Captain Wallace Taylor, the POW commandant, sent for the British Vanishers and said, "If you are planning another escape, I'd like to offer some suggestions. We are now in touch with friends on the outside. They want three of us to escape, including a radio operator. You will be taken to a secure post in the mountains, where Romanians will bring the men being shot down on these high-level jobs." Collins said, "We'll think it over, sir."
Back in their billet, he said to Lancaster, "That's an odd request. Why do they want POW's to run the show, when parachute agents would be better? Maybe it's a blind and he has something else for us to do when we get out." Lancaster said, "I've got the radioman. Did you know Huntley was a radio operator in the Canadian Army?" Collins said, "Fair enough. I'd go anywhere with old Limey." Lancaster reached under his mattress and said, "Feast your eyes on this." It was a pair of wire cutters. "Pinched 'em off the camp electrician," he explained. They gathered up Huntley and went back to see Captain Taylor, who gave them the pseudonym of his underground contact in a village near the camp.
The new effort was to be a breakout through the wire from a privy a few yards away. There were two sentry boxes near the spot, but the British Vanishers intended to leave on a rainy night when the guards would be taking shelter in them. Sergeant Garrett was in charge of the inside arrangements. He had discovered how to short-circuit the lights and put the camp in darkness. When Collins attacked the wire, Garrett would blow the lights and the rest of the men would start yelling and singing in the barracks. Some of them would be lookouts, to warn the escape party of movements of guards during the uproar. The lookouts could yell in plain English, which none of the sentries understood.
On the first rainy afternoon Collins set the break for dusk, and Garrett extinguished the lights at 1845. While his two companions sheltered in the privy, Collins dashed to the inner strand of barbed wire and began snipping. The sound of the shears was muffled by the rain. He had to cut through the inner double strand, a thick entanglement between it and the outer wire, and go through four strands there before Lancaster and Huntley could leave the privy and join him in the bolt for freedom. The camp guards were confused by the darkness and the howling in the barracks and did not spot Collins laboring in the open. He passed through the entanglement and cut three of the outside wires. As he was attacking the last strand a lookout yelled, "Keep quiet. The guard is moving up on you."
The sentry passed ten feet from Collins without seeing the silent, unmoving escaper. Lancaster called, "Pull back, Doug. The lights are going on any second and they're beginning a roll call in the main barrack." Collins kept his head. He did not run for the barrack to get there before the roll call. That would leave the gap in the wire, followed by a major Romanian offensive to get the wire cutter. Methodically he began twisting the severed wires together again, thinking, "There's some compensation in getting your brains blown out on the way out of prison, but I'm going to look funny if they pot me while I'm trying to get back in." Praying the blackout would hold, he backed out, hooking up the wires. When the lights went on in the barracks and the roll call began, Collins was there, standing at rigid attention, panting somewhat.
The rain continued next day and the Romanians did not discover Collins' wire hookup. In the evening the three escapers took positions as before, and the lights went out. Collins parted the wires and was cutting the last one when a voice called, "Come back, Doug! The guard is on top of Ted and Limey and they can't make it out of the can." Collins decided he was too far out to return, and there was not enough time to replace the wires. He cut the last wire and took off alone. The decision was sound. A moment later the floodlights came on and machine guns began spraying the gap in the fence.
Collins prowled into a back yard in the underground man's village. The populace was outdoors, talking about the prisoner's escape. Entering the village would endanger both himself and the contact man. Collins departed north through the rainy forests.
He was caught near Brasov six days later. "It was a sad sort of balls-up," said he, "but we had showed willing." He told his interrogators that he was an American Air Force officer shot down a few days before, a ruse designed to get himself sent to Bucharest to join the high-level prisoners. He figured his chances for the next escape were better in Bucharest. The tale was going over well when Major Matiescu arrived from Timisul and claimed his runaway. He dragged Collins back to the camp and turned him over to the guards for a thorough beating. Admiral Doorman and Captain Taylor vigorously protested, and Matiescu gave Collins a week in isolation, after which he would be sent to the Slobozia punishment camp for a month.
