General Jimmy Doolittle was one of the most famous men in the United States Armed Forces and certainly one of the best regarded within the air force. Diminutive, balding, but with fiery dark eyes and a ready smile, he turned forty-seven on 14 December, having already had a long and highly distinguished career in aviation. Born in California, he had gone to university in Berkeley before enlisting in the Signal Corps Reserve as a flying cadet and was commissioned the following year. Kept in the States as an instructor rather than being sent to France, he later undertook a number of aeronautical engineering courses and became a famous aviation pioneer, carrying out a number of first-ever flights, including the first transcontinental flight in September 1922, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. But Doolittle was also increasingly interested in the technical side of aviation and completed a master’s thesis, drawing on his own practical experiments with aeronautical acceleration, and then went on to gain a doctorate, the first ever awarded for aeronautical engineering. Using his knowledge and skill to good effect, he then became a test pilot and a high-speed pioneer, winning the world-renowned Schneider Cup air speed race for the United States in 1925.
However, possibly Doolittle’s most important contribution to aviation during the 1920s and 1930s was his development of instrument-only flying. Up until that point, little thought had been given to flying in anything other than daylight and fair weather, but Doolittle recognized that true operational freedom in the air could only be achieved by blind flying using just instruments. In 1929, he became the first man to take off, fly and then land without any view at all outside the cockpit, and over the next few years he helped develop and test instruments still universally used to this day, such as the artificial horizon and directional gyroscope. He collected numerous awards and further air speed records before finally retiring from air racing, not least because of his beloved wife, Jo, and his children, but also because, for him, racing was all about the development of aviation; as far as he had been concerned, air racing had, by the mid-1930s, outlived its usefulness. By this time he was as famous as a Hollywood film star: in a progressive nation emerging from the Great Depression, aviation was an impossibly glamorous and exciting pursuit, and Doolittle was one of its greatest and most heroic advocates.
A major in the Air Reserve Corps, he had also worked as manager of Shell Oil Company’s aviation department and in that role had travelled the world, including to Germany a number of times; he even became good friends with Ernst Udet, the former fighter ace and head of the Luftwaffe’s procurement. Doolittle was brought back into the US Army Air Corps in July 1940 in the role of aircraft procurement and a year later was sent to England as part of a special observation mission.
By the time of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Doolittle was not only one of America’s most celebrated aviators and a highly successful aeronautical engineer, but he was still young, dynamic and a man of proven flair and vision. Not surprisingly, he was singled out and promoted to lieutenant-colonel and given the job of planning the US Army Air Forces’ first retaliatory raid on Japan. He had also volunteered to lead the mission he had devised: flying sixteen B-25 twin-engine bombers off the USS Hornet to bomb a number of targets, including Tokyo.
The Doolittle Raid, as it became known, launched on 18 April 1942. All the planned targets were hit, and Doolittle was among those who, with his crew, subsequently bailed out over China, coming down in a rice paddy. Helped by Chinese Nationalists to get through Japanese lines, he made it to safety along with all but seven crew. For planning, leading and executing the raid, Doolittle was awarded the Medal of Honor, America’s highest award for gallantry.
Since then, he had been given key appointments for America’s first major contribution to an active campaign: Twelfth Air Force commander in Northwest Africa, then C-in-C of the new Northwest African Strategic Air Force. He oversaw the Allied strategic bombing of Sicily and Italy, and at every promotion and step up the chain of command proved more than capable of rising to the challenge. In terms of practical knowledge, experience and leadership by example, Jimmy Doolittle ticked all the right boxes, and he commanded the utmost respect from those who served under him. It was a shrewd move on the part of Spaatz to suggest Doolittle take charge of the struggling Eighth.
