The Forgotten 500

by Gregory A. Freeman

  The first bombing run caused substantial damage, but it was clear to the Allies that many more young men would have to risk their lives to keep the refineries off-line. Bombing runs continued, and then in August 1943 the Allies launched Operation Tidal Wave, intended as an all-out effort against Ploesti. Unlike previous attacks that had been made from thousands of feet in the air, Operation Tidal Wave called for striking the oil fields at very low levels—treetop level sometimes, so low that the exploding bombs and oil fires actually threatened the planes. And then, of course, there was the problem of a B-24 bomber making a very big, very easy target at that altitude.

  The extreme risk required that the plan be approved all the way up the chain of command, with even President Franklin D. Roosevelt agonizing over whether the need to knock out Ploesti justified the extreme risk to the aircrews. He decided that it did, and the bomber crews were given terrifying orders.

  The increased danger called for more than the usual mission preparation. The low-level raids on Ploesti were practiced on a full-scale replica of Ploesti built in the desert. The crews had to perfect their navigation skills and fly in strict radio silence if there was any hope of reaching their target without being shot down. Getting back home was even tougher, and more of an afterthought in the training.

  One hundred and seventy-seven B-24s took off in Operation Tidal Wave on August 1, 1943, a huge wave of bombers that filled the sky but nevertheless intended to sneak into Ploesti. The extensive planning did not ensure success. Things went badly right from the start, as one B-24 crashed on takeoff. The strict radio silence caused the bomber groups to became separated on the long flight across the Adriatic, and then when the planes neared Corfu, Greece, the lead aircraft—the one carrying the route navigator that was to lead the whole group into Ploesti—suddenly dove into the water for no apparent reason. Another plane, this one carrying the backup route navigator, circled down to check for survivors but lost so much time doing so that it couldn’t catch up with the formation. So it turned back to base, leaving the lead bomber group with no expert navigators to lead it on this extremely dangerous low-level approach to Ploesti.

  The planes continued on anyway, the importance of their mission having been drilled into them. They met thick cloud cover as they approached the mountains around Ploesti, and the various bomber groups making up the overall attack chose different paths through the clouds. The two lead bomber groups carefully made their way through or under the clouds, while the three other groups climbed over them. The high-flying bombers took a while to get back down and by then they were half an hour behind the others. The carefully choreographed mission was falling apart.

  As they approached Ploesti, the crews were looking for waypoints to mark their path, especially other towns they could recognize from the air. One of the bomber grouşte for Floreşti, an error that went undiscovered until it led them to the outskirts of Bucharest, way off target. At that point, the crews realized there was little hope of carrying out the attack they had practiced for so long. They broke radio silence and turned north to attack the complex of refineries in Ploesti as best they could. Hit anything you can, they told one another. Just find a target and drop your bombs.

  German fighters attacked the bombers, which did their best to pick out high-value targets and bomb them at very low altitude, as planned. The fighters pursued the bombers as they left Ploesti, shooting down fifty-four planes, each with a crew of ten or twelve men. Another fifty-three planes were heavily damaged. Though reconnaissance flights confirmed that the damage to Ploesti was significant, it was a costly victory. Allied bombers would continue hitting Ploesti over and over again until August 19, 1944.

  Every bomber that left from an Allied base to bomb Ploesti carried up to a dozen young men like Clare Musgrove. Some of them would die before they ever reached their target, many would die as they reached the target and met withering antiaircraft fire and attacks from German fighter planes, and others would make it through the worst of the fighting only to find themselves in a crippled, rapidly dying airplane that would not make it back to base. The bombing runs were always harrowing and violent, with every successful return seeming like a triumph over fate.

