cliff
Short stroy that might fit.
Moderators: Immortals, Supreme Beings, Old Ones
Short stroy that might fit.
i have a short story that i have been working on. I started when there was a hint about ghost tech so it could fit there or Chaos Earth. Who would I send a draft to? if someone could send me a PM, that would be great. or just tell me to go pound sand.
cliff
cliff
Re: Short stroy that might fit.
Well, i did not here from anyone... so here is chapter 1. I hope you all like it.
A loyal War Horse
The Chant
The clouds were low and dark, with only streaks of gray going threw them in great bands. The sun was above the clouds in all of its fierce glory, but it could not burn through the mass of cold and wet below its powerful beams of energy. Some people on the ground would have called it a soul crushing gloom, that the clouds gave the flat landscape below. Below the low-lying grey and gloomy clouds, was a massive building in the middle of a great expanse of flat land.
The area was called Wichita, Kansas. Its current claim to fame was the massive building, and what was made inside her tall flat sides. It looked like those walls almost reached into the low flying clouds overhead. Near the huge building was a white expanse of concrete that was a perfect rectangle when seen from above. Connecting the rectangle to the outside world was a long narrow strip of concrete with a yellow stripe running down the concrete path long ways. This was the factory’s runway for its product to leave by. From above small silver things were sitting on the rectangle of white in the open air. As you got closer to the ground, soon you could see little black specks moving near the silver things that were now cross looking. As you got even lower, soon those little dark specks turned into people.
Then you could see how massive the silver thing, that was the most advanced bomber of its time was to the normal world. The silver things were the current production run of the B-29 Super Fortress. This was an American four engine bomber that would come to change the world. One of these monsters would leave the huge building three or sometimes four times a day to be parked on the white concrete. There it would wait for a final check, before it was accepted by its new owner. If it passed a final check? It could be flown to a number of different bases around the country.
Now there was a line of seven B-29’s waiting outside the huge construction building, that had berthed them. In the center airplane that was called simply 42-6347. Inside of its polished aluminum skin, a thin, plain looking woman cried while she worked inside the great beast.
Jana Scott was a farm girl from Texas, until a year ago. She was also one of the famous Rosie the Riveters. Her husband had enlisted the day after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. He had scored very well in gunnery school and had been assigned to a PBY unit, as his reward. He was sending almost all of his money home each month, but it was not enough to feed and take care of her and the four boys he had left behind. She did what a lot of women did in that situation today. She got a job in the defense industry, to both do her part and feed her kids. Jana was what someone farther down the timeline had called OCD, but only about at the mid-level of affliction. This was an asset in her current job. Aircraft were coming off the production line so quick, that sometimes stuff was missed. It was Jana’s job to find those mistakes and fix them or report them to someone else to fix. She was very good at her job and most days she worked alone on an aircraft, until it met her standard.
It had been four days since she had received “The Telegram”. Her husband had been assigned to VP-12 “Black Cats”. They had been attacking the” Tokyo Express” for weeks now, and it was all over the news reels. Now he would never be coming home again. The whole crew for that matter would not be returning home ever again, after not returning from a night attack mission on the Express. She could not stay home, that would drive her crazy or maybe it would drive her crazier. So, she had come back to work as soon as she could without getting strange looks from her co-workers.
It was better to cry here instead of in front of the now fatherless boys. She cried and talked to herself, as she worked on the massive bomber. “You will get your crew home. You hear me?” She would fix a rivet then move to the next problem. “You will get your crew home. You will not let them die alone. You will get them home! You will do whatever it takes! You will get them home!”
She would repeat this chant as she cried and worked her twelve-hour shift in this one aircraft. She did not notice or would not have cared, if she had noticed. That a handful of other workers were outside of the bomber, and they could hear her. They had come to offer support, but instead they had listened to the distressed woman. Now they could only offer their silent support, and then returned to their own jobs deep within the massive building.
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It was not uncommon for a plane to leave the factory with a name given to it by the builders, instead of waiting for the first crew to name them. Sometimes the names were given by famous people, or just to sell more war-bonds to help fund the massive war. So, when the mostly polished aluminum B-29 number 42-6347 flew to her new home? She had a new name. In letters in black and red printed on both sides of the massive bomber in three-foot-tall letters only said “Get’em home.” Jana was not there when the plane, with its new name left the airfield.
It was with this name, that she went from a storage base to a training unit at the end of 1943. From there she almost went to China to launch missions against the main islands of Japan. But at the last minute, she was pulled to a different mission. It was after an engine fire in her Number 1 mount delayed her flight out. She had many crews so far, but none would dare change her name. It was considered bad luck, and bomber crews were more than a little superstitious. Okay, they are a lot superstitious. An addition had been made to the bottom of her name by her last crew, that would take her to war. They thought that it was a better fit of their ideas. “Complete the Mission.” They had thought, that it was a good secondary goal.
In mid-1944 she and her latest crew had started their journey to Tinian Island, and soon after they would be dropping bombs on the enemy’s homeland. They were very good at their mission, and it did not take long for them to develop a reputation of getting the hard jobs done and of getting safely back home again. When Curtis LeMay moved from Europe to the Pacific everyone knew that he was going to change the game, even before he landed on the island. Most people just did not know how much he was going to change things up.
It’s well known that he ordered a change from high level to low level bombing attacks on Japanese cities. He also changed them from dropping mostly high explosives to more incendiary devices, and then he shifted into doing more night attacks. He had also ordered most of the defensive weapons, pressurization equipment and armor removed from the craft, all so that the B-29’s could carry more fuel and bombs. What is not well known, was that he did not do that with all of the bombers under his command. Some still ran missions just as the huge plane had been planned and built for. This group of non-modified bombers were tasked with weather data gathering, recon, daytime bombing, mine laying and other types of pinpoint bombing. There just was not that many of them compared to the rest of the fleet.
A loyal War Horse
The Chant
The clouds were low and dark, with only streaks of gray going threw them in great bands. The sun was above the clouds in all of its fierce glory, but it could not burn through the mass of cold and wet below its powerful beams of energy. Some people on the ground would have called it a soul crushing gloom, that the clouds gave the flat landscape below. Below the low-lying grey and gloomy clouds, was a massive building in the middle of a great expanse of flat land.
The area was called Wichita, Kansas. Its current claim to fame was the massive building, and what was made inside her tall flat sides. It looked like those walls almost reached into the low flying clouds overhead. Near the huge building was a white expanse of concrete that was a perfect rectangle when seen from above. Connecting the rectangle to the outside world was a long narrow strip of concrete with a yellow stripe running down the concrete path long ways. This was the factory’s runway for its product to leave by. From above small silver things were sitting on the rectangle of white in the open air. As you got closer to the ground, soon you could see little black specks moving near the silver things that were now cross looking. As you got even lower, soon those little dark specks turned into people.
Then you could see how massive the silver thing, that was the most advanced bomber of its time was to the normal world. The silver things were the current production run of the B-29 Super Fortress. This was an American four engine bomber that would come to change the world. One of these monsters would leave the huge building three or sometimes four times a day to be parked on the white concrete. There it would wait for a final check, before it was accepted by its new owner. If it passed a final check? It could be flown to a number of different bases around the country.
Now there was a line of seven B-29’s waiting outside the huge construction building, that had berthed them. In the center airplane that was called simply 42-6347. Inside of its polished aluminum skin, a thin, plain looking woman cried while she worked inside the great beast.
Jana Scott was a farm girl from Texas, until a year ago. She was also one of the famous Rosie the Riveters. Her husband had enlisted the day after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. He had scored very well in gunnery school and had been assigned to a PBY unit, as his reward. He was sending almost all of his money home each month, but it was not enough to feed and take care of her and the four boys he had left behind. She did what a lot of women did in that situation today. She got a job in the defense industry, to both do her part and feed her kids. Jana was what someone farther down the timeline had called OCD, but only about at the mid-level of affliction. This was an asset in her current job. Aircraft were coming off the production line so quick, that sometimes stuff was missed. It was Jana’s job to find those mistakes and fix them or report them to someone else to fix. She was very good at her job and most days she worked alone on an aircraft, until it met her standard.
It had been four days since she had received “The Telegram”. Her husband had been assigned to VP-12 “Black Cats”. They had been attacking the” Tokyo Express” for weeks now, and it was all over the news reels. Now he would never be coming home again. The whole crew for that matter would not be returning home ever again, after not returning from a night attack mission on the Express. She could not stay home, that would drive her crazy or maybe it would drive her crazier. So, she had come back to work as soon as she could without getting strange looks from her co-workers.
It was better to cry here instead of in front of the now fatherless boys. She cried and talked to herself, as she worked on the massive bomber. “You will get your crew home. You hear me?” She would fix a rivet then move to the next problem. “You will get your crew home. You will not let them die alone. You will get them home! You will do whatever it takes! You will get them home!”
She would repeat this chant as she cried and worked her twelve-hour shift in this one aircraft. She did not notice or would not have cared, if she had noticed. That a handful of other workers were outside of the bomber, and they could hear her. They had come to offer support, but instead they had listened to the distressed woman. Now they could only offer their silent support, and then returned to their own jobs deep within the massive building.
######################
It was not uncommon for a plane to leave the factory with a name given to it by the builders, instead of waiting for the first crew to name them. Sometimes the names were given by famous people, or just to sell more war-bonds to help fund the massive war. So, when the mostly polished aluminum B-29 number 42-6347 flew to her new home? She had a new name. In letters in black and red printed on both sides of the massive bomber in three-foot-tall letters only said “Get’em home.” Jana was not there when the plane, with its new name left the airfield.
It was with this name, that she went from a storage base to a training unit at the end of 1943. From there she almost went to China to launch missions against the main islands of Japan. But at the last minute, she was pulled to a different mission. It was after an engine fire in her Number 1 mount delayed her flight out. She had many crews so far, but none would dare change her name. It was considered bad luck, and bomber crews were more than a little superstitious. Okay, they are a lot superstitious. An addition had been made to the bottom of her name by her last crew, that would take her to war. They thought that it was a better fit of their ideas. “Complete the Mission.” They had thought, that it was a good secondary goal.
In mid-1944 she and her latest crew had started their journey to Tinian Island, and soon after they would be dropping bombs on the enemy’s homeland. They were very good at their mission, and it did not take long for them to develop a reputation of getting the hard jobs done and of getting safely back home again. When Curtis LeMay moved from Europe to the Pacific everyone knew that he was going to change the game, even before he landed on the island. Most people just did not know how much he was going to change things up.
It’s well known that he ordered a change from high level to low level bombing attacks on Japanese cities. He also changed them from dropping mostly high explosives to more incendiary devices, and then he shifted into doing more night attacks. He had also ordered most of the defensive weapons, pressurization equipment and armor removed from the craft, all so that the B-29’s could carry more fuel and bombs. What is not well known, was that he did not do that with all of the bombers under his command. Some still ran missions just as the huge plane had been planned and built for. This group of non-modified bombers were tasked with weather data gathering, recon, daytime bombing, mine laying and other types of pinpoint bombing. There just was not that many of them compared to the rest of the fleet.
Re: Short stroy that might fit.
The mission
The Briefing Room was small and hot, even with four good sized fans pushing air around the room to try to cool the space. Four complete air crews from different B-29s sat in the main area of the briefing room. They were seated in an area that was below the briefing podium or deck. Center in the room, that was off to one side of North Field on Tinian Island was the crew of “Get’em home.”
They were a pretty normal group for a B-29 crew. You had the Pilot commander Captain Clark Lamb. He was the nephew of William Donovan, the little-known head of the OSS. The OSS would turn into the CIA, not long after the war was over. His friend, and almost mental twin was the Co Pilot Lt. Doyle Martin. He had been a shoe salesman in Newark before the war. The Bombardier was SSG William Jennings. He was the best in the world at what he did. He had even turned down an assignment to the 509th Composite Group when they had come calling. They had been cherry picking crews, and they were not about to take no as an answer. That is until his last drunken brawl while on R and R below the equator. They had stopped looking at him while he was still in hack, sleeping it off. Then you have the Flight Engineer SSG Tommie Bowen from Washington State. The Radio operator SGT Wesley Stokes was from a farm in central Illinois. The Radar observer SSG Jonathan Douglas, who was also from Illinois, but had been born and raised in central Chicago. The Right gunner was SGT Victor Jefferson, and he was from Kentucky. The Left side gunner was SGT Ross Sanders, who was from West Virginia and both were deadly at their trade of shooting. The Tail gunner CPL Forrest Boone was a 19-year-old from Texarkana, and he was the best shot on all of Tinian. This was something he had proven time and again, with a lot of pocket money and beers to prove it. The heart of the B-29 was the Central Fire Control System, and it was managed and maintained by LT Justin Kelly who was born and bred in Queens, NYC.
