“You’ve got the best seat in the whole show, Rourke,” put in Fred Marmon. “Babbitt and I are missing all the fun, with our heads stuck into this two-gun top turret. If we were flying Sweet Rosy O’Grady now, we could see something of the countryside.”
“The countryside,” said Chick Enders from his perch in the nose, “is going by too fast for me to see much of it. Oh-oh! That ack-ack battery just ahead has spotted us—”
WHAMMM!
BRRRRRRRRRR!
The explosion of a Jap shell just above the hedgehopping Marauder was answered by a two-second burst of Chick’s gun.
“That crew is out of action,” he said grimly as the gun emplacement swept beneath him. “They came a little too near to spotting us. Better keep below the treetops where you can, Barry.”
Entering the little valley behind Hauisa Point, the B-26 fairly skimmed the bushes. At the base of Mt. Horiel she turned north, dodged behind Mt. Sirimau and cut across the broad base of Latimore Peninsula. Behind her now lay the Amboina docks and naval station, the target of bombers that were still on the way. To the left appeared the tiny villages of Halong and Lateri, Barry’s landmarks.
He hopped over the little rise between them and found himself above his next objective—between forty and fifty Jap seaplanes. Nearly half of these were big three- and four-motored flying boats, Kawanishis and Mitsubishis. A few Aichi T98’s and a number of single engined Nakajimas made up the rest.
“Burn ’em up, Chick,” Barry Blake ordered curtly. “Between you and Rourke we ought to account for plenty of these babies.”
The chatter of Chick’s machine gun answered him. Barry swept over five of the huge Kawanishis, while Chick Enders and Mickey Rourke ripped at their engine cowlings, floats and keels. He swung over a line of little Nakajimas, climbed swiftly, and came back to strafe a string of Mitsubishi boats.