A Terrifying Beauty – the Art of Piotr Forkasiewicz

Via Adam

In the black of night of June 8, 1944, two days after the D-Day invasions of Normandy, the dark hulk of a four-engined Lancaster bomber of 15 Squadron, Royal Air Force, trailing a blow-torching curtain of livid flame, lurches heavily into a dive over the French countryside, a few miles to the west of Paris. The flame is bright enough to illuminate the farms below in a pale and ghostly light. The big bomber is dying, her lifeblood streaming in angry, high octane sheets from her starboard wing fuel tanks.

Behind the Lancaster, a Luftwaffe night fighter follows her down to finish her off. Its cannons hammer continuously at the British aircraft, while their tracer rounds rocket and shriek past, trailing smoke, lit by the burning, streaming wounds of the Lanc. Beneath the Lancaster, escape hatches open and crew members, abandoning the dying aircraft while they can, tumble out into the slipstream like rag dolls. On the top side of the Lancaster, however, the mid-upper gunner, Robbie Aitken, with his back to the approaching French farmland, empties his ammunition boxes into the German, giving time for his crew to get out of the mortally wounded aircraft. The searing muzzle flashes of his twin Brownings stab the night like dragons, likely blinding the young gunner. Hot brass shell casings tumble unseen in the darkness to thud heavily into fields and villages below, while oily grey smoke, ghosted by the streaming funeral pyres, wakes behind from two of her engines.

The sound is the sound of hell. Four thundering Merlin engines. The foundry shriek and snap of wind-whipped flame. The rip-saw burp of Aitken's 303 Brownings. The heavy thump of the night fighter's cannons. And perhaps above it all, the angry scream of Aitken as he fights to the end of his ammunition.

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