They were not just a bomber crew. They were family and they were in each other’s hip pockets, and it did not matter. They had been together since picking up their ride after it had been repaired from the last engine fire, that was so common for this class of bomber. They were a close-knit team or maybe pack, that had each other’s back no matter what. Again, this was nothing new from aircraft crews, and it did not matter if it was a three-seat scout or a dozen crew of a heavy bomber.
They and the rest of the aircraft crews were sitting in the dark room waiting for the shoe to drop. It was a few minutes’ later that two enlisted men walked to the front of the room from the back, and they pulled away sheets from the easels fixed mounted on the stage. They had been covering flight paths and close up pictures of their target. The bomber crews were studying the images, when the Major without a name tag took center stage blocking their view.
The Major had done this dance with this group as well as the larger group, that had been done before the meeting with this group. He was the only one, that would handle the briefings for the pinpoint attack missions because of the security issues involved. “This is the Japanese city of Yokosuka. Your target is not the city itself, but this compound on the Eastern edge of the city.”
He pointed to an area of the town and the blown-up images of one part of the city, that he was talking about. “This is the headquarters of what the Japanese call Unit 731. This is a very special unit in the Imperial Army. The buildings in the compound are assessed to have bunkers deep underground. We do not know if they are barracks or workspace. Command does not care. They just want them gone.”
Captain Clark Lamb went deep in thought at that unit’s name, it was not unknown to him. He had been able to have a short R and R back in Hawaii a few months ago. The timing had allowed him to spend time with his uncle. One time after his beloved uncle had a few drinks. He had gone into detail about that unit, and what they were thought to have done to date. They had made the worst SS units seem like a group of quiet Boy Scouts. His uncle was hoping that they would use the same plans about a trial on these people, that they were thinking about in Germany. Clark gave a slight body shake that his co-pilot picked up on, but after a quick glance he did not ask. The Co-pilot knew that he would find out later. This was a good target, Lamb thought, and then went back to paying attention to the briefing.
“The bunkers might be deep, so normal 500pound M 43 High explosive bombs will not work for this task. We have been working with the local Navy support unit, and we have been able to get some of their AN-MK33 1,000pound armor piercing bombs. They don’t have enough on hand to fill all of your birds, so we are mixing them with normal High Explosive and M 76 firebombs.”
The Army Air Corps Major stopped talking and looked around the warm room. “Higher Command thinks with this unit’s history and proven fanaticism, that it needs to be remove from the battlefield before we have to land troops. If this unit is reduced? Then it will help with the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands.” The Major went into the normal end of the brief. It was on the threat in the air, that the bombers might or could meet at different points in the flight plan. When he wrapped up and asked if there were any questions. None were asked, and none were needed. This was a “normal” mission for this group.
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It was 3am, and the moon was just setting in the west. The group of B-29’s started rolling down the long white concrete runways and slowly clawed their way into the coolish night air. As they climbed, they adjusted their heading more north and west. They would climb above 20,000 feet slowly and steadily as they closed on their target. They were not flying in a box formation, like what was seen over Germany with B-17 and B-24’s. This was more of a finger five formation spread across the sky, and at different levels above the ground. Japan did not have much of a high-altitude defense force this late in the war, or to begin with. That did not mean that they were defenseless. It just was that it was a lot lighter than what Germany had, even at the end of the war.
Doyle looked over to the other control seat to his left. “Clark, Jon says were 200 miles out from target.” The Co- pilot released his neck mounted microphone to end his statement. They did not have to worry about cold and talking threw an air providing mask. The cutting-edge bomber crew compartment was pressurized to simulate what it was like at 8,000 feet. It was something very different than the freezing crews of B-17s had to endure.
Clark looked to his right, and then around the cockpit checking the hundreds of displays and knobs. Everything looks in order to his well-trained eye. He nodded to his friend, and then pressed his own neck mic. “Okay, guys. Let’s get ready. 45 minutes out from target.”
All around the large plane, her crew went about final checks as they entered the threat area. Remote controlled guns swept the skies with their targeting and aiming systems. The tail gunner fired off a short burst from the 20mm cannon that was over mounted the twin 12.7mm machineguns, before he started to scan the skies. Everyone in the crew went about their tasks, with a much-practiced ease. It was just like they had done 35 times already, and that was not counting the training flights this group had completed together.
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High off the coast of Japan. Kenichi Aioi was warm in his flight suit, as he flew high above his island home. He was in his beloved Ki-61 Hien, as it streaked threw the thin air. Fuel was in very short supply, but he and his five other wingmen were up today. They even were hunting in the skies of his home with full tanks. This was the first time, that this had happened in almost a year. Thinking about those full fuel tanks, got him thinking about why it was such a novel experience.
American bombers and submarines were slowly destroying his country, and he had been able to do very little to stop them. That was not what his commander was saying at the twice daily briefings. But he had eyes, and he could see the changes that had happened over the last few years. Aioi did not have any of the still hard to come by radars to help him, so it was with his eyes that he saw his prey. It was a loose formation spread out between two layers of white clouds. Without radios to weight his light fighter down. Aioi had to move his stick in such a way, that the wings would move up and down. This had the desired effect, and he could see the other pilot’s heads turn toward him. He pointed to the lower flying four engine bombers and pointed to one at the center, then he jabbed his finger at it three times fast. The attack was on. They were air sharks, and they now had prey in their sights. Only this prey had teeth, lots of teeth, and they were very sharp.
A deadly dance started between six single engine fighters with one person in each, going against one with eleven people in her long hull. Aioi made the first pass and stitched a mixed line of 20mm and 12mm bullets from a two second burst from his weapons. It was not a good gun attack on his part. As he was lining up on the massive bomber. It had sharply dropped one wing, and instead of punching holes in the fuselage. Most of his rounds had missed, but a few did hit the number one engine of the silver bomber.
His wingman did not fire at the bomber, but the bombers twin top mounted heavy machine guns reached out and hit the lightly built fighter. The fast-moving American made 12.7mm hard nose bullets struck the fighter in the engine. They were like black tipped copper hammers, as they ripped into the cast iron cylinders of the Kawasaki Ha40 inverted liquid cooled engine. Then they followed a line aft of the engine. In less than a blink of an eye. They were striking thin walled fuel and oil tanks, and then they went into the flight instruments. The line of destruction stopped just at the young pilot’s feet, or more to the point. The line of impacts of the American made round stopped at his toes. The damage was done. It was a long way to the ground below as the powerless craft fell spinning away from the fight, with a wounded pilot at its controls.
The B-29 was being hit in every direction by the five remaining enemy fighters. With the loss of one engine and holes in her hull, she started to lose altitude. The last that the damaged bomber was seen by the rest of the flight, was as the damaged B-29 was sinking below the lower cloud bands. She was still being attacked by the Japanese fighters. This was the last any of the other bombers flying that day saw of the “Get’em home”. She was damaged, being attacked by five fighters, and falling from the sky trailing black smoke.
Tommie hit his mic. “Sir!! We’re taking a lot of damage back here.”
Lamb looked towards his co-pilot and only gave him a slight nod, and then pushed his mic. “Complete the mission.” Was all he said, and he released the mic at his throat. He had to yell over the scream of air ripping across the cabin, to get those three words out.
The attacks kept up, and the crewmembers were hit. But they did not leave their stations or stop working. They also were taking out the attackers one at a time, or once a pair of enemy fighters went down in flames. Not even as their life leaked or in most cases poured out of their bodies. Out loud, and in their heads. The crew chanted their motto. “Complete the mission and Get us home. Complete the mission and get us home.” They said this over and over, as they fired the plane’s weapons and fought the controls of the damaged bomber. When the bomber drifted lower, it was greeted by fire coming up from Type 10 120mm AA guns and Type 99 88mm AA guns. The bursting black puff balls of death did not stop them, even as they grew in number.
Will was in the zone, and he did not notice the bursting enemy shells. He was using the most advanced bombing sight America could make. As he made small adjustments, he was talking to himself. He turned three side mounted wheels, one at a time as he looked threw the device. “Complete the mission. Complete the mission and Get us home.” He did not feel the pieces of glass that made up the nose of this craft break and fly towards him.
When the time was right, and according to the Norton bombsite, and his well-known skills, he pushed the button on a handle near his seat. Behind the crew in the nose of the bomber, two sets of doors swung open into the slip stream. Three types of bombs dropped away from the craft as fast as gravity could pull them out of the protective bay. They were a mix of navy supplied weapons meant to kill battleships, then there was the 500pound explosive filled metal eggs to blow buildings apart, and with an equal number of thin walled bombs that would start fires.
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As the bombs went down, the bomber went up like a rocket with the loss of 15,000 pounds of death to her waistline. Lt. Jennings was not just as good as he thought he was, he was even better. The complex below them was only two city blocks long by four city blocks wide. He put every bomb within the high walls that separated the compound from the rest of the city. Bombs were starting to fall around other areas, but none of those were close to the target today. Those had come from the other bombers hidden in the clouds over head.
The first bombs to fall from Get’em Home’s bay were the six 1,000pond armor piercing bombes. They were meant to work below two thousand feet. With the higher dropping altitude, they reached full terminal velocity well before they hit the ground. Each one could have forced its way through feet of heavy battle steal. Dirt and concrete parted like water, before their hard noses. They did not need to hit a void to do their jobs. As soon as the bombs stopped moving, a timer started. And it was just three seconds later that they exploded.
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Shock waves moved through the dirt and crushed any nearby underground bunkers. Above the holes they punched in the dirt, a massive fountain of dirt and rock went flying up into the air. This shock wave started shaking the hardened buildings, just as the M43’s started to hit the ground or brick and masonry buildings. The M43 was designed to do damage with the explosive filling, and not shrapnel that could be formed from its casings. As they started breaking the buildings open the 6pound incendiary bomblets finally arrived in the area, and things really started to burn.
When Clark and Doyle felt the plane jump up with the bomb release, they both took over command from the bombsite. With some pressure on the twin yokes they made a turning action with the climbing caused by the loss of weight, so that they could head back home. The two pilots did not need to speak, they just did the job. They did what they needed to, and after about an hour. The craft was off into the sunlit and clear skies of the great Pacific Ocean, heading home. Clark looked around the cockpit area, and it was not a pretty sight. It was a mess of blood, broken glass and rushing air threw cannon, bullet, and Flak holes all around them. He could feel the other damage done to his bomber, threw the vibrations coming through the yoke in his hands.
Clark risked taking one hand off of the yoke and pushed his throat mic. “It’s Clark, give me a head count.” He looked over to his copilot, and he could see a blood streak coming down his face. It looked to be about an inch wide, and it was flowing freely. He was about to say something, when someone replied to his post battle call.
“Clark, its Tom. Johnathan is dead. And Will is not going to make it, much longer. He’s holding on to the bombing site, like it was his mother. But both of his legs are gone below the knees.”
The news hit both pilots like a brick, and it was Clark that recovered first. He was the aircraft commander after all. “Tom, no one else has checked in. I need you to go and check on them for me.” He gave his copilot a look then re-pushed the mic. “The intercom system might be down. I need to know what is going on back there, so I can get us home.”
It was hard to tell, over all the wind noise. The Flight Engineer did not sound like he believed his commander, but he only said one word. “Roger”.
Tommie Bowen cut the line, and he started to check the craft and crew. He found Wesley, the radio operator near the tunnel over the bomb bays. He would not be making another radio call, and neither would his radio. They both looked like they had been hit by a nearby flak burst of some kind. By now it would have just been academic, if it was 120 or an 88 that had killed him. After making it threw both sealed hatches in the tunnel, that crossed the two bomb bays. He was in the central compartment with the two gunners.
He found them still slumped over and strapped into their glass domes seats, that were needed to site the remote machine guns. Both men had left frozen puddles of blood under their stations, that must have been an inch thick. Tom had one more tunnel to go through. It would take him to the loneliest position in the crew, the tail gunner station. He barely noticed that he was sliding threw blood in the tunnel, both his and the gunner’s that was waiting at the end of the tunnel. Tom stopped only one time, to repair the battle-damaged intercom system but he kept going. He was surprised to see that the tail gunner was not dead, even with all the blood in the tunnel. Tom knew that he would not last much longer. He held the younger man, so that he would not die alone today.
A much weaker voice of the Flight Engineer came over the intercom, to the pilot’s ears. “Clark, Doyle, there all dead. Forrest just went a minute or so ago. I’m not going to last much longer. I couldn’t stop the bleeding. Get us home gentlemen.” It was a very soft and barely heard final words to his friends. “Please, get us home.” The Flight Engineer died with a hunk of metal from a copy of the German 88mm AA gun in him. A part of a flak bursting round had cut into his liver and lungs, but it was still inside his body and it had slowed the bleeding.
A broken voice of Clarks was sent back to a set of dead ears. “She will get us home, Tom.”
