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schedules. Nowhere near enough. Peenemünde is a disaster.”
SEPTEMBER 9, 1943, THE NORTH SEA
    The fleet of B-17 bombers had aborted the primary target of Essen due to cloud cover. The squadron commander, over the objections of his fellow pilots, ordered the secondary mission into operation: the shipyards north of Bremerhaven. No one liked the Bremerhaven run; Messerschmitt and Stuka interceptor wings were devastating. They were called the Luftwaffe suicide squads, maniacal young Nazis who might as easily collide with enemy aircraft as fire at them. Not necessarily due to outrageous bravery; often it was merely inexperience or worse: poor training.
    Bremerhaven-north was a terrible secondary. When it was a primary objective, the Eighth Air Force fighter escorts took the sting out of the run; they were not there when Bremerhaven was a secondary.
    The squadron commander, however, was a hardnose. Worse, he was West Point; the secondary would not only be hit, it would be hit at an altitude that guaranteed maximum accuracy. He did not tolerate the very vocal criticism of his second-in-command aboard the flanking aircraft, who made it clear that such an altitude was barely logical
with
fighter escorts;
without
them, considering the heavy ack-ack fire, it was ridiculous. The squadron commanderhad replied with a terse recital of the new navigational headings and termination of radio contact.
    Once they were into the Bremerhaven corridors, the German interceptors came from all points; the antiaircraft guns were murderous. And the squadron commander took his lead plane directly down into maximum-accuracy altitude and was blown out of the sky.
    The second-in-command valued life and the price of aircraft more than his West Point superior. He ordered the squadron to scramble altitudes, telling his bombardiers to unload on anything below but for-God’s-sake-release-the-goddamn-weight so all planes could reach their maximum heights and reduce antiaircraft and interceptor fire.
    In several instances it was too late. One bomber caught fire and went into a spin; only three chutes emerged from it. Two aircraft were riddled so badly both planes began immediate descents. Pilots and crew bailed out. Most of them.
    The remainder kept climbing; the Messerschmitts climbed with them. They went higher and still higher, past the safe altitude range. Oxygen masks were ordered; not all functioned.
    But in four minutes, what was left of the squadron was in the middle of the clear midnight sky, made stunningly clearer by the substratosphere absence of air particles. The stars were extraordinary in their flickering brightness, the moon more a bombers’ moon than ever before.
    Escape was in these regions.
    “Chart man!” said the exhausted, relieved second-in-command into his radio, “give us headings! Back to Lakenheath, if you’d be so kind.”
    The reply on the radio soured the moment of relief. It came from an aerial gunner aft of navigation. “He’s dead, colonel. Nelson’s dead.”
    There was no time in the air for comment. “Take it, aircraft three. It’s your chart,” said the colonel in aircraft two.
    The headings were given. The formation grouped and, as it descended into safe altitude with cloud cover above, sped toward the North Sea.
    The minutes reached five, then seven, then twelve. Finally twenty. There was relatively little cloud coverbelow; the coast of England should have come into sighting range at least two minutes ago. A number of pilots were concerned. Several said so.
    “Did you give accurate headings, aircraft three?” asked the now squadron commander.
    “Affirmative, colonel,” was the radioed answer.
    “Any of you chart men disagree?”
    A variety of negatives was heard from the remaining aircraft.
    “No sweat on the headings, colonel,” came the voice of the captain of aircraft five. “I fault your execution, though.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “You pointed two-three-niner by my reading. I