Bomber Pilot

by Philip Ardery

  Finally we reached the next point, where we were to accomplish a series of turns to close up the space between the various small formations. I had five ships with me at that time. I thought we might pick up four or five more when the dawn approached, and I was satisfied with the way our formation looked. We now wanted to close the interval so that, whatever the size of the various formations, they would be in position when they struck out across the Channel to hit the enemy coast almost at the same instant. The plan was followed with great precision. Our navigator had to change the briefed course a little to keep our small unit clear of some thick cloud in which the wing men wouldn't have been able to maintain their position. But when we came upon the next designated point to make good at a certain time we hit it perfectly.

  Perhaps the most amazing part of our flight thus far was that there was no enemy opposition at all. Of course we were still over the British Isles, but I had greatly feared intruder action that would render completely chaotic the intricate plan we were trying to follow. Even though we were over Britain, the German radar would have let the enemy know all three air divisions had taken off and were forming up. They would have been over to stop us in a matter of a few minutes after we started takeoffs had they desired. Much later I learned what I should have guessed: our intruders had done a wonderful job of smashing their radar just before we took off. The absence of enemy intruders, plus the progress of the mission thus far, had just about dissipated the qualms I had had about what might come of our mighty effort to support the boys in the barges. My experience in combat flying told me we were through what might have been the roughest part of the mission.

  Dawn crept closer as we reached the proper point in the pattern where we were to strike out directly for the south coast of England. Now we were firing green flares one after another. Abreast of us heading due south far to our right and left were other comparatively small formations, none larger than twelve planes. The leaders of all these also were firing green flares which showed up prominently in the first gray light of dawn. These pathfinders, like ourselves, were signaling to any stray ships in the area a message which said, “I am an instrument bomber. If you haven't attached yourself to a formation yet, join me and I will lead you to the proper bomb release point.”

  At that instant I counted two or three straggling airplanes which joined the nearest formations. Just then we drew off the friendly coast and headed south toward Normandy. Our plan was set. There would be no more changes and no more flares fired. A tidal wave of formations abreast headed south over the Channel waters separating England from Normandy. The weather over the Channel was spotty. We had in the beginning of this mission flown through some rather heavy clouds. On our final run down to the English coast we had found clearer skies. Now heading over the Channel waters toward France, we saw the clouds building up again ahead of us, but they were below our level of flight.

  There were some breaks in the clouds as we neared the enemy coast. Through them I saw masses of boats of all sizes on the water; the flash of the guns of several warships as they shelled coastal installations; the white, curling wakes of the fast patrol boats as they darted about. Through one hole in the cloud ahead I saw a coastal battery firing, but shells from our ships seemed to be bursting all around it. Then the cloud below us thickened. We couldn't see the coastline at all.

  It was evident we were going to have to bomb by instruments. I called the eight other ships I now was leading and told them to “stack it in.” We wanted a good pattern of bombs and to get it, the formation had to be good. The bombardier and navigator were working together as a perfectly coordinated team. I switched to interphone from time to time to be sure they hadn't fumbled the ball. It is the terror of all command pilots to have a bombardier or a navigator indicate he is inextricably messed up when the bomb release line is a matter of seconds away. I listened to them talking back and forth; finding them in good control of the situation, I switched back to radio.

  A few seconds later the bomb release indicator lights on the instrument panel began blinking, and I felt the ship shift balance slightly as the load of explosives trained out of the bomb bay. I looked out and saw the planes in our formation were releasing with us. The light in the east let me know that the sun was probably on its way up at that moment, though I couldn't see the horizon for the clouds. I prayed for the men in the boats.

  I called the bombardier to ask him whether he thought he had a good run. Of course we could see nothing below us but the deck of clouds into which our bombs disappeared. “Sir,” he replied, “if that wasn't a good run I'd never count on one being good. I think we dropped them right in the bucket.”

  Thank God! I thought. No intruders, no midair collisions, no fuss, no bother—just a push-button mission and on instruments! There was only one question in my mind. I had noticed that the ship which according to the briefed plan was supposed to fly on our right wing wasn't actually the ship filling that slot. Perhaps that plane filled in with another formation. It was okay as far as my losing my deputy lead, because no deputy was needed this trip.

  As we proceeded over the French coast we saw several ground-fired rockets bursting with such inaccuracy that they were good for the first laugh of the day. Not one burst was near any plane. We turned right and flew out over the west coast of the Cherbourg peninsula. For a time we flew due west and then turned north. We did not fly over the lanes of water traffic heading toward the landing beach, for we had been told that the Navy would fire on any aircraft seen in that area going north. We could fly over their heads to the target, but we'd better not fly back the same way.

  I was overjoyed by the prospect of the mission's success. Of course, I would have to wait until the Navy and ground forces observation reports of the bombing accuracy came through before I would really know how well it had gone. But I was particularly elated that in spite of heavy cloud to begin with, icing conditions, and darkness, our plan of formation had been good. The units did group themselves and proceed in a most orderly manner to the beach, all hitting almost simultaneously and within a minute and a half of the briefed time. We had been given three minutes’ leeway—and only three minutes. That was precision in both planning and execution.

