However, the large number of fighter escorts had been one of the main reasons why not a single bomber was shot down on the mission – in fact, the only casualties were two that collided near the Initial Point. Certainly, the pilots of the 56th FG had been quick to pounce on any enemy they saw. Bob Johnson and Gabby Gabreski were both flying that day and using brand-new paddle-blades on the propellers. This gave the P-47s massive extra bite as well as both climbing and diving speed, as Bob Johnson discovered first-hand. Spotting some Me109s directly beneath him, Johnson rolled over and dived down. ‘And wow! What a dive!’11 he wrote. ‘I hauled back on the stick, afraid that the engine would tear right out of the mounts.’ Unfortunately, he dived so fast he completely overshot them. Cursing to himself, he vowed to get back and put in some practice time to get used to this new power.
Not everyone made the same mistake, however, as Heinz Knoke discovered to his cost. He was closing in to attack the bombers when his Messerschmitt was hit by German flak. Immediately the tail felt sluggish and he realized his prop and the front part of his engine had been completely shot away. It was all he could do to keep the stricken fighter under control, but a moment later a Thunderbolt dived down on him and shot up his wing, which burst into flames. Knoke was now in serious trouble and only by using all his strength could he keep the control column vertical between his legs. Flames were already licking the cockpit; it was time to bail out. Off flew the canopy and, with his leads and harness undone, he was suddenly jerked out of the cockpit before he was ready, but left dangling, his parachute snagged on something and billowing open. With his right leg outside the cockpit and his left still in, and with the flames growing, the aircraft plunged towards the ground. The force of the slipstream was so great he simply couldn’t move.
In intense pain, Knoke could barely breathe and now flames were licking across his body. The pressure was immense and he had plummeted some 12,000 feet when, with one last effort and with blood streaming from his nose, he managed to get his right leg back inside, push over the stick so that the aircraft half-rolled, stood on its tail and then dropped, but in the process Knoke was thrown clear at last. For a fraction of a moment he was falling alongside the fuselage, then something hit his back with a mighty blow and struck his head, knocking him out cold.
He came to surrounded by clouds and dangling from his parachute. Glancing down at the ripcord, he saw it was still in its socket; miraculously, the chute had opened fully by itself. Now the ground was rushing towards him and his parachute was swinging wildly from side to side. Almost horizontal, he managed somehow to avoid the roof of a house and landed heavily on solid frozen ground in the garden. Knoke gasped, then lost consciousness again.
When he awoke, he was in a hospital bed with a fractured skull, fractured lumbar vertebrae, severe bruising of the right pelvis, bruising of the hip, severe concussion and temporary paralysis of the right side due to his back injury. Vomiting continually and in great pain, he wished he could sleep, but that eluded him. He shouldn’t have even been flying that day – it was only because of casualties in the group that he had done so. ‘And today,’ he wrote later in his diary, ‘was to have been the last day of my leave with Lilo and little Ingrid …’12
That same day, Tuesday, 4 January, tragedy struck the 381st BG at Ridgewell. ‘Today,’ noted Chaplain James Good Brown, ‘war came close to us.13 It hit us in the face like a ton of bricks.’ That morning, two of the first pilots to have arrived with the 381st in the summer were completing their twenty-fifth and final missions and would then be shipped back home, their combat service finished. One of them was Lieutenant Cecil M. Clore and the target was Kiel – not the worst trip, because they would have the Little Friends with them the whole way. At the briefing, everyone was patting Clore on the back and wishing him good luck.
Clore took off as normal, but then something went wrong – what, exactly, remained unclear – but suddenly his Fortress was on fire. Quickly, the bombs were jettisoned in a field, about five of them exploding and causing the ground to pulsate for miles around. Desperately, Lieutenant Clore tried to land the plane and so headed towards another field, but it was still not fully light and instead the plane hit the edge of a wood next to the field and was torn to pieces.
Chaplain Brown was immediately called to the hospital, unsure at this stage whether any of the men were alive. On arrival, he saw five bodies – the men who had been hurled from the wreck of the aircraft as it had crashed. The tail gunner, Sergeant Richard E. Ingmire, had been smashed against a tree. ‘To stand there and see the bodies of five men whom we loved, men who gave their blood and life for what they were told was a good cause, and who did so willingly, causes us to wonder whether these dead shall not have died in vain,’ wrote Brown.14 ‘Let us hope that we shall be nearer a goal than we were before. This is my hope.’
