Forgotten Fifteenth

by Barrett Tillman

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AIR SUPREMACY

  SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 1944

  Axis power withered in the Balkan heat that summer of 1944. Romania capitulated in August, Bulgaria in September. Internally fragmented, Slovakia was largely occupied by German forces in September. Only Hungary remained allied with Germany until the following spring.

  As summer waned, morale rose in the Fifteenth Air Force, especially with the retrieval of lost friends. In mid-September the Forty-seventh Bomb Wing launched Operation Freedom, the return of some combat crewmen from captivity in Bulgaria.

  Though a member of the Axis, Bulgaria had maintained relations with Moscow. The Soviet conquest of Romania, however, placed Russian troops on the Bulgarian border, and Stalin declared war on September 5. Unable to oppose the Red Army, Sofia forsook the Axis three days later in favor of an alliance with Moscow.

  There was little understanding in the West of Bulgarian sympathy for Russia. Within living memory—the late 1870s—czarist armies had driven Ottoman occupiers from Bulgaria, freeing the nation after 475 years of Turkish rule, setting the stage for full independence in 1908.

  When the Russians overran Bulgaria that summer, the Fifteenth Air Force immediately laid plans to retrieve some three hundred men from captivity. It was a smaller operation than the rescue of Allied personnel from Romania but still required logistical support. Planning for Operation Freedom was conducted at Bari, mainly under Colonel Reuben Kyle, the Forty-seventh Wing chief of staff.

  Despite the distances involved, Kyle accepted British assistance in Africa. His planners organized an interim airlift to Egypt before returning the former prisoners to Italy. On September 15 Kyle led six B-24s from each of the wing’s four groups to Cairo. He took along seven correspondents and photographers to cover what promised to be an emotional event.

  In Cairo the liberated men were processed for return to Italy. They were deloused, issued fresh clothing, and received medical exams. The wing historians recorded, “The best food was spread out for them, but all of these failed entirely to eliminate from their faces telltale lines of suffering and long imprisonment.”

  After two days in Egypt, the evacuees traveled by ambulance to the flight line, where they climbed aboard the Liberators. Observers noted an aura of solemnity rather than joy. “Though they were going home, it was hard for these men to forget the mistreatment, the illness and the unmentionable filth of their prison camps in Bulgaria. Some were too sick to be moved; others were placed aboard on litters and others hobbled.”1

  Landing in Italy, the survivors gaped at their reception: Lieutenant General Twining and wing commander Brigadier General Hugo Rush amid photographers, reporters, bands, and Red Cross personnel, along with hundreds of AAF well wishers. “Repatriation of these prisoners was considered a personal triumph by the Forty-seventh Wing,” said the history. “Their incessant bombing which paved the way for the Russian victory was rewarded with the rich prize of seeing some of their old buddies again, safe and on their way home to civilization.”2

  With Romania in Russian hands and the Ploesti campaign at an end, most of the Luftwaffe was removed. After June, only two groups of JG 77 remained in Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean, and one group of JG 53 remained in Hungary. Hungarian fighters and Fascist Italy’s remaining units augmented the Luftwaffe but not enough to affect the Fifteenth. The attrition charts at Bari reflected the reduced fighter opposition. From 171 aircraft lost to enemy action in August (the fourth-highest monthly total of the war), the Fifteenth’s known combat losses dropped to sixty-eight in September. Bomber losses to Axis fighters almost disappeared, dropping from ninety-one in August to seven in September. The near absence of aerial combat meant that Twining’s airmen mainly faced antiaircraft fire, everything from 20mm automatic weapons up to 105mm artillery. In the last four months of 1944, the Fifteenth lost twenty-one bombers and fighters to enemy aircraft but 339 to antiaircraft guns.3

  As the Germans withdrew from the Balkans, Allied airpower concentrated on communications targets in order to impede the retreat. On September 2 the Fifteenth lost ten fighters over Yugoslavia, including seven Lightnings from the First and Fourteenth Groups. It was the third-highest one-day toll of fighters during the war—all lost to ground fire.