Clark did not say another word. He focused on trying to get his crew and craft home. It was two hours later that he realized that his co-pilot Doyle Martin was already dead, and his hands were still on his yoke. Clark had a death locked grip on the yoke after that. He had no idea where he was, as he flew in the blue skies. Everything started to go gray out, due to his own blood loss. He died slowly, in pain, freezing, and alone. Basically, it was all the ways a soldier did not want to die. This was how he passed from this world and into the next. If they had a flight data recorder back then? It would have carried only one set of words said over and over again, for hours. “Get us home. Please get us home.” It would only have change in energy with the ebb and flow of the pilot’s own energy level.
“Get’em home” would be written up as lost in action, due to enemy action three days later. And “The Telegrams” would be sent out to more families. She would not rate a footnote in any history book, and her crew would only be remembered by those they left behind. Even then those memories would fade over time.
The Briefing Room was small and hot, even with four good sized fans pushing air around the room to try to cool the space. Four complete air crews from different B-29s sat in the main area of the briefing room. They were seated in an area that was below the briefing podium or deck. Center in the room, that was off to one side of North Field on Tinian Island was the crew of “Get’em home.”
They were a pretty normal group for a B-29 crew. You had the Pilot commander Captain Clark Lamb. He was the nephew of William Donovan, the little-known head of the OSS. The OSS would turn into the CIA, not long after the war was over. His friend, and almost mental twin was the Co Pilot Lt. Doyle Martin. He had been a shoe salesman in Newark before the war. The Bombardier was SSG William Jennings. He was the best in the world at what he did. He had even turned down an assignment to the 509th Composite Group when they had come calling. They had been cherry picking crews, and they were not about to take no as an answer. That is until his last drunken brawl while on R and R below the equator. They had stopped looking at him while he was still in hack, sleeping it off. Then you have the Flight Engineer SSG Tommie Bowen from Washington State. The Radio operator SGT Wesley Stokes was from a farm in central Illinois. The Radar observer SSG Jonathan Douglas, who was also from Illinois, but had been born and raised in central Chicago. The Right gunner was SGT Victor Jefferson, and he was from Kentucky. The Left side gunner was SGT Ross Sanders, who was from West Virginia and both were deadly at their trade of shooting. The Tail gunner CPL Forrest Boone was a 19-year-old from Texarkana, and he was the best shot on all of Tinian. This was something he had proven time and again, with a lot of pocket money and beers to prove it. The heart of the B-29 was the Central Fire Control System, and it was managed and maintained by LT Justin Kelly who was born and bred in Queens, NYC.
They were not just a bomber crew. They were family and they were in each other’s hip pockets, and it did not matter. They had been together since picking up their ride after it had been repaired from the last engine fire, that was so common for this class of bomber. They were a close-knit team or maybe pack, that had each other’s back no matter what. Again, this was nothing new from aircraft crews, and it did not matter if it was a three-seat scout or a dozen crew of a heavy bomber.
They and the rest of the aircraft crews were sitting in the dark room waiting for the shoe to drop. It was a few minutes’ later that two enlisted men walked to the front of the room from the back, and they pulled away sheets from the easels fixed mounted on the stage. They had been covering flight paths and close up pictures of their target. The bomber crews were studying the images, when the Major without a name tag took center stage blocking their view.
The Major had done this dance with this group as well as the larger group, that had been done before the meeting with this group. He was the only one, that would handle the briefings for the pinpoint attack missions because of the security issues involved. “This is the Japanese city of Yokosuka. Your target is not the city itself, but this compound on the Eastern edge of the city.”
He pointed to an area of the town and the blown-up images of one part of the city, that he was talking about. “This is the headquarters of what the Japanese call Unit 731. This is a very special unit in the Imperial Army. The buildings in the compound are assessed to have bunkers deep underground. We do not know if they are barracks or workspace. Command does not care. They just want them gone.”
Captain Clark Lamb went deep in thought at that unit’s name, it was not unknown to him. He had been able to have a short R and R back in Hawaii a few months ago. The timing had allowed him to spend time with his uncle. One time after his beloved uncle had a few drinks. He had gone into detail about that unit, and what they were thought to have done to date. They had made the worst SS units seem like a group of quiet Boy Scouts. His uncle was hoping that they would use the same plans about a trial on these people, that they were thinking about in Germany. Clark gave a slight body shake that his co-pilot picked up on, but after a quick glance he did not ask. The Co-pilot knew that he would find out later. This was a good target, Lamb thought, and then went back to paying attention to the briefing.
“The bunkers might be deep, so normal 500pound M 43 High explosive bombs will not work for this task. We have been working with the local Navy support unit, and we have been able to get some of their AN-MK33 1,000pound armor piercing bombs. They don’t have enough on hand to fill all of your birds, so we are mixing them with normal High Explosive and M 76 firebombs.”
The Army Air Corps Major stopped talking and looked around the warm room. “Higher Command thinks with this unit’s history and proven fanaticism, that it needs to be remove from the battlefield before we have to land troops. If this unit is reduced? Then it will help with the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands.” The Major went into the normal end of the brief. It was on the threat in the air, that the bombers might or could meet at different points in the flight plan. When he wrapped up and asked if there were any questions. None were asked, and none were needed. This was a “normal” mission for this group.
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It was 3am, and the moon was just setting in the west. The group of B-29’s started rolling down the long white concrete runways and slowly clawed their way into the coolish night air. As they climbed, they adjusted their heading more north and west. They would climb above 20,000 feet slowly and steadily as they closed on their target. They were not flying in a box formation, like what was seen over Germany with B-17 and B-24’s. This was more of a finger five formation spread across the sky, and at different levels above the ground. Japan did not have much of a high-altitude defense force this late in the war, or to begin with. That did not mean that they were defenseless. It just was that it was a lot lighter than what Germany had, even at the end of the war.
Doyle looked over to the other control seat to his left. “Clark, Jon says were 200 miles out from target.” The Co- pilot released his neck mounted microphone to end his statement. They did not have to worry about cold and talking threw an air providing mask. The cutting-edge bomber crew compartment was pressurized to simulate what it was like at 8,000 feet. It was something very different than the freezing crews of B-17s had to endure.
Clark looked to his right, and then around the cockpit checking the hundreds of displays and knobs. Everything looks in order to his well-trained eye. He nodded to his friend, and then pressed his own neck mic. “Okay, guys. Let’s get ready. 45 minutes out from target.”
All around the large plane, her crew went about final checks as they entered the threat area. Remote controlled guns swept the skies with their targeting and aiming systems. The tail gunner fired off a short burst from the 20mm cannon that was over mounted the twin 12.7mm machineguns, before he started to scan the skies. Everyone in the crew went about their tasks, with a much-practiced ease. It was just like they had done 35 times already, and that was not counting the training flights this group had completed together.
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High off the coast of Japan. Kenichi Aioi was warm in his flight suit, as he flew high above his island home. He was in his beloved Ki-61 Hien, as it streaked threw the thin air. Fuel was in very short supply, but he and his five other wingmen were up today. They even were hunting in the skies of his home with full tanks. This was the first time, that this had happened in almost a year. Thinking about those full fuel tanks, got him thinking about why it was such a novel experience.
American bombers and submarines were slowly destroying his country, and he had been able to do very little to stop them. That was not what his commander was saying at the twice daily briefings. But he had eyes, and he could see the changes that had happened over the last few years. Aioi did not have any of the still hard to come by radars to help him, so it was with his eyes that he saw his prey. It was a loose formation spread out between two layers of white clouds. Without radios to weight his light fighter down. Aioi had to move his stick in such a way, that the wings would move up and down. This had the desired effect, and he could see the other pilot’s heads turn toward him. He pointed to the lower flying four engine bombers and pointed to one at the center, then he jabbed his finger at it three times fast. The attack was on. They were air sharks, and they now had prey in their sights. Only this prey had teeth, lots of teeth, and they were very sharp.
A deadly dance started between six single engine fighters with one person in each, going against one with eleven people in her long hull. Aioi made the first pass and stitched a mixed line of 20mm and 12mm bullets from a two second burst from his weapons. It was not a good gun attack on his part. As he was lining up on the massive bomber. It had sharply dropped one wing, and instead of punching holes in the fuselage. Most of his rounds had missed, but a few did hit the number one engine of the silver bomber.
His wingman did not fire at the bomber, but the bombers twin top mounted heavy machine guns reached out and hit the lightly built fighter. The fast-moving American made 12.7mm hard nose bullets struck the fighter in the engine. They were like black tipped copper hammers, as they ripped into the cast iron cylinders of the Kawasaki Ha40 inverted liquid cooled engine. Then they followed a line aft of the engine. In less than a blink of an eye. They were striking thin walled fuel and oil tanks, and then they went into the flight instruments. The line of destruction stopped just at the young pilot’s feet, or more to the point. The line of impacts of the American made round stopped at his toes. The damage was done. It was a long way to the ground below as the powerless craft fell spinning away from the fight, with a wounded pilot at its controls.
The B-29 was being hit in every direction by the five remaining enemy fighters. With the loss of one engine and holes in her hull, she started to lose altitude. The last that the damaged bomber was seen by the rest of the flight, was as the damaged B-29 was sinking below the lower cloud bands. She was still being attacked by the Japanese fighters. This was the last any of the other bombers flying that day saw of the “Get’em home”. She was damaged, being attacked by five fighters, and falling from the sky trailing black smoke.
Tommie hit his mic. “Sir!! We’re taking a lot of damage back here.”
Lamb looked towards his co-pilot and only gave him a slight nod, and then pushed his mic. “Complete the mission.” Was all he said, and he released the mic at his throat. He had to yell over the scream of air ripping across the cabin, to get those three words out.
The attacks kept up, and the crewmembers were hit. But they did not leave their stations or stop working. They also were taking out the attackers one at a time, or once a pair of enemy fighters went down in flames. Not even as their life leaked or in most cases poured out of their bodies. Out loud, and in their heads. The crew chanted their motto. “Complete the mission and Get us home. Complete the mission and get us home.” They said this over and over, as they fired the plane’s weapons and fought the controls of the damaged bomber. When the bomber drifted lower, it was greeted by fire coming up from Type 10 120mm AA guns and Type 99 88mm AA guns. The bursting black puff balls of death did not stop them, even as they grew in number.
Will was in the zone, and he did not notice the bursting enemy shells. He was using the most advanced bombing sight America could make. As he made small adjustments, he was talking to himself. He turned three side mounted wheels, one at a time as he looked threw the device. “Complete the mission. Complete the mission and Get us home.” He did not feel the pieces of glass that made up the nose of this craft break and fly towards him.
When the time was right, and according to the Norton bombsite, and his well-known skills, he pushed the button on a handle near his seat. Behind the crew in the nose of the bomber, two sets of doors swung open into the slip stream. Three types of bombs dropped away from the craft as fast as gravity could pull them out of the protective bay. They were a mix of navy supplied weapons meant to kill battleships, then there was the 500pound explosive filled metal eggs to blow buildings apart, and with an equal number of thin walled bombs that would start fires.
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As the bombs went down, the bomber went up like a rocket with the loss of 15,000 pounds of death to her waistline. Lt. Jennings was not just as good as he thought he was, he was even better. The complex below them was only two city blocks long by four city blocks wide. He put every bomb within the high walls that separated the compound from the rest of the city. Bombs were starting to fall around other areas, but none of those were close to the target today. Those had come from the other bombers hidden in the clouds over head.
The first bombs to fall from Get’em Home’s bay were the six 1,000pond armor piercing bombes. They were meant to work below two thousand feet. With the higher dropping altitude, they reached full terminal velocity well before they hit the ground. Each one could have forced its way through feet of heavy battle steal. Dirt and concrete parted like water, before their hard noses. They did not need to hit a void to do their jobs. As soon as the bombs stopped moving, a timer started. And it was just three seconds later that they exploded.
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Shock waves moved through the dirt and crushed any nearby underground bunkers. Above the holes they punched in the dirt, a massive fountain of dirt and rock went flying up into the air. This shock wave started shaking the hardened buildings, just as the M43’s started to hit the ground or brick and masonry buildings. The M43 was designed to do damage with the explosive filling, and not shrapnel that could be formed from its casings. As they started breaking the buildings open the 6pound incendiary bomblets finally arrived in the area, and things really started to burn.
When Clark and Doyle felt the plane jump up with the bomb release, they both took over command from the bombsite. With some pressure on the twin yokes they made a turning action with the climbing caused by the loss of weight, so that they could head back home. The two pilots did not need to speak, they just did the job. They did what they needed to, and after about an hour. The craft was off into the sunlit and clear skies of the great Pacific Ocean, heading home. Clark looked around the cockpit area, and it was not a pretty sight. It was a mess of blood, broken glass and rushing air threw cannon, bullet, and Flak holes all around them. He could feel the other damage done to his bomber, threw the vibrations coming through the yoke in his hands.
