As they headed east towards Berlin, enemy fighters appeared in greater numbers, but then suddenly the P-51s appeared. McGinty rather enjoyed watching the Mustangs tangling with the Me109s and FW190s. On more than one occasion he saw a German fighter barrelling through their formation with a Mustang on its tail. ‘We had to be careful not to hit our little friends,’ he noted.11 A great deal of lead was criss-crossing the sky.
From there until they reached the target, the flak was heavy, and as they began their bomb run McGinty saw that many stragglers, presumably already hit and damaged, were struggling to keep with the main group. Clusters of enemy fighters swarmed around these planes. McGinty saw several going down in flames but with parachutes opening as crew hurriedly bailed out of their stricken aircraft. Over the target, however, there were – as forecast by Spaatz’s weathermen – clear skies and in Blue Blazing Blizzard Matty Nathan, the bombardier, reckoned he had dropped their bombs pretty accurately.
Among those escorting the bombers to Leipzig were the P-47s of the 56th FG. For Bob Johnson, it was his only mission so far all month – he had missed the first couple of weeks due to an infected boil on his leg – but now, as they headed over Germany with big new 150-gallon drop tanks strung underneath them, he could only marvel at the sight of miles upon miles of bombers droning towards their targets, contrails streaking across the bright winter sky.
All was quiet for them until it was time to break off escort some 30 miles west of Hanover. Gabby Gabreski was leading the squadron, with Johnson commanding Blue Flight to his left. Lieutenant Justus Foster suddenly called out, ‘Bandits, seven o’clock low.’12 They looked down and saw thirteen Me110s skimming along the tops of patchy cloud at about 15,000 feet. ‘Everything,’ noted Johnson, ‘was shaping up for the perfect bounce.’13 This required a 180-degree turn to the left and a 7,000-foot dive. ‘We really hit those 110s hard,’ wrote Gabreski.14 The twin-engine fighters were split into two sections and Gabreski latched on to the second from the right of the rear group. ‘He exploded when I was about fifty yards behind him,’ he added, ‘with his tail and wing separating from the rest of the plane, and went down spinning.’ Beside him, Johnson had slid under him to come out on Gabreski’s right, so that, by the time they came upon the 110s, eight Thunderbolts were in line abreast. All eight opened fire at pretty much the same time: thirty-two heavy machine guns pummelling the startled Messerschmitts before they could react. ‘We hit the first bunch in true Thunderbolt fashion,’ noted Johnson, ‘ripped through their scattering ranks and began to chop up the second echelon.’15
Pulling into a climbing turn, Gabreski glanced back and saw the sky littered with burning 110s and parachutes blooming. By his reckoning, only one had escaped and, seeing it hurriedly diving away, he sped after it, firing off a burst just as the Messerschmitt disappeared into cloud. Johnson had followed his squadron leader down and spotted two more enemy planes in a shallow dive, engines trailing smoke and hurrying for safety. He sped on after them, caught them and opened fire. ‘They went down like wheat before a scythe,’ he noted.16 ‘One, two and two flaming fighters.’ In just a few minutes of violent aerial combat, the group had claimed fourteen enemy planes for no loss.
As the 1st Division reached Leipzig, the new boys of the 357th in their Mustangs now successfully entered the fray. In his cockpit, Bud Anderson was feeling pretty chilly; the heater helped a bit, but not enough when 6 miles high. Already he had rubbed frost from the inside of the canopy and was glad of the layers of clothing. He had also taken to wearing a silk scarf, not to look flamboyant but so that he didn’t chafe his neck from constantly swivelling his head around.