  The First Group lost two pilots near Belgrade, but Lieutenant Arthur Hoodecheck evaded. The Fourteenth lost two, including Lieutenant William T. Church, flying his seventy-fourth mission. The squadron diarist commented, “Fine fellow. We are down to nine P-38Js now.”4

  The reason for the shortage was ordinary attrition and aircraft stranded after the shuttle missions. Pilots were flown to Russia to fetch the Lightnings back to Triolo, while other fliers were ferried to Britain to obtain replacement aircraft.

  The Thirty-firsters launched a devastating attack on rail, road, and river traffic on September 2. They began with all three squadrons sweeping in line abreast—a wall of noise blending the authoritative moan of Merlins under high power with perhaps eighty machine guns per squadron pounding half-inch bullets into Axis steel. The group left three P-51s behind after busting thirty locomotives, two dozen trucks, and assorted transport, including barges. The Mustang jockeys also downed an unfortunate pair of Junkers transport planes that crossed their path.

  Many fighter pilots relished “loco busting,” as nearly all European locomotives were steam-driven until the 1950s. The explosive effects of .50 caliber on steam engines were far more satisfying to pilots than catching a rare diesel train “that just sort of died on the track.”5

  Meanwhile the bomber war progressed, with occasional diversions courtesy of the enemy. Before an early September mission, fliers at Celone Airfield were enjoying “Axis Sally,” the turncoat American broadcaster from Maine. Mildred Gillars had come to Germany in 1934 seeking career opportunities in broadcasting or music and decided to stay with her fiancé when the war began. While covering the 1936 Berlin Olympics she had met Frank A. Kurtz, an American who had won an Olympic bronze in swimming in 1932. Now he was Colonel Kurtz, the stern and capable commander of the 463rd Bomb Group, which was the sixth and last B-17 unit to join the Fifteenth, beginning operations at the end of March.

  One of the group’s navigators was a twenty-year-old Minnesotan, Robert C. Clemens, who had arrived in Italy that June. Years later he recalled, “In early September I flew Fifth Wing lead with Colonel Kurtz. We listened to Sally’s broadcasts because she played the latest popular music of the era. That day she broadcast that the Germans knew where we were going to bomb (Budapest) and they would shoot down Frank Kurtz ‘and that young, pink-faced navigator from Minnesota.’”6

  On September 5 the group put twenty-eight B-17s over the target with poor results, but Sally’s threat proved hollow: all 463rd aircraft returned to base. It was one of Kurtz’s last missions, as he completed his tour a week later. In March 1945 he took command of Kirtland Air Base, a B-29 training facility near Albuquerque. It was a more important assignment than it appeared: Kirtland provided operational support for an undertaking called the Manhattan Project.7

  “BLACK HAMMER”

  After Ploesti dropped off the target list, Fifteenth bombers spread their ordnance across other petroleum facilities throughout the Reich. That fall a frequent destination was Blechhammer (which Allied fliers nicknamed “Black Hammer”—not a translation, as the name actually means “sheet metal hammer”), some 160 miles north-northeast of Vienna (in western Poland today). It was a long mission—1,260 miles round-trip from Foggia.

  Divided into two large compounds designated Blechhammer North and South, the complex reportedly had the potential to produce half a million tons of synthetic oil annually. It had first been struck in June, then with increasing frequency. Defended by one hundred or more heavy antiaircraft guns, Blechhammer began taking a steady toll of Fifteenth bombers.

  The Fifth Wing returned on September 13 while Liberators hammered other petro-targets, including Odertal and Auschwitz. Twenty-five bombers had b
een lost already at Blechhammer, including a dozen B-17s, so the Fortress crews knew what to expect.

  Nine heavies went down that Wednesday, the hardest hit group being the veteran Ninety-seventh, which lost five planes.

  Flying a nearly new B-17G was First Lieutenant Bruce D. Knoblock, a twenty-eight-year-old Wisconsin native. On the bomb run, navigator Lieutenant Leon Cooning, flying his twenty-fourth mission, exclaimed, “Look at that damned flak!” The sky was speckled with bursts—the proverbial get-out-and-walk-on-it variety.