Clark risked taking one hand off of the yoke and pushed his throat mic. “It’s Clark, give me a head count.” He looked over to his copilot, and he could see a blood streak coming down his face. It looked to be about an inch wide, and it was flowing freely. He was about to say something, when someone replied to his post battle call.
“Clark, its Tom. Johnathan is dead. And Will is not going to make it, much longer. He’s holding on to the bombing site, like it was his mother. But both of his legs are gone below the knees.”
The news hit both pilots like a brick, and it was Clark that recovered first. He was the aircraft commander after all. “Tom, no one else has checked in. I need you to go and check on them for me.” He gave his copilot a look then re-pushed the mic. “The intercom system might be down. I need to know what is going on back there, so I can get us home.”
It was hard to tell, over all the wind noise. The Flight Engineer did not sound like he believed his commander, but he only said one word. “Roger”.
Tommie Bowen cut the line, and he started to check the craft and crew. He found Wesley, the radio operator near the tunnel over the bomb bays. He would not be making another radio call, and neither would his radio. They both looked like they had been hit by a nearby flak burst of some kind. By now it would have just been academic, if it was 120 or an 88 that had killed him. After making it threw both sealed hatches in the tunnel, that crossed the two bomb bays. He was in the central compartment with the two gunners.
He found them still slumped over and strapped into their glass domes seats, that were needed to site the remote machine guns. Both men had left frozen puddles of blood under their stations, that must have been an inch thick. Tom had one more tunnel to go through. It would take him to the loneliest position in the crew, the tail gunner station. He barely noticed that he was sliding threw blood in the tunnel, both his and the gunner’s that was waiting at the end of the tunnel. Tom stopped only one time, to repair the battle-damaged intercom system but he kept going. He was surprised to see that the tail gunner was not dead, even with all the blood in the tunnel. Tom knew that he would not last much longer. He held the younger man, so that he would not die alone today.
A much weaker voice of the Flight Engineer came over the intercom, to the pilot’s ears. “Clark, Doyle, there all dead. Forrest just went a minute or so ago. I’m not going to last much longer. I couldn’t stop the bleeding. Get us home gentlemen.” It was a very soft and barely heard final words to his friends. “Please, get us home.” The Flight Engineer died with a hunk of metal from a copy of the German 88mm AA gun in him. A part of a flak bursting round had cut into his liver and lungs, but it was still inside his body and it had slowed the bleeding.
A broken voice of Clarks was sent back to a set of dead ears. “She will get us home, Tom.”
Clark did not say another word. He focused on trying to get his crew and craft home. It was two hours later that he realized that his co-pilot Doyle Martin was already dead, and his hands were still on his yoke. Clark had a death locked grip on the yoke after that. He had no idea where he was, as he flew in the blue skies. Everything started to go gray out, due to his own blood loss. He died slowly, in pain, freezing, and alone. Basically, it was all the ways a soldier did not want to die. This was how he passed from this world and into the next. If they had a flight data recorder back then? It would have carried only one set of words said over and over again, for hours. “Get us home. Please get us home.” It would only have change in energy with the ebb and flow of the pilot’s own energy level.
“Get’em home” would be written up as lost in action, due to enemy action three days later. And “The Telegrams” would be sent out to more families. She would not rate a footnote in any history book, and her crew would only be remembered by those they left behind. Even then those memories would fade over time.
Re: Short stroy that might fit.
The Sleep
Get’em Home flew on, with a crew of dead men in her silver metal hull. There three working engines droned on for the rest of the day and into the night. Some of her battle damage helped a little. The missing prop from the number one engine, had let her fly longer without the drag caused by a feathered prop. As tank after tank was pumped dry, and even the fumes were sucked out for just a little more power. The plane got lighter and used less fuel. She had kept going until the old girl had run out of every drop of her fuel, and then she had crashed into the dark and empty waters of the Pacific Ocean. The only witness to this were a few fish and a lost sea gull.
She had slowly lost speed, as one after the other of her three powerful prop driven engines stopped running due to fuel starvation or battle damage. She slowly drifted closer and closer to the blue water below, as she lost speed and lift in equal measure. Somehow the dead men at her controls had kept her from stalling, and just falling out of the skies. That is until she struck the water at 80 mph on the belly.
The first part of her airframe to touch the water, was just forward of her aft bomb bay doors. She skipped, splashed, and skidded across the smooth water until all of her speed had been bleed off. She was still again, this time on top of the water. Her outer skin was more of a pipe shaped, so she did not stay on the top of the ocean for long. She sunk into the water like a pipe thrown into a pond. She had slipped below its blue waters surface, on a slow drift down through the depths of increasing pressure. As she fell, the water currents would shift around her, and one of the elevators or ailerons would shift under the pressure of the moving dark cold water. This would change how she fell, and how fast she was falling through the water column. It was almost like someone was still at the controls of the sinking bomber.
She fell for a few hours going deeper and deeper into the abyss. Then she came to a rest on an underwater mud mountainside deep below the wave tops. She was still there with the bones of her crew still locked inside her aluminum hull. All of the major hull openings were hidden a few feet deep under the mud. The great airplane was covered in a cloud of silt and mud caused by her “crash” as things settled down.
It would take days before the water in this area was clear again. Time moves a lot slower in the low energy environment of the deep sea. Soon, she was just another bit of stuff hidden on the ocean floor. By the end of the month, when all the paperwork had been done writing her out of the history books. It looked like she had been down there since the dawn of time. All she could do was wait to be found.
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The Bomber had seen almost a half dozen ships of all kinds make the long trip from the bright surface world down toward her over the years, after her coming to rest on the side of this mud mountain. None had seen her; it was the old saw of “miss by an inch, you miss by a mile”. So, she still sat. she was waiting till she could get her crew home, alone in the dark and cold for decades and decades. She had given up her last bit of hope. It was when it had turned out that the next visitor to the deeps near her, was just another wreck coming down and not a scout for the race of man.
It would take another two years, when bright white and red lights lit up the area around her in painful displays of searching light. She had been sleeping, are sleeping for her at least. She had not even noticed the latest scout on the way down from the surface, until the lights came on and bathed her in their tear inducing glare.
They were looking for the Chinese submarine, that had an accident in these waters. The surface ship had tracked the radiation coming from her nuclear pile to this location. She was marked, as all newly discovered wrecks were. She was not what the surface support ship was looking for, but she was checked out just the same. Doing something like that was just out of habit. It was just a normal day running an ROV. That changed when the large ROV’s lights peered into the cracked glass of the cockpit, and it saw an eyeless white skull looking back at them in the white glare.
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The ROV pilot was in a very warm small room on a larger surface vessel, and he froze like he had been dropped in liquid nitrogen. He was very good at his job, one of the best in the world. He had seen a lot of things, while on jobs like this. All of it had been caught on data recorders, to prove what he had seen when it had come to bonus time. Now what he was looking at, was not the eyeless white skull, but the small print below the bullet scar glass on the old warplane. It was his name, printed in easy to read large black block letters. It was not his whole name on the side of the silt covered plane. But what were the odds? That you make a dive in one of the deepest oceans on the planet and see something, with your last name printed on it already. Jack Lamb had no idea if he was related to this Clark Lamb, but it was freaking him out and he was now breathing hard.
When the command screens showed that the ROV had stopped moving, and it did not start back up after a half minute. The ship’s captain and expedition commander took the half dozen steps, to see why his extremely highly paid ROV driver was not doing his job. He in turn froze, when he saw whose name was on the screens. Unlike most of the rest of the crew, he wrote the paychecks. So, he knew the last name of the ROV operator. He was also gob smacked and did not react quickly, to what he was seeing on the screen. One part of his brain was saying it was an April Fools joke, and another part was wondering if it was Halloween already. He was totally brain locked, as he looked on the video data coming up the tether from the ROV.
As they were watching and recording the images. They noticed that there was still some hair waving in the slight movements in the water caused by the UAV/ROVs props. The ROV pilot brought himself under control, and very slowly dropped the little craft lower to the mud bottom. He started to get a more detailed inspection of this wreck aircraft’s nose section. Right under and just a little aft of the glass panels, still visible, but very faded was her name. Her name was still legible, and the letters proudly shouted her name to the crew in the control room. It was a simple name, but one with lots of power behind the words. Goose bumps was the word of the day, as more and more of the crew looked over at the video screen. The skull was only just visible in the same frame that held the name of the old warhorse.
In letters in reds and blues it simply said “Get’em Home” in a flowing script. Below the name in black block letters was the planes motto in letters three feet tall. “Get’em Home, Complete The Mission.” The eyeless skull was daring them to take on a job. The ROV pilot, again without orders, moved the ROV back from the nose of the wreck. He wanted to get a better view of this apparition. One part of his mind knew what needed to be done.
The crews, on orders from the expedition leader, spent two full days working over the massive bomber laying in the mud. They mapped and imaged every inch of the bomber and the area around her, in as much detail as they could. This is when they found part of the Chinese submarine, that they had been looking for in the first place.
The HD video was sent back to their home station, in Hawaii, while they were still over the old warbird. This is where it quickly made first local and then national news, with a bullet. A large MIA/POW recovery team was quickly put together. They wanted to see if they could recover the bodies from the wrecked bomber. Or if they should leave her, as she was and marked as a war grave for all time. It was because of recent rapid advancement of technologies, that it might make both missions equally possible.
After months of work, it was thought that they would be able to extract the crew and plane from the mud in one pull. The new metal technologies, that were coming out as part of what would be called later the Golden Century. They were a lot stronger, than what had been around even 3 years ago. These new technologies would make the trip safer and easier. Besides the CIA, US Military, and even Green Peace wanted the SSBN recovered from the sea floor that was near the bomber. Any time all three of these organizations could agree on something, it was as rare as “A Great Planetary Alinement”.
So, both missions were planned to take place at the same time. It was advertised as a cost savings issue, by adding the bomber recovery. It “only” added 15 to 20 percent to the bottom-line budget of the recovery of the “main” target. It was however the groundswell of support of “Getting Them Home” that made the mission possible. Even if it was thought by the leadership, that the bomber was the secondary mission when the plan was drawn up the first time. It they could recover the two-part submarine, with the bodies. Then why not the crew of the WW 2 Bomber? Were their lives worth less, than the foreign crews? This statement and argument were being pointed out on many new shows around the world, but it was also getting a lot of support from grass root groups in the United States.
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When the old girl was raised from the depths of the cold deep waters by four heavy lifting cranes. they did not pull her all the way out of the water, not just yet. She was lifted into two tied together half sunken floating dry docks. The docks were like those seen around most large ports, just with a few modifications done to them to better support a valuable and unique cargo. This was so that the still intact bomber’s wings would fit and be held by the half-flooded docks, but still keep the bomber underwater and away from air.
It took two months for the floating dry dock to be slowly towed into Pearl Harbor. They kept her just off of Ford Island in the middle of the famous harbor overnight. Waiting on her to make her “final” arrival was a list of VIPs almost a mile long. While people from around the world watched. The aircraft and her crew of lost souls were slowly raised totally out of the water, for the first time. The bullet holes and small Flak holes leaked water and mud onto the deck of the large ship, as it carefully rose out of the harbor water. When about half of her dull silver hull was out of the clear water, something happened.
A loud deep groan, that was heard all the way back into the cheap seats. Had come from the old warhorse, when she had mostly cleared the water. A documentary and news film crew had been covering the reaction from a small group of the oldest Veterans, that had been gathered from around the country to view this special event. Not one person in the group had a dry eye, and a clear voice was heard on the tape. One that no one would be able to point out, who said it later. The voice was clear as a bell and broadcast, live to the whole world.
“Thank you, old girl. You did your job. You got them home, where they belonged.” The voice was too young sounding to have come from any throat in the group, but it had a tired tone to it also.
Then it was as if the B-29 that was rusty, tattered, and mud covered heard the statement from this group of old soldiers. She replied with another groan of her own back. This one was a lot softer and was almost a sigh sounding noise, that came from the old bones of the waterlogged bomber.
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The old bomber was the center of news story after news stories, for weeks and months to come. The recordings of her coming out of the water were played over and over again. While some were claiming that the sound was just the wind and the shifting wreck, that had caused the almost words, but not all thought that. Most people had their own opinions on the statement from the crowd, and the reply from the wreck. Drinks were hoisted at veteran’s clubs from around the world, or just when a group of them would meet to have dinner. They knew what had happened, and they were not talking to outsiders. There are somethings that civilians just would not understand. Besides most civilians thought most of them were crazy already. They were not about to give those people more ammunition to use against them.
The Body Recovery people from the military and the University of Hawaii worked day and night, many without pay for as long as it took to get the job done. Every step was recorded, as the group of 20 people slowly went through the bomber from nose to tail. The remains were only skeletons now, but the deep water and cold had let nothing eat the processed leather and bones of the crew. They just could not get through the holes that had been blown into the craft above the mud line.
