Combat Crew

by John Comer

  The bomb sight incident began one morning when we were in crew training at Casper, Wyoming. We took off to let the Bombardier do some practice drops with a Norden Bomb Sight. Soon after takeoff the oil pressure on one engine dropped off too much and we returned to the base to have a relief valve replaced. Now, the Norden Bomb Sight was guarded with elaborate security. The Sight was the cornerstone of the high-altitude concept and elaborate means were taken to insure that it did not fall into the hands of the enemy in time for it to be duplicated and used against us. Bombardiers were held responsible. When Purus checked out a Norden Sight for a practice flight he was required to wear a .45 automatic and keep that sight under surveillance at all times.

  When Herb landed the aircraft and pulled onto the hardstand I saw right off that the crew chief was alone. I told him the bad news. “I’m afraid we’re gonna have to replace a relief valve on number-three engine. You want me to start taking it out while you go get a new one?”

  “That would speed things up. I oughta be back in twenty to thirty minutes.”

  When the crew chief took off for Aircraft Supply, Herb asked, “How long we going to be tied up?”

  “Forty minutes to an hour,” I answered. “We’ll have to run up the engine and check out the pressure after the valve is changed.”

  Herb turned to the other men. “Come on, let’s go to the club for coffee. We have plenty of time and we don’t need to hang around here.”

  Purus shook his head. “I can’t go, Herb. I’ve got to guard this damn bomb sight.”

  “Aren’t you a commissioned officer? Well, order one of these sergeants to guard the sight while we’re gone.”

  Purus hesitated. “I don’t know … well, I guess it would be all right. Here, Wilson, buckle on my forty-five and stand where you can see the sight up in the nose at all times. Don’t let it out of your vision — and no one is to enter this aircraft ’til we get back. And remember, this gun is loaded! Be careful!”

  I was working high on an engine repair stand with my head up behind the engine most of the time. A few minutes later I looked down and saw Wilson practicing fast draw with that forty-five.

  “Wilson! Put that gun back in the holster! You know better than to play with a loaded gun!”

  He meekly agreed to do so. Five minutes went by and I glanced down. He was at it again!

  “Wilson, you’re gonna kill someone! Put that gun where it belongs!”

  I felt someone tap my foot and looked down. There was one of the sight technicians I had seen at the bomb sight vault several times when Purus checked out a Norden Sight.

  “Sergeant, we got an inspection due today on the sight you’re carrying. How long will you be here?”

  “Another thirty minutes, I guess.”

  “Good! I’ll have the sight back in less than thirty minutes.”

  “Don’t talk to me! See that Sergeant with the gun? He’s in charge of the sight. Talk to him about it.”

  I went back to work and assumed he cleared it with Wilson. In a few minutes I had to come down for a tool and could see the technician in the nose of the plane, removing the sight. He was clearly visible through the plexiglass, and I saw him leave the aircraft carrying the bomb sight and walk off close enough to Wilson that I thought sure he saw him.

  I heard the rest of the crew returning. When Purus looked up at the nose of the plane his face went white.

  “Wilson!” he screamed. “Where’s the bomb sight?”

  Carroll whirled around and stared in utter disbelief at the gaping, empty space in the nose where the sight should have been. His mouth popped open and he went into shock. He couldn’t say a word — just blabbered incoherent sounds. That was when I realized that Wilson didn’t know where the sight was.

  Carqueville ran over to me. “John! You must have seen something! Where’s the bomb sight?”

  “No idea,” I said, “I was busy and had my head up in the engine nacelle. How could I see anything?”

  Stark tragedy had suddenly struck Purus and Carqueville! They had succeeded in losing the Air Force’s top-secret device. A prison sentence was altogether possible. The crew chief returned just in time to catch the last of the act. He glanced at me, saw that the sight was in safe hands, and said nothing.

  Purus turned his fury on Wilson. “You stood there and let someone walk off with the Norden Sight!” He was almost hysterical. “Don’t you know what that means? The Germans would pay a million dollars for that Norden Bomb Sight!”

