Halberstadt was overcast by the time the 1st Division’s combat wing reached it, which was why the mission had been withdrawn. Once again, the weather had proved a fickle and difficult force to predict. ‘We dropped our bombs,’ noted Hugh McGinty, ‘and could not be sure of the results.9 As we started a sweeping turn toward home, I could see a lot of smoke but not the target itself.’ He hoped it was enough and that they wouldn’t be ordered back again. Once more, as they cleared the target area, the flak thinned and out of the sky enemy fighters swooped in for the kill. Machine guns hammered, tracer criss-crossed the sky, a few ships fell, and then the fighters disappeared, only to be replaced by the intense flak of the Ruhr once again. At least he felt he could do something about fighters and try to defend their ship, but flak just had to be taken on the chin. He hated the feeling of helplessness. A hole the size of a bathtub appeared in the right wing, which was then reported over the intercom, but Ernal Bridwell, the pilot, told the others he didn’t want to hear it.
Then they were through once more. And still flying. Still in one piece. A group of FW190s now appeared parallel to their formation. The leader suddenly pulled clear, turned and barrel-rolled through the bomber formation, then rejoined his group before leading them all down for a mass attack. Once in range, the fighter leader was pummelled by machine-gun fire and blew up; the rest split-S’ed and headed for the clouds.
Hovering overhead since Koblenz had been the pilots of the 4th Fighter Group, led once more by Don Blakeslee and rendezvousing with just twenty-four 1st Division B-17s, although not those of Hugh McGinty and co. Sticking with them until just south of Brussels, they then headed for home and, although they chased after two Me109s, they managed to escape into cloud. It was then 3.35 p.m.
Not long after, the rest of the 1st Division was nearing the Dutch coast when yet more enemy fighters appeared. This time, they hit the Fortress of McGinty’s great pal Willy McGinnis. The ship went down from 22,000 feet and exploded shortly before hitting the deck. Suddenly Spitfires appeared and tore into the enemy fighters. Their arrival gave the struggling B-17s the chance they needed to reach the coast; McGinty reckoned the English Channel had never looked so good. The remains of their combat wing tried to maintain close order, but there were too many stragglers trailing smoke, with their aircraft shot up and short of fuel. McGinty’s crew reached Kimbolton safely, however, touching down and taxiing on to their hardstand, where they finally shut down the engines. McGinty could hardly believe he was still alive, that he had been spared one more time. His premonitions had, thankfully, not been self-fulfilling after all.
In Italy, Sully Sullivan and his crew also made it back to Lucera, where pilot Bill Epps managed to land safely despite the extensive damage to their Fortress. ‘Tail gunner pretty bad off,’ noted Sullivan.10 A good Catholic boy, he always prayed hard and even managed to get to mass in a makeshift chapel that had been created in a tent. ‘The good Lord is looking out for me!!!!!!!’ he wrote.
The crews of the 2nd BG had also returned to their base at Foggia. Half had been sent to Regensburg and the rest to Graz. Neither had hit their primary target due to the ten-tenths cloud; those heading to Regensburg had hit a railway marshalling yard at Ochling near Munich, while bombardier Michael Sullivan and his crew had given up on Graz and bombed Zagreb airfield instead. The 2nd BG had lost only one bomber but, much to Sullivan’s dismay, it had been the crew of his good friend Airleigh Honeycutt, with whom he shared a hut.
It had not been a bad day for the Fifteenth, all things considered. After their Fortresses had hit their target in Regensburg so too had their Liberators, destroying two assembly buildings and badly damaging a third along with a number of workers’ buildings. Some twenty-six enemy fighters had been brought down too.
The Wright crew also made it back safely to Tibenham. Robbie Robinson was frustrated and felt the entire mission had been a wasted effort. Nor was he pleased to find himself by turns almost frying and then freezing, so after the debrief he took himself off to find the quartermaster. There was a shortage of new electric suits, so he was given a kind of small clamp to join the wires together. For the time being, that would have to do.
