No familiar faces greeted Rosy O’Grady’s crew at the Mau River airport. A new bomber command was based there. Three more forts, Barry learned, were due to join it within the week. Until they arrived there would be no mass raids on enemy targets.

Rosy’s first job was a reconnaissance flight to the northwest. There had been signs of enemy concentration among the islands west of Point D’Urville. Headquarters wanted to learn what it meant.

Rosy O’Grady took off with the first faint dawn light. Her bomb racks were full. In addition, she carried a few score of four-pound incendiary bombs. She was “loaded for bear,” and eager for a fight.

At 10,000 feet, Barry Blake turned westward. As they flew along the coast, the gunners in the top and tail turrets watched the sky for Jap planes. The pilots and the bombardier scanned air and sea ahead. Suddenly Chick Enders leaned forward on his perch in the nose, with a shout of discovery.

“What do you see now, bombardier?” Barry asked. “Some more grass skirts?”

Chick Enders ignored the gibe.

“Look at that little island, just offshore,” he said sharply. “There’s a white streak stretching north from it, like the wake of a ship.”

“It is, at that!” cried Hap Newton. “A boat of some kind must have put into a hidden cove there.”

“That island isn’t big enough to shelter any vessel that could make such a wide wake,” Barry Blake declared. “Could the island itself be moving, Chick?”

“It is!” the Rosy’s bombardier yelped. “The thing is a Jap vessel camouflaged with palm fronds. Give me a run on it, Skipper ... now!”

Barry’s touch on the controls did not shift. Without altering its course by a single point the flying fort kept straight on up the coast.

Chick groaned.

“Why did you pass up such a chance, Barry?” he asked. “We could have laid an egg right in the middle of that floating brush heap.”

“Two reasons,” the young skipper replied. “First, there are four ships at least in that floating island, and two or more may be cruisers. Splitting their formation would only prolong the job.... Second, I want a better look at their scheme of camouflage before we blow it to pieces.... Sergeant Babbitt, you will radio the airport what we have seen, and say that we are about to attack.”

He swung the Fortress a few points to the left and nosed down.

“Tail gunner from pilot:” he said through the interphone. “Let me know as soon as that fake island is out of sight.”

A few minutes later Tony Romani’s voice came through.

“Pilot from tail gunner: Floating island has dropped below the bulge of the coastline.... Are we going back, sir?”

“Right now, Tony!” the skipper told him.

Keeping the land mass of New Guinea between him and the Jap vessels, Barry turned his plane around. Lower and lower he took her, until Sweet Rosy O’Grady was skimming only a few hundred feet above the sea. Tree tops nearly grazed her belly turret as she swept over a blunt headland, into sight of the camouflaged ships.

“We’re going over ’em at two thousand feet, Chick,” Barry warned. “Be ready to drop a whole stick of bombs on the target.”

“Look!” yelled Hap Newton. “There’s a swarm of landing barges between the fake island and the shore. They’re crammed with Jap troops.”

“We’ll take care of them later,” Barry said grimly. “Here we go, bombardier.”

“Roger!” Chick’s answer came back ... and an instant later: “Bombs away!”

Hard upon his words came the blast—a multiple explosion so terrific that it tossed the great Fortress like a feather. Later her crew found that it had torn all the fabric off her ailerons and elevators.

Barry climbed his ship, and came back. There was no more “floating island”—only three burning Jap transports and the two broken halves of a fourth, just settling into the waves.

A puff of smoke blossomed just beyond Rosy O’Grady’s right wing-tip; another, to the left and rear. The gun crews of the stricken transports were only now reaching their weapons. Rosy’s sudden re-appearance, close at hand, had taken them entirely by surprise.

Barry Blake swung his ship shoreward and nosed down.

“We’ll risk the shell-fire,” he said briefly. “Our first job is to destroy those Japs landing on the beach. Be ready to fire all guns.”

At a thousand feet the big bomber roared between the burning ships and the shore. Her nose and tail and belly turrets spat .50-caliber death. Beneath her the Jap soldiers in thirty landing barges fired their rifles upward in frantic reply. Through the side gun-port Fred Marmon hosed lead at the deck of the nearest transport.

Twice more the flying fort swept back over the same course. Shells from the Jap ships missed her narrowly. Some of the bursting antiaircraft fragments struck her fuselage and rudder. But the Jap landing force was practically wiped out.

Sinking barges drifted aimlessly, filled with dead men. Some of the soldiers jumped overboard, only to die in the water. Curly Levitt with his side-gun mowed down the one bargeful that made the beach.

