When Heroes Flew

by H W Buzz Bernard

  Why Oregon? Not only did Al hail from Oregon—Forest Grove outside of Portland—but so did Sorey, who came from Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River. Sorey, though a junior officer, had proved an excellent aviator. Al guessed that Sorey’s experience as a salmon fisherman who frequently transited the Columbia River Bar, a highly dangerous stretch of water where the river emptied into the Pacific Ocean, had taught him how to handle rough weather, strong currents, and powerful winds. Nobody could land a B-24 in gusty crosswinds better than Sorey. Al loved the short, stocky, ruddy-complected lieutenant.

  Together they’d chosen the name for the bomber and come up with the concept of the cartoon. A third member of the crew, Tech Sergeant Bryce McGregor, the radio operator, had painted it.

  Now Oregon Grinder approached Benghazi late in the day. The slanting rays of the sun cast long shadows over a dusty, barren landscape. Patches of green speckled a narrow strip of land adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea, but south of there sat nothing but an ocean of sand, the Sahara Desert, that stretched for over a thousand miles into French Equatorial Africa.

  Khaki and army-green tents of all sizes, and a few wooden buildings that appeared to lack structural integrity, dotted the sprawling Benghazi complex that boasted five separate runways.

  “Holy crap, look at that,” Sorey said. He pointed out the front of the cockpit windshield, down and to the right.

  A string of camels, herded by men in long brown robes and headgear that looked like piles of white rags, plodded along a fence outside the air base.

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Al said.

  “Shit, Kansas is a rain forest compared to this place,” Sorey responded, then added, “Oh, to be back in green, green England.”

  “I was told this would be only a brief TDY.”

  “Hope you didn’t believe that temporary duty shit,” Sorey grumbled.

  “Has the Army ever led us astray?”

  Sorey laughed.

  They landed Oregon Grinder and taxied it to a hardstand of sorts—really just firm, smoothed sand—where they shut down the engines and deplaned.

  Al and Sorey dropped onto the ground through the Liberator’s open bomb bay doors, where they joined up with the rest of the crew.

  An Army major with bushy eyebrows and wearing lightweight khakis that had seen better days greeted them.

  “Gentlemen, welcome to Benghazi. I’m Major Norman Appold of the 376th Bomb Group. We’re better known as the Liberandos.”

  Al saluted, then stepped forward and shook the major’s hand. “Captain Al Lycoming, 93rd Bomb Group, the Circus.”

  The 93rd’s nickname had been shortened from Ted’s Traveling Circus, the tag it had earned when Lieutenant Colonel Edward “Ted” Timberlake commanded it and it was frequently called upon to “take its show on the road” and deploy outside of England. Timberlake had since been promoted to a staff position. Now Lieutenant Colonel Addison Baker led the Circus.

  “Look, I know you guys are tired,” Appold said. “Let’s get you over to the mess tent where you can grab some grub, then get you bedded down. Not much in the way of quarters here, but the cots are firm and the blankets warm.”

  “I thought it was supposed to be hot here in the desert,” Sorey chimed in.

  “Not at this time of year. The nights are chilly. But that’s a good thing. Makes the scorpions lethargic and kills the flies.”

  “Scorpions?” Sorey said, a tinge of alarm in his voice.

  “The national animal of Libya. The cool weather slows ’em down, but best you still check your boots in the morning before you slip them on.”

  Sorey shook his head in disbelief and glared at Al. What have you got us into?

  “Okay, gentlemen, follow me to the ‘dining room.’”

  Major Appold sidled up to Al as they walked. “I’ll brief you and your men in the morning about a special mission we’ve got planned. It’ll be just four birds, three Liberando ships and yours. I understand you’re relatively new to the Circus, but Lieutenant Colonel Baker said you’re one of the best pilots he’s got. That’s great, because we’re gonna need a lot of skill on the trip we’ve got planned.”

  They reached the entrance of the mess tent.

  “Well, eat hearty, sleep well, and I’ll tell you in the morning about the adventure we’ve got coming up.” Appold slapped Al on the shoulder and disappeared into the growing darkness.

