Mustang Hit

Friday, February 25, 1944

Over western Germany, heading west

Twenty-four year old Major Marc Suchet’s hands rested lightly on the controls of his P-51B Mustang. Painted on the left side of the airplane’s nose was a name, Daisy-Mae, his mother’s name. At twenty-eight thousand feet the air was smooth, and the sun was blindingly bright. High above there were thin cirrus clouds, below there were lower altitude scattered cumulus.  The hum of the Packard built Merlin engine was the only noticeable sound. Around him were the fifteen other P-51s of the 355th Fighter Squadron. Fifteen other men that he had led today. Ahead of them were the thirty-two Mustangs of the rest of the 354th Fighter Group.

Compared with some missions, the day had felt just about routine.They had escorted a B-17 Flying Fortress raid on Regensburg, Germany. The bomber’s target was an aircraft plant in the city. The Messerschmitt works. Today the Luftwaffe showed itself but never pressed a determined attack. Over the target the flak was bad, but it could have been worse. The Fortresses took losses, but not many.  

It had been about thirty minutes since the 355th had been relieved by a Fighter Group of P-47s. They were now free to return at maximum cruise speed to RAF Boxted, their base. Once clear of the bombers, German fighters hadn’t challenged the Mustangs.

Below, Germany slipped slowly past. Marc checked his watch, then checked his map. By his reckoning they were approaching Saarbrücken. Beyond that lay occupied France, only slightly safer than Germany itself. Marc didn’t allow himself to relax. Not yet. He couldn’t relax until he got home, and home wasn’t France, wasn’t even the Channel.Home was England. Daisy-Mae parked on her hardstand and the Merlin ticking quietly as it cooled.Only then could he breathe.

Marc knew the dangerous part wasn’t over. His eyes kept their endless rhythm — over his left shoulder, over his right, a check behind Bluebird 2, then a sweep above the horizon, a pause near the sun. A quick glance at the gauges. Everything on the instrument panel looked normal. So his eyes went back outside to start over again.

Below, Saarbrücken grew larger. Rail yards spread outward like tangled spiderwebs. The Saar river flashed silver as it threaded through the valley.

The first black puff appeared ahead. Flak again. Then another, and another — scattered, low, little black flowers blooming against the blue.Harassing fire, probably random.Marc watched it anyway.

With the next barrage the gunners found their range and altitude.The next series of bursts blossomed in and around the P-51 formation, and then — WHUMP.

The impact slammed into the underside of Daisy-Mae. She leapt, pushing Marc down into his seat before settling level again. A shudder raced up through the stick. His pulse spiked. His eyes snapped to the instrument panel. Oil pressure, normal. Fuel pressure, normal. RPM, normal.No smoke. No fire. Maybe it missed?

The radio crackled. “Bluebird Two to lead. You’re leaking something.” The radio call was from Bill Anderson. Bill had been his wingman since he had arrived at the 355th in November ’43, and was his closest friend in the squadron. Bill dropped his altitude slightly so he could look at the underside of Marc’s Mustang. “You’ve got a big hole in your belly.”

Marc’s stomach tightened. “Roger, Bill. Where’s the leak coming from?”

“Behind the air scoop. Looks clear.” A pause.“You’re leaking bad.”

His mouth went dry. Coolant. Not oil, not fuel — coolant, the Mustang’s one true weakness. A single jagged piece of flak through the belly of the cooling system is all it takes. Lose the coolant and the Merlin overheats and becomes a paperweight, and the Mustang becomes a spectacularly expensive glider.

He checked the gauges again. The temperature needle was moving. Not fast. Not yet. “I’ve got increasing temp.”

“Roger. How much longer do you think you’ve got?”

“Not too long,” Marc glanced left. Bill had eased in closer, flying welded to his wing. Even through goggles and an oxygen mask, Marc could read the concern on his friend’s face. He raised a gloved hand. Bill answered with a nod. Neither man said anything. There was nothing else to say.

Every second now belonged to the temperature gauge. Marc eased the throttle back to lighten the load on the engine, and the Merlin’s growl softened — but something in the vibration through the airframe changed too, something small and wrong. He knew how this airplane was supposed to feel.She didn’t feel right anymore. He was still barely keeping up with his flight.

The needle kept climbing. Minutes passed with the kind of slowness that makes a man count his own heartbeats. Then Bill’s voice again, “Marc, you’re not leaking anymore.”

Marc closed his eyes for half a breath. That was worse. That meant there was nothing left to leak.

