At the base in Bassingborn, UK, in early November, crews and ground crews who did not fly missions today were waiting for friendly forces to return.

There was a roar in the sky, and the people who had been playing football and chatting immediately cheered up and looked up at the sky.

A B17 appeared in everyone's field of vision, and even on the ground, the remaining traces of combustion on its engine could be clearly seen. However, the plane was quite lucky, only one engine was reimbursed, and relying on the remaining three engines, it flew fairly smoothly and the landing gear was lowered smoothly.

The crowd watched as the plane overhead and landed in the direction of the runway.

Then the second bomber appeared, this one was much more unlucky, the three engines lost power, the tail was also broken a piece, he flew crookedly, and the flaps at the root of the wing seemed to have been broken The control device was also broken, and it was in a half-open state.

As the bomber approached the airport, it fired a red flare, indicating that there were wounded on the plane, so the medical van, which had been on standby for a long time, immediately drove towards the runway where he landed.

Then seven or eight more bombers appeared over the airfield.

Captain Müller and his crew watched the sign of each plane that skimmed overhead.

"See the Supersonic Wasp?"

"No," Mueller's co-pilot, Eric, shook his head, "I've looked at the logos of each one, but I haven't seen them." ”

Muller licked his tongue and whispered: "If the Supersonic Wasp is also shot down, then we will be the only B17 left in the first batch to come to the UK." ”

"Yes, we're the only ones left."

Muller and Eric's words made the expressions of the entire crew of the Morpheus Macho become stern.

"In just two months, 95 percent of the battle losses were ......," Sean the navigator whispered, "and this is a goddamn hell." ”

The Morpheus Macho B17 was one of the first twenty bombers to arrive in the United Kingdom, and the B17 had the ability to fly over the Atlantic Ocean to complete the transition, so replenishing the B17 to Britain to attack the European continent was regarded as the first task of the American military in Europe.

The U.S. High Command has a list of priorities for the various operational concepts of a counterattack in Europe according to the likelihood of implementation, with the use of strategic bombers to attack the European mainland at the top of this list. So despite the fact that the skies of Europe were still firmly in the hands of the Air Force of the Alliance for Human Innovation, and although there were simply not enough fighters in Britain at this time to escort the bomber forces, the lads of the US Army Air Corps received orders to march towards Europe and drop bombs on European cities.

This practice makes the high casualty rate almost inevitable.

"It's like sending you to death." Little Harry, the tail gunner, shook his head, "The ones up there don't care about our lives or deaths. ”

"Alright, Harry, stop talking." Mueller whispered, "It's useless to say this, if the colonel hears you're going to stay in the confinement again, I won't bring you food this time." ”

"Okay, okay, head."

At this time, someone shouted: "Another one!" ”

The crowd who had already planned to leave turned their heads to look in the direction of the European continent in unison, and sure enough, they saw a B17 flying towards this direction.

"He flew too low." Muller, the captain and pilot, muttered in a low voice, "If he doesn't pull up, he won't be able to get to the runway...... God, his engine is stopped, it won't pull up! Spread out, everyone! It's going to crash-land on the grass! ”

In fact, most of the pilots had already sensed that something was wrong at this time, and when they heard Mueller say this, everyone immediately dispersed and ran to the sides, and in an instant, only the soccer balls and bicycles that had been thrown on the ground were left on the grass that was still crowded with people just now.

After running some distance, Muller looked back at the plane that was about to land, and he was relieved to find that the landing gear had been lowered, but he immediately realized that the speed of the plane was too fast, and the altitude was too low, and the landing gear would not be able to withstand the impact of landing.

"Slow down! Slow down! Mueller shouted loudly, holding up his big cap and waving it, and the people around him also chanted together, and for a time everyone on the ground waved their hats and shouted "slow down".

But the plane still landed on the grass at this speed - to be precise, the plane did not fall on the grass at all, but directly on the grass, and the landing gear broke off at once, just as Müller had expected, and the whole plane fell into the grass, scraping a wide crater and raising the earth like a wall out of thin air.

The taxiing process lasted for several seconds, and the plane finally stopped, at which point everyone saw an open flame at the base of the wing.