  Al watched him go and wondered, as Sorey had suggested earlier, What have I got us into?

  2

  Benghazi, Libya

  March 27, 1943

  Major Appold convened the promised briefing at ten o’clock in the morning in a small wooden structure that reeked of stale cigarette smoke, dried sweat, and whiffs of aviation gas that weaseled into the room through ill-fitting doors and windows. From outside, the cough and throaty roar of B-24 engines being run up from time to time competed with Appold’s resonant voice.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I’ll get right to it. I’m sure you’re wondering why you were dispatched from Jolly Old to the desert—and in a way I am, too—so I’ll begin by filling you in with some background info.”

  He walked to a map of Sicily that rested on a rickety wooden easel.

  “Near Messina, on the island of Sicily, there’s a set of ferroconcrete train sheds that protect supply trains carrying weapons and food bound for what’s left of Rommel’s army in Tunisia. The trains are ferried across the Strait of Messina from the mainland of Italy, then moved into the sheds. We’ve gone after the sheds several times with high-level raids, but our bombs haven’t been able to penetrate their roofs. So I thought a different approach might be called for.”

  Appold paused and took a swig of coffee from a cracked, steaming mug.

  “I went to our group commander, Colonel K.K. Compton, and suggested mounting a low-level attack on the sheds using just a handful of bombers. I was kinda surprised, but he jumped at the idea, and even suggested bringing in a B-24 or two from England. I don’t know why—I wanted to use just our Liberando crews—but decided not to stir the pot once I got Compton’s okay. Maybe he thought it would be good experience or something.”

  “You do realize,” interjected Al, “we’re high-altitude bombers, not hedgehoppers. We don’t have any low-level credentials.”

  “Neither do we, Captain, but I think we can pull this off. I’d love nothing better than to poke a stick in Rommel’s eye, and the Italians’.”

  “Yes, sir. We’re on board with that. What’s the plan?”

  Appold pointed at the map again.

  “I’ll lead our three Liberando ships and your bird to a fighter strip on Malta—that’s about fifty miles south of the southernmost point of Sicily—on March 29, and we’ll launch from there, after dark.”

  Appold continued his briefing for half an hour, filling in logistical, navigational, and tactical details. “Any questions?” he asked when finished.

  “Can I assume,” Al said, “since we’ll be hugging the ground when we attack, the bombs will be on a delayed fuse?”

  “Absolutely. I know at two hundred miles per hour and roof-top level our bomb-trail will be dangerously short. I don’t want us blowing up the guys behind us.”

  After the conclusion of the briefing and the question-and-answer period, Al and Sorey, along with Captain George Coleman, Oregon Grinder’s navigator, walked together back to their tent quarters. George, a skinny Jewish kid from Brooklyn, had joined the military two years before Al. Despite being from opposite sides of the country, Al from Oregon and George, or “Rabbi” as the rest of the gang called him, from New York, they got along well. In fact, they became fast friends, perhaps because they were the “old men” of the crew. George wore a look of perpetual bemusement on his face, a face that appeared to have been snatched from a cubist painting, but he proved a serious and capable officer. Still, from time to time, he couldn’t resist taking a shot at his aircraft commander.

  With a smirk on his face, h
e turned to Al. “Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”

  “You watch too damn many Laurel and Hardy movies,” Al snapped. “Good grief, that must be all you and Sorey do, go to movies.”

  “We get our asses shot at once in a while, too.”

  Luqa, Malta

  March 29, 1943

  A cool evening breeze wafted over the small island of Malta as ground crews at a fighter strip in the town of Luqa refueled four B-24s from Benghazi. A dull overcast hid the moon.

  Major Appold gathered the pilots, copilots, and navigators from the Liberators in a ramshackle shed perched on the edge of the runway and reviewed the plan for the attack.

  “Okay, men, just to refresh your memories, we’re going around the top of Sicily, keeping under radar all the way.” He unfolded a crumpled map of Sicily and placed it on a table. “Like this.” He indicated a west-northwest course out of Malta, then around the western tip of Sicily. “Once we reach Trapani, we’ll turn east, passing north of Palermo.”

