by John Comer
“Yes, there are two things. You got to keep the cylinder head temperature of number two below two-fifteen or you’ll get detonation. And there’s a vibration between seventy an’ eighty on takeoff. It don’t hurt nothing, so don’t worry about it.”
I always wanted words with the crew chief because every plane, like every flier, had its own eccentricities.
The target was Osnabrück, known to me previously for its cheese. Gleichauf was leading the squadron and we were flying the low position in the Group.
“Well, we got the purple heart corner again today,” said Balmore.
The first ship got off at ten-thirty and pulled steadily up through an overcast. The tail gunner flashed a red “L” signal with a bright lamp to guide other aircraft to form on the lead plane with less loss of time.
“Bombardier to Turret, pull the bomb fuse pins.”
A few minutes later, “Turret to Bombardier, pins are pulled — rack switches are on.”
“Radio to Turret.”
“Go ahead.”
“My oxygen regulator is not right.”
“What’s the problem?”
“It just don’t look right. I don’t think it is working.”
I knew it would be better to get George settled about his oxygen system before we reached enemy territory.
“Turret to Copilot, I’m going to the radio room for a few minutes.”
A mechanic had hooked up the regulator backwards, but it made no difference. It was working fine. As soon as I got back to the turret, I called George.
“Your oxygen supply is OK. It does look odd but don’t worry about it.”
At twenty thousand feet we headed out over the North Sea: The temperature was minus forty-two degrees, but otherwise it was a nice day for a mission. The clouds thinned and visibility was adequate below.
“Tail to Turret, my electric heat went out.”
“Which circuits are gone? Hands and feet or the body circuit?”
“All of them are out.”
“Check the plug on the end of the cord. You may have a poor connection.”
“Can’t see anything wrong with it — I’ve tried plugging it in and out several times.”
“One other thing you can try — scrape the prongs on the plug with any kind of metal you have back there. A screwdriver will do fine. Try to get any corrosion off the plug.”
“Bombardier to Tail, it’s going to be better than forty below at our full altitude today. You think you can make it?”
“I’ll make it — some way.”
“Copilot to Tail, exercise those hands and feet.”
“Not much room in the Tail to exercise, but I’ll find some way to do it.”
“Turret here, now keep up that exercise no matter what. One mission I had to go up and down for four hours to keep my feet from freezing.”
“Copilot to Turret, the damn airspeed indicator went out.”
“What’s the altitude?”
“Twenty-two thousand.”
“It could be in the instrument or it could be that some trash in the air caught in the pitot tube. Can Gleichauf fly lead with no airspeed?”
“It will be rough. We would be better off flying a wing position. If Paul can’t cut it, we’ll drop back and let the deputy lead take over.”
“Navigator to Pilot, enemy coast in ten minutes.”
“Bombardier to gunners, test fire your guns.”
I listened to the chatter of the guns as each position rattled off a burst and thought how lucky I had been to be with such a solid crew of ordinary men who became extraordinary when they had to. It all boiled down to three things: a first-class pilot who was good at tight formation, a good crew, and those much appreciated escort pilots.
“Radio to Turret, I’m getting dizzy. I told you this regulator wasn’t working right.”
“George, listen to me. I think you’re imagining trouble and are over-breathing. Now relax. Breathe normally and quit taking in deep gulps of air. Try it and see if you feel better.”
“OK, I’ll try it.”
“Bombardier to crew, fighters at eleven o’clock low.”
“Copilot to crew, don’t let them slip in on us.”
Sleek 109G fighters, the latest German interceptor to appear against us, circled the formation warily and made several passes but none directly against our Squadron.
“Tail to crew, the escort at six o’clock high.”
“Copilot to Navigator, look at those dogfights! How I’d love to be flying one of those fighters.”
I could think of many things I would prefer to do. The fight between the 47s and 109s was a swirling panorama of tracers, cannon flashes, and smoke plumes. Then the Bogies vanished and for a little while we had the 47s overhead. When they reached the end of their fuel range, they dipped wings and turned away. P-38s were due in a few minutes and I hoped more Bogies would not hit us in the interval. I was already starting to worry about my last three missions.
“Copilot to Navigator, this formation is so lousy, a group of hot fighters could tear us apart. How long to the I.P.?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“Navigator to crew, fighters at nine o’ clock low.”
They climbed to our level and began to circle the Group picking out targets.
“Copilot to crew! Fighter coming in twelve o’ clock high.” I had some good shots but could not tell if I inflicted any serious damage. I could hear the ball guns hammering away below. When the firing ceased, I called Harkness. “Are you all right down there?”
“I’m OK — they keep coming up at us — I spray ’em an’ they break off the attack.”
The 381st took a beating as we approached the target and three Forts went down. I saw one chute but the unfortunate man pulled his ripcord too soon, and the silk flared out quickly and hung on the rear of the Fortress. It was a sickening sight to watch that pitiable drama that could end only in a prolonged agony of terrifying struggle and a horrible death unless somehow that silk shook loose from the tail where it was caught. The last I saw of the stricken Fort, that doomed man was still trailing along helplessly in the slipstream. Nearby, two P-38s blasted a 109 and I noticed a brown parachute blossom from it seconds before it went into a dive out of control. One of those P-38s had to execute a frantic turn to avoid flying into that chute.
