Combat Crew

by John Comer

  ‘Left Waist! You see those bastards at ten o’clock high? Watch ’em! Here they come! Shoot the sonnuvabitches! Kill them! Blow their asses off! Knock ’em down!’

  ‘Right Waist, you no good sonnuvabitch. I’ve told you a hundred times not to shoot when they can’t hit us. Dammit, that fighter was rolling away from us.’

  ‘Crew! Crew! If you keep on wasting your ammunition we’ll be out of ammo before we get to the target! Goddamn it, don’t shoot ’til you can hit th’ bastards! Don’t waste one single round. You think some damn ammo truck’s gonna fly up here an’ give us some more bullets? Watch your ammo!’

  A few minutes later…

  ‘Get those three bastards eleven o’clock high! Shoot! That’s it — blow ’em out! Don’t let ’em hit us!’

  The pilot kept telling us, over and over, that when a fighter quit firing at us to forget about him, and concentrate on the one that was coming in next. He said, ‘Don’t waste any Goddamn attention tryin’ to confirm claims for some gunner. Keep up the fire when they come in, an’ catch th’ next one — hit ’em while they’re comin’ in — foul up their aim.’

  A plane flying near us was hit and caught fire. The flame streamed beyond the tail, and down it went. Likely no one got out. About twenty minutes later, as we crossed over the Rhine River, the squadron lead plane lost an engine. A little later a second engine began smoking. The plane dropped back, and the tail gunner reported that three fighters finished it, but he saw three parachutes.

  ‘The intercom came on, and a shaky voice said, “I’m scared! I want my mama!”’

  Jim reported the following conversation from the aircraft he was in.

  ‘Navigator to Pilot! Aren’t we out of formation?’

  ‘Out of formation? Can’t you see we’re the only one left in the squadron?’

  Jim continued:

  The enemy fighters were trying doggedly to finish us off, and the pilot was taking heavy evasive action. It threw me all over the waist and my ammunition flew out of the ammo cans and got fouled up. Once we almost collided with a fighter, but they didn’t get us. We maneuvered over to a squadron still in fair shape. One plane was throttle-jockeyin’ — fallin’ back, catching up, fallin’ back. When it fell back too far, we sat down in its place. A few minutes later I saw that ship catch five fighters, and down it went. That may sound ruthless and coldhearted, but if someone ahead of you was hit and got out of tight formation and then began to straggle, it was accepted procedure to move right into his place.

  Our route in was slightly west of Koblenz, where the Moselle River joins the Rhine. At the time the Germans probably guessed that Frankfurt was our target. By the time we had passed that city they must have realized with great anxiety that the bombers were headed for their most essential war plants — the bearings factories at Schweinfurt.

  ‘Navigator to Pilot.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘You can see Wurzburg ahead and a little to your right. We’ll make a ninety-degree turn to the left and be on the bomb run in five minutes.’

  There was another flurry of attacks, and then I saw bursts of flak nearby.

  ‘Bombardier to Pilot, we’re on the bomb run.’

  ‘OK, Bombardier.’

  The flak was moderately heavy. The fighters kept away, as always, when we went through the field of fire approaching the target.

  ‘Bombs away!’

  We breathed a sigh of relief that we were rid of that weight. The group had sixteen aircraft left at the halfway point. Suddenly, either a rocket or a flak shell made a direct hit on one of our Forts nearby, and it blew up.

  Right after the target, fighter activity slacked off, and I mistakenly thought the worst was over. North of Frankfurt they hit us with one of the heaviest attacks of the day. The 381st was losing one plane after another. I thought the fighters would leave us soon and take on the incoming Second Division. There were plenty of fighters, however, to handle the Wings going in and coming back.

  The pilot was listening to every burst of fire and keeping up his unending harangue: “Keep watchin’ that ammo! We’re gettin’ closer. Make that ammo last a little longer. Dammit, we’re gonna make it! The worst is over!”

