Wells, in our waist gun compartment, was taking pictures of the gruesome spectacle. Slowly the ship on our right lost speed and began to settle in a glide that looked like it might come to a reasonably good crash-landing. But flames were spreading furiously all over the left side of the ship. I could see it plainly, as it was on my side. Now it would touch down—but just before it did, the left wing came off. The flames had been too much and had literally burnt the wing off. The heavy ship cartwheeled and a great flower of flame and smoke appeared just ahead of the point where last we had seen a bomber. Pete had given his life and the lives of his crew to carry out his assigned task. To the very end he gave the battle every ounce he had.
My attention was drawn back to the task of self-preservation. We flew over part of the town of Campina after bombing. We could feel the heat inside the ship that resulted from flying over that furnace-like target with bomb bays open. The engineer in the top turret said he saw flames blown up into the bomb bay by the explosion that occurred as we went over, but we were not on fire. At that time there was no visible evidence of damage to our ship at all. Bob Wright held his position on our left wing as we skipped over the tops of trees and tension lines, keeping at almost zero altitude to reduce the effect of ground defenses.
After we left the little town we passed over grain fields. The top of a big straw stack in front of us slid back and two Nazi gunners appeared there firing 20 mm. machine guns at us. I switched on my remote control guns and watched their tracers spray out. The boys in the nose were firing their flexible guns, too, but I could see my fire going over the target. “Shove the nose down a little, Ed,” I shouted. Just at that moment he saw what I was yelling about. He pushed forward on the wheel and kicked a little rudder back and forth and we saw a mass of tracers of all our forward firing guns splitting into the gun emplacement. The Jerries stopped firing and fell beside their guns. Maybe they were dead; I hoped so. That was the nearest I ever got to killing men I could see. The brutality of heavy bombardment is highly impersonal. I was used to carrying out my mission four miles above the point of impact. It is difficult under those circumstances to get any feeling of injuring the enemy at all. But here I got the satisfying sensation of thinking I had stopped at least two of the maggots corrupting the body of Europe.
Then I looked out to the left and discovered that Bob Wright was gone from his position. I looked around but couldn't find him anywhere. We were in no perceptible formation at all at this moment. Our ships flying south were meeting other Liberators flying north that had attacked targets in the region south of ours. The sky was a bedlam of bombers flying in all directions, some actually on fire, many with smoking engines, some with great gaping holes in them or huge chunks of wing or rudder gone. Many were so riddled it was obvious their insides must have presented starkly tragic pictures of dead and dying, of men grievously wounded who would bleed to death before they could be brought any aid; pilots facing the horrible decision about what to do—whether to make a quick sacrifice of the unhurt in order to save the life of a dying man, or to fly a ship home and let some crew member pay with his life for the freedom of the rest.
By this time, with my mission accomplished, I had at last come to the point of being frightened for my own safety. Earlier I had reconciled myself to the probability that I would not return, and I was willing to stick by that decision. Funny, but when it seemed to me there was slight hope of my returning from a mission—as there had been in the beginning of this one—I didn't worry much. But when it appeared I had passed the point of greatest danger and thereafter stood a good chance to make it, I began to sweat it out in earnest?.
Soon we appeared to be out of danger of the ground fire emplacements protecting the immediate target area. We had a semblance of a formation now, though I could count only five ships that had regrouped out of an original formation of thirty-two. Some of these were damaged, others showed no damage on quick observation. I caught sight again of Bob Wright who seemed to be all right, and I heaved a sigh of relief.
We were still very low. We flew over farmers in the fields. It was a Sunday afternoon. I recall going over a railroad station peculiarly situated out in the country miles from any town. A train was coming in, and a crowd of gaily dressed people on the platform waiting for the train watched us with what seemed every kind of reaction. Some waved, some shook their fists, some jumped up and down gleefully, some ran, and some just stood and looked. As we swept on I saw a man run around the side of a farm house, grab up a little girl in his arms and dash through the door of the house. Then I saw a shepherd tending his flock in a field. He had a long rifle and I wondered if he would fire it at us. He just leaned on it and looked as we roared a hundred feet over his head.
Romania is a pretty country. I got to see a good deal of it from rather close range that day. My general impression was that the initial effect of our raid on the people was to give them real gratification. Most of them who were sufficiently off to one side of our flight path to feel tolerably safe, waved to us what looked like a friendly welcome. Our crews might have fired at a good many things they shouldn't have, but it was certainly not in the plan. We were briefed not to, and we started the mission with the expectation that we might find the people generally favorable to the attack.*
As we headed west for the mountains and home, to our backs the sky was black with smoke. The oil fires of the refineries were tremendous and darkened the whole sky. Our tail gunner gave us a running commentary except during those moments when we had to shut him up to get other messages out over the interphone. The turret gunners had had great fun shooting incendiaries into the great storage tanks of gas and oil in the vicinity of the refineries. They had been targets not considered worth the expenditure of bombs. But the gunners did a big job on the tanks with their 50 caliber guns.
