As the bombers crossed the Channel, McGinty worried about the lack of Little Friends – but close escorts had been scrubbed since Doolittle had taken charge, something that had not filtered down to the tail gunner. In fact, nearly six hundred American fighters would be taking part in the day’s mission, along with six squadrons of Spitfires to provide cover during the last phase of the return leg. Even so, McGinty was right to be worried, because although the escort plan had been thought out in meticulous detail, the rapidly worsening weather – a situation that had not been forecast the previous day – had ensured all manner of delays in both take-off and then forming up. It underlined just how complicated the organization of a large mission of this kind was, and equally how fraught with potential difficulties it could prove.
As McGinty and his crew crossed the Dutch coast, flak started to pepper the sky and the bomber began to jolt and rattle from the blast. McGinty could also see enemy fighters climbing up through the clouds and, with still no sign of their own fighters, he knew they were in trouble. The first attack came head-on, but soon the bombers were being attacked from all angles. McGinty felt their Fortress vibrate from the recoil of the .50-calibre guns, then saw one Me109 collide with a B-17 and the two go down together in a bundle of burning wreckage.
Suddenly the fighters were gone, presumably, McGinty thought, to refuel. He wondered again where their own fighters were. Was the bomber formation off course? Or were they early or late? From his lonely position at the tail of the plane, there were a lot of unanswered questions and a lot to worry about.
Soon after, another mass of enemy fighters attacked. This time, as single-engine Me109s and FW190s closed for the kill, twin-engine Me110s, 210s and Ju88s fired rockets from a range that was too far for the bombers’ .50-calibres. Rockets began exploding in the middle of the formation, showering the bombers with blast and bits of shrapnel; so dense were the formations, inevitably some found their mark. McGinty saw several bombers hit and explode mid-air, a truly shocking spectacle for any aircrew watching.
In England, the worsening weather was causing mayhem. Intelligence suggested the weather had also deteriorated over the targets and the decision was made to recall the bombers of the second and third formations. However, no signal was sent to the B-17s of the 1st Division, which included McGinty’s crew and the rest of the 379th BG, because, by the time the decision was made at High Wycombe, they were within 50 miles of Oschersleben. What’s more, the lead combat wing of the second formation was far enough into German air space for the bomb leader to decide to press on to the primary target. The remaining three combat wings of the second formation, however, did turn around.
Continuing on its way deep into Germany, the more than 250 bombers of the 1st Division came under further attack as the full weight of the Luftwaffe’s fighter force was thrown against them. On McGinty’s Fortress, Bill Weigel, their top-turret gunner, called out that friendly P-38s were now coming in at four o’clock high. While the bombardier in the nose had the clearest visibility, the reality was that no one position provided a clear 360-degree view. Even the waist gunners could see only a portion of the sky, and enemy fighter planes would scream past and be gone in a flash. This meant crews really did have to work together and talk to one another once an attack on them began. At Weigel’s warning, McGinty now looked up and saw the top-turret gunner was wrong, however: the aircraft bearing down on them were Me110s – an easy mistake to make. In moments, a further three bombers were falling.
McGinty saw two FW190s close in on the tail of another B-17. There appeared to be no reply from the tail gunner, so McGinty guessed he must be dead. Raising his own twin guns, McGinty realized the Focke-Wulfs were within his own arc of fire, so he opened up and saw strikes hit the cowling of the first 190, which promptly broke off and made for the clouds. McGinty switched to the second and, again, hit him hard; this time, the Focke-Wulf rolled over trailing smoke. Adrenalin-fuelled tension got the better of McGinty and he began shouting excitedly until the co-pilot, Lieutenant John Talbot, told him to get off the intercom. Chastened, McGinty realized he had just broken his own rule never to shoot at any enemy aircraft unless it was directly attacking their own ship. This was because the Luftwaffe used the finger-four – or Schwarm – as their basic formation, as did RAF and American fighters, and by concentrating on two enemy planes it was easy to take your eye off the other two. McGinty’s job, he reminded himself, was to concentrate on protecting his own crew. In fact, he had developed a successful technique. If any enemy fighters looked to be locking on to their tail, he would fire at them until they lined up directly behind, give them an extra second, then call out to Talbot to ‘jump’. Talbot would push the throttles forward, pull back on the control column and the B-17 would climb sharply. With luck – and so far it had held – the fighters’ bullets and cannon shells would pass underneath and the fighters dive away.
