Forgotten Fifteenth

by Barrett Tillman

  Following a recommendation of the Joint Oil Targets Committee, the Fifteenth’s planners aimed for the maximum effect on gasoline production. They used their entire menu of bombing methods—visual, radar, and offset technique. Eighty-three bombs hit Astra Romana, including eleven that did not explode—an unusually high 13-percent failure rate. The damage was repaired in days, and the results were not worth the cost of nineteen bombers. The 304th Wing was especially hard hit, losing ten planes. Ploesti was taking a beating but still exacting a fearsome price.

  July ended with a Fifth Wing attack on Xenia in which two Fortresses out of 154 were lost. First Lieutenant James Jarmon of the 463rd Group witnessed one of the losses—a B-17 flight above and ahead of his squadron. A Fortress took a direct hit and exploded, dousing the airspace below with debris and burning fuel. “I had an airplane in the formation just above me blow up on the bomb run,” Jarmon remembered. “We flew through the burning gasoline and parts of that airplane. We had parts come through the nose.”19

  Bombing was disappointing with twenty hits on Concordia, now lying idle. But there was no doubt that the campaign would continue.

  July 1944 was the costliest month ever for the Fifteenth. It lost 333 aircraft, including sixty-eight fighters. The heavy toll followed the terrible June losses of 248 aircraft, eighty of them fighters. But with losses came some accomplishments. The Fifteenth had hammered Ploesti five times with erratic but increasingly effective results.

  Yet there was a downside for aircrews. Ploesti had carried double mission credit, but in late July, its fighter defenses greatly reduced, it slipped into the single-credit column. Twining declared that double credit would be limited from then on to missions north of forty-seven degrees north latitude, skirting Innsbruck and the far slope of the Alps. Bucharest, also once a hot spot, became a “single counter” sortie. A B-24 unit later recounted, “The absence of enemy fighters over the target did not lessen the displeasure of the combat crews for the single-sortie rule. This collective displeasure was perhaps best summed up by J. F. Scroggs’s crew during the post-mission debrief following the July 15 mission: ‘We invite the general to visit Ploesti on our next mission—single sortie! No flak vest will be issued.’”20

  FRANTIC FINALE

  The August all-fighter shuttle mission, from the fourth to sixth, was flown at the request of the Soviets with Mustangs of the Fifty-second Group and Lightnings of the Eighty-second. The objectives on the fourth were enemy airfields well northeast of Ploesti, a distance requiring the Americans to land in Soviet territory before returning.

  The Axis gunners seemed ready for the raiders, knocking down five P-38s and killing one pilot. The other four downed fighters included one flown by the Eighty-second’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Litton, who had survived the Christmas 1943 massacre. With both engines afire he bellied into the ground at high speed, and his wingman glumly reported that the plane exploded. Surely the colonel was dead. Incredibly, Litton survived with serious burns. He was treated in a Romanian hospital, where doctors wanted to amputate an arm. Litton refused, warning them that Bucharest was about to surrender and threatening to have them tried as war criminals and executed. He kept his arm and returned to Italy.

  Another pilot would have been captured but for the fortitude of a friend. Lieutenant Richard E. Wiltsie’s plane was badly hit pulling off the target, and he radioed his plight. Flight Officer Richard Andrews replied, “Pick a good field and I will come in after you.” As he headed to a likely field, Wiltsie took more hits, including a grazing wound to the head. Ignoring the blood on his face, he plunked his doomed fighter onto its belly and slid to a stop. As he jumped out, he tossed in a phosphorous grenade to destroy the aircraft.

  Wiltsie then watched in grateful wonder as Andrews landed across the furrows of the plowed field. A small dogfight erupted overhead, as 109s tried to strafe the would-be rescuer, but First Lieutenant Nate Pape dropped one and drove off another. Andrews set his parking brake, climbed out of the cockpit, shucked his parachute, and helped Wiltsie up on the wing. “You fly,” Andrews said. Wiltsie settled in, and the pair of airmen quickly found a way to fit into the one-seat cockpit: Andrews’s right leg over Wiltsie’s shoulder to clear the control column, and his left leg under the pilot’s arm. It was awkward, but it worked. Guided to the Russian base, the piggyback pair landed safely. Thus ended Dick Andrews’s tenth mission, which earned him a Silver Star. He was twenty years old.21

  A Mustang pilot received the Silver Star for a similarly spectacular rescue the next month. On September 1 the Fifty-second Group was strafing targets of opportunity in Hungary when First Lieutenant Charles Wilson’s plane was caught in the blast of an exploding locomotive. He made a forced landing but was picked up by Major Wyatt Exum, a Pacific veteran flying his first European mission. They managed the four hundred miles to Manduria, Wilson’s head exposed to the slipstream the entire way.

