Combat Crew

by John Comer

  “What the hell is the matter with that back door! I couldn’t budge it.”

  “No wonder,” Counce replied. “Me an’ John nailed it up yesterday.”

  “You could have told me about it, instead of lettin’ Franek catch me with my pants down. Now he will have me on one of those miserable slow-times for two or three days a week.”

  October 23

  In Washington doubts were developing about the ability of the Fortresses on daylight strategic combat missions into Germany, where it really counted. The R.A.F. Command was still unconvinced about the accuracy of the bombing or the ability to resist the certain fierce attacks on deep daylight missions. General Eaker was unshaken in his feeling that the American concept could hit the enemy harder with fewer men and materials. What had the October raid on Schweinfurt proved? One, that the Fortresses could severely damage any target in Germany regardless of enemy opposition. Two, the losses of men and machines were too severe for continuous attacks into central Germany without long-range fighter escort.

  It is unfortunate that the Lancasters and the Fortresses did not concentrate their bombing offenses jointly on a few key German industries, using daylight and night raids to obliterate them. Eaker could never get the R.A.F. to help destroy the bearings production, regardless of the fact that the enemy only had five or six locations that could have been eliminated with better cooperation and understanding of what such a blow could have done to German military production. Then there were the oil and transportation industries, and they were almost as vulnerable. An oil refinery or large storage tank site was difficult to conceal. In late 1943 it seems to me that the Allies had the combined air strength to wipe out at least one or two of those industries. No modern army could fight long if deprived of any of them. Instead of concentrating on a few vital targets, we scattered our air strength over so many kinds of targets that in truth we succeeded in destroying none of them. German war production continued until the Allied armies broke into the interior of the Fatherland.

  October 25

  There was some free time that morning. At the hut I asked, “Anyone want to join me? I’m headin’ for the bath house.”

  “You better hurry and get in line,” Green said.

  Jim chipped in, “I do like the big windows in the bath house — such a good view. We don’t really need any glass in the windows — better ventilation an’ no mildew.”

  “Well, is anyone else comin’?”

  “Hell, no! Not me. I’m not gonna freeze my ass in that ice box,” Buck answered.

  “You know somethin’? You guys from the north are always the first to bitch about being cold. In all barracks you will see men from Maine and Michigan near the stove an’ the men from Texas an’ Florida at the end of the room.”

  The bath house was located in the middle of the personnel huts but in winter it was shunned as if the plague lurked in its murky interior. An icy north wind blew unhindered through the open window spaces. This is what went through my mind: “Why don’t I put it off? Hell, I had a bath last week. No! You got to get on with it. Won’t be any warmer tomorrow. Well, here we go! Get undressed — that’s it. Hang your clothes on those nails. Forget about that freezing wind. Now off with those shoes. All right, go ahead and yell! That cold mud is hell. Come on, let’s get it over with before pneumonia sets in. Over to the shower — now turn on the water. That’s it, leap back when the water starts squirtin’ out. Now hold the wash rag in the water and get it lathered up real heavy. OK, now soap down all over. Quit shaking; the blue skin will recover in ten or fifteen minutes. You are committed now! You’ve got to get under that shower to get the soap off. All right! Step under the shower. No! There’s no hurry. Yes there is. Now get under that water! Owwwww! Yell louder! You’re not going to disturb anyone. Do those yells actually make me a little warmer or is it my imagination? That’s enough. Get out of here, you’re wasting water. Turn it off and make a run for the towel. Where in the hell did I hang the clean underwear? Oh damn! It fell off into the mud on the floor. Well, put on the dirty underwear. Now on with the shirt and pants. You are feeling much better now. Right? Sure you are. Now rinse off the mud from your feet. You feel great! Just great! It was worth the ordeal, wasn’t it? Tell that to the boys back at the hut!”

  October 29

  George, Hubie Green, and I were lingering over a last cup of coffee at the mess hall. The building was almost empty as most of the men had departed.