Late that evening a great gaggle of battle-scarred Liberators struggled to get over the mountains separating them from home. Many had only three functioning engines and some only two. Most were short of fuel and many suffered cut hydraulic lines and punctured fuel tanks. The sun was settling in the west as our own little formation, now seven aircraft, cleared the mountains and flew on toward the Adriatic Sea. Our radio was jammed with tragic calls, announcing, “fighters everywhere,” “all the ships we were with are gone now but us—don't see how we can last through these attacks”; followed so frequently by the call, “bailing out, ship on fire.” We saw some enemy fighters but had only a few halfhearted attacks on our formation. Why should they attack us? We had a pretty good defensive unit. The sky was full of dying airplanes that were severely crippled by ground fire and could be knocked down with little danger of strong defensive action. We got by simply because there were many easier targets.
Our ship touched down at Bengasi just as it was getting completely dark. It was thirteen and a half hours since takeoff. A hurried inspection proved we were hit many times, but again we were lucky enough to have the hits where we could take them. We went directly to group operations to await the summing up of information about all the planes. At the time we got there eight other ships of our group of thirty-two had landed.
Through that whole long night story piled upon story of a heroic struggle. One pilot had come in with his control cables completely shot away. He had flown most of the way back on the automatic pilot and had even managed to land his airplane on that instrument. Thank God, the autopilot didn't depend on control cables but on servos mounted directly on the controls. He had to come home to bring two wounded men and the body of a third. His landing was done with such calm and perfect execution that the ship suffered no additional damage in landing, but it was so wrecked from battle damage that it was towed off the end of the runway and left to be stripped of its remaining serviceable parts. Many others had flown for hundreds of miles on three, or even two, engines. Many crews had put out fires, had done amazing jobs of first aid with the seriously wounded, and had shown in hundreds of ways examples of the highest type of battle stamina.
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After a while listening to these accounts, I bade goodnight to Ed at operations, and stumbled through the dark to bed. I lay on my back with my eyes open in the dark, my senses stunned beyond ability to receive any further impression. Hank Yaeger was a Catholic and about 2:30 A.M. Father Beck came in looking for him. He had not and would not return. The padre had wound up all the work he could do that night among the men and remains at the field hospital.
The code words for the attack were Tidal Wave. Official figures for the entire mission had it that 178 B-24s took off, of which 53 were lost, and 446 airmen were killed or missing.
For a week or so after the big raid life itself continued to seem anticlimactic. Then things were slowly lifted out of limbo and gradually reestablished in their proper place. If I didn't fear death, then why should I allow such a thing as a mission, from which I returned unharmed, to paralyze my senses? Suppose I could look at the figures and discover that logically there was no reason why I should have returned when so many others didn't? The fact was that I had returned, and I would be remiss in my duty to myself and the Power that helped me if I permitted the shock of the experience to make me a zombie.
There was only one string left that I wanted to tie up. Then I would put the whole raid behind me until such time as I could think about it without recurrence of shock. That remaining string had to do with Pete Hughes. We had had many heroes living and dead and many who were prisoners, but from it all the example of Hughes stood out in my mind as a case of most conspicuous merit. Others might have been as great, but there was not quite the tangible evidence to support their cases. We even had pictures of Pete trying to land that flaming Liberator. I went to Colonel Wood and told him I had written a citation on Pete for the Congressional Medal of Honor. I asked him if he would approve it. I felt also that all the other members of that crew should have the Distinguished Service Cross. Colonel Wood turned me down. Perhaps he felt it impossible that such a recommendation would clear higher headquarters, but I was upset about it until I was approached one day shortly after the raid by an Office of War Information representative from Cairo. He had seen the pictures of Pete's ship and came to me for the story. I showed him the citation I had prepared to send through and told him the story according to the way I saw it. Three days later Colonel Wood sent for me and told me General Ent had heard of the case and said he would be glad to approve a recommendation for the Congressional Medal on Lieutenant Hughes.
Months later, after more than one award of the Congressional Medal had been announced by the War Department from this raid, orders came out announcing the posthumous award of that great honor to Lieutenant Hughes. I had a big poster made bearing Pete's picture in a design of the Air Corps wings, and carrying under the picture the citation. This I displayed in squadron operations to impress upon the minds of all what a great tradition of fearless, selfless patriotism and honor Pete Hughes had left with our command. It was something which made its impression on every newcomer as soon as he arrived, and it was something which gave us what every squadron should have if it is to be a high-spirited fighting organization.
We had thought upon completion of our oil fields raid that we would go directly back to England. But not so. We stayed around and about two weeks later found ourselves facing another mission that would be almost as long, though no one believed it would be as hazardous. We were going for the first time to Wiener Neustadt, just south of Vienna, Austria, to bomb a factory producing frames for German fighter planes. It was a great production center and an extremely important target. The raid was to be run in conjunction with a shuttle England-to-Africa raid of Eighth Air Force Fortresses based in England. We would take off at our home station and land in Tunis. We would fly back down the coast of North Africa to Bengasi the next day. Colonel Wood had planned to lead the raid, but he was stricken with “gippy tummy,” more scientifically known as dysentery. He tried to stay on his feet, but he looked like a walking ghost and was not able to make the raid.
