Forgotten Fifteenth

by Barrett Tillman

  Lightning pilots gawked at the unusual sight of Allied gliders in French pastures. One flier remarked, “They landed those things in spaces tighter than you could park an automobile.”33

  The Italian-based fighters logged thirty-nine missions that day, creating dawn-to-dark work for the maintenance crews, who always had their hands full with the big, complex Lightnings.

  There was almost no aerial opposition; the visiting P-38 pilots claimed only four shootdowns from Corsica. On D-Day the First Group bagged three Bf 109s near St. Tropez, two by Captain Thomas E. Maloney, who became the group’s leading scorer. Three days later the Fourteenth Group’s Colonel Daniel S. Campbell dropped a Junkers 88, the last claim by the two Lightning outfits. Later the army fliers learned that the navy’s carrier-based Hellcats did better, with eight victories.

  Despite air supremacy, losses occurred daily. The Fourteenth lost six planes in the first two days, mainly to small arms fire and light flak. But there were other casualties, and one in particular was a heartbreaker.

  On August 17, the Fourteenth’s “hack” aircraft—a stripped-down B-17F—was landing with a full load. The pilot, First Lieutenant William T. Starbuck, decided to abort the approach and shoved up the power to go around. Abruptly the Fortress’s nose pitched upward, perhaps because of shifting cargo that threw off the center of gravity. With the gut-wrenching feeling that accompanies the playing out of inevitable disaster, the GIs along the flight line watched helplessly as the planeload of comrades lived out their last few seconds of life.

  The Fortress did all that Boeing Airplane Company had built it to do. Engines screaming, props in low pitch, and with two doomed pilots pushing forward on the controls, the B-17 fought and lost a two-front battle as drag defeated thrust and gravity trumped lift. Nose up and quickly bleeding off airspeed, the bomber stalled and fell off to the right. It disintegrated on impact. Twelve of the fifteen men on board died instantly; another succumbed in the hospital. Two survived.

  German transport—especially locomotives, rail lines and bridges, and motor convoys—was now the main target. The ground forces tried to coordinate with the airmen, but coordination was not always possible. Sometimes the Americans advanced more swiftly than expected without informing the air force. One flight of P-38s sighted an armored column and rolled in to attack. Just before reaching firing range, a sharp-eyed pilot recognized the Sherman tank’s tall profile, in contrast to the sleeker, lower Panzer, and radioed, “My god, they’re ours!”34

  THE ORDEAL OF TOM MALONEY

  Lanky, affable Captain Tom Maloney was a twenty-one-year-old Oklahoman and the First Group’s leading ace. He ran his score to eight on D-Day, flying his sixty-fourth mission. Four days later, however, he began a grinding, grueling ordeal. Caught in a target explosion while attacking an airfield near Marseille, he turned for Corsica. Unable to reach the island base, he ditched his Lightning about five miles out to sea. As he recalled, “The flying characteristics of the P-38 were superb. It was gentle as a lamb . . . but I immediately discovered that it floats like a crowbar.”35

  The downed ace deployed his rubber raft and slowly drifted northward in the dark back to land. After coming ashore, Maloney began walking in the moonless night. Shortly he heard a click followed by an extremely loud explosion—he had stepped on a mine. Both of his feet were shattered, and he suffered compound fractures of both legs. Metal shards were driven into his legs and arms, leaving large wounds that became infected. His trousers and one shoe were blown off, and his face was lacerated and burned.

  Maloney lay semiconscious for three days, then spent five more reaching an estuary, where he built a crude raft. On the tenth day, August 29, local residents found him and placed him in a truck. The bouncing caused Maloney such excruciating pain that the patriotic French carried him to a paved road and summoned an ambulance.

  The pilot was taken to a nearby hospital, where he endured surgery without anesthesia to remove some of the metal splinters. He lapsed in and out of consciousness until the night of September 1, when he opened his eyes to a magnificent sight—an American medical officer, who gave him a sedative. Tom Maloney slept pain-free for the first time in nearly two weeks.

