Combat Crew

by John Comer

  At first I did not pay much attention to the Ball and Tail reports about two-engine fighters standing back out of the Fortress gun range and steadily throwing rockets into the formations.

  “Ball to Pilot.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “That low group is takin’ a helluva beating — they’re getting rockets and fighter passes at the same time.”

  “Waist to Bombardier.”

  “Go ahead, Waist.”

  “When the rockets explode it looks like they throw out something like hand grenades that also explode.”

  “Bombardier to crew — watch those rocket explosions. Tell me if they are throwing out other explosives.”

  “This is Radio! M.E. 109 is right above us — something is hangin’ below it — on a long cable. The sonnuvabitch is tryin’ to drop a bomb on us.”

  Fortunately, the bomb fell through the formation and exploded too far below to do any damage. The rocket-carrying twin-engine fighters increased in number as we battled deeper into Germany. The rockets were hurled steadily into the formation with devastating results. A few made direct hits, but mostly Forts were damaged too much to be able to stay up with the formation. When they fell behind, away from the protection of the concentrated defensive fire, the single-engine fighters ganged up on them, and their chances for survival were slight.

  We turned toward the target at Wurzburg. Cahow called the Tail Gunner: “How many Forts has the low group lost?”

  “Eleven I think — don’t know if any of ’em are gonna make it.”

  With that final left turn, the Germans knew for sure where we were heading. They must have suspected that the ball-bearing plants were the objective thirty or forty minutes earlier. The modest city of Schweinfurt now lay straight ahead. The fighter fury intensified; their attacks became more savage. In the distance, sunlight reflected from a maze of red-tiled roofs. There was a slight haze and some smoke, but visibility was excellent. At that point I could not pick out the beating plants for certain, but I did see sizable buildings along the Main River that wound through Schweinfurt, and I suspected they were the targets.

  Flak began to burst all around the formation and I could hear heavy shrapnel striking the ship. To my surprise the fighters kept on coming after us in the middle of that inferno of fire and smoke. The enemy showed great tenacity in defending those plants that were so vital to their military production. I knew there were three hundred eighty-eight– and one-hundred-and-five– millimeter antiaircraft artillery pieces in the Schweinfurt defense perimeter. With no guns to fire, I felt stripped of protection. The act of doing familiar things provides some sense of security in combat. In a strange position with little to do, I was shaking as if I had a chill. There was too much time to look and think about the paper-thin aluminum sheet metal and transparent plastic separating me from the hideous white-hot shrapnel. I wished I had Shutting’s special armor devices.

  Below, and to my right, I noticed several Forts trailing us on a strange beating that would cause them to miss the target if maintained. There was no heavy damage that would explain why the Fortresses were out of formation. They must have been remnants of some badly mauled outfit. It was soon evident that they knew the turn we would take after the drop, and were cutting the target short in order to pull into one of the groups low on aircraft. (It was the only time in seventy-five missions over the Continent that I saw, or heard of, undamaged Flying Fortresses deliberately bypassing the target.) None of the documentary accounts I have read mention that incident. It was one of the few times I was in position to see the bombs strike the target. The drop pattern blanketed what I thought must have been the bearings plants. The strike looked real good, but I wondered if it was really worth the high price we were paying. There had been strikes before that we thought to be excellent, but the plants were back in production in a few weeks.

  The 381st fared better than I expected, only because we were high up in the formation escaping the worst of the rockets and fighters. The lowest group was always easier to attack because the enemy fighters performed better lower down, and the defensive fire was reduced. Halfway back to the coast the two remaining aircraft of the ill-fated 305th Group pulled into empty positions in the 91st. Thirty minutes from the coast the interceptors faded out. Were they really gone? I searched the sky for a while then slowly unwound from the high tension that had gripped me for the last seven or eight hours. It was the first time I relaxed since I heard the dreaded word “Schweinfurt” early that morning.

  Counce, Balmore, and Wilson were waiting at the hardstand when we climbed out. They had heard what the target was and knew only too well what we were catching. They told me that Purus was on the mission with Hutchins and his crew and their plane was reported missing. My elation at getting back was short lived. The interrogation was long and tedious, but I barely listened, wondering what happened to Johnny. I felt numb, almost devoid of energy, my vitality drained down to empty.

  The way I saw it, on October 14 the Germans achieved a victory over the Fortresses. The enemy losses in planes shot down were small in view of the intense action. The rockets were devastating. Standing back just out of the gun range of the Forts, the Jerry pilots had tremendous success throwing rockets into the Fortress formation. At Luftwaffe headquarters they must have been elated that at last they had a weapon that would either stop the American attacks, or wipe out the attackers if they persisted on deep missions into Germany. Albert Speer described Goering’s triumphant report to Hitler about the success of the rocket defense against the Fortresses earlier in the day — sixty bombers smashed out of the sky.16 Goering was positive that long-range fighters could not be designed or built with the technology of that period, as were many other aviation experts. Without deep fighter escort, the German Defense Command thought that they now had the much needed weapon to stop deep raids into Germany in daylight. And in the weeks following, it looked that way to the American flight crews also.