Arnold conducted his lengthy discussions with Spaatz, Doolittle and the other senior air commanders in the Mediterranean during a trip to Italy following the Cairo Conference. The weather was just as dreadful in Italy as in England, and made worse by the war damage already wrought on the country and by the far more primitive conditions. Arnold was shocked by what he found there. ‘Foggia hard hit by bombs,’ he jotted in his diary on 9 December.5 ‘Debris all over the streets. Station and railroad yards a mess.’ Two days later, he was staying in the old palace at Caserta, headquarters of General Alexander’s Allied Armies in Italy. ‘Modern battle,’ he wrote.6 ‘Jeeps and mud, trucks and tanks, more mud, trucks and road jams, bridges and culverts blown out by bombs and demolitions of the Germans. Bomb holes, mine holes … Villages and towns demolished, partly demolished. Destruction and devastation everywhere, mud and more mud.’ Compared with Italy, England was like the Garden of Eden. And compared with England, America was the land of luxury. Four days later, he was back in Washington, his mission complete and most of the changes he had wanted in place. He hoped they would give POINTBLANK the renewed impetus that was so desperately needed. Now all he had to do was tell Eaker.
This Arnold did on 18 December. It came as a complete bolt from the blue, which was surprising, since Eaker had fielded no small amount of criticism from Arnold over the past few months. What’s more, on the 14th, Portal, back from Cairo, had visited Eaker and relayed Arnold’s sharp criticisms. He had also briefed him about Spaatz’s new command. Eaker had chosen not to see the writing on the wall, but instead had accepted what Portal said and agreed wholeheartedly with the need to pursue the POINTBLANK targets more vigorously. But now, on 18 December, he was staring at the cable from Arnold, his old friend, collaborator and close colleague, telling him he was to become Commander Mediterranean Allied Air Forces. ‘As a result of your long period of successful operations,’ Arnold wrote to him, ‘and the exceptional results of your endeavors as Commander of the Air Force in England, you have been recommended for this position.’7
Taken at face value, this was a decent promotion, but for Eaker it was the darkest moment in his career. He felt as though he had been ‘kicked upstairs’.8 No matter that he was moving to a more senior post; as far as he was concerned, he had been sacked and no amount of sugar-coating could disguise it. ‘I feel like a pitcher,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘who has been sent to the showers during a world series game.’9
Immediately, he cabled Arnold urging him to reconsider. ‘Believe war interest best served by my retention command Eighth Air Force; otherwise experience this theater for nearly two years wasted.’10 Then he added a personal plea: ‘It would be heart-breaking to leave it just before climax.’ It was also, however, heart-breaking to be shot down in flames in a B-17 over Germany, so a degree of perspective was needed. Portal weighed in on Eaker’s behalf – the latter was popular with the British and had even been given an honorary knighthood – but popularity with coalition partners was not enough, and Arnold was not to be swayed.
In any case, he had made the right decision. Spaatz would be a tougher and altogether more influential senior air commander in England, Doolittle had far better vision, tactical intuition and general chutzpah, and someone of Eaker’s standing and experience was absolutely needed in Italy. No matter how hurt and upset Eaker might feel, the new team was a better one for the all-important next phase in the strategic air war.
Change affected the Luftwaffe too. In the second week of December, General Beppo Schmid ordered the nine surviving defence districts to hand over operational control of all anti-aircraft units to the fighter divisions in order to ensure better cooperation between fighter and flak forces. His fighter divisions were a
lso given control of the air-raid warning system. This was a sensible streamlining of the air defence, which, for all its sophistication, had become somewhat unwieldy and, like so many organizations in Nazi Germany, was operating with too many parallel command structures. From now on, Schmid’s fighter divisions would be responsible for bringing together the different strands of information available on each enemy raid and then managing the coordinated defences for each enemy air attack. Air Command Centre was renamed Luftflotte Reich – Air Fleet Reich – and by Christmas Schmid had further disbanded the old original fighter command centres – or Jafü – and handed over all tactical control of fighters to the divisional operations rooms. Fighter tactics were also changing. Small groups of thirty-plus fighters were not enough to make a significant impact on daylight bomber formations. From now, Schmid wanted fighters to attack with two or even three groups, that is, between sixty and ninety aircraft.
They were still, however, flying the same Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts. After Galland’s falling-out with Göring, no further appointment was made and so the General of Fighters had continued in his role. Two weeks passed, then a further two, and then Göring apologized and Galland was formally reinstated. His task was no easier, however. Rockets and flying bombs were still absorbing much of the Luftwaffe’s potential resources and a new upgraded version of the FW190 had still not reached the squadrons. Nor had training improved much.