  Originally shipped to Tunisia, Maloney recuperated enough to be flown to Naples. Doctors there intended to amputate both of Maloney’s legs, but the airman sought the intervention of his CO, Colonel Robert Richard. Whatever Richard said, it worked: he saved the legs of his top shooter, who was walking again at war’s end. But Maloney was not fully rehabilitated until 1947.

  The two Lightning groups flew just over a thousand sorties from Corsica, losing two dozen P-38s and nearly as many pilots before the Germans were beaten down. Operational losses far outweighed combat attrition toward the end. The Foggia fliers began returning to Italy on the eighteenth. “Home today,” Bob Richard recorded in his diary, “—our combat losses were four men, two of which we know are all right, and nine airplanes. Two more were killed this morning forming up after takeoff. No excuse for these things.”36

  MORE OIL TARGETS

  With the Allies firmly ashore in southern France, the Fifteenth returned full time to the oil campaign. On August 22 more than 320 Liberators went to Vienna, 125 struck Blechhammer, and nearly 170 Fortresses attacked Odertal.

  The Luftwaffe was waiting.

  Like experienced big-game hunters, Gotthard Handrick’s southern watch controllers read the American spoor correctly. They called up nine fighter Gruppen—some 220 aircraft—and concentrated more than half on the Viermots. At selected places the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs were able to penetrate the escort and get among the bombers with telling results. Twenty-eight heavies were downed or scrapped (the heaviest toll since Vienna on June 26), including thirteen from the Blechhammer task force.

  Fifteenth fighters claimed fourteen of the twenty-one German and Hungarian losses. The accumulated casualties among Colonel Heppes’s “Puma” group now forced his remaining 109s out of combat for a month.

  A German enlisted pilot, Willi Reschke, recalled his unit’s attack:

  I was flying on the far left side of our own formation, and during the breakthrough to the bombers my wingman, Private Angermann, and I were engaged by P-51s. We had long since dropped our tanks, and at that altitude—above seven thousand meters—the Bf 109G-6 gave its best performance, equal to that of the P-51. We were held back only by our numerical inferiority. We worked hard to keep our Rotte [two planes] together. In such air battles—fighter against fighter—minutes seemed like hours, and instinctive reactions were required. We had learned to judge success by mere survival.37

  The bloodletting continued, but even in multi-use facilities, life was focused on local affairs. When the Second Group lost nine of twenty-eight planes on August 29 over Czechoslovakia—including an entire squadron—most of the Ninety-seventh Group across the field at Amendola was unaware of the disaster. Said one Ninety-seventh gunner, “Hell, I never heard a word about it until after the war.”38

  Despite unrelenting losses, there were some exceptional results. Bridges probably were the toughest targets in World War II; they were extremely narrow, affording almost no margin for error. Often they were attacked by fighter-bombers, which could dive to low level with greater accuracy than level bombers, but most targets worth bombing are worth defending, and losses rose proportionately.

  The best way to bomb a bridge was diagonally across its length, optimizing chances for a hit, whereas a perpendicular approach required saturation bombing. But on August 30 the Forty-seventh Wing obtained spectacular results against a rail bridge at Cuprija in central Yugoslavia. Three groups attacked the span with the 376th dropping one-tonners, putting 95 percent of the bombs within 1,000 feet of the target. The 98th and 449th employed thousand-pounders to complete the bridge’s destruction. The wing history concluded, “Bombardiers, who regard bridges as difficult and unsatisfactory targets, were very happy over the results.”39

  OPERATION REUNION

  Aug
ust ended on the best note possible when hundreds of Fifteenth airmen began returning from captivity in Romania. Some had been listed as missing in action. The senior American flier held in Romania was Lieutenant Colonel James A. Gunn III of the 454th Bomb Group. His Liberator had been downed over Ploesti on August 17, and he was sent to the Allied officers’ compound in Bucharest. Though the prisoners were not generally mistreated, they described conditions as “appalling.”40 When Romania changed sides on August 23, most of the guards fled in terror before the advancing Russians. The Luftwaffe, upset by the abrupt reversal of alliance, began bombing Bucharest. Gunn eventually made contact with Romanian officers with enough initiative and authority to organize the repatriation of American fliers to Italy—and to request the Fifteenth to attack the proximate German airfields.