Brown left the hospital along with an ambulance crew to try to find the remaining five members of the crew in the wreckage. The fires had died out by the time they reached it, so they could easily pick out the main structure of the wrecked Fortress. They spotted a head among a pile of twisted metal. They got hold of a leg and tried to pull the man out but he wouldn’t budge; more wreckage needed moving first. ‘The body emerged,’ wrote the chaplain.15 ‘But the head and arms were caught under heavy material. Some wires had to be cut. With our hands, we had to pull aside the burned material.’ One by one, they pulled them all free, grappling with bits of shattered aircraft and prising off charred flying suits to collect dogtags and any unburned papers, lockets and mementoes. Brown was horrified and sickened. ‘One must see a burned body to know what it looks like,’ he wrote.16 ‘Yet we had to face this awfulness in order to identify the bodies. We had no choice. The grim aspect of war was forced upon us whether we liked it or not.’ The chaplain tried to convince himself that they had died because of the war as surely as if they had been shot down over Germany, but the stark and vivid sight of ten young lives cut short in such a violent and cruel manner affected him deeply. Nor could he get rid of the smell of the burned bodies. It was as though it had pervaded his very soul.
On Friday, 7 January 1944 the target for the Eighth was Ludwigshafen. All three bomb divisions were being used and Captain Jimmy Stewart, now on his fourth mission, was bomb group leader for the 445th, following the 389th BG and with the 93rd BG off to their starboard. That put Stewart in charge of sixteen ships and sitting in the co-pilot’s seat of Lady Shamrock, skippered by Lieutenant Bill Conley. In all, the sixteen B-24s of the 445th were part of a 420-bomber force all heading towards the IG Farben plant outside the city on the Rhine. Escorting them were even more fighters: 571 in all.
The boys of the 56th FG were once more among the fighter escorts. By this time, Bob Johnson had thoroughly mastered the new paddle-blades on his Thunderbolt, as he had demonstrated the previous day over Koblenz. Diving successfully down on to fifteen Focke-Wulfs, he had seen Gabby Gabreski lock on to one of the enemy planes, then watched the German’s wingman go hard after his squadron commander in turn. Johnson spotted him swing towards Gabreski, so turned hard himself and made a head-on pass. The Focke-Wulf pulled up steeply and turned to starboard, while Johnson, throwing his Jug into a roll, went after him. Pulling his Thunderbolt into a tight turn, Johnson kept rolling and firing, sticking to his opponent’s tail like glue as the German tried every trick he knew to shake off his pursuer. Still Johnson kept on him, wounding his enemy like a matador toying with a bull. Bits of airframe were falling off, bullets tearing holes in the metal. Eventually, the German flicked over and dived, yawing the plane from side to side to throw off Johnson’s aim. ‘He was terrific,’ noted Johnson, ‘one of the very best.’17 The German’s mistake, however, had been to dive. There had been a time when the FW190 and Me109 could out-dive any plane, so it had been a reliable way to get out of trouble. But not any more. Johnson dived too, quickly gained on him, drew in close and opened fire. ‘The bullets tore into his cockpit and left wing root, flaming a fuel tank,’ he wrot
e.18 ‘The Focke-Wulf tumbled crazily, end over end, and tore apart.’ It was victory number eleven for Johnson.
Meanwhile, on the 7th, no enemy fighters had so far got near Jimmy Stewart and the B-24s of the 445th, although there was plenty of flak along the 30-mile run-in from the Initial Point to the target and in Lady Shamrock the crew were being bounced and jolted about all the way as shells burst around them. None the less, everything was going well: they dropped their bombs, then climbed and began making the turn for home.
Ahead, the 389th BG were already turning, so Stewart intended to tack on behind and simply follow them home, but he and his crew soon realized they were headed on the wrong bearing, some 30 degrees off course.
‘What are they doing?’19 Conley asked, giving his compass a tap. Stewart had been part of the briefing earlier, so knew the course should have been 283 degrees, but the leader of the 389th was steering them on a bearing of 245 degrees instead.
