THE evening was warm<br >August. Despite the sec<br >weather was judged hot enough to leave the door of the<br >briefing hut open， so the big， blue-eyed Navy flier and his<br >copilot in the first row could glance past the weather<br >officer and see their doomed bomber squatting distantly<br >across the vast Suffolk airdrome. She sagged huge， white，<br >and clumsy in the late-setting summer sun， already so<br >crammed with explosives that she seemed about to squash<br >flat her ridiculous tires. Two broomsticks， painted black to<br >fool attacking Messerschmitts， poked from what had once<br >been her tail turret. Odd clusters of antennae stuck askew<br >from her back， as if she had been overcome by pigmy<br >archers. The Negro U.S. Army detachment loading her<br >had finished-and gone to chow. An armed Air Corps<br >private sauntering near her and a red-haired Navy<br >mechanic checking her tie-down lines seemed at this safe<br >distance Lilliputians entrusted with a tethered giant.<br >Packed carefully into her gut was the largest explosive<br >charge ever assembled by man.<br > The pilot in the briefing hut was on temporary duty<br >from a U.S. antisubmarine squadron to the south， in<br >Devon. He was almost too handsome: just under six feet<br >and broad-shouldered， with dark chestnut hair and the<br >sapphire eyes of his family and a curving patrician nose<br >and teeth straightened at Choate School. He had a re-<br >markable lopsided grin， devastating to women. He was<br > 15<br ><br >