  Little aerial combat resulted from 275 sorties in the three Italian shuttles—about sixty shootdowns—and the strafing results appeared marginal for the effort. The point they were making was the long reach of American fighters: more than a thousand miles from Foggia to Pyriatyn in the Ukraine. No spot in the greater Reich was beyond the reach of Allied airpower.

  AUGUST OIL

  August began with attacks on more oil targets, mainly alternating between Ploesti and Blechhammer. On the seventh, some 350 heavies struck Blechhammer, B-17s bombing the North complex and Liberators the South. The mission cost eleven bombers, while the escorts claimed twenty-three Messerschmitts, including those encountered in attacks against Yugoslavian oil and transport.

  Blechhammer and other synthetic oil facilities became increasingly important in the strategic air war, and the Allies applied unrelenting pressure to any plants within range. But Romania still beckoned, and the Mediterranean air commanders, Eaker and Twining, doubled down on their efforts against Ploesti.

  Following hard on an RAF mission to Ploesti the night of August 9–10 (which lost eleven of sixty-one Wellingtons, Halifaxes, and Liberators), more than four hundred bombers from all five wings went for Romana Americana, Unirea, Xenia, Astra Romana, and Steaua Romana.

  The clever use of weather reconnaissance P-38s contributed to the success of the mission. Lightning pilots flying twenty minutes ahead of the bombers radioed reports back, allowing task force commanders to optimize their runs over a dispersing smoke screen. The scouts radioed updated information to each airborne wing commander who, armed with current intelligence, could select the best target for visual bombing. The plan worked. A thinned-out smoke screen permitted accurate bombing, and two inactive refineries—Steaua Romana and Romana Americana—were knocked out of business.

  The Forty-seventh took over half the seventeen losses, which were entirely from flak. In fact, only three of nearly fifty interceptors got within range of a bomber.

  The last three days of the campaign involved a huge effort: from August 17 to 19, six thousand quarter-ton bombs were dropped on five refineries either visually, by offset methods, or by radar-directed pathfinders.

  On the seventeenth, three wings put 245 Liberators over Romana Americana and Astra Romana. They scored several dozen hits on the latter refinery, inflicting serious damage to a reforming plant.

  Seventeen B-24s failed to return, however, including five from the 454th Group. Quentin R. Petersen, a bombardier flying his first mission with his own crew, was one of the survivors. He recalled,

  As we turned at the Initial Point (about a minute or two from the target), I found it ominous that the box-barrage I had come to expect on these raids was absent. I’m sure that Colonel [James A.] Gunn must also have recognized that the fighters assigned to precede us to the target and drop the chaff [a sort of Christmas-tree tinsel] used to screw up radar-aiming of antiaircraft guns, had missed the rendezvous. The AA gunners below were just tweaking their sights. But what could he do? What could anyone do?

  The next thing I knew we were hit by the fi
rst flak we saw that day. Two of our engines were destroyed. Pieces and crew of the five leading planes passed by our craft. Recognizing that some bombs had been hit, I let ours go in salvo. With our oxygen and hydraulic system shot out, we descended to a breathable altitude, assessed the damage, and started for home alone, having fallen far behind. . . .

  Petersen later learned that because attrition had left his plane in front, when he salvoed his load so did the others—an unwanted result of the “drop on lead” policy. The ball turret gunner opined that the 454th “really blasted hell out of a wooded area.” The crew bailed out over Greece, where Petersen sustained a dislocated hip. A German officer lent the American his cot for the night.22

  The British flew their fourth and last mission of the Ploesti campaign that night as No. 205 Group dropped ninety tons of bombs on the area.