  When we landed and taxied to the hard stand I saw the general's Packard pull up. Out stepped General Ted. A photographer who had been waiting advanced behind him and began snapping pictures. When I got out the great man accosted me.

  “How'd it go, Phil?”

  “Fine, I think and I certainly hope.”

  “Well, I believe you are right. We already have the report from the Navy that the bombing was excellent. They were amazed by the accuracy, considering the total cloud cover.”

  That was all I needed to make my joy about the bombing complete. But there was one other item to be noted. We went from the parking area to the tower to check on returning airplanes. One failed to return. It was my deputy lead ship. Hours later we got the report that bits of the wreckage of that plane had been found about twenty miles north of the field. It was evident something had happened during the first part of the assembly. At first we thought it was a midair collision, but there was no evidence of any other ship having been hit. Finally we guessed that airplane must have picked up a load of ice and spun in. It was a real tragedy. In my flier's fatalistic credo I told myself the Lord must have wanted that crew. All the others managed to get through that blanket of ice but this one.

  The rest of D day the ships were shuttling in and out carrying loads of bombs to the bomb line just ahead of our troops. I spent the time in our operations office helping with these successive missions and giving rapt attention to the advance of the thin thread across our map used to designate our ground forces’ position on the beach.

  That evening late, after dinner but a little before dark in the long twilight of the English summer evening, I got on my bicycle to take a ride. I wanted to think of home and all those things which seemed so much nearer now that the second front had begun. I rode d
own to the airdrome and out to the main runway. All the ships were in from the last mission of the day and the runway was closed off for repairs. Our field had been almost in condition to stop operation some months before because of the cracking up of the concrete strip.

  The field was built by the British for their type of landing on soft, almost marshy soil. The concrete of the runways was not thick enough to carry the weight of our fully loaded planes, and small cracks had appeared and quickly expanded into large breaks. It got so bad landings and takeoffs had to be made with great care to avoid collapsing a ship's landing gear or blowing a tire.

  We had a company of British engineers who puttered around the problem of repairing the concrete, but the damage was keeping well ahead of the repair when we managed to release the British help and get in a company of American Negro engineers. Those men really knew how to handle their concrete mixers.

  The pavement of the longest runway was made up of big squares about thirty feet on a side. The engineers would pick a square with serious breaks in it, completely dig it up and replace it with quick-drying concrete. This work would always be done between the time the last ship landed in the evening and the first took off the next morning. Our operations were not slowed up at all by the work, and after three or four months almost our entire runway system had been renewed.

  Whenever I wanted to feel a little nearer to the States I would ride down to where the men were working. They worked quickly and efficiently with a coordination rarely seen among construction crews in England. That evening, happy from the success of the day's mission and in the knowledge that the second front was under way, I found myself in quite a chatty mood. Most of the engineers were too busy to waste more than a moment talking to me.

  Sometimes I worried that there wasn't enough indication to them of our appreciation for their indispensable efforts. They were doing something the folks back home might never know about, but they didn't seem to care. They did a good job and they knew it. They were winning their part of the war so that they could get home. They felt just like 1 did, I guess, except that had I been in their place I might have bothered more about getting proper recognition.

  A few nights after D day when our war in the West was progressing acceptably, the people of London were awakened by the most terrific barrage of antiaircraft they had ever heard. Shells were bursting low over the roofs of the houses, and many people were injured by splinters of shrapnel intended to bring down attacking planes.

  A few of the people looked out their windows and saw a new type of small plane go over. The ones seen trailed small comets behind them. They flew singly in straight lines from southeast to northwest over the city. At a special point the flame trailing one would quit and the plane would dive earthward. In a matter of seconds after this happened a tremendous explosion would occur which would sometimes wreck almost a whole city block, depending upon the type of housing. The blast effect was worse than any of the previous explosions during the blitz.

  The news of this first robot bomb attack on London took us with some surprise in spite of the fact that we had been expecting it for a long time. We had run many raids which were at first reported in the papers as “attacks on the Pas de Calais area,” but were later termed “blows at the rocket coast.” Our intelligence had a pretty good idea of the sort of activity going on at the sites whence these weird missiles came. The greater surprise was that they had not been launched in large masses to stop the invasion. They could have dealt a devastating blow.

  I never knew the answer to that one. Perhaps the sites weren't ready. Perhaps they were only accurate enough at long range to hit London. I don't know. I do know that when we flew over that coast to bomb the launching sites we received the most accurate antiaircraft fire we got anywhere. There was not as much flak as there was in some other places. But at two of the larger “dig-gin's” which were obviously sites prepared for a larger weapon than the first robot bomb, or V-l, the defensive fire was lethal. On two or three occasions our units would come back with a whole group formation showing a 100 percent flak damage. The sheet metal men in our maintenance shops used to moan when the ships returned from the rocket coast. They had to work overtime almost continually after these raids started.

