Forgotten Fifteenth

by Barrett Tillman

  Amid the bedlam of multiple fighter attacks, aircrews found time to make some surprisingly detailed observations. “One Me-109 had British markings on the underneath side of each wing while one FW-190 painted yellow and green fuselage and wings with yellow nose had American insignia on the top of left wing.”10 Some fliers probably confused Romania’s yellow markings on IAR 180s for FW 190s.

  The Americans lost thirteen bombers, 5.6 percent of the attackers—not nearly as bad as Tidal Wave’s 30-percent loss. But the April 5 raid inflicted less damage and demonstrated that Ploesti remained a tough target.

  PATHFINDERS

  On April 15, Twining split his force—ordinarily a tactical sin—but he had a reason. The bombers conducted simultaneous attacks on Bucharest and Ploesti, the Fortresses of the Fifth Wing dropping visually because of the sparse smoke screen. With a P-38 escort, the B-17s got off lightly, losing only three planes when the defenders’ 169 fighters had to cover two targets. Protecting the B-24 task force, First and Fourteenth Group Lightnings claimed eight kills near Bucharest.

  On this mission, the 450th Group Cottontails introduced pathfinders to the Fifteenth Air Force. Pathfinders were radar-equipped lead bombers that put a group formation on target when visibility was reduced. The Eighth had used pathfinders in the summer of 1943.

  British “boffins” had produced the H2S radar that presented a crude terrain map on a scope, actually a cathode ray tube much like a television screen. Reportedly the alpha-numeric designation was based on a pun by Churchill’s science advisor, Professor Frederick Lindemann, product of a German father and American mother, who insisted “it was stinking that it had not been invented sooner.” H2S is said to refer to hydrogen sulfide (H2S), which smelled like rotten eggs.11

  As they often did in wartime, the Americans took a British invention and ran with it. MIT’s radiation laboratory began hand-building early sets while Philco was contracted to produce thousands more, operating on a shorter wavelength that yielded superior resolution of surface features. Designated H2X, the American product went operational in late 1943 but did not reach the Fifteenth until the following spring.

  The basic technology of airborne radar was four years old and shrouded in secrecy. Twining’s electronics warriors dubbed the set “Mickey,” after Mickey Mouse, but it was neither small nor cute like the Disney rodent. An H2X weighed three hundred pounds and contained eighty vacuum tubes. It was mounted in a fuselage receptacle that replaced a B-24’s belly turret and was operated by one highly trained technician who displaced the turret gunner and the usual bombardier. The image projected to the radar bombardier afforded exceptional accuracy through weather or darkness.

  A Cottontail flier who participated in the pathfinder debut on April 15 recalled,

  On this mission to Bucharest the 720th Squadron led the 450th Group, which in turn led the 47th Wing. . . . Cloud over Yugoslavia was fairly dense and worsened as the formation neared the IP.

  By the time they reached the target, the cloud cover had increased to between 8/10 and 10/10. At 1210 the 450th dropped its deadly cargo through the solid cloud cover. Two minutes later the 449th Bomb Group, also guided by pathfinders, dropped its bombs. Flak over the target was heavy [caliber], light [intensity], and inaccurate, and was not encountered until after the bomb run. Clouds prevented any assessment, but as [Sergeant Maurice] Gilliam recorded in his diary, “The Pathfinder found the way to the target.” Later reconnaissance showed that the mission was a success with heavy hits in the southwest corner of the city.12

  Mickey had proved itself, but it was no panacea. If the radar bombardier made a routine error or misread the image, or if the set malfunctioned, the entire formation missed the target.

