Amboina City, with its piers, its big coaling station and its naval installations, offered the biggest group of targets. A whole squadron was assigned to hammer it with two-ton block-busters.
At supper time the study of contour maps, targets and enemy gun positions was still in progress. Nobody had been permitted to leave the briefing room. So great was the secrecy with which the whole venture was surrounded that guards had been posted several yards from the building, to keep anybody without a pass from approaching it. Not until ten o’clock was the order given to dismiss; but the evening was not over.
A dozen army trucks pulled up near the door. The fliers piled in, and the vehicles roared away toward the docks. There a number of speedy PT boats were waiting. In these the hundred-odd flying officers were rushed through the spray-filled darkness to a point offshore which the steersmen seemed to find by instinct.
There lay the carrier, a long, dim shape that grew rapidly huger until the speedboat paused close to her towering side. Ship’s ladders had been lowered already. Each boatload of airmen climbed hurriedly to the dark port that opened into the ship’s bowels. Behind them the PT boats roared away into the surrounding blackness.
The Fliers Piled into the Army Trucks
Young Navy fliers of the carrier’s own company came forward to greet the Army men and conduct them to their mess. They were cordial chaps, perhaps a little more formal than the Army fliers. They stood treat for the newcomers with soft drinks and there was a lot of pleasant small-talk. Finally they got around to showing the bomber group their temporary quarters.
The enlisted members of the B-26 crews were already on board, bunking forward with the petty officers. In the morning they’d all get together and each crew would be assigned a plane. From then until the moment of take-off they’d be responsible for its care.
Barry’s team took four bunks in a corner of the large room assigned to the Army group. For the first time in many hours they had a chance to talk quietly together about the mission on which they had embarked.
“It’s a smarter stunt than any of the Japs have pulled off,” Hap Newton declared. “B-25’s and 26’s are usually considered too big to take off from a carrier’s deck. I still don’t see how we can do it with a double load, but the experts must have figured it out. Each ship will be practically a flying bomb.”