Horner waited fifteen seconds and followed him down, offsetting to the west so he wouldn’t get hit by enemy ground fire shot at the leader. It was absolutely calm as Horner watched the lead’s bombs set off two of the storage tanks in a violent orange and black maelstrom. He eased his aircraft’s nose to the right, checked his dive angle, airspeed, and altitude; and when his gun sight crept up on the huge pumping station, he depressed the bomb-release button on top of the control stick, then reefed back on the stick to keep from hitting the ground, and watched over his right shoulder as his bombs struck dead center on the mass of pipes and buildings that had once been a petroleum-pumping station.

With his head twisted completely around over his right shoulder and the nose of his jet now pointed toward the sky, he somehow saw red fireballs stream past on the left side of his canopy. Someone is trying to kill me, he thought abstractedly—the way we might think, It’s raining out. Meanwhile, he racked his jet toward the sea and tried to see the lead, who was just fifteen seconds ahead. Then he realized that he couldn’t see the leader because both of their jets were surrounded by greasy black smoke with orange centers making whoomp whoomp noises that rocked his jet. At that point, he put his jet into maximum afterburner, to get as much speed as possible, and started to dance around in the sky, to kill any tracking solutions the gunners might be working out.

It’s just like the World War II and Korea veterans said it was, he thought, as he flew out over the sea. And instantly he was a veteran.

Later, AAA too became part of the routine. If he looked down at the ground, he could see the red flame from the barrels of the AAA as they shot up at him. He could tell when the big guns were shooting at him because of the black greasy puffs. The 57mm guns were arranged in a circle and would fire in salvo, so what he saw was a circle of fire. And then if he looked to the other side of the formation and above the flight, he could see the black smoke of projectiles exploding. The smaller-caliber weapons featured tracers that snaked up from the ground and then curved behind the flight. In reality, the tracers didn’t curve; they appeared to because of the movement of his aircraft. Orange tracers were the sign of 37mm guns. The projectiles from these weapons exploded in gray-white smoke. . . . All in all, fascinating to look at.

After the excitement and skill of an attack and evading AAA, the trip home was easy—a thoughtful time. When a man is filled with adrenaline, he thinks fast, but on the way home he has time for meditating about what he has just done.