At 2:00 a.m. Philip Ardery heard "the racket of alarms going off, and jeeps tearing from tent to tent, blowing horns, and men shouting, 'Get up! Get up, you guys! Roll cut of those sacks. This is the day!'" The airmen walked through the dark to the last briefings. Sergeant Patrick McAtee, rear gunner, came to the Eight Ball meeting in a Class A uniform with full decorations and polished silver wings. "The general said this was going to be a rough mission," he explained. "If the Germans get me, I want them to know they really have somebody."
At Terria, the new commander of the Circus, Colonel Addison Baker, spoke to his men. He was a tall, stem-jawed Regular Army man from Akron, Ohio. New civilian youths tended to shy away from him until old hands pointed out, "Baker is all heart. He'll do more for an enlisted man than any joker in this outfit." As a squadron leader he had led the Circus through sanguinary air battles in the west. In the briefing tent he looked at the drawn faces of seven comrades who had completed their missions with him and were flying with him today. Baker said, "We're going on one of the biggest jobs of the war. If we hit it good, we might cut six months off the war. She may be a little rough, but you can do her, fellows. Good luck."
A navigator asked, "What'll happen if you and Jerk don't make the target?" Baker replied, "Nothing like that will happen. I'm going to take you to this one if my plane falls apart." A radioman asked, "What are the chances of staying off detection?" Baker grimaced. "Don't think there will be any surprise to it," he said. "When we get in the air, they'll hear us clear to Cairo. Low-altitude bombing is the only thing that will take us through."
Pilot John R. ("Packy") Roche's flight engineer, Fred Anderson, a telephone linesman from Washington, D.C., left the briefing thinking, "There comes a time in every man's life when he hits something big and feels it all over. This is the biggest thing. The target must be destroyed to win the war. The idea is to take the bombs exactly to the AP's [Aiming Points]. Coming back is secondary today."
The co-pilots distributed the escape kits. They contained a handkerchief map of the Balkans, a British gold sovereign (or a U.S. twenty-dollar gold piece), ten one-dollar bills, and six dollars worth of drachmae and lire -- the latter equal to three months' wages for a Balkan peasant. There were pressed dates, water purification tablets, biscuits, sugar cubes and "desert chocolate," which Walter Stewart said "looked like modeling clay and tasted like it too." There were tiny compasses to secrete in the body and hair, and one type could be assembled from two suspender buttons. Ardery saw his men concealing so many compasses on their persons that "the only way they could walk was north." He taped a hacksaw blade to the sole of his foot. "I had spent weeks planning my escape after I was shot down," he said. "I had complete confidence in my ability to come through it." He was convinced most of the planes would go down and there would be enough wandering Americans in Romania "to call a general election, vote the Germans out, and make peace with the Allies."
The men also received mimeographed vocabularies in Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat, Turkish and Greek -- the phrases chosen to cover wounds, hunger, concealment and obtaining civilian clothes. Men who found themselves in Romanian forests were advised to avoid wolves and bears, but not peasants. "The people of Romania, especially the peasants, are honest, friendly, kindly and hospitable to strangers," said the escape notes. "Amongst the middle and upper classes, however, there are many grafters, friendly to the Germans. Generally speaking, it is safer to keep to villages and small towns."
After the briefing, thirty men attended Stewart's Mormon meeting. "We talked about death, resurrection and the life to come," the pilot said. "I told the boys that no Nazi gunners could end that which has always been -- the soul and intelligence of man. I was convinced beyond question that this life was just part of a great, everlasting, progressive existence that ruled before we came here, moves on according to our diligence and obedience here and then to the next life, forever growing without limits or bounds. This testimony was much appreciated by the warriors of the 93rd. It does not remove fear, which is fixed by nature, but it gives great purpose to this life."
Charles L. Roberts, a tail gunner, thought of "the general who told us the mission would be a success even if none returned."