The sixth of June the POW's saw a strange and exciting new type of plane in the battle sky, a fork-tailed speedster that flew big arcs around the Messerschmitts. The twin-engine Lightning (P-38) had entered the Ploesti campaign. The new American fighter-bomber was now escorting the heavies all the way, and it sometimes swooped down and strafed the refineries.
As the offensive grew in power and intensity, Gerstenberg sent Colonel Woldenga to Belgrade to manage fighter interception on the bomber streams going to and fro. The lethal game wore on -- bombers up from Italy, fighters up from the Balkans, flak most of the way. The adversaries got to know each other. As they attacked, German pilots radiophoned greetings to U.S. commanders by name. The Ploesti campaign became gladiatorial. The contesting airmen felt a queer sort of comradeship, like slaves of a mad emperor sent forth in the accursed arena to slay each other with swords versus nets and tridents.
An impulsive act by an American pilot brought heavy retribution to his group. The Messerschmitts shot him out of formation with a crippled engine. As his ship fell behind, shaking with hits, he lowered his landing gear, the classic act of surrender in the air, but one rarely used by the American bomber army. The Me-109's ceased fire and formed a diamond around the B-17 to escort it to their base. Then the American flight engineer phoned his pilot that he could recover the engine and give nearly maximum power. The pilot told his gunners to aim at the fighters, and, upon command, they shot down the Messerschmitts. The B-17 pulled up its wheels and returned to base.
The next mission of its group brought a day of terror. Every fighter in the air attacked the group, virtually ignoring the other bombers. Before the following mission, the U.S. commander painted out the group symbol on his rudders, but the fighters ganged up on him as before, calling his pilots by name and littering the air with burning planes and parachutes. Throughout the high war on Ploesti the fighters unerringly picked out the group, exacting heavy revenge.
Norman Appold flew two high-level missions to the refineries. To him Ploesti was a crusade. Some new men went to the deadliest target more often than his four times. On every mission Gerstenberg took installments on his price for the refineries -- a 3.6 percent average American loss per raid. The Fifteenth Air Force paid it from the minting of new planes and men rolling out of the fully geared production lines and air schools in the States.
Hundreds of white parachutes dotted the bomber courses, overtaxing camp facilities in Romania. None of the high-level men were brought to Timisul, however. They were kept in Bucharest. The high strikes could not help hitting civilians. The petulant Romanians talked of the low-level captives as the "Africans," and complained to them about the unmannerly "Italians" -- the high-level Americans. The "Africans" grew in esteem as more "Italians" fell into harsher confinement in Bucharest. The offensive went on, wider attacks on the whole Romanian oil system -- refineries at Ploesti, rail tanker yards at Brasov and Bucharest, and water transshipping points at Giurgiu and Constanta.
On 24 June the popular former commandant at Timisul, Colonel Saulescu, and his beautiful daughter drove into the POW compound and spread a picnic for their American friends. Carma brought them news of the throngs of comrades in prison in Bucharest, where she had volunteered as an interpreter. She said the boys there were not as gentlemanly as her low-level favorites. During the bucolic afternoon the bombers struck Ploesti, Craiova and Brasov.<
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It was not a reconnaisance. It was an American defeat, proportionately heavier than the low-level mission. By now the resilient Gerstenberg was gaining on the bombers, and oil production was rising, due to extensive use of smoke screens. He had had two thousand smoke generators placed in patterns to take advantage of prevailing winds. It took twenty minutes to raise a smoke blanket over Ploesti, and his radar gave him plenty of time to prepare for high attacks. The Fifteenth Air Force on this day tried to circumvent the smoke screens and radar by sending 46 twin-engined Lightnings with thousand-pound bombs slung on their bellies to attack under the smoke. The overburdened P-38's were surprised by Messerschmitts before they reached the target. The second low-level mission on Ploesti cost 26 Lightnings, more than half the force.
