Big Week

by James Holland

  Meanwhile, Spaatz also implemented a plan to target key oil centres fuelling the Reich, from its one actual oilfield at Ploesti in Romania to the various synthetic-fuel plants dotted around Germany. By the end of May, this was really hurting the Luftwaffe. Training of new crews was cut even more, to save fuel and to allow enough fighter pilots to be processed to fly the numbers of aircraft being produced. By the end of May, training time had been cut to just 110–20 hours. Most were swiftly slaughtered.

  If Big Week is taken as one single battle, then it was the largest of the war, yet today it is largely forgotten, as is the importance of the epic clashes that took place in the air during the autumn of 1943 and early months of 1944. For both sides, this was a pivotal moment in the air war and that third week of February was the point at which the Allied plans for D-Day were saved. By April, the skies over western Europe were largely clear and the Allies had the all-important air superiority they so needed. It deserves to be better known and to be woven more clearly into the D-Day narrative, rather than consigned to the general history of the war in the air, which in turn is so often viewed in isolation rather than in its more important wider context.

  Many of those who flew in Big Week also took part in clashes that followed, over Berlin and beyond. Larry Goldstein did manage to make it to twenty-five completed missions, even though his last two were to Berlin, just about the worst target he could have been given. ‘At last,’ he wrote in his diary on the evening of Saturday, 4 March 1944, ‘I have walked away from the plane on my 25th mission unscathed.6 Thank God!’ He returned home to New York, got married and had children. He now lives in a retirement community to the north of Washington DC.

  Jimmy Stewart continued flying. On 30 March, he was posted to the 453rd BG to become its operations officer, but he continued to fly until 1 July when he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and became executive officer to Brigadier-General Ed Timberlake, commander of the 2nd Bomb Wing; he flew twenty official missions and a number more unofficially. Stewart was awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses – the first for his leadership on 20 February 1944; he also received the Croix de Guerre and Air Medal with three Oak Leaf clusters. By the end of the war he was a full colonel and briefly commanded the 2nd Combat Wing. After the war, he returned to Hollywood and was Oscar-nominated for his career-defining performance in It’s a Wonderful Life. Despite his return to the movies, he remained in the Air Force Reserve, served in Vietnam and rose to the rank of brigadier-general. He died in 1997, aged eighty-nine, having become one of the greatest film stars of the twentieth century and having never lost touch with his comrades from the war years – a period about which he rarely spoke, but of which he was justifiably proud.

  Robbie Robinson survived his tour, making it home to his beloved wife, and together they raised children and lived a long, contented life. He died in 2011, aged eighty-nine.

  Bill Lawley recovered from his wounds and returned to operational flying in May 1944. He was reassigned to the USA in June that year and was awarded his Medal of Honor in August. Remaining in the air force, he served for thirty years before retiring in 1972. He died in 1999. His Medal of Honor, flight jacket and dog-tags are all on display at the wonderful Mighty Eighth Museum outside Savannah, Georgia.

  Bob Hughes of the 100th BG finished his tour on the last day of Big Week and headed back to the USA. Jim Keeffe was shot down over Berlin but bailed out, survived, and spent the rest of the war as a POW. He returned to the States after the war and eventually wrote his memoirs at the urging of his children.

  Hugh McGinty finished his tour – extended for all bomber crews of the Eighth to thirty – at the end of May 1944 and eventually got back to the USA in July. He married, had children and many years later, in 1987, returned to Europe with his wife, Lois, to spend three weeks touring the German cities he had bombed all those years before. After going to Augsburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Bremen and elsewhere, they went to England, intending to visit his old base at Kimbolton. They paused to see the beautiful American cemetery at Madingley, just outside Cambridge, and then drove on towards Kimbolton. At Bedford, however, they stopped. ‘I was suddenly overcome by grief,’ he wrote, ‘and could go no further.’7

  The two Sullivans, T. Michael and Sully, also survived the war. As with many others, their wartime experiences remain vividly real through the immediacy and honesty of their jottings, written in their diaries at the time in those makeshift bases in southern Italy.

  Bill Byers survived his tour too, married his English girlfriend and returned to Canada, before moving to California. He always thought about his brother a lot. ‘I wonder what kind of life I would’ve had if he’d been here,’ he told me seventy years later.8 ‘He was my only brother and we were so close, you know.’

  Gordon Carter was eventually liberated at the end of the war and returned to France to marry his French fiancée. Ken Handley also completed his tour and made it through the war. Their memoirs and diaries are now in the Imperial War Museum; they both appear to have had long, peaceful lives after the fighting was over.

  For the German fighter boys, fortunes were mixed. Adolf Galland, Hajo Herrmann, Heinz Knoke and Wim Johnen all survived. Galland returned to operational flying in March 1945 when he took command of Jagdverband 44 of Me262 jets. Having survived the war, he became close friends with a number of his former adversaries, both British and American. He helped the Americans after the war as they began interviewing former commanders about all aspects of the Germans’ military effort, advised the Argentinian Air Force and later ran his own business. He died in 1996.