  Weather prompted a recall on April 21, but few formation leaders heard the message, so most groups proceeded independently. Though the bombers were late, Major James G. Thorsen’s Mustangs galloped into “a hell of a fight that erupted over the target and all around it.” The Thirty-firsters described their foes as “full of hate and destruction” while fighting “ferociously and heroically.” Though outnumbered, the P-51s trampled elements of three Romanian fighter groups, killing ten pilots and destroying fourteen aircraft while losing three Mustangs. It was a serious setback to the vân tori (aerial hunters) from a force of thirty 109s and seventy homegrown IARs.13

  Across the border, the Royal Hungarian Air Force suddenly faced the necessity of home defense. Though well blooded in Russia, the Magyar aviators first clashed with the Fifteenth in April, adjusting to the vast difference between the Soviet and the American air forces. After a few initial combats, Budapest recognized the need for a dedicated air defense unit and in May established 101 “Puma” Fighter Group as the basis of a wing. The group commander was a veteran, forty-year-old major Aladar Heppes, commanding three squadrons of Bf 109Gs. “The Old Puma” began leading interceptions in late May, adding to his tally of Russian kills. Group headquarters was established at Veszprem-Jutas near Lake Balaton, southwest of Budapest. The white-crossed Messerschmitts would be drawn into more and more missions against the Fifteenth Air Force.

  On the third Ploesti mission, April 24, the Fifth and Forty-seventh Wings dispatched 290 bombers, which inflicted worthwhile damage on Astra Romana and Concordia Vega, despite the official emphasis on transport. Astra was especially hard hit, with 134 bombs (six duds) inflicting “very severe damage” to coolers, furnace, and pumps.14

  Postwar evaluation showed that some portions of Concordia were permanently disabled at a cost of eight planes. Flak was “intense and accurate,” with the defenders employing both tracking and barrage fire. The gunners had their solutions dialed in: twenty-eight of the Second Group’s B-17s returned with flak damage.15

  April’s losses over all targets totaled 205 aircraft, including thirty-four fighters and recon planes, a 56-percent increase over February’s record of 131 with Big Week attrition. The defenses were getting tougher throughout the Fifteenth’s operating area.

  MAXIMUM EFFORT

  On May 5, Nathan Twining launched his first maximum effort against Ploesti: all five wings, totaling 485 bombers. They delivered 1,220 tons on the rail yards, sustaining the heaviest losses yet. The antiaircraft defenses had nearly doubled in a month, and eighteen American planes failed to return—a loss rate under 4 percent and therefore sustainable as the Fifteenth was nearing its peak strength.

  The 456th Group Liberators escaped interception until five minutes before bombs away. Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs attacked from “around the clock” but inflicted no serious damage. One flier recalled, “As usual for Ploesti, flak was heavy, intense, and accurate, and three planes were lost.”16

  The enemy met the May 5 mission with a new trick. The Luftwaffe flew “Thistle” aircraft—captured U.S. planes—near the bomber stream to report the raiders’ course, speed, and altitude. They usually vanished before anyone detected the deception.

  On the other hand, springtime brought some relief for the frozen fliers. At 20,300 feet the temperature was now a tolerable eighteen degrees below zero centigrade, or zero Fahrenheit. “It was getting warmer. Aircrews could feel the difference and welcomed it.”17

  LAST RAIL TARGETS

  The 304th Wing logged the last Ploesti mission against marshalling yards on May 6. Though still officially targeting transportation, the intelligence annex to the field order said the mission “continues systematic destruction of oil refinery capacity and rail transport facilities in Romania.” Again the smoke screen was ineffective, while the wing lost six of 135 aircraft.18

  The six missions officially flown under the transport plan were rated a partial success. Ploesti dispatched half a million tons less oil than when the bombing began, but it remained a valuable resource for the Axis. With reduced rail capability, more of its oil was pumped to stations on the Danube, where barges assumed a greater share of the load. The British countered with a mining campaign whose success demonstrated the effectiveness of aerial mines a year before B-
29s launched Operation Strangle against Japanese coastal waters.19

  Losses had remained well within limits: forty-eight of 1,320 effective bomber sorties on the Ploesti “rail yard” targets.

  While continuing the Ploesti campaign, the Fifteenth struck other targets as well. On May 10 Wiener Neustadt, always a tough target, cost the AAF twenty-seven bombers. The 463rd Group was hardest hit, losing eight Fortresses. The group commander, Colonel Frank Kurtz, was a two-time Olympic diver who had taken a bronze at Los Angeles in 1932. In 1941–42 he became known as pilot of the B-17D, The Swoose, that evacuated personnel from the Philippines.20

  TARGET: REFINERIES

  On May 17, Eisenhower in London made destruction of the Luftwaffe the AAF’s priority. Knowing that the Germans could not defend every target, Spaatz and Eaker counted on the enemy’s protecting its fuel sources. On May 18, with permission to strike oil production, Twining sent 206 bombers from three wings, each targeting a specific refinery. More than half the force—111 Liberators of the 304th Wing—struck the Redeventa refinery with 270 tons of ordnance. But even with pathfinders and offset bombing techniques, the results were pitiful. The large Romana Americana facility east of town took only eight hits.21

  Experience gained in the first six attacks permitted the defenders to optimize their passive—and most effective—weapon. May 18 was the first time that Ploesti produced a fully effective smoke screen.

