MIDWAY ATOLL
“He changed course to land on the north-south runway, the same one he had taken off from early that morning. A lifetime ago. With no flap controls, he throttled back the engine as the plane slowly descended. Next, he pushed the undercarriage lever to lower the landing gear. Nothing happened. The mechanical indicators in the cockpit showed that both wheels were still in their recessed compartments. Reaching down to the emergency release lever at the base of the instrument panel, he yanked hard on it. The mechanical indicator for the left wheel now indicated that it had dropped down into its locked position. The right wheel apparently had stayed in its compartment. His first thought was to try to shake the wheel loose. He used the trim tabs to climb back up to two thousand feet and then put the plane in a dive, waiting for the g-force to build before pulling the nose up. The right wheel didn’t come down. He took the plane up again and tried the maneuver once more. The wheel refused to drop. Worried that the strain of the dives would shake the battered plane apart, he tried to think of something else. There were two options. He could ditch the plane in the lagoon, or try to bring it in on one wheel. With less than a hundred hours of flying time in an Avenger, he wasn’t thrilled about trying to land it on one wheel, but after everything they had come through, it didn’t seem right to put it in the lagoon, particularly if there was a chance Jay Manning might still be alive. He decided to land. As he came in over the airfield, the landing officer next to the runway began furiously waving him off with his signal flag. Advancing the throttle again, Bert rolled the trim tab to regain altitude. He guessed that the landing officer had waved him off after seeing their torpedo hanging out of the bomb bay. After making another circuit around the field, he came in for his next approach. Once more, the landing officer frantically waved him off. The hell with this, he said to himself. I’m taking it in. The landing officer at the edge of the runway was still waving his flag when Bert’s Avenger roared past him. Dropping to the runway, Bert felt his left wheel connect to the concrete path. He thought it was a beautiful one-point landing until the Avenger began slowing down. Suddenly, the right wing tipped over, hitting the runway and setting off an explosion of fiery sparks. The plane spun wildly in a 270 degree arc toward several aircraft parked alongside the runway. As Bert braced himself for a crash, the Avenger finally came to a stop on the coral apron that abutted the runway. It was over. He had come through the fire and survived. Bert cut the power switches, and the air was quiet again. Unbuckling his safety harness, he saw a crash wagon speeding toward the plane. Climbing out of the cockpit on unsteady legs, he dropped down off the wing and knelt down to look inside the open bomb bay. Their torpedo was gone. Only the cables that held it in place were hanging from the belly. He had worried for hours over nothing. Suddenly there were people surging all around the plane. Harry had managed to get the rear hatch open and crawled outside. He felt faint as he tried to stand up. Two Marines came over to steady him. Seeing that his face and T-shirt were covered with blood, they helped him into a waiting field ambulance. A few moments later, he was on his way to the hospital tent. Bert declined treatment of his own wound. Tottering like an old man, he headed back toward the turret to check on Jay Manning. A big Marine came up and blocked his path. Staring at the blood soaking Bert’s flight suit, the Marine said quietly, “You don’t want to go back there, sir.” Two other Marines were already draping a big canvas tarpaulin over the shattered turret where Manning had died. Turning away, Bert looked across the apron of the runway where the six Avengers had been parked that morning. It didn’t look like any of the others had come back. Another man was calling to him. It was the landing officer who had waved him off with his signal flag. “We were radioing for you to bail out,” said the landing officer. “We thought bailing out was your best chance.” Bert didn’t have the energy to explain that his radio was gone along with the rest of the instruments. He asked the landing officer how many of the Avengers had gotten back. “You’re the only one so far,” he said.”
Excerpted from “A DAWN LIKE THUNDER”, author, Robert J. Mrazek. Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, Hachette Book Group. 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017.
To be continued: Islander.