‘Göring makes a most peculiar impression,’ Knoke scribbled in his diary later, with his fancy grey uniform, plentiful gold braid and bulging legs sticking out of scarlet doeskin boots.14 ‘The bloated puffy face makes him look to me like a sick man,’ Knoke added. ‘Close up, I am forced to the conclusion that he uses cosmetics.’ On the other hand, he was cordial and seemed genuinely interested in what Knoke and his fellows had to say.
After the presentation of the medals, Göring then made a speech, talking openly about the difficulties that now faced them. They should, he told them, use the RAF’s defence of Britain back in 1940 as an example of courage and determination. Knoke did not disagree, but he was left with a clear feeling that the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe had very little idea or understanding of what they now faced when engaging American bombers and fighters. ‘The inescapable fact,’ noted Knoke, echoing Wim Johnen’s views, ‘is that on the technical side our performance is inferior in every respect.’15 As far as Knoke was concerned, the early victories of the war had led to the Luftwaffe leadership becoming complacent and resting on their laurels, and he blamed them for the chronic shortages of decent planes and pilots. What successes they continued to have were, Knoke thought, purely down to the excellent morale and fighting spirit of the aircrews. ‘We need more aircraft, better engines,’ he noted in his final lines for that day, ‘and fewer Headquarters.’16
In England, Ira Eaker’s demands for more men and more machines were being answered, but he was competing with a new strategic air force being established in Italy. Following the successful invasion of Sicily, the British had urged their American coalition partners to press on and invade Italy too. The Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, had been deposed and his replacement, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, had agreed an armistice, which had come into effect on 8 September 1943. The American chiefs were initially against invading Italy, which they saw as a further distraction and drain of resources from the main goal, the cross-Channel invasion in May 1944. However, both General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, and General Tooey Spaatz, now US Twelfth Air Force commander in North Africa, were big advocates of the initiative, as it would put other vital POINTBLANK targets within easier range. So too was Portal, and soon enough both General George Marshall, the US Chief of Staff, and Hap Arnold were persuaded by these arguments. Further boosting the strategy was the revelation, from decoded German signals, that Hitler intended to abandon Italy up to the Pisa–Rimini Line, some 150 miles north of Rome. What’s more, it was agreed that the build-up of strategic air forces would be given priority over ground forces.
British Eighth Army had invaded the southern tip of Sicily on 1 September, but the day after the armistice, 9 September, US General Mark Clark’s Anglo-American Fifth Army had landed at Salerno, to the south of Naples. Although the landing had been successful, the German commander, the Luftwaffe Feldmarschall Albert Kesselring, had defended so voraciously that Hitler had been persuaded to fight for every yard of that mountain- and river-covered peninsula. Then the weather swiftly turned, with persistent and heavy rain. Suddenly, instead of an easy victory and Rome captured by Christmas, the Allied forces faced a resource-sapping and soul-destroying slog up one of the most brutal places imaginable in which to fight. Nor were the ground forces helped by the priority being given to the build-up of air forces.
That, however, went largely according to plan, with the capture of the all-important Foggia airfields on 27 September. Roughly a third of the way up the leg of Italy, Foggia was one of the few flat areas in the country and its capture meant that, at the beginning of October, Arnold had been able to draw up plans and get approval for the creation of the Fifteenth Air Force, with the existing Twelfth Air Force becoming the tactical force to support the ground operations. Transferred to the new strategic air force would be the Twelfth’s six heavy-bomber groups, plus fifteen more from the United States. Unsurprisingly, Eaker had protested against such a move. From 15 October, he had become commander-in-chief of all US Army Air Forces in Britain – the equivalent of an army group commander – and was in charge of both the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces. The demands on him were enormous, the expectations incredibly high, and yet he was simply not getting the tools he needed. In a long memo to Arnold he pointed out that of the 113 key targets outlined by POINTBLANK, only 10 per cent were closer to Italy than England. He also argued that, while the weather was probably better in Italy – actually, it wasn’t – the weather over the target was what really mattered and aiming and navigation devices like H2X and Oboe were available only to crews operating from England. What’s more, facilities were better and more established in England and it was an easier place to maintain operationally. The defenders of the Reich, he pointed out, faced west, not south, and in order to beat them he needed the largest force possible. ‘It is axiomatic,’ he argued, ‘that our loss rate goes down as the force builds up.17 The movement of several groups out of the UK leaves a diminished force which must face the concentration of defenses in Western Europe. It can be expected, therefore that our losses will be heavier.’