  Carqueville sat down on a box and buried his face in his hands. I heard him muttering, “Why couldn’t I get nine sane men like the other pilots do?”

  Wilson finally recovered his voice. “I only looked away for five seconds — whoever got it had to work mighty fast!”

  Balmore yelled, “Hey! Isn’t that someone carrying a bomb sight?” He had spotted the technician who was now about forty yards from the bomb sight vault.

  “That’s him! Catch the sonnuvabitch! Don’t let him get away! Catch him!” All nine of them took off like the Keystone Kops after Charlie Chaplin. It was a scream to watch! Wilson was leading the way, determined to redeem himself, waving the forty-five and yelling, “Stop, you sonnuvabitch! Stop! Or I’ll drill ya!” Even Carqueville put on a burst of speed that amazed me.

  When the unfortunate man heard all the commotion he turned and was astonished to see a madman flourishing a lethal forty-five and eight more hostile men bearing down on him. He started to make a run for the safety of the vault, but realized he couldn’t make it carrying the heavy sight.

  “Hands up! Hands up!” screamed Wilson, and he leveled the gun as if to shoot. The technician quickly put the sight down and raised his hands. They swarmed over him and pinned him to the ground and held him there.

  “We got him! We got him!”

  Our brave men had captured the dastardly spy! Attracted by the noise, five or six men from the vault ran quickly to the scene, and from the distance I saw the man get up and several men help brush the dirt off of his clothes. There was a short conference and nine sheepish, subdued men headed back to the aircraft. That ruckus over the bomb sight was funnier than anything I had ever seen on a movie screen. The crew chief went into such hysterics that he lost his balance and fell off the engine stand. Fortunately I was there to break his fall. The returning heroes did not appreciate the uncontrolled mirth of the crew chief and me.

  “What’s so damned funny?” growled Counce.

  Balmore was inordinately sensitive about anything that made him look silly. I could see that he was getting angry, and about ready to take a swing at me, so I quickly got out of range. “Go ahead and laugh,” George fumed. “We were trying our best to get the bomb sight back, and you guys think it’s a joke.”

  Carqueville had regained his composure and turned on Wilson. “You had only one thing to do,” he said, “and that was to guard the bomb sight, yet you let a man walk off with it!”

  “Honest, Sir, I never took my eyes off that sight,” Wilson insisted, “except for a few seconds when I lighted a cigarette.”

  The truth was that Wilson never once glanced at the bomb sight. With his glib tongue, however, Carroll could get out of anything! I listened to his spiel, still laughing, but said nothing about his Billy the Kid act. I owed him something for his lead role in a real-life comedy so memorable that it still lingers in my memory as one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

  Carroll had another characteristic that was not so funny. On training flights he would find a comfortable spot in the waist or radio room and sleep for two or three hours at a time. He would wake up and get bored with the long flight and wander around the airplane trying to find something to do. One night he wandered into the cockpit while Jim and I were running down an open circuit. Jim was holding the large cover of the main fuse box and I was trying to locate a burned-out fuse. Wilson decided we needed help so he turned to Jim. “Here, let me hold that while you help John.” In his awkward movements he jammed the cover aga
inst the open fuses and shorted out almost every electrical circuit on the airplane. A ball of blue fire rolled out of the fuse box, between the Pilot and Copilot, and against the windshield before it burned out. The only lights left in the cockpit were a few luminescent instrument figures. Carqueville was so infuriated that if he could have reached Wilson at that moment he would have inflicted physical damage. Fortunately, we had two flashlights.

