By 0906, Fred could feel the damaged plane struggling to hold altitude. He knew what their options were, and he wasn’t surprised when he heard Jackson order Haught to drop the bomb load. Even with the radio room door to the bomb bay closed, Fred could feel the turbulence created as the bomb doors opened and the raging wind found the interior of the plane. Seconds later, he felt a lurch as the bombs fell away and then the surge as the plane, free of her explosive cargo, gained altitude and speed.
With the plane four tons lighter, Fred thought they would soon catch up to the heavily laden squadron and regain the safety of numbers. But before they could regain their position, the plane entered another zone of heavy flak. As the heavy plumes of smoke erupted around them, the plane was jostled and jolted, knocking everyone around. There was one especially severe shock that slapped the left wing.
That shock got everyone’s attention. At the waist, Fred was knocked off his feet, hanging by one hand from the guard of his gun. Blood streamed down the left side of his face, and the left leg of his flight suit was shredded. He had been hit by flak, with one piece passing completely through his left calf. Sam rushed over to see if he could help, but under the circumstances, there was little he could do.
The plane was shaking severely, and the oscillations were getting worse. The strain on the plane was severe, and on either side of the fuselage, the control cables that ran aft suspended between guides were vibrating like tuning forks, each cable a blur. There were more lurches from incoming flak, and more patches of daylight appearing in the airframe. The #2 engine was spinning unevenly, and the wild windmilling was what made the plane shake so violently. And then Fred, fighting to remain conscious, saw the engine burst into flames, the fire spreading rapidly along the left wing, heading toward the fuselage. With the engine in flames and the hydraulic lines ruptured, Fred knew there was no way to control the runaway propeller. He also knew there was no way to put the fire out. Fred had learned in training that engine fire extinguishers had been removed from the design to save weight.
Without any way to suppress the fire, he could envision only two possible scenarios, neither of them encouraging. One was that the propeller shaft would fail and the freed propeller would spin right through the cockpit on its way toward the right wing. The other was that the spreading fire would weaken the wing, ignite the fuel in the wing tank, and then the left wing would collapse. Once either of those scenarios came to pass, it was game over for the aircrew.
Their luck had run out. With only two functional engines, there was no way to gain or even maintain altitude, and with the fire raging, the plane was unlikely to reach the ground intact. None of the crew was surprised to hear the bailout alarm, followed by “Pilot to crew: Abandon ship” over the intercom. The alarm would have been deafening had they been on the ground with the engines off, but under the current circumstances, it was just a new sound in an already noisy environment. Its meaning, however, was unmistakable to everyone onboard.
On the navigator’s deck at the front of the plane, Lt. Haught opened the bomb bay doors and then clipped on his parachute. He then opened the hatch in the floor below the flight deck, and left the plane. He was followed moments later by Lt. Shaffer. Lt. Jackson could feel the resistance added by the opening of the nose hatch and the bomb bay doors, but he decided to hang tight for 3-4 minutes to give the crew adequate time to leave the plane. Behind him, Sgts. Marsilii and Pickrel were grabbing their parachutes, and they quickly left the plane via the bomb bay.
At the waist, Sam ditched his flak vest as Fred, fumbling a bit with the straps, dropped his. Running on adrenaline, Fred detached his oxygen hose and the intercom cables from the plane’s systems, stuck the hose from the bailout oxygen bottle in his mouth, and opened the valve on the bottle. He then joined Sam at the ball turret, which they noted with alarm had not rotated to bring the access hatch to the top. Either Felipe had not heard the alarm, or he was hurt, or there had been a hydraulic or power failure. In any case, he could probably use a hand extracting himself from the ball turret.
Taking the handles from their brackets on the bulkhead, they manually rotated the ball to bring the access hatch to the top. Opening it, they quickly boosted Musquiz, who was uninjured, out of the enclosure. The three sergeants hastily assisted one another with clipping the parachute packs onto the D-rings on the front of each harness. They then raced aft, to the waist hatch on the starboard side of the fuselage. On the way, Fred could see light through the open tail hatch. It meant that Ted Dubenic, the tail gunner, was already out of the plane, and there was no need to crawl back to check for him.