  Among the Romanians was a fabulous character, thirty-eight-year-old Captain Constantin Cantacuzino, commanding the Ninth Fighter Group. Born a prince and favored with movie-idol looks and a magnetic personality, “Bâzu” was one of those rare men who excel at everything. He had led the Romanian hockey team, set an automobile speed record from Bucharest to Paris, and won the national aerobatic championship. An international sportsman, he considered aerial combat the ultimate competition. Since 1941 he had downed nearly forty Soviet and American aircraft.

  One of Europe’s finest fliers, Cantacuzino also cut a wide swath on the ground. He adored women (he was reportedly married four times) and, according to a colleague, had his pick “from countesses to cooks.”41

  Lacking direct communication with Twining’s command, Cantacuzino conceived an innovative approach. He suggested that Gunn cram himself into the fuselage of the prince’s 109 for the flight to Italy. After discussing the plan—Cantacuzino was multilingual—Gunn consented.

  On the afternoon of August 27 Bâzu Cantacuzino throttled his Messerschmitt southwestwerly, his passenger unable to bail out in event of trouble. The Romanian navigated with a hand-drawn map that Gunn provided, aiming for landfall near Foggia. The 109 was adorned with a hand-painted American flag lest Fifteenth fighters draw the wrong conclusion.

  The two fliers made it. Upon landing, the curious pair was driven to Bari, where planning for an airlift began immediately. “Operation Gunn” began five days later.

  The Americans knew little of some airfields around Bucharest, however, and required Cantacuzino’s assistance. He was willing to lead the first rescue mission, but needed an airplane. While visiting the Thirty-first Group’s base at San Severo, he allowed a P-51 pilot to fly his Messerschmitt, with unhappy results. Requiring a replacement, he was offered a Mustang. After a brief cockpit checkout he took off and put on an eye-watering aerobatic demonstration. Said one admiring Thirty-firster, “He landed the Mustang as if he had flown it all his life.”42

  Escorted by Lieutenant Colonel William A. Daniel and a wingman, Cantacuzino (U.S. call sign “Funnel”) flew to Popesti to arrange for the airlift. It did not take long. While the Americans circled overhead, Cantacuzino worked his princely magic, then fired two yellow flares indicating all was well. The two airborne pilots then raced home with the word: Operation Gunn—renamed Reunion—was on.

  Fortresses of the Second and Ninety-seventh Groups were modified to carry twenty returnees in good health or ten patients on litters. From August 31 to September 3, the Fifth Wing shuttled B-17s between Foggia and Bucharest, returning with more than a thousand Allied airmen. Each airlift was escorted by fighters in case the Luftwaffe tried to intervene, but no hostiles appeared.

  The process went with barely a hitch: 1,166 freed POWs returned to American control, nearly all Fifteenth men. Returnees included 235 from the Forty-seventh Wing, more than any other.43

  A B-17 pilot, Captain Charles E. Crafton, recalled the excited spectacle at Popesti:

  While we circled the field, we could see a line of men formed on the ground in groups of about twenty. . . . We taxied up to the men and they began waving and shouting in their joy to see us.

  The crewmen, some held prisoner for over a year, were dressed in motley uniforms of all descriptions. Some sported German helmets, German and Romanian uniforms, long and wicked looking knives, fancy belts, scarfs, colorful pants and shirts. Some had long beards but apparently all were in good health. One sergeant . . . lugged a complete German machine gun and another was carrying two unopened boxes of German hand grenades.

  Romanian cigarettes, which they had purchased in prison camp canteens, were thrown to the ground or given to curious soldiers, and cases of American cigarettes were opened and eagerly smoked. Twenty airmen were loaded in each B-17 and started to taxi again, being on the ground for eighteen minutes.44

  While raucously gleeful reunions were held on bases around Foggia, the Mediterranean air war entered a new phase.

  CHAPTER SIX

  OTHER PLAYERS

  1944–1945

  Weather scouts, Photo Joes, Droop Snoots, Yugos, and Carpetbaggers—there was far more to the Fifteenth Air Force than bombers and fighters, and seventy years later most of the other players remain largely unknown. Yet they all had their own intriguing stories to tell.