  Musgrove was typical of the bomber crews that flew these critical missions, wondering each time he climbed into the plane if he would make it back alive. Growing up in Hersey, Michigan, a small community north of Grand Rapids, Musgrove never imagined he would be flying missions that were so important to the Allied war effort and that could kill him every time. One of four children, Musgrove had spent much of his childhood helping his grandparents on their small, twenty-five-cow dairy farm and graduated from high school in 1937. He then went to a local community college and spent four years teaching in rural schools, which he enjoyed but knew he would not make his life’s work. Instead, Musgrove looked to the military for a better career, one that might offer more adventure than he saw in central Michigan. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Musgrove knew his path was clear.

  America had been at war in Europe for about six months in 1942 when, at age twenty-two, Musgrove volunteered for the air force because he wanted to fly. Most of his former classmates and most of his friends were volunteering also. Everyone wanted to fly because it was the glamorous way to serve in the military. The recruiting posters showed handsome young men in flight suits and leather caps, heading off for grand esca pades that outshone anything in a schoolteacher’s life, so that was the choice for Musgrove. Unfortunately, Musgrove ran into the same road-block that stymied many young men’s aspirations for flight. He couldn’t pass the eye test. Musgrove’s less-than-perfect depth perception meant the government wasn’t going to put him in the pilot’s seat, but hey, there are plenty of other seats on those big bombers, the air force pointed out.

  Musgrove could still fly if he found another position, so he considered navigator, radio operator, and engineer. But the one that sounded best was aerial gunner. The air force obliged and transferred him from Shepherd Field, near Wichita Falls, Texas, where he had undergone basic training, to Laredo, Texas, on Rio Grande River at the border with Mexico. This was the site of the air force’s first aerial gunner school, and Musgrove excelled at his work so much that he was tapped to stay on as an instructor in how to use the ball turret gun on a B-24 bomber. Having already gotten his fill of teaching before joining the service, Musgrove taught for a year before becoming restless as he watched other, less experienced men, go off to war. He lobbied for an assignment to active duty and the air force relented, sending him overseas to the Fifteenth Air Force stationed in Italy.

  Musgrove still didn’t leave his teaching role, however. The air force assigned him to be the instructor for ball turret gunners with the Fifteenth Air Force, reinforcing what the newly arriving crew members had been taught Stateside and helping them hone their skills for life-or-death missions over Europe. And there were always plenty of new recruits to bring up to speed. Every time a plane went off on a bombing mission and came back loaded with dead and dying crewmen who lost their fight with a storm of shrapnel, or when a plane never returned at all, that meant more young men had to be brought in as replacements. Musgrove stayed busy teaching the new ball turret gunners how to protect their bombers and how to stay alive. Neither was an easy task for someone hanging in a Plexiglas sphere from the belly of a bomber.

  Nobody really wanted to be in a ball turret. This Plexiglas ball hanging from the bottom of the bomber was one of America’s latest innovations in warfare. An ingenious piece of machinery built by the Sperry Corporation, the ball turret was a heavily armed bubble just big enough to hold a grown man—but only one on the small side. It had room for the gunner and its two fifty-caliber machine guns—and little else. The extremely cramped quarters meant that the gunner was the only crew member on a bomber who did not wear a parachute during the mission. His was left sitting up in the main part of the plane, where he would have to go get it and put it on before escaping with the rest of the crew. Musgrov
e always told his students: “Stow your chute where you can find it in a hurry. You won’t have much time.”

  The ball turret was not a place for the claustrophobic. It was a tiny space, though it had a great view of the scenery below—or the fighter planes coming up to kill you. The entire unit rotated around in a circle and also up and down, so that the gunner could fire on planes coming from any direction. Being suspended underneath the plane gave the gunner a sensation of flying free, and that often meant that the attacking fighters seemed to be going after him personally rather than trying to shoot down the bomber itself. Everyone on the plane was riding an adrenaline surge during a fighter attack, but none more so than the ball turret gunner who was furiously firing his fifty-caliber machine guns at the German plane trying to kill him in his little glass bubble.

