Anthony saw Wahoo's bombs drop out. His brother hurdled the refinery stacks, pressed low and ran at top speed across the ground. Anthony put on his headset and heard, "This is Killer Kane. Anybody that's hurt, go to Turkey!" However, Thomas Fravega was not ready for that remote decision. He merely wished to put Ploesti behind as rapidly as possible. He drove Wahoo at 225 mph, so long that Anthony called to him, "The engines are going to blow their heads off!" Thomas climbed to 3,000 feet and reduced his power settings. One of the slow German biplanes that had been sent up to avoid being bombed on the ground had the misfortune to be in his path. Wahoo's gunners shot the old crate down.
Fravega joined two other Liberators and asked his crew for an assessment of their damages. Flight engineer Oscar McWhirter reported, "Lieutenant, I can't find a dang thing wrong with this ship, except that we got four hundred gallons of gas in a Tokyo tank that we can't get at. The fuel transfer pump is out." The pilot said, "Well, we've got to have that gas or we won't get back." Anthony Fravega and McWhirter tinkered with the transfer pump but could not repair it. They disconnected the hose and let the engine suck at the tank. This seemed to work. Wahoo took up course for Corfu.
The bloody business at White Four was not over. The fourth Pyramider wave passed out of the flickering night over the target into the sights of Manfred Spenner's Yellow Wing of Messerschmitts. The German ace saw "fighters and bombers flying in all directions, flak coming up, balloons going down." He spotted a Liberator whose pilot had not yet appreciated the security of the earth and was leaving the target at an altitude of 1,300 feet. Spenner circled for his tail and attacked through heavy fifty-caliber fire from its top and tail gunners and those of another bomber. "I hit mine good," said the German. "As I passed him I could plainly see the gunner at the right waist window. I looked back and saw the plane settle down without wheels, bump along and explode." Circumstantially, his victim would seem to have been a fourth wave Pyramider piloted by John V. Ward, which left no survivors.
Pilot Robert W. Sternfels of the fourth wave plunged into the target smoke yelling, "Here we go!" Gunner Harry Rifkin said, "We tore through a balloon cable and skimmed through the flames so fast we had no time to be scared." Their wingmate, a Colton, California, railway shopman named Leroy B. Morgan, came out with part of a wing ripped off by a cable. "The antiaircraft made good with six direct hits on my ship," said Morgan, "which left about two hundred fifty holes and knocked out my hydraulics, oxygen, electricity and radio. I decided closest to the ground was safest." Both of these p lanes returned to base.
The fifth and last of Kane's waves over Ploesti had a short history. Six went in. One came out. It was the heaviest toll of any echelon in the battle. Only Francis E. Weisler's Liberator got home. Edward T. McGuire's wreck deposited three living men on the ground -- Clark Fitzpatrick, James Waltman and Robert Rans. When James A. Deeds crashed, his co-pilot, Clifton Foster, and radioman James Howie were left among the living. Radio operator William Treichler was the only man delivered of August W. Sulflow's demolished B-24. Pilot Wallace C. Taylor alone survived his ship and the first question the Germans asked him was, "Where is Killer Kane?"
The remaining victim of the fifth wave shambles was piloted by John J. McGraw and Charles Deane Cavit, on their first combat flight. Like the Fravega crew, they were Sky Scorpions who had hitchhiked from England by Air Transport Command a few days before Tidal Wave and demanded a plane to fly to Ploesti. The Pyramiders gave them "an old junk heap" called Jersey Jackass. The proud fledglings removed old pieces of flak imbedded in her and scrubbed away dried blood. A tall lad from Philadelphia, Jack Ross, cleaned up the tail turret for his first war adventure and his last.
They got their bombs into the target, but the flak men knocked Jersey Jackass to pieces. The pilots crash-landed the flaming heap and broke free. Farmers with pitchforks drove them to a German field dressing station. Cavit said, "Our uniforms hung in smoky tatters, and the medics thought we were Germans or Romanians until we spoke." Then the doctor in charge yelled in English, "You killed my wife and daughter on a raid in Germany! I order my men to do nothing for you." He gave his people a passionate speech in German about the bestiality of the two fainting Americans. In the midst of it tail gunner Jack Ross was brought in, hairless and seared black, but still on his feet. He held out his burned hands to be treated. The doctor grabbed a knife and said, "I'll cut them off." Ross jerked his hands behind his back and said to Cavit, "What have we got into?"