At first, the waist door would not open, the airframe having twisted, but by slamming their shoulders against the door repeatedly, they finally managed to free it. Thanks to the delay, compounded by exertion, shock, and adrenaline levels, Fred’s bailout bottle was already low. At risk of oxygen deprivation as well as shock, Fred dove through the hatch head first, falling into the blue toward a layer of cloud roughly a mile below them. Sam and then Felipe followed a heartbeat later.
Fred, free-falling and only half conscious, felt the bitterly cold wind tearing at his face and the corners of his now useless oxygen mask. By making shifts and adjustments to the positions of his arms and legs, he managed to flip over to his back. Above him, he could see the bright blue sky, and with the wind roaring past and pressing against his back, he felt much more secure. He barely had time to appreciate that sensation before he lost consciousness.
Certain that other members of the crew were already on their way, Jackson held the bucking yoke with his left hand and motioned to Blake to leave the plane. Ross unclipped his harness, pulled his parachute from beneath his seat, and climbed over the central control console. He clipped the parachute on before climbing down to exit via the forward hatchway. Although the official plan was for the pilot and copilot to leave via the bomb bay, the forward hatch was preferred — one was less likely to collide with the belly turret.
As Blake was climbing down, Jackson began his preparations for departure. His parachute was stuffed under his seat, and as he leaned forward, struggling with his harness and air hoses and wiring, his weight shifted forward, pushing the control yoke to the front and sending the plane into a steep dive. He got the parachute out as quickly as possible and hauled back on the yoke to level her out at 16,000’. He had dropped over a mile in the few seconds that it had taken him to access his chute! He glanced at the left wing to see how bad things were, and realized with a shock that the rushing air in their descent had blown the fire out. They might be able to make it home after all!
Jackson hit the intercom to tell any remaining crew members to stay on board, but he got no replies. He set the autopilot momentarily and shifted back to look down and forward to see if Blake had left yet. He was still aboard, sitting on the hatch coaming. Blake stuck his head up, but when Jackson took off his mask and yelled “Stay with the plane!” Ross waved jauntily and dropped through the hatchway. Jackson, totally alone on the plane, returned to his seat, disconnected the autopilot, and started a banking turn to the west to head for home. But within moments the fire restarted with a vengeance, flaring across the wing. At a lower speed and lower altitude, the fire was much better fueled, and it was really raging. “Well,” thought Jackson, “now it really is time to go!” Setting the autopilot for the last time, he descended to the forward hatch and dropped toward the ground.
Lt. Haught, the bombardier and the first of the officers to leave the crippled ship, fell well clear before pulling the ripcord to deploy his parachute. Almost immediately, he was startled by the rush of a falling body trailing a tangled, streaming parachute. The free-fall continued before his horrified stare until both airman and parachute were lost in the cloud layer below. Haught was now descending toward the cloud layer at a more stately pace, and he was being steadily blown to the northeast.
Jackson, the last to leave, had hardly opened his parachute before he saw to his dismay that the plane did not app
ear interested in leaving his side. Like some huge lumbering shark, the plane had gone into a flat spiral, pivoting around the flaming right wing and centering on his approximate position. Three times he watched the plane rush past, once so close that he thought he would be struck head-on. But each time, it passed with either lateral or vertical separation before its descent accelerated, and it plummeted through the cloud layer toward the ground below.
Long moments later and a considerable distance below, Fred recovered consciousness. He was still on his back, still falling, but with a layer of cloud in view, rather than the sharp blue he remembered from just moments before. Groggily, he flipped himself over and saw to his shock that he was very low, far below the 5000’ that he had planned on, and he could see what looked like a church steeple rocketing toward him like a javelin. Frantically, he pulled on the ripcord, and with a jolt, the deploying parachute slowed his descent — at the cost of a mule kick to his private parts, the result of having a slack harness. With the parachute full, the wind pushed him rapidly to the northeast, away from the village and its church.