It had been a dark day for the 381st BG and, after the euphoria of the 20th, Chaplain James Good Brown struggled to absorb the palpable sense of despair at Ridgewell when it became clear that six crews would not be returning. ‘The end may be victory,’ he noted, ‘but there are many spots of darkness along the way.11 February 22, 1944, is one of these dark spots.’ Brown had attended the debrief in the interrogation room. The crews had talked incessantly, describing the persistent German attacks. Ships had gone down in flames, others had been torn in half.12 One of Brown’s best friends on the base had been lost in this way. ‘A man who had been on the base a long time and had won the hearts of everyone,’ wrote the chaplain. ‘He was a smiling, kindly, honest, stalwart and steady citizen of society, a peach of a fellow.’
Back on the ground in Germany, Gordon Carter was still on the run. As daylight started to fade, he reached the River Weser near Nienburg. It was flowing far too fast and the water temperature was much too cold to risk trying to swim, so he thought he would attempt to cross by one of the town bridges once it became dark. At that moment, however, as he was contemplating his route, a group of schoolboys approached him and started chatting. They soon left him alone, but shortly afterwards he came across a German sailor shooting crows with a shotgun and the man beckoned him over. For a brief moment, Carter considered trying to take him on, but as he could speak reasonable German he decided instead to see if he could talk his way out of his predicament. It didn’t work. Carter had no papers to show and so the sailor told him he was turning him in. At shotgun point, he escorted Carter to his house and called the local police. Carter couldn’t fault his manners or those of his family. ‘While waiting for the police to show up,’ he noted, ‘the lady of the house and her two teenage daughters gave me a glass of schnapps and invited me to return and visit them after the war.’13 Soon the police appeared, with the line, ‘Für Sie ist der Krieg zu Ende.’ Gordon Carter’s luck had run out. For him, the war was over.
CHAPTER 23
Thursday, 24 February 1944
‘U.S. IN FIRST Joint North–South Air Blow’, ran the headline in Stars & Stripes, the US forces’ newspaper, on Wednesday, 23 February.1 ‘Heavies From Italy And Britain Plaster Bomb-Drunk Reich’. The Allied press had been reporting the attacks with increasing glee, and Stars & Stripes guessed that so far in the ‘60-hour’ Allied assault some 11,000 tons must have been dropped. ‘Even as flames were leaping from German targets north and south,’ the lead article continued, ‘Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in a report on the war to Parliament, was promising that in the coming spring and summer the scale of attacks will reach far beyond the dimensions of anything which has yet been employed or, indeed, imagined.’
The first few days of ARGUMENT had shocked the Luftwaffe’s leadership. I Jagdkorps reported losing 28 fighters on the 20th and many more badly damaged; in all, 58 had to be written off. Some 65 per cent of the floor space at Messerschmitt’s Heiterblick plant at Leipzig had been destroyed and 83 per cent at Leipzig–Mockau, and although most of the machine tools had been salvaged, the Luftwaffe could in no way function properly when its factories were being as badly hit as this. Dispersal of the aircraft industry was going to have to be sped up, but was neither very efficient nor good for economies of scale. On the 21st, a further 32 fighters had to be written off and 52 on the 23rd.
On the 22nd, Göring had summoned his senior commanders to an emergency meeting at Carinhall, his estate near Berlin, and told them of his growing concern. Schmid once again asked for unification of all German fighter defences; it was too split up, he argued. I Jagdkorps had three fighter divisions in northern and central Germany, but there was also II Jagdkorps with three fighter divisions still in the west, a further fighter division in the south and Luftflotte IV in Hungary. As Schmid pointed out, no one comma
nd had enough fighters to cope with the American daylight raids and each regional commander, understandably, was anxious to hold on to his fighters until the last minute rather than releasing them to other areas earlier. By the time they were finally being released to help other commands, it was too late and the bombers were on their way home. Although Luftflotte Reich had the power to overrule any of the regional commands, it could do so only with the Reichsmarschall’s say-so, which caused a delay that, again, worked against a swift and coordinated response. Göring accepted Schmid’s arguments and placed all fighters in southern Germany, Austria and Hungary under I Jagdkorps’ control, but effective only from 1 April, so no immediate help. He did, however, also order the immediate transferral of another fighter Gruppe from the Eastern Front to bolster 1 Jagddivision.