Yet this bad day was the turning point of the Ploesti campaign. Escorting Lightnings destroyed ten fighters, and not long after that the Luftwaffe was a negligible factor. This was due principally to U.S. Mustang (P-51) and Lightning escorts that were now able to go all the way to the target with the bombers. Gerstenberg's hoarded fighter strength was vanishing and he could not get replacements from Goering. In fact, Romanian defense squadrons were being pulled out to defend northern Italy and Germany.
Soon after its day of ignominy the Lightning became the dictator of Ploesti. The Fifteenth Air Force took a leaf from the British textbook and sent out, in advance of the bombers, a Master Bomber in a Lightning. He sat high over the target, inspecting Ploesti for holes in the smoke screen. Despite Gerstenberg's concealment, winds usually exposed a refinery or two. The Master Bomber openly radiophoned the oncoming destructive force, directing it to the openings. He was quarterbacking the defense posture just before the play. The bomb force no longer went in with a pattern set by side-line coaches in Italy.
In the end the formula for destroying the refineries, which had begun with the ponderous Tidal Wave instructions, was found in fewer briefings at base and more improvisation over the target. Gerstenberg could not shift fast enough for the Master Bomber.
At last, in early summer, bombs found Romana Americana, and the deluded civilians who ran there for sanctuary painfully learned that the United States was not sparing Standard Oil property. *
* When the U.S. Strategic Bomb Survey team inspected Ploesti after the Red Army captured Romania, its Russian hosts were amazed at the proof that capitalism had destroyed its own property.
During the ferocious June Battles the air-raid alert sounded on the Liberator base at Bari, Italy. Radar had picked up a lone, unidentified aircraft approaching. Three Spitfires scrambled to meet it. The plane was a new Focke-Wulf 190, with its wheels down. The German machine waggled its wings and landed. The pilot was resigning from the Ploesti campaign. German aviation fuel was so low that none could be spared for training new pilots. What there was went to the front, where the old pilots kept on fighting and dying hopelessly against giant swarms of fresh Allied planes. The Tidal Wave fighter pilots were all gone from Romania. Werner Gerhartz had been shot down twice in Italy, once by a Liberator, once by an R.A.F. Kittyhawk, and was going to his last rendezvous at Berlin. Gamecock Hahn had been shot down and killed over Rome. Sixty U.S. Mustangs jumped Hans Schopper's eight Me-109's at Fulda and shot off his arm. Hans Eder was killed in Italy. Manfred Spenner was hunting U.S. artillery liaison planes in Italy when he was hit in German and American crossfire. He parachuted and was captured in no man's land by Americans. Uncle Willie Steinmann succeeded Gamecock Hahn in Italy. He was to be the only Mizil pilot still fighting at the end of the war.
Bulgarian interceptors were punished severely. Just after Tidal Wave, Germany had presented 120 French Dewoitine 520 pursuits to the Sixth Bulgarian Air Polk. The Dew-520 was a good fighter in 1938, but this was 1944. With this inferior equipment the unfortunate Bulgarians threw the first blocks on the invading air armies. The bombers and P-38's knocked them out of the sky. By the time the Bulgarians were traded up to Me-109's, the invaders had the superior Mustang. When there were four pilots left in the Wraschdebna strength, the regiment was regrouped at Karlovo and given thirty Me-109's from battle-repair shops. While new pilots were being trained, the R.A.F. clobbered the Karlovo field, killing 82 airmen and destroying or damaging all aircraft, including a hundred Me-109's in the repair shops.
At the start of July the Timisul POW's who were counting German military movements outside the wire noticed a convoy of half-tracks and armored trucks going north. Gerstenberg was beginning the final phase of his plans, the creation of Festung Ploesti to stop the Red Army and the national rising. Big changes were at hand. The Royal Air Force now appeared in force in Romania, bombing Bucharest by night, while American heavies struck Brasov and Ploesti by day. The Russian cooks and servants in the POW camp were removed, and the noncommissioned officer prisoners had to work for the first time. They squawked to Major Matiescu about cleaning toilets. Food deliveries became uncertain. Uncollected garbage piled up at the camp gates. The idyl was over.