And he was doing just that – checking all around him – when he spotted a Focke-Wulf 190 some 4,000 feet below. Nosing over, he plunged down and came out 300 yards dead astern. Opening fire, he felt the Mustang vibrate from the burst of his four .50-calibres and some hits and smoke. The pilot now performed a split S, inverting his plane then diving down in a half-loop, and skidding violently as he did so. Then he did what all Germans did to get out of danger: he dived. Anderson followed, diving steeper and steeper until his air speed indicator was approaching 500 m.p.h. ‘I was determined,’ he wrote.17 ‘I would go wherever he went, do whatever he did. I wanted a victory.’ But then he noticed his canopy starting to open – the side and top pieces were pulling apart where the two were latched together. Suddenly, the clarity of his situation struck home. This was his fifth mission and he hadn’t completed it yet. Aggression was a good thing in a fighter pilot, but not recklessness. At 11,000 feet, prudence won. He gave up the chase and instead climbed back to find the rest of the squadron. ‘Thinking about it afterwards,’ he noted, ‘I decided I had come close to doing something unforgivably dumb.’18
Now nearing Leipzig, away to the south-east, was Lieutenant William Lawley in a brand-new B-17. Lawley and the other nine in his crew had all been on leave and while they were away their ship had been assigned to another crew, who had failed to return, so, after having the first Cabin in the Sky taken off them on arrival in England, and the second now lost, his latest, brand-new Fortress was Cabin in the Sky III; they hadn’t had time to have the name painted on the cowling yet.
They had been harried by enemy fighters much of the way, but the Thunderbolts had kept with them and now, as they neared Leipzig, Mustangs were hurtling about the sky. His own gunners had been busy, the .50-calibre machine guns hammering as enemy fighter planes sped past. The sky was criss-crossed with tracer, while up ahead it was peppered with dark puffs of flak. As they reached the IP and began their bomb run, the fighters started to leave them alone, but then the flak grew heavier and for the bomb run Lawley had to switch over to automatic pilot and fly straight and level. The flak, though, was definitely lighter than it might have been, because the anti-aircraft crews below were exhausted after a long night attacking the RAF. Despite the usual jolts, bumps and occasional clatter of shell blast, Lawley’s crew reached the target without problem; even better, the sky was largely clear and their targets, the assembly plants of Leipzig–Mockau, were easily visible. Staring below at the white, snow-covered landscape, bombardier Henry Mason could see perfectly and, because of the snow, the target looked as monochrome as the aerial reconnaissance photographs they had been shown at the briefing. With the bomb bays open, he pressed the bomb release, fully expecting the lurch that came with the sudden loss of 2½ tons of bombs. But nothing happened. Mason closed the doors, then opened them again and tried once more to jettison the bombs. Again, nothing. Almost certainly, the bomb racks had frozen in place, but whatever the reason, they were now potentially in serious trouble. Ahead and around them, everyone else in the group was dropping their bomb loads and immediately accelerating away. Lawley opened the throttles in an effort to keep up, but their Fortress was rapidly starting to lag behind. Each time they opened the bomb-bay doors, the added drag combined with the weight of the bombs ensured they dropped ever further behind the rest of the squadron.
This was a nightmare situation for the crew because nothing was more vulnerable in a sky swarming with enemy fighters than a straggler with a belly full of bombs. After opening the doors again, Lieutenant Mason hurried from his position in the nose, past the cockpit to the bomb bay and, despite the plane jolting from flak at 17,000 feet up, tried to kick the bombs free. But still he couldn’t budge them. All on board were keenly aware that they were now dicing with death even more than usual. As they turned to follow the others, the distance between their lone ship and the rest of the group began slowly but surely, agonizingly, to widen. Up ahead, the rest of the 305th were turning for the home run, still in tight, defensive formation.
Suddenly, one of the crew called out a warning on the intercom that a Schwarm of Focke-Wulfs was diving on them from behind, although, blinded by the sun, Sergeant Alfred Wendt, the tail gunner, couldn’t see them. The Fortress up ahead on their wing was hit and, in flames, the B-17 dropped out and began plummeting downwards. Flak now burst close by,
knocking Cabin in the Sky as though it had been punched by a giant fist. Shrapnel hit one of the outer engines, which began to lick flames. Lawley immediately ordered Lieutenant Paul Murphy, his co-pilot, to apply the onboard extinguisher and shut it down. This, however, lost them even more power.
As the Fortress dropped further and further behind the rest, so more enemy fighters began to home in on the struggling bomber. The gunners were calling out and firing furiously as more than a dozen enemy aircraft converged from above and below, the German pilots sensing easy pickings. Then suddenly, up ahead, more FW190s appeared and, directly in front, one in particular was heading straight for them. Flashes appeared from its gun ports, then there was a huge crash and for a moment Lawley’s vision went black.
He came to moments later to see Murphy’s shattered body slumped forward, killed instantly by a 20mm cannon shell. There was a massive hole in the cockpit Perspex, and blood, gore and debris spattered the instruments and remaining windshield. Effectively blind, Lawley realized he had been hit by cannon splinters. His right arm had been peppered and so had his face. Another engine was on fire and the aircraft was falling in a sharp dive.