His parachute was a small, hemispherical canopy known as a “survival chute,” and each time it rocked, it would dump air. As a result, Fred descended in a sequence of rock-fall-jerk, rock-fall-jerk. With the ground now 400-500’ feet beneath him, he moved laterally, passing over fields, dirt roads, and then a small crossroads. Ahead, about where he expected to touch down, he saw a cultivated field and a small trail adjacent to a small forest. At the last moment, he attempted to pull the shrouds to keep the chute from rocking and thereby control his landing speed, but to no avail. The parachute dumped air in the moment before landing, and he fell hard, his weight falling on his injured left leg, which promptly collapsed and pitched him face first toward the ground. He hit with a bang, and again the lights went out.
CHAPTER 4
12 June 1944, Peenemünde, Germany
THE OFFICE OF BARON WERNHER Magnus Maximillian von Braun was in House 4, a brick two-story building that was the administrative and engineering headquarters for the Peenemünde research facility. Von Braun was a tall man who in many ways resembled the idealized German male. At 32, he was blond, blue eyed, and very fit, with a commanding presence and an arrogance that was in part a consequence of birth — his father was a Prussian aristocrat who had been the Minister of Agriculture and whose support in the cabinet was instrumental in Hitler’s rise to power — and in part the result of his rapid ascent through the academic, political, and scientific ranks. He had arrived at work as usual, wearing one of the custom-tailored business suits he preferred for his day-to-day life in and around Peenemünde. He always wore a prominent Nazi Party lapel pin, but donned his SS14 uniform only for meetings of the local SS unit and when traveling to outlying rocket assembly and testing sites.15 When dealing with SS field teams, the uniform was a definite plus, and it encouraged immediate obedience from the general public. But as an SS-Major16 (Sturmbannführer) there were hundreds of SS officers who outranked him and to whom he must defer, whereas as Professor and Technical Director of the Nazi rocket program, he needed to defer only to the Führer and General Dornberger,17 the head of the Army Ordnance team that employed him.
As technical head of the rocket program, von Braun was responsible for the design office, the five laboratory complexes (materials, ballistics, guidance, fabrication, and testing), as well as budgeting and associated administrative operations. The challenges kept him energized and very, very, busy.
It was 0930, and Wernher was tired from traveling but excited about the days ahead. Two big events were scheduled. The most important, from his perspective, was the test flight of a V-2 rocket equipped with a remote-controlled guidance system intended for use with the new anti-aircraft rockets already being fired (with little success) at enemy bombers. Wernher was in charge of this project, which was code named Wasserfall (Waterfall). The V-2 wasn’t intended for anti-aircraft use (it was a ballistic missile) but it was big enough to carry all of the communication and testing gear needed to assess the remote control system intended for use in smaller rockets.
Although still referred to by the engineers as the A-4, the missiles headed for mobile launch facilities in Germany and the occupied territories would become widely known as the V-2’s, the V designating “Vengeance Weapons” (Vergeltungswaffen). The first of the Vengeance weapons would become fully operational the next day, when the V-1 bombardment of England would begin. The jet-propelled flying bombs, developed by the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), were already being loaded onto their launch rails, and a test firing earlier in the morning had already sent one toward an unknown fate in England.18 The V-1, technically the Fi103, was cheap to construct and available in large numbers. Thousands were either already built or under construction. Each was basically a simple jet engine strapped to a glider frame carrying a 500 pound bomb. It was a cumbersome, slow, primitive, and limited weapon, as compared to Wernher’s cherished V-2, but the propaganda value of flights of unmanned, pre-programmed flying bombs raining down on Germany’s enemies would be considerable. His direct involvement with V-1 development was limited, because the Luftwaffe ran the program in Peenemünde-West, whereas Wernher’s V-2 project was based in Peenemünde-East. Yet the success of any advanced weapon from Peenemünde would bode well for long-term support for Wernher’s projects — as long as they could overcome the logistical hurdles and win the war.