“Yeah,” he said. “Engine’s heating up fast. Throttling back more — I’ll see if I can keep her alive a little longer.” He pulled the throttle further back.

He keyed his radio. “Bulldog lead to all Bulldogs. I took a hit.Can’t keep up. Bluebird Two is staying with me. Asheville One has the lead.” He forced a grim smile no one could see. “Y’all have a beer for me tonight.”

Asheville One, the squadron’s ops officer, answered, “Roger, Lead.Asheville One now has the lead.”Simple. Final. A pause.“Godspeed Marc.”

No one said goodbye. He wouldn’t either in their place.

Daisy-Mae began slipping behind the others at once. One by one the rest of the squadron pulled ahead until the formation drew away toward England without him. Off to his right the city of Metz slid beneath the wing.

He pulled off a glove to switch frequencies, “Bluebird Lead to Harvest Lead.”

“Go ahead.” The group lead, somewhere ahead in the three-squadron stream.

“Took flak. Lost coolant. Throttling back. Can't keep up. Asheville one is now Bulldog Lead.” 

“Roger, Bluebird Lead.”

The Merlin coughed — once. His eyes dropped to the tachometer. The RPM had begun to sag. It coughed again, and the smooth engine note turned ragged at the edges.

“Bill... I don’t know how much longer I’ve got.”

“I’m right here, buddy.” Bill stayed tucked in close. “I’ll stay with you as long as I can.”

Another minute, and the temperature needle buried itself in the red. Heat started bleeding through the firewall, and Marc could feel it against his legs despite the freezing air streaming past outside. He looked down. Rolling farmland stretched beneath him, broken by narrow roads, and ahead, dark wooded hills rose in a solid ridge across the countryside. Not good. Too many trees. Too many fences. Not enough open fields.

The Merlin was dying. “Bill... I’m shutting her down.” His eyes never left the ground. “I’ll glide as far as I can. If I don’t find somewhere to land before three thousand, I’ll bail.”

“Roger,” Bill said. “I’ll stay at ten and mark your position and report it.”

Throttle, mixture, ignition, fuel selector. The Merlin fell silent.

The change was startling. After hours of constant engine noise the cockpit felt enormous around him. The only sounds were the rush of air over the wings and the faint creak of the airframe.The propeller slowed until it was little more than a blurred cross hanging in front of him.

He followed the book — nose up for best glide, speed bled down to a hundred and forty-five knots, held there. Above him Bill’s Mustang seemed to hang motionless against the sky before easing into a slow orbit to keep him in sight.

Marc barely noticed. Everything now depended on the ground. Find a field. Stay clear of the city and towns. Don’t hit the trees. The wooded hills rushed up to meet him — seven thousand feet, no good spot. Five thousand, thirty-five hundred, still nothing.He was over the trees. Every clearing was too short, too uneven, or fenced in by trees. He gritted his teeth. Maybe the parachute gave him better odds than the airplane would?

“Damn it.” He keyed the radio one last time. “Bill...I’m bailing.” He didn’t wait for an answer. His hand slammed the canopy release, and it tore away into the slipstream — a blast of freezing air slammed into the cockpit hard enough to steal his breath and blur his eyes.

Working from muscle memory alone, he released his harness. Goodbye Daisy-Mae. A quick prayer flashed through his mind before he could even think, “Lord, protect me.”

He rolled inverted. Gravity tore him free of the cockpit, and Daisy-Mae vanished above him in an instant. Blue sky. White cloud.Brown earth. Blue again. The wind roared loud enough to drown every thought in his head. His arms pin–wheeled until training finally took over — spread out, stabilize. His gloved hand found the D-ring without him having to look for it. He pulled.

The opening shock was brutal, a dead stop that snapped every strap tight at once and drove the breath out of him in a single grunt. Then, mostly silence.

Not complete silence — the wind still whispered through the canopy above him, and somewhere far off engines droned on toward England — but after the Merlin’s roar it felt like another world. It was another world.

His heart pounded. The white canopy hung steady overhead. Good. He gripped the risers and looked around. Daisy-Mae was gone.

Bill’s fighter circled thousands of feet up, a tiny olive drab cross against the blue, banking once to catch the sun before vanishing again.At least someone knew where he was.A steady breeze carried him west.

Below, the wooded hills slid behind him and broad winter fields drifted up beneath his boots — stone walls dividing dark earth into uneven rectangles, narrow dirt roads winding between small villages, thin columns of smoke rising lazily from chimneys and dissolving into the cold afternoon air.