These arguments fell on deaf ears and, valid though they were, there was no doubting that having strategic air forces operating from Italy put huge extra strain on the German defence of the Reich. The oilfields of Ploesti in Romania, for example, Germany’s one real source of that liquid gold, were in range only from the bombers in Italy. There was also a psychological benefit in attacking not only from the west but also from the south – a theatre about which Hitler had always been hugely paranoid and to which he attached enormous strategic significance. In any case, while weight of numbers was unquestionably important to the success of the Eighth’s bombing efforts, the rapid build-up of long-range P-51s was even more vital and none of those precious fighters was heading to the Fifteenth Air Force. Not in 1943 at any rate.
The Fifteenth had been formally activated on 1 November, but although heavies were now operating from the Foggia area and the build-up of supplies was continuing apace, the 2nd Bombardment Group was still based at Tunis in North Africa. Despite its number, the 2nd BG was actually the first US bomb group and had been formed in September 1918 in France as the 1st Day Bombardment Group. It had survived the cuts at the end of the First World War and been redesignated the 2nd in 1923. Although it had not been the first group to be sent across the Atlantic, it had been in action – first on anti-submarine watch – since America’s entry into the war. Stationed in North Africa since April, it had more than played its part in the final stages of the Tunisian campaign and subsequent invasion of Sicily and mainland Italy.
Only recently arrived, however, was Lieutenant T. Michael Sullivan, a replacement bombardier from Elgin, Illinois. Sullivan had joined the Army Air Force in April 1942, and, having completed his training, had finally been shipped overseas on 23 September 1943 in a large, 65-ship convoy to Casablanca, arriving after what had seemed like an interminably long voyage on 11 October. Just under a week later, he flew the final leg in a C-47 Dakota along with fourteen others plus baggage. A storm, however, brought them an early landing in Algiers. ‘Went to town, ate, I drank wine,’ he scribbled in his diary.18 ‘Just like the movies … Harbor littered with sunken ships. Town torn up a bit.’ The following day, he finally reached his allotted squadron, the 429th of the 2nd BG at Tunis. For a young man who had barely left the Midwest before joining up, it was quite an eye-opener: burned planes and tanks all over the place, tented accommodation and almost no facilities, and only two crews on base, as the rest were busy bombing Araxos aerodrome in Greece. This involved a three-day trip, staging at Foggia, bombing the target, remaining another night and then flying back to Tunis.
On 22 October, Sullivan had flown a practice mission over the islands of Pantelleria and Sicily, then the next day, Saturday, 23 October, he had joined Lieutenant John C. Goodfellow’s crew in Flying Fortress Wolf Pack and flown to a B-25 base at Grottaglie, near Taranto in the heel of southern Italy, each man
equipped with his flying kit, mess kit and a bed roll. ‘Ate a rotten supper,’ noted Sullivan.19 ‘Slept on marble floor in operations.’ At 5.30 a.m. they were woken and by 8 a.m. were airborne. The target was Wiener Neustadt, the site of seven Messerschmitt facilities in Austria, which, according to Allied intelligence, were now producing 20 per cent of all German single-engine fighters and 40 per cent of Me109s.
There were some two hundred bombers and fifty P-38 escorts for the mission, of which the 2nd BG was providing forty-two Fortresses. Unfortunately, a petrol-dump fire at Ponte Olivo airfield on Sicily prevented the thirteen B-17s staging there to take part, but despite this and despite thick ten-tenths cloud, the entire force managed to form up over Foggia and then head north towards Austria, although the four bomb groups involved struggled to keep in formation and soon became strung out. The bad weather, however, played into the Americans’ hands, as the Luftwaffe remained firmly on the ground; on the other hand, visibility over the target was almost non-existent and only a mere five bombers managed to drop their loads in the vicinity of the target. ‘Impossible to see target,’ noted Sullivan.20 ‘Washout mission.’ All that effort had been for nothing, but at least Sullivan had chalked up his first mission. Tours were of different lengths in the Mediterranean theatre – fifty missions rather than twenty-five. So only another forty-nine to go.
