Ploesti

by Dugan; Stewart

  Utah Man, the first ship to bomb, was far in the wake of the Circus hegira. The big Mormon pilot could not exceed 150 mph air speed lest his wreck fall apart. The live thousand-pounders sucked closer to their fuse settings. The engineer and the bombardier were in the bomb bay, clawing and hammering to release the ton-weight of death, their labors muffled by a screeching of wind from the torn and dangling left bomb door. Stewart's men, who had prepared for life everlasting at his prayer meeting the night before, sailed on toward that almost certain port. They counted 367 flak holes in the fuselage and wings. One hole was three feet wide. Yet the shells had missed them all, except the radioman, who fingered a crease in his hand dealt by spent flak. "Look at Steiner trying to open the cut so he can get the Purple Heart!" said a comrade.

  The screeching stopped. The hanging left bay door had torn away in the wind. Now they could hear tools banging in the bay as Cummings and Bartlett worked on the bombs. There was a mighty yelp from the flight deck. Bartlett was hammering the pilot's shoulder. "Walt! They're gone!" The two thousand-pounders were tumbling into a field.

  Stewart said, "Get back to crash-landing positions." Now he had a chance to save his men by skidding in. The fuselage men sat in tandem, backs to the bulkhead, nestled between each other's legs like a rowing crew, and padded themselves with their parachute packs. Stewart said, "Hey, I don't smell gas any more!" Koon said, "We're probably out of gas. Let's set down now." The pilot said, "No, let's not. Maybe the engines don't know they're out of gas. Watch them like a hawk, Larry, and we'll try to make Yugoslavia, where we have a chance of ducking the Germans." The gunners arose from the crash-landing positions and looked out. There were no other planes in the sky. The feeling came over them that no one else had come through. Shedding fragments of metal, Utah Man plodded on.

  Bombs Away: 1200 hours

  Il n'y a cheval si bien ferré qu'il ne glisse.

  --Proverb

  7 TARGETS OF OPPORTUNITY

  When K. K. Compton and General Ent took the Liberandos on the wrong turn at Targoviste, their mission flagship was on the right flank, a few planes behind the substitute route leader, John Palm, driving Brewery Wagon. The others turned southeast and knit onto the flagship, except for Palm. He kept on going straight. His tail gunner phoned, "They're all turning right!" Palm and his co-pilot, William Love, executed a tight turn and tacked onto the errant formation. Their navigator, William Wright, phoned, "If this is the correct turn, I'm lost. This heading is all wrong!" Palm thought, "Little Willie Wright always knows where he is." The navigator's protest was underscored by outcries on the command channel: "Mistake!" "Wrong turn!" "Not here!" Wright calmly said, "I'm going to try to salvage a course to the left." Palm had such confidence in his navigator that he complied. He turned off and Brewery Wagon headed east, all alone.

  In a moment the other planes were lost from view behind trees. Brewery Wagon was engulfed in a blinding rain squall. For long, nervous seconds Palm ran through the murk, then shot out into dazzling sunlight, headed straight for a hill. He kicked up over it and saw spread before him a vista of glistening green and golden fields. In the distance, framed in a rainbow, were the stacks and stills of Ploesti. Palm selected the nearest refinery and drove toward it at an altitude of twenty feet. From the greenhouse Wright called off trees and power poles and Palm hurdled them.

  Soon Palm was standing in the sights of the professional German gunners in the inner flak ring. John Palm was a husky, magnetic youngster who had fled his father's shoe store in El Paso, Texas, to fly big bombers. Serving with the Liberandos, he had caught the eye of K.K. Compton, who encouraged him to think of the Air Force as a career. Palm had made a good record, although he was sometimes assigned a hexed ship which was often shot up, the same Brewery Wagon he was now piloting. Her nominal captain was Robert H. Storz, a brewer's son from Omaha, Nebraska. That morning Storz had drawn a B-24 named Per Diem II, and Palm got the hoodoo plane. Before getting in to take her off, Palm threw stones at Brewery Wagon.