"Come out of here!" The crowd who had just been shouting to slow down shouted again, "Come out!" Come out! ”

Landing planes don't explode very often, but if there is an open flame, it is a different matter, and if the automatic closure of the fuel tank fails when the wing is broken, and there is an open flame, the explosion can happen at any time.

While everyone shouted "get out", two fire trucks screamed and drove towards the plane, and the hand-cranked water pump in the rear body of the fire truck kept swaying from side to side with the bumps of the body, making people worry that the water pump could fall out at any time.

But before the fire truck could get closer, the plane exploded, and a large fireball erupted from the broken body of the plane, and then rushed into the sky, turning into a large cloud of black smoke and gradually rising.

A miserable hissing could be heard inside the body, and the sound made everyone present creep.

"Holy." Navigator Sean smacked his lips, "I'd rather fall to my death than be burned to the ground like this." ”

"I don't want to crash and die." Bombardier Lieutenant Steven shook his head, "I'm at the front of the whole plane, if it crashes I'll be the first to touch the ground and then crushed by the whole plane, I hate that way of dying, I can at least kill myself with a pistol when the ground is on fire." ”

"You can kill yourself before the crash."

"Okay, that's enough, don't talk about that." Jane, the top turret shooter, interrupted the conversation loudly, "It's unlucky, and we should now observe a moment of silence for our comrades who were killed, shouldn't we?" ”

After that, Jane pointed to the burning plane, and everyone followed his finger to see the ground crew members lifting the burned crew members beyond recognition from the rear of the airframe where the flames had been extinguished.

"Looks like a tail gunner...... "Harry Jr., who is also a tail gunner, whispered.

Mueller was staring at the body being carried out, when the co-pilot, Eric, touched Mueller's shoulder. Mueller turned around and saw Eric squirting at the nose of the crashed plane.

At this time, Muller discovered that there was a familiar pattern on the nose of the nose that was knocked beyond recognition.

The "Supersonic Wasp...... was the symbol of the last B17 to transfer to the UK in the same batch as their Morpheus hunk, and now, the only B17 that flew over the Atlantic was the Morpheus hunk.

Someone recognized Morpheus's crew, and he came over and patted Mueller on the shoulder and said, "You're all left, lucky guys." ”

At this time, everyone began to walk towards the base, leaving only the firefighters and doctors to rescue the crashed Supersonic Wasp, and Muller's men looked at each other, and finally turned around and walked in the direction of the dormitory.

Eric patted Muller on the shoulder: "Let's go, let's eat, I'm coming back more this time than last time, so if I go late, I may have to eat bread with soup." ”

Mueller then turned around and walked towards the dormitory.

**

Early the next morning, before dawn, the officers rushed into the barracks and knocked on the beds where the officers slept -- there were many lieutenants in the bomber unit, and there were three lieutenants and three non-commissioned officers on one plane, so there was simply not so much room for officers of the first rank of lieutenant, and the officers had to sleep with the soldiers in the same crew.

"Hurry up, hurry up! Breakfast starts at 6 o'clock, and the flight briefing at 6:30 o'clock! The clerk yelled as he lifted the officers' quilts one by one, and the winter cold could make anyone wake up at once.

"Damn it!" Sean complained loudly, "Our plane is broken, even if we attack today, it won't be our turn!" ”

"The ground crew fixed it last night!" The clerk said in a cold tone, "Go and thank the ground crew." ”

"Hell!" Sean scolded and pounded the bed hard, then sat up, "What are you doing so fast?" Obviously one wing is going to be replaced, isn't it? It was repaired so quickly! ”

The clerk ignored Sean, who was constantly pounding on the guardrails of the bed, and he came to the side of the innermost officer's bed in the dormitory and slapped the bed hard: "Lieutenant Steven, up—Lieutenant Steven?" ”

The clerk lifted the quilt and looked at the empty bed, and then he turned to Eric next to him and shouted, "Where's Lieutenant Steven?" ”

"How do I know!" Eric was out of his breath, but halfway through it he noticed the officer's stinky face and realized what he was supposed to do now.