  “Altitude?” asked one of the pilots.

  “We’ll be skimming the wave tops.”

  Al winced. When he’d first heard “low level,” he’d assumed a thousand feet or so. He looked at Sorey and George and could see they didn’t like the notion of barreling through sea spray any more than he did, especially on a cloudy night with no moon. But maybe if they had a difficult time seeing, the Italians might have a tough time spotting them, too.

  Appold continued his briefing. “The IP may be hard to find. It’s an unmarked spot of water between the Lipari Islands and Messina, where the rail sheds are.”

  “Lipari Islands?” George said.

  “An east-west string of tiny islands about fifty miles northwest of Messina. Don’t worry, Captain. Just stick together and we’ll be fine. I’ll get us there.”

  Al hoped so. If they got separated, the mission would fall apart. They had no landmarks, other than the unmarked Initial Point, they could use to navigate on their own.

  “One final thing,” Appold said. “If we can’t get to the sheds in Messina, our alternate target is Crotone on the mainland.”

  Al had heard of Crotone, located in Calabria, Italy’s southwest peninsula. The town harbored chemical and ammunition manufacturers that, like the rail sheds in Messina, had proven resistant to high-level bombing attacks.

  At midnight, the Liberators launched. As planned, they flew just above the waves. George shifted from his usual navigator’s position in the lower nose of Oregon Grinder to the bomb bay. There he crouched on a narrow catwalk above the open bomb bay doors and looked down at the white caps of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Every few minutes, he called off the plane’s estimated height above the water to Al.

  The four-ship formation swept into an unexpected cluster of low stratus clouds. Al lost sight of the other bombers. His grip on the control wheel tightened to a point where he felt as if he were strangling it.

  “You see anything, Sorey?” Al said.

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “George, what’s our elevation?”

  “Hard to see now. Maybe fifteen feet.”

  “Shit. Way too low. Hold ’er steady, Sorey. No quick moves up or down, left or right. Let’s try not to ram anybody.”

  Oregon Grinder thundered through the leaden darkness, barely above the sea. Al kept his gaze glued on the attitude indicator, making sure he held the bomber straight and level.

  As suddenly as they’d penetrated the clouds, they popped out, but found themselves still cloaked in lightless gloom.

  “You see any of the other birds?” Al said, addressing Sorey.

  “Negative, Pops.”

  “That’s why I hate this follow-the-leader crap on bombing runs. Now there’s nobody to follow. Hell, all we can do is abort and head back to Benghazi. George, give me a heading.”

  George responded. Oregon Grinder climbed and turned back toward North Africa as a sliver of brightness materialized low on the eastern horizon—dawn.

  “There,” Sorey said after several minutes, “about three miles ahead of us.”

  “I see,” Al responded. Well in front of them, two other B-24s appeared to be on a track toward Benghazi. “Looks like we weren’t the only ones to call it off.”

  “Well, Major Appold’s on his own,” Sorey said.

  Just then the command channel came alive. Appold.

  “Flight leader here. Too much fog and low cloudiness over the target. Sorry I lost ya. We’re going for the alternate. Over and out.”

  “Guy’s nothing but determined,” Al said. He hated having to bail out of the mission but knew he had no choice. “Good luck to him and his crew.”

  Oregon Grinder and the two other Liberators landed in Benghazi at midday. After a quick debrief, the crews headed to their tents for much-needed sleep. They’d been without for almost twenty-four hours.

  Evening had settled over Benghazi by the time Al awoke. He walked to the operations tent and learned that Appold had successfully carried out his raid on Crotone, the alternate target.

  The intelligence officer on duty, a small lieutenant with a marshmallow build and big glasses, gave Al a brief summary. “That son-of-a-gun major blew apart a train with a five-hundred pounder on his run to the target, then put his other five bombs directly into a munitions factory. He blew it to hell. We won’t be returning there.”

  “Something to be said for low-level attacks, I suppose,” Al mumbled.

  “Probably won’t become SOP, though,” the intel officer responded.