Somehow, despite his wounds, the ringing in his ears, the carnage around him and a bomb-laden Flying Fortress screaming in its death-dive, something deep inside Lawley told his brain to think clearly and rationally and not to panic. And so, after frantically wiping his face, he used his bloody right arm to pull Murphy back out of the way, while with his left he pulled the control column towards him and desperately tried to regain control of the aircraft. Perhaps the only benefit of the dive was the centrifugal forces that helped propel the bloody remains of his co-pilot backwards and off the second control column, but that wasn’t going to help anyone if he couldn’t pull out of the dive.
Lawley now called out to the crew to bail out. Up ahead in the nose, Henry Mason lifted the hatch to jump, while behind, navigator Lieutenant Henry Seraphine did the same, yet before either jumped Lawley suddenly managed to start regaining some control. The dying ship was actually emerging out of its dive. Henry Mason clambered up into the cockpit and went back to check on the crew. Only he and one other man had escaped injury and two crew members were so badly wounded there was no chance of them making the jump.
Levelling out, Lawley cleared the instrument panel and windshield in front of him as best he could, then swiftly made a decision. Anyone who wanted to jump could do so, but he would stay with the ship and try to nurse it back, despite his wounds. The flight engineer decided to take his chances and, lowering himself out of the forward hatch, disappeared. For Lawley and the other seven men, however, the situation remained critical, because another engine was now on fire and the bombs remained stuck in the bomb bay. Freezing-cold air was blowing like a high-speed wind through the aircraft and Lawley himself was struggling badly. Of those left on board, only Lieutenant Mason was uninjured. The rest of the crew could barely function at all and their ship was trailing more than enough smoke for any enemy fighter for miles around to see on that clear winter’s morning. The prospects of a safe return seemed slight to say the very least.
At just after 1 p.m., the B-24s of the 2nd Division were nearing their IP. Aboard Tenovus, Jimmy Stewart watched the Pathfinders pass south of Hanover, then they were on the bomb run and pilot Bill Conley switched over control to Lieutenant John Rankin, the bombardier. Flak started up again and their B-24 rocked and shuddered with the blast. A shell exploded uncomfortably near, shrapnel clattering against the cockpit, causing the ship to buck.
‘Damn it!’19 exclaimed Conley, but now up ahead they saw red flares bursting and the burning lights floating down on parachutes.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Stewart. This, they knew, was the signal for the flak gunners below to stop firing in order to let the fighters attack unhindered. On cue, the flak stopped and suddenly their gunners were calling out the enemy fighters they could see sweeping in from above and below. Machine guns began hammering as they continued with the bomb run, but then Rankin called out, ‘Bombs away!’ and, as always, Conley took back control, the B-24 surging upwards and banking as it began the turn for home.
‘Get ’em, Little Friends!’20 someone called out as Stewart looked out and saw P-38s tearing down towards the enemy fighters. Despite their arrival, the German pilots continued to press home their attacks. A Liberator started flaming and falling out of formation. Bob Kiser’s ship, someone called out. The youngest pilot in Stewart’s squadron. On they flew towards the rallying point and then, when all the survivors had joined them, Stewart ordered them to tighten up formation. With the Me109s and FW190s disappearing as quickly as they had arrived, they began the journey home: first an hour or so to Cologne, then a change of course and two more hours across Belgium and then over the Channel at Dunkirk.
Far to the north, the 388th BG had reached Poznań. The Focke-Wulfs had gone but had been replaced by twin-engine fighters. ‘There were quite a few enemy fighters,’ noted Larry Goldstein, ‘but somehow they weren’t too eager and did not pester us.’21 Perhaps the enemy pilots lacked experience, or maybe simply didn’t want to risk pressing home their attacks: a bomb group of thirty-six Fortresses still had 468 .50-calibre machine guns between them, with nearly a million bullets.
Somewhere below, hidden by cloud, was the target, but it couldn’t be seen and they had been told to hit it only in the clear. Much to the deep frustration of all, they had no option but to turn for Rostock, their secondary target. They had flown all that vast distance for nothing.