Faraway storms of engines sounded, and dust blew all night as the mechanics tuned them up at Lete, the Pyramider base, and on the long plains of the Eight Balls at Benina Main, the Sky Scorpions at Berka Four, the Liberandos at Berka Two, and the Traveling Circus at Terria. R.A.F. ack-ack men on the perimeter came out of their tents and brewed up tea, wondering what the bloody hell the Yanks were up to after this past strange fortnight.
Sam Nero's men were producing a triumph -- seventeen more planes than were called for in the field order. The 10 percent increase in aircraft would partially offset the high percentage of bombs that would not burst. Duds or not, the bomb loaders grunted under the open bays, hoisting 311 tons of them into the shackles. The Sky Scorpions had only skeleton ground crews, and the men who would deliver the bombs helped load their own. During the night, orders came down to put two boxes of British incendiaries in each plane. The gunners could throw these thermite sticks into the highly combustible refineries as they passed over.
The people on the ground were also busy in the enemy camp that night. "Willi, something big is in the air," said Armament Warden Nowicki's CO, Major Maier. "Do the best you can." Nowicki checked out 36 flak guns and fell asleep in exhaustion at midnight. After two hours a battalion clerk awakened Nowicki. "You're wanted immediately at Battery Four. No time for breakfast." The Waffenwart motorcycled across fragrant harvest fields and reported to the fire controller of Battery Four, a slim, bespectacled Viennese sergeant named Aust. "The elevator panel on Bertha is out of order," said Aust. "First, I must report to your officer," said Nowicki. Aust waved glumly toward the officers' billet. Nowicki found Oberleutnant Arnold Hecht profoundly out of the war in a tobacco-stale bedroom littered with empty brandy bottles. He stirred the officer, reported, and went to Bertha, the big 88. The man in charge of the malfunctioning elevation panel, Corporal Walter Becker, in peacetime a diamond cutter from Idar-Oberstein, helped Nowicki turn off the nuts on the panel. Inside there were intricate circuits and indicator lights, manufactured by Zeiss, the camera people. "Hand me this, hand me that," said Nowicki to Becker. The gun crew and the Russian slaves came on duty, yawning and scratching, surprised to see a Waffenwart at work so early in the morning.
At Benghazi, about a third of the combat men were weak with dysentery. Normally, half of such cases would be medically grounded. But the flight surgeons, like the operations officers, had to produce air crews. Three army nurses and eight Red Cross girls, the only women among eight thousand men, helped the medical effort to man Tidal Wave. The doctors grounded two extreme cases of dysentery, a man with an impacted wisdom tooth, and three flight neurotics. Three able men refused flatly to fly and are remembered by those who did. The empty places were taken by some who had never been in battle and some with no air-crew training, including three privates. That all posts were manned indicated the summit of resolve the Ploesti men had reached.
In a dozen ships additional gunners volunteered, despite the high odds against coming back. Pilot Richard L. Wilkinson carried two extra people. Lieutenant Howard Dickson, a Circus ground officer who had flown twenty combat missions to learn what the men went through, got a berth on Euroclydon (The Storm) with Enoch Porter. The pilot asked, "What's the book for today, Dick?" It was Dickson's habit to read classics on the long hauls to and from the target. He said, " As You Like It . Shakespeare." Porter said, "Well, don't get too deep in the book. You're going to see some sights. We're going over in the first wave with Colonel Baker."
At Benina Main, Colonel Leon Johnson, commander of the Eight Balls, stood under his ship, a collection of patches called Suzy-Q, and chatted with his ground staff officers. A jeep arrived with the news that Johnson's pilot was prostrated with dysentery. A retired combat man, Major William Brandon, took his place. Johnson
handed his wallet to the group chaplain, James F. Patterson. Out fell a four-leaf clover given to Johnson by his wife. Colonels and majors got on their knees, looking for it. The tower controller shot a flare. The searchers found the charm and handed it up to Johnson as Suzy-Q rolled away.
