Dave Dawson at Truk

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"Nope," Dave replied. "But we're only at eight thousand now. Whoever's signalling is sure a persistent guy, isn't he? Is he so deaf he can't hear us coming down, do you suppose? You haven't caught any different signals, have you?"

"The same two groups of signals over and over again," young Farmer replied. "I fancy they'd stop, though, if we acknowledged. But I wouldn't, Dave, if I were you. I still have a funny feeling about this business. It just doesn't seem quite right to me, but blessed if I know why. I ..."

Freddy never finished the rest. He never did for the reason that at that exact moment a stab of orange red flame showed down by the blinking light. Dawson saw it and had only time to stiffen slightly in the seat before the night darkness all about the Fortress was lighted up as brilliantly as high noon by a bursting star shell. And hardly had the white light virtually exploded in front of Dawson's face before the air all about was filled with the roaring thunder of bursting flak shells.

For the infinitesimal part of a split second Dawson sat as a man struck dead. Then with a wild yell he shook himself out of his trance, rammed all four throttles wide open and threw the Flying Fortress up and around in a steep climbing turn. The first star shell had died out by then, but a second and a third one had taken its place, and the silvery brilliance that seemed to flood everything was punched red and orange here and there by flak shells seeking out the Fortress.

"A trap, a trap, and I all but flew right down into it!" Dawson yelled angrily. Then as he looked down over the side of the plane, cold rage shook him from head to toe. "Freddy!" he shouted into his inter-com mike. "Do you see what I see, Freddy? It's a submarine. A Jap submarine. The dirty rats! They pulled us almost down to the muzzles of their cocked anti-aircraft guns. The stinkers. If they'd waited just a minute longer they couldn't possibly have missed. Hey, Freddy! You okay, kid? Did we get hit by anything?"

"Not that I can see from here!" young Farmer called back. "But I guess my feeling meant something, what? The dirty beggars! I wonder how often they've pulled this killer's trick on lone planes flying out to the Islands? Praise be they're rotten shots. Look! They see that they can't get us now, so they're preparing to dive. They're ... I say, Dave! What the devil's wrong? Is the plane out of control?"

"Out of control, nothing!" Dawson roared as he sent the huge bomber over on wing, and down. "I mean it to go this way. Show me some of that sweet shooting of yours, Freddy! I'll take you right down on top of them, and nuts to their flak fire. Boy! If we only had a depth charge or two, or a bomb. But give them what you can, Freddy!"

"Right you are!" young Farmer's voice echoed in Dawson's earphones. "Just get me a little lower, and level us off. I'll make the dirty blighters dance."

The Jap submarine's fire was still pretty heavy, but Dawson sent the Fortress thundering right down through it as though it didn't even exist. The submarine was getting under way, and one by one the deck guns ceased fire as the gun crew quit them and scampered along the wet decks to the conning tower. Two or three of them reached the ladder leading up to the bridge, but that's as far as they got. Freddy Farmer's port-slot fifty-caliber guns started to speak their piece, and the running Japs were knocked flat as though invisible hands had jerked their feet out from under them. Those behind the ones that fell kept on coming like men crazed by fear who didn't know any better. Anyway, they ran straight into the withering fire that had cut down the others, and their rotten lives were promptly snuffed out in exactly the same way.

Not a gun fired back at the Fortress, now, as Dawson kept circling the target so that Freddy could work his slot guns continuously. The undersea craft was driving hard through the water with its diving planes undoubtedly all set to be run out for a crash dive the instant those who survived the death that sprinkled the deck were inside and the conning tower hatch closed tight. But Freddy Farmer was seeing to it that none of those scampering Japs on deck survived his withering fire. He relentlessly cut them down one after another like tenpins. And then as Dawson veered the Fortress even closer to the trapped submarine, young Farmer sent a hail of explosive bullets practically straight down the still partly opened conning tower hatch.