The V-2 rocket to be tested had been shipped from the manufacturing plant at the Mittelwerk. Like the others under construction, the rocket was 46’ tall and capable of delivering nearly a ton of explosives to a target roughly 200 miles away. That particular unit was painted a dull green camouflage color, and rather than carrying explosives, its payload consisted of radios that would provide onboard telemetry. Some compromises that had been made to improve transmission quality concerned him. For example, the skin of the central section of the rocket had been made of wood rather than sheet metal, and although he had calculated that the wood would be strong enough to tolerate the launch forces, uncertainties remained.
In fact, there were many uncertainties about the V-2 program in general. Primary among them would be whether or not Arthur Rudolph, his friend and former subordinate, had managed to suppress the continuing problems with quality control with the aid of SS-General Hans Kammler. The problems were generally attributed to intentional sabotage by the prison laborers on the assembly line. He was sure that Rudolph and Kammler would do whatever was necessary to overcome the problems, so that the V-2 barrage could begin on schedule.19
Wernher had certainly done everything he could to simplify the design and improve quality control on the production line. It had become very clear that he was going to need to visit the V-2 assembly complex, known as the Mittelwerk, every few weeks to oversee the numerous design changes and to check progress and production quality. He had just returned from one of those trips the previous day.
The pressure was intense. By the end of the year, the Führer expected 1,000 V-2s to be slamming into London every month, and von Braun was determined to do everything possible to make that happen. He pushed himself hard, and his staff was treated no differently, driven by a mixture of patriotic exhortations and thinly veiled threats — “I will call the responsible people to account.”20 There was general agreement, however, that Wernher was a superb organizer and leader. He was considerate to his staff, he celebrated and encouraged teamwork, and he rewarded their achievements. If an engineer suggested a technical improvement during a meeting and von Braun overruled it, he would often buy the engineer a drink to smooth the waters. On the other hand, he demanded absolute loyalty. Once he’d made a decision, he expected everyone to follow it without question. They were a team, he was in charge, and that was the end of it. He would take the heat if there were setbacks, and he would take full credit for all successes. Both the team and the V-2 were “his.”
Wernher thrived on the responsibility and the status it afforded, and he enjoyed being t
he center of attention. At social events, he entertained the group with his piano skills, and his romantic exploits — such as showing up at parties with two girlfriends — raised eyebrows and stimulated lively gossip. He was charismatic and a gifted speaker, fluent in French and capable in English. He also automatically assumed that he was smartest guy in the room. That was not an unusual attitude at the upper levels of the Reich — the same could be said about Speer, Himmler, or Göring. Although Wernher wouldn’t say it aloud, he expected everyone else to share that opinion of him. This intellectual arrogance was recognized by those around him, as was his driving ambition and his obsession with rockets.
Wernher’s attitude often affected his management style, which caused problems with colleagues who considered him arrogant and self-important. He didn’t mind technical disagreements, as long as his decisions were accepted. But he would not tolerate having his decisions challenged. As Technical Director he had no trouble seeing that those who disagreed or displeased him wound up working elsewhere. In 1938, in the early days of V-2 development, he had optimistically promised Walter Dornberger, then an Oberstleutnant (lieutenant colonel), that the missile would carry a one-ton payload more than 550 miles. Dr. Paul Schröder, who was in charge of testing the rocket engine, objected, saying that the engine could at best have a range of 120 miles. Although Schröder was correct, Wernher formally accused him of insubordination. Dornberger defused the situation, but the following year, after yet another heated confrontation (this time over a rocket guidance system that Wernher advocated and Schröder disparaged), Dornberger transferred Schröder to another division, one that didn’t report to von Braun.21
Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences Page 5