Bomber Pilot

by Philip Ardery

  The raid was held up a day or two after the first briefing because the runway, which had no hard surface, was too muddy to bear our loaded airplanes. It is a bad thing to hold up a mission after it has been briefed. Somehow we felt that it was evident there were leaks in our security, and we were continually afraid the enemy intelligence knew in advance where we were going. After a couple of days of weather without rain we got up just before dawn one morning to hear that this was the day. We got another hurried briefing chiefly on the weather, ate one meal and took another in the form of K rations with us to the ships.

  We took off and assembled our group over the field and headed out on the long course. We were going across the Italian peninsula, then up the Adriatic Sea to the hip of the boot and on into Austria. We would turn left when abreast of our target and make a bombing run from east to west. After leaving the target we would let down a thousand feet or so to facilitate regrouping of the formation, turn left again, and come home.

  The mission went about as planned. One surprise was that over Italy on the way in we flew over a town where we got a good deal of unexpected flak. We swore at our intelligence for not warning us about the guns there. There had been absolutely nothing said about them at briefing. But then the Germans were withdrawing in Italy, and it was likely the guns had just been moved in from a point farther south. It was a good excuse, but little consolation to us. We were a long way from the target to be running any risk of flak damage. We felt bursts all around our ship, but we suffered no apparent damage, and on we went.

  We turned up the Adriatic and progressed on into Austria. We made our turn and started from the IP—the initial point— into the target. A few minutes later we were on the bombing run. Just as we started, and even when there were long minutes to go before we reached our bomb release line, huge black flak bursts suddenly puffed up all around us. It was a clear day, we were at about fifteen thousand feet, which was a moderately easy range for heavy guns. One thing proved the type of fire being directed at us—there was no cloud of flak ahead of us to fly into. The very first shells that went off broke almost between our engine nacelles. That let us know it was aimed fire, and not a barrage. The guns were brand new—they had to be to shoot like that. They were not the 88 mm. type; they were 105s.

  Here I would like to correct a frequent fallacy made by writers describing bombing raids. The noise a bomber pilot hears is awful, but that noise isn't the loud noise of shells bursting. The pilot is encased in many thicknesses of clothing—even his head is almost completely covered. Tightly clamped against his ears are his headphones, built into his helmet. Out of these headphones comes most of the noise he hears. The horrible screaming is the noise of the enemy radio-jamming apparatus. It is like a death cry of the banshees of all the ages. On our missions it usually started faintly in our headphones as we neared the enemy coast and grew louder and louder. A pilot had to keep the volume of his receiver turned up high in order to hear commands over the air through the bedlam of jamming. After a few hours of it I felt that I would go crazy if I didn't turn the volume down. I would turn it down when I was out of the target area, but I knew when I did that I might be missing an important radio order or a call from another ship asking for help or direction in one way or another.

  We could hear the firing of our own guns. Chiefly we could hear the top turret. In addition to the noise of the top turret we could hear the nose guns, the waist guns, the ball turret, and finally the tail turret. We really couldn't hear the tail turret, but after we had ridden in our bombers for a while there was a peculiar faint vibration that would run down the skin of the ship and up the seats to let us know little Pete Peterson of Fowble's crew was warming up his guns. When Pete's guns chattered, some Nazi always regretted it. And when I felt the vibrations of his guns coming through the seat of my pants it was like someone scratching a mosquito bite in the middle of my back.

  But then about the flak. You could hear it—faintly. When flak was very very near you could see the angry red fire as the shells exploded before the black smoke formed. You could hear the bursts sounding like “wuff, wuff, wuff” under your wings. You could see the nose of the ship plowing through the smoke clouds where the bursts had been. You could hear the sprinkle of slivers of shrapnel go through the sides of the ship if they were hitting close to you. I always said that if you hear the flak—if you get the “wuff, wuff, wuff”—and really hear it over the screaming of the radio and other sounds, then it is deadly close. You don't realize the terror it strikes into some airmen's hearts until you've had your own plane shot to hell a few times. I laughed at Franco's flak coming through Gibraltar. It wasn't much flak, but I wouldn't laugh six months later when I had seen more of it.