  A little later we lost another B-17. Several others were in serious condition. Suddenly, I realized that the fighters were fading away. I was well aware that we didn’t have much ammo left. Was it really over? Or were we due for another mauling? A great feeling of relief swept over me as the minutes ticked off.

  Jim said that he looked around at the 381st and tried to count the losses, but he did not know how many ships the group put up to start the mission. From what he could see, his guess was twelve to fourteen missing, but that did not mean all of them were lost.

  When the coast slipped by I felt mighty good. We definitely were going to make it! Troubles for the 381st were over, I thought — but not quite: one of our aircraft was in serious trouble and dropped down, down. Just before we reached the English coast it hit the water.

  ‘Ball to Copilot.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Beautiful ditching below us — I can see the crew climbin’ out. I think they’ll be safe this close. Air-Sea Rescue oughta find ’em before dark.’

  Carroll Wilson said after the mission:

  The coast of England had never looked so good, and the white chalk cliffs were a welcome sight. We began to let down and those miserable oxygen masks came off. How I hated those masks!

  It was approaching dusk as we set down at Ridgewell Airdrome. A weary and beaten crew climbed out, thankful that they were privileged to get back. All of the aircraft were damaged, many quite heavily. The 381st lost eleven out of twenty-four aircraft and one plane aborted, the highest loss of any group. The leading 91st Group lost ten ships.

  Interrogation was long and detailed. Official claims contended that the target was half destroyed. In truth, something like thirty-five percent of the capacity to produce bearings was destroyed.

  The 8th Bomber Command had taken a frightful, shocking loss. Sixty B-17s shot down! Twenty-seven other Fortresses were damaged too severely to be repaired. Another blow dealt us at this time was the incredible failure of Air Force planning to coordinate the facilities in North Africa with a reasonable expectation of the need for repairs. Colonel LeMay found, to his amazement, that the only service he could get would be refueling!6 There were no available parts, and no mechanics to repair the heavy battle damage his division suffered — which was comparable to our own.

  The combined Schweinfurt-Regensburg casualties were:

  60 B-17s shot down — sixteen percent of the total force

  27 damaged too much to be repaired

  60 B-17s left in North Africa due to no facilities for immediate repairs (what eventually happened to them I do not know)

  147 Total Aircraft

  Morning brought a severe letdown in morale. At breakfast very few men showed up. The long rows of empty tables took away my appetite. Only yesterday men were crowding in line waiting for seats. That day there were too many unoccupied seats. The usual chatter and banter was absent. Men ate in silence and left quickly. I found myself looking around for faces that I knew I would never see again. What about the future? Was yesterday a preview of what we could expect? That question hung heavily over Ridgewell Airdrome on the morning of August 18.

  It seemed to me that it would be a week before we could get enough replacements to make up the minimum requirements of a Combat Group. Nevertheless, that evening I made a trip to the base canteen to check out the faces. The people I looked for were there, so that meant nothing was shaping up for the next day, as I read the signs. The men who loaded the bombs were called Armorers. If none of them were at the canteen we knew that bombs were being loaded and made mental preparations for the next morning. Many times last-minute weather changes would make raids possible. Three favorable conditions had to exist simultaneously: Visibility over the target had to be fair, local conditions had to be favorable fo
r takeoff, and visibility had to be assured for landing a large group of planes on the return.

  The Americans and British had a decided advantage over the German weather forecasters, because of the Allied weather stations in Greenland and Iceland. The weather forces that determined what conditions would prevail over Europe developed in the Arctic regions. It was helpful to be able to tie in the long-range forecasts with on-the-scene reports from Allied weather planes sent out over the target areas. Also of great value was the Turing electronic machine. It quickly unscrambled the German military and diplomatic code, and could read the German weather reports broadcast to their military and air units each day.

