The Bomber Boys

by Travis L. Ayres

  Later, as George relaxed over a glass of scotch, he relived the Messerschmitt attack for the benefit of an interrogation officer. He told how his turret’s bullets had eliminated one German fighter that had attempted an attack from below.

  “Do you think you got him?” the interrogator asked.

  “I’m sure I did!” George replied.

  Afterward, George gave the matter little more thought. He was too busy flying bombing missions to worry about the Eighth Air Force record-keeping procedures. One day he received word that the “official kill” of the Me-109 in question had been credited to an Air Force major. The officer had apparently been flying on the mission as an observer, taking the place of a tail gunner in order to get a good view of the formation. The major had also claimed credit for downing the German fighter and received credit for the kill. The sergeant, of course, did not. George shrugged it off. He was certain he had prevented that particular Luftwaffe fighter from ever shooting down his or any other American bomber, and that was all that mattered.

  As the new guys, Walker’s crew had been given a patched-up, battle-weary B-17. After the July 13 mission to Munich, she needed even more patches. George knew the bomb run was going to be a tough one long before the bomb group reached Munich. It was his fourth combat mission, and the sky over Munich was darker than it had been at any previous target. A black cloud of flak smoke hovered above the city, the residue of shells fired at earlier bomb groups.

  Fresh flak explosions appeared quickly as the 351st began its bomb run. Not only was it the thickest flak George had yet witnessed, it was also the first time he could actually hear shrapnel striking the ball turret. A German antiaircraft shell would explode close by and fragments would cut into the bomber’s fuselage, while other pieces would glance off the round metal back of the turret. Sometimes George would not even see an explosion, but still he would hear the stuff thumping against the turret. The air was full of large and small metallic hazards.

  Walker’s bomber returned from Munich and landed at Polebrook with more than a hundred flak holes adorning it. Miraculously, not one man on board had been hit. Looking at how the flak fragments had sliced through the bomber’s metal shell as if it were butter, George began to appreciate the ball turret even more. The outside of the turret was scarred and the metal part showed some denting, but its design had protected him. The back of the turret was armor-plated and thick bulletproof glass (but not twenty-millimeter proof) shielded the front of the gunsight and, as a result, its operator. The rest of the ball turret was Plexiglas, which might not withstand a direct hit but could deflect small fragments off its round form.

  While most airmen avoided assignment to the ball turret, George was now convinced it was the best place to be during a bomb run. If he attempted to explain the advantages of his gun position to other crew members, they would just smile and slap young George on the back. After all, ball turret gunners were different.

  After a few more missions over Germany, Walker’s crew was rewarded with a brand-new airplane. She was a silver B-17G, with the serial number 43-37854. A large “J” painted on her tail signified she was part of the 351st Bomb Group. The letters “RQ” on the bomber’s fuselage represented the 509th Bomb Squadron. The letter “V” stood for the aircraft itself.

  George and his buddies were proud of her. They all agreed such a beautiful lady deserved a special name. Many monikers were suggested but quickly rejected as not worthy enough. Even as they flew their new B-17 to bomb military and industrial targets in Germany and enemy troops in France, the bomber boys could not come up with an acceptable name. After completing a dozen or so combat missions, Walker’s airmen received news that put the name discussion on the back burner.

  The crew of the no-name Flying Fortress had been granted a forty-eight-hour pass to London. They all took the train together into the old city and then crammed into a couple of taxis to search for a hotel. The driver of George’s cab told his passengers he knew a nice place and assured them they could get all the rooms they needed.

  “Let’s go!” came the enthusiastic response, and off they went on what was to be a thrilling ride through the streets of London. The boys were waving at young women and pointing at double-decker buses when they heard the air raid siren. Though they had never been to London, the airmen knew the warning meant V-1 bombs were headed toward the city. Here and there they could see the bombed-out buildings. Earlier in the month they had bombed German V-1 launch sites in France. Now they faced being on the receiving end.

  Their driver seemed unaware of the loud sirens as he sped by slower traffic. Even the pedestrians were in no particular hurry to reach the bomb shelters. George watched as some of the Londoners calmly ducked into a covered doorway or down the stairs leading to the tube, while others simply ignored the noisy warning and continued on their way.

  “Shouldn’t we be looking for shelter?” one of the airmen asked.

  “No, we will be fine,” the driver said confidently. He went on to explain his view that if everyone stopped every time the V-1s dropped, then London would cease to function as a city. One couldn’t give the Jerries that satisfaction, he said. He assured the American flyers the rocket bombs would land far away from them, and they did.

  George heard the explosions as the V-1s fell in another part of London. Minutes later, the taxi stopped in front of a first-class hotel. The second cab, carrying the rest of the bomber crew, pulled up seconds later. The hotel lobby was crowded with civilians as well as men and women in British and American uniforms. George guessed the taxi driver had been mistaken. There’s not much chance this hotel will have any vacancies.

  “Do you have rooms available?” Lieutenant Walker inquired on behalf of his men.