  Back at the hut a long time later, I hit the bed quickly and closed my eyes. The station loudspeaker came on: “Now hear this — now hear this — Lieutenant Hutchins landed at an English airdrome on the coast with all crew members safe.” It was a good day for me after all. But I vowed that I would never again volunteer for anything as long as I was in the service.

  The official losses were:

  Sixty-two Forts shot down.

  Seventeen Forts damaged too much to be repaired.

  Ninety-nine enemy planes shot down.

  Thirty enemy planes probably shot down.

  Thirty-six Forts damaged but could be repaired.

  A day later the damaged figure was raised to one hundred forty-two. Which figure was correct, if either was, I did not find out. Perhaps it depended on how to define “damaged.”

  Unpredictable factors, impossible to foresee, sometimes decide the fate of men, or shift the course of history. For me — and the 381st Group — that high bank of fog hovering over our air assembly space that morning was an incredible stroke of good fortune. Although we bitterly cursed the fate that put us in that ten-thousand-foot layer of murk, it turned out to be the difference between acceptable losses and disaster! Had we been in our assigned low position, the odds against getting back would have been twelve to one (based on the losses of the 305th Group).

  In the days that followed the second Schweinfurt Raid, it received widespread publicity, ranking alongside Doolittle’s Raid on Tokyo, and the sensational raid on the oil fields at Ploesti. Mr. Roosevelt had to make a public statement about the raid to soothe over the disastrous losses. It represented to me the zenith of German aerial resistance to the American Air Forces. Never again was Goering able to achieve an out-and-out victory over the Fortresses. There would be days when the B-17s would suffer losses of comparable numbers in the future, but against much larger fleets with a far lower loss percentage.

  Some persons can point to a spot in their lives — a name perhaps — that represents to them an intangible emotional height beside
which all other days pale. The name of the obscure Bavarian town “Schweinfurt” means nothing to most Americans but a name on a map of Germany. But the men who endured the fury of either of those historic battles will never forget what air combat, at its epitome, was like. Some historians contend that the collision of those two large forces over Germany marks the highest point that aerial combat has ever reached — the greatest air battles of all time. That is, of course, merely an opinion. There is no way to compare the great naval engagements of the Pacific involving carriers and their planes with the savage conflicts over the Continent. In the Pacific, the great air battles covered vast distances and sometimes lasted several days. The two Schweinfurt raids were a powerful, determined offensive air fleet clashing with an equally potent defensive force in a restricted air passageway in a time span of four or five hours. There had never been anything like them before. Never again will two air forces of such magnitude collide head on in a single afternoon.17 By some criteria the October 14th mission was the most savage in the history of the Air Force. It depends on how a historian looks at it: there was a devastating nineteen percent loss of the aircraft participating.

  October 15

  No matter what the conversation started out to be, sooner or later it would inevitably shift back to the thing most on our minds. The raids were flown over and over. Bits and pieces that were missing fell into place because other men in different aircraft saw things I could not see. I could reconstruct the whole action only by gathering the observations of others who were in different positions, and fitting them in with my fragmented memories of what happened. In the process of doing this, there was a tendency to combine the ideas and impressions of others with my own in such a manner that a month later what I actually saw could not be separated from what I heard from them. I am sure that I have some vivid memories of incidents that I did not see so indelibly imprinted in my mind that now I think that I personally witnessed them.

  There was a divergence of opinion about how the odds for survival worked out. Rogers led one school of thought on the subject and I was the foremost proponent of a different way of looking at it.

  “Now, Buck, you say that ever’ time I fly another mission my luck and chances for survival stretch thinner?”

  “That’s right. The more raids you get, the more the odds catch up with you.”

  “You mean to say that the odds on my twentieth mission will be twenty times more against me than on my first mission?”

  “You’re damn right, if you make it to twenty missions. Those odds stretch and stretch. That’s why so many men go down on their last two or three missions.”

  “The way I see it the odds start all over every day or every mission,” I answered.

  “I can’t buy that. The more you fly, the closer you get to the breakin’ point. Then bang! They catch up with you,” Rogers said.

  “The laws of chance don’t change just because we’re talkin’ about missions,” I insisted.

  “Sure they do,” said someone, “they’re bound to catch up with you.”

  “Look, you take a pair of dice — you roll them and the mathematical chance to get a seven or eleven will repeat every time you throw those dice. It’s the same for a mission. What’s already happened doesn’t count. It’s a new ball game ever’ mission morning.”

  Jim cut in, “You are right. But each raid you learn something new, so you can change the odds a little in your favor with experience.”

  But Balmore disagreed. “Buck’s right, your odds keep stretching like a rubber band — unless you are lucky, one day the rubber won’t stretch any more an’ it snaps.”

