Excerpt: War Eagles - Chapter 4 - Free Fall

The clouds opened like a grand theater curtain. Below, well-manicured farmland stretched as far as the eye could see. The incessant hum of his Sopwith Camel’s engines masked the initial sound of the tracer rounds and armor-piercing Spandau lead that riddled the stretched fabric skinning his flimsy biplane. Looking back, he saw that three German Albatros D.IIs and a Fokker Dr.I Triplane were right on his tail. The pilot had no choice; he was a singleton out in the middle of nowhere with very few options. His plane made an abrupt change in direction climbing up and rotating on its axis to head back into the safety of the clouds.

As he passed the four German planes, the pilot took the opportunity to spray the air with hot lead from a pair of twin, synchronized .303 Vickers bolted to his plane’s fuselage. By the time his lead reached its target it was spent, doing little more than peppering the enemy plane’s plywood skin. The German planes split out of formation and turned to pursue the Camel. The pilot instinctively knew that he was in a dogfight that he might not be able to win.

Once in the clouds, the pilot banked right and then pulled hard on the stick. His plane climbed like a bottle rocket and shot through the top canopy of the cloudbank. Leveling off, he cut his engine. The pilot soon heard the telltale sound of the Fokker’s air-cooled, 9-cylinder rotary motor. Diving silently back down into the clouds, the pilot waited until the sound of the Fokker seemed only a few yards away before pumping lead out of his smoking machine guns. After a count of five, the pilot pulled up, just missing the bloom of the explosion as his rounds found their way into the fuel tanks of the Dutch-built fighter plane.

He saw the tracer rounds coming from one of the three remaining German planes a split-second before he heard them. However, it was not enough time to avoid being hit. This time the 7.92mm slugs ripped through the plane’s support struts. The Sopwith’s wings buckled and snapped back off the plane.

The pilot was now in free fall. His plane spun out of control through the clouds. Disoriented, the pilot had no idea which way was up until he punched through the clouds on his downward spiral to the field below. He was upended, looking up he saw the ground zooming down to meet him. In a matter of seconds, all he could see were rows and rows of corn drifting in the wind.

Brandt woke up before his “dream plane” hit the ground. He generally had this dream when he felt anxious or was under a lot of stress. He had not had the dream in a long time. To Brandt, the dream was like an old friend: familiar and, in some twisted, unfathomable way, comforting. Only this time it had felt different and deeply unsatisfying. Never actually having been in combat, Brandt had always wondered what it would be like to go one-on-one with an equally matched adversary. The possibility of one day participating in an actual dogfight had been one of the main reasons he originally chose to serve in the Army Air Corp. Now that he was no longer part of the country’s military machine, Brandt felt certain that he would never know that feeling. But now, thanks to Lou Carson, at least he was flying again. However, his time in the air, from this point on, would be a bittersweet legacy; a swan song to a promising military career that was abruptly cut short; taken away from him for nothing more than wanting to do what was right.