  “We have plenty of rooms available . . . on the top floor, sir.” The desk clerk smiled and waited for a reaction. The top floor was okay with George and his buddies. They just wanted to drop off their bags, get out and see the city, and maybe meet some of its female citizens. Later, an English bartender would explain why all of London’s hotels had rooms available on the top floor. The regular hotel guests would not stay in a top-floor room because of the V-1 flying bombs. A V-1 explosion was powerful enough to destroy the top story of a building and even do heavy damage to the next. Any of the lower floors were considered safer. Most guests paid a premium for rooms on the lower floors, leaving many top-floor rooms unoccupied. Hotel managers slashed the top-floor rates and found American service personnel more than willing to take a little risk in order to stay at a posh hotel.

  George also gained important (although somewhat inaccurate) knowledge about the operation of the V-1s, information the average Londoner already knew and used almost daily. The enemy’s flying bomb was powered by a jet engine. The engine was noisy and as it reached the airspace over London, it sputtered and then went silent. Hearing this sequence, a pedestrian had about thirty seconds to find shelter. This design flaw led many in England to the false conclusion that a flying bomb carried just enough fuel to get it to Britain and, once over its target, its jet engine simply “ran out of gas.”

  Actually the German scientists had developed not only a complicated guidance system using a magnetic compass and a gyroscope, they had also invented an equally complex system that shut off the jet engines’ fuel supply once it was over the target. When the power source was starved of fuel, the flying bomb was supposed to fall on its victims, much like a conventional bomb. In reality, the bombs glided for some time and distance after the jet engine was heard to shut down. Thus the Germans had unintentionally provided some advance warning of the deadly explosions.

  Upon returning to his hotel, George also learned one of the advantages of staying at one of London’s better establishments. You never knew whom you might bump into in the lobby—in this case, two American movie stars. Dinah Shore and Danny Kaye were in England on a morale tour; at the same time, they were promoting their new movie, Up in Arms, and they were staying at George’s hotel. The young bal
l turret gunner elbowed his way through the crowd surrounding the celebrities and managed to shake hands with the comedian and even get an autograph from the beautiful actress. As she handed him the piece of paper bearing her signature, she flashed that famous Dinah Shore smile in his direction. George was hooked.

  Word spread among the lobby crowd that Miss Shore would be performing a song from her movie that very evening during a stage show. George and several of his crewmates were in the audience when the curtain went up. His favorite part of the show was when Dinah Shore sang “Tess’s Torch Song.” Heading back to Polebrook the following evening, the image of Shore’s performance kept running through George’s thoughts.

  When Walker’s crew resumed flying combat missions, someone protested that it was high time they decided on a name for their aircraft. When their popular young ball turret gunner blurted out, “How about Torchy Tess?” to his surprise, no one objected. A vote was taken, and in August 1944 the silver B-17 named Torchy Tess (now with a few battle patches) was taking them to Berlin.

  George’s mission count soon passed any other member of Marvin Walker’s crew. As a good ball turret gunner, he was in demand to fly extra missions with other crews. Although the extra missions held the promise of getting him home to the States sooner, he never liked flying with a different crew. The ball turret was a lonely position, and he depended on his buddies above him to keep him up to speed on what was happening in the bomber. Once, when the interphone system was knocked out by flak, George was worried he would not hear the bailout alarm if it sounded. He opened the turret hatch and yelled at Buddy Armstrong, the waist gunner: “Hey, bang on the top of the turret every now and then to let me know you’re still up here.”

  Armstrong smiled and nodded. George ducked back into his turret and closed the hatch, confident that his crewmate would never leave without him. Each time he flew with an unfamiliar crew, he wondered if he could trust them with his life. On his fifth such mission, he decided he had had enough.

  With one of the bomber’s engines shut down by flak, George sat in his turret and watched the earth gradually coming closer and closer. If he had been flying with his regular crew, they would have been chatting on the interphone all the way back to England. This crew, including the pilot, was strangely silent as their B-17 continued to lose altitude. As soon as they cleared the English coast, the pilot sat the bomber down safely at the first available air base, but George had reached a crucial decision.

  He marched into Operations and told the officer in charge that he would gladly fly for Lieutenant Marvin Walker and his crew, “Anywhere, anytime!” But he added, “In the future, I won’t fly with another crew!”

  The Operations officer was just as direct. “No, if you are assigned to another crew, you will have to fly with them.”

  George walked out without additional comment, but he was determined to stand his ground. He went straight to Walker’s barracks and told his commander of his decision. Walker told his young ball turret gunner to get some rest and then go get a beer. Then the pilot headed in the direction of the Operations building. George would never know what his airplane commander said to the Operations officer, but he was never again assigned to fly with any bomber crew other than Lieutenant Marvin Walker’s.

  George had come close to insubordination with the Operations officer, but he felt he had a good reason and stood on principle. A separate incident that got him into hot water could only be attributed to foolhardiness. When it was over, he could not explain why he had done it. Perhaps, even after numerous combat missions, there was still much of the teenage boy inside him. Perhaps he did it just to prove once again that ball turret gunners were different.