They grumbled among themselves about another infliction. Officer Z, the luncheon speaker at the Bucharest Rotary Club, wore out his welcome in the officers' camp and came to live with the gunners. Top Sergeant Terry was equal to the occasion. He called Officer Z before a meeting of the enlisted men, explained that all duties were shared among them, and put the officer on latrine duty. Officer Z bought a lamb and butchered and ate it himself, without sharing the food. The sergeants bleached the lamb's skull and surreptitiously strung a line on pulleys between the barracks. At night they put a candle in the skull. Garrett doused the lights, and they hauled the candlelit skull between the buildings. The guards poured out, yelling and shooting. They saw the ghostly death's-head in the sky and fell on their knees in prayer.
The deteriorating situation offered no such relief to German soldiers below at the target city. Werner Horn, a radio operator at H.Q., Flak Regiment 180, stationed five miles north of Ploesti, lived with two gnawing anxieties. His fiancée, airwoman Liesel Droge, was in a plotting center under the American salvoes, and a Soldatenklau, one who steals soldiers, was prowling among the Luftwaffe technicians. His name was General Unruh, which means "unrest," and he was causing plenty of it. Hitler had sent the Soldatenklau to impress rear echelon men for frontline military duty. Horn was in danger of being torn from his intended wife into a death mill grinding harder than Ploesti -- the Red front. By now the Soviets had hurled the last German from their soil and were gathering a swift and shattering blow for Gerstenberg and Antonescu.
Horn said, "The U.S. Air Force put us under a test of nerves. Every day that God made, the attackers swept over. Shortly after sunrise, the Master Bomber appeared in the sky at great heights, and a few hours later the bomber formation came. Our troops became unnerved under constant attack. Daylight was hardly ever seen in Ploesti as the black clouds rolled over it. And night never really came, as the refineries blazed away. Everybody felt things were going backward. The supply lines broke down. Prospects of victory diminished by the hour. The Romanians turned anti-German. The situation was hopeless, but we had to obey."
Horn's regimental commander was a great morale asset to the bedeviled men. Then, late in July, the spirit suddenly went out of him. An unsuccesful attempt had been made on Hitler's life and the plotters were being rounded up. The commander listlessly obeyed an order to report in Bucharest, where the Gestapo pushed him out a high window, as a suspected member of the assassination ring. Sergeant Horn decided he had to disobey. He trumped up medical grounds for sending his fiancée home to Germany, and she left before the debacle of Romania.
At Timisul the Romanians took away the sheets and blankets from the POW's. Matiescu separated the officers and men, confiscated the radios, and took up the rule of an uneasy tyrant. The bomber hordes came stronger and more often. On 15 July, 607 planes bombed Ploesti. An FW-190 fell toward the camp, shedding its wings, but crashed beyond the wire. John Palm, finding the bombing rather hazardous for a chap with a peg leg, took a vacation in the Alps and bro
ught along to Timisul a high-level officer named John Cune. Cune gave the Rip Van Winkles of Tidal Wave a year's news from home; he described the awesome B-29 Superfortress and the new hot Liberator and the Black Widow fighter. The POW's learned for the first time that they had all been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The first of August, the first anniversary of Tidal Wave, the POW's spent in somber contemplation of life, thanking God for deliverance, or getting happily drunk.
For some months the Romanian paymaster, who was known as "Jesse James," had been stealing part of their salaries. Major Matiescu, who was suspected of getting some of the loot, would not listen to complaints. Sergeant Doll wrote a letter of protest to the Romanian Minister of War and gave it to "Jesse James" for transmittal to Bucharest. The thief was thunderstruck. In his army an ill-humored glance from an enlisted man entitled an officer to thrash the soldier on the spot. The puzzled officer alternately threatened Doll and whined to him, but the soldier stood his ground. The complaint actually reached the minister. He settled it in Romanian fashion, by ordering Doll and three fellow protestors, including Lieutenant Henry Lasco, to imprisonment in Bucharest with the high-level captives, under the bombs. During the slow rail journey Doll got a good look at the high-level depredations at Ploesti. Among Romanian passengers he noted a healthy increase in the national spirit kindled a year before by Tidal Wave.
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