The Thunderbolts of the 4th FG had been given the job of withdrawal support for the B-17s returning from Leipzig and so had not even been briefed until midday. They had taken off shortly after, led by Captain Jim Goodson, and reached the Dutch coast at just before 1.50 p.m. and flying at 23,000 feet. Just as they rendezvoused with the bombers, they spotted five Me109s attacking the third box of B-17s with rockets and so the 334th Fighter Squadron was sent down after them. A little further on, above Malmedy in Belgium, a further eight Focke-Wulfs were spotted.
Captain Bee Beeson was flying Green 1 and leading his flight as they dived down, Green section following behind Blue and White sections. Beeson now spotted two more Focke-Wulfs at about seven o’clock in the sky and below the B-17s. Keeping his eyes glued on them, he watched them circling some 5,000 feet directly below and so dived straight upon them, but they were still circling and Beeson struggled to get on any of their tails. He was just diving down for a second attack when he spotted another P-47 closing in on one of the enemy planes, so Beeson waited for him to shoot down the last of the four Focke-Wulfs and then intended to go for the leader of the German Schwarm himself. However, the other P-47 overshot with his attack and the German leader and his wingman whipped around in a starboard turn. Swiftly reacting, Beeson now homed in on the wingman, who began to climb rather than following his leader, who was now diving out of the fray. Beeson followed, opening fire at 300 yards and closing to just 100. Strikes clattered around the cockpit and next moment the pilot jettisoned the canopy and bailed out. Always meticulous, Beeson then made sure he got footage of both the aircraft and pilot descending on his fine camera.
The northern formation of 1st Division bombers had hit Rostock and the heavies were now turning back for home, Goldie Goldstein and his crew on Worry Wart among them. Flak continued to pound and pepper the sky, but gradually it thinned. They all began to breathe just a little bit more easily.
Meanwhile, Bill Lawley was still at the helm of his badly damaged Fortress. They had managed to use the in-built extinguishers to put out the second engine fire and now, at a much lower altitude, Mason had been able finally to jettison the bomb load somewhere over open French countryside, so the immediate risk of the whole crate exploding into a million fragments appeared to have passed. But then some Me109s had begun circling. Despite their wounds, the gunners had let fly with everything they had, while Lawley, still using only his left hand, had taken evasive action and the enemy planes had sloped o
ff; perhaps they had been short of fuel or decided the bomber was already finished. At any rate, Cabin in the Sky had been given a chance to try to make it home.
Lawley was struggling badly, however. He was losing blood and in severe pain, and was becoming exhausted from the strain of flying one-handed. It was difficult to see through the mess of the cockpit and blood was still streaming down his cheeks from the wounds to his face and head, while sub-freezing winds were howling through the shattered Perspex. He was feeling faint, but continually refused the pain relief offered by Mason, knowing that if he took morphine he would be unable to continue to fly, let alone land. Getting them back on the ground was the only hope his crew had of survival.
To make matters worse, Lieutenant Harry Seraphine, the navigator, had lost his maps when he had opened his escape hatch; they had all blown off his desk and out of the opening. He was now navigating from memory and estimated speed, but there was cloud cover below. Seraphine gave Lawley what he thought was the best heading and told him to stick on it. If they hit some flak, then he would quickly make adjustments. Sure enough, soon puffs of black smoke started peppering the sky around them and the B-17 shook and jerked as bits of shrapnel clattered against the damaged airframe. It was time for another bearing and then, suddenly, they were over the coast and out above the Channel.
Many of the Eighth’s bombers were now reaching home. Hugh McGinty’s crew made it back to Kimbolton in one piece, along with every other Fortress from the 379th BG, although there were twenty-two ships with damage of some kind, two dead and fourteen wounded. One of the 379th’s Fortresses had suffered a similar fate to Cabin in the Sky. An Me109 had sprayed the ship of Lieutenant Paul Breeding. The co-pilot had been badly hit and died soon after, while Breeding was also wounded, but the top-turret gunner, navigator and waist gunner all came to his help. They pulled the co-pilot clear, then the navigator took the controls, flying high above the rest of the bombers while the two gunners administered first aid to Breeding. As they neared England, the navigator knew he would be unable to land the plane through the cloud, so after a vote they decided they should all bail out. Breeding, however, vetoed it and insisted he take back the controls. Incredibly, he managed to land the plane safely and only after taxiing off the runway did he finally pass out.
Big Week Page 33