Occupied France. He was no longer a fighter pilot. He was prey.

Marc pushed the thought aside. There were more immediate things to focus on. Eyes on the horizon, not the ground — let the ground surprise you.He fixed his gaze on a distant tree line and it worked, for a while. But the horizon kept closing in. The fields grew larger. Individual trees resolved out of the stands. A fence line. A wagon trail. A lone farmhouse. Too close.He pressed his eyes shut.

The impact came without warning — frozen earth driving the breath from his lungs, his body crumpled to the side. He landed hard on his side and rolled across the rough ground as the parachute dragged him a few yards before it finally collapsed into the dirt.

He lay still. The sky filled his vision. His ears rang. His instructors back in Texas would have been horrified by that landing. It didn’t matter. He was alive.

The thought cleared his head fast. Occupied France. Move.

He rolled onto one elbow, bracing for pain that never quite arrived. Nothing felt broken. Everything hurt anyway. He ripped the oxygen mask from his face so that he could breathe better.

His knees protested as he pushed himself upright, his fingers clumsy inside the heavy gloves as he fumbled for the harness releases. The buckles seemed impossibly complicated until the first one finally snapped free, then the second.

A gust caught the silk and the canopy billowed back up, alive again. “Damn it.”A white parachute fluttering in the middle of a brown field was as good as a signal flare. He grabbed handfuls of it, fighting the wind and the tangled risers — the fabric heavier than it had any right to be, torn from his grip with every gust until he wrestled it back.

Finally he gathered the whole bundle against his chest and allowed himself a moment to look around. He was standing alone in the middle of a wide, frozen field. The soil was dark and hard under a dusting of snow, last autumn’s stubble poking through in neat rows. The wind swept across the open ground with nothing to slow it, cutting through his flightsuit and leather jacket as though they were lace. His breath hung in front of him in a thick white cloud before the next gust tore it away.

To the east, perhaps half a mile off, wooded hills rose in dark folds. Good cover, but nothing else — no shelter, no food, no real chance of surviving many nights out here in February. To the west stood a weathered barn, smoke curling steadily from somewhere behind it.Warmth. People. Help.Or Germans.

He checked his watch. 1347. A few hours of daylight left, no more. He looked at the woods once more, then back at the barn. He didn’t really have a choice.

Clutching the bundled parachute, he started walking. Every step across the open field felt exposed, the ground uneven and frozen solid where wagon wheels had churned it. His flying boots weren’t built for this.Before long his shoulders ached from the weight of the parachute. He kept expecting to hear shouting, a truck engine, a dog’s bark, a rifle bolt chambering a round. All he heard was the wind. The walk took fifteen minutes but seemed to stretch on for hours.

At the back of the barn he stopped in its shadow and listened.Nothing — no voices, no machinery, only weathered wood creaking in the breeze. The lower walls were stone; above that, vertical timbers were spaced six or eight inches apart with some kind of stucco packed between them, the roof and gable wood-framed in the old style. He tried the rear double doors. Thankfully it was unlocked.

He slipped inside and eased it shut behind him, and the sudden stillness was startling. The barn wasn’t warm, but after the wind it felt close to it. The barn smelled of horse, hay, leather, and old wood.Further down a horse occupied the stall to his left. The horse lifted its head at the sound of the door, considered him with mild curiosity, and went back to its hay.

Marc nearly laughed. At least someone today wasn’t trying to kill him.

To his right he found a mound of hay and, hanging forgotten over a rail beside it, a heavy horse blanket. He hesitated only a moment before taking it. He burrowed a hollow into the hay, using his parachute as more insulation and padding beneath him, and the blanket a barrier against the cold.For the first time since the flak burst, he was hidden.

What now? Knock on the farmhouse door and trust strangers who don’t speak his language, in a country whose language he didn’t speak either? Wait for dark, when at least the night might give him a chance to run if things went wrong? Dark seemed safer. He settled deeper into the hay.

His body started to remember everything at once — the ache across his shoulders and back from the chute opening, the throb in his legs from the landing, the faint tremor still in his hands. Outside, the wind sighed against the barn walls. The horse shifted its weight with a soft snort.Somewhere a board creaked, and the sound was, strangely, a comfort.

His thoughts drifted without direction. England. Bill. Daisy-Mae. His parents, his brothers, his sister. The absurd, stubborn thought that he wouldn’t be drinking beer tonight.

Sleep came fitfully.