The bodies were complete with non-iron metal ID tags, and bomber/flight jackets with their names still painted on the backs and over the right chest. DNA was still taken, and it was tested against any of the relations of the crewmembers that could be found. It did not take long for each body to be identified, without a doubt. The only problem had been in the Tail gunner’s position were two bodies had been found locked together.
Many papers would be written trying to explain what had happen, but no one would really know what had happened back there. After some time, and a little research in a few different archives. They would only know that a forward crewmember had made it all the way back to the aft most crewmember of the bomber, before both had died due to traumatic injuries. Pieces of metal had been found in both bodies. They knew that one had died from a piece of 88mm Flak round, and the other had died from bullets from a Ho-103 machine gun.
The Bomber had been stored on Ford Island, as different groups of people worked inside her metal hull. She drew a lot of interest into rebuilding her, and they talked about putting her on flying display so that more people could see her. There were only a few bombers of her type left in the world, so she had value besides her story. The local museum wanted to have her on display, if they could raise the needed money to restore her.
It was going to cost 50 million dollars at least, and bets were that it would be closer to 75 million in the end to stabilize her. The museum in Hawaii could not raise that much money in the time they had to do the work. The Airforce could not take the aircraft in hand. They had the nuclear bomber already on display, and they did not have the room for another one to be put on proper display. That did not mean, that they did not care about her. It only meant that it would not be them doing the work on this one. There was a museum in Washington State that looked promising. They were already working with the parent company, that had built the B-29 so long ago. They did have the money and room to do the job, as well as do the job right in the first place.
The huge plane was taken apart, but she remained in as few pieces as possible. Then she was loaded into a huge six engine cargo plane. One that specialized in carrying oversized loads, that were also very fragile. When the huge plane and its odd cargo landed, she was then transported via highways to her new home. It was big news and the video and recordings were replayed again of her emergence from the water.
The museum had modified one hangar just for this project, and its anticipated popularity. The bottom or hangar floor was where most of the work would be done. A heavy metal walkway 20 feet off the ground lined three sides of the hangar, was one of the key modifications. It was so that a visitor could look down at the work going on below them.
In its new home the whole plane had to be completely taken apart. It would need to be inventoried and thoroughly cleaned, before any other work could be done. This was a very expensive and years long prosses, alone. During one of the fundraisers, where very high-end donors could walk on the lower level of the hangar and be very close to the subject of the fund raising. That was when someone touched the side of the old plane, with a bare hand. What he got was not what he expected, at all.
Get’em Home flew on, with a crew of dead men in her silver metal hull. There three working engines droned on for the rest of the day and into the night. Some of her battle damage helped a little. The missing prop from the number one engine, had let her fly longer without the drag caused by a feathered prop. As tank after tank was pumped dry, and even the fumes were sucked out for just a little more power. The plane got lighter and used less fuel. She had kept going until the old girl had run out of every drop of her fuel, and then she had crashed into the dark and empty waters of the Pacific Ocean. The only witness to this were a few fish and a lost sea gull.
She had slowly lost speed, as one after the other of her three powerful prop driven engines stopped running due to fuel starvation or battle damage. She slowly drifted closer and closer to the blue water below, as she lost speed and lift in equal measure. Somehow the dead men at her controls had kept her from stalling, and just falling out of the skies. That is until she struck the water at 80 mph on the belly.
The first part of her airframe to touch the water, was just forward of her aft bomb bay doors. She skipped, splashed, and skidded across the smooth water until all of her speed had been bleed off. She was still again, this time on top of the water. Her outer skin was more of a pipe shaped, so she did not stay on the top of the ocean for long. She sunk into the water like a pipe thrown into a pond. She had slipped below its blue waters surface, on a slow drift down through the depths of increasing pressure. As she fell, the water currents would shift around her, and one of the elevators or ailerons would shift under the pressure of the moving dark cold water. This would change how she fell, and how fast she was falling through the water column. It was almost like someone was still at the controls of the sinking bomber.
She fell for a few hours going deeper and deeper into the abyss. Then she came to a rest on an underwater mud mountainside deep below the wave tops. She was still there with the bones of her crew still locked inside her aluminum hull. All of the major hull openings were hidden a few feet deep under the mud. The great airplane was covered in a cloud of silt and mud caused by her “crash” as things settled down.
It would take days before the water in this area was clear again. Time moves a lot slower in the low energy environment of the deep sea. Soon, she was just another bit of stuff hidden on the ocean floor. By the end of the month, when all the paperwork had been done writing her out of the history books. It looked like she had been down there since the dawn of time. All she could do was wait to be found.
###############
The Bomber had seen almost a half dozen ships of all kinds make the long trip from the bright surface world down toward her over the years, after her coming to rest on the side of this mud mountain. None had seen her; it was the old saw of “miss by an inch, you miss by a mile”. So, she still sat. she was waiting till she could get her crew home, alone in the dark and cold for decades and decades. She had given up her last bit of hope. It was when it had turned out that the next visitor to the deeps near her, was just another wreck coming down and not a scout for the race of man.
It would take another two years, when bright white and red lights lit up the area around her in painful displays of searching light. She had been sleeping, are sleeping for her at least. She had not even noticed the latest scout on the way down from the surface, until the lights came on and bathed her in their tear inducing glare.
They were looking for the Chinese submarine, that had an accident in these waters. The surface ship had tracked the radiation coming from her nuclear pile to this location. She was marked, as all newly discovered wrecks were. She was not what the surface support ship was looking for, but she was checked out just the same. Doing something like that was just out of habit. It was just a normal day running an ROV. That changed when the large ROV’s lights peered into the cracked glass of the cockpit, and it saw an eyeless white skull looking back at them in the white glare.
#############
The ROV pilot was in a very warm small room on a larger surface vessel, and he froze like he had been dropped in liquid nitrogen. He was very good at his job, one of the best in the world. He had seen a lot of things, while on jobs like this. All of it had been caught on data recorders, to prove what he had seen when it had come to bonus time. Now what he was looking at, was not the eyeless white skull, but the small print below the bullet scar glass on the old warplane. It was his name, printed in easy to read large black block letters. It was not his whole name on the side of the silt covered plane. But what were the odds? That you make a dive in one of the deepest oceans on the planet and see something, with your last name printed on it already. Jack Lamb had no idea if he was related to this Clark Lamb, but it was freaking him out and he was now breathing hard.
When the command screens showed that the ROV had stopped moving, and it did not start back up after a half minute. The ship’s captain and expedition commander took the half dozen steps, to see why his extremely highly paid ROV driver was not doing his job. He in turn froze, when he saw whose name was on the screens. Unlike most of the rest of the crew, he wrote the paychecks. So, he knew the last name of the ROV operator. He was also gob smacked and did not react quickly, to what he was seeing on the screen. One part of his brain was saying it was an April Fools joke, and another part was wondering if it was Halloween already. He was totally brain locked, as he looked on the video data coming up the tether from the ROV.
As they were watching and recording the images. They noticed that there was still some hair waving in the slight movements in the water caused by the UAV/ROVs props. The ROV pilot brought himself under control, and very slowly dropped the little craft lower to the mud bottom. He started to get a more detailed inspection of this wreck aircraft’s nose section. Right under and just a little aft of the glass panels, still visible, but very faded was her name. Her name was still legible, and the letters proudly shouted her name to the crew in the control room. It was a simple name, but one with lots of power behind the words. Goose bumps was the word of the day, as more and more of the crew looked over at the video screen. The skull was only just visible in the same frame that held the name of the old warhorse.
In letters in reds and blues it simply said “Get’em Home” in a flowing script. Below the name in black block letters was the planes motto in letters three feet tall. “Get’em Home, Complete The Mission.” The eyeless skull was daring them to take on a job. The ROV pilot, again without orders, moved the ROV back from the nose of the wreck. He wanted to get a better view of this apparition. One part of his mind knew what needed to be done.
The crews, on orders from the expedition leader, spent two full days working over the massive bomber laying in the mud. They mapped and imaged every inch of the bomber and the area around her, in as much detail as they could. This is when they found part of the Chinese submarine, that they had been looking for in the first place.
The HD video was sent back to their home station, in Hawaii, while they were still over the old warbird. This is where it quickly made first local and then national news, with a bullet. A large MIA/POW recovery team was quickly put together. They wanted to see if they could recover the bodies from the wrecked bomber. Or if they should leave her, as she was and marked as a war grave for all time. It was because of recent rapid advancement of technologies, that it might make both missions equally possible.
After months of work, it was thought that they would be able to extract the crew and plane from the mud in one pull. The new metal technologies, that were coming out as part of what would be called later the Golden Century. They were a lot stronger, than what had been around even 3 years ago. These new technologies would make the trip safer and easier. Besides the CIA, US Military, and even Green Peace wanted the SSBN recovered from the sea floor that was near the bomber. Any time all three of these organizations could agree on something, it was as rare as “A Great Planetary Alinement”.
So, both missions were planned to take place at the same time. It was advertised as a cost savings issue, by adding the bomber recovery. It “only” added 15 to 20 percent to the bottom-line budget of the recovery of the “main” target. It was however the groundswell of support of “Getting Them Home” that made the mission possible. Even if it was thought by the leadership, that the bomber was the secondary mission when the plan was drawn up the first time. It they could recover the two-part submarine, with the bodies. Then why not the crew of the WW 2 Bomber? Were their lives worth less, than the foreign crews? This statement and argument were being pointed out on many new shows around the world, but it was also getting a lot of support from grass root groups in the United States.
#####################
When the old girl was raised from the depths of the cold deep waters by four heavy lifting cranes. they did not pull her all the way out of the water, not just yet. She was lifted into two tied together half sunken floating dry docks. The docks were like those seen around most large ports, just with a few modifications done to them to better support a valuable and unique cargo. This was so that the still intact bomber’s wings would fit and be held by the half-flooded docks, but still keep the bomber underwater and away from air.
It took two months for the floating dry dock to be slowly towed into Pearl Harbor. They kept her just off of Ford Island in the middle of the famous harbor overnight. Waiting on her to make her “final” arrival was a list of VIPs almost a mile long. While people from around the world watched. The aircraft and her crew of lost souls were slowly raised totally out of the water, for the first time. The bullet holes and small Flak holes leaked water and mud onto the deck of the large ship, as it carefully rose out of the harbor water. When about half of her dull silver hull was out of the clear water, something happened.
A loud deep groan, that was heard all the way back into the cheap seats. Had come from the old warhorse, when she had mostly cleared the water. A documentary and news film crew had been covering the reaction from a small group of the oldest Veterans, that had been gathered from around the country to view this special event. Not one person in the group had a dry eye, and a clear voice was heard on the tape. One that no one would be able to point out, who said it later. The voice was clear as a bell and broadcast, live to the whole world.
“Thank you, old girl. You did your job. You got them home, where they belonged.” The voice was too young sounding to have come from any throat in the group, but it had a tired tone to it also.
Then it was as if the B-29 that was rusty, tattered, and mud covered heard the statement from this group of old soldiers. She replied with another groan of her own back. This one was a lot softer and was almost a sigh sounding noise, that came from the old bones of the waterlogged bomber.
###############
The old bomber was the center of news story after news stories, for weeks and months to come. The recordings of her coming out of the water were played over and over again. While some were claiming that the sound was just the wind and the shifting wreck, that had caused the almost words, but not all thought that. Most people had their own opinions on the statement from the crowd, and the reply from the wreck. Drinks were hoisted at veteran’s clubs from around the world, or just when a group of them would meet to have dinner. They knew what had happened, and they were not talking to outsiders. There are somethings that civilians just would not understand. Besides most civilians thought most of them were crazy already. They were not about to give those people more ammunition to use against them.
The Body Recovery people from the military and the University of Hawaii worked day and night, many without pay for as long as it took to get the job done. Every step was recorded, as the group of 20 people slowly went through the bomber from nose to tail. The remains were only skeletons now, but the deep water and cold had let nothing eat the processed leather and bones of the crew. They just could not get through the holes that had been blown into the craft above the mud line.
The bodies were complete with non-iron metal ID tags, and bomber/flight jackets with their names still painted on the backs and over the right chest. DNA was still taken, and it was tested against any of the relations of the crewmembers that could be found. It did not take long for each body to be identified, without a doubt. The only problem had been in the Tail gunner’s position were two bodies had been found locked together.
Many papers would be written trying to explain what had happen, but no one would really know what had happened back there. After some time, and a little research in a few different archives. They would only know that a forward crewmember had made it all the way back to the aft most crewmember of the bomber, before both had died due to traumatic injuries. Pieces of metal had been found in both bodies. They knew that one had died from a piece of 88mm Flak round, and the other had died from bullets from a Ho-103 machine gun.
The Bomber had been stored on Ford Island, as different groups of people worked inside her metal hull. She drew a lot of interest into rebuilding her, and they talked about putting her on flying display so that more people could see her. There were only a few bombers of her type left in the world, so she had value besides her story. The local museum wanted to have her on display, if they could raise the needed money to restore her.