  August 18 was the last large mission, sending the Fifth and Fifty-fifth Wings against Romana Americana, the Forty-seventh to Dacia, and the 304th to Steaua. The Americans dropped 825 tons on the three refineries, compounding the damage. The Forty-seventh lost five of the seven planes downed among 373 airborne.

  The next day, August 19, the Fifth Wing wrapped up the Ploesti campaign. In words of a later time, the mission’s intent was mainly to “bounce the rubble.” The intelligence annex stated, “Final attack to finish off Ploesti and keep the fires burning. . . . Fires still burning when Wellingtons arrived last night and they added more.”

  Twining’s operations staff did not think it would take much effort to finish off Ploesti. Of 854 available bombers, only 79 (9 percent) were allotted to the mission against Xenia, representing three of the Fifth Wing’s six B-17 groups.23

  Each Fortress carried eight five-hundred-pounders. The RDX explosive was fused for 0.1 seconds delay to optimize a ground burst. Xenia was the primary target and Dacia the first alternative, but the weather recon P-38s confirmed to the mission commander that visibility was good. Fourteen planes aborted or proved non-effective, leaving sixty-five to cross the target.

  No enemy fighters rose to challenge the B-17s, and for once the flak gunners were largely ineffective, possibly because of chaff dispensers among the fighters. The 463rd Group took the only casualties; Berlin Sleeper III was the group’s fourteenth loss of the campaign.24

  The last American bomber over Ploesti was Lieutenant Milford Phillips’s Ninety-seventh Group aircraft. With one engine shut down and two pulling reduced power, the plane limped off target, but the crew got home.25

  While the air campaign proceeded, the ground war broke wide open. On August 20, after increasing pressure, the Soviets smashed Romanian defenses in the northeast. The Russians’ 1.3 million men and massive artillery, backed up by powerful armor and air support, could not be stopped. In a few days they seized numerous cities along Romania’s eastern border, compelling an abrupt switch of allegiance in Bucharest. Twenty-three-year-old king Michael announced that he was deposing the dictator Ion Antonescu, declared war on Germany, and concluded an armistice with Moscow in mid-September.

  Meanwhile, the Soviets reached the Danube and secured the Black Sea port of Constanta. From there, little remained to impede their 125-mile advance on Bucharest and thence to Ploesti. Upon arrival, the Russians gaped at the burned, twisted metal at most of the refineries. The more astute among them realized they were viewing a power that Joseph Stalin envied but would never possess during the war.

  PLOESTI EXAMINED

  Shortly after Ploesti was secured, Eaker and Twining flew there for a first-hand look at their command’s handiwork. On-scene evaluation showed that the four-month blitz crippled more than half of the complex’s production capacity, and actual shipment was far less. The two generals were impressed with what they saw.

  Most refineries showed the same grim wreckage: battered, blasted, blackened buildings and conduits, warped steel, and eviscerated holding tanks. Despite the Romanians’ belated efforts, even blast walls erected around some tanks were leveled. It was a tribute to the persistence and ability of the Axis engineers and repair crews that Ploesti continued producing any oil at all. At the end, the amazingly resilient Astra Romana refinery was still producing more oil than most of the other facilities combined.

  Between March (before the bombing) and late August, Ploesti production had plummeted from 269,000 tons to 84,000. The cumulative four-and-a-half-month loss of 718,000 tons represented a 56-percent reduction of potential refining capacity. The Ploesti campaign reduced August output to 10 percent of its previous high, although, as will be seen later, not all of the reduction was due to bombing. (See Chapter Nine.)26

  The American airmen had reason for satisfaction in their work, but there was cause for concern as well. In most cases the bomber over a target scored barely one hit inside a refinery. Astra Romana, for example, the target of 437 sorties in three missions, was hit by 721 bombs, including duds. The Standard facility was attacked twice by a total of 144 bombers scoring 151 hits. Considering the typical bomb load of eight five-hundred-pounders, the Fifteenth scored roughly 12 percent against Ploesti, whose defenses—especially smoke—were highly effective.27

  At the same time, 225 of the 804 Fifteenth Air Force bombers lost over petroleum targets (including “rough ones” like Vienna, Budapest, Blechhammer, and Ruhland) went down over Ploesti. Vienna exacted a greater toll than Ploesti because the Romanian campaign barely lasted four months, but every airman in the Mediterranean Theater appreciated the importance of Ploesti. Of the men killed at Ploesti, Twining said, “They gave their blood for Hitler’s oil. They drove a hard bargain which will never be forgotten.”28

  D-DAY SOUTH

  Before its last Ploesti mission the Fifteenth had other work at a far more glamorous location—the French Riviera.