  August 30

  By the end of August the crew had settled down into a routine that was predictable. Carl Shutting was the clown, and every crew needed one. The ground crew was always grumpy in the cold, predawn hours when the combat personnel arrived at the aircraft. But when Shutting dumped out his gear at the hardstand the mechanics gathered around him to chuckle at his antics and wisecracks. He always had something missing from his equipment bag. It might be a mic or an electric glove he had neglected to replace from the last mission. Some mornings I would have a spare of what he needed. Other mornings it was not unusual for Carl to have one of the ground crew rushing to get something. He refused to enter the nose of an aircraft without his special armor plate on the floor. When he donned his testicle protective armor he had no problem getting two volunteers to assist in tying it in place. The mechanics followed him around until time to enter the ship. It was the only show on the base at that hour. Shutting set out to create a character behind which the real Carl Shutting could hide. He was never as slaphappy as he often appeared to be. All of us built up a wartime pose which made us appear different from what we were in civilian life. Carl carried it two levels beyond the norm. He adopted a homespun manner of talking similar to that of Bob Burns, an early-day Bing Crosby radio character (who coined the word “Bazooka” to describe the odd musical instrument he played). Gleichauf told me Carl had a special cap that he wore at night to keep his bald head warm that created mirth and kidding.

  Chapter VII

  Missions to Amiens-Glizy and Romilly

  August 31

  Woodrow Pitts made an early trip to the Grog Shop and was back within a couple of hours. “They’re loadin’ those damn bombs.”

  “Are you sure?” Green asked.

  “Hell, yes — twelve five-hundred G.P.s” (General Purpose Bombs).

  I turned to Balmore, “Where did Abramo and Wilson go? Anybody know?”

  “They took off for the pubs two hours ago.”

  “You know Nick never leaves ’til they close the pub — somebody has to go find them an’ tell them to break off.”

  Counce spoke up. “I’ll do it. Anyone want to go along? We don’t want Nick to piss in his pants tomorrow.”

  They were back in time to listen to the late news from B.B.C. There was no point in going to bed until the newscast was over and the noise and lights died down. I lay in the sack a long time before sleep would come, wondering where we would go in the morning and how rough it would be. I could never resist the question before a mission: “Which of us will not be here this time tomorrow night?”

  August 31 — Amiens-Glizy

  Aircraft 765: Nip and Tuck

  The next morning I stood outside the Briefing Room with Counce until we heard the reaction to the target when the map curtain was pulled back.

  Jim said, “About average — probably somewhere in France.”

  “That’s how it sounds to me.”

  The weather looked questionable, but there was always the chance it would break before sunup. We were happy to have George back with us in the radio room after a layoff to recover from frostbite again. Raymond Legg was doing well as a replacement for Rogers, whose future status was unknown.

  Gleichauf called us into a circle for the crew briefing. “We’re hittin’ Amiens-Glizy in France. There are two hundred and fifty fighters that can intercept. Flak will be moderate, and fifty P-47s will pick us up at the coast. Colonel Nazzaro will lead the Wing flyin’ with Colonel Gross, the Wing Commander.”

  The Group got off on time and the climb and assembly were flawless. It seemed to me that things always went smoother when Nazzaro was leading. By the time the three Groups were assembled into Wing formation we were over heavy clouds with ground visibility zero.

  “Bombardier to crew, Bombardier to crew — oxygen check.”

  “Turret OK.”

  “Radio OK.”

  “Ball OK.”

  “Tail OK.”

  “Pilot and Copilot OK.”

  “Waist OK.”

  “Bombardier to crew, test fire guns.”

  One by one I listened to the positions rattle off a short burst. For ten minutes the formation droned on toward the Continent.

  “Pilot to Navigator.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Is this cloud cover goin’ to foul up the drop?”

  “If it stays like this it will — got two alternates but they may be covered, too.”

  “Turret to crew, flak three o’clock high.”

  The antiaircraft fire was light and inaccurate.

  “Waist to crew, Waist to crew — fighters four o’clock high. Looks like the escort.”

  The cloud cover held on but there were a few breaks in it.

  “Navigator to Copilot. Tell Paul if these clouds don’t open up real soon, we won’t hit the primary target — we’re gettin’ close to the I.P. now.”

  Gleichauf switched from Command to intercom at the Copilot’s signal.