“Navigator to Pilot.”
“Go ahead.”
“They are sure cracking that wing ahead of us.”
Balmore picked up the three words “cracking the wing” and his blood pressure went out of sight. In the radio room he could see little of the action. About that time the aircraft caught some propeller wash from a plane ahead and lurched sickeningly. George thought the wing was coming off and grabbed his chute and headed for the exit door in the waist. La Buda, flying as waist gunner for us that day, stopped him, but George insisted on examining the two wings from the waist windows before he would return to his position.
“Radio to Turret, is something wrong with one of our wings?”
“Not that I know of — why do you ask?”
He did not reply, but I could sense his relief.
“Turret to Copilot, is the airspeed still out?”
“Yes — shows nothing.”
“How is the Pilot doing?”
“Rough. He’s estimating the speed by watching the squadron ahead. Could the pitot tube be frozen?”
“It could be, or something in the air clogged it up. Or the instrument may have gone out.”
“Bombardier here, did you see those two 109s up above try to throw their belly tanks at us? They’ll try anything.”
“No, couldn’t see it from the waist, but two Forts at three o’clock high came damn close to colliding. That could’ve knocked out half of the squadron. A 109 just clobbered a 38 at four o’clock low.”
“This is the Copilot. I saw it. The 38 got careless. You can’t do that with those damn Krauts.”
“Bombardier to Pilot — Bombardier to Pilot
.”
Kels motioned Gleichauf to switch from command to intercom.
“Go ahead, Bombardier.”
“We’re starting the bomb run.”
Flak began bursting around us. It was not heavy, but it sure was accurate. As usual, I cringed when the shells burst close by.
Wham! It was jut below us.
“Copilot to Ball — are you all right?”
“I’m OK — it was close but didn’t hit me — we got damage between the waist and tail.”
I felt better when the bomb load fell free.
“Radio to Bombardier, the bomb bay is clear.”
“Tail to crew, the fighters are fading away — fuel getting low is my guess.”
“Navigator to Pilot — Cahow has about got it made.”
The formation droned placidly along with no opposition. I kept alert for another fighter group to come screaming up, because we were vulnerable with our loose erratic formation. This time, the 533rd Squadron was throttle-jockeying like the rest because Gleichauf was guessing at his airspeed.
“Navigator to Pilot — ten minutes to the coast. Now I know Cahow has it made.”
I knew his men were happy for him and so was I. He was one of the best. The coast slid by and the North Sea was a welcome sight, like the causeway when I was coming back to Corpus Christi by way of Aransas Pass. We were almost home again.
I relaxed and began removing some of the equipment, especially that uncomfortable oxygen mask. After five or six hours, my face was raw from the pressure of the mask and the low temperature. I found out early in the game that a mask was worse when the whiskers needed shaving. If I thought a mission was likely, I often shaved at night to lessen the discomfort. The realization came over me that I was tired. It was not the usual exhaustion of the early missions; I had become acclimated to the routine. It was a built-up weariness of months of altitude and combat tension. For the first time I understood why twenty-five missions was set as the completion point of a combat tour. It was the time when crews would begin to lose mental and physical effectiveness. I suspected the accumulated fatigue was due more to mental strain than to physical weariness.
As we approached Ridgewell, Kels punched me and pointed down. “Cahow is buzzing the field.” Indeed he was. At the 381st it was customary to permit a pilot returning from his twenty-fifth mission to buzz the field in celebration of a job well done.
That day we lost seventeen Forts to German fighters. To my thinking the loss was excessive. It was the familiar pattern of late: loose, erratic formations inviting Jerry to attack. The accumulated losses in men and aircraft during the summer and fall of 1943 were staggering and beyond expectations. The replacement crews were put through speeded-up training procedures, by no means as thorough as the original 381st received. The predictable result was that inexperienced pilots and crews predominated, and the price we paid was higher casualties than should have been necessary. In the air as on the ground, raw troops rarely fare well against seasoned battle-hardened forces. But an attrition factor was working for us: we were thinning out the experienced pilots of the Luftwaffe. When a veteran German pilot with eight or ten years of training plus experience in numerous campaigns was lost, they could not replace him any faster than we could create his counterpart in the U.S. or England. The advantage in attrition gradually shifted to the side with the largest manpower and industrial facilities. Fortunately, that was the combined might of the Allied Forces.