  The 8th Air Force officially claimed 288 German fighters were shot down on the August 17 Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission. The R.A.F. throughout the war was positive that American claims were grossly inflated. I certainly agreed. There was really no reliable way to determine accurately the number of aircraft shot down. Probably one-third would have been closer to being correct.

  The problem in claiming fighters shot down was that it was rare when only one position fired at a fighter. Sometimes twenty guns were involved and in a few cases as many as fifty. At times several gunners thought they shot down the same fighter and put in claims for it, so the claims ballooned. Also, enemy fighters were so heavily armored that they could shake off heavy hits and keep coming.

  At the command headquarters General Eaker’s staff that morning pondered deep and searching questions. What was the lesson learned at Schweinfurt? Had the R.A.F. been correct in their predictions about daylight Fortress raids deep into Germany? The General, very likely, reached two conclusions: one, the Fortresses could battle their way to any target in Europe regardless of German all-out opposition; two, the Bombers must have long-range escort fighters to hold the losses to an acceptable figure when making deep thrusts to well-protected targets.

  The questions were: What fighters did we have that could go with the B-17s to distant targets? When could we get such fighters delivered to England? The proposed new modified P-51, with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, was not released yet for full production. As far as we knew, the only other fighter with enough range was the P-38 Lightning. Was the P-38 a match for the excellent M.E. 109s and F.W. 190s? The P-38 was a good fighter, but not great, and I’m sure the General wanted something better. We, the bomber crews, knew nothing of Bomber Command’s urgent appeal for long-range escort. We would have slept better had we known how strenuously they were pleading with General Arnold, in Washington, for immediate help.

  After the Schweinfurt showdown the Colonel no longer had to exhort his experienced pilots to stay in tight formation. Those who got back had learned a lesson they would never forget. They saw what the Jerry fighters did to “throttle jocks.” There were a number of reasons why a tight formation was so essential to standing off German fighter attacks. A bomber could not concentrate much firepower against a fighter except on tail attacks. The Germans knew that, so they mainly hit with a frontal charge. A single Fortress could bring to bear only three guns on a head-on attack (the nose gun and the two top turret guns). The navigator could fire only if the attack was approaching at an angle to the nose. The top turret guns could not be brought down quite level, so a German fighter charging straight in at the nose could sometimes get under the trajectory of the turret, leaving only the Bombardier’s single gun to oppose him. (When the B-17G model was brought out in October of 1943 the single nose gun was replaced with two guns in a chin turret and the navigator side guns were eliminated.) That meant three fifty-caliber machine guns versus four twenty-millimeter cannon and two to four thirty-caliber machine guns — quite an unequal match-up if the fighter was opposed by only one B-17. (German fighters varied in the kind and amount of armament.) So the chief defense factor was a large number of guns from adjoining aircraft, exceeding the firepower of the attacker. The tighter the formation was, the more fire it could bring to bear against the enemy. Even so, the Bogies had armor plating protection around the engine and cockpit, which cut the chances of our fifty-caliber projectiles getting to the pilot and the most vulnerable parts of the aircraft.

  Attacks from the rear were infrequent because very early the Jerries learned that to attack a B-17 from the rear was not the way to remain alive and healthy. First, the lethal tail guns were assisted by the top turret, the ball turret, and sometimes the radio gun. Second, the fighters overtaking the bombers had a slow rate of closure. That meant the B-17 guns could begin firing at one thousand yards and do a lot of damage before the Germans got close enough to fire their cannon, which had a shorter range of six hundred yards. Thus, a tight formation was the ultimate defensive tactic of a bomber force beyond the range of fighter escort.

  That night Jim said to me, “Do you remember that time when we were flying alone over the mountains and number-one engine burst into flame?”

  “Sure, I remember it. We didn’t know enough to realize it was highly dangerous. We know now.”

  “If it happened tomorrow the whole crew would be rushing to the nearest escape hatch.”

