Bomber Pilot

by Philip Ardery

  Blind bombing over Emden, Germany, leading port and submarine building yard on the Ruhr River, September 27, 1943.

  Smoke rising from Emden after bombing raid of September 27, 1943.

  Bombs falling over Kjeller, Norway, near Oslo, during raid by the Eighth Air Force on November 18, 1943.

  Smoke rises over German repair and maintenance base at Kjeller after raid on November 18, 1943.

  Lieutenant Colonel James M. Stewart interrogating a crew of the 453rd Bomb Group after their return to base in England from a mission over enemy territory.

  Wreckage of a crashed Liberator at base near Norwich.

  Liberators flying formation en route to bombing raid over enemy territory.

  Firemen spraying wreckage of a bomber at base near Norwich.

  Liberators dropping bombs over the Erkner ball bearing factory near Berlin on March 8, 1944.

  Smoke rises from Erkner suburb of Berlin after bombing raid by the Eighth Air Force.

  Smoke rises from Erkner factory after raid by Flying Fortresses and Liberators on March 8, 1944.

  Liberators on a mission over the Pas de Calais sometime before D day in 1944.

  First row (from left): Captain Johnnie Fino, wing bombardier, and Colonel Ardery. Second row: Mike Phipps; Captain Sam Ross, communications officer; Captain Alba, adjutant; Lieutenant Gene Porter. Third row: Lieutenant Jarecki; Captain McClain, wing navigator; other unknown. Photo taken at base near Norwich.

  Major Ardery after completing his combat mission tour on March 23, 1944.

  General “Tooey” Spaatz reviews Colonel Wood and the staff of the 389th Bomb Group at an Eighth Air Force base in England.

  The 389th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force receives a citation for their participation in the Ploesti raids from Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz, May 6, 1944.

  Wing and group commanders of the Second Bomb Division, Eighth Air Force, England, meeting on September 19, 1944. Seated far left, Colonel Jack W. Wood; fifth from left, Brigadier General Timberlake; far right, Colonel Milton W. Arnold. Standing, first row, fourth from left, Colonel Frederic H. Miller. Standing, second row, fourth from left, Colonel Lawrence M. Thomas.

  From left, Capt. W.T. “Temp” Cumiskey, Lt. Col. Philip Ardery, and Gen. “Ted” Timberlake on D-Day, June 6, 1944, in Norwich, England.

  “Sure, George,” shot back the answer. “You go on at plus five. All set?”

  “Right.”

  I read my script in the measured tones of a country boy who is uncertain of his act and suffering from mike fright. I didn't care how it sounded as long as Anne could tell it was I. With every word of that script, which told of the Emden raid, I was saying to her, “Anne, I'm all right. I'm well. I'm here talking to you and giving you news about me that is ten days fresher than that in the letter you'll get in tomorrow's mail. I love you and I'll be back soon.” The broadcast over, I caught the early morning train back to base.

  Upon my return, I dived into the business of group operations officer almost viciously. There was much to be done to improve the training of the lead crews, and directing their training was primarily my responsibility. Since our type of bombing required putting all the eggs in one basket, the lead crews who carried that basket had to be exceptional. The aircraft they flew had to be exceptional. Breakdowns in the system were breakdowns of the functioning of group operations. I stood or fell on their record.

  In those days just prior to the spring of 1944 many of the raids were long and hard. The heavy bombers had just begun to go all the way into the Berlin area. When the weather was bad it usually meant that formations which did get over enemy territory were leaner. Of the ships which took off, fewer were able to climb through the heavy cloud and find the designated point where the various units formed up before going out. And, generally, to fail to make formation was to fail to make the mission. Frequently, in this bad weather the bombers and fighters would fail to meet at the assigned rendezvous. Sometimes only a handful of escorting fighters would make it through the weather to give cover. These circumstances combined to make losses heavy and bombing accuracy poor.

  Nearly every time we went out one group and, sometimes, one combat wing out of the three divisions would be hit hard. Experience had taught the masterminds of the Luftwaffe that the way to inflict maximum damage and suffer minimum losses was to have all their available attacking fighters hit one or two small units—usually units for one reason or another less protected than the rest. It might be that the friendly support was spread particularly thin at one point or another, or one group might be flying poorer formation than another. Whenever we took off we knew some unit in the day's mass of bombers had a bad card to draw, and we hoped it wouldn't be ours.

  Our group was fairly lucky. There were times after two or three hard raids in a row when our ranks were pitifully thinned out. But we had no times as bad as some of the traditionally unlucky groups. Some groups lost almost their entire force on a single raid. There were five days in February when the Eighth Air Force lost 244 heavy bombers and 33 fighters. Those were five days of clearing skies after many weeks of weather so bad as to make pinpoint bombing impossible. On one of those five days Colonel Arnold led a very successful mission to Gotha, and I flew on his wing as deputy lead. Our group lost more crews and airplanes on that raid than on any raid in its previous history, including the low-level attack on Ploesti. The next day Colonel Miller led our group out on a brilliant mission against the aircraft factory at Fürth. Those raids cost us sorely, but they nearly bled the enemy to death. Their fighter plane production never recovered from what the Air Force did that week.

