“I’m not going to wait for that,” Barry told him. “Do you see that fog layer hanging close to the water? It reaches almost to the tip of Nusanive Point. We’ll duck into it and fool any gunners that might spot us too soon in clear air.”
A long, shallow dive took them into the fog layer two hundred feet above the water. And there, for the next thirty miles, they stayed. When at last the mist thinned to a few wispy streamers the swift little B-26 fairly hugged the water. Her target, the Nusanive radio tower, loomed just ahead.
The shore batteries had spotted her now, but she was flying too low and too fast for them. The ack-ack was bursting far above and behind her. Some of it was aimed at her sister bombers who were now scattering over Amboina Bay.
“Listen, Chick!” cried Barry. “I’m going in low—just clearing the roof of that radio station.”
“Can’t miss it, Skipper!” the little bombardier replied. “I’ll lay this two-ton egg right on their breakfast table. Boy! Look at that gun crew duck for cover.... Bombs away!”
Barry reefed back sharply, gaining altitude in the few precious seconds before the delayed action blast arrived. Without it he might find himself knocked out of the air by the concussion.
The plane jumped—like a baseball struck by a giant’s bat. Her nose went down. With all his might, Barry pulled back the control post. At three hundred feet he leveled off, turning sharp right, to skirt the steep slope of Mt. Kapal.
“Tail gunner from pilot,” he called. “What happened to that radio station?”
“Everything, sir,” Mickey Rourke’s answer came back. “The last I saw of the tower, it was headin’ for the moon, with a few bits of the station roof taggin’ along behind. Your bomb must have landed in the cellar.”
“Keep your eyes peeled for Zero fighters when we start shooting up the seaplane anchorage,” Barry warned him. “We’re moving too fast for them now.”