  One of the waist gunners was Sergeant William N. Hess, a young Louisianan flying his eleventh mission (sixteenth credit) with the 340th Squadron. He had joined the crew at age eighteen and, because he looked even younger, he became known as “Junior.” On the Blechhammer mission he had just turned nineteen. He was unhappy that he had been issued a worn, dirty parachute pack because his regular chute was being repacked. Ordinarily he let his pack dangle by one snap from his harness but now he left the replacement on the floor, doubting that he would need it. An 88mm battery put a shell into the sweet spot, hitting one Fortress in the bomb bay. The squadron was carrying RDX bombs that day, a more volatile explosive than TNT. The flak shell detonated the ordnance in one of the three Flying Fortresses in Hess’s flight. The B-17 evaporated in the explosion and crippled two others in the formation.

  Later there was speculation that the group’s high squadron dropped bombs on the low squadron, but it is unlikely that the bombs would have fused in time to produce a huge explosion. Whatever the direct cause, two of the three planes in the flight were quickly lost, one with no survivors, the other with five.

  In the exposed left waist position, Bill Hess was knocked unconscious by the fragments and concussion. While struggling to keep the plane level, Knoblock called for an intercom check. One of the gunners said, “Junior’s dead, sir.”

  Knoblock turned easterly, hoping to reach Soviet forces in Romania. But after perhaps a hundred miles the crippled Boeing gave out. The pilot rang the bailout bell and the crew began abandoning ship. By then Hess had regained consciousness but he was still dazed. When he raised himself from the aluminum floor the steel plates fell from his shredded flak vest, and he noticed his helmet on the deck with a fist-sized dent. He picked up his dirty replacement chute, snapped it to his harness, and staggered to an exit. Followed by the copilot, he grasped his rip cord and leapt into space.

  Hess descended to earth southeast of Krakow, alighting in a small wooded area with deep ditches running throughout. They provided welcome cover, as he heard the buzzing whine of supersonic objects snapping overhead. Some German soldiers had seen his parachute and, with a rough idea of his location, began taking long-range pot shots. After all, ammunition was cheap and plentiful, and diversions few.

  The Louisiana teenager ducked and dodged through the trees, making good progress away from the threat. Then, in reduced visibility, he walked into three men wearing gray. They wore coalscuttle helmets and carried Mauser rifles. Bill Hess was a prisoner.

  Two of Knoblock’s crewmembers evaded. The radioman, specially trained to monitor German frequencies, got away clean. The copilot, reportedly with only one mission behind him, had beginner’s luck. He fetched up with a heroic Polish family willing to conceal the American, but he got cabin fever. After three months he wandered into town and was scooped up.8

  END OF THE AMERICAN SUMMER

  1944 was the year of the “American summer” in Hungary, though the Fifteenth Air Force, flying from Foggia, was also known as “the Italians.” In September Twining’s bombers struck Budapest and related targets eight times, prompting the Hungarian Air Force to expand the Puma fighter group into a wing totaling six squadrons. Hungary’s limited assets were focused eastward against the Soviets, however, and Magyar Messerschmitts engaged American aircraft only five times from September through early November.

  The Hungarians benefited from radar warning of U.S. formations coming from Italy and did not take off until the attackers crossed the Yugoslavian border. Climbing away from the raiders to gain precious height, the Messerschmitts relied on ground controllers to vector them onto the “Italians.” A Bf 109 pilot, Lieutenant Mihaly Karatsonyi, was credited with five American aircraft that summer, but he recalled, “I could see the handwriting on the wall and I knew we were going to lose the war when I watched helplessly as over 1,200 American bombers and fighters flew over Hungary. What were we to do with only forty of us in our tired old Me 109s? It was the beginning of the end for the Pumas during that dreadful summer of 1944.”9

  After Romania’s capitulation most of Twining’s Lightnings flew dive-bombing and strafing missions, but the Hungarians remained wary. “The P-38s were well respected by us because of its tremendous combination of four .50 caliber machine guns and one 20mm cannon in its nose,” Karatsonyi explained. “We adopted a hit-and-run tactic with the Lightnings because if you stuck around and tried to fight them, you might end up outmaneuvering two or three, but there were always a dozen more lurking in the shadows, waiting to latch onto your tail.”10

  On October 12, in dogfights around Lake Balaton, the Red Tails’ 302nd Squadron claimed nine kills, three by First Lieutenant Lee Archer, while the 52nd and 325th Groups downed nine more. The Checkertails and Red Tails each lost a P-51, both credited to Hungarians. Thereafter Fifteenth aircrews rarely saw a white-crossed Messerschmitt, as Balkan aerial combat diminished to almost zero.