  “Hey, look comin’ in — some brand new officers,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Green, “you can see that look on their faces. They must have arrived today.”

  Five minutes later they had their trays and were seated at a table next to us. The temptation was too much to resist: it was time to start their initiation. Immediately we launched into a morbid discussion of combat raids in drastic detail, explosions, aircraft fires, dead crewmen, amputations, planes falling in spins out of control. We made it a point to act as if we did not realize they were listening. When the conversation was particularly gory, there was no sound of knife or fork from the next table. I noted with satisfaction when we left that the newly arrived officers were no longer hungry. It was our warm and friendly welcome to the 381st Combat Group and Ridgewell Airdrome.

  November 1

  There were nights when we could hear the faint sound of air raid sirens from the east toward the coast. We would lie there quietly listening to the spine-tingling wails, hoping they would fade away to the north or south. But some nights sirens closer to us would open up, then the nearby towns would come alive, and we knew the German bombers were coming in our direction. There were no air raid shelters at the base. There were some slit trenches near each hut, but they were always half full of water and mud. Most of us had rather chance the bombs than the freezing water and mud. If the weather was clear, men swarmed outside to find a vantage point and try to catch a glimpse of the action. Sometimes a dark shape of a bomber could be seen in the sky, silhouetted against a searchlight beam or the moon. On those rare occasions when a Jerry plane was caught by a blinding searchlight beam, it would shine brightly in the night sky, a perfect target for the R.A.F. night fighters. One night in October, eight parachute flares burst into brilliance over the base but floated over an adjacent village and burned luminously. It was clear that the bombers were after the 381st that night.

  Chapter XV

  Mission to Wilhelmshaven and Gelsenkirchen

  November 3 — Wilhelmshaven, Germany

  Aircraft 719: Hellcat

  The weather looked questionable when I left the hut. The first man I saw at Operations was Chaplain Brown watching each man as he arrived. What did he look for? And if he pinpointed a man who appeared shaky, what did he say to him? Did he say, “God will watch over you and protect you,” knowing that the man was on his way to kill and destroy?

  When Gleichauf arrived at the aircraft, I had no idea what kind of mission we would face for the day. “We’re hittin’ Wilhelmshaven in Germany. Fighter opposition will be about the same as we get over Bremen, which can be rough. Flak is estimated from medium to heavy concentration. We’ll pick up fifty P-47s at the coast on the way in. But the big news is we will have P-38s with us over the target.”

  There were whoops of joy! We were completely unaware that P-38s had arrived in England until that day. The Lockheed Lightning was powered by two liquid-cooled engines and had a double tail boom. Its main feature was long range and strong construction. Fighting characteristics were good, but not great. It had performed well in the North African campaign against German aircraft, but how it would stack up in the rarefied air of twenty-five to thirty thousand feet, against the best pilots the enemy could muster, was yet to be determined. But even a fair performance on those long penetrations, with the rocket menace hovering in the background, would be a tremendous help. There was no doubt that they could easily handle the rocket-carrying fighters with those awkward chutes hanging under each wing.

  A few minutes after the
P-47s turned back toward England, the Tail gunner came on intercom: “Tail to crew — here come the Bogies-five o’clock low.”

  The fighters climbed rapidly to our altitude and began circling to look us over as they usually did.

  “Turret to crew — Turret to crew — those Germans got a big surprise coming. P-38s at four o’clock high.”

  I watched a P-38 lead plane pick out a target and go into a steep dive. To my surprise the P-38 caught a blast of fire from somewhere and broke into two pieces and fell away in flames. The other P-38s pulled back up and decided to look things over a bit more carefully.

  “Navigator to Copilot.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did you see what happened to that P-38?”

  “He got caught by a 109 he never saw — it’ll take a while, but they’ll learn to use the P-47 tactics — get careless with those 109s an’ they’ll blow your ass off.”

  German and American fighters were evenly matched in numerical strength. I noticed that 38s seemed to fight in elements of two, while the P-47s used elements of four. But the 38s did better than I expected on their first encounter with the more experienced foes.

