Dave Dawson on Convoy Patrol

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"Okay, you've got the idea!" Dave shouted at the raider. "So here we come with the old one-two punch."

As the words rushed off his lips, Dave steepened his wing howling dive slightly, then took one hand from the Dep control wheel and grabbed the bomb release toggles especially fitted to the side of the compartment so that the pilot could still release eggs in case the bombing officer was killed during an action. One hand gripping the Dep wheel, and the other gripping the bomb release toggles, he sent the Catalina rocketing down lower and lower, straight through a sea of bursting, roaring flame that rose up from the guns of the raider and the U-boats.

Split seconds whipped by. He felt the Catalina buck and tremble as bits of archie shell crashed into her. He heard the steady chatter of Freddy Farmer's guns aft, and he saw two more balls of flame go tumbling seaward off to his right. And then it seemed as though the hull nose of the Catalina was going to smash right down into the black smoke belching funnel of the raider. He was so close he could see the white faces of the raider's crew crouched behind their guns and frantically striving to bring their weapons to bear right on him. He even saw some members of the crew banging away at him with machine guns, and even rifles.

He heard and saw all those things as in a dream. Then in the last split second to spare he hauled the nose of the Catalina up out of its mad dive. The instant it came up level and was rocketing forward at terrific speed he yanked back a brace of bomb release toggles. No sooner had he dropped his eggs than he pulled back on the Dep wheel control, dropped the right wing slightly and went careening around and up toward the sun flooded heavens.

No sooner had he started up than his sharp eyes caught the flash of German wings cutting in at him from an angle. His free hand flew to the forward machine gun trigger button on the stick. He booted the Catalina around a bit more at the same time, and then let go with his forward guns. Through a blur he saw that the German craft was a Junkers Ju 88, one of the most deadly type of raiders Hitler was sending against British convoys. It had both bomb power and great fire power as well. It was nothing to fool around with, and Dave didn't waste time fooling. He plastered the nose of the craft, and forced the pilot to turn away. That was the German's fatal mistake. It gave Dave a belly shot, and he took full advantage of the opportunity. He gave the Junkers everything. And a split second later it was all over for the plane and its crew. It exploded in a billion flaming pieces that seemed to go arching out toward the four horizons.

"My regards to Satan!" Dave howled at the top of his voice. "You'll be seeing him before I do, and how!"

That off his chest, Dave hauled the nose even higher and plowed straight for a long range Focke-Wulf 187 twin engined job that was trying to cut down under Freddy Farmer's withering fire from the tail turret of the Catalina. That too was a bad maneuver on the part of another one of Goering's little boys. Dave's slashing burst practically cut the Focke-Wulf in two. It stopped dead in midair as though it had smacked straight into an invisible brick wall. Then it buckled in the middle, and started slowly spinning seaward.

"Cheating on you, Freddy!" Dave shouted. "But the shot was too good to pass up. I...."

Dave stopped short as the whole sky seemed to suddenly turn into a sea of blinding red, and orange, and yellow. The Catalina shook and trembled as a thunderous blast of sound rushed in upon it from all sides. For one horrible heart stopping second Dave thought that an anti-aircraft shell from the raider or one of the U-boats below had scored a direct hit on them and that the Catalina was going up in flame. In the next instant he saw the truth; saw the mighty sheet of flame off to the left that was sliding straight down to the sea leaving behind a towering column of oily black smoke and flaming bits of debris. A second look at it and his heart burst with pride. Freddy hadn't even been paying any attention to the Focke-Wulf trying to get in at him. Instead he had ignored it for bigger game. The largest and most powerful of Hitler's aerial sea raiders. A mighty four engined Focke-Wulf "Kurier." The so-called Flying Fortress of the Nazi Air Force with tremendous bomb, and cannon, and machine gun fire power. And Freddy Farmer had brought it down. Sent it hurtling down in flames never to fly again in this war, or in this world.

In spite of the showers of death that were still whining and howling about the Catalina as it prop-clawed up for altitude, Dave threw back his head and laughed.