  MAKING SMOKE

  Romania had established a commander of Passive Defenses for Bucharest and Ploesti, armed with chlorosulfite acid generators to produce large smoke screens. Steel barrels each containing four hundred pounds of acid were connected to large canisters of high-pressure compressed air that expelled the acid into the atmosphere. When there was a verified report of inbound bombers, the Romanians started the generators forty to sixty minutes before expected target time. The smoke could linger for three hours or more, depending on local winds.

  At the end of the campaign, Ploesti deployed some 1,900 generators—twice as many as during Operation Tidal Wave a year before.

  The three wings attacking on May 18 (the Fifth, Fifty-fifth, and 304th) lost fourteen aircraft. A Fortress group, the 463rd, returned to Celone short five planes after a prolonged shootout with German and Romanian fighters. Among the Axis losses was a Romanian squadron commander, Captain Gheorghe Cristea, who had just scored his fourth shootdown. American fighters claimed fourteen Germans and Romanians, though four of the victims were misidentified as Italians.

  The Fifteenth recognized the growing effectiveness of Ploesti’s passive defenses and began considering countermeasures. Twining’s operations staff began evaluating blind bombing techniques, including radar-assisted bombing from pathfinder aircraft and “offset bombing,” in which targets were determined by their known bearing and distance from some identifiable point.

  In the run-up to D-Day, Spaatz had two hands to play. He sent the Eighth against refineries on May 28 and 29 while the Fifteenth returned to Ploesti on the thirty-first. Again Twining launched all five bomb wings, each to a particular refinery, with good results. Despite a thick smoke screen, some formations drew a deadly bead on their targets. Thanks in part to the sharp-eyed 451st Group bombardiers, the Forty-ninth Wing smothered Concordia Vega, northeast of the city, with 156 bombs, trashing the boiler house and halting production for two weeks.

  The Forty-seventh Wing crippled Romana Americana for a month while fires erupted in the little-struck Standard refinery.

  The 122 German and Romanian interceptors downed a dozen B-24s out of 481 bombers, and they took out four fighters, the heaviest loss since May 8. The yellow-tailed Mustangs of the Fifty-second Group accounted for fourteen of twenty-two fighter claims that day. Lieutenant Fred Ohr chased a Messerschmitt into the ground, his second notch en route to becoming the only American ace of Korean descent. The group lost two pilots, including one who apparently collided with a Focke-Wulf.

  The best bombing in May came from the Forty-seventh Wing, composed of the Ninety-eighth, 449th, and 450th Groups. The new wing commander, Colonel Hugo P. Rush, formerly the leader of the Ninety-eighth Group in North Africa, had the experience and organizational ability to produce results within three months of taking over at Manduria. His headquarters was perhaps the most picturesque in the Fifteenth—whitewashed buildings set among olive groves, with recreational outlets for basketball, volleyball, and horseshoes. But Rush paid close attention to business. In May his groups put as much as 52 percent of their ordnance within the desired thousand-foot circle of the aim point.

  Rush’s success was part technical, part psychological. Under the 376th Group’s former commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert H. Warren, the wing staff streamlined procedures for takeoff and rendezvous, producing tighter formations early in a mission profile. Smoky “sky markers” were loosed at the initial point prior to the final bomb run, giving trailing groups a better idea of their position.

  Rush also appealed to his airmen’s egos, as the group with the best recent bombing record was given the leading place in the wing. The unit with the poorest record, naturally, flew “tail end Charley” until it worked its way out of the cellar.22

  When the Fifteenth reached full strength that May (minus the allotted photo-recon group), it amounted to about half of Doolittle’s command in Britain. The Mighty Eighth numbered thirty-nine bomb groups and had just received its fifteenth and final fighter group. The last two B-24 groups went operational the next month. On D-Day the heavies favored B-17s with twenty-two groups, and four Liberator outfits converted to Fortresses that summer.

