SKY
Chapter 1 - LOST ABOVE THE NORTH ATLANTIC
It is two hours before dawn on December 5, 1943. We are somewhere past mid-ocean on a
flight from Labrador to Scotland. Our Boeing B-17G, four-engine bomber, is in thick cloud
8000 feet above the icy water of the North Atlantic. A violent storm rocks the shuddering
plane.
And we are in serious trouble.
"We're lost?" the pilot says over the intercom.
"Virtually," the navigator says. "I haven't had a star sighting for hours, and George can't get a
radio fix. In a storm this bad, I can only guess where we are."
The intercom is deathly silent. To be lost over the North Atlantic in December sends a chill
down your spine.
"I'd say that we're more than three-fourths of the way across," the navigator continues, "but
in this weather, we could be a long way from where I estimate we are."
"We damn well better be more than three-fourths of the way across," the pilot says. "There's
less than two hours of fuel left. If we don't find land in the next 120 minutes, we go into the
water."
"You know how cold the water is down there?" the navigator says. "We better be able to get
into those life rafts. Otherwise, we'll only last a few minutes."
"I know," the pilot says, "but when the gas is gone, we go down."
I sit alone in the bomber's radio room, with only a tiny light above my desk. I'm trembling.
In my 19 years of life, I have never faced anything like this. I know that our flight from
Labrador to Scotland is at the limit of a B-17's range. Planes usually fly from Newfoundland
to Iceland and then to Scotland, but the Eighth Air Force in England wants us urgently. It is
possible to make the nonstop flight, as long as we don't have headwinds, and I assumed that we
would fly across the ocean with no problem.
We left Goose Bay, Labrador on a clear, cold night, but while the bomber droned eastward,
a storm front raged south faster than predicted. It hit us, wrapping us in thick cloud, buffeting
the aircraft with strong winds, and preventing our navigator from seeing the stars to plot our
course across the ocean. The pilot used up precious fuel in a futile attempt to climb above the
storm to give the navigator star sightings.
To aid navigators in this situation, I use the radio to get our position from a
direction-finding station in Great Britain. Sounds good, right? But on this stormy night, my
radio receiver emits a steady howl that sounds like "wow, wow, wow." It blots out all other
sounds. I carefully tune the big, radio transmitter at the rear of my cabin and broadcast query
after query to the British for our position, but all I hear is "wow, wow, wow." In the
background are whispers of dots and dashes, but they are too weak to understand. As we
continue to fly eastward, the interference grows stronger. I heard that the Germans and Allies
jam each other's radios, but I didn't know that the Germans could reach out into the Atlantic to
try to kill us. I'm a real innocent.
Now, we're blind, alone, and lost, without communication with the outside world. If we
can't find land before we run out of fuel, no one will know where we went down.
While I listen to wow, wow, wow on the radio, I gaze around my compartment. It is shaped
like a big, aluminum can lying on its side. Aluminum girders, the skeleton of the airplane,
form a network inside unpainted, aluminum walls. The cabin is about seven feet in diameter
and has a wooden floor. It smells of oil and metal. On the left side of the cabin, my desk is
bolted to the front bulkhead. A powerful, radio receiver faces me from the rear of the desk. It
is black, and its lighted dials gleam at me. Behind me stands a big, black transmitter, its red
lights glowing in the gloom. To my right, a door leads forward into the bomb bay and beyond
it into the pilots' cabin. To the right of the door is an aluminum rack of small radios for
navigation and talk to nearby planes. Attached to the far wall is a first aid kit. A medic taught
me how to use its contents, including syringes of morphine for wounded crewmembers.
On the rear wall of the radio room, a door leads back into the waist compartment that
extends from radio room almost to the tail. It has big windows for machine guns on each side.
It also has the entrance to the "ball turret," a globe-like structure that hangs beneath the plane.
It is a claustrophobic nightmare, but a cramped gunner can fire its twin machine guns. Beyond
the waist, at the rear of the plane, is a tiny compartment where the tail gunner kneels
uncomfortably to fire two machine guns.
In this new B-17G, the roof of my compartment is transparent Plexiglas. It is one of the
first B-17Gs to head for England, but we will fly bombing missions in a B-17F, which has an
open roof that allows a 170 mile-per-hour gale as cold as 50 degrees below zero to sweep
through the radio room and the rear of the plane.
Each wall of my compartment has a window. Benesth the window on my left is a hose that I
can connect to an oxygen mask when we fly above 10,000 feet. There are cables to connect to
earphones and microphone, and to an electrically-heated suit. The 10 crewmembers
communicate by means of an intercom system.
Hours earlier, we passed near the spot where the Titanic sank into the same freezing water
that waits for us if we run out of gas. When I was a child, my grandmother told how Titanic
passengers went from the comfort of warm cabins to freezing death in the icy water. When
our plane roared into the night sky from the Royal Canadian Air Force base at snow-packed
Goose Bay, Labrador, we knew that coming down in the North Atlantic in winter can cause us
to suffer the same fate as the Titanic passengers. Even if the plane doesn't smash apart on
impact with the ocean's huge swells, it will sink like a rock as water pours in through the
many openings in the bomber. If we survive impact with the ocean, our only hope is to launch
two, inflatable life rafts that the plane carries.
The red handles that release the life rafts are near the ceiling at the front of my cabin.
During training, no one mentioned these controls, but as I stare at them with growing fear, I
realize that I don't know how they operate. Do I pull on them? Do I turn them? Do I push
them? One thing is certain. I'm not going to have time for experiment to find out. When the
plane hits the ocean and sinks like a rock, I must reach those controls before an avalanche of
water sweeps me away. There will be only seconds to find out how to operate them. If I fail,
we will freeze to death within 30 minutes while we float in our inflated life jackets in frigid
water.
flight from Labrador to Scotland. Our Boeing B-17G, four-engine bomber, is in thick cloud
8000 feet above the icy water of the North Atlantic. A violent storm rocks the shuddering
plane.