By this time, a mounting sense of fatalism had unquestionably crept into the Luftwaffe’s fighter units. It was hardly surprising, but earlier wartime enthusiasm had been replaced by the growing belief that they were now involved in a numbers game in which the odds were stacked against them. Most still felt a sense of pride, loyalty and even patriotism, but they were like a once-great sporting team that had suffered a string of defeats and was now in a slump from which there appeared to be no means of emerging. There were still some very good pilots – Heinz Knoke, Wim Johnen and Hajo Herrmann to name but three – but the best were suffering too. The Wehrmacht had always celebrated individual success. U-boat aces were feted and given Knight’s Crosses and then had Oak Leaves, Swords and even Diamonds added to the original award. Panzer aces were similarly treated as heroes and decorated in much the same way. So it was with fighter aces too. These warriors were the idols of Nazi Germany: brilliant men whom other young Germans could aspire to emulate. A fighter ace with more than twenty-five ‘kills’, or ‘victories’, was known as an Experte and once an Experte had proved himself to be a cut above the others, the job of the lesser mortals in the Staffel was to support him and protect him so that he could get on with the job of shooting down enemy aircraft and ensuring his score and his celebrity continued to rise.
There were, however, three big drawbacks to this approach. It completely ignored the fact that the U-boat commander had a crew and officers under him who more than played a part in any success they might achieve. The same was true in a tank. A panzer commander was supported by the gunner, or loader, and driver – the men who were actually getting into position and taking the shot. Being in a U-boat or in a tank was a team effort. It was a team effort being in a fighter squadron too. The second problem was that putting a chosen few on a pedestal often stifled the development and skills of those following behind. After all, if so much focus was on supporting the ace, how were the new aces to come through? Finally, it did little for either performance or morale if these heroes were then killed in action – something that was increasingly becoming an occupational hazard. The attrition on German manpower had been grinding down their war effort for a couple of years; ever since the autumn of 1941, Germany had been struggling to fill the hole caused by the huge casualties already suffered in the war. This meant there was little chance for rest and recuperation. Experten were expected to keep flying. And keep flying. And then fly some more.
During 1943, just twelve Luftwaffe aces claimed 1,160 Allied aircraft. The over-dependence on these men was, of course, completely unsustainable. On 4 December, Hauptmann Wilhelm Lemke, one of the Luftwaffe’s leading aces with 131 victories to his name, was killed by American pilots far superior in skill and in machines than their Soviet counterparts. In mid-December, Heinz Knoke was due to go on leave and see his beloved wife, Lilo, but was unable to get away. The Gruppe had moved once more, albeit not very far – this time to Wunstorf, to the south-east of Bremen. On 17 December, he was sitting in the car and about to go to catch a train to Berlin when the alert sounded and he was forced to run to his Gustav instead. ‘My driver shook his head,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘and even Arndt said that I really needed a few days’ rest.’11
There was a palpable sense of fatalism among many of the American bomb groups too. At Ridgewell, home to the 381st Bomb Group, which had suffered so in August and again during the Blitz Week of October, Chaplain Captain James Good Brown noticed a huge change. One evening, a new pilot accosted him in the chow line and asked him whether Brown knew Millheim, Pennsylvania. The chaplain did – he had been brought up there. The relief in the pilot was obvious – at last, a connection to home! New crews arriving into established bomb groups often felt distant and isolated, like unwanted strangers. Often they were given bunks only recently vacated by those just killed or now POWs. The old hands were often wary of becoming too friendly, because that just made things harder when a new comrade was subsequently lost. When Chaplain Brown had arrived at Ridgewell with the original 381st BG, the confidence had been exceptional. ‘Not a single man expected to be shot down,’ he wrote.12 ‘We were innocent. We did not know war.’ When their numbers started to be decimated, the trauma was immense. To begin with, the survivors had clung together ever more tightly, unable to process what was happening. Then, in October, even more had been taken. ‘It nearly killed us,’ he wrote. ‘As for comradeship, this was no more, for our comrades were gone.’
