Rhapsody in Junk: A Daughter's Return To Germany To Finish Her Father's Story

     Brakes screeched in a symphony as pilots systematically released them. Planes lurched, and pungent clouds of blue smoke belched from their engines billowing forth to hover over the taxiway. The engines caught, and sputtering graduated to thunder. “Rhapsody in Junk’s” four weary engines bellowed as she lined up with the others behind the polka-dotted assembly plane which led the PFF plane upward.

     All the planes from Horsham St. Faith that day were B-24s, designated as “heavies.” The darkness lifted by 4:30 a.m., and a partly cloudy morning shone through for take-off. By 7:32. a.m. the lead bomber of the 96th Combat Wing moved out. The hulking “Rhapsody in Junk” waited to swing around off the tarmac and onto the runway. She was eighth to take off in section one.

      In turn, the plane pulled into position. In minutes, under Northrop’s control, the battered green plane would make the transition from bouncing all over the runway to drifting into the orderly formation where planes were staggered side to side and top to bottom. Once there, he would be alert to other planes in the wrong place in the formation. He would have to concentrate hard to keep his own plane from drifting, and like the squadron leaders, correct his position, which was made all the more difficult as he battled the prop wash of the other planes.

      The frame shook as her slick tires, worn from far too many take-offs, clicked rapidly over the expansion joints of the runway past the red and blue marker lamps. With building speed vibrating her rivets against the ever-strengthening force of the wind, Northrop heaved the heavy into the sky. With an upward thrust, she was in the air lifting thirty tons of bombs, plane and men from the earth. Passing the control tower, “Rhapsody in Junk” was on her way. Behind her, twelve more planes in section two took their position in the macabre dance.

     Northrop knew his job well, but it did not make it any easier. "Rhapsody" had seen too much combat action, and her engines had been revved up to their maximum peak so many times there was not much emergency power left in them. They would just barely permit Northrop to keep up with the formation as he kept them on maximum power.

      The first plane leaving Horsham St. Faith that morning circled the field. Others fell in behind. Three at a time, planes moved off, and the pattern repeated itself as the continual line of planes corkscrewed upward into formation . . . . .

    . . . . . . . . Up in the cockpit, Northrop understood the futility of their plight. He put the nose wheel down to surrender to the Germans, but beneath the smokescreen, they kept firing. Once down, he could not get the wheel back up, and it blocked the exit through the nose wheel hatch. He hit the bail out bell just outside the flak area. With just eighteen combat hours, the crew’s wings would be clipped, and they would spend the rest of the war on the ground as prisoners of war of the Third Reich. By the time the mission was concluded, Harold Flaugher would be dead.