  SCOUTING THE WEATHER

  The Fifteenth’s chief adversary was not the Luftwaffe or any of the other five Axis air forces. It was the weather. And the battle was continuous, often waged at altitudes previously considered unrealistic for military aircraft. Weather was the crucial element with which air operations constantly had to contend, even in “sunny Italy.”

  Especially in sunny Italy, as it turned out. Contrary to expectations, the Mediterranean weather proved worse than that of cold, rainy, fogbound northern Europe for the duration of the Fifteenth’s operations.

  Jimmy Doolittle recognized the problem as soon as he established his command in November 1943. A few days later he formed the Fifteenth Air Force Weather Detachment under Captain Eugene E. Churchill, which reported to headquarters’ meteorological officer for coordination with bombing mission planning.

  Churchill had five combat-tested P-38 pilots supported by twenty-two experienced Lightning mechanics. Their goal was to improve upon the method of scouting the weather employed since early 1943—usually an impromptu affair, with individual bomb groups sending out reconnaissance planes ahead of the formation. It was an inefficient process, as a mission still could be aborted on the basis of en-route reports.

  Churchill explained the new method: “Instead of sending a hundred bombers on a flight that might be wasted, a fast fighter plane is first sent over the target to take a look at the weather and report back. There was nothing wrong with the idea itself but it took months of experimenting before it really paid off.”1

  The fliers knew that Allied “weather guessers” were not to blame for the typically inaccurate assessments. Their information ended when their scouts reached hostile airspace, sometimes still hundreds of miles from the target. Sending advance scouts made sense, but communications problems, changing weather, and limited assets conspired to thwart many missions. As Churchill said, “The freakish movement of air masses across the Alps frequently resulted in a complete about-face in the weather within an hour or two.”2

  The specialists flying P-38s proved their worth almost immediately. Mission aborts were reduced within a week of the weather detachment’s organization on November 3. By the end of February 1944 Churchill’s men were credited with saving fifteen missions that likely would have been scrubbed or recalled.

  On February 13, First Lieutenant Walter Pittman took off from Bari’s rutted airfield, launching the first Fifteenth Air Force mission to Rome. He returned three hours later. No bombing was attempted that day, but the concept was proved: the weather detachment could be relied upon.

  Meanwhile, the Fifteenth was growing. Jimmy Doolittle had departed in January, and Nate Twining saw the need for more weather reconnaissance. Since November the force had grown from five bomb groups to nine, with more inbound. That meant multiple missions requiring more weather information.

 
Help was on the way.

  Originally an Arkansas National Guard unit, the 154th Reconnaissance Squadron had entered combat in North Africa in January 1943, mainly flying P-39 Airacobras. Along the way it became the first American unit to fly the Allison-engined P-51 Mustang in combat. Finally the squadron fetched up in Algeria, embarking for Italy in January 1944.

  Upon arrival at Naples in early February, Major Joseph Whitwell’s squadron learned that it would join the Fifteenth Air Force. The newcomers settled into Bari, where they remained for the rest of the European war.

  Pilots appreciated the new P-38s, and were briefed on their upcoming missions. Sorties would last three to four hours, mostly above twenty thousand feet. Pilots and ground crews could expect 6:00 a.m. takeoffs to provide pre-bombing coverage of targets in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Greece. Later Romania was added.

  Whatever the geography, the weather was constant. A P-38 pilot recalled, “Over Europe at 25,000 feet and above, my outside air temperature gauge read minus 35 centigrade (-31° Fahrenheit). My intake air temp going into the carburetors read minus 20 degrees (-4° F) and lower. The cockpit temp gauge read minus 10 degrees (+14° F) because it couldn’t go any lower. We had people wearing three pairs of gloves who returned with frostbite. Our turbo coolers had three quarters of the intakes blocked off and our carburetor temps were still far below zero.”3

  Like every other aspect of air warfare, weather scouting evolved technically and operationally. From straightforward missions simply reporting visibility and winds at the target, the 154th developed more sophisticated procedures, working closely with its “clients,” the heavy bombers. The scouts would lead bombers by thirty minutes (up to seventy-five miles), providing updated info on weather conditions approaching and over the target.