When Heroes Flew

by H W Buzz Bernard

  “Thank you, Geschwaderkommodore.”

  Rödel waved his hand dismissively. “Gustav will do.” He examined a stack of papers on his desk and pulled out several sheets. An electric fan rotating erratically in a corner of the room sent one of the sheets flying, but Rödel grabbed it out of the air before it could get away.

  “The heat,” he said, “always the heat. I think it’s worse here than in North Africa.”

  Egon knew the 27th had previously supported the Afrika Korps. When the wing evacuated from Africa, its three component Gruppes, or groups, redeployed to France, Italy, and Greece. Egon’s orders had assigned him to a new fourth group now in the process of being established at Kalamaki.

  Rödel studied the paper he’d snatched from the air. “You come bearing an excellent recommendation, Hauptmann, one from Generalmajor Adolf Galland.”

  “General?” Egon couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice. “Meine Gott, he was a major when I knew him.”

  “He’s a shooting star, my friend. One of the Luftwaffe’s best. He’s got Reichsmarschall Göring’s eye. Hard not to when you’ve got over ninety victories.”

  “Over ninety?” Again, surprise threaded his voice.

  “Legitimate kills, too, not pencil whipped. He’s a fighter pilot’s fighter pilot. He hates his staff job, by the way. No more combat.”

  “He loved flying and fighting,” Egon said. “That’s all he wanted to do when I knew him in northern France. He couldn’t wait to mix it up with the Spitfires and Hurricanes.”

  “The Battle of Britain.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you? Did you love it?”

  Egon looked out a side window of the office. A man with a stick prodded a donkey pulling a wooden cart along a cobblestone lane.

  Egon turned to face Rödel. “The first time I went after a bomber I fired from about a mile away and nearly peed in my pants.”

  Rödel rocked back in his chair and laughed heartily. “We all did, Hauptmann, we all did. If you didn’t, there’s something wrong with you.” He studied another sheet of paper resting on his desk. “General Galland knows a fighter pilot when he sees one, and he saw one in you. You proved him right on the Eastern Front.” He tapped his forefinger on the paper.

  The fan sputtered to a sudden stop and the lights in the office dimmed, then blinked off.

  “Damned electricity,” Rödel said. “Two or three times a day it goes out. Our engineers are trying to show the Greeks how to construct a reliable system, but so far it’s proved futile. Anyhow, the Eastern Front. You were there for the Battle of Stalingrad last winter. Over a dozen kills. Now here you are with twenty-two total. An Iron Cross beckons.”

  Thirty seemed to be the magic number for the award. Egon shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. My victories came in a losing cause. Stalingrad was a disaster for the Wehrmacht.” He stopped speaking abruptly, fearful his commentary had overstepped the bounds of what a junior officer should voice.

  Rödel steepled his fingers beneath his chin and appeared to be lost in thought. After several moments he spoke. “Yes, I know. I also know it’s sometimes natural to question our leadership. I have to admit, Der Führer declaring war on America after Pearl Harbor was, shall we say, at best, ill-timed. How could we possibly fight Britain, the Soviets, and America all at once?

  “Yet we must. We fight for our country, our families, and our brother pilots. We fight to stay alive.” Rödel paused, leaned forward, then spoke in an almost conspiratorial whisper. “But we do not go into battle for ideals devoid of integrity and honor. We are warriors and soldiers, Hauptmann, not state-sanctioned terrorists and executioners.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rödel fixed his gaze on Egon, not in a threatening way, but in a manner that suggested a bond between commander and commanded.

  “There is an unwritten law,” he said, “that I like to remind all my pilots of. Once you have defeated your opponent, shot him from the sky, victory is yours and the engagement is over. You do not fire on men in parachutes, you do not strafe men on the ground or in the water. You maintain your honor as a Luftwaffe officer. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  The fan whirred back to life, the lights flickered on.

  “Good,” Rödel said. “You’ll do well here, I have no doubt. And let me tell you something else, Egon, if I may call you that . . . I need you.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re a proven fighter pilot, battle-tested and experienced. We’re losing too many men with such credentials these days. We’re replacing them with youth and enthusiasm, not know-how and skill. We’re getting aviators who know how to fly but not fight. We are getting kids with half the training we got. I fear we’re feeding them into a meat grinder.”