The pilot fell unconscious. When the doctor turned, Cavit snatched a bottle of ointment and treated McGraw's burns. A German sentry sidled over and handed him a bottle of water. "He was scared of the doctor," said Cavit, "but he wanted to help us." McGraw died, perhaps, as Cavit and Ross think, from lack of medical attention.
With one engine out, Killer Kane flew off target into the fighter battle, feeling "like a crippled fish in a school fleeing from sharks. My eyes burned from salty drops falling from my eyebrows." Co-pilot Young reduced power. "Why?" yelled Kane. Young said, "We must save the engines." Kane roared, "We'll save them after they save us!" He pushed his settings up full, but could make only 185 mph. Kane's was the last plane in a collection of about eighteen and he was falling farther behind. He could not hear any noise from his turret gunner and asked why. The bombardier, Raymond B. Hubbard, said, "He shot all his rounds. He's sitting up there oiling his guns." The gunner, Harvey I. Treace, his features petulantly contorted, was trying to pull a stuck oil can out of his pocket. "And Hubbard and me laughing like crazy," said Kane. "It beats me how men can laugh under those circumstances, but, by glory, they do!"
Kane's other gunners were busy with fighters. "We took everything they had," said Kane " -- five hits on an inboard engine and the underside of the right wing. The main spar was buckled." The Germans shot the tip off one propeller and put a two-inch hole through the blade of another. "The fighters were hanging on us like snails on a log," said the Pyramider leader. Three corporals who rode with Kane passed through gunnery school that day: Harry G. Deem, Jr., Yves J. Gouin and Thomas O'Leary.
Kane headed south, knowing that his afflicted machine could not get back on the planned withdrawal course. The distance to Libya was too great, the mountains too high. To the south there was a chance for Hail Columbia, in the lower passes of the Balkan Mountains. Navigator Whalen gave him the heading for Cyprus. Three other ships accepted Kane's radio appeal to make for Cyprus and followed him. One was Hadley's Harem, with nose shot off and a feathered engine. Another was The Squaw, piloted by Royden L. LeBrecht, which had come through little damaged from the flak devastation on the right column of the first wave, but was short of fuel. The third craft, piloted by William D. Banks, was in fairly good flying condition. Kane's Hail Columbia seemed the worst damaged. He diminished his airspeed to 155 mph and ordered his crew to unburden excess cargo. LeBrecht saw the air filled with objects and radiophoned, "What is this -- spring housecleaning?" Kane was not amused. He was facing a 6,600-foot climb over the southern hook of the Balkans, and on the ascent could produce an airspeed of only 135 mph, which was close to stalling speed for an aircraft as hard hit as Hail Columbia. Kane told his men, "Throw everything out!" Into the slip stream went ammunition belts and cans, rations and precision tools. "Dammit, I said throw everything out!" roared Kane. The corporals ripped out oxygen bottles and gun mounts and pantomimed grimly at the windows with their parachute packs. Hail Columbia trudged up a mountain pass, clawing for altitude, feeling for updrafts. She seemed unequal to the climb. The plane heaved on, 200 feet lower than the top of the Balkan Mountains.
Kane's force had destroyed half the productive capacity of the largest oil refinery in Europe at the appalling cost of 22 heavy bombers. And a dozen other Pyramiders were, like himself, struggling hard to remain airborne.
Bombs Away: 1215 hours
Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to lear
n from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd
what your children en-masse really are?)
