The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [198]
The voice came through the intercom from his navigator.
“Target dead ahead, sir.”
“I see it, Captain.”
Tibbets leaned back, made a slight glance at Blanchard, said into his intercom, “Note the time, if you will, Colonel. Unfortunately, my navigator has miscalculated. We’re ahead of schedule by four seconds.”
Blanchard said nothing, the message very clear. Tibbets looked to the altimeter, the plane straight and level at thirty thousand feet. He spoke into the intercom again.
“Major Ferebee, it’s your bird.”
The bombardier responded, “Got her, sir.”
Tibbets pulled his hands back from the controls, scanned the skies to the front for any sign of Japanese anti-aircraft fire. The island of Rota was still in enemy hands, though no one, including the Japanese, seemed to give that much thought. The island was less than a hundred miles to the south of Tinian and for now made the perfect target for test bombing runs. Today, they carried a single five-hundred-pound bomb, and other than giving the B-29’s crew one more opportunity to test their skills, Tibbets had designed this flight to serve only one purpose: a demonstration of the prowess of the men Tibbets already knew to be the best he had ever flown with. Impressing Colonel Blanchard would be fun.
“Ten seconds to target, sir.”
“Roger.”
“Bomb away.”
Ferebee’s voice was calm, none of the raucous cheerleading, no excitement from any of the others. Ferebee had been with Tibbets from his earliest days in the B-17s, as had his navigator, Captain Dutch Van Kirk. Both men knew exactly what this particular flight was about, and so far there hadn’t been a single hitch.
With the bomb’s release, Tibbets’s hands moved quickly back to the controls, and in one jerking motion he pulled the plane into a steep banking move. It was a maneuver he had practiced a dozen or more times, knew already that the turn would reach an angle of 155 degrees, the best angle the plane could withstand to carry its crew as quickly as possible away from the bomb’s eventual target. It was not a challenge any of them had faced before, but when the moment came, and the enormous power of the atomic bomb was unleashed over a Japanese target, no one, not the physicists, the military officers, not Tibbets himself, had any idea what would happen to the plane that dropped it. This one part of their training had appealed to Tibbets with perfect logic. Turn the plane as sharply as possible and get the hell out of there.
Tibbets had braced himself for the violence of the turn, knew the rest of the crew had done the same. Behind him, the one man who did not expect the maneuver squawked into the intercom, “What the hell? What’s happening? We’re stalling!”
Tibbets held hard to the controls, felt the tail of the plane sag, the natural reaction to such a tight turn. He suddenly had no patience for his passenger, said in a clipped shout, “We have to stall the tail. Only way to do the turn at this angle. You tell me if there’s another way I should be doing it.”
“Okay! Enough!”
“Not yet, Colonel.”
Tibbets pulled back on the controls, the plane suddenly veering upward, nearly vertical, the engines straining, the nose skyward, the plane slowing, seeming to bounce softly on its tail. The plane stopped flying now, the perfect stall, nearly motionless, but now the violence returned, the nose suddenly swinging over to one side, the plane in a momentary free fall. The ocean below was in full view now, the plane in a steep dive, and Tibbets focused on the altimeter, heard a gurgling sound through the intercom, a chattering voice, “You’re going to kill us!”
“Not today, Colonel.”
He pulled back slowly on the wheel, the plane’s nose rising, his stomach settling hard, the smoothness returning, the wings straight and level.
“Navigator, what’s the heading to base?”
“Zero two zero, sir.”
“Zero two zero, roger.”
He could already see Tinian, could see the shape