  Egon nodded. He’d witnessed the same thing all too often of recent. He understood the vaunted Third Reich couldn’t keep up with the demand for pilots. Losses had begun to exceed replacements on a regular basis.

  “I need you to take these new flyers, as many as you can, under your wing,” Rödel continued. “Lead them into battle. On their initial combat missions tell them to stick to you like a shadow and do exactly what you do. Maybe we can keep a few more alive that way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve a family, Egon?”

  “A wife and a daughter.”

  “They mean the world to you, yes?”

  “The universe.”

  “I want you to go home to them after all this is over, I truly do. And I want to send as many of the young men that are now joining us home, too. If you can help them fight, win, and survive, you will have done your job as a Luftwaffe officer honorably.”

  “You have my promise, sir.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Now let me tell you why we’re here, what our mission is.”

  Rödel rose from his chair and walked to a large-scale map tacked on the wall behind him.

  “The fighter group here at Kalamaki has been formed specifically to defend the Romanian oil refineries at Ploesti.” He pointed to Romania on the map. “Ploesti is about thirty-five miles north of Bucharest.”

  “I haven’t heard of Ploesti,” Egon said.

  “I understand. But you’ll hear much about it in the future. The refineries there supply nearly a third of the overall petroleum needs of the Wehrmacht. In simplest terms, it’s the lifeblood of our tanks, trucks, battleships, submarines. More importantly to us, the Luftwaffe, Ploesti supplies all of our aviation gasoline. Without it, the Luftwaffe would cease to exist.”

  “I assume Ploesti is heavily defended.”

  “General Alfred Gerstenberg, the commander of air defenses there, has made it perhaps the most heavily fortified target in all of Europe. He’s got well over two hundred anti-aircraft guns ringing the city, and hundreds of batteries of lighter cannons, plus tethered balloons, flak towers, and countless machine guns.”

  “A bastion of death.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be in an American bomber attempting to penetrate it. It would be like trying to storm a castle when you’re bare naked.”

  Egon couldn’t imagine flying in a big, slow box into that kind of firepower. He coveted being a fighter pilot, controlling something nimble and quick . . . which prompted his next question.

  “Fighters?” he asked, meaning around Ploesti.

  “About seventy Bf 109s and 110s.”

  “Have the Allies attempted any kind of an attack there yet?”

  “Once, about a year ago. But it seemed kind of a half-assed raid, apparently unorganized and haphazard. About a dozen B-24s dropped bombs, but not very effectively. Damage was minimal. But it certainly put us on alert, gave us the incentive to create the fortress that we have.”

  Rödel pointed to the map again. “Now that the Allies have taken over North Africa, that opens up new avenues of attack for them. Across the Med, over Yugoslavia or Bulgaria, and into Romania. It’s just a matter of time. We don’t have any specific intellige
nce on when or precisely where, but we know they’re coming. It’s our job to help Gerstenberg.”

  Rödel returned to his chair, but didn’t sit.

  “So that’s our mission in brief. Let’s get you to your quarters now. I know you must be tired. We’ve found some decent villas here in town for our officers.”

  Egon stood. “Thank you, sir.”

  Rödel popped to rigid attention and extended his right arm in the Party salute. “Heil Hitler.”

  Egon, stunned, failed to return the salute.

  Rödel lowered his arm and smiled an apology. “I had to make sure. The Black Coats are not welcome here, but you will be visited by them.” The Gestapo. “They’ve managed to weasel sympathizers into every unit, usually at lower levels, clerks and errand boys. So, be careful of what you say and how you say it.”

  “Well, when they come,” Egon said, “I’ll be able to tell them my wing commander snapped off a sharp Party salute.”

  “Believe me, there are other elements of the Party I’d rather snap off,” Rödel mumbled, a sharpness in his words, “but you didn’t hear that.”

  “Hear what, sir?”

  Rödel nodded his approval. “And the jokes, be careful. Our black-coated friends have no sense of humor. What’s worth a snicker among us pilots is worth a trip to