  Hajo Herrmann was captured by the Russians at the end of the war, spent ten years in a Gulag and then, on his return to Germany, became a highly successful lawyer; during his career he defended Holocaust deniers David Irving and Fred Leuchter, as well as Otto Ernst Remer, the head of the new-Nazi Socialist Reich Party. He married a celebrated soprano, had two children and lived to the age of ninety-seven. I interviewed him several times and it was always an intimidating experience. He wore a trim, silver goatee beard and at the heart of his pale, classically Aryan eyes were dark pupils that seemed to bore right into me. He was not a man who suffered fools, but he did eventually thaw a little and it was clear that behind those piercing eyes lay a mind that remained as keen and sharp as ever.

  How Heinz Knoke survived the war is anyone’s guess. He was shot down yet again on 29 April and, although he bailed out once more, suffered bad concussion. Nazi Germany being what it was, he was swiftly returned to the front line, however, and took command of III/JG1, flying over the Normandy front in August 1944. Having pulled back following the end of the campaign there, he was wounded yet again near Prague when his car struck a partisan-laid mine. Still on crutches in March 1945, he took command of Jever air base. After the war he dabbled in right-wing politics, joining the Socialist Reich Party, and then, once it was deemed illegal, became a local leader of the Liberal Democratic Party. Remaining in the Jever area, he also worked for the Jever Pilsener Brauhaus. After retiring in 1972, he went to university and studied for a degree in literature and philosophy. He died in 1993, still comparatively young at seventy-three, but by anyone’s reckoning he had had fifty more years of life than had ever seemed possible during his wartime flying career.

  Wim Johnen also made it through the war. He studied engineering at Munich University and later went on to work with Professor Willi Messerschmitt before setting up his own construction business. He retired to Lake Constance and continued to fly into his seventies. He died in February 2002.

  Of the American fighters, Gabby Gabreski went on to become the top-scoring American ace of the ETO. He was due to return home after amassing three hundred combat hours, but on 20 July 1944 he decided to fly one more mission and damaged his Thunderbolt after flying too low on a strafing run. Forced to crash-land, he was taken prisoner and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. After the war, he remained in the air force and served in Korea, amassing 6.5 kills against MiGs. He f
inally retired in 1967 and died in 1992, having fathered nine children, two of whom also joined the air force.

  Bob Johnson left the 56th FG in June 1944, by which time he had become a top-scoring ace with twenty-seven victories and reached the rank of major. After the war, he became chief test pilot for Republic Aviation as well as remaining in the Air Force Reserve, then later he became an insurance executive. He died in 1998.

  Bud Anderson ended up flying 116 combat missions on two tours and finished the war a triple ace with 16.25 victories to his name. Remaining in the air force, he became a leading test pilot and also served at the Pentagon, as well as taking command of the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing flying F-105s in Vietnam. After retiring from the air force he worked for McDonnell Aircraft Corporation as the manager of the Flight Test Facility and continued to fly and attend air shows – and still does. He lives close to his childhood home in northern California.

  Dick Turner ended up with twelve victories to his name and, after finishing his tour in late 1944, returned to the US but remained in the air force and later served in Korea, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He died in 1986, aged just sixty-six.

  Don Blakeslee was finally grounded in September 1944 having flown an incredible five hundred operational sorties and accumulated more than a thousand combat hours. No other single American fighter pilot flew more in the war. He stayed in the air force after the war, finally retiring in 1965 as a full colonel. During the war alone he won two Distinguished Service Crosses, eight Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Silver Stars and eight Air Medals, as well as a British DFC and French Croix de Guerre with Palm Leaf. He also served in the Korean War and picked up a further Distinguished Flying Cross and four more Air Medals. He was certainly one of the most remarkable fighter leaders who ever lived. Settling down in Florida, he died in 2008, aged ninety, an old warrior to the end.

  At the beginning of April 1944, Bee Beeson was brought down by ground fire while flying low and was taken prisoner. At the end of the war, he finally made it back to Debden and was then posted back to the USA. Although he tried to get reassigned to the Pacific, he was instead posted to Sarasota Field in Florida, where he met his future wife. Marrying in January 1946, he soon after began feeling ill and was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He died in February 1947, still tragically young at just twenty-five years old. Despite his curtailed wartime career, he was highly decorated and one of the leading aces of the ETO with twenty-two victories. He was also unquestionably one of the finest marksmen of all the Eighth’s fighter pilots.