-- Walt Whitman, "Drum-Taps," 1865
11 RED TARGET IS DESTROYED
The last Tidal Wave group over the targets was the 389th -- the Sky Scorpions, who had found their style in the stinging sands and clear skies of Africa. They made up a fervent, close-hauled, confident organization. New to battle, they were the second generation of U.S. bomber schools, instructed by retired combat fliers from Europe. The Scorpions doted on tight formations and equipment maintenance. Despite the fact that most of their ground mechanics still languished in Britain, the air echelon, in its half-dozen short raids in the Mediterranean prior to Tidal Wave, had always put up more planes than were called for in the field order. For Ploesti they lent nine crews to Kane for pink ships he could not man.
Their objective was the isolated Steaua Romana refinery, owned by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and located at Câmpina, nestled in a valley of the Transylvanian Alps, eighteen miles northwest of Ploesti. It was known as Red Target. The assignment had drawn razzing from other groups. "You guys get the soft one. . . . Away from the heavy flak . . . They must think you can't find Ploesti." The fact was that Timberlake and Ent had given the newcomers the separate target because the Scorpions were flying new Liberators with a slightly greater range and Red Target was the farthest objective of the seven. Some of Colonel Jack Wood's planes carried ball turrets which set up a slight drag, so that if they could not keep up with the simultaneous bombing front over Ploesti it did not matter. He could bomb Red Target a few minutes later without affecting the timing of Tidal Wave.
The ingenious Scorpions had devised their own bombing plan, which Timberlake had approved. The critical part of Red Target was only 400 feet wide. Its four vital buildings -- boiler plant, power plant and two still houses -- lay in a diamond pattern. Jack Wood proposed to cross in three waves, hitting each objective three times with bombs graduated from one-hour delay on the first wave to 45 seconds for Tailend Charlie. The first wave would drive up over the diamond, hitting the lowest and side aiming points and dumping overages into the top point. A second wave would cross obliquely, hitting bottom and side AP's, and crash overages into the remaining two. The third wave would repeat the tactic from the opposite angle.
As the Scorpions descended to the Danube, Pilot Harold James, survivor of the low-altitude training crash in England, asked his flight engineer, Harold M. Thompson, for an estimate of remaining fuel. Thompson checked the gauges and reported privately to the radioman, Earl L. Zimmerman, the other man left from the training collision, "Even if we turn back right now, we don't have enough gas to reach base." Zimmerman said, "Don't tell the pilot until we get off the target. He has enough worries." The plane went on, burning up its chances of return. James was flying with a substitute co-pilot -- his customary seatmate was one of the three men who had refused to fly to Ploesti.
The Scorpions trailed Johnson and Kane to the First Initial Point, Pitesti, where they swung out a few degrees northeast, as briefed, to climb the foothills above Red Target. Their turning point was going to be extremely difficult to pick out in the washboard of wooded ridges and ravines ahead. Wood's people had to lower into bombing altitude while the foothills were rising under them, a tricky matter of pilotage. Small mistakes in judgment of height could leave wrecks in the trees.
Wood's flagship was piloted by Captain Kenneth M. Caldwell, a senior command pilot with ten years in the service, but only recently come to war. Wood crouched behind him with a map spread on his knees, peering intently ahead for recognition points. The group navigator called up, "Can't see a single peak ahead, sir. There's a complete cloud cover on the mountain tops." Wood said, "Look for the monastery." They had been briefed thus: "When you pass north of Targoviste, the ancient capital of Romania, look for Monasterea Dealului [The Monastery on the Hill], a landmark that can be seen for miles around in clear skies." The navigator said, "Yeah, if we only had clear skies."
The miles were fleeting by. The monastery was nowhere in sight. Wood could not delay decision any further. In fear that he was overshooting the I.P., he decided to turn into a ravine that had to be the right one according to his time computations. As he turned into the valley he saw with relief that it extended along the correct target heading and that near the mouth there was a huge plant and town.
His deputy, Major Brooks, leading the second element, saw Wood turn and his heart sank. "They're going down the wrong valley," he said to his navigator. "We're short of the I.P. Colonel Wood has made a mistake." The meticulous Scorpions had fallen into the same error as the Liberandos and were turning short of their I.P.
