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Morrison studied De
“Thank you, sir. We’ll get the job done.”
“I don’t doubt it for a second,” said Morrison, forcing a confident expression. He waited for De
After a few awkward moments, De
Morrison’s smile was barely visible. “You want to back out?”
“No, my crew and I will see it through. But why us?” he repeated. “Excuse me for saying, sir, but I can’t believe we’re the only flight crew in the Air Force you’d trust to fly an atomic bomb across the Pacific, drop it in the middle of Japan, and then land at Okinawa with little more than fumes in the fuel tanks.”
“It’s best you know only what you’ve been told.”
De
Morrison made a resigned shrug. “I believe it was the President.”
Twenty-seven minutes later, De
In the co-pilot’s seat to the right of De
De
He eased the throttles forward again, compensating for the tremendous torque by slightly advancing the left engines over those on the right. Then he released the brake.
Fully loaded at 68 tons, De
The four 3,350-cubic-inch Wright Cyclone engines strained at their mountings, their combined 8,800 horsepower whipping the 16.5-foot propellers through the wind-driven sheet of water. Blue flame erupting from exhaust manifolds, wings enveloped in a cloud of spray, the great bomber roared into the blackness.
With agonizing slowness she picked up speed. The long runway stretched out in front of her, carved out of the bleak volcanic rock and ending at an abrupt drop eighty feet above the cold sea. A horizontal bolt of lightning bathed the fire trucks and ambulances spaced along the runway in an eerie blue light. At eighty knots De
Forward of the pilots, in the exposed nose section, Stanton the bombardier apprehensively watched the runway rapidly diminish. Even the lethargic Stromp straightened up in his seat, his eyes vainly attempting to penetrate the darkness ahead for the change in black where runway ended and the sea began.
Three quarters of the runway passed, and she was still glued to the ground. Time seemed to dissolve in a blur. They all felt as though they w re flying into a void. Then suddenly the lights of the jeeps parked beside the end of the runway burst through the curtain of rain.
“God almighty!” Stromp blurted. “Pull her up!”
De
Morrison stood outside the warmth of the radar but under the downpour, his four-man staff dutifully standing behind him. He watched the takeoff of De
He cupped his ears and listened to the engine’s pitch diminish in the distance. The uneven sound was faint. No one but a master flight mechanic or an aircraft engineer could have caught it, and Morrison had served in both capacities during his early Army Air Corps career.
An engine was slightly out of tune. One or more of its eighteen cylinders was not firing continuously.
Fearfully, Morrison listened for some sign the bomber was not going to lift off. If De
Then the radar man shouted through the open door, “They’re airborne!”
Morrison exhaled a tense sigh. Only then did he turn his back on the miserable weather and walk inside.
There was nothing to do now but send a message to General Groves in Washington informing him that Mother’s Breath was on her way to Japan. Then wait and hope.
But down deep the general was troubled. He knew De
“God help them,” Morrison muttered under his breath. He knew with dread finality his part of the immense operation didn’t stand a prayer.
“Gear up,” ordered De
“Am I ever glad to hear those words,” grunted Stromp as he moved the lever. The gear motors whined and the three sets of wheels rose into their wells under the nose and wings. “Gear up and locked.”
As the airspeed increased, De
“How’s that number-four engine?” he asked Mosely.
“Pulling her share, but she’s ru
“Soon as we hit five thousand feet, I’ll drop her back a few rpm’s.”
“Wouldn’t hurt, Major,” Mosely replied.
Arnold gave De
When they finally cleared the worst of the storm, De
The crawl tu
Pulling a flashlight from a leg pocket, he made his way along a confined catwalk ru
Hesitantly, De