  When Carl Spaatz’s two segments of the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe were thus complete, mature, and ready to proceed with their assigned missions, an unlikely partner arrived.

  FRANTIC IN JUNE

  In a rare example of Soviet cooperation, Stalin consented in early 1944 to make Russian bases available to U.S. Army Air Force units to attack otherwise inaccessible industrial targets in eastern Europe. This “shuttle bombing” would permit eastbound missions to strike targets en route to Russia, land there, and hit other targets on the return flight. Stalin approved the plan in early February, setting off four months of preparations.

  The campaign was originally dubbed Operation Frantic Joe—and the preparations were indeed frantic. Perhaps to alleviate diplomatic concern about offending the Soviet ruler, the name was shortened to Operation Frantic. The primary aim was geopolitical, as President Roosevelt wanted to build a stronger relationship with Stalin and possibly pave the way to Siberian bases for missions against Japan. The European airmen’s agenda was necessarily narrower, but Spaatz and Eaker hoped to bomb industrial plants in Latvia and Poland beyond range of the Eighth and Fifteenth.

  The geopolitical maneuvering behind the shuttle missions tested the entente at every level. The Soviets wanted the operational benefits of heavy air attacks on targets beyond the Red Air Force’s range or capability, and AAF planners quickly recognized that Frantic would benefit the hosts far more than the visitors. The Soviets allowed only 1,200 American support personnel under Major General Robert L. Walsh of the U.S. Eastern Command.

  Considerable logistic effort was required to pre-position supplies and provide facilities for sustained operations. The Russian allies were unaccustomed to contact with the West, so the U.S. Air Transport Command had to fly in aircraft parts, ordnance, and accommodations from Iran. The Americans also had to deliver their own fuel, since the Red Air Force’s gasoline was a lower octane.

  The Soviets provided three Ukrainian airfields for the visitors: Poltava and Mirgorod for bombers and the shorter Pyriatin for fighters. Poltava lay nearly seven hundred miles northeast of Budapest and 1,185 miles from Foggia. All the Frantic bases lay along a northwest-southeast bearing within about a hundred miles of Poltava. The Americans had to rely on basic navigation, however. Their only homing beacon had a range of about fifteen miles—nearly useless in the vast Eurasian steppe.

  Unknown to
aircrews, four of the Fifth Bomb Wing’s six B-17 groups were selected for Frantic One: the Second, Ninety-seventh, Ninety-ninth, and 483rd. The 301st and 463rd would continue operations from Foggia. The 325th Fighter Group’s P-51s provided long-range escort.

  The first shuttle operation was a closely held secret, even from the airmen who would fly the missions. The briefing was sprung on aircrews between three days and two hours before takeoff. At the Ninety-ninth Group’s headquarters at Tortorella, Colonel Ford J. Lauer explained the grand strategy—to bomb distant synthetic oil plants in Poland—which failed to develop as planned, but Lauer shared another objective. He told his crews, “One hundred thirty million Americans will look upon you today, and you are their representatives in a land where you will be the first American combat men.”23

  The bombers took extra men to Russia: 325th Group crew chiefs and mechanics to tend the Checkertail Mustangs. Given the ten-day duration of the shuttle mission with three combat missions, maintenance would be necessary on many of the fighters.

  Frantic One launched the morning of June 2 with 130 B-17s shepherded by sixty-nine Mustangs bound for the rail yard at Debrecen, 120 miles east of Budapest. Eaker flew the outbound leg from Foggia, occupying the copilot’s seat in a Ninety-seventh Group B-17 named Yankee Doodle II. He had led the first Eighth Air Force heavy bombing mission in the group’s original Yankee Doodle in August 1942, before the unit went to the Mediterranean.

  With little opposition, the raiders could take their time over Debrecen. The Ninety-ninth preceded the Ninety-seventh, raising so much smoke and dust that the latter had to go around for a second pass before its bombardiers could drop. The results were excellent.