As they finally reached the target, thick cloud covered Oschersleben, so they headed for their secondary target, Halberstadt, and the Junkers factory there. As they approached, they received word that the weather had closed in over the town, so the decision was made to head for Oschersleben after all. The entire mission was turning into something of a fiasco. And still the enemy fighters kept coming.
Listening to the mission unfolding from the operations rooms were not only Doolittle and Anderson but also Spaatz and Lieutenant-General Barney Giles, who were with General Bill Kepner at VIII Fighter Command Headquarters. Giles, Hap Arnold’s deputy, was over from the US to see the birth of the USSTAF and both senior commanders were given a crystal-clear vision of the enormous complications of organizing such a raid in rapidly worsening weather conditions. Fighter groups had not arrived where and when they should, and even the forty-four P-51s had reached the target area a little early, which meant they were wasting precious fuel circling before any bombers or enemy fighters showed up.
None the less, eventually they spotted the bombers below them. The three squadrons of the 354th Fighter Group had just begun deploying themselves when a voice crackled over the RT, ‘My God! There are Germans coming up in droves beneath the bombers!’ That was precisely what had been hoped.3 Glancing down, Dick Turner saw both Me110s and 109s climbing together like a swarm of insects, albeit still some 10,000 feet beneath the bombers. That was good, because it meant the P-51s could dive down on them with the crucial advantage of height and speed; all that was missing was having the sun behind them.
‘Go down and get the bastards!’ Turner heard in his headset. It sounded like Major Jim Howard, so Turner did as ordered and flipped over, pushed the stick forward and dived. Down they hurtled, all twelve of Howard’s 356th Fighter Squadron, each pilot lining up a target. Turner sped towards a gaggle of Me110s, diving down with Frank O’Connor on his wing. As they neared, the lumbering Zerstörer – ‘Destroyers’ – split their flight in half, one element heading north-east and the other to the north-west. With O’Connor turning towards the latter group, Turner tore towards those moving north-east, latching on to one, pulling up underneath so that his six .50-calibre machine guns were aiming at its underside. In a climbing attack at eight o’clock, slightly to the port side of the twin-engine Messerschmitt he opened fire and felt the Mustang judder with the recoil. Turner clearly saw sparks flare across the enemy aircraft as his bullets struck, then flames rapidly engulfed the Messerschmitt. Still climbing, Turner sped past at an angle, drawing up underneath a second Messerschmitt and seeing another row of strikes tear across the port wing all the way to the fuselage.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, another aircraft bore down – an Me109, its guns flashing. Turner turned his P-51 away from the 110 directly towards the attacking 109, firing his machine guns as he passed. As the tracer from his guns flew by his attacker, he saw the Messerschmitt turn, roll over and dive towards the deck, although not before a number of bullets from Turner’s guns tore into him. Turner was going back to finish off the Me110 when over the intercom he heard his wingman, w
ho now had two Me109s on his tail trying to ‘shoot his ass off.’4
‘Where are you?’ Turner asked, but O’Connor couldn’t tell him. All he knew was he was going round and round in ever tighter circles, trying to dodge the Me109s. Turner sped around the sky looking for him. Minutes passed, Turner agonizing for his troubled buddy, then finally he heard him through his headset.
‘Never mind, Dick,’ said O’Connor.5 ‘I finally caught up with the SOBs and shot one of them down. The other two cowardly bastards ran away.’