Stewart called up the leader of the 389th and pointed out their navigation error, but to no avail. ‘We know what we’re doing,’ he was told.20 ‘Get off the air.’ This presented Stewart with a difficult conundrum. Not far away, another group of bombers was leaving on course and he could have directed his group, and with it the 93rd, to tack on behind and follow it home. That, however, would have meant abandoning the 389th up ahead. A single group, groping its way homeward, would be vulnerable to say the least, and it would also mean splitting the fighter protection that was on offer. On the other hand, if he continued in the interests of keeping the formation close and tight and giving the wayward 389th a better chance, then he would be exposing his own group to possible fighter attacks and flak damage; routes were carefully chosen to avoid flak and enemy fighters. Wandering off even by a few degrees could mean the difference between getting home unscathed and having several bombers knocked out of the sky. To make matters worse for Stewart and his crew, at that moment the de-icer on his starboard No. 3 engine packed up and as a result the supercharger froze, which meant they were now reduced to three good engines.
Ultimately, it came down to which course was likely to cause fewer overall casualties and so, with a heavy heart, Stewart decided to follow the 389th. Pushing the broadcast button on his radio, he said, ‘F Lead to Group.21 All right, listen up. I want this formation as tight as it’s ever been. Look sharp. We’re covering our wing lead.’
‘But they’re heading for Paris!’ said his navigator.
‘Yeah,’ replied Stewart, ‘that means we all are.’ A few moments later, he added to the entire group, ‘Radio silence, everybody.’ From now on, the only sound would be Stewart urging his group to fly ever tighter together.
Already they had said enough to rouse the Luftwaffe, whose listening services and observers and radar would have picked up on the confusion. Sure enough, enemy fighters soon appeared, tearing into the formations. One of the first B-24s to go down was the lead ship of the 389th. They continued on until they could see Paris, and even the Eiffel Tower, down below. Only then did the 389th realize their mistake and dog-leg westwards. So far, not a single aircraft from the 445th had been shot down, but they were incurring some battle damage, including Lady Shamrock, when the de-icer on the No. 1 engine was hit.
Eventually, both the flak and the fighters melted away and soon after they could see the French coast. At this point Lady Shamrock’s No. 1 engine packed up; the B-24 could still fly on just two engines, but with less power, which meant dropping out of formation. Fortunately, however, their work was largely done. Stewart radioed to the deputy lead bomber to take over, then told his crew to throw out anything they could to lighten the load.
Lady Shamrock touched down again safely at Tibenham some seven and a quarter hours after taking off. Incredibly, the 445th had not lost a single ship. A few days later, a note of thanks came through from Colonel Milton Arnold, commander of the 389th. ‘The good judgement of Captain Stewart, your Group leader,’ he wrote, ‘in maintaining an excellent group formation yet making every attempt to hold his position in the Combat Wing formation is to be commended.’22
CHAPTER 15
Thirty Against One
TUESDAY, 11 JANUARY 1944. To the meteorologists, it had looked the previous day as though there might be a break in the weather, so Doolittle and Anderson had decided to make the most of this and send a heavy force into Germany to hit targets at Brunswick, Halberstadt and Oschersleben, all quite close to one another to the west and south-west of Berlin, and all with aircraft assembly plants.
At Kimbolton, the crews of the 379th BG were woken earlier than usual. As they dragged themselves out of bed, Hugh McGinty and his pals in their Quonset hut had got into a routine of turning on the radio to listen to the Irish-American traitor and Nazi broadcaster Lord Haw-Haw on one of the German stations. In particular they wanted to hear the ‘Guests of the Reich’ section in which captured airmen were listed. Today, Lord Haw-Haw specifically mentioned the 379th: ‘The Luftwaffe is waiting to welcome you this morning,’ he said. None of them was too bothered by this. Then, as they were about to leave for the mess hall, the broadcast ended with a song from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: ‘Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go’. ‘That put us in a better mood,’ noted McGinty, ‘and we sang all the way to chow.’1
Despite this lightening of the mood, McGinty felt the briefing room was noticeably tense that morning. Everyone could sense it. As the commander entered, they all stood and came to attention, then, as the curtain was drawn back and they saw the long line heading east in the direction of Berlin, a loud spontaneous groan was let out by the crews. But it wasn’t Berlin; for 1st Division, including the 379th, the target was Oschersleben, some 50 miles south-west of the capital. That was still a long way to go.