It was going to cost 50 million dollars at least, and bets were that it would be closer to 75 million in the end to stabilize her. The museum in Hawaii could not raise that much money in the time they had to do the work. The Airforce could not take the aircraft in hand. They had the nuclear bomber already on display, and they did not have the room for another one to be put on proper display. That did not mean, that they did not care about her. It only meant that it would not be them doing the work on this one. There was a museum in Washington State that looked promising. They were already working with the parent company, that had built the B-29 so long ago. They did have the money and room to do the job, as well as do the job right in the first place.
The huge plane was taken apart, but she remained in as few pieces as possible. Then she was loaded into a huge six engine cargo plane. One that specialized in carrying oversized loads, that were also very fragile. When the huge plane and its odd cargo landed, she was then transported via highways to her new home. It was big news and the video and recordings were replayed again of her emergence from the water.
The museum had modified one hangar just for this project, and its anticipated popularity. The bottom or hangar floor was where most of the work would be done. A heavy metal walkway 20 feet off the ground lined three sides of the hangar, was one of the key modifications. It was so that a visitor could look down at the work going on below them.
In its new home the whole plane had to be completely taken apart. It would need to be inventoried and thoroughly cleaned, before any other work could be done. This was a very expensive and years long prosses, alone. During one of the fundraisers, where very high-end donors could walk on the lower level of the hangar and be very close to the subject of the fund raising. That was when someone touched the side of the old plane, with a bare hand. What he got was not what he expected, at all.
Re: Short stroy that might fit.
She Speaks
Don was walking around the hangar floor. He did not want to be here drinking cheap champagne and eating rubber chicken, again. He had to do about a dozen of these things a year, and he didn’t like any of them. He viewed them as a tax write off, and as a chance to press some flesh for his real work. Work that paid his bills and gave a few thousand people paychecks to take home. He took another sip of cheap Champagne, in a cheap glass, as he walked around a bunch of old metal on the concrete floor. He was not impressed, it looked like a high-end car garage. And he had been in more than of few of those in his life.
When he came around the nose of the plane, that had been in the news so much over the last year. He could not help himself. He reached out, with his free hand and touched the skin just below the printed motto. It was like an invisible spark of electricity jumped between the warplane, and his outstretched fingers. Then he was not looking at a rusting and dull hulk of a wreck. He was standing on an open tarmac, under an impossibly bright clear and sunny sky. The plane was not a wreck anymore, but it was polished and clean. She glowed in the sun, like he had never seen anything like it before. It was heart stopping.
Don jerked his hand off the bomber, and it was again a wrecked and aged warplane spread out over 20,000 square feet of cold and dull concrete. Don looked around, and no one seemed to be looking at him. And nothing seemed to be off or setting off, any of his internal alarm bells. He swallowed some spit, to try to cut his dry mouth. He reached up, and very gingerly touched the aircraft hulk again. He had the vision again, of the visually stunning airplane sitting under the bright sun. He stood there for an unknown amount of time. He could feel the joy coming off of the bomber and threw his fingers, and it was intoxicating. He only removed his hand, when a voice interrupted him. The voice sounded like it was coming from a long distance away, and not near him.
With the vision and feelings now gone. He looked over to the person, that had just interrupted him out of one of the most beautiful moments his life had ever had. If he had a few more drinks, he might have said something off color to the intruder. Instead he just gave the man a blank look and held his tongue.
The older man did not take the hint, and he repeated himself. “I said that it would be great to see this one fly again. Don’t you think?”
Don shakes his head left and right with some energy, and he knows what he needs to do today. He does not raise his voice, but he made sure to use the right tone. “No. She’s tired. She did her job already. She needs a nice new dress and some time off to enjoy the sun. She has been in the dark for so long. I think she just needs to be shown that we appreciate her for getting them home and let her retire.”
What he did not know, was that when he pitched his voice that way. It had carried threw out the open space of the hangar. As his words made their way to other ears around the open area. They were then repeated and discussed in detail about how “right” it was. Quickly long-standing plans were changed. She would not be returned to flight status, but she was going to get a nice dress and a relaxing retirement.
Don left a check a few hours later. It was a lot larger than he had planned on, or his accountant would have liked. He would return to this hangar every day he could. More and more volunteers came forward to help on this project, until they could not take more. Those extra and willing hands would be shifted to other needed, if lower profile projects. People would spend hours, just touching the craft after they had done any assigned work. The ever-increasing number helping, had drove the project forward at almost a breakneck speed. What the people did not know, was that they were giving to her there loves and hopes. All as they touched every rivet or peace of aluminum on the airplane. Even people on the walkways were channeling a little something to the slowly changing scene.
The plane was a huge draw, and the number of visitors went up every year for the museum. When she was finally put on display. It was not in the sun, but it was in a huge hangar with other planes from her era. Without a doubt, she was the center piece of the whole hangar. They even had to add some bench seating under her wings, to keep people from sitting on the concrete floors just to be near her. The museum rented out this hangar for many afterhours functions, and the museum management were bringing in large amounts of money with her presence.
This influx of money caused problems. When someone who should not have access to the money does? There will be issues and those issues will go public, no matter how much all parties might wish that it did not. When the embezzling was publicly exposed? The Airforce decided to review the loan agreement for all of its loaned aircraft country wide. That meant, that in 2050. The B-29 with the tail number of 42-6347 and was 98% as she had been when she rolled off the line, was moved from the west coast to southern Arizona.
A museum in Tucson jumped on the chance to get this addition to their fleet. Many had seen and touched her over the years, after she had been raised from the ocean floor. After word was released of the pending move. The museum was quickly able to raise the funds to build a massive 100,000 square foot hangar built for her. It was built with an equally large door on one side of the new building. It was built with the strongest materials known to man, up until then. No expense was spared, because the locals would see to it.
Part of the loan agreement with the USAF, was that the bomber be rolled out at least once a month for a few hours. It would only be on days that rain was not expected. She would be able to spend time under the sun at last. She was happy, and she made most people happy when they were near her. During her announced monthly roll out, she would always draw a large crowd. Besides this first of the month show, she would be rolled out between once and three times a week. Tucson was not known to have that many rainy days. Whenever the weather was predicted to be good? She was pulled out into the sun.
Everyone that came to see her, would read her story, and touch the magnificently restored aircraft. Many books were written, and movies made, some of those movies were even with her in them somehow. Things were perfect, and as with everything that was perfect it had to end. And when it ends? It will end very bloody.
Don was walking around the hangar floor. He did not want to be here drinking cheap champagne and eating rubber chicken, again. He had to do about a dozen of these things a year, and he didn’t like any of them. He viewed them as a tax write off, and as a chance to press some flesh for his real work. Work that paid his bills and gave a few thousand people paychecks to take home. He took another sip of cheap Champagne, in a cheap glass, as he walked around a bunch of old metal on the concrete floor. He was not impressed, it looked like a high-end car garage. And he had been in more than of few of those in his life.
When he came around the nose of the plane, that had been in the news so much over the last year. He could not help himself. He reached out, with his free hand and touched the skin just below the printed motto. It was like an invisible spark of electricity jumped between the warplane, and his outstretched fingers. Then he was not looking at a rusting and dull hulk of a wreck. He was standing on an open tarmac, under an impossibly bright clear and sunny sky. The plane was not a wreck anymore, but it was polished and clean. She glowed in the sun, like he had never seen anything like it before. It was heart stopping.
Don jerked his hand off the bomber, and it was again a wrecked and aged warplane spread out over 20,000 square feet of cold and dull concrete. Don looked around, and no one seemed to be looking at him. And nothing seemed to be off or setting off, any of his internal alarm bells. He swallowed some spit, to try to cut his dry mouth. He reached up, and very gingerly touched the aircraft hulk again. He had the vision again, of the visually stunning airplane sitting under the bright sun. He stood there for an unknown amount of time. He could feel the joy coming off of the bomber and threw his fingers, and it was intoxicating. He only removed his hand, when a voice interrupted him. The voice sounded like it was coming from a long distance away, and not near him.
With the vision and feelings now gone. He looked over to the person, that had just interrupted him out of one of the most beautiful moments his life had ever had. If he had a few more drinks, he might have said something off color to the intruder. Instead he just gave the man a blank look and held his tongue.
The older man did not take the hint, and he repeated himself. “I said that it would be great to see this one fly again. Don’t you think?”
Don shakes his head left and right with some energy, and he knows what he needs to do today. He does not raise his voice, but he made sure to use the right tone. “No. She’s tired. She did her job already. She needs a nice new dress and some time off to enjoy the sun. She has been in the dark for so long. I think she just needs to be shown that we appreciate her for getting them home and let her retire.”
What he did not know, was that when he pitched his voice that way. It had carried threw out the open space of the hangar. As his words made their way to other ears around the open area. They were then repeated and discussed in detail about how “right” it was. Quickly long-standing plans were changed. She would not be returned to flight status, but she was going to get a nice dress and a relaxing retirement.
Don left a check a few hours later. It was a lot larger than he had planned on, or his accountant would have liked. He would return to this hangar every day he could. More and more volunteers came forward to help on this project, until they could not take more. Those extra and willing hands would be shifted to other needed, if lower profile projects. People would spend hours, just touching the craft after they had done any assigned work. The ever-increasing number helping, had drove the project forward at almost a breakneck speed. What the people did not know, was that they were giving to her there loves and hopes. All as they touched every rivet or peace of aluminum on the airplane. Even people on the walkways were channeling a little something to the slowly changing scene.
The plane was a huge draw, and the number of visitors went up every year for the museum. When she was finally put on display. It was not in the sun, but it was in a huge hangar with other planes from her era. Without a doubt, she was the center piece of the whole hangar. They even had to add some bench seating under her wings, to keep people from sitting on the concrete floors just to be near her. The museum rented out this hangar for many afterhours functions, and the museum management were bringing in large amounts of money with her presence.
This influx of money caused problems. When someone who should not have access to the money does? There will be issues and those issues will go public, no matter how much all parties might wish that it did not. When the embezzling was publicly exposed? The Airforce decided to review the loan agreement for all of its loaned aircraft country wide. That meant, that in 2050. The B-29 with the tail number of 42-6347 and was 98% as she had been when she rolled off the line, was moved from the west coast to southern Arizona.
A museum in Tucson jumped on the chance to get this addition to their fleet. Many had seen and touched her over the years, after she had been raised from the ocean floor. After word was released of the pending move. The museum was quickly able to raise the funds to build a massive 100,000 square foot hangar built for her. It was built with an equally large door on one side of the new building. It was built with the strongest materials known to man, up until then. No expense was spared, because the locals would see to it.
Part of the loan agreement with the USAF, was that the bomber be rolled out at least once a month for a few hours. It would only be on days that rain was not expected. She would be able to spend time under the sun at last. She was happy, and she made most people happy when they were near her. During her announced monthly roll out, she would always draw a large crowd. Besides this first of the month show, she would be rolled out between once and three times a week. Tucson was not known to have that many rainy days. Whenever the weather was predicted to be good? She was pulled out into the sun.
Everyone that came to see her, would read her story, and touch the magnificently restored aircraft. Many books were written, and movies made, some of those movies were even with her in them somehow. Things were perfect, and as with everything that was perfect it had to end. And when it ends? It will end very bloody.
Re: Short stroy that might fit.
28 December 2098
The ending started on a nice sunny day in December of the year known as 2098. She awoke and it was different this time, than at any other time. At least before, when she was in darkness. She could feel and she could move. The last was a first that she could remember. She only did small things, but for once no one was in the hangar with her. She had no idea what was going on, but she could tell that evil was near. She was old and had seen the elephant, and now the elephant was near. She would be ready to see the elephant, and the elephant had better beware this Kansas beauty.
This was something new, and she wanted to see what was going on. It was so hard to wait, she wanted to join the fight. She had no idea what was going on or why it was happening. But she did learn a few things over the next few days. Indeed, evil was near. Air Dales were going to war, and they were dying like moths caught in a blowtorch. She was lucky, and a modern airbase was only a few miles away from where she sat. She had a front row seat, seeing what was going on from at least one side of this new conflict.
Finally, she had seen and heard enough. On the second day of her watching, the radio display near the double doors had come to life. She had enough of hearing “her” people not getting home. She could no longer stand just watching. She had no idea what she could do, but she was going to by The Riveter do something. She willed the massive metal hangar doors to move, and they did. With a little bit of power from her props that came to life at her command. She rolled out, to be under the graveyard sky and watched some more. She needed to know were the enemy was. She saw her Air Dales overhead, and when they turned east, she was ready.