A few days later, on the 29th, Sullivan flew with a different crew to bomb a ball-bearing factory at Turin, but the Fortress developed engine trouble and so they were forced to turn back early. Then weather once again intervened. ‘Raid called off.21 Bad weather,’ he noted on 5 November. ‘Raid again called off, bad weather,’ he scribbled two days later. That same day he learned that his friend, Frank McGinley, had been killed on the group’s second attempt on Wiener Neustadt five days earlier. They had been in the same training crew together back in the States. ‘It cut me deeply,’ wrote Sullivan.22 ‘He was an old friend and a swell kid. I’ll pray for him.’ Two days after that, he and his crew suffered a flat tyre on their Fortress and so could not take off. Three days later, engine trouble kept him grounded again. Then, on Saturday, 13 November, he hitched a ride into Tunis in a ‘Limey truck’ which then crashed and rolled four times. Sullivan was lucky to get away with a bruised arm and sprained leg, but his pal ‘Mac’ McKew cut his head, which bled profusely. Next day, Sunday, was Sullivan’s twentieth birthday. ‘I’m out of my teens,’ he scribbled in his diary.23 ‘I feel as if someone beat me with a baseball bat. Can scarcely walk.’
Not until Monday, 22 November did he finally fly another mission – this time to bomb the naval base at Toulon – but once more bad weather intervened. Neither Sullivan nor the Fifteenth was having much luck. On paper, establishing the new strategic air force had seemed a sound idea. After all, Italy was a place of sunshine, azure skies and citrus groves, where the dense fog of England could never be found.
Except in the winter of 1943, when the cloud, rain and cold seemed to have descended over much of war-torn Europe. Nor was it about to change.
CHAPTER 10
New Arrivals
AIR MARSHAL SIR ARTHUR Harris had wanted to hit Berlin in August, immediately after Hamburg, but at that time he had been hamstrung: the capital of the Reich had been beyond the range of Oboe; he still did not have enough Lancasters for the job; and he had to contend with the vagaries of the weather. As if to prove the point, the three times he had sent his bombers there at the end of August and the beginning of September the raids had been marred by the limitations of H2S radar. By the middle of November, however, Harris had more aircraft – over eight hundred heavies most days – and a number of Pathfinder aircraft were now equipped with H2S Mk IIIs, as well as with a new Ground Position Indicator, making it possible to carry out accurate timed runs to the target even when flying through heavy flak. The time had come, Harris believed, for a sustained assault on Berlin. Other cities would continue to be hit, but the German capital was to be the focus and nearly all operations were now to take place deep inside the Reich. This would place an extra strain on the crews, but Harris believed that if these attacks were properly driven home, the sacrifices made by his bomber crews would save the lives of many, many more. Berlin, though, was further away than Hamburg, better defended, and its attack would not be catching the Luftwaffe off guard again. Nor were Hitler and the Nazi leadership conducting the war in a rational and logical way.
What Harris would call the Battle of Berlin began on the night of 18/19 November, although only 444 aircraft were sent to the city, while 395, mostly Halifaxes and Stirlings, were sent to Mannheim and Ludwigshafen. Among those leading the way were twenty-one Lancasters from the Pathfinders of 35 Squadron. The Pathfinder Force, of necessity, had among the best and most experienced navigators, as its task was to direct the rest of the bomber stream on to the target as accurately as possible. Flight Lieutenant Gordon Carter had been posted to 35 Squadron straight from training the previous October, when still only nineteen, but with consistently high marks at every step. His night vision had been ‘exceptional’; his navigational skills ‘Well above average’.1 He had also been praised for his maturity and singled out for a commission. ‘Calm and confident. Very mature for age. Intelligent. Deep thinker.’ He had also proved a brilliant navigator. ‘This man,’ wrote the examiner in his final navigation report, ‘knows his navigation and exploits it to the Nth degree.’
