Hurry Up and Wait

Flying a B-24 was characterized by moments of sheer pucker up time, followed by many hours sometimes in endless cruise flight. Trimmed for optimum fuel consumption she did 250mph**. Tom did his best to ensure the aircraft was always performing at its best. But it was a very complicated airplane. The instrument panel was a myriad of dials, switches and gauges. The pilots manual was 114 pages of charts, diagrams, photos and endless details describing every gauge and dial.

Tom was an expert at every nuance of the B-24. He was one of the few guys who read the manual well after graduating from **bomber school and he would sit in the cockpit with his copilot reviewing emergency procedures so they had them down wrote.

From England to Germany was generally a 4 hour trip with a full load. Usually once the group was formed up over English channel it was a good 2 hours*** and more if they had a head wind before they made contact with the first German fighters. At the height of the German occupation this would happen earlier as the krauts had bases in to France and Belgium, etc..

“Tom” said jack. “think we’ll see heavy flak today”.
“not supposed to according to the analyst” responded jack in a ho hum manner. Everyone on the ship was always tense about the flak. You could be cruising along minding your own business and some Gerry would get off a few lucky shots and next thing your in flames headed for the great beyond.

“I try not to worry about it before we know” said Tom. The truly cruel thing about these missions was the constant threat of death. The machine could kill you, the enemy could kill you, your crew mates could kill you, and the other ships in the formation could kill you.

“watch Lady Marylin Tom” said jack. Referring to the bomber just above them and ahead by about 100 feet. She had been slowing slightly allowing Tom’s plane to gain on her slightly. She also had lowered her altitude a bit.

“yeah I’m compensating slightly” tom said pulling back on the throttles of the 4 big radial engines just hardly enough to even notice.

“idiot” jack scowled. Jack was a stickler for formation cruise flight. Tom sometimes growled back when jack would give constant advice about power settings, airspeeds and the like in cruise flight. This was the problem with the waiting. Each man was nervous. Each man knew there were too many details that had to go right for them to make it back. And each knew they would watch as all of that conspired against them and their buddies in formation creating a situation for some that was unbeatable.

The twin radial engines were humming, albeit loudly, at 2,200 rpms. The engines were working their way through 2,300 gallons of fuel at a rate of 45 gallons per hour for every engine.