  Operation Anvil-Dragoon, the invasion of southern France on August 15, began nine weeks after Overlord in Normandy. The unavoidable reason for the delay was shipping. Even at the height of the Second World War, the Allies did not have enough sealift and amphibious craft to support two simultaneous landings in Europe. Nevertheless, the Mediterranean Theater commanders had considerable assets, including total control of the sea and outright air supremacy. The eleven understrength German divisions south of the Loire were supported by only two hundred aircraft. They faced an onslaught: the U.S. Sixth Army Group with 175,000 men, including French divisions, under General Jacob Devers.

  The pre-invasion strategy aimed at multiple objectives: neutralize the Luftwaffe; support the assault forces on D-Day and later; and prevent or limit enemy reinforcements. The Twelfth Air Force had added missions of dropping paratroopers and working with the French resistance, the Maquis.

  The Fifteenth attacked various targets in southern France in preparation for the landings, especially Marseille, Lyon, Grenoble, and Toulon. The Forty-seventh Wing, for example, pounded beaches and submarine pens along the Riviera, destroying six U-boats at their moorings.

  The French island of Corsica, only about 150 miles from the landing beaches of Toulon, was already an Allied base. By mid-August Corsica was bristling with Anglo-American airpower: 2,100 aircraft from the Twelfth, Fifteenth, and Royal Air Forces were crammed into fourteen bases. All had been constructed or modified by the exceptionally efficient army aviation engineers prior to mid-July, despite rain and perennial shipping shortages.29

  The Twelfth Air Force’s P-47s were already on Corsica, but Eaker wanted Fifteenth P-38s to augment the buildup there. The First and Fourteenth Groups therefore flew their Lightnings 350 miles to Aghione, a dusty, dirty airstrip on the east coast. The effort required to move and support a single P-38 group was impressive. Colonel Robert Richard’s First Group needed twenty-two C-47 transports laden with maintenance personnel, supplies, and spares to sustain sixty fighters for eight or ten days. His pilots settled into a ramshackle two-story building while the ground crews moved under canvas. The makeshift accommodations did not dampen Richard’s spirits: “This looks like the real beginning of the real end for that SOB H
itler. We are living in an old abandoned hotel that is a real swanky Sulfur Spa (long since abandoned.) I’m living in what must have been the bridal suite.”30

  Operating six squadrons from one runway in hilly terrain posed challenges. But Corsica’s hardscrabble turf offered no options, so the visiting airmen did what they could with what they had. To combat German twilight bombing raids, the P-38s began flying dusk patrols, which required night landings. On D-2, August 13, seventy-two planes tried to land after dark. Two pilots crashed in the brush, one without a scratch and the other suffering a broken jaw. Bob Richard reflected, “God was riding copilot a lot tonight.”31

  The pace of operations required continued nocturnal landings, and there were further complications. Leading a squadron one evening was Major James B. Morehead, a survivor of the brutal Pacific combat of 1942. His flight of four and another flight got down safely, but the third leader crashed on the only runway. With no other airstrips available for their gas-starved aircraft, Morehead recalled, “seven pilots [had] to bail out or force land in hilly, brushy country at night. P-38s were going down in all directions and there was nothing we could do about it since we had no heavy equipment to drag the crashed plane off the strip. Five P-38s and two pilots were lost. Miraculously, the others walked away.”32

  On “D-Day South,” Twining’s Foggia-area bomb groups carpeted the landing areas prior to the naval bombardment. The Allies’ low casualties on most of the beaches were partly attributed to Fifteenth bombing of German shore batteries.

  The airmen marveled at the amphibious spectacle arrayed below them. A particularly literary Mustang pilot escorting heavy bombers wrote, “I’ve never seen so many boats in all my life. The little ones left curving wakes as they darted around among the larger, slower vessels and made a picture of white crocheting on a polka-dot blue and black background.”