The turret gunner's twin fifties hammered away, a steady thump-thump-thump that vibrated through the floorboards. One Zero overshot, unable to match the Mitchell’s sudden deceleration as Elias pulled the flaps. The enemy fighter zipped past—right into the sights of the nose guns. Elias squeezed the trigger on his yoke, and the Zero disintegrated in a ball of fire.
"Twenty minutes out," Elias crackled over the intercom. "Gunners, check your belts." Medium Bombers of World War 2
By the time they hit the open ocean, the remaining fighters had turned back, low on fuel. The Gray Ghost was riddled with holes, its hydraulic fluid leaking into the bay, but the engines held. The turret gunner's twin fifties hammered away, a
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. Elias squeezed the trigger on his yoke, and
The engines of the B-25 Mitchell, nicknamed The Gray Ghost , coughed to life, spitting blue smoke into the humid air of the South Pacific. It was 1943, and for Captain Elias Thorne and his crew, the mission was simple: hit the Japanese airfield at Lae and get home before the Zeros found them.