  Now, nearing Ploesti, the flak men attended to luckless Brewery Wagon. A well-timed 88-mm. shell burst in the nose, killing Wright and bombardier Robert W. Merrell. The explosion destroyed an engine and set two others afire. The plane almost turned over. Palm and co-pilot Love fought to recover the ship. "Tramping the pedals was like fighting a bucking horse," said Palm. "Although the bombardier was dead, we were obsessed with doing good with our bombs. I was not getting much pressure on the right pedal. I reached down. My right leg below the knee was hanging from a shred of flesh." Palm jettisoned his bombs.

  The rogue ship was floundering around west of Ploesti, where the Mizil Messerschmitts were diving on the Circus. As Uncle Willie Steinmann roared away from his pass at the Circus, making up his mind to go hunting singles, he espied highly eligible prey, a sandy bomber heaving along at low speed with smoke trailing from two engines. Brewery Wagon was nearing the end of her poor luck.

  Steinmann attacked according to a theory he had worked out from studying Liberator models -- obliquely from the rear at a high angle, in order to hit the right wing root and cockpit. "I went in," said Steinmann, "and raked the tail and walked my fire across the B-24. He crashed immediately."

  As Brewery Wagon hit the earth, Love flooded the engines with foam, preventing an immediate explosion. Palm ripped out the cockpit window with one hand, "something I couldn't do under normal circumstances with both hands in a week," he said. He dived out headfirst and hit the ground in a football shoulder roll. Love and engineer Alec Rockinson carried Palm away in a fireman's carry, and they hid in a cornfield. From the broken ship came radioman Harold Block and gunners Austin Chastain, Clay Snyder, William Thompson and Dallas Robertson. The latter had a piece of 20-mm. shell in his skull.

  German riflemen ran toward the dazed sergeants. Palm drew his .45 and leveled it at the Germans. Rockinson, who was at his feet, putting a tourniquet on Palm's leg stump with a web belt, said sharply, "Don't do that, sir." It was the first time he had ever called the pilot "sir." Palm put away his gun. The Germans flushed Palm's trio out of the corn and manhandled them. A big Romanian soldier menaced the Germans with his gun and they let go of Palm, who was bent over, holding his leg on with both hands. A German pulled a knife and with a swift motion cut away Palm's wrist watch. The Germans departed, leaving the Romanian with his captives.

  During Palm's misadventure the main Liberando formation continued to fly toward Bucharest on the wrong course. "On the way we found that altitudes of five to ten feet, allowing for fences, cattle and buildings, were the only means of survival," said Appold. "In the haze and low altitude, I could see only the rear elements of Section A up ahead. Barwell continued to gun the flak crews with short economical bursts."

  In the flagship, General Ent and K.K. Compton now realized the magnitude of the navigational error. From the haze ahead there loomed the towers of a city. They were not the stacks of Ploesti, but the Orthodox church spires of the Romanian capital.

  K.K. Compton said, "At this point, General Ent went on the command channel, acknowledged the error at Targoviste, and turned the formation north toward Ploesti. We were completely disoriented on our briefed target, White One, the Romana Americana refinery. We decided it was best to attack Astro Romana, the number-one objective of the mission. It was Kane's target, but we did not know where he was. For all we knew, he had been forced to turn back. So we looked for the fractionating columns of Astro Romana as we headed north."

  Norman Appold obediently winged over and took his element north with K.K. Compton. The little pilot said, "My apprehension grew as I thought of our predicament. What was General Ent going to do -- circle Ploesti to the north and try to bomb on the briefed axis?" Other Liberando pilots were equally baffled over what the command intent might be. No explanation was forthcoming from the flagship, which had reverted to radio silence. The cautious Ent was not going to announce his new objective on the open radio for the Germans to hear.

  Across Ent's new course north lay
Lake Znagov, where a party of German officers were swimming on their day off. Oberleutnant Hermann Scheiffele, adjutant of the Fifth Flak Division, assumed that the engine noise came from Heinkels on an unannounced test of the defenses. "Suddenly twenty or thirty bombers swept over us very low," said Scheiffele. "I clearly saw up through their open bomb doors and recognized them as B-24's." He and Leutnant Egon Schantz, armament inspector of the division, jumped in a car in their bathing suits and drove pellmell for Ploesti. When he saw the colossal mushroom of smoke over the Circus targets, Scheiffele said, "Nobody can be alive in that sea of fire." But he found that only the outlying tank farms were burning and that it was possible to drive into the refinery compounds. The quick-fused bombs were done exploding. In the sepulchral gloom, Scheiffele and Schantz saw big yellow time bombs scattered around on the grounds. A stocky, bespectacled man hailed the car -- their commanding general, Julius Kuderna from Vienna. "Schantz," he said, "find out how these bombs can be disarmed before they explode."