Schmid called his own meeting on 23 February to work out how best to meet these new and intense attacks. It was obvious, he told those gathered, that the current assaults were designed to gain air supremacy as a prelude to an invasion. From now on, their fighters would have to do their utmost to defend the aircraft industry, which was clearly the Allies’ priority. Each fighter division was to assign one Gruppe to attack the American fighter escorts, which was a reversal of Göring’s earlier order to ignore the enemy fighters and just go for the bombers. He also posted these Gruppen to airfields in western Germany in an effort to distract and divert the American escorts before they reached the bombers’ targets. At the same time, other units were ordered to retreat further into Germany because those still in the west were not having enough warning time to reach the kinds of altitudes needed to prevent them being bounced by Allied fighters.
All the while, the Luftwaffe’s half-hearted ‘mini Blitz’ continued, which meant nights of air-raid alerts for many of the air bases in England. The Luftwaffe’s bomber missions might not have been achieving much, but they were an undoubted nuisance. At Debden, there had been a ‘semi-alert’ at midnight and then a ‘full alert’ at five past. The all-clear had sounded at 1.20 a.m. No bombs had been dropped anywhere near the base – they never were. ‘The American sporting spirit of the enlisted personnel,’ ran the 334th squadron diary, ‘is well illustrated by the fact that pools are being made up predicting the exact hour of the next full air-raid alert.’2
However annoying it may have been for the aircrews to have air-raid alerts repeatedly waking them up, this was, of course, as nothing to the exhaustion, terror and trauma caused by the Allied bombing of Germany. What Margarete Dos was experiencing in Berlin was repeated in many German cities, and although Operation ARGUMENT was targeting aircraft factories, the bombers were still flying near or over other cities, air-raid sirens were going off across the Reich day and night, anti-aircraft guns were booming, and in target areas such as Regensburg, Leipzig and Brunswick, civilians were victims of those attacks. Normal life was constantly disrupted as civilians all over Germany, but especially in the western half, spent weary nights in air-raid shelters or found themselves having to stop their work and tramp down into shelters. It was demoralizing to say the least. So far in 1944, Cologne, for example, had had at least one air-raid alert every single day.
‘You learned to live from one air raid to the next,’ said Hugo Stehkämper, who was a 14-year-old boy living in Cologne.3 ‘It became routine.’ A lot of people moved out to the countryside, although there was precious little housing to spare and it was still winter. Stehkämper and his family preferred to stay put, fully aware they were risking their lives by doing so. ‘You simply continued to live from day to day with a certain degree of indifference.’ When the bombs started falling, however, he, like so many others, found himself gripped by a deathly, unshakeable fear that only ever passed when the all-clear sounded.
The city was crumbling, rubble lay everywhere, there was a chronic shortage of coal and particularly food. On paper, an adult was supposed to get nearly 2,000 calories a day, but the disruption and constant problems of supply meant this was rarely met. The SD – the Sicherheitsdienst, the SS intelligence agency – planted observers throughout the Reich to make reports on morale. ‘After the attacks,’ wrote one SD report, ‘the population appeared completely exhausted and apathetic.’4
Apathy and despair mixed with a hardening of many to the horrors they were witnessing. Another living in Cologne was Heribert Suntrop, who was fifteen and rapidly becoming inured to the death and carnage around him. The morning after one raid, he found the corpse of a British airman who had fallen without a parachute. He kicked the dead man with his boot. Another airman lay a bit further down the street, his body cut in half. ‘Only the upper part was there, completely naked,’ Suntrop recalled.5 ‘And this sight left me completely cold as well.’