  That incident did not disturb us a bit. Herb calmly retarded the throttle, then opened it up and sucked out the blaze as if it were an everyday occurrence. But I would never again remain calm with an engine fire. I had seen what happened, and how fast, after engines caught on fire.

  August 18

  For the first month at Ridgewell the mental strain of not knowing what to expect with the dawn of each new day was severe. No amount of training, and especially the kind we had, could prepare one to step from a sheltered civilian life to the chance he would face death, or an injury even worse in the next twenty hours. All of a sudden my priorities had undergone a traumatic shift. The small anxieties I used to worry about seemed so trivial. Did I once worry about making my sales quota? Or about paying the monthly bills? How absurd! It boiled down to revising my mental priorities to accept a new way of looking at things — a new mental attitude that would have been alien and totally unacceptable six months ago.

  I turned to Balmore: “George, I’ve begun to study the men with the most missions, and I can see some common characteristics among them.”

  “Like what?” asked Wilson, who came awake long enough to hear part of the conversation.

  “Well, the best way I can explain it, they act like they don’t give a damn what happens! Haven’t any of you noticed that?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes. Some of ’em do act that way,” replied Nick.

  “Is it an act? Or do they really feel that way?” asked George.

  “My guess is it starts out as an act — a sort of front to mask their real feelings — then they work themselves into a mental state where they really don’t worry much about tomorrow. It’s the old philosophy that you can make yourself be what you think you are. I guess that’s what we need to copy. I remember that General Pershing once said that when he wanted his best troops he went to the guardhouse and let them out.”

  “The men who raise enough hell do let the tension work off,” said Rogers.

  “Well, I know for sure, cautious civilian thinking isn’t going to work over here. I don’t know how much I can change my mental outlook — or how fast — but I am starting to try right now.”

  After making my decision, I began consciously to try to drive out contrary thinking. “Why worry about tomorrow? There is no tomorrow — there is only today. Quit thinking about tomorrow or next week or next month. You can’t control what will happen tomorrow, so why spend the precious time you have today worrying about it? The only time you have for sure is now. Today is real. So forget what the future may bring and learn to enjoy to the fullest extent what you have now. When life is threatened, each hour becomes more irreplaceable. Today you are alive and well, so be grateful. For all you know this may be your last day! Don’t ruin it by morbid forebodings of burning airplanes and horrifying plunges out of the sky. To hell with tomorrow!”

  I began to grope my way slowly, with twist
s and turns, and a few detours, to controlled thinking. I went a good way toward that objective during my stay in England but it was during another tour of combat duty, in a different area of the conflict, before the process matured, and a combat raid for me became just another day at the office (15th Air Force, Foggia, Italy — fifty missions).

  I think the best soldiers in combat develop a mystic feeling of immunity to death. Sure enough “others all around me may get it, but the bullets and shrapnel will miss me! I’ve got this special thing going for me. What special thing? I have a strong feeling I’m going to make it, no matter how hopeless it seems, or how rough it gets.”

  On days we weren’t flying, we tried to find things to do to fill the idle hours. I began keeping a record of the things we did, and included some of our conversations. I kept detailed accounts of our raids, gathering together eight or ten men — some of them from different aircraft — going over what happened after each mission. I gradually began to record not only the combat raids, but what went through the minds of men under combat stress. There also developed for me a new pleasure in simple things. When the continuity of life was threatened, the reality of what life was became clearer. After all, one achieves an exalted state of existence only at rare moments. The rest of life is the daily sequence of one small insignificant thing followed by another. If one stands aloof waiting for another mountaintop experience, and fails to find zest in the small matters that comprise most of life, he or she will miss a majority of the best life has to offer.

  Chapter V

  Mission to Gilze-Rijen

  August 19 — Gilze-Rijen

  Aircraft 003

  I heard the Jeep stop outside and that surprised me, because I was so sure we could not mount a mission with our recent heavy loss of aircraft and our damaged planes.