At Berka Four, Father Beck visited the planes before take-off. He was a jovial, sunburned, white-haired man with a happy, confident smile. He blessed the Catholics and anyone else who wanted a prayer. A co-pilot said, "You got good connections up there, Chappie?" Beck said, "I pray through channels." The men in the plane grinned down at him and held their thumbs up. "Make contact for us, Padre," a gunner shouted. The engines were turning.
Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,
Soon unlimber'd to begin the red business.
-- Walt Whitman, "Drum Taps," 1865
5 THE GREAT MISSION AIRBORNE
During the summers in Cyrenaica the khamseen comes punctually in the afternoon, flooding dust across the coastal shelf. The Liberators used to stand in it like elephants bathing, while mechanics cleaned engines and bombardiers swaddled bombsights against the scouring disease that took a third of an airplane's life. On this Sunday morning, the first of August 1943, the dust storm came before dawn, roaring like no wind of nature. For forty miles along the Libyan bulge, 712 engines blew up earth upon which no rain had fallen for four months as 178 cruelly burdened B-24's queued up for take-off. Each plane carried at least 3,100 gallons of gasoline and an average load of 4,300 pounds of bombs, bullets and thermite sticks, exceeding the Liberator's maximum load allowance. The first, and possibly suicidal, problem of the flight to Romania was simply to get off the ground.
The first wave aircraft in the seven target forces had extra fixed nose guns; some had armored the flight deck, most had extra belts of fifty-caliber shells. The mission force carried more than 1,250,000 rounds of armor-piercing, incendiary and tracer shells and 311 tons of bombs -- more killing power than two Gettysburgs. In Romania much greater fire power awaited it. The aerial army rolling through the red dust consisted of 1,763 United States citizens from every state of the Union and the District of Columbia. Also aboard were a Canadian, Sergeant Blase Dillman of Kingman, Saskatchewan, flight engineer of Daisy Mae, and an Englishman, Squadron Leader George C. Barwell, Royal Air Force, London, flying top turret with Norman Appold. Barwell was present without leave. The R.A.F. had not given him permission to fly, but for the Americans his combat art was to be one of the luckiest things of the day.
As the Liberators gathered at the end of the runways and waited for the dust to settle, tank trucks came around and topped off the gas loads in the regular wing tanks and the special bomb bay tanks. During the wait, Flight Officer Russell Longnecker of Broken Bow, Nebraska, co-pilot of Thundermug, sat on top of his ship against the top turret wondering how he could become a first pilot. His squadron operations officer, John Stewart, came by in a jeep, checking crews. He asked the pilot of Thundermug, "Well, how do you feel now?" The pilot, who had just left a hospital bed, still suffering with a bad case of dysentery, said, "I don't think I can make it." Stewart yelled up to Longnecker, "The lieutenant isn't going. You think you could take her there yourself?" Longnecker shouted, "Can I take her! This is what I've been waiting for since flight school!" "Okay," Stewart said, "I'll find you a co-pilot," and he jeeped away.
He returned with another sprouting flight officer, Donald K. ("Deacon") Jones. The senior officer aboard was now the bombardier, Second Lieutenant William M. Schrampf, twenty-three, a mathematics teacher, who concealed his misgivings from the boy pilots. Neither had ever taken a loaded airplane off the ground. Their first try would entail lifting an overload of combustibles and an extra man in the crew, Flight Officer Odin C. Olsen, an observer.
At 0400 hours Greenwich mean time,* the command meteorological officer, having stirred the entrails, pronounced the weather auguries favorable in the Balkans, and with that last ground decision of six months of ground decisions, the tower controllers shot the flares. At Berka Two, the lead plane of the mission, Brian Woolley Flavelle's Wingo-Wango, carrying the mission route navigator, Lieutenant Robert W. Wilson, started the long and dangerous take-off run.
* All times of day in the book are given by Greenwich mean time on the 24-hour European system. The Benghazi bases ran on Egyptian summer time -- GMT plus three hours -- while Romania was on eastern European time -- GMT plus two.
