The Mitchell groaned as Elias shoved the throttles forward. The Japanese fighters dived, their tracers stitching lines across the wings. A medium bomber's greatest defense was its speed and its ability to hug the terrain. Elias banked hard, threading the bomber through a narrow river valley, the wingtips nearly clipping the ancient trees.
Unlike the heavy B-17s that droned at high altitudes, the Mitchell lived in the "dead zone." They flew fast and low—so low the salt spray sometimes smeared the cockpit glass. Medium Bombers of World War 2
The plane jolted as the weight fell. Behind them, the airfield erupted in a series of daisy-chained explosions. But the celebration was short-lived. "Zeros at six o'clock! High!" the tail gunner screamed. The Mitchell groaned as Elias shoved the throttles forward
The Mitchell was a medium bomber, a jack-of-all-trades. It didn't carry the massive payloads of the "Flying Fortresses," but it had something better for this kind of work: agility and a nose packed with .50-caliber machine guns. As they crossed the coastline, Elias pushed the nose down. The jungle canopy became a green blur just thirty feet below the belly. Elias banked hard, threading the bomber through a
Suddenly, the airfield appeared. Elias didn't use a bombsight; at this height, it was all instinct. He toggled the "para-frags"—small bombs attached to parachutes designed to drift into aircraft hangars and fuel depots. "Bombs away!"