And we are in serious trouble.
"We're lost?" the pilot says over the intercom.
"Virtually," the navigator says. "I haven't had a star sighting for hours, and George can't get a
radio fix. In a storm this bad, I can only guess where we are."
The intercom is deathly silent. To be lost over the North Atlantic in December sends a chill
down your spine.
"I'd say that we're more than three-fourths of the way across," the navigator continues, "but
in this weather, we could be a long way from where I estimate we are."
"We damn well better be more than three-fourths of the way across," the pilot says. "There's
less than two hours of fuel left. If we don't find land in the next 120 minutes, we go into the
water."
"You know how cold the water is down there?" the navigator says. "We better be able to get
into those life rafts. Otherwise, we'll only last a few minutes."
"I know," the pilot says, "but when the gas is gone, we go down."
I sit alone in the bomber's radio room, with only a tiny light above my desk. I'm trembling.
In my 19 years of life, I have never faced anything like this. I know that our flight from
Labrador to Scotland is at the limit of a B-17's range. Planes usually fly from Newfoundland
to Iceland and then to Scotland, but the Eighth Air Force in England wants us urgently. It is
possible to make the nonstop flight, as long as we don't have headwinds, and I assumed that we
would fly across the ocean with no problem.
We left Goose Bay, Labrador on a clear, cold night, but while the bomber droned eastward,
a storm front raged south faster than predicted. It hit us, wrapping us in thick cloud, buffeting
the aircraft with strong winds, and preventing our navigator from seeing the stars to plot our
course across the ocean. The pilot used up precious fuel in a futile attempt to climb above the
storm to give the navigator star sightings.
To aid navigators in this situation, I use the radio to get our position from a
direction-finding station in Great Britain. Sounds good, right? But on this stormy night, my
radio receiver emits a steady howl that sounds like "wow, wow, wow." It blots out all other
sounds. I carefully tune the big, radio transmitter at the rear of my cabin and broadcast query
after query to the British for our position, but all I hear is "wow, wow, wow." In the
background are whispers of dots and dashes, but they are too weak to understand. As we
continue to fly eastward, the interference grows stronger. I heard that the Germans and Allies
jam each other's radios, but I didn't know that the Germans could reach out into the Atlantic to
try to kill us. I'm a real innocent.
Now, we're blind, alone, and lost, without communication with the outside world. If we
can't find land before we run out of fuel, no one will know where we went down.
While I listen to wow, wow, wow on the radio, I gaze around my compartment. It is shaped
like a big, aluminum can lying on its side. Aluminum girders, the skeleton of the airplane,
form a network inside unpainted, aluminum walls. The cabin is about seven feet in diameter
and has a wooden floor. It smells of oil and metal. On the left side of the cabin, my desk is
bolted to the front bulkhead. A powerful, radio receiver faces me from the rear of the desk. It
is black, and its lighted dials gleam at me. Behind me stands a big, black transmitter, its red
lights glowing in the gloom. To my right, a door leads forward into the bomb bay and beyond
it into the pilots' cabin. To the right of the door is an aluminum rack of small radios for
navigation and talk to nearby planes. Attached to the far wall is a first aid kit. A medic taught
me how to use its contents, including syringes of morphine for wounded crewmembers.
On the rear wall of the radio room, a door leads back into the waist compartment that
extends from radio room almost to the tail. It has big windows for machine guns on each side.
It also has the entrance to the "ball turret," a globe-like structure that hangs beneath the plane.
It is a claustrophobic nightmare, but a cramped gunner can fire its twin machine guns. Beyond
the waist, at the rear of the plane, is a tiny compartment where the tail gunner kneels
uncomfortably to fire two machine guns.
In this new B-17G, the roof of my compartment is transparent Plexiglas. It is one of the
first B-17Gs to head for England, but we will fly bombing missions in a B-17F, which has an
open roof that allows a 170 mile-per-hour gale as cold as 50 degrees below zero to sweep
through the radio room and the rear of the plane.
Each wall of my compartment has a window. Benesth the window on my left is a hose that I
can connect to an oxygen mask when we fly above 10,000 feet. There are cables to connect to
earphones and microphone, and to an electrically-heated suit. The 10 crewmembers
communicate by means of an intercom system.
Hours earlier, we passed near the spot where the Titanic sank into the same freezing water
that waits for us if we run out of gas. When I was a child, my grandmother told how Titanic
passengers went from the comfort of warm cabins to freezing death in the icy water. When
our plane roared into the night sky from the Royal Canadian Air Force base at snow-packed
Goose Bay, Labrador, we knew that coming down in the North Atlantic in winter can cause us
to suffer the same fate as the Titanic passengers. Even if the plane doesn't smash apart on
impact with the ocean's huge swells, it will sink like a rock as water pours in through the
many openings in the bomber. If we survive impact with the ocean, our only hope is to launch
two, inflatable life rafts that the plane carries.
The red handles that release the life rafts are near the ceiling at the front of my cabin.
During training, no one mentioned these controls, but as I stare at them with growing fear, I
realize that I don't know how they operate. Do I pull on them? Do I turn them? Do I push
them? One thing is certain. I'm not going to have time for experiment to find out. When the
plane hits the ocean and sinks like a rock, I must reach those controls before an avalanche of
water sweeps me away. There will be only seconds to find out how to operate them. If I fail,
we will freeze to death within 30 minutes while we float in our inflated life jackets in frigid
water.