Turner cursed to himself. ‘Here I was,’ he wrote later, ‘practically blowing up my engine over Germany hunting for him, and it turns out he’s casually having a turkey shoot.’6 By now, as was so often the case in aerial combat, the sky around them had largely emptied – of both enemy fighters and their own bombers – so Turner called over the intercom that they might as well head home; when to cut and turn back to base was generally up to the individual pilot and usually self-evident: when fuel was getting low or ammunition was almost out. He still couldn’t see O’Connor, but found another Mustang for company and together they turned and headed west. As he flew, Turner began thinking of all the potential targets he had passed over in his search for his wingman and decided he would demand a drink per missed enemy aircraft in the mess that night. Then he suddenly spotted an Me410 twin-engine fighter heading in the opposite direction. Clearly the German pilot was as surprised as he, but as Turner began to turn to attack he glanced at his fuel gauge, saw it was already quite low, so thought better of it and continued back towards England.
At the same time as the P-51s descended on the German fighters, the bombers had been on their bomb runs over Oschersleben. McGinty had seen these new long-range Little Friends appear like knights in shining armour. ‘The startled Nazis didn’t know what hit them,’ he noted.7 ‘They thought they had us all to themselves and weren’t looking for any American fighters.’
The P-51s had taken quite a toll on the enemy fighters, but the melee had drawn many of them, Turner included, away from the bombers and only one lone Mustang was battling to keep the bombers safe. This was Major Jim Howard, Turner’s squadron commander, who had climbed back up to look after the bombers. Although a squadron commander rather than group CO, Howard had been combat lead that day, so in overall charge of the 354th FG for that particular mission. He had already done well in their initial dive with the rest of the group. He had seen an Me110 move up right in front of him, heading straight for the lead B-17s. Waiting until the Messerschmitt’s wingspan had filled his sights, he had then opened fire with a four-second burst. The 110 had begun smoking, dived out of the fray and then its wings had torn off. A moment later Howard raked a 109, then sped after a Focke-Wulf 190, opened fire again and watched the pilot bail out. In less than a minute he had shot down three enemy fighters.
Howard had then found himself alone and was about to withdraw when he realized there was no sign of the P-47s due to take over the escorting of the bombers, so he climbed back up, throttling back and turning to attack any enemy fighter that tried to get near the bombers. More enemy aircraft appeared; Howard attacked another Me110 and saw it peel off and plummet with smoke trailing. He next spotted an Me109 lining up behind the formation of Fortresses, but as he turned towards it, the German pilot dived out of the way. Howard chased it, firing and eventually pulling out of a climb some 3,000 feet above the bomber stream as the 109 also started belching smoke and diving away. Then another Me109 attacked, but again Howard dived down on it and drove it away.
For more than half an hour, the American stayed with the Fortresses, diving and aggressively attacking any German fighter that tried to get too close. Eventually, a Junkers 88 twin-engine bomber started trying to move towards the Forts, but Howard again forced it to turn away, driving it off as a lion would a hyena. Three times he forced it away, till eventually it turned and headed off. Only when the enemy fighters appeared to have gone for good did he finally waggle his wings to the B-17s and make for home. Much of his heroics had been witnessed by Lieutenant William Lawley and the crew of Cabin in the Sky, who, along with others from the 305th BG, had continued on their way after the recall had been issued. Hugh McGinty had also seen this lone Mustang twisting and turning across the sky. ‘The last I saw of him,’ wrote McGinty, ‘he was diving through the clouds with three FW 190s after him.’8
Incredibly, not a single Fortress of the 305th or 401st Bomb Groups had been shot down while Howard had protected them, yet in the course of that one mission he had downed four confirmed and very probably two more, and also seen off as many as thirty enemy fighters.