  Though the antiaircraft fire was very accurate, the raids were never considered as hard as raids deep into Germany for two reasons. One was that the bombers practically never suffered from German fighter attacks. The other was that the targets in that area were close enough to friendly territory to make it possible to get a ship back which had suffered very heavy damage. Nevertheless, it was not uncommon for a formation to report one or two ships blown up in midair from direct flak hits. And it was also not uncommon for the returning planes to carry in them a few dead and some seriously wounded crew members.

  We had done great damage to some of the emplacements and had measurably delayed the preparation of others. Once sites were complete they were almost invulnerable to bombing. They were well camouflaged, hard to hit, and, if hit, still harder to destroy. The larger sites were still under construction, though certainly it was not possible for work gangs to maintain intensive construction under the almost incessant rain of bombs we gave them.

  Nevertheless, either from some of the installations we had been bombing, or from others of more temporary construction in the area, the Nazis were now making life hard for Londoners. Those people who suffered so bitterly during the first great blitz awakened to find that there were newer horrors to face. It was a bitter pill coming at a time when they thought terror bombing from the Germans was at an end.

  I heard so many of the English people talk of the shock of this earlier bombing of London that I wanted to go there immediately to spend a day or two and see how the town was weathering this new storm. True, I had been there one night when London endured a raid by a hundred planes. On that occasion all the town's defenses, including the great rocket throwers in Hyde Park, cut loose. I hadn't panicked, perhaps only because I never woke up. I had gone to bed quite late and tired, and read about the raid in the morning's papers. It struck about two hours after I went to bed and lasted about an hour. The fact that I slept through the whole thing led me to believe it wasn't much of a show.

  Once or twice I saw the puny efforts of the Nazis attempting a raid on our airdrome. We would hear frantic calls over the public address system for all personnel to report to the shelters. It was only a cue for us to go outside to see the sight. Several times we were alerted by lone raiders, and twice I watched the enemy planes get shot down.

  I wondered how the Yanks, who were now so thick in London, would bear this trial. A British saying familiar to my ears was in effect, “You may say what you like about the British. But after all is said and done you must admit they're a pretty steady lot. You take the conduct of the people of London, for example: if the blitz had happened in New York instead of London it would have wrought utter panic. Oh, yes, you Americans are clever and quick. The British are slow and stolid. But in the blitz the true character and spirit of London came out.”

  I believed at least part of that. It came as a frequent comment and was somewhat in the same vein as the British reasoning that Americans were poor foot soldiers; that they had not the stolidity, the tenacity of the British. Here was an opportunity for me to see Americans and British side-by-side enduring the same terror weapon. I couldn't resist it.

  Many of my friends of earlier visits were now over on the beachhead. Larry LeSueur was in the very front line of troops fighting in Normandy. Instead of having his lavish quarters put at my disposal, this time I felt myself lucky to be able to find a room in a hotel. I had been told getting rooms in the hotels was a lot easier since the buzz bombs started, but I found it quite the opposite. The hotels are of a more solid construction than many of the buildings containing the most comfortable of London's flats. Consequently many flat-dwellers had moved out of their residences and into hotels.

  This time there was a car from our headquarters go
ing to London to spare me the burden of the trip by rail. I had quite a comfortable drive down. When I reached the outskirts of London it seemed to me I could notice already the difference between this and the London of my last visit. There was evidently an alert on at the time of my arrival.

  The streets were almost bare. Those people who could be seen seemed to be persons who had unavoidable business. There were no window-shoppers or casual strollers, and most everyone wore a slightly worried expression. It was about noon. Then I heard for the first time that noise unfamiliar to me but obviously well known to those on the street. It sounded more like a Model T Ford than anything else I could compare it to. The noise grew. Thrr, rhrr, rhrr, rhrr, rhrr—it went with a sort of spasmodic rhythm. The driver came to a stop. I was looking out of the car window to try to get a glimpse of the “doodlebug” at this moment and so missed a chance to see what the pedestrians were doing.

  The noise stopped suddenly. There was absolute silence for a number of seconds and then the explosion. It evidently wasn't very near us, but down the street and through a cut in the skyline of buildings I could see a cloud of black smoke with some small bits of debris floating around. The explosion was quite loud, and my driver and I felt a slight bit of the concussion. It was obvious we weren't close enough to that one to get the proper effect of it.

  We drove on. The driver admitted that he wished he hadn't come to London. After all, he had been on a nice quiet bomber station out of all this mess only a little while ago. Just then the all clear sounded. The expressions of the pedestrians seemed to brighten up a bit and a small part of the old gaiety and life returned to London. Throughout the rest of that day hot on the heels of each all clear came the sirens screaming out the next alert. It was easy to see how this disruption could impair the total effort of a great city. I certainly felt the strain myself.