Gooney Bird

When most folks think of World War II, they usually think of D-day, or Pearl Harbor, or Iwo Jima. For most people, the war was broken into two theaters—three if you count North Africa. But what the history books don’t tell you about is the thousands of Americans who lost their lives in the China-Burma-India theater of war.

While the Pacific fleet was scrambling to rearm after the circle jerk at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese war machine was rolling through China and into Burma. Over in India, the British were getting their asses handed to them and had Churchill making all kinds of noise at FDR about getting some help over there to make sure the Japs didn’t gobble up India too.

Of course, the American military didn’t give a damn about India. They weren’t interested in helping Britain regain its imperial hold in the East, but we needed all the help we could get over in Europe. Throwing the Brits a bone in the pacific seemed the best way to get friendly results in Europe too. So while the bulk of the Pacific fleet was gearing up to hand the Japs a good old fashioned American ass-whoopin’, the Army Air Corps sent elements of my unit, the Fifth Air Wing, over seas to aid in the resupply effort for the British troops in India. But like I said, nobody thinks to talk about that part of the war. It’s all about Normandy, and Midway, and the Bulge.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Those boys did a helluva job over there. They were some hard charging sonsabitches for sure, but it really sticks in my craw that the only thing anyone seems to remember about that damn war were the guys pulling the trigger. They don’t even stop to think about the guys who got them the ammo and weapons in the first place, who put the clothes on their backs, and delivered the food to keep them alive.

Hell, in my book, the logistics guys were the real heroes of the war. They had to contend with just about the same shit storm as the front line grunts, but these guys didn’t have much of anything to shoot back with. It’s kind of like a football game. All the glory goes to the ones who get to carry the ball, but without linemen supporting the whole operation, those skinny little suckers wouldn’t get two yards before they got run over by a freight train. Anyway, I suppose that’s all beside the point. We had a job to do, and by God it was going to get done.

We arrived in early April 1942. Our job was to ferry cargo into Burma to resupply the British divisions who were fighting tooth and nail with the Japs over control of rubber plantations and river crossings. The Japs had air bases along most of the over-land routes, so we ended up taking a detour over the Himalayas in order to avoid the squadrons of Zeros that were just itching to shoot something. Thing of it was, we weren’t in one of those nifty “flying fortress” bombers with guns covering just about every angle of the damn thing. No, we didn’t have anything as fancy as that. We had the Douglas C-47 “Skytrain.”

We called it the “Gooney Bird” ‘cos it was as ugly and as awkward as a gooney bird trying to fly. The damn thing handled like a dump truck in the air, but it could take off from short runways and it could absorb more than a few pounds of lead and still keep chugging away. Still, with no weapons on board to defend ourselves, we were dependant on fighter escorts to keep the Zeros off our backs.

Whatever you want to say about the Japanese, they’re for damn sure smart little suckers. They figured out our supply route over the mountains pretty quickly, but they also figured out that with the longer route, our fighter escorts couldn’t tag along the whole way. The Brits were nice enough to send along 1 fighter for every 2 C-47s, but about half an hour away from the drop zone, the “Hurricanes” would start to run low on go-go juice. They’d bank off and head back home, leaving us to fend for ourselves. We would always take alternate routes over the mountains trying to throw the Japs off our trail, and most of the time it would work, but whenever we made the drop over our boys, they’d be all over us like bees on honey. They didn’t give a damn if were empty of cargo or not.

It was one of those runs that I remember the most. We had just jettisoned our cargo and were headed back across the mountains. Captain Miller was at the controls, along with Lieutenant Skowitzki his copilot. The navigator Lieutenant Liovna sat at his bench, plotting our course back into India. I was the crew chief, the one responsible for loading and unloading the cargo. Since that phase of the flight had come and gone, I was busy holding on for dear life as the Gooney Bird shuddered against some nasty turbulence.

The ride was never pleasant. Though the ‘Bird was built as strong as a brick shithouse, it couldn’t do anything to drown out the roar of the engines as they cranked out about 1200 horse power a’piece. And it was cold—damn cold, the kinda cold that freezes your spit two seconds after it leaves your mouth. When you’re flying over the highest mountains in the world, the weather has a tendency to do that, you know. Some guys got the bright idea of peeing on themselves during the flight to keep themselves warm. Oh it worked, but only for about five minutes, and then they had to deal with a set of frozen cover-alls that stank to high heaven. So all I could really do was fold my arms and look around the cabin to amuse myself.

Captain Miller had some kind of wooden statue nailed to the dashboard up in the cockpit. He said he got it in some bazaar in Turkey during a duty assignment before the war. The statue was made of dark burnished wood, and it depicted this tall skinny guy with a beard holding onto a fish with one hand. It looked religious to me, maybe Orthodox Christian, though I couldn’t tell you why. Whoever it was supposed to be, Miller used it as a good luck charm, kinda like a plastic Jesus you can buy for your car.