  “Ball to crew — fighters comin’ up at us from below.”

  I heard his guns chatter again and again. No one could help him down there. Attacks I could not see always worried me.

  “Bombardier to Pilot — Bombardier to Pilot. Over.”

  “This is the Pilot …”

  “We’re on the bomb run.”

  “Tail to crew — flak at eight o’clock level.”

  It was spotty, but what they threw up was devastatingly accurate. Numerous Forts took hits, but none that I saw had to pull out of the formation in our Group. That Wing following us was not so lucky.

  On the return P-38s chased away the few Jerry fighters who came up to our level. No rocket-carrying craft showed up. Actually, I would have liked for Jerry to have attacked us with rockets to see what the P-38s would do to them. On the way back I began to calculate the way long-range escort was going to shift the odds of survival for me. Until that day I tried many times to compute what the odds really were, using the total number of men who participated on raids since I arrived against the total casualties. This figure I projected over twenty-five missions. But the statistics I played with were too unreliable to have real meaning. My guess was that from July through October the odds must have been at least four to one that we would not make it. With the P-38s those odds were going to improve. That was the great news of the day. How much they would improve would depend on how many P-38s were in England then and how fast the force would be built up. At that time no airman at the 381st had succeeded in completing twenty-five raids. It was past the time that some of the earliest arrivals should have been through. For the first time I began to feel a cautious optimism that before long the 381st was going to turn out some graduates.

  November 4

  The Flying Fortresses were originally designed to fly as individual aircraft at high altitudes up to thirty-eight thousand feet using the accuracy of the Norden Bomb Sight. In practice this concept turned out to be impractical for two reasons. First, thirty thousand feet was found to be the highest altitude that crews could stand with consistency, due to the crude oxygen equipment and the intense cold in some areas of the airplane. Two, the opposition was so fierce from enemy fighters that the bombers had to attack in tightly flown formations to concentrate defensive fire.

  In late October some officials of Bomber Command raised the question as to whether the Fortresses needed a highly trained navigator and bombardier in the nose. Could one officer be quickly trained to perform enough of the duties of both so that a well-qualified gunner could be used up front where the main attacks were? Some bombardiers proved to be top-notch gunners, like our Johnny Purus, but others could not get over the notion that their main job was to drop the bomb. That was important, of course, but I can tell you for certain that the primary thing nearly all of us had in mind was to get back to England one way or another. Some training toward combining the two positions had already been started. After all, a navigator was needed only when an aircraft was separated from the formation or lost in murky weather on the way home. The navigator in the lead plane did the rest of the navigating for the Group. And the bombardier in the lead aircraft did the work with the Norden Bomb Sight. All of the other bombardiers watched for the first bomb to fall from the leader, then instantly released their load. But if the aircraft became separated deep in enemy territory, a bombardier would be needed to find some target of opportunity to keep the mission from being a total failure for that aircraft.

  Shutting and Purus took this idea as a big joke. “Why we need you Johnny?” Shutting asked. “I can toggle out those bombs when the stud bombardier lets go, and we can get us a good gunner on those nose guns.”

  But Purus retaliated, “No! It’s you we don’t need any more. If we get lost comin’ back home, all I gotta do is call Balmore an’ ask for a fix or a Q.D.M. — why we need you?”

  (The concept of a single Bombardier-Navigator never caught on. A great deal of time had been spent in the training of both positions, and resistance to combining the two positions was too strong to overcome. After a few weeks we did not hear any more about it.)

  November 5, 1943 — Gelsenkirchen

  Aircraft: Hellcat #719

  On the way to the mess hall that morning I could hear the last of the Lancasters up above, returning from a night raid against the Germans. I wondered where they had been and what it was like up there alone at night. They had to have a hell of a navigator to find the target and the way back to their base in the dark.