Brooks had to decide instantly whether to obey standing orders and follow his leader on the wrong course or to continue straight on to the proper turning. He decided to stick with Wood. A few miles from the big plant, which was a cement factory in Targoviste, Wood recognized and rectified his error by an immense and perfectly executed maneuver. He doubled his twelve Liberators back in their tracks and S'ed over the next ridge, Brooks leaping behind him with his seventeen ships. Brooks said, "I learned a lesson in discipline. If I had left the formation, after he jumped the ridge my force would have collided head-on with his."
The tricky, miniature weather changed like a magic-lantern slide. The skies became transparent and the tail gunners saw the monastery gleaming in the sun. Down the next ravine lay the stacks of Red Target. The Scorpions tucked in tight and low, each ship in its slot in the three-wave surprise for Steaua Romana.
Hurtling down the valley, propellers threw up chopped leaves like lawn mowers. The fliers saw picnic parties; three richly caparisoned horsemen sitting like statues as the prop-wakes tossed their horses' manes; a small boy bolting in terror, then stopping and hurling a stone at them.
The flak batteries opened up. Machine-gun volleys poured into the first wave. Captain Caldwell steered Wood's ship toward the boiler house at the bottom of the diamond. He put the nose down and his co-pilot fired the fixed forward guns at flak positions. The top turret joined in. Its vibrations jarred bits of things down on Caldwell's head. Leveling for the bomb run, he wiped dust from his eyes. "Push up over the chimneys!" Colonel Wood commanded. "Go down to altitude!" pleaded the bombardier, John Fino. Caldwell went in thirty feet from the ground, helplessly looking at two guns firing into him from the top of a boiler house. He was thinking of nothing but delivering the bombs. His gunners shot the flak men off the boiler house, and Fino crashed a thousand-pounder into it. The bomb, fused for an hour, did not need to explode. The boiler burst and the plant blew out, flinging up a fountain of debris.
Caldwell saw flames shooting out of the tallest chimney in the refinery. Fino put his remaining bombs in the secondary aiming point and began firing his nose gun, feeding it belts loaded successively with two armor-piercing, two incendiary, and two tracer bullets. "I saw a tracer carve a little hole in a storage tank," said the pilot. "It was a funny thing. A squirt of oil came out. It became solid flame, hosing out in a neat stream and spreading a big pool on the ground like molten iron. The tank got white hot and buckled. Then I lost sight of it."
Captain Emery M. Ward's Liberator, carrying B Force Leader, Major Brooks, whizzed across the burning target bearing the most secure and contented man on the mission -- the tail gunner. He had been terribly airsick during the low-level rehearsals and mal d'air had returned as they reached low at the Danube. A sympathetic comrade, tunnel gunner Brendon D. Healy, said, "I'll take care of your guns till we get near the target." The sick man staggered forward and lay retching in the bomb bay. Healy became preoccupied with flak gunners and forgot to change places with him until they were well past bombing the powerhouse and boiler plant. He found the tail man snonng soundly in the bomb bay. Healy said, "I guess he's t
he only guy who got the D.F.C. for sleeping over Ploesti."
Lieutenant Stanislaus Podolak flew Sweet Adeline, named for his sweetheart in the Army Nurse Corps. He carried two gunners from Columbus, Ohio: Paul F. Jacot and Herman Townsend. A former aircraft welder, Richard Crippen, knelt in the rear escape hatch and photographed the target as they bombed the rear of a distillation unit. In the bail turret was Robert McGreer, one of the three privates who flew to Ploesti. Podolak was low on fuel. He asked navigator Gilbert Siegal to give him the heading for Cyprus.
Crews coming off the target saw Robert W. Horton's Liberator crash-land with wings aflame, and later reported, "there seemed no possibility that anyone survived." Yet, top turret gunner Zerrill Steen was alive. His turret remained in place on the impact and Steen stayed in it, firing his machine guns at flak towers after the crash. He used up all his ammunition while flames converged on the turret. Steen broke out of the plexiglass dome between his guns and jumped through the fire. He ran, stripping off his flaming clothes. Romanians found him lying in a stack of hay and took him to a hospital. He was the only survivor of Horton's craft.
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