“We’re going over ’em at two thousand feet, Chick,” Barry warned. “Be ready to drop a whole stick of bombs on the target.”
“Look!” yelled Hap Newton. “There’s a swarm of landing barges between the fake island and the shore. They’re crammed with Jap troops.”
“We’ll take care of them later,” Barry said grimly. “Here we go, bombardier.”
“Roger!” Chick’s answer came back ... and an instant later: “Bombs away!”
Hard upon his words came the blast—a multiple explosion so terrific that it tossed the great Fortress like a feather. Later her crew found that it had torn all the fabric off her ailerons and elevators.
Barry climbed his ship, and came back. There was no more “floating island”—only three burning Jap transports and the two broken halves of a fourth, just settling into the waves.
A puff of smoke blossomed just beyond Rosy O’Grady’s right wing-tip; another, to the left and rear. The gun crews of the stricken transports were only now reaching their weapons. Rosy’s sudden re-appearance, close at hand, had taken them entirely by surprise.
Barry Blake swung his ship shoreward and nosed down.
“We’ll risk the shell-fire,” he said briefly. “Our first job is to destroy those Japs landing on the beach. Be ready to fire all guns.”
At a thousand feet the big bomber roared between the burning ships and the shore. Her nose and tail and belly turrets spat .50-caliber death. Beneath her the Jap soldiers in thirty landing barges fired their rifles upward in frantic reply. Through the side gun-port Fred Marmon hosed lead at the deck of the nearest transport.