  And yet with the increasing terror came a greater understanding that there was little a heavy bomber pilot in the midst of a large formation could do about flak. There came a determined calm to contain one's terror. The leader of a large group or a larger combat wing formation knew that attempts at “evasive action” simply could not be made anywhere that enemy fighters were active. Usually the worst flak we saw was while we were on or closely approaching the bombing run, when we could not afford to make turns for any reason, except to put the bombardier over the target. After the bombs were away, if the formation was one of medium or larger size—that is, twenty-four ships or more—the wisdom of turns, except as briefed, was questionable. If fighters were about such turns might loosen the formation. Loosening the formation meant greater vulnerability to fighter attacks. The way we were flying there was really nothing you could do when the flak started breaking around your ship but sit and look at it—and pray. If we knew some localities on the route in or out were heavily defended we would try to fly around them. But once in flak, we just had to look at it.

  That was certainly the way it was our second trip over Wiener Neustadt. The shells broke on all sides of us as we went in. We heard the angry “wuff-wuff-wuff” of the bursts above the maniac's ball of noise coming over the radio. We could see the flare of fire in the bursts of the shells. I was looking out to the right of the ship. The formation was good and tight in spite of the flak, and to the high right of my ship was the lead squadron and the ship in which General Jimmie was flying. Just under his left wing was an airplane flown by a Lieutenant Matson of Paul Burton's squadron. General Hodges's plane was piloted by the indefatigable Captain Ken Caldwell, the group first pilot in whom Colonel Wood and Major Brooks had the greatest confidence.

  As I looked out on that hell of shellfire I think I felt as much terror as I have ever felt in an airplane. For some reason I think I was more frightened than I had been over Ploesti. I can't explain it unless it had seemed to me this was a raid that would be costly without reasonable results to compensate. Somehow we had no adequate purpose on this raid to bolster up our courage. I felt it was just a “big raid” to give bomber command some satisfaction for having sent us to Africa.

  As I was looking out watching the group leader and wondering how any of us could get through the fire, I saw a direct burst of a shell center the bomber directly to my right front—Matson's ship. It was in the low left element of the lead squadron, and almost in front of me—a little high and to the right. Matson's Lib was perhaps a little more in line with the ship of Mac McLaughlin than with my own. Mac was flying his beloved Ole Irish on my right wing. But the hit Lib was so close in front of both of us that I wondered how we were going to get by. When the shell went off inside the bomber the sides of it seemed to puff out momentarily. It didn't blow to bits, but big chunks of it flew off and tongues of flame licked out of its spread seams in all directions. The stricken plane pulled up right in front of us. We nosed our ship down, and so did Mac. The flaming Lib then pulled up high and out to the left, pieces falling off of it all the way. As we went by and under it we could see it glowing like the inside of a furnace.

  The next moment our bombs were away. Then in another moment Sergeant Le Jeune, our Louisiana Cajan flight engineer, was tryin
g to get the bomb bay doors closed. The bombardier hadn't been able to close them from the nose compartment. Communication with our crew stations in the rear was cut off. Flak had evidently cut the interphone lines. It had also cut several of the hydraulic lines in the bomb bay and consequently the bomb doors wouldn't go closed. With the bomb doors open our ship wouldn't fly as fast as the others without use of excessive power. That meant one of two things: either we would drop behind and run the danger of being hit by enemy fighters, or we would stay up with the formation by using added power and run the danger of giving out of gas before we got back across the Mediterranean. It seemed a long way home at that point.