In the 100th Bomb Group at Thorpe Abbotts, the vast majority of those crews who had been in the group when Lieutenant Bob Hughes had arrived back in July had gone. Some had finished their twenty-five missions, but most had become casualties. His crew had stuck together, but Sergeant Joe Boyle, his radio man, had been killed on a mission to bomb the synthetic fuel plant at Gelsenkirchen on 5 November. It wasn’t easy flying home with a dead comrade bleeding all over the ship. Nor was it easy writing the condolence letter to Joe’s mother.
In sharp contrast to the bombers, morale could not have been higher among the American fighter units now in England. In the early years of the war, the Luftwaffe’s fighter pilots had strutted around with the brazen cockiness of young men who knew they were good, flying the world’s best fighter in the Me109E, and winning. A very similar attitude now pervaded most of the American fighter units.
For every mission, each squadron was expected to provide four flights of four, with an extra flight of four on standby in case operational gaps had to be filled. This still left a lot over. In Dick Turner’s 356th Fighter Squadron, for example, there were forty-three pilots, which meant a ratio of more than two to one in terms of operational requirement. Turner quickly found that choosing who should fly was one of the more challenging tasks facing a flight commander on the ground. ‘By now,’ he wrote, ‘my pilots were all clamouring to fly every mission.’13 He and the other flight commanders were forced to set up a strictly impartial rotation system ‘in the interest of fair play.’ As a flight commander, he was expected to fly two out of every three missions, which enabled another pilot to gain valuable leadership experience and which, as far as he was concerned, brought the added privilege of allowing him to fly more missions than most.
Fighter squadrons tended to be competitive towards one another too – another sign of high confidence. ‘Anything you did in an airplane,’ said Bob Johnson, ‘you were watched and criticized by other squadrons and, of course, you broke that competitiveness down within the squadron itself between flights.14 C Flight of the 61st was always the best! That was my flight!’ Johnson believed the 56th was the finest fighter unit arou
nd. They had a new nickname: ‘Zemke’s Wolfpack’. Hub Zemke had even given his pilots the target of reaching a hundred confirmed victories by 6 November, a total they achieved the day before. ‘The 56th was by now an experienced, effective fighter group,’ wrote the slightly more restrained Gabby Gabreski.15 ‘But we never stopped experimenting and looking for better ways of doing things.’ With the 4th Fighter Group at Boxted Don Blakeslee regarded the air war as adrenalin-fuelled sport, an approach that inevitably rubbed off on others. He made a point of telling his pilots to be aggressive and imbued his men with a cast-iron belief that the 4th was the best in the entire United States Army Air Forces.
A survey carried out by Eighth Air Force showed that fighter pilots were usually younger than bomber pilots, were much more likely to sign up for another combat tour and nearly all admitted that if they were asked to join the air force again, they would choose to become a fighter pilot again. ‘Fighter pilots,’ the report noted, ‘are more likely than bomber pilots to report that they are in good physical condition.’16
This all augured well for General Doolittle as he prepared to take over command of the Eighth. In the weeks to come, his fighter boys would be given the task of knocking their counterparts out of the sky. High levels of confidence and skill were vital. But so too were new tactics.
CHAPTER 13
Berlin
THE OLD YEAR finally drew to a slow close. There had been only a handful of missions in the second half of December, and two of those had been back to Bremen yet again. Hitting Bremen three times in a month was only partially fulfilling the aims of the POINTBLANK directive, however. It was an important industrial centre and a major location for the manufacture and assembly of U-boats, but it was not quite the key German aircraft industry target it had been earlier in the war when a major plant for Focke-Wulf had been located there. ‘The Focke-Wulf Company are believed to have transferred about two thirds of their Bremen plants to Eastern Germany, East Prussia and Poland,’ wrote the latest update in the Air Ministry’s Bomber’s Baedeker.1 ‘It is believed that the Hastedt and Hemelingen works are now engaged on the production and modification of components for the airport works.’ On the other hand, it was a major industrial city, and of targets in Germany was closer than most to England. And the Luftwaffe seemed keen to defend it, which – every bit as important – brought their fighters into the skies.
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