Flavelle was the volunteer who had attacked the Messina ferry slip and had broken down its ferroconcrete roofs. He had completed twenty-seven missions without mishap, but had been downed on the twenty-eighth just prior to Tidal Wave. That was a small epic. His plane was crippled by enemy attack and forced down in enemy-held Sicily. Flavelle sank her carefully into a small rocky pasture, with his wheels down, and braked her so skillfully that the ponderous B-24 stopped with her nose crumpled against a stone wall without injuring anyone. The crew took to heel and found an English-speaking Sicilian who had helped excavate the New York subways in his youth. He put them aboard a fishing vessel for Malta, where Flavelle's people were forwarded to Benghazi to resume military duty. Sam Nero gave Flavelle a brand-new airplane called Wingo-Wango to fly at the brunt of Tidal Wave.
Out of seven leagues of dust the lumbering monsters heaved into the air at two-minute intervals and climbed into the five formations circling 2,000 feet up. Through thickening dust they continued taking off for an hour and finding their places in the swarms slowly turning over the airdromes. Dawn touched the pink ships and the green ships as they took up group order, with Flavelle out front pointing to Corfu, 500 miles away. Many of them saw what happened to one of the last ships to leave the ground, Robert J. Nespor's Kickapoo, which had been loaned by the Circus to the Pyramiders for the day. John C. Riley was the co-pilot. One of its engines failed shortly after take-off. Nespor banked back into the dust for a blind emergency landing. His wing struck a ferroconcrete telephone pole and Kickapoo crashed and burned. There were two survivors, Second Lieutenant Russell Polivka and tunnel gunner Eugene Garner.
Behind K.K. Compton's 29 pink Liberando ships the battle order stood: 39 green planes of the Traveling Circus, led by Addison Baker; Killer Kane's 47 lion-colored Pyramiders; 37 green Eight Balls following Leon Johnson; and at the end, Colonel Jack Wood's 26 factory-fresh Liberators crewed by the novice Sky Scorpions.
The armada now standing for Corfu was the most intensively prepared and most experienced large force that has been dispatched in the history of aerial warfare. Except for the Sky Scorpions, each man aloft had flown an average of fifteen raids, most of them over western Europe in the hardest theater of the air war. Three hundred of them had made more than 25 missions and had long since used up their odds on staying alive or out of captivity. There might be 50 percent casualties -- some even predicted 100 percent -- at Ploesti. They flew to shorten ihe war.
Each group was formed of V's, the basic three-plane units adopted by American heavy bombers in World War II. The V permitted the fullest concentration and field of fire from thirty guns. The V's were stepped up toward the rear of each group. The air fleet, gleaming in the sunrise, streamed north, laying five miles of fleeting shadows on the quiet sea. It was a flying city. Its metal and glass terraces passed like a legend of the Mediterranean, stranger than Minos or Troy. It was a dumb, cloistered city. The men in each plane could talk to each other on the interphone, but there was no talking between planes. The command radio frequency was to be silent the whole way to avoid the enemy's radio-detection.
The precaution was useless. The Germans knew immediately that the force was up from Benghazi. Unknown to Allied Intelligence, the Luftwaffe had recently placed a crack Signal Interception Battalion near Athens. It had broken the Allied code and was reading Ninth Air Force transmissions. Although the attackers were not broadcasting their destination, they had to spread a short, essential message to Allied forces in the Mediterranean theater, simply announcing a large mission was airborne from Libya. It was necessary to
alert friendly air, sea and ground forces not to jump to the wrong conclusion if a big formation was sighted. Only a few weeks before, in the invasion of Sicily, the U.S. Navy had tragically shot down dozens of American troop carriers, mistaking them for Germans.
In Greece, one of the German Signal Interception officers, Leutnant Christian Ochsenschlager, took the decoded message and relayed it to all defense commands "interested or affected." The message said that a large formation of four-engined bombers, believed to be Liberators, had been taking off since early morning in the Benghazi area.*
Ploesti Page 10