  Sergeant Le Jeune went out on the catwalk and hung between the gaping doors, the icy wind blowing through, and the whole inside of the bomb bay including the precarious point of his footing covered with slippery hydraulic fluid. He tried to pull or kick the doors closed. Finally he decided to cut in the last reserve of hydraulic fluid to get the doors closed. The hydraulic lines would be temporarily charged and the doors might close before all the reserve supply of fluid ran out. If so, that would mean that when we got back we would have to use the emergency manual procedures to get the landing gear and the flaps down and we would probably be without brakes. Le Jeune had done his best—even hanging head down in the open bomb bay and pulling at the doors—so this seemed to be the only other thing to do. He crept aft on the catwalk and cut in the reserve supply. Then I moved the lever to the “Close doors” position and the doors slammed shut as the remaining fluid poured out like blood from open veins into the bomb bay.

  Later Le Jeune made another checkup inside the bomb bay. He found one serious fuel leak that already had filled the inside of the ship with heavy gas fumes, but he managed to get this patched well enough so that, though the fumes were heavy, the additional loss of fuel was slight. With that job completed, I asked him to go aft again and check particularly to see if the crew members were all right. I had not been able to use the interphone to any of the rear stations, and I thought it likely that someone might have been hit in the midst of that flak storm. Then I took stock of the ship and was happy to see that all the engines were apparently functioning okay. Ed and I could tell quite easily that the cables to the control trim were cut, but with both of us on the main controls we managed to keep the ship steady without too much difficulty.

  The formation had loosened during the last minute of the bomb run and now began to close up again. We were clear of the target and at last out of the field of fire of the guns below. We were not at that moment under enemy fighter attack, but we could hear many distress calls over our radio coming from other ships and other formations in the rear not as lucky as ourselves. We held a tight formation and evidently that sufficed to render us at least temporarily immune. On such missions it always became a contest in formation flying. The Jerries jumped the loosest formation and shot it to pieces. It behooved us to fly better formation than some other group in order not to be elected.

  In a few minutes Sergeant Le Jeune came forward and reported that all personnel in the rear were okay, though there were holes in the ship by the score, big and small. Our trim tab cables were beyond repair and one of the main aileron cables was partly cut through. It might give way, but there were enough strands holding so that if we handled the ship gingerly we stood a good chance of getting home. I knew it was by the grace of God and nothing else that we could have so much flak damage and yet none of it critical.

  We kept our place in the formation and after two endless hours found ourselves a long way out on the way home. We were almost beyond the point where fighter attack was likely. As we passed north of Rome we saw a great flak barrage thrown up, but we flew around it. The flight across the Mediterranean seemed almost interminable. I was wondering all the time about the difficulties we might have in landing our ship. Finally, just about as our navigator Sollie predicted, we saw the misty coast of Africa ahead. The formation, which had loosened up a bit on the flight across the water, tightened up again to get in proper shape for the peel off to land.

  There were many other ships that had obviously suffered flak damage, but we seemed to be in worse shape than any of those that had made it back from the target. I called the formation lead plane to say that we would pull out of formation and wait until all the other ships had landed before we came in. We had enough fuel left to risk the wait, and we didn't want to take a chance on blocking a runway when there were others behind still to land. We got acknowledgment of our message and pulled out of the formation in a gentle diving turn to the left. We had had about four and a half hours of anxiety.

  The group was lined up in tight formation going over the field in the direction for landing. Now the peel off was beginning and one after another of the big ships banked sharply to the left and swung around the traffic circle, putting landing gear and flaps down to land in rapid succession. We hovered above and waited. Finally the last ship cleared the runway. We called in for our landing and started the arduous process of getting the landing gear down by the manual emergency procedure. Sergeant Le Jeune went through it as though he had to do it every day. Finally he got the big wheels cranked down after cranking the winch back in the bomb bay until his back almost broke. He checked the gear and announced to us in the cockpit, “Gear down and locked.”