The plan was explained. The 2nd Division was going to Brunswick and the 3rd to Halberstadt. They were shown where they could expect the worst of the flak and warned that they might attract considerable enemy-fighter attention, which was, of course, a major reason for mounting the raid. The fighters would be protecting in the relay system recently implemented: Thunderbolts and P-38 Lightnings to the target in relays; then, over the target area, the new long-range P-51 Mustangs of the 354th Fighter Group would provide protection. As they turned for home, they would be met by yet more P-47s, which would escort them back to England. This made the crews feel a little better – it was the first time the Mustangs had ever been briefed to accompany them on a deep-penetration raid. Just to make sure the bomber crews didn’t start taking pot-shots at these new Little Friends, they were shown plenty of identification pictures so that they wouldn’t mistake them for enemy planes. ‘The chaplain,’ noted McGinty, ‘was a very popular guy that morning.’2
Eighty miles away at Boxted, Dick Turner had been woken as normal and made his way to the headquarters buildings for the 354th Fighter Group’s briefing. It was a significant moment in the history of the Eighth Air Force: the first time bombers had ever been sent to the heart of the Reich with escorts all the way there and back.
At Kimbolton, Hugh McGinty and his crew loaded up their kit and headed out to their plane. They were getting a new ship, but it was still undergoing modifications and wasn’t ready, so they were flying one of the spares. Whatever the weathermen had thought, at Kimbolton the cloud was low and the atmosphere damp. Take-off was delayed twice, which only added to the tension they all felt. They didn’t want to head into the jaws of the lion, but nor did they want to have the mission scrubbed; it was draining to get oneself keyed up only to be stood down, and, of course, a scrubbed mission meant they were no closer to finishing their tour.
Finally, a green flare was fired over the airfield and they began running up their engines. When the second flare went up, they started taxiing. Misty low cloud and drizzle covered the wide-open expanse of the airfield, but at last Lieutenant Ernal Bridwell’s crew were at the end of the runway. As the bomber ahead of them disappeared into the mist, Bridwell opened the throttles to 2,500 revs, with sup
erchargers set at 52 inches of manifold pressure, released the brakes and off they sped, hurtling down the runway and lifting off with 1,800 lb of incendiaries in their bomb bays.
McGinty was tired from the early start and the tension he had felt all morning, so instead of getting into his tail turret, he opted to lie himself down on the catwalk in front of his position and try to get some sleep. He soon nodded off and woke only when he heard the navigator, Bill Rau, calling on someone to check that their tail gunner was all right: McGinty hadn’t answered the oxygen check. He now clambered into his gun station and checked in.
Looking around him, he saw the groups all starting to form up on their leaders. It was always an extraordinary sight: hundreds of heavy bombers emerging from the cloud base, circling and climbing and slotting into their part of the formation. The clouds below them were bright, with the group forming up below silhouetted against them. A rainbow seemed to circle their shadows on the clouds. Flying in close formation with bombers either side and ahead and behind was easier said than done, but as Jimmy Stewart and the 445th had shown, good, tight formation flying really did save lives. The trouble was, keeping that tight formation with enemy fighters swooping from all angles, guns blazing, or with flak bursting all around, was difficult and required cool heads, nerves of steel and very steady hands on the controls.
At Boxted, the pilots of the 354th FG were being dropped off at their squadron areas, and with parachute packs swinging behind them and leather flying helmets loose on their heads, they clambered up into their P-51Bs. Dick Turner was feeling keyed up, the adrenalin surging already, certain they would soon be tussling with the enemy as they flew directly over the heart of the hornet’s nest. Cockpit drills, the familiar smell of oil, metal and aviation fuel, preceded the engine start: the slow turn of the big four-blade metal prop and then a puff of flame and smoke from the exhaust stubs as the Merlin suddenly roared into life, the prop now a whirr and the Mustang shaking rhythmically. Brakes off, throttle forward, rudder, and they were rolling. Moments later, the throttle now wide, they were hurtling across the airfield, Turner pulling back on the stick as they became airborne. Undercarriage up and almost immediately Essex turned into a thin, spectral landscape and disappeared altogether.
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