Captain Kristen Crump (Hammer 43) looked out the cockpit of her S-14a Air Hawk. She was a second line US Airforce craft, and an updated version of the S-14 Sea Hawk. She was “only” good enough to be in the nasty guard and the weekend warriors club. Now it was all that was available to defend their country, after the last week. The Captain was leading the last six operational aircraft from her airbase on this mission. They had started with 44 operational jets on the 21st of Dec.
About another dozen were on the ground damaged or otherwise not flyable, back at her base. They had been running combat missions every hour of every day and night, since the world went nuts around them. There had been confirmed reports of nuclear weapons being detonated down south, and reports of others closer to home. That had been enough to put the base on alert, and start the ball rolling to become fully operational.
Then the crazy blue lights had filled the sky. They were followed by massive earthquakes, freak storms, and volcanos blowing their tops around the area. The reports coming in from White Sands were about monsters attacking, killing, and even eating people. They had not been believed, by anyone who had been able to pick up the weak radio report. That is until the scout reported being attack by some kind of 20-foot-tall flying manish looking thing. All while it had been flying at 12,000 feet, when it had overflown the area trying to find data for the local government.
They had sent a dozen armed planes when the scout quit reporting midsentence, and not one of them had come back to base. The attack jets had not been able to get one message back to base, after they had only gone about 100miles from the end of the runway. It was like the world had gone crazy. It was like end of times kind of things, going on from their viewpoint in the traffic control tower. The only thing her and people like her could do was there duty, even if they died trying.
That was why Hammer 43 was leading this mission. She was the most senior combat pilot left alive, that could fly a plane. This mission was a close air support task to ground forces. The Base had received a radio message, through all of the crap that was filling the air waves. A mixed bag of active duty Army units, National Guard units from the US and Mexico, NEMA, Air force, armed civilians and refugees were begging for help.
They had been running from the monsters, that were attacking them since El Paso. They were near the old town of Lordsburg, but they could not move anymore. That was because the monsters were pressing them so hard. If they were caught in movement and out in the open, without any fixed defensive points? They would be wiped out. It was hoped that this air attack would buy the people on the ground some time, to try and get farther away. Maybe even buy them enough time, so that they could hide in the mountains to the west.
It was a suicide run for the jets and their pilots, and every one of the pilots knew it before they had strapped onto their warhorses. They were going, no matter what. People were in need, and they would do their jobs. Even if it meant their lives in the process of just trying to help those calling for help. That is what happens, when you volunteer to join the military. You write a check, that is payable to up to your life at any time. It looked to the crews, that payment was about to be called.
Something was moving below her, and it drew her eyes to the movement. A band of low-lying clouds that seemed to have infested this part of the world for the last few days had shifted. In the gray clouds below a thin object started to rise through the clouds. It was like a silver shark fin rising up from the murky depths, slowly. It took what seemed like minutes, to clear the clouds to expose more of the predator. Kristen could not take her eyes off the object. Gray clouds rolled off the shiny hull, like gray water coming off a whale surfacing. Now the full exposed silver hull was dazzling, as if every single ray of sunlight was reflecting off of it.
Kristen knew what the object was; she had made models of that type of plane before as both a kid and an adult. One of her green eyes flicked to the left side on her HUD. It clearly said that she was moving at just under 600 knots of indicated airspeed. There was no way on Earth, that a B-29 could keep up with them at this speed. She did not remember how fast they could fly, but she knew it was nowhere near that fast.
The data handling system built into her craft, automatically shared her data to the rest of the flight. With everything they had seen the last few days, not one word was said between them about the addition to their flight. She tried to raise the new addition on the radio, but there was not any response. After the third attempt, she stopped trying. She could not see into the glass enclosed cockpit, and after her mind caught up with the situation. She realized that it was an intel gap she could live with. They pressed on towards the attack location.
The attacking jet fighters steeply dropped in altitude, so that they could make a visual attack run. When they group dropped below the odd blue and grey clouds? They were attacked by what they could only described as flying monsters. She knew she was going to die, when a huge gargoyle like monster started heading her way. It looked large enough that she could have flown down his nostrils. It was just luck that it crossed the nose of the strange four propeller engine plane. The jet’s rail guns firing DU rounds had some effect, but four lines of strange visible laser or plasma bolt fire hit the attacking flying monster square in the wing covered back. Captain Crump would swear that the monster had a “what the crap just happened to me?” look on its face, as its huge bat like wings suddenly had a set of lines of huge holes punched into them.
The attack jets went lower but the B-29 stayed higher, just under the cloud ceiling. There firing on the gargoyle like thing, drew the rest of the flying monsters to it like a moth to a flame or a magnet to steel. The Super Fortress lived up to her name and put walls of death between her hull and the attacking enemy. Her enemies fell from the skies one after the other. The old bomber was even drawing most to the strange bolt or energy fire, that was coming up from the brown ground below toward it. It was distracting any attackers that had even close to a line of sight to her.
Kristen and her wingmen were able to make repeated attack runs, without being seriously engaged by the monsters. This had been a first since this craziness had started. Kristen and her team were taking out point targets, but the real killer was the bomber flying over their heads. Besides drawing all of the flying monsters to her, to have holes blown into them.
The Bomber would single out groups below and rain hell on them, with bombs like no one on his earth had ever seen before. The bomber also was not responding to radio messages, from the lone radio operator on the ground. But they seemed to know when they needed to drop something danger close. Kristen had seen them drop some kind of explosive fire ball like weapon, only 500 feet from a human defender that was about to be over run. They would do this time after time, and the groups not close would get a different type of weapon dropped on their heads.
The mixed group of flying craft spends half an hour attacking the monsters, again and again. When the last S-14a’s had spent all of the ordnance on the enemy? They started to rise higher in the air. Without any weapons, they could not affect the battle going on below them. Even when she had “aimed” her sonic boom, it did not seem to have a visual effect on the larger monsters. The smaller one’s seemed to drop to the ground and writhe in pain for a few minutes, but they would always rise again and seek battle with the ground defenders.
They soon were joined by the bomber, that was not as shiny as she had been when they first saw her. The group of jet pilots now could see, that smoke was coming out of three of her propeller driven engines mounted on her wings. When Crump or one of her wingmen tried to fly closer to their strange larger friend, to get a better look at her. It would start to shift away from them, like it was trying to keep the distance. She orders her command to leave the strangers alone, after the third attempt of drifting closer. She had seen the great tears in her hull, like claw marks on a zebra. Even her tall tail was now scared from battle.
The group was somewhere over southern Arizona when the massive bomber disappeared. She had slowly drifted back down into the cloud bank below the retreating jet fighters. The Traffic Control tower sounded shocked when Captain Crump raised them on the radio, and she reported that there would be six birds landing on the airbase in a few minutes. That had been the most fighters ever to return to the base from a mission, these last few days of hell.
Three hours later and the sun was well down over the airbase, but Captain Crump was not sleeping in her cot in an empty office. Her home had been flattened killing her husband and son, on the first day of Armageddon. She had been the one to pull their bodies out of the wreckage. She had done this alone, because everyone else in the state was doing the same thing.
The office door opened without knocking, and in walked Colonel Douglas. He was the senior military officer that anyone had been able to get ahold of, for days now. He took a seat across from the female Captain, but he did not say a word. He was quiet and just watched her. For her part, she was watching him back. She had a good idea why he was here, and why he was staring at her. She had mentally timed how long it would take for someone to read her after action report. She had expected something like this or an escort to the rubber room, about ten minutes ago.
When the Captain did not start talking, and she looked to be sane. The Colonel had seen about 10 percent of the surviving people on and off base go crazy, so far. This one was not showing the outward signs, but he knew that this could be worse. “Okay, Captain. That report, are you going to stick with it? Or would you now like to make some changes to it?”
Kristen tilted her head to one side and gave him a level look. “Did you already read the AARs from the rest of the flight?” It was a simple question, and one that was loaded with land mines. She had no idea what the other jet crew’s might have written up. She had hoped they would tell the truth, but she was not supposed to know what was going into those reports.
Colonel Douglas nodded his head up and down. “OH, I did!! And they say basically the same thing, that was in your report. But theirs were a lot less eloquent, and they used a lot more four-letter words to try to get the point across. What they did not call it, was an unknown armed civilian aircraft flying at subsonic combat speeds. Each and every one on that mission, but you, called it a B-29 Super Fortress with “Get’em Home and Complete the mission” printed on her nose.”
Kristian could feel the “I love me jacket” being fitted for her. She looked down at the book, that she was trying to read to get her mind off of what had been going on for the last few days. “So, what are you going to do? Sir?”
Colonel Douglas looked at his clinched hands in his lap. “I am not saying one bloody thing or word. I don’t care who, or what they were. I know only that they helped. The refugees were able to get away, when they all thought they were going to die out there. On top of that this was the first mission we ran, where everyone came back alive. I don’t care why or how. The intel team is still reviewing all of the recorded data you brought back, and before you ask. Yes, the bomber was recorded by all six fighters. Get some sleep Captain. I think we are in for a long, whatever it is we are in.” He got up out of the chair and left the room, closing the door behind him.
The next attack went out 2 Jan 2099. The time between the two missions was used to repair and recover more pilots, crew, and combat craft. The shot in the arm of morale, with the whole last mission returning did not hurt at all. Word of the “surprise” help had been whispered around ground crews. The thought of supernatural support had added just a little more, to the morale of the whole base. More than a few silent prayers were sent to the unknown bomber and her crew. The whole base was starting to feel a little hope.
When the call came out for bomber and attack support a dozen craft of all types, left the base on the mission in one wave. They were heading toward the Superstition Mountains to help a team of NEMA personnel in Chrome Guardsmen suits, that were cleaning out a monster nest. Then maybe they would be able to attack the blue energy curtain nearby, after the first mission was done.
Captain Crump was in command of this attack, just like on the last one. She kept looking around, to see if the bomber would show up. She spent more time looking outside of her canopy, than she was looking at the navigation display. A dozen sky cycles had been sent out looking for the bomber, museum, or its wreck the day after her return to base. Nothing was found for two days, but death and destruction all around the scouts. Luckily these scouts were armed heavy enough to fight their way through any opposition.
It was the tail end Charley of the flight, that reported that they were not alone. The information was sent via his data link to the rest of the attack force, before he could say more than a few words. When Kristen looked at her center mounted 3d screen. It was not a four-engine bomber, but a lot smaller single engine plane with straight wings.
Her attack flight had been joined by a P-39 Airacobra painted in pristine New Guinea 1942 pattern camouflage. It would join them on the attack against the monsters to the north. This time they were lucky, and all of the monsters were of the ground walking types. Again, the human attack jets returned to base. This time they were only missing two of their number, both pilots were recovered by the NEMA teams. The report of their recovery had beaten the jets home. The area NEME commander had contacted the Colonel and said that they would be sent south, as soon as they could. It was hoped that they would be able to use recently recovered aircraft from Luke to head south in. If not, they would be sent on a pair of two seat sky cycles. Again, on the way to home base the old plane went into a cloud bank and was gone.
More missions were launched, and not all the time did one of them have an odd attachment. But they did have one on most days. Sometimes they would have a F8F Bearcat, or Mustang, or even a P-38. Never would they have the same addition two days in a row. When Get’em home showed up again, it was greeted by the whole flight. She still did not reply to the greetings, and this time on one tried to get closer to her. They just accepted that she was going to bring the BOOM onto someone today.
The notion that these attachments were invincible was shattered, when a Twin Mustang disappeared in the middle of a huge fur ball. One second it was there, and the next there was a bright flash of light and it was gone. They also never were able to “see” who was at the controls of these attachments. Never was radio communication established between the jets and the older generation of support. It was like they were using their own way to communicate with the outside world.
It was help, and that was all that mattered to the flying defenders. What the people who ran the airbase did not know, was that these haunted pieces of equipment were drawing the evil to the human airbase like iron to a magnet. The humans found out in time, and a great battle was waged. One that left the area around the Base and all of southern Arizona looking more like the moon, and not like an area that had been holding a city of about a million souls. No one would remember what they did, our how well or poorly they fought. They were lost to the sands of time.
Unless you know where to look, that is. Then you just might find out more than you really wanted to.
The ending started on a nice sunny day in December of the year known as 2098. She awoke and it was different this time, than at any other time. At least before, when she was in darkness. She could feel and she could move. The last was a first that she could remember. She only did small things, but for once no one was in the hangar with her. She had no idea what was going on, but she could tell that evil was near. She was old and had seen the elephant, and now the elephant was near. She would be ready to see the elephant, and the elephant had better beware this Kansas beauty.
This was something new, and she wanted to see what was going on. It was so hard to wait, she wanted to join the fight. She had no idea what was going on or why it was happening. But she did learn a few things over the next few days. Indeed, evil was near. Air Dales were going to war, and they were dying like moths caught in a blowtorch. She was lucky, and a modern airbase was only a few miles away from where she sat. She had a front row seat, seeing what was going on from at least one side of this new conflict.