  “Geez, I hope not.” B-24s had not been designed for nap-of-the-earth missions.

  Al strolled out into the darkness and plodded toward the mess tent, drawn by mystery smells, a veil of cigarette smoke, and the chatter of fellow airmen.

  Someone fell in beside him. A deep baritone voice he didn’t recognize said, “I hear you’re from Oregon.”

  “What?” Al turned to see a tall lieutenant walking next to him.

  “You’re Oregon Grinder’s commander, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was attending the U of O when I decided to join the Army Air Force. My motive—can’t stand those fascist bastards in Europe.”

  Al stopped. “A fellow Oregonian, huh?” He extended his hand. “Al Lycoming. Glad to meet you.”

  “Brian Flavelle.” He gripped Al’s hand. “But I’m from New Jersey.”

  “Jersey? And you ended up at the University of Oregon? How in the hell did that happen?”

  “I wanted to study forestry. Oregon seems to have a few of those . . . forests.”

  Al laughed. “So I’ve heard.”

  “Anyhow, sir, I wanted to ask—you were on the mission to Sicily with Major Appold, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And had to abort?”

  “Clouds and fog. Never made it to the primary target.”

  “I want to try again.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. And I’d love for you to come along.”

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant. One nighttime run making like a seaplane when you can’t see crap is enough for me. I prefer dropping our loads from twenty thousand feet in the daylight, not twenty feet in the dark.”

  “I know, I know. But I’m not planning a nighttime mission. If we go in at evening twilight we can avoid those wee-hour mists that screwed up Appold’s raid.”

  “You keep saying ‘I.’ Is this a bee you’ve got in your bonnet, or is this coming from on high?”

  Flavelle cleared his throat. “Well, it’s kind of my idea, sir. But I’m planning on taking it to our group commander, K.K. Compton, and General Ent, and see if they’ll sign off on it.”

  “General Ent?”

  “Uzal Ent. He’s the bomber force commander.”

  “What is it with this rooftop-level flying business? It seems to give you guys a hard-on.”

  Flavelle shrugged. “It worked at Crotone. Why not Messina?”

  “So you haven’t c
leared it yet?”

  “I was planning on hitting up Compton and Ent tomorrow. So how about it? You want another shot at Messina?”

  In truth, he did. As much as he hated low-level missions, he hated not completing an assignment even more.

  “Yeah,” he sighed, “sign me up. I didn’t join the Army Air Force to sit on my butt and wring my hands when things don’t go right.”

  “That’s jake, sir. I’ll let you know tomorrow if it’s a go or not.” He popped to attention and snapped off a sharp salute. “Thank you, sir.”

  Al returned the salute. Flavelle strode off into the darkness, and Al continued his journey to the mess tent.

  Well, at least we might be able to return to England with an attaboy from the bomber chief.

  Messina (Sicily), Italy

  April 2, 1943

  With the blessings of General Ent and Colonel Compton, Lieutenant Flavelle led raid number two on the Messina rail sheds. The four-plane flight repeated the route Major Appold had followed, refueling in Malta, then circumnavigating Sicily to the west and north. Only this time they flew in daylight and reached the IP in evening twilight.

  Skimming the wave tops, Al and Sorey in Oregon Grinder followed Flavelle as he turned into the bomb run.

  This time, no fog or mist obscured the target. They crossed over the north coast of Sicily, skipped over a low, forested ridge, then barreled toward the Messina rail yard at tree-top level.

  “Straight ahead, got ’em in sight,” Oregon Grinder’s bombardier announced, his voice steady and unexcited. Al liked the guy, First Lieutenant Kenny Brightman, a Georgia Tech engineering student who came across as serious and quiet but highly professional. Kenny rarely missed his target. He proved excellent at calculating in his head the vectors involved in bombing. He seemed almost as good as the Norden bombsight, the technological marvel employed on high-level missions over Europe.

  “Let ’em go when you’re ready,” Al said. Hugging the ground negated using the Norden. Here it would be all seat-of-the-pants, Kentucky windage. Al expected Kenny to excel.