Carter had never really intended to join the RAF. The son of a New Zealander father and English mother, he had had a peripatetic upbringing, living in Paris until he was thirteen and then in New York. In the summer of 1939, with war looming, the family made trip to see Europe and England, after which Carter began his freshman year at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He spoke French fluently, though by this time he had become thoroughly Americanized; none the less, he felt fiercely British and patriotic, despite never having lived there, and as he completed his first year at Dartmouth he became increasingly concerned about Britain’s plight and certain that he needed to do something to help. To begin with, he thought about joining the navy, but then decided it would be better to get involved directly without actually having to kill people – a ‘mild sort of conscientious objection’.2 Getting passage to England proved next to impossible, but as his eighteenth birthday approached in the summer of 1941, he took himself to Montreal in Canada to try to join some non-combatant relief outfit.
He was turned down by a Canadian Scots field ambulance unit preparing to ship to the Far East for being too young – or so he was told – although extreme disappointment became relief some months later when Singapore was overrun by the Japanese. Instead, he turned to the RCAF, which he formally joined on 8 July 1942. Although quickly side-lined away from becoming a pilot, he swotted up his maths and made sure he applied himself to the considerable challenges of becoming a navigator. Immediately earmarked for the Pathfinder Force, in 1943 he was commissioned and a few weeks later finally headed back across the Atlantic and, eventually, to 35 Squadron at Graveley, near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire.
The PFF had been formed only a couple of months earlier, and Carter swiftly realized that, for all his high marks in training, navigation was both difficult and challenging, especially in a Pathfinder and supposedly leading the way. GEE, Oboe and the advent of H2S all helped, but navigating still involved a fair amount of dead-reckoning – or DR – which meant manually calculating courses and times on the strength of predicted winds. Weather forecasting was notoriously difficult and far too often the weather briefings proved inaccurate. Carter always had to make his own estimations of wind speed by repeatedly calculating drift and then making the appropriate adjustments. This was not necessarily easy, particularly once deep in Germany and beyond the range of GEE, which would otherwise help determine position by providing a ‘fix’, as it was known. Astro-navigation was used too, but relied on the pilot flying straight and level until stars could be lined up – which was fine over the North Sea, for example, but not such a good idea over
Germany. Multiple challenges remained, even by the autumn of 1943. ‘We were blinded by darkness and thick clouds,’ Carter noted, ‘which often used to shake us up quite badly and which were the cause, every so often, of very near misses, another aircraft suddenly flashing past or “sitting” on us, or just squeezing past beneath us.’3 Carter’s was a job of constant calculations and anxiety, of checking and double-checking his Dalton computer – a kind of slide-rule – as well as maintaining an event-by-event log throughout any trip. He kept his eye glued to his watch and desperately tried to keep his jottings and course markings neat and clear, despite operating in temperatures as low as –50°C at 20,000 feet and with flak bursting all around. The demands on pilots, bomb-aimers and navigators like Carter are barely comprehensible.
Carter joined Flying Officer Tommy Thomas’s crew at Graveley and soon began to rack up missions. On 13 February 1943, the target was the U-boat pens at Lorient in France. Carter found the Blavet river and led them directly to the target. No sooner had they released their target indicators, however, than they were hit by flak. In moments, fire was pouring from the port inner engine. Thomas dived to try to put it out, but to no avail, and soon after gave the order for them to bail out. Carter had snapped back his folding table and seat, clipped his parachute to his harness, pulled up the floor hatch and lowered himself so that his feet were dangling out. Immediately, one of his boots was whipped off in the slipstream. ‘Navigator bailing out!’4 he called, then remembered in the nick of time to pull off his flying helmet with its intercom and oxygen leads. Clutching the ripcord, his guts cramping with fear, he jumped into the void. After the worst anguish he had ever known, the parachute opened and he was jerked upwards before drifting gently down to the ground.
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