"He just went to the toilet! Hold a big roll of paper! Ran out of the dormitory! You should go to the toilet and find him! ”

The clerk gritted his teeth, then turned his head and strode away, and before going out, he also admonished: "Remember to start dinner at six o'clock, the old rule is that there is nothing to eat when it is late." ”

**

When Mueller arrived in the canteen, the entire canteen was already packed with pilots, and everyone looked nervous.

Most of the faces were B17 crews that had crossed the ocean only the day before yesterday - the planes of yesterday's sortie were in need of maintenance, and it was these rookie crews that were on strike today - and the Morpheus Macho was probably the only experienced crew of today's sortie.

As soon as Muller was in line to receive the meal, he saw someone in front of him drop the plate containing the food on the ground.

The private who dropped the plate looked very embarrassed, and twice in a row he took off his hands and threw things on the ground while cleaning up the plates. Muller followed the group, and it was almost time before he could barely clean up the mess on the ground.

As he rubbed shoulders with the recruits, Müller stopped him: "Hey, don't be so nervous, I believe that the command of the Eighth Air Force will not be so stupid to send you recruits to the interior of Europe, we can at most bomb Cherbourg or Antwerp or something, and we will be back soon." ”

"Yes, is that so?"

"Yes, when we first arrived, we also went to Calais to get acquainted with the situation and then came back, although the French came to stop us, but as long as we fired desperately, they would not force their way in." Eric, who was following behind Muller, also spoke, "You must know that we have thirteen point 50 machine guns in one plane, which is a veritable air fortress, and the psychological pressure on the enemy to attack us is not small at all. So as long as you don't panic and fire desperately, you can force the French away, so you can try to use the 'night battle bullet chain', this bullet chain in order to enhance the accuracy of night shooting, tracer bullets are usually stuffed with one bullet every other round, once fired, one machine gun can play the visual effect of two machine guns, giving the French more psychological pressure. ”

"That's right, okay, I'll talk to the ground crew later."

The rookie didn't look as nervous as he had just been, and Mueller tapped him on the shoulder, then went back to his breakfast.

A moment later, Mueller and his men sat down with breakfast, and Sean, who was already in his place, whispered, "I wonder how many people here will be able to come back for dinner tonight." ”

Mueller just glanced at Sean and didn't speak, he was used to the negative thoughts of his navigator.

As soon as Mueller had finished eating, he had left the dining hall when he saw Steven staggering towards him.

"You're drinking again." Mueller frowned, "We're going to go today." ”

"I'm going to drink until I'm going to go," Steven said, jumping in front of Mueller and pulling a pocket watch out of his pocket, "Captain, this is what my dad gave me, help me bring him back to America and give it back to my dad...... Please......"

"Don't give it to me! You take yourself and give it back to him! ”

"Leave me alone! I'm a bombardier, and there's a glass of that size in front of me! Glass, understand! I'm the one with the least defense of the whole plane, and I'm definitely going to die today! ”

"You're not going to die! None of us will die! ”

"We will! We're all left! Everyone else is dead, we will definitely die, we can't escape, even if we don't die today, there are still twenty-one flights before we can return home, do you know what that means? I tell you, I studied at Pennsylvania, I am good at math, the chance of surviving is 1 in 20, and 21 flights are 21 times in 20, understand? Twenty...... ...... vomit"

Steven squirted Muller with drunken vomit.

"Damn."

"I'm sorry, Captain, I think I drank too much."

"Okay, Eric, I'll take this guy to sober up, change clothes by the way, you go for a flight briefing, if I can't make it, say I'm having diarrhea in the toilet."

With that, Mueller took Steven and left. Eric stood still and watched as they disappeared in the direction of the dormitory before turning around and following the other pilots towards the flight briefing room.

In the flight briefing room, the officers of the various crews had already arrived, and the commander of this bomber regiment, Colonel Vincent, was already waiting on the podium.

After the staff officer reminded him that the time was up, Colonel Vincent looked up and glanced at everyone in the room, his gaze resting on Eric.

"Eric, where's your chief?"

"He went to the toilet and seemed to have some stomach trouble."

"Well, you're going to tell him the truth about what I'm saying, you know?" Colonel Vincent took a deep breath, "Ladies and gentlemen, today I would like to tell you an extraordinary piece of news, that our target for today's bombing is the German city of Bremen. ”