  OCTOBER FLAK

  On October 13 the Fifteenth put up two aerial task forces: 620 Liberators to Vienna and 250 Fortresses against Blechhammer, screened by a total of some four hundred fighters. The Americans lost thirty-two planes, including six fighters shooting up railroads. All the losses were attributable to flak or ground fire, as only a handful of FW 190s engaged, and they never bothered the bombers. It was Twining’s biggest loss since Vienna in late June, and rarely again did the opposition down twenty planes in a day.

  As Axis fortunes waned that fall, the Germans withdrew additional forces from the farther reaches of their empire. The situation cut both ways for Allied airmen—they enjoyed greater latitude on the peripheries but faced more concentrated air defenses in the Reich itself, especially antiaircraft fire.

  One of the legendary weapons of the Second World War was Germany’s fabled 88mm antiaircraft gun, which doubled as a fearsome tank killer. “Flak” was Teutonic shorthand for Flugzeugabwehrkanone. In its most common form, the Flak 36/37 (first deployed in 1936 and 1937) fired a twenty-pound shell as high as thirty-five thousand feet. Its bursting radius of thirty feet could kill or cripple a four-engine aircraft. The improved Flak 41, appearing in 1943, was produced in modest numbers (556 versus 20,754 for the Flak 18/36/37) and used only in Germany.

  Deployed in four-gun batteries, the 88s fired “pattern barrages” of rectangular boxes into the path of a bomber formation. With one of the guns tracking the targets by optical predictor or by radar, the others easily duplicated the readout on each mount. The aiming problem was solved by an exercise in spatial geometry based on known values: target height and speed, initial velocity of the shell (2,700 to 3,000 feet per second), and time of flight to the desired altitude. After that, the exercise evolved from marksmanship to probability theory.

  The gun’s design was optimized for a high rate of fire: upon discharge the recoil stroke automatically opened the breech, ejected the empty casing, and cocked the gun. The loader dropped the next round into the loading tray, slammed the breech shut, and stood ready for the next round. The assistant loaders kept a conga line of grunting, sweating soldiers passing the ammunition, if not quite praising the Lord like their storied Allied counterparts.

  A well-drilled gun crew of ten to twelve could sustain fifteen rounds per minute—one shell every four seconds. Expert crews approached twenty rounds in sixty seconds. It took anywhere from four thousand to nearly twenty thousand shells to down a bomber. Fortunately for Allied airmen, the Germans never perfected proximity fuses, which detonated a shell when
the miniature transmitter sensed a target. Otherwise, kill ratios would have improved even more.11

  The other heavy antiaircraft weapons were the 105mm Flak 38/39 and 128mm Flak 40, together accounting for some 5,300 tubes between 1939 and 1945. The latter were especially effective, rated at three thousand rounds per bomber kill, as opposed to about fifteen thousand for 88s.12

  Axis fighters posed the greatest threat to the Fifteenth during its first eight months. But from June 1944 onward, flak took an increasing toll: throughout the year the Fifteenth Air Force attributed nearly seven hundred bomber losses to enemy fighters and 950 to AA guns.13

  The Germans’ success in downing Allied bombers, however, came at immense cost. That summer the Luftwaffe flak arm deployed 662,000 troops and nearly half a million auxiliaries, including old men, boys, women, and even fifty thousand Russian POWs—in all, more than one-third of the Luftwaffe’s 2,890,000 personnel.14

  The bombing campaign received most of the attention, but other Mediterranean operations continued apace, including the little known Operation Manna. From October 14 to 16, the Eighty-second Fighter Group escorted six British missions against Megara Airdrome, west of Athens. It was a truly joint operation, conducted by the RAF Balkan Air Force and Twelfth Air Force troop carriers, with Fifteenth Air Force fighters.

  On the sixteenth a low ceiling forced the C-47s towing Waco gliders to fly below two thousand feet, affording the P-38 pilots a close-up view of a rare sight. But there was an exception. Lieutenant Roy Norris’s lucky number was eighty-two: he had been a glider infantryman in the Eighty-second Airborne Division before going to flight training and on to the Eighty-second Fighter Group. He recalled,