Finally, she had seen and heard enough. On the second day of her watching, the radio display near the double doors had come to life. She had enough of hearing “her” people not getting home. She could no longer stand just watching. She had no idea what she could do, but she was going to by The Riveter do something. She willed the massive metal hangar doors to move, and they did. With a little bit of power from her props that came to life at her command. She rolled out, to be under the graveyard sky and watched some more. She needed to know were the enemy was. She saw her Air Dales overhead, and when they turned east, she was ready.
Captain Kristen Crump (Hammer 43) looked out the cockpit of her S-14a Air Hawk. She was a second line US Airforce craft, and an updated version of the S-14 Sea Hawk. She was “only” good enough to be in the nasty guard and the weekend warriors club. Now it was all that was available to defend their country, after the last week. The Captain was leading the last six operational aircraft from her airbase on this mission. They had started with 44 operational jets on the 21st of Dec.
About another dozen were on the ground damaged or otherwise not flyable, back at her base. They had been running combat missions every hour of every day and night, since the world went nuts around them. There had been confirmed reports of nuclear weapons being detonated down south, and reports of others closer to home. That had been enough to put the base on alert, and start the ball rolling to become fully operational.
Then the crazy blue lights had filled the sky. They were followed by massive earthquakes, freak storms, and volcanos blowing their tops around the area. The reports coming in from White Sands were about monsters attacking, killing, and even eating people. They had not been believed, by anyone who had been able to pick up the weak radio report. That is until the scout reported being attack by some kind of 20-foot-tall flying manish looking thing. All while it had been flying at 12,000 feet, when it had overflown the area trying to find data for the local government.
They had sent a dozen armed planes when the scout quit reporting midsentence, and not one of them had come back to base. The attack jets had not been able to get one message back to base, after they had only gone about 100miles from the end of the runway. It was like the world had gone crazy. It was like end of times kind of things, going on from their viewpoint in the traffic control tower. The only thing her and people like her could do was there duty, even if they died trying.
That was why Hammer 43 was leading this mission. She was the most senior combat pilot left alive, that could fly a plane. This mission was a close air support task to ground forces. The Base had received a radio message, through all of the crap that was filling the air waves. A mixed bag of active duty Army units, National Guard units from the US and Mexico, NEMA, Air force, armed civilians and refugees were begging for help.
They had been running from the monsters, that were attacking them since El Paso. They were near the old town of Lordsburg, but they could not move anymore. That was because the monsters were pressing them so hard. If they were caught in movement and out in the open, without any fixed defensive points? They would be wiped out. It was hoped that this air attack would buy the people on the ground some time, to try and get farther away. Maybe even buy them enough time, so that they could hide in the mountains to the west.
It was a suicide run for the jets and their pilots, and every one of the pilots knew it before they had strapped onto their warhorses. They were going, no matter what. People were in need, and they would do their jobs. Even if it meant their lives in the process of just trying to help those calling for help. That is what happens, when you volunteer to join the military. You write a check, that is payable to up to your life at any time. It looked to the crews, that payment was about to be called.
Something was moving below her, and it drew her eyes to the movement. A band of low-lying clouds that seemed to have infested this part of the world for the last few days had shifted. In the gray clouds below a thin object started to rise through the clouds. It was like a silver shark fin rising up from the murky depths, slowly. It took what seemed like minutes, to clear the clouds to expose more of the predator. Kristen could not take her eyes off the object. Gray clouds rolled off the shiny hull, like gray water coming off a whale surfacing. Now the full exposed silver hull was dazzling, as if every single ray of sunlight was reflecting off of it.
Kristen knew what the object was; she had made models of that type of plane before as both a kid and an adult. One of her green eyes flicked to the left side on her HUD. It clearly said that she was moving at just under 600 knots of indicated airspeed. There was no way on Earth, that a B-29 could keep up with them at this speed. She did not remember how fast they could fly, but she knew it was nowhere near that fast.
The data handling system built into her craft, automatically shared her data to the rest of the flight. With everything they had seen the last few days, not one word was said between them about the addition to their flight. She tried to raise the new addition on the radio, but there was not any response. After the third attempt, she stopped trying. She could not see into the glass enclosed cockpit, and after her mind caught up with the situation. She realized that it was an intel gap she could live with. They pressed on towards the attack location.
The attacking jet fighters steeply dropped in altitude, so that they could make a visual attack run. When they group dropped below the odd blue and grey clouds? They were attacked by what they could only described as flying monsters. She knew she was going to die, when a huge gargoyle like monster started heading her way. It looked large enough that she could have flown down his nostrils. It was just luck that it crossed the nose of the strange four propeller engine plane. The jet’s rail guns firing DU rounds had some effect, but four lines of strange visible laser or plasma bolt fire hit the attacking flying monster square in the wing covered back. Captain Crump would swear that the monster had a “what the crap just happened to me?” look on its face, as its huge bat like wings suddenly had a set of lines of huge holes punched into them.
The attack jets went lower but the B-29 stayed higher, just under the cloud ceiling. There firing on the gargoyle like thing, drew the rest of the flying monsters to it like a moth to a flame or a magnet to steel. The Super Fortress lived up to her name and put walls of death between her hull and the attacking enemy. Her enemies fell from the skies one after the other. The old bomber was even drawing most to the strange bolt or energy fire, that was coming up from the brown ground below toward it. It was distracting any attackers that had even close to a line of sight to her.
Kristen and her wingmen were able to make repeated attack runs, without being seriously engaged by the monsters. This had been a first since this craziness had started. Kristen and her team were taking out point targets, but the real killer was the bomber flying over their heads. Besides drawing all of the flying monsters to her, to have holes blown into them.
The Bomber would single out groups below and rain hell on them, with bombs like no one on his earth had ever seen before. The bomber also was not responding to radio messages, from the lone radio operator on the ground. But they seemed to know when they needed to drop something danger close. Kristen had seen them drop some kind of explosive fire ball like weapon, only 500 feet from a human defender that was about to be over run. They would do this time after time, and the groups not close would get a different type of weapon dropped on their heads.
The mixed group of flying craft spends half an hour attacking the monsters, again and again. When the last S-14a’s had spent all of the ordnance on the enemy? They started to rise higher in the air. Without any weapons, they could not affect the battle going on below them. Even when she had “aimed” her sonic boom, it did not seem to have a visual effect on the larger monsters. The smaller one’s seemed to drop to the ground and writhe in pain for a few minutes, but they would always rise again and seek battle with the ground defenders.
They soon were joined by the bomber, that was not as shiny as she had been when they first saw her. The group of jet pilots now could see, that smoke was coming out of three of her propeller driven engines mounted on her wings. When Crump or one of her wingmen tried to fly closer to their strange larger friend, to get a better look at her. It would start to shift away from them, like it was trying to keep the distance. She orders her command to leave the strangers alone, after the third attempt of drifting closer. She had seen the great tears in her hull, like claw marks on a zebra. Even her tall tail was now scared from battle.
The group was somewhere over southern Arizona when the massive bomber disappeared. She had slowly drifted back down into the cloud bank below the retreating jet fighters. The Traffic Control tower sounded shocked when Captain Crump raised them on the radio, and she reported that there would be six birds landing on the airbase in a few minutes. That had been the most fighters ever to return to the base from a mission, these last few days of hell.
Three hours later and the sun was well down over the airbase, but Captain Crump was not sleeping in her cot in an empty office. Her home had been flattened killing her husband and son, on the first day of Armageddon. She had been the one to pull their bodies out of the wreckage. She had done this alone, because everyone else in the state was doing the same thing.
The office door opened without knocking, and in walked Colonel Douglas. He was the senior military officer that anyone had been able to get ahold of, for days now. He took a seat across from the female Captain, but he did not say a word. He was quiet and just watched her. For her part, she was watching him back. She had a good idea why he was here, and why he was staring at her. She had mentally timed how long it would take for someone to read her after action report. She had expected something like this or an escort to the rubber room, about ten minutes ago.
When the Captain did not start talking, and she looked to be sane. The Colonel had seen about 10 percent of the surviving people on and off base go crazy, so far. This one was not showing the outward signs, but he knew that this could be worse. “Okay, Captain. That report, are you going to stick with it? Or would you now like to make some changes to it?”
Kristen tilted her head to one side and gave him a level look. “Did you already read the AARs from the rest of the flight?” It was a simple question, and one that was loaded with land mines. She had no idea what the other jet crew’s might have written up. She had hoped they would tell the truth, but she was not supposed to know what was going into those reports.
Colonel Douglas nodded his head up and down. “OH, I did!! And they say basically the same thing, that was in your report. But theirs were a lot less eloquent, and they used a lot more four-letter words to try to get the point across. What they did not call it, was an unknown armed civilian aircraft flying at subsonic combat speeds. Each and every one on that mission, but you, called it a B-29 Super Fortress with “Get’em Home and Complete the mission” printed on her nose.”
Kristian could feel the “I love me jacket” being fitted for her. She looked down at the book, that she was trying to read to get her mind off of what had been going on for the last few days. “So, what are you going to do? Sir?”
Colonel Douglas looked at his clinched hands in his lap. “I am not saying one bloody thing or word. I don’t care who, or what they were. I know only that they helped. The refugees were able to get away, when they all thought they were going to die out there. On top of that this was the first mission we ran, where everyone came back alive. I don’t care why or how. The intel team is still reviewing all of the recorded data you brought back, and before you ask. Yes, the bomber was recorded by all six fighters. Get some sleep Captain. I think we are in for a long, whatever it is we are in.” He got up out of the chair and left the room, closing the door behind him.
The next attack went out 2 Jan 2099. The time between the two missions was used to repair and recover more pilots, crew, and combat craft. The shot in the arm of morale, with the whole last mission returning did not hurt at all. Word of the “surprise” help had been whispered around ground crews. The thought of supernatural support had added just a little more, to the morale of the whole base. More than a few silent prayers were sent to the unknown bomber and her crew. The whole base was starting to feel a little hope.
When the call came out for bomber and attack support a dozen craft of all types, left the base on the mission in one wave. They were heading toward the Superstition Mountains to help a team of NEMA personnel in Chrome Guardsmen suits, that were cleaning out a monster nest. Then maybe they would be able to attack the blue energy curtain nearby, after the first mission was done.
Captain Crump was in command of this attack, just like on the last one. She kept looking around, to see if the bomber would show up. She spent more time looking outside of her canopy, than she was looking at the navigation display. A dozen sky cycles had been sent out looking for the bomber, museum, or its wreck the day after her return to base. Nothing was found for two days, but death and destruction all around the scouts. Luckily these scouts were armed heavy enough to fight their way through any opposition.
It was the tail end Charley of the flight, that reported that they were not alone. The information was sent via his data link to the rest of the attack force, before he could say more than a few words. When Kristen looked at her center mounted 3d screen. It was not a four-engine bomber, but a lot smaller single engine plane with straight wings.
Her attack flight had been joined by a P-39 Airacobra painted in pristine New Guinea 1942 pattern camouflage. It would join them on the attack against the monsters to the north. This time they were lucky, and all of the monsters were of the ground walking types. Again, the human attack jets returned to base. This time they were only missing two of their number, both pilots were recovered by the NEMA teams. The report of their recovery had beaten the jets home. The area NEME commander had contacted the Colonel and said that they would be sent south, as soon as they could. It was hoped that they would be able to use recently recovered aircraft from Luke to head south in. If not, they would be sent on a pair of two seat sky cycles. Again, on the way to home base the old plane went into a cloud bank and was gone.
More missions were launched, and not all the time did one of them have an odd attachment. But they did have one on most days. Sometimes they would have a F8F Bearcat, or Mustang, or even a P-38. Never would they have the same addition two days in a row. When Get’em home showed up again, it was greeted by the whole flight. She still did not reply to the greetings, and this time on one tried to get closer to her. They just accepted that she was going to bring the BOOM onto someone today.
The notion that these attachments were invincible was shattered, when a Twin Mustang disappeared in the middle of a huge fur ball. One second it was there, and the next there was a bright flash of light and it was gone. They also never were able to “see” who was at the controls of these attachments. Never was radio communication established between the jets and the older generation of support. It was like they were using their own way to communicate with the outside world.
It was help, and that was all that mattered to the flying defenders. What the people who ran the airbase did not know, was that these haunted pieces of equipment were drawing the evil to the human airbase like iron to a magnet. The humans found out in time, and a great battle was waged. One that left the area around the Base and all of southern Arizona looking more like the moon, and not like an area that had been holding a city of about a million souls. No one would remember what they did, our how well or poorly they fought. They were lost to the sands of time.
Unless you know where to look, that is. Then you just might find out more than you really wanted to.
Re: Short stroy that might fit.
i hope you all like my little story.
a link to this story on Fanfic.net.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13415799/1 ... -War-Horse
a link to this story on Fanfic.net.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13415799/1 ... -War-Horse