  “Navigator says it don’t look good for the main target.”

  As we approached the drop area, visibility was nil and there was no possibility of executing the primary plan. I suppose most leaders would have turned around and headed for England. But with plenty of fuel Nazzaro intended to use all possible means to inflict damage to Germany’s ability to wage war. We flew around for a long hour with the lead Navigator searching for an alternate or a suitable target of opportunity. Our 47 escort was excellent until they had to turn north toward England. Suddenly there was a break in the clouds and an enemy airfield loomed straight ahead. I do not know if the Lead Bombardier recognized it or not.

  “Bombardier to Pilot.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “There’s an airfield and we’re going to drop on it.”

  “Radio — watch the doors down.”

  “This is Radio — doors are down.”

  After a short run I felt the bombs drop away.

  “Navigator from Pilot — what did we hit?”

  “Don’t know — didn’t recognize it.”

  “Bombardier to Tail, how did the strike look?”

  “Looked good to me — covered the field.”

  We were lucky to get a quick bomb run and an excellent strike pattern. The mission was an example of good leadership turning a failure into a success. The return flight was uneventful until we neared the home base. Visibility was far too poor for a sizable force of planes to attempt to land at the same time. So each ship was on its own to feel the way down and hunt holes in the mist, at the same time avoiding a collision with other aircraft.

  September 2

  Lieutenant Purus never changed from the way he was the first day I met him. Quiet and soft-spoken, mild in manner and disposition, he was a solid man to have on the crew. What I remember best about Purus was that he managed always to look neat and clean even in the English mud. The Bombardier was responsible for the bomb load as soon as the aircraft moved away from the hardstand. Those bombs had three safety devices to insure against an accidental explosion: (1) a cotter key had to be removed by hand from the fuse mechanism of each bomb; (2) an arming wire had to pull out of the fuse assembly when the bomb fell from the aircraft; and (3) an impeller had to spin off of the fuse assembly from the action of the wind on the drop. As long as any of those three safety measures was in place, the bomb was supposed to be inert and no more dangerous than a block of concrete of the same weight. Any of those devices would restrict the striker pin from igniting the explosion at the moment of impact with the ground.

  Our practice was to remove the cotter pins
as soon as we were reasonably sure the mission was going as planned and a few minutes from the enemy coast. Since I was nearer to the bomb bay than Purus, I performed the pin-pulling assignment. If the mission had to be canceled later, the pins had to be reinserted before the ship could land, a much harder task than removing them.

  Balmore worked at a table adjacent to the bomb-bay door. He could open the door and see into the bay. So he reported doors up or down and when the bomb load released. If one or more bombs failed to release, the radio operator immediately called the Bombardier. By arrangement with Purus I took over the task of working the stuck bombs free, because I was closer to the bombs and had the only tools on the aircraft. Ordinarily I could trip the bomb shackle with a long screwdriver and quickly get rid of it. But if we had an unusual situation with several bombs in difficult hang-ups to reach, we kept the bomb-bay doors open until we were at sixteen thousand feet, letting down on the return. At that point Purus and I went back and did whatever was necessary to get those bombs out of the ship. Once a bomb failed to release from a rack the aircraft was not permitted to land until that bomb was ejected one way or another. Believe me, it was not a fun thing to work out on that narrow catwalk with the doors open below.

  While the bomb was theoretically supposed to be inert with any of the safeties in place, I would not have wanted to wager any money on it. But one night a guard was sitting in the cockpit of a B-17 that was loaded with bombs for a mission the next morning, and somehow in fooling around with the switches and controls he accidentally dropped all twelve bombs out of the airplane. They knocked down the bomb-bay doors and hit the pavement of the hardstand and rolled in every direction. None of them exploded, but we had a white-faced guard who thought for a few seconds it was his last moment on earth. The strange thing was that he should not have been able to do this without pulling the salvo ring, which was an emergency release for the bombs in case the electrical system should fail.