December 23
Lieutenant Cahow had finished his twenty-five missions! The dangers were all in the past. He had nothing more to worry about now except getting back to the States. However, Operations assigned him, along with Pitts (Engineer), Parsons (Copilot), and Dubois (Navigator) to take a B-17 to a Modification Base thirty or forty miles away. They were to return another B-17 that had been modified back to Ridgewell. There was a solid overcast at five hundred feet but no problem. The navigator gave Cahow a heading of one hundred and ninety degrees going over. Coming back, the navigator gave him another heading of one hundred and ninety-five degrees. The pilot should have recognized that to be an error, but it was a fun flight and they were all joking on the intercom, not paying too much attention to what they were doing. All of a sudden Cahow began getting interference on his headset. It got worse and worse. Something was definitely wrong with the radio — the noise became increasingly louder. Suddenly Cahow saw that he was flying between heavy steel cables that would have sawed the wing right off an aircraft that hit one of them. To his horror he realized he was in the middle of a balloon barrage near London! He could not see the balloons because they were hidden in the overcast above. That loud noise was his IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) sending out a warning signal of the balloons and cables, and the flak guns down below, ready to blast any unidentified aircraft from the skies. Lieutenant Cahow turned that big Fortress around like it was a fighter plane and carefully dodged those cables until he was back in the clear.
There were few signs of Christmas on the base at Ridgewell Airdrome. Some cards and a few packages had arrived, and some scattered decorations were hung here and there. It was a half-hearted effort to do lip service to the Prince of Peace while we went about the grim task of killing and destruction. I had a good idea of how I would spend Christmas Eve, no doubt in dropping off a Christmas package for Uncle Adolf. Our gift would be twelve giant firecrackers a bit larger than the ones I used to explode Christmas mornings. Peace on earth and good will toward men would have to wait until the killing was finished.
It was extremely cold and it had been weeks since the last distribution of coal to our area. During the morning we tramped the nearby woods searching for small trees that might be sneaked out for firewood without attracting attention. There was a risk if caught, but weighed against no heat in the middle of winter, it was a slight deterrent. Most of the woodcutting with our crosscut saw was done at night to lessen the chance of getting into trouble. Two hours after dark we had a sizable stack stashed away for the next two weeks. With the fire going again that night, it was cozy in the hut. Balmore asked, “John, you are down to three missions?”
“That is correct — three and I got it made.”
“How many does Purus need?”
“Two I think — not sure.”
“I noticed he’s been nervous the last week. That’s not like Johnny.”
“They all go through that emotion. Gleichauf will finish one raid ahead of me so I will have to fly my last one as a spare — and I don’t like to think about the possibility of having to do the last raid with a new crew,” I added.
George continued, “I wish I was up there with you. I need so many missions, I’m bound to draw some lousy crews.”
Watching others approaching twenty-five missions, I had seen the tension building up, but I did not expect it to happen to me. I was older than most of the men flying combat missions and I thought that I had more disciplinary control over my mental processes. I resolved that I would not let it happen to me.
Chapter XXIII
Mission to Calais21
December 24 — Calais
Aircraft 730
When I heard the Jeep coming some distance away, I got up and started dressing, because the signs were clear the night before that we would go out today if the weather cooperated.
“You would think we could do without raids on Christmas Eve,” growled Balmore. “What we do today isn’t going to change the war much.”
“But Mars is more powerful than Jesus — I don’t think the burghers are goin’ to like the presents we have for them today,” I answered.
We waited outside the Briefing Room after drawing equipment. A loud cheer echoed through the closed door.
“It must be a super milk run,” George said.
“That’s fine with me. I hope my last three runs are milk runs.”
An hour later Kels arrived with a grin on his face.
“All right! Let’s have it. Where are we goin’ today?”
�
��Maybe I should wait an’ let Gleichauf tell you,” he toyed.
“Come on! Where we goin’?”
“Today we raid Calais!” he answered.
“Calais! I can’t believe it.”
“It is Calais — we will go over in small nine-plane formations to try to destroy some construction sites the Allied Command thinks the Germans are building to launch long-range rockets across the Channel. There can be a lot of fighters but Spitfires and P-47s will fly low cover to keep them from getting up to us. Major Fitzgerald will be flying as Copilot and I will go along as Observer.”
“I’ve heard about observers but you are the first live one I’ve ever seen. What the hell are you supposed to do?”
“Try to see what the bombs hit an’ how much damage they do.”
“We already got a whole squadron of tails and balls who can see the bomb drop a lot better than you can see it from the cockpit.”
At one P.M. the Squadron cleared the English coast and turned toward the Continent. It was a beautiful day for wintertime Europe and the altitude was only twenty thousand feet.
“Bombardier to crew — stay alert — don’t get cocky an’ think we can’t get hit over Calais — test fire guns.”
“Navigator to crew — heavy flak ahead.”
Calais had a large number of flak guns and I dreaded the barrage at our lower altitude, because all of their antiaircraft guns could reach twenty thousand feet with accuracy. The squadron circled to the right slightly in an effort to go around the main field of fire. All at once the bursts caught us dead center. With perfect visibility and the low height, the Jerry gunners were at their best. Burst after burst exploded in the middle of the Squadron. It was incredible that with so much accuracy and so many shells thrown at us, no direct hits were made. The fuse timing was perfect: Every burst was exactly at our level. It was the best example of the art of antiaircraft fire I ever saw. At times the other planes in our small formation were obscured by the smoke of the bursting shells. Only pure luck prevented one or more of the Squadron aircraft from taking a direct hit. At times I cringed down behind the Sperry Computing Sight as if that would do any good. There was no way to guess which way the lethal fragments were coming from.