German civilians were given a much-needed respite on 23 February when poor weather put paid to a fourth consecutive day of operations, which meant the Allied aircrew, at any rate, could have a lie-in and catch up on rest. For the moment, ARGUMENT would have to pause, giving the beleaguered ground crews of the Eighth a chance to patch up the battered bomb groups. Although the number of destroyed bombers had been small, many more had been damaged, plenty of them beyond redemption. Some 223 bombers had returned with battle damage on the first day, for example, all of which required immediate attention. Eighth Air Force had been able to fly 1,017 heavies on 20 February, 914 the following day and just 603 on the 22nd. Through the super-human efforts of the ground crews, that number had risen again to 854 by Thursday, 24 February. These ground engineers might not have faced danger in the skies, but all aircrews were mindful of how much they owed them. Camaraderie among the ground crews was as intense as it was among the aircrews; all understood the necessity of working immensely long hours in freezing conditions to make aircraft as safe as humanly possible.
All through the night and the wet, washed-out daylight hours of Wednesday, 23 February, the ground crews worked their magic and by Thursday morning over 800 heavy bombers were ready to fly along with 947 fighters. What’s more, the morning dawned cold and clear. Hugh McGinty could barely believe his eyes. ‘Was this England?’ he wondered.6 ‘We were almost glad to fly.’ He, for one, felt rested and refreshed after a day’s break, the terrors of the trip to Halberstadt pushed out of his mind. Then at the briefing the curtain was pulled back to reveal the target was Schweinfurt, prompting widespread groans and a dramatic deflation of spirits. Schweinfurt – a byword for the very worst of targets, and for McGinty’s thirteenth mission too.
It was to be another maximum effort. This time, the B-24s of the 2nd Division were being sent to the Messerschmitt factory at Gotha in eastern central Germany, which meant another long trip deep into the Reich. The 389th BG was detailed to lead the group, but because they now had only thirty B-24s available rather than the full complement with which they had begun the week, their formation included a section of fifteen ships upfront and a second section of fifteen behind. Jim Keeffe’s squadron, the 566th, was in the second echelon.
They were ordered to fly in lower than usual, at 14,500 feet, which was reckoned still to be above the light flak but low enough to get a better and more accurate bombing pattern. They were to completely paste the Gotha works; each mission in this week of weeks needed to count hard.
Also joining the 2nd Division’s strike on Gotha were the Liberators of the 445th from Tibenham, and Lieutenant Wright’s crew were once again on the list. At the briefing, Robbie Robinson – who had put on his electric flight suit with special care and no small amount of anxiety that it might once again malfunction – had been horrified to discover they were heading back to Gotha. The numbers were getting noticeably smaller: just twenty-five heavies could be put into the air from the 445th that day. They were promised fine weather and a clear target. Robinson remained sceptical, however; they had been told the same before the last trip.
A better, less predictable route had been chosen, and it seemed to work because they encountered neither much flak nor any enemy fighters. There had also been snow over central Europe
– from the cockpit, Keeffe saw nothing but a monochrome landscape below. He guessed 4 or 5 inches of snow had fallen; perhaps that had grounded the enemy fighters.
Also heading far into Germany were the Fortresses of the 1st Division. After the shock of learning they would be heading to Schweinfurt, by the time they took off Hugh McGinty had managed to regain some confidence, not least because climbing up to the assembly point would be done in the clear for pretty much the first time.
Meanwhile, the Fortresses of the 3rd Division were heading to Brunswick. Larry Goldstein and the crew of Worry Wart were among those on the list from the 388th BG, along with 303 other heavies scheduled to fly from the 3rd Division. When the curtain had been drawn back, Goldstein had not been the only one immediately to think of the hellish experience they had suffered eleven days earlier on their last visit to the city.
To the south, the Liberators of the 2nd Division were also having a fairly easy passage across Germany: the weathermen had got it right and they were flying in clear skies and, so far, had not been bothered by enemy fighters. Robbie Robinson wondered whether the Germans were asleep that day.
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