The long mission to Oschersleben was not over yet, however. While Howard had seen off one concerted attack, the bombers met still more enemy fighters on the return leg. McGinty saw the plane of one of his best friends hit and disappear into the cloud, but at long last they were approaching the Channel and the enemy finally melted away. Exhausted crews now faced the challenge of flying the last leg of the journey back down through thick cloud to their mass of bases. In their Fortress, McGinty’s crew tried to keep in formation, but as they entered the cloud they soon lost sight of one another. Now there was a very real danger of collision, especially with pilots and co-pilots physically and mentally drained after their ordeal; they had been airborne nearly seven and a half hours already. Many of the crews had dead or wounded on board, or had to battle with aircraft that were low on fuel, and many were badly damaged. McGinty could only wait and hope. They had little fuel and Kimbolton was a lot further inland than many of the Eighth’s airfields. This meant they had to find another – and unfamiliar – base at which to land. But they managed it, touching down at a B-24 base closer to the East Anglian coast. Miraculously, apart from a bit of shrapnel damage, the aircraft and all ten crew were unscathed.
On the face of it, the mission had been a great disappointment for the Eighth. Of the 633 bombers dispatched, only 139 had attacked Oschersleben, just 52 had hit Halberstadt and a mere 47 had bombed just one of the Brunswick targets – the MIAG plant 5 miles outside the city. That meant they were not attacking with anything like the weight of force they should have done. What’s more, another 42 bombers had been lost, 13 per cent of the attacking force. On the other hand, despite the cloud, the bombing had been pretty accurate and subsequent reconnaissance showed the Oschersleben plant had suffered considerable damage.
Despite the problems of getting the fighter escorts into the right place at the right time, 39 enemy fighters had been shot down for not one loss of their own. Perhaps more significantly, the 44 P-51s had shot down considerably more than the 177 P-47s and P-38s. That was truly remarkable and showed that by January 1944 the Allied fighter arm was beginning to reveal its potential. The P-51s, still comparatively few in number, had proved beyond doubt that they had the potential to radically change the air war.
At Boxted, all the group landed back down that day, with claims of some fifteen destroyed and a further sixteen damaged. Major Jim Howard made his claims, but otherwise said little about his exploits. Only a day later did the truth about his victories start to emerge, when Eighth Air Force Headquarters asked that the group examine its claims and find the name of the pilot who had attacked and driven off no fewer than thirty enemy fighters, destroying six in the process, as witnessed by the incredulous bomber crews he had been single-handedly defending. Someone reported that the code letters of the Mustang were AJ-A. That was Jim Howard.
The bomber boys were astounded. ‘For sheer determination and guts,’ reported the 401st’s leader, ‘it was the greatest exhibition I’d ever seen.’9 Others were equally effusive in their post-mission debriefings, so Lieutenant-Colonel Harold W. Bowman, the 401st BG’s commander, sent them to Doolittle, who knew a piece of public relations gold when he saw it. A week later, Howard was ordered to attend a press briefing in London, much to his embarrassment. ‘I seen my duty,’ he told one reporter, his tongue firmly in his cheek, ‘and I done it.’10 It was a joke on Howard’s part
, but no one cared. That was the headline. In a long, dark and bruising winter, this was a good news story for a change. Little did Howard know it at the time, but his truly incredible air fighting over Oschersleben had won VIII Fighter Command its first and only Congressional Medal of Honor.
CHAPTER 16
Dicing with Death
MAJOR JIM HOWARD’S feats high above Oschersleben had been something to cheer, but about the raid as a whole General Hap Arnold was not at all happy. His bad mood began when Spaatz, Doolittle and Giles deliberately held back their report on the raid. Normally, Arnold was sent a report the same day but, aware that the 11 January mission had not gone to plan, they decided to wait until they had the pictures in from subsequent reconnaissance flights over the targets.
However, in the meantime, the German press had boasted about the shooting down of a staggering 123 US aircraft, which was then picked up by the American media. By trying to be clever, Spaatz and Giles had only made the situation worse. What really riled Arnold was not the claim of so many downed US planes, but the small number of bombers hitting the target, and in penny packets too. ‘I cannot understand why with the great number of airplanes available in the Eighth,’ he steamed, ‘we continually have to send a boy to do a man’s job.1 In my opinion this is an uneconomical waste of lives and equipment.’ What he wanted to see was a really large force absolutely pulverizing one target at a time rather than lots of pecking at many. He told Spaatz he wanted to hear his thoughts and some new lines of approach.
Big Week Page 26