After that run, Barry did not turn his ship until well beyond the range of Jap shell fire. At ten thousand feet he swung back. The three Jap transports were much farther apart. The nearest one was drifting and burning more fiercely than ever. The others were zig-zagging.

A sudden sheet of flame shot up from the drifting vessel. In a space of seconds her superstructure went to pieces.

“She’s done for,” Chick Enders said. “Give me a run on the farthest one, Skipper. I’ll try to drop an egg right down her stack.”

“Hap and I will do what we can to help you,” Barry answered, “at ten thousand feet. We have those last two ships in the bag. There’s no need to risk Rosy O’Grady at point-blank range.”

Chick’s first attempt was a near miss—the Jap helmsman was too good at dodging. On his run over the second transport he scored a hit. The five-hundred-pound bomb struck her stern, crippling her steering gear.

“Nice work, bombardier!” Barry applauded. “Now we can concentrate on the last target.”

A shell burst from the stricken craft slammed chunks of jagged metal through Rosy’s tail assembly. The big bomber lurched.

“Tail gunner from pilot:” Barry spoke into the phone. “Are you all right?”

“That flak missed the turret, sir,” Tony Romani answered. “But I can see daylight through the fuselage just behind me.”

“The rudder and elevators still work,” Barry told his crew. “That’s as near a hit as I want, though. Let’s get this job done.”

On his next run Chick Enders accomplished the nearly-impossible. His bomb plunged down the transport’s stack and exploded in her bowels. The Jap ship simply crumpled up and sank, like an old tin can.

The one ship left afloat was burning fiercely from stem to stern. No boats or barges had been lowered. Those Japs who had survived the flames were now swimming in the shark-infested water.

“Here come three of our forts from Mau River!” Hap Newton cried, pointing to the east. “Boy! Will they be sore when they see what we’ve left!”

“Just a few bones on a broken platter!” Barry exulted. “We had all the cold turkey and cranberry sauce. Switch over to the radio and let’s hear what they’re saying, Soapy!”

Few of the other crew’s comments were cheerful, but Barry soothed their disappointment.

“You might possibly find a force of Jap warships farther up the coast, sir,” he told the commanding officer, Major Browne. “My guess is that they were landing troops for a night attack on our airport. In that case they’d be expecting some naval units to come after dark and ‘soften up’ the field for them with shell fire.”

“That’s good reasoning, Lieutenant Blake,” the major agreed. “We’ll search the coast toward Point D’Urville. Sweet Rosy O’Grady looks to me as if she needs a little patching before she goes hunting more trouble.”

“Rosy needs bombs, too,” Chick Enders remarked, as they headed for home. “She’s had a pretty good day’s hunting, even if she didn’t finish her patrol. By the way—how do you think those Japs rigged their camouflage, Skipper?”

“With rope nets, I’d say,” Barry replied. “I noticed some of the stuff drifting alongside the ships, after the first bombs struck them. I think they strung their nets over the masts and superstructures and fastened the tops of jungle trees to them. They used bushes to cover the sides. The one thing they couldn’t hide was the ship’s wake.”

“They’d planned to have all their troops ashore a little after sunrise,” Curly Levitt put in. “If we hadn’t come along, they would have left a force here strong enough to take over our airfield and perhaps two or three more.”

Five minutes after landing, Barry Blake and his crew were making their report to the officer in command of the airport, Colonel Bullock.

“You men have written a great page in Fortress history today,” the officer declared when they had finished. “Four transports and thousands of enemy troops sent to the bottom within a few minutes! That would have been a nice bag of game for a whole squadron. I have an idea that decorations will be coming to all of you for this feat. You’ve earned a few days’ rest, too, but I’m afraid you won’t get it.”

“We shan’t mind that, sir,” Barry said with a smile. “We like action better than sitting around and fighting mosquitoes. Is there some special mission for us?”

Colonel Bullock’s gaze shifted to the slice of blue sky framed in the tent door.

“No, not yet,” he replied, frowning. “But the enemy is massing his strength for another big land, sea, and air attack. Our steady gains in the South Pacific have cost him too much. He is due to strike back, hard.”

There was a brief silence. Glancing at his crew, Barry saw their faces tighten with eagerness.

“The sooner they come the better, sir—so far as we’re concerned,” he said.

The colonel rose to his feet, smiling.

“That spirit will win this war for us, son,” he said. “It’s won every war we Americans have fought. But here at Mau River we’re still short of planes and men. I shall see to it personally that Sweet Rosy O’Grady’s repairs are rushed through. In a day or two we may need her—badly!”