Just before takeoff I was standing outside the group operations hut and noticed a full colonel standing there. I had never seen him before. He was blond and stocky with high color in his extremely strong face. He was wearing a broad grin, which seemed a frequent expression of his, as he chatted with Colonel Wood. Standing off to one side was the famous polo-playing Major Mike Phipps. Mike was our wing intelligence officer and a very good guy. “Who's the colonel, Mike?” I asked.
“Gee, don't you know? That's Colonel Timberlake. He came out to lead the mission when he heard Colonel Wood was sick.”
So this was the famous Ted of Ted's Flying Circus. Well, he certainly looked the part. He also looked a good deal like a typical all-American quarterback.
Our trip to Wiener Neustadt was long, tiresome, and uneventful. We ran into a little flak at a small town on the Adriatic coast, and that was virtually all the opposition we had. Other formations behind us encountered some fighter attacks, but on the whole the opposition was light. Over the target there was no heavy flak, and the light stuff we did encounter broke ineffectively beneath us. We landed in Tunis on schedule with no losses and next day flew back to Bengasi.
This was my eighth raid, and the first one I returned from with no battle damage to my aircraft. I had planned to go on all of them as long as I lasted or until I finished a tour. If I got through a combat tour of operations of course I wanted to go home. But we were told that squadron commanders should not expect as prompt a return to the States as individual crew members might. The story was that higher-ranking officers would be more subject to other demands and the general needs of the combat Air Force at the time their tours were complete. I felt if I did get a tour finished and had to stay on I would want to go on missions occasionally, but I wouldn't want to go on them all. A squadron commander or anybody else in the combat zone for that matter, can't hold much prestige if he is qualified for combat and doesn't sally forth occasionally, tour or no tour. A combat tour in heavy bombardment in the European Theater at that time was twenty-five missions. The fighter boys flew fifty, but the actual combat hours were approximately the same.
The news I received when I got back to Bengasi from Tunis was very annoying. Major Brooks told me that Colonel Wood and he had decided that henceforth squadron commanders would not go on every raid. They would be told what ones they might go on if they wished. Apparently it would be left somewhat to the squadron CO himself to volunteer to go. But his offer to lead a raid for his squadron or for the group would not always be accepted. I knew John had felt the squadron COs hadn't been functioning as they should. I thought some of his criticisms were justified, and some purely the result of envy. I felt particularly irked about John's attitude because I knew he had carried severe criticisms of the squadron COs to Colonel Timberlake. The latter hadn't the personal acquaintance with our abilities that someone in the group would naturally have. And so it was logical Colonel Timberlake would rely on John for some comment.
One day when I had had several reports of the program going on to discredit squadron commanders, I went up to the group operations hut and asked John if he would come to my tent with me. John came into the tent with apparent innocence. I told him I knew about some of the comments he had made to Colonel Timberlake concerning the efficiency of squadron commanders. I informed him also of all the details of the meeting of squadron COs that had been held back in El Paso resulting from comments he had made about Cross. “You probably don't know it,” I said, “but had it not been for Paul Burton and me on that occasion you would have been thrown out. We went to bat for you and persuaded Colonel Lancaster to give you another chance. Your successor had already been chosen.”
I mentioned that we all had heard rumors that Colonel Wood was shortly moving on to another job. I told John I had no ambition in the Army other than to do my share of fighting and then go back to Kentucky, that I'd as soon see him be group CO as anyone else if we could only get along, and that I certainly would not obstruct his military ambitions, but woul
d like to keep the job I had.
I could see John was taken aback. He assured me I was mistaken. He criticized the other squadron COs but said he had always held me in high regard. He said a few other things I thought markedly inconsequential, and with that our discussion ended. I tried to leave him with the feeling I was intending still to make a sincere effort to get along with him, and generally just to get along in the work of running my squadron. I hoped no action would be taken regarding me or my command until the wing CO knew the picture well enough to judge fairly for himself about my capabilities. I felt that would be as good a break as anyone in my position would deserve.
With that off my mind and in compliance with the new group order against squadron COs flying every mission, I took a few days off and went to Alexandria. It was the first time I'd had off since leaving the States. Alexandria was a good change of scene for me. Dan Minnick, and one of our group intelligence officers, handle-bar mustachioed Major Marshall Exnicios, and I went together. We enjoyed sitting around the Union Bar paying a native “Gillie-Gillie-Man” to perform tricks for us. He did all his tricks of black magic while keeping up a running chant of “Gillie-Gillie-Gillie.” He was superb. His chief artistry lay in the fact that, though he worked at such close range to his audience, usually just across the table, he still kept his trick well concealed. He had a bunch of white mice that he would pull from parts of an onlooker's clothing. The names of the mice were Sidi Barrani, Bengasi, and Alec Thompson.
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