  “I can’t figure your thinking. You’re trying to tell me that if I roll dice ten times the odds for me to make a seven get less each time I pick up the dice. The professional gamblers sure wouldn’t agree with you. And the laws of chance are a matter of mathematics. It makes no difference if it’s cards, dice, or missions.”

  Neither side would budge from their positions and the arguments went on month after month.

  October 16

  It was a cold night, too rainy to get far from the hut. The small depressing building was quiet for a change. Only four of us were there. Woodrow Pitts walked over to my bunk.

  “Comer, how did you like your ride with us to Schweinfurt?”

  “I felt strange. I was out of place. It was like a bad dream when I suddenly find myself in some public place with no clothes on.”

  “Because you didn’t have any guns?” he asked.

  “Partly that — an’ I couldn’t see the action behind us. I heard all those comments about the rockets on the intercom and could not see them from the nose.”

  “You had a lotta time to look around. Could you see the strike?”

  “Yes,” I answered, “I could see the strike OK — one of the few times I ever saw them hit — an’ I saw too many Forts on fire or out of control.”

  “I saw too many of those myself.”

  “Woodrow, I used to feel nauseated an’ sick when I saw a Fort go down an’ no one get out. But that day I watched them fall with a cold, impersonal feeling — like there were no men in them.”

  “You’re just getting used to it. When you see so many lost, you quit thinking about it.”

  “Are we becomin’ so callous we don’t care when we see our own men trapped in a falling airplane?” I asked.

  Jim Counce spoke up. “Don’t you think it’s nature’s way of conditioning a man for what he has to do? People can get used to worse than what we’ve seen.”

  “In combat you have to become accustomed to death all around you or you’ll blow up inside,” Pitts added.

  “Think how much worse it would be if we were fighting hand to hand with bayonets. But we could get used to that, too, if we were in it long enough,” Jim said.

  Of course they were both right and it was a good thing. One could not dwell on what happened to other men — even those he knew well — and maintain his sanity.

  October 18

  After lights were out that night and I thought the others were asleep, Lancia muttered into the darkness: “We’ve gotta have long-range fighters.”

  He was voicing the thought uppermost in the minds of all personnel in Bomber Command, from the Commanding Officer down to the newest gunner. Without some way to stop those rockets we were all but finished as an effective deep offensive force.

  “Where ya goin’ to get ’em?” came from a voice at the other end of the hut.

  “They could send us some P-38s.” I recognized Pitt’s voice.

  “But are they good enough to go against the 190s and that new 109G?” I asked.

  “That leaves us nothing but the P-51s — the new models we’ve heard about. But no one has seen them in combat yet, so we don’t know what they can do,” Pitts added.

  “Well, the P-38s would be a lot better than nothing,” said Jim. “They could tear up those rocket-carrying fighters — that’s for sure.”

  October 22

  On days that missions were not scheduled, Operations often called crews for wearisome practice flights, or to slow-time aircraft with new engines. There were also flights to test repairs that could only be checked out at high altitude. With a shortage of crews, we caught a lot of those assignments if Operations could find us. We developed a sensitive ear for the sound of the Operations Jeep, and if we heard it in time escaped quickly to other locations. If they could not find us, they picked up others less fortunate, especially flight engineers, radio operators, and pilots.

  Ridgewell Airdrome was located at about fifty-two degrees latitude, which corresponds with the lower end of Hudson Bay and Labrador. Only the warm waters of the Gulf Stream make the British Isles a decent place for people to live. But the northern latitude meant that long winter nights were rapidly approaching. Our crude metal hut was ill-equipped to withstand the ordeal soon to descend. So Jim and I went into Cambridge and managed to procure wire, receptacles, lamps, and insulators to install individual
lights for each bunk. We also got caulking compound and sealers to plug up the cracks that let the north wind blow in unhindered. The English electrical system was two hundred twenty volts, requiring more care in installation than our one hundred ten system. We made some crude chairs from wood we could scrounge, and a table for the poker games and for writing. A few pinups of nude women provided the remaining touches, and we were more ready for the cold days and long nights of mid-winter.

  Balmore was on pass in Cambridge doing some shopping the day we nailed shut the back door and sealed it securely. Early the next morning George heard the Jeep coming. He hastily grabbed his jacket and coveralls and made a run for the back door. While he was frantically trying to open it, Lieutenant Franek, the operations officer, came in the front door.

  “Well! Well! Where you heading so eagerly? Do you always run around in your long handle drawers? Maybe we can find something for you to do. Be at Operations at nine hundred hours for a slow-time.”

  He turned to go, then came back to George’s bunk. “I’m glad to know we have such eager men who leap out of bed so early in the mornings. We will try to find some more interesting flights for you, Balmore.”

  After Franek left George glowered at the rest of us who were shaking the hut with loud laughter. Lancia said, “How about that? You are getting to be Franek’ s favorite boy.” And he rolled out of the way of the vicious kick he knew was coming. Balmore could be pushed just so far and that temper would explode!