There was also a photograph mounted on the wall above Lieutenant Liovna’s head—a black and white of a pretty little dame sitting all hunched over, her breasts hanging almost daintily in front of her as she fixed the camera with a blank stare—the kinda stare that makes it hard for you figure out what a body is thinking. She was pretty, but hadn’t gotten all dolled up for the photograph, which made her more attractive for it, like it was so natural for her to be sitting there in front of you that she wouldn’t need to make a special occasion of it.

It was a weird juxtaposition, the simultaneous display of sin and saint, but it represented two of the driving forces in our lives—the desperate hope that, should the end finally come at the receiving end of a Jap machine gun, there would be someone on the other side to receive us. And of course, that if we should survive yet another mission, we’d have a day or two more to live it up and raise hell before we were sent out again.

That’s what was going through my mind when Skowitzki suddenly shouted, “I see them! Four of them at ten o’clock!” He pointed out the cockpit window.

I leaned out into the isle to get a better look, but through the haze of clouds hanging over the mountain tops, I couldn’t see a thing.

I heard Miller swear. “Zeroes. Damn it, I knew we were going to catch hell this run. Get on the horn and let the rest of the boys know if they don’t already. Break formation and get low to the ground. We’ll try to lose them in the clouds.”

Skowitzki nodded and started to relay the orders.

I looked out the window, trying to pick out some of the other planes in our formation through spider-webs of ice framing the glass. I didn’t have much time to look before I felt the deck beneath me nose downward as Captain Miller plunged the ‘Bird down into a cloud bank below. He reemerged a moment later, skimming along the rocky cliff face of one of the Himalayan mountains.

I glanced out the window again just in time to see another aircraft break through the cloud cover to our right. The white fluff bled off of the sleek aircraft like the surf bleeding off the gills of a shark as it rises above the waves. As soon as I saw the bright red dot emblazoned upon its side, I knew we were in trouble.

“We’ve got a tail!” I yelled out to the others.

“Yeah, I see him,” Miller responded. He hauled back on the steering yoke, pulling the Gooney Bird into a steep turn. The old girl creaked ominously as the wind howled furiously over her hull, but she held together as Miller whipped her around a rocky outcropping and began to pull up, banking over a mountain peak looming before us.

The zero matched us move for move—which wasn’t hard, seeing as how the ‘Bird had the maneuverability of a school bus—and closed the gap as we shot over the mountain’s rocky face. Then the shooting started. I ducked and covered, as if that would help against lead projectiles the size of my little finger, as bullets pinged off of the plane’s hull. The rounds punched several holes in the fuselage, sending the slugs richocheting off instruments and piping before singing through another weak spot in the Bird’s skin.

One of them skipped off of the dash, splintering through our wooden Jesus to imbed itself in the middle Skowitzki’s skull. A spray of blood showered the window next to him as he sagged toward the floor, his seat belt the only thing keeping him from spilling all over the floor. Miller cursed and pitched us forward into another dive, but he couldn’t shake the fighter behind us.

I didn’t see the next hit more than I felt it. Bullets tore through our number two engine, shredding the delicate machinery as black smoke began to billow out from the mangled engine.

“Cut the engine!” Miller yelled to Skowitzki, momentarily forgetting that he had just taken one to the face. He swore to himself and leaned over to slap the switch to silence the sputtering machinery.

With only one engine, the Gooney Bird began to lose altitude, tilting to one side as she descended. The lone engine howled furiously, struggling with all its might to keep us aloft, but still the altitude kept bleeding away. I was sure we were going down. The Jap pilot must have thought the same, because I could see him bank away and start gaining altitude as he headed back east.

Now remember what I said before about C-47s being able to take a beating and keep on ticking? Well, at that particular moment, I was really starting to doubt the truth of that claim because we were still losing altitude. But as it turned out, taking a few rounds in the engine was probably the best thing that could have happened to us. We dipped below a low-lying cloud bank just as Miller began hauling back on the yoke. The ‘Bird shook a bit, but slowly began to level off.

I gave a shuddering sigh of relief and sank back in my seat, happier than a hog in a wallow just to be alive. I looked over to where Captain Miller had his hands stiff on the yoke, trying not to look at Skowitzki’s blood where it was starting to freeze over the windshield. He didn’t say a word, not even when Liovna reached over to close the dead man’s staring eyes.

Soon enough we broke through the clouds and started for home. The old ‘Bird somehow got us there, though the landing wasn’t the smoothest ever. Out of our flight of 8 planes, only 4 made it back. It was kinda sobering to think of so many of our boys having lost their lives, but for the couple days or so up until the next flight, I didn’t give a damn. I was just happy to be alive.