  The armament inspector rallied some fire police from an underground shelter and led them and the general behind a blast wall, saying, "Everyone else stay here. I am going to have a look at that bomb over there" -- pointing to a thousand-pounder about 600 feet from them. He ran to the bomb, examined it, and returned. "It has a new kind of detonator that I have never heard of," said Schantz. "The nose has two separate screw turnings, one back of the other. I think one stops the time clock and the other sets off the bomb immediately. Schütz!" His best man, fireman Schütz, moved in close to listen over the roar of flame. "I am going to the bomb and remove the first screw turning," Schantz told him. "You remain here. If it is the wrong one, you'll know how to handle the other bombs."

  Peering around the blast wall, Scheiffele saw Schantz kneel and examine the nose "for a long time." He saw the armament inspector "seize the first screw with both hands and turn it slowly." The nine-inch nose came off and Schantz ran back, holding it to his ear, exclaiming, "I can't hear the clock." The detonating system inside was a silent, acid-melting type, and, if it exploded, the effect would be that of a hand grenade. "Let me try to hear," said Scheiffele. He held it to his ear, waving off others who wanted to listen. "All right, that's enough," said Schantz. "Why, is it dangerous?" Scheiffele asked. The inspector said, "If there is a clock in there, you could be minus your head." He placed the detonator on the other side of the blast wall. General Kuderna said, "All right, Schantz, get your men organized to take care of the other bombs." The firemen, encircled in flame, roofed with smoke, dispersed to disarm them.

  At the time the Liberando force had alerted this bomb team at Lake Znagov, the Circus was still struggling to deliver Schantz's bombs.

  Hurtling nearer to the target city, the Liberandos saw through the haze on their left front an apocalyptic event taking place -- the Circus fighting the city guns. The scene sharpened through Appold's windscreen. "Flights of three or four, or sIngle planes, were going in different directions, streaking smoke and flames, striking the ground, wings, tails and fuselages breaking up, big balls of smoke rolling out of the wrecks before they stopped skidding," Appold said. K.K. Compton was nearing this slaughter at White Five. His new target was its neighbor, White Four, where the Liberandos faced the same ferocity of guns. "A few miles from Ploesti," said Compton, "we entered so much antiaircraft fire that General Ent decided that the defenses, now thoroughly alerted, were too formidable."

  Red Thompson, piloting the flagship beside Compton, got a dash of rain on his windshield, distorting the red-balled horror at White Five. He glanced at the general on the flight deck. Ent looked at his watch, went to the radio desk, and opened the group frequency. "This is General Ent," he said. "We have missed our target. You are cleared to strike targets of your choice."

  The Liberando pilots, released from discipline, followed a common instinct to veer off east, away from the web of flak and blocking balloons. The formation came apart, scattering over open fields where there was only light infantry fire from the ground. K.K. Compton salvoed his bombs on what looked like a power or pumping installation. Many other pilots followed suit; there were no targets ahead and the sooner they got rid of the bombs, the better were their chances of getting back.

  Appold, however, radioed his section, "Hold on to your bombs. We're going to use them. Hang on to me. Keep formation." He saw A Section making another sprawling turn, to the north, and turned hard inside them, his wingmen, Robert H. Storz and Lyle T. Ryan, hugging his wing tips. Barwell phoned from the top turret, "There are four planes still with us, Norm." Appold led them north at high speed, perilously low.

  Ent's wandering Liberandos passed east of a large isolated refinery and Appold skimmed across the fields west of it. It happened to be their briefed target, White One, the Romana Americana refinery. Nobody recognized it from the opposite angle of approach. Even if they had, few planes had any bombs left.