  After his extraordinary tussle with the Focke-Wulfs over Compiègne in January 1944, Don Gentile and his wingman, John Godfrey, became two of the most celebrated Mustang fighter aces in the Eighth. Their fame quickly grew, so that Churchill called them ‘Damon and Pythias’ after the legendary Greek heroes. By mid-April, Gentile had become the leading ace of the ETO, but then crashed his P-51 while performing stunts over Debden for some assembled press reporters, which was embarrassing both for him and for the entire 4th FG. Blakeslee grounded him and, with 350 combat hours in his logbook, he was posted home to help sell war bonds. He recorded his memoirs for war correspondent Ira Wolfert in a promotional booklet called One-Man Air Force. After the war, he also stayed in the air force as a tactical and gunnery instructor, but was killed when he crashed his T-33 Shooting Star trainer in late January 1951.

  Of the many air bases that once dotted eastern England – both USAAF and RAF – most have long since been carved up and returned to farmland. The remnants, however, are not hard to find and many have small museums that keep their wartime heritage alive. Debden is now an army base, but Halesworth, where the 56th FG were based, is still clearly etched on to the landscape, even though many of the wartime buildings have gone. At Thorpe Abbotts, the giant airfield itself is now fields, but the control tower has been restored. To the south, on the far side, the once vast encampment has largely gone, but cracked concrete tracks remain and in among the trees it is still possible to see remains of old Nissen huts, steadily being reclaimed by nature.

  After the war, Chaplain James Good Brown wrote a highly moving and personal account of his wartime experiences with the 381st BG, based on his wartime jottings. Ridgewell is like many old Eighth Air Force air bases, but I was given a tour of the place on a cold October day – not dissimilar to those that plagued the Eighth’s efforts in the autumn of 1943 – by Paul Bingley, a local resident who works in the aviation industry but whose passion is the heritage of the 381st. He took us to the old cinema, now surrounded by thick brambles and nettles and home to a collection of dust-covered old farm vehicles. At the far end, through a doorway, were the remains of the room where Chaplain Brown camped out and gave solace to so many of those frightened young men expected to take to the skies to bomb Germany. A bit further on, following another track of broken concrete, we emerged into a clearing that had once been the air base’s makeshift baseball ground – a bat had been found in a hedge some time later.

  Although derelict and overgrown, it didn’t need a huge leap of imagination to picture what it must have been like all those years ago in early 1944. Half-close the eyes and it was almost possible to see the mighty Fortresses lined up and to picture the aircrew and ground personnel hurrying past on their bicycles. What battles had taken place in the skies back then and what sacrifices had been made. As my daughter skipped on ahead and ran down part of the old main runway, I thought again about how lucky we are.

  1 The cockpit of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

  2 The waist gunner’s station in the B-17, with the ball turret beyond. It was little more than a tin can.

  3 The prototype B-17, gleaming and silvery. It was the most modern heavy bomber in the world when it first flew in July 1935.

  4 Don Blakeslee briefs pilots of the 4th Fighter Group. James Goodson, with moustache, sits to his left. Drawn from the American volunteers who made up the original RAF Eagle Squadrons, the 4th FG were tough, highly experienced pilots. And of those, Blakeslee was the toughest.

  5 The identical twins from Canada, George (left) and Bill Byers, who arrived in England to fly Halifax bombers in RAF Bomber Command’s 6 Group.

  America’s air leaders, committed not only to daylight strategic bombing but also to gaining air superiority and defeating the Luftwaffe.

  6 Fred Anderson

  7 Hap Arnold

  Jimmy Dolittle

  Ira Eaker

  8 Bill Kepner (far left) and Carl ‘Tooey’ Spaatz (2nd left)

  Some of the Eighth Air Force’s most celebrated aces. Increasingly, American fighter pilots had greater flying hours, skill and combat tactics than their German adversaries.

  Bud Anderson

  Don Blakeslee

  9 Duane Beeson

  Gabby Gabreski

  Don Gentile

  10 Jim Howard

  Bob Johnson

  Dick Turner

  11 Hub Zemke

  The prototype P-51 Mustang showed immense promise from the outset, but not until the P-51B model.

  12 Harnessed with a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, did it become one of the most important aircraft ever designed.

  The 4th FG were thrilled to be among the first units to get Mustangs.

  13 The Thunderbolt P-47 and its firing scheme.

  Newly arrived P-47 Thunderbolts transported through Liverpool.

  15 B-17s lined up ready to taxi for another mission.

  Some of the crew of Worry Wart.

  16 Ace Conklin (co-pilot)

  17 Larry Goldstein (radio operator)

  18 Kent Keith (bombardier)

  Jimmy Stewart, from Hollywood star to outstanding air leader.

  19 Rusty Waughman in the cockpit of his Lancaster.

  20 Newly commissioned.

  21 The interior of a Lancaster looking back from the flight engineer’s side of the cockpit and showing one of the huge wing spars that had to be clambered over. Crew comfort and safety was not a big consideration in its desi
gn.

  22 Conditions in the winter of 1943 and early 1944 were awful.

  Here, 101 Squadron crew cross ‘Mudford’ Magna.