  One night in a local pub he was drinking with a group of airmen when the conversation turned to oddball stunts. One airman happened to mention that he knew of a ball turret gunner who, after returning from a bombing mission, decided he needed just a little more excitement. As the bomber crossed into English airspace, a time when a belly gunner would usually crawl out of the ball turret, the man stayed put. In fact, the sto ryteller proclaimed, “He rode in that turret all the way down and through the landing.”

  Most of the airmen at the bar laughed, being of the opinion the tale was far-fetched. However, one veteran ball turret gunner silenced the doubters. “I believe it, because I’ve done it myself.” The man went on to describe in detail the experience of watching the runway rise up at him while he sat beneath the massive aircraft. “When the wheels touch down, your ass is only eighteen inches above the runway.”

  “What if one of the tires was to blow out, or the landing gear failed?” someone asked.

  “Then I wouldn’t be here talking about it,” the ball turret veteran said, and took a long drink of his ale. George sat quietly as the conversation drifted elsewhere. He was proud of being a ball turret gunner—one of the youngest in the Eighth Air Force. It was sort of a small club. But to be able to say you had ridden in the turret all the way through a landing, that was something George found intriguing.

  It took very little investigation to discover that remaining in a ball turret during a landing was a violation of Eighth Air Force regulations. This did not discourage George, but it did require some secrecy. Only one of Torchy Tess’s waist gunners would need to know of his plan in advance. Eighth Air Force bombers were by then flying missions with nine-man crews. Both waist gunners remained on Walker’s crew, but they flew alternating missions. Also, Sergeant Paul A. Schrader, who at over six feet tall was cramped in his tail gunner’s compartment, often swapped gun positions with Duke or Armstrong. George would have to let whoever was flying as waist gunner in on his plan, because if he did not emerge from his turret before landing, the waist gunner would surely try to reach him via the interphone and Lieutenant Walker would be listening.

  The feat would need to be accomplished following a bombing mission during which Torchy Tess was untouched by flak—something of a rarity. George wanted to be beneath a perfectly functioning aircraft when he tried it. Soon such an opportunity arrived.

  So George stayed inside the ball turret as Walker piloted the bomber back across the North Sea and past the English coast. During a normal landing, a ball turret gunner would wait until the bomber’s wheels were lowered, do a visual check for any flak damage or other potential problems, and then exit through the turret hatch into the main fuselage compartment. In order to use the hatch in this manner, the ball turret’s guns had to be pointing straight down. Once inside the bomber, the gunner would use a hand crank to manually rotate the turret so the guns were facing aft. This was the regulation position of the turret during landing.

  To escape detection from anyone in the control tower, George would need to turn the turret until his guns faced backward. Once the airplane was on the ground, it would be impossible for him to exit into the B-17. The runway would simply be too close to turn the guns straight down. He would have to make a quick exit out the back of the turret, in the direction of the bomber’s nose.

  England was lush and green below as Torchy Tess began her approach to Polebrook. George saw the bomber’s wheels come down from the wings. Everything looked in order. No flak damage anywhere. Up front, all four propellers were spinning smoothly. No reason it should not be a perfect landing, he thought, and swung the turret until its guns were pointed at the tail of the bomber.

  He would have preferred the forward view of the landing, but his position soon proved thrilling enough. As the surface of the runway raced closer and closer, until it was only a few feet away, the young belly gunner had a second of doubt: Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.

  The B-17’s wheels tweaked the runway. George had a sudden sensation of speed unlike anything he had ever experienced in the air. It was as if he were riding in a fast race car—backward. Then the tail end of the bomber settled down on the small rear wheel, and the ball turret dropped to within inches of the runway.

  “What a ride!” George yelled at the top of his voice as
Walker slowed the bomber to taxi speed. As soon as Torchy Tess came to a stop, George popped open the hatch and lowered himself onto the tarmac. Nobody on board the B-17 was the wiser except his waist gunner friend, and he would never tell. Someone on the ground crew, however, spotted him leaving the turret and reported the incident to the aircraft’s commander.

  Marvin Walker confronted his young turret gunner, and George immediately confessed the deed. The pilot showed no anger, but he made it clear that such juvenile behavior would not be tolerated on his crew. They were risking their lives on every mission, but unnecessary risks were foolish.

  “Don’t ever do it again,” Walker warned.

  “No, sir!” George assured him. Then the two men walked together to the post-mission interrogation room. Almost in a whisper, the pilot asked, “What was it like, George?”

  “Great!” the belly gunner replied with a grin.

  George Ahern was born on May 10, 1925, in the small town of Branford, Connecticut, which was nestled along the Long Island shoreline just east of New Haven. Most of Branford’s male residents worked at the local wire mill. George’s father, John, had served as an artillery captain during World War I. His mother, the former Hazel Baisely, raised three daughters and her one son to adulthood, only to suffer the heartache of seeing her firstborn, Patricia, die at twenty-one. Soon afterward, George graduated from Branford High School and joined the Army.

  Hazel Ahern wrote to her son often, as did George’s sisters, Betty and Joan. Happily, the young airman could usually count on a letter from at least one family member when mail call was announced. Those letters were his lifeline to the world he hoped to return to when all his bombing missions were completed. George tried to think of it as when and not if he got through all his missions.