  When a group lost heavily on one or two raids there was a natural strain on the morale of the remaining combat crews. It was hard for the boys coming back to go to quarters that were practically vacant, quarters which had been full a few hours before. It wore on their nerves to go to the club and find the place more filled with the ghosts of those who had gone than the presence of the few who remained. General Doolittle was a savvy guy about this particular hardship. I heard a story about a visit he made to one of the groups that had lost nearly everyone on a single raid. The incident happened just after the unit had been filled up with replacements following a similar occurrence only a few weeks before. The general, as was his custom, flew his own fighter plane to the base and went unannounced to pay a visit to the officers’ club.

  It was late evening and the bar was open. A lone lieutenant was solemnly drinking a beer. The general stepped up beside him and ordered one. The lieutenant, noticing who the newcomer was, turned to the star-bearing little flier and said, “What're you doing up here, general? Lookin’ over our mo-ralle?”

  The general smiled. “Not at all. I try to get around to visit all my groups every now and then. I didn't have much to do in headquarters this afternoon, so I decided I'd fly up and pay you a call.”

  “You know, general,” the lieutenant continued, “Funny thing, mo-ralle. Ours is okay till the high-ranking generals start coming around lookin’ it over. Then it just goes all to hell.”

  The general laughed, chatted with the officer a while, went out, climbed in his ship, and flew off. Yes, General Doolittle was a savvy guy. He was hard when the situation called for that, but when he left that group that day he knew that there was enough fighting spirit in the handful of flying men left to give proper inspiration to the new bunch of replacements he was sending in.

  In these hard raids, I took mine as they came. For those qualified to act as command pilot in the lead ship of our group there was a system. They rotated in a regular schedule, and with few exceptions when a man's name came up he took the mission, wherever it was.

  The first few daylight raids on Berlin were run by the B-17s. The Libs hit other targets concurrently with these Fortress raids. The theory was that the Libs, fully loaded, couldn't fly as high as the Forts and thus would be more vulnerable to the intense flak barrage over the city. The RAF high command had said it would be impossible ever to hit B
erlin in a daylight raid and sustain for any length of time the losses that would result. But then, as we knew would happen, calls came for the B-24s to take the trip over The Big B.

  On one of the earliest of these I drew the lead. The mission was really supposed to bomb a ball bearing works on the southeast edge of the Nazi capital. That was to be our target if the weather was clear. Our forecast had it, however, that the area would likely be covered with cloud, so that the ball bearing works was designated as a secondary target. The primary target, given under the assumption that weather would prevent pinpoint bombing, was the center of Berlin. In case of cloud coverage preventing visual bombing we would bomb the center of the town on instruments. At that time our instrument bombing was accurate enough for a wide area like the city of Berlin, but not accurate enough for a single factory.

  The way the mission was planned, I would fly in a pathfinder airplane to be brought in by a special pathfinder crew a few hours before briefing. We were leery about allowing our group, and as in this case our whole combat wing of three groups, to be led by a strange crew. The deputy command pilot was Major Jack Dieterle, a new squadron commander. Jack was a tall, dark-eyed young fellow from Toledo, Ohio, and one of the excellent younger leaders. He was flying with one of the best lead crews we had. According to the plan, if the target did happen to be clear, my plane would shift places with Jack's in sufficient time before reaching the target to allow him to make an unhampered visual bombing run. After bombing we would shift back and I would lead the wing home. If, of course, it was blind bombing I would merely hold my place in the lead, and we would bomb the center of town on instruments.

  We were up several hours before dawn. If the fellows ever felt like breaking into loud cheers upon having an important target announced in the briefing room, that morning they might have. But when the curtain was lifted from the big map, revealing the long route in, the target, and the long route out, there were no cheers. I knew where the target was, and so when the map was uncovered I didn't look at the board. Instead I watched the faces of the crews. They became a shade more grave, but were otherwise unmoved.

  When the main briefing was over the briefing officer called on me as the lead commander to give any final comments I wished. I remember saying, “Today let's win the contest of formation flying. You all know the poorest formation is the one that gets ripped. It won't be us! Now, if the target should be open we will know it in plenty of time for me to shift the lead to you, Jack. And if I do shift to you, and after that you have a malfunction of a bombsight or for any reason fail to drop on the factory, there will be no use to shift leads back. We will be right on the southern outskirts of Berlin. You will simply turn north and fly over the center of town and let them have it. Good luck, fellows. I'll see you here tonight.”

  There was the usual sickening hour before takeoff. The hour of getting into heavy, smelly clothes; fitting oxygen masks; checking the ships; checking the bomb loading, fusing, gas loading, oxygen, guns, ammunition; and the million other things. On that occasion, as on others, I got to myself for a moment and prayed that I be given the courage to do my best and that whatever happened I would fight as long as I could. Before takeoff I nervously whistled a tune. It was “Room with a View.” It brought back to my mind that most unusual wedding trip to Kentucky. I loved it and now it helped to calm me.