  White One was third in economic importance among the seven objectives of Tidal Wave, but it was first in propaganda value. Repeatedly the planners had told the airmen, "You've got to hit White One." The plant was owned by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. If it were not bombed, German Propaganda Minister Goebbels would have a sharp wedge to drive between the Allies, simply by broadcasting that the Americans had hit British and French refineries while sparing their own. Among the Tidal Wave planners there were large stockholders of Standard Oil and in the B-24's there were many smaller ones, all intent on blowing up their Romanian holdings. But all the ships, including Appold's, blindly flew past White One and the great refinery fell behind, untouched.

  General Ent instructed his radio operator to send a prearranged code signal to Brereton in Benghazi. It consisted simply of the letters "M.S." standing for Mission Successful. Few Liberando men could agree with that. Red Wicklund in the flagship, pilot William Zimmerman and John E. O'Conner, a gunner in Chum V, were heartsick. They had been to Romania with Halpro and had now missed the target a second time after perilous flights that would total 5,000 miles before they got home.

  In the Liberando rear, pilot Myron R. Conn was carrying the legendary Ploesti stowaway who has not been previously identified but has inspired several romances of the great raid. The facts are as good as the fiction. He was an elderly squadron Intelligence officer named L.J. Madden, a "retread" from World War I. K.K. Compton had refused him permission to accompany the mission, but the gaffer slipped into a berth by pulling seniority on Conn. Both were first lieutenants, but Madden's commission antedated the pilot's by a quarter of a century.*

  * Madden returned safely to Benghazi and K.K. Compton chose to overlook the matter.

  K.K. Compton's main Liberando body passed Ploesti and climbed the foothills northeast of the city. A single Romanian fighter approached, and frustrated Liberando gunners gave him a concert. The playboy jitterbugged to escape destruction and ran away. Teggie Ann turned west and the ships behind winged over and began packing up again. Small-arms fire was thickening and big flaks were banging away in the west. Red Thompson saw pink bombers coming down from the north on a convergent course. "They were evidently being led by Killer Kane," said the pilot, "at what I judged was fifteen hundred to two thousand feet altitude -- nice fat targets for any defense. I was pulling up to get over cows and hedgerows."

  At this phase of battle all order seemed lost. Tidal Wave's planned simultaneous strikes had become a mistimed farrago of groups entering Ploesti from several sides. The leading Liberandos were west-bound, north of the city, the battered Circus was reeling off the target through Ploesti streets, and three more forces were swooping down on the briefed target run from the northwest. And Norman Appold was about to skip-bomb from the northeast.

  He had found a target of opportunity while his five-plane privateering force drove up the east side of the city. Among the targets flashing by he saw the last objective he could possibly reach, a plant on the north edge of town. "Looks like dry bones over there," he said. "Tabby, we're going for that target. Are you
set?" The bombardier, Clarence R. Tabb, said, "I'm okay." Appold had picked Concordia Vega, Target White Two, which had been assigned to Baker, the Circus leader. Concordia Vega's stacks and silver balloons were silhouetted against the black smoke from Baker's pyre on the far side of Ploesti. Appold radioed his followers, "Let's tuck in now. Stay with me and keep close. Course two-three-oh. Out."

  The orderly turns of the mission were plotted on a three-mile radius, but there was no time for that if he was to hit the refinery swiftly sliding astern. "The turn was hard on Ryan," said the little pilot. "He had been hanging on my left all the way. I climbed a few feet over him on the sharp turn and leveled out full throttle." A mile and a half ahead were invisible balloon cables and an unknown power of guns. Appold went in ten feet from the ground.

  High on the black picture through his windshield, Appold saw green insectlike shapes coming straight toward him out of the oily clouds on the far side of the city. They were Ramsay Potts's survivors, groping out of White Four without suspecting they were on a collision course with another formation. Appold was committed to his bomb run and could do nothing about the green ships. He put them out of his mind to be dealt with a few seconds later. Now a swarm of blond insects came buzzing down his windshield from the high right. Killer Kane was lowering the Pyramiders through the northern flak to carry out his orders at White Four, which Ramsay Potts had just set in lofty fires. Appold said, "I could not think about Kane's planes and the new dangers of collision. Directly in front of us, measured in hundreds of yards, was the target we had picked. So up, gently, the elevators for a smooth ride over the towers, and a shout, 'Tabby, let's get them all in there!'"