  We turned on the base leg, putting it far back from the field. I started the manual system of working the flaps, broke the safe-tying wire, and began vigorously pumping the hand pump. I was afraid that the pump wouldn't work because I watched the flap indicator for about the first fifty pumps and saw nothing happen. But finally the pressure built up enough so that the flaps started slowly down. I managed to get them down about half way as we were on the final approach to the runway and I left them there. Sergeant Le Jeune had ordered the waist gunners to go as far to the rear as possible so that they would weigh the tail of the plane down. We would probably want to drag the tail on landing, because it was obvious we would have little or no brake pressure. As a rule the accumulators hold brake pressure up pretty well even though the rest of the hydraulic system is gone. But once the brakes are applied, they must be held in the on position. If the central hydraulic system is out when they are let up, the accumulator pressure goes out.

  We touched down easily, nose higher than usual. Ed pulled back on the wheel and I helped him on my wheel, so that the nose rose even higher until we could hear the tail skid touch and drag down the rough runway. Dragging might buckle a rear bulkhead, but that would be all right. It would slow us down and prevent going off the end of the runway with a possible landing gear failure on the uneven ground beyond.

  The ship slowed down more and more until it became necessary to let the nose down. It wouldn't stay up any longer. The nose wheel came down pretty hard and we were wondering if the nose strut would fail, leaving us down by the bow. It held. “Brake her, Ed,” I said. “We'll see what we've got.” Ed applied the pressure and the brakes took hold. He held his pressure on them until the ship stopped. Then he tried them again, but the pressure gauges showed his last pressure gone. We cut the engines and left the hulk that had flown like an airplane to be towed in by tugs. It wasn't safe to taxi without brakes.

  The landing and general handling of the ship had been a tribute to Ed Fowble and his crew. Sergeant Le Jeune and Ed had done everything the way the Consolidated handbook prescribes handling emergencies. The result was that the crew was safe and sound, and the ship had only battle damage. We got out of it and looked it over. Holes were poked through it in every direction. A couple of the members of the crew had been hit by flak, which had failed to puncture their flak suits. We had turned out to be too tough a nut for the Nazi defenses to crack. Besides the myriad of holes in the wings and fuselage we noticed the sad old ship dismally leaked gas out of several of her self-sealing fuel cells, which had been punctured. They were going to have to be replaced, but the self-sealing feature of their construction had worked well enough to slow the fuel lea
ks so that the amount of fuel lost coming home was not critical. Here was old I for Item, the second one Fowble had had, in which he had taken no less pride than the first. She would fly again, but not until a great deal of work had been put in on her. I said a prayer of thanks that we all got home.

  I felt this would probably be my last raid in Africa—a happy thought. At least rumors had it that this would be the last. After this we should be ready to go back to England for good. And yet I felt some melancholy mixed with happiness that this was probably the end of Africa. I had seen a good number of our boys go down that day, which was not easy to forget.

  When I went to dinner I found the great Murph there. He had prepared for my return by bartering for a bottle of red Tunisian wine and a loaf of good French bread. I drank almost the whole bottle of wine and ate several big chunks of bread and then curled up on the cot and went to sleep.

  The next day the squadron commanders were called over to Colonel Wood's headquarters. We were told to bend every effort toward getting our ships ready. The rains would soon set in for good and he wanted to lose no time in getting out. That was the best news I had had in ages.

  As I came out of the tent I saw the smiling face of Mac McLaughlin waiting for me. Mac had some pieces of metal in his hand. “Thought you might like some of these,” he said.

  “What are they?”

  “Pieces of Matson's ship. They lodged in my number one engine nacelle. Pieces of that ship hit both of us. I guess I got most of them, though. You might want these and you might not. Anyway, here they are if you do.” And, of course, I did.

  I went to the area where my ships were parked and told Sergeant Peterson, my line chief, to turn on full steam to get the ships ready. Those boys on the line already had the rumor about leaving and were working like beavers. They got news by some medium that is faster than two-way radio. I've known engineering men on the line to know a mission was scrubbed before it was announced in operations.