  We started engines and taxied to the head of the runway and then cut them to wait for the rest of the ships to marshall behind us. I chatted with my crew, the pathfinder boys. I soon discovered they had nothing like the total number of missions which our crews were required to accomplish to become lead crews. They were nervous and showed it. I tried to affect an air of casualness about the mission to calm them down, but I was worried.

  On the dot of that moment of anticipation which had been set for takeoff we got a green signal light from the tower. The darkness prior to early morning was just beginning to break as the pilot pushed the throttles open. I followed them up with my hands behind his and locked them. I concentrated on the engine instruments in order to catch a runaway prop or supercharger should one need catching, and stood by for the raised thumb signal from the pilot indicating “landing gear up.” The overweight Liberator waddled down the runway gathering speed very slowly at first, but at last picking up enough to struggle into the air at the end of the concrete strip.

  We circled our airdrome in weather which was not nearly as bad as that to which we were accustomed, and at the designated time we had our group fairly well formed and in position to pick up the other two groups of our combat wing. We were leading the wing, and ours was the last wing of the three divisions all going over the same target that day—the eighth of March, 1944.

  Within reasonable bounds our mission went as briefed until we got far into Germany. At a well-defined checkpoint the whole flotilla of bombers was supposed to turn from its easterly heading to about forty degrees southeast of the original course. After we held this heading for a while we planned to turn again due east and continue past the longitude of Berlin. Then we would turn north and swing back around to the west. We were to fly over our target and drop bombs heading west. From that heading we would be more or less on course home, and if the plan were followed we would pass just south of the main defenses of the city.

  When we came to the point where we were supposed to turn southeast, the great chain of formation of bombers kept flying directly east. Our navigator called me on the interphone, telling me that the division leader had passed up the turning point. What did I want to do? Should we turn as briefed, or should we follow the leader?

  I was in a little bit of a quandary. The weather was moderately clear, I had my maps in my lap, and I could plainly identify the spot the navigator pointed out as the place where we were supposed to turn. But all the fighter support, thin as it was that far into Germany, would remain over the main formation if we turned. If we got out from under our fighter cover we would certainly find ourselves elected.

  At this point it might be well to explain a few things about the method the Jerries used in planning attacks on us. From the time we entered the continental coast on a raid, until a good while after we left it, we were shadowed by a German monitoring aircraft. This would be a light, fast craft that flew far above us and off to one side enough to be out of danger from our guns and away from attack by our fighter cover. This ship would maintain constant radio contact with the Nazi Ground Sector Control. The Ground Sector Control by reports from the monitor plane, plus information gained from the German radar, would get a complete picture of the condition, heading, speed, and altitude of our bomber formations. The Germans knew constantly which formations within the larger formation were the most vulnerable to attack because of poor flying, lack of friendly fighter cover, or whatever. They kept their own fighters alerted and were able to hit any part of our attacking force according to precise plan in a matter of seconds after the order was given.

  I knew all this. I recalled how my friend Fearless Ken Caldwell had been killed and his formation shot to pieces because he withdrew from the division formation coming out of France that evening several months before. But then, there is also the mission to be accomplished. If everyone else missed the target it would be many times more necessary that I hit it. I looked at the formation ahead. They were still headed due east with no sign of a turn. I tried unsuccessfully to get the division leader on the radio.

  Finally, of course, I thought of Anne and Pete back home and how near I was to the completion of my combat tour. If I could get home from this raid I had only one more to go. Usually they gave you an easy one for the last one. But while that thought was turning over I already knew I had made up my mind that the right thing to do was to pull out of the division formation. If others failed to fly the mission as briefed and I knew they were wrong and I was unable to raise anyone on the radio to correct the error, there was only one logical avenue of action open to me.

  I called the navigator and told him to give us a head
ing to get us back on the briefed course. I got it almost immediately and gave the order to turn. At that moment, one of two or three such moments in my flying career, I thought I had given up my last good chance to get home. I decided we would try our best to do a good job of bombing and then fight our way out. If my airplane were shot down I determined I would get all the men out, then hit the silk. From there on it would be a question of escape from Germany. I felt equal to the attempt, though I sensed a tiredness unlike any I ever had before.

  As we turned southeast we were not very far from our target. The weather cleared until it was the clearest I ever saw that far into Germany. There wasn't even any haze in the air. I called Jack Dieterle, my deputy leader, to ask him if he had himself properly spotted. He replied that he did. I told him it was evident the bombing would be visual and ordered him to prepare to shift places with me so that his crew could lead on the bomb run. He acknowledged.

  Just about that time I noticed the bombers ahead, which were now only specks in the distance. They were turning to the southeast. There was no doubt about their being far off course. Evidently something had messed up in the lead and everyone else elected to follow. Just now the leader of the column was plainly trying to get back on course. The fact that we had turned southeast before the head of the column turned put us now almost abreast of them flying a parallel course. Of course they were pretty far off to our left, but it would make it difficult for us to get the proper interval to bomb without getting in someone's way. We would simply have to give ourselves margin enough to be sure we would not fly through another formation when we turned on the target. Else we might get ourselves mixed up and miss the aiming point after these long hours of work and worry.