  The briefing sent a shudder up my spine: “We’re heading for Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr Valley. We’ll have a P-47 escort at the coast — the navigator will give you the rendezvous time. Spitfires are due on the way out. Be careful not to mistake the Spits for 109s. There are seven hundred gun emplacements in the Ruhr so the flak will be intense, rougher than any we’ve seen so far.”

  There was an audible groan.

  “Ball, keep a watch underneath for flak damage. There can be up to two hundred fighters, but they may not be too eager to come after us in all that flak.”

  After the briefing Kels said, “We got us two Navigators now, so which one of you jokers is gonna give us the headings today?”

  Balmore stepped up. “I’ve got the solution to that problem.” He presented small bailout compasses18 to Carl and Johnny. With a serious expression on his face he said, “I’m giving compasses to both of you, so when the pilot calls for a new heading, the one who comes up with it first gets to call it in.”

  Shutting and Purus solemnly shook hands with Balmore and accepted their tiny compasses. “Balmore, your thoughtfulness is greatly appreciated. Now each of us has his very own compass!” responded Shutting.

  At the coast the Tail came on intercom: “Fighters at six o’clock high.”

  “Radio to crew — they’re 47s.”

  “And right on time,” added the navigator.

  The P-47s were using some larger disposable belly tanks made from pressed paper by the British that extended their range considerably. A few fighters broke through the escort cover but were ineffective. Losses to the bombers were slight, but the flak was awesome. There seemed no end to it and the accuracy was unbelievable. Numbers of times we were bounced about by the concussion of close ones. I heard frequent shell fragments crash into the aircraft, and could see some damage from my position. Lieutenant Butler’s ship was hit, and he began to fall back. One of his engines was smoking. Then Colonel Nazzaro’s ship was hit and the engine trailed black smoke for two hours.

  Wham! A big piece of shrapnel slammed through the accessory section of number-four engine.

  “Turret to Copilot.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “How do the instruments look on number four?”

  “Instruments are normal.”

  “All we can do is hope there is
no fire.”

  The wings were perforated with holes to the right and to the left. My greatest concern was an oil- or fuel-system rupture that would ignite from the red-hot exhaust collector-rings of the engines.

  “Turret to Ball — can you see any serious damage under the right wing? Look for fuel leaks.”

  “I see a lot of holes, but no leaks yet. Maybe they self-sealed.”

  A large chunk crashed under me and was deflected by an oxygen tank. Another slashed through the narrow space between the turret and copilot, and on out of the aircraft.

  “Bombardier to Pilot — Bombardier to Pilot! We’re on the bomb run.”

  “Drop ’em quickly so we can get out of this damn flak!”

  A few minutes away from the target coming out I heard an extra-loud clang down below. A close one had showered the ball turret.

  “Ball to Copilot — Ball to Copilot!”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The Ball was hit an’ both my eyes are full of glass. I can’t open ’em to see.”

  “Are you hit anywhere else, Ball?”

  “No, just my eyes full of glass slivers.”

  “You want us to get you out now, or wait ’til we’re over water?”

  “You can wait. I’m as well off here as I would be in the radio room.”

  Number-two engine took a heavy hit squarely on the propeller hub, but continued to operate normally. A hunk of flak, a lot bigger than most of the fragments, tore through the empty bomb bay with a fearsome noise.

  “Bombardier to crew — fighters at one o’clock level — 109s, I think. They don’t seem too eager …”

  “If you were a Jerry would you want in this damned flak?”

  “Hell, no!”

  The Spitfires scheduled for the return escort did not show, although they could have been flying low cover below us. When the coast came into view, a small flak field opened up. The Colonel expertly moved the formation around it. Lieutenant Butler was having double trouble. He was in doubt that he could make it over the North Sea. Later he insisted that the copilot gave orders for the crew to bail out while over land without his knowledge or consent. The navigator, four enlisted men, and the copilot jumped, including a special friend of ours named MacGinty. “Mac” was often a visitor to our hut. We would miss him. He had thirty-three raids with the R.A.F. and this raid would have made a total of forty-two. Lieutenant Butler, with only three of his crew left, made it back to Ridgewell.