  The ball turret gunner sat curled up in a fetal position, swiveling the entire turret as he aimed the two guns. As he moved the turret quickly to find attacking planes and then follow them with his guns, the gunner could be in any position from lying on his back to standing on his feet. The gunner sat between the guns, his feet in stirrups positioned on either side of a thirteen-inch-diameter window in front, his knees up around his ears and very little room for moving anything but his hands. His flight suit provided the only padding for comfort.

  An optical gunsight hung in front of his face, and a pedal under his left foot adjusted a reticule on the gunsight glass. When the target was framed in the sight, the gunner knew the range was correct and he let fly with the machine guns, pushing down on the two firing buttons located on the wooden handles that also controlled the movement of the ball. Shell casings were ejected through a port just below the gun barrel, pouring out as fast as the beads of sweat on the gunner’s face.

  The plane carried two hundred fifty rounds of ammunition per gun for the ball turret, fed down from boxes mounted on either side of the hoist. The ball turret in the B-24, which Musgrove flew, was electrically raised and lowered, unlike those in the B-17 bombers, which had to be manually cranked up into the fuselage. Musgrove thought this was a great improvement over the B-17 design, because no one wanted to be trapped in a ball turret. There was no way to exit the turret without raising it into the fuselage of the plane, so a turret that could not be retracted was a deathtrap for the gunner. Any system that made it faster and easier to retract the turret was welcomed by the gunners. They had all heard the stories of ball turret gunners who were trapped in their glass bubbles when battle damage prevented them being retracted into the fuselage. Not only was the gunner left out there with no protection, probably with his guns empty or inoperable, but he also faced the prospect of the big plane landing with him hanging from the belly.

  It was every ball turret gunner’s nightmare, and it became a horrifying reality for some. If the gunner was already dead in the turret and it could not be retracted into the plane, the crew sometimes would jettison the whole apparatus because the plane was not designed to land with the ball turret hanging underneath. But if the gunner was alive, they would have to tell him that they had no choice but to put the plane down eventually. The ball turret gunner had a long time to contemplate his fate, maybe to say good-bye on the intercom to his crewmates, as the damaged plane limped back to base or looked for a field in which to crash. All he could do was sit in the glass bubble like a helpless fetus in the womb, watching the ground come up closer and closer.

  When the plane landed, the ball turret was scraped off the belly, taking the gunner with it.

  Musgrove knew the risks, and he had heard all the terrible stories about how ball turret gunners died. But he wanted to fly missions, not just teach others how to risk their own lives. His superiors agreed to let him fly missions as long as his main priority remained teaching the new crew members who were streaming in all the time. That meant Musgrove couldn’t be teamed up with one flight crew that always went out on missions together, as most of the crew members did. Instead, he would rotate through the different flight crews to fill in for ball turret gunners who were out of action that day or whose replacements had not yet been assigned.

  Musgrove never knew when he was going to fly and when he was going to stay at the base and watch the planes leave on their bombing missions. Less than two weeks shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, he had been on eight missions already—bombing power plants and railroad junctions and participating in the invasion of southern France—and he had seen a fair share of heavy-duty combat from his position in the ball turret. He was sleeping soundly when, on the morning of July 28, 1944, an officer came to his bunk and woke him up much earlier than he had planned.

  “Get ready to fly. Be at the briefing by 0430,” the officer said, pausing only briefly to make sure Musgrove was awake and then turning to leave. When Musgrove made his way to the briefing with a dozen other bleary-eyed men, he found out that he was flying on a mission to Ploesti. The briefing officer explained that a number of bombers would be flying directly over the main production areas of the Ploesti oil fields.

  “It’s a very hot target area, well protected by the Germans,” the officer explained. “This target’s been hit almost daily for about ten days, and we’re trying to eliminate this last energy source for the Germans. They’re desperate to protect it, so you can expect a lot of resistance. But you’re the best damn bomber crews in the air force, so they’ve got a real fight coming!”

  Despite the somber warning about how tough the mission would be, the young airmen left the briefing feeling elated and eager to get underway. At dawn, Musgrove climbed into a B-24 with nine other men and found a position near the tail gunner for takeoff. In addition to Musgrove, the B-24 carried a pilot, copilot, navigator, and a bombardier—all officers. The crew also included an airplane mechanic, who operated the top turret located above the cockpit, and a radio operator, who manned the nose turret when he wasn’t on the radio. Two wing gunners manned the big fifty-caliber machine guns on either side of the fuselage, and the tail gunner protected the rear of the plane. Because the ball turret gunner didn’t lower the ball until after takeoff, he was the only crew member who was away from his assigned position when the plane sped down the runway. And because Musgrove was a floater who flew with whatever crew needed him, he was the only member of this crew that had not flown with the others on previous missions. He was welcomed and the rest of the crew were glad to have a talented gunner onboard, but Musgrove knew he was not part of this plane’s tight-knit brotherhood, a bond that forms naturally when men fly into danger together over and over. This crew had been in Italy for only a short time, and they were going out on their third mission. But Musgrove knew they had trained and flown together, so they were a family, and he was a stranger to them.

  “All right boys, let’s go show ’em what we got!” the pilot called out over the intercom as the plane taxied for takeoff. Musgrove and the other crew responded with a hearty yell.

  Thirty-six B-24 bombers from bases all over Italy formed up for this mission to Ploesti. Musgrove and the other crew members were mostly lost in their own thoughts as they flew four hours to the oil refineries in Ploesti, the unmuffled noise of the plane combining with the rushing wind to make conversation difficult without using the intercom. They each sat at their stations, going through checklists and confirming operational details with one another, sharing a bit of dark humor here and there about their prospects of returning from the mission. They all knew that each mission could be their last. But despite the looming threat of death, the men were not overtly scared or apprehensive. They were excited, eager to do the job they were trained for, to accomplish the task they knew was so important for the Allied war effort. Like the rest of the young men on the B-24, Musgrove wanted to get the job done, return, and celebrate a successful mission.

  Musgrove was trying to stay warm as the plane climbed higher and higher, soon putting on a flight suit over his summer khakis when the air became colder and colder. By the time the plane reached twenty-two thousand feet, Musgrove had a
lready plugged his flight suit into an electrical port that allowed the garment to heat up like an electric blanket. After a few minutes, the suit was warm enough that he could forget the bone-chilling cold wind rushing through the plane.

  As they crossed over into enemy territory, Musgrove heard the pilot call out to him on the intercom. “Ball turret gunner, take your position.” That was his signal that it was time to leave the interior of the plane and drop down underneath it. He unplugged his flight suit from the port in the plane and stuffed himself into the ball turret so that his knees were almost up around his ears. Then he used the electro-hydraulic controls to lower it into position beneath the plane. Once he was in position, Musgrove gripped the handles to maneuver the turret fully through its rotations and test the movement of the guns, ensuring that the turret was ready for action as soon as German planes showed up. Once he was satisfied that everything was in order, Musgrove plugged his suit back into the warming port and settled in. There was nothing for him to do but sit and wait for the inevitable leg cramps and the itch you couldn’t reach.

  He rode another couple of hours toward Ploesti, scanning the skies all around the bomber for any sign of German fighters as the formation descended down to ten thousand feet. The planes made it nearly all the way to the target without being intercepted, but then Musgrove could see that the Germans were well aware of their arrival. The sky ahead of the bomber was already filled with the inky black bursts of antiaircraft fire.

  The flak over the target rattled Musgrove like a piñata, the explosive concussions shaking the plane hard and bouncing him around in the tight confines of the turret bubble. With every booming blast, Musgrove waited for the one piece of red-hot shrapnel that could come flying through the Plexiglas and kill him like so many other ball turret gunners. That piece of shell casing never came, and the plane flew on through the inky black clouds left by the explosions. After what seemed an eternity, as any flight did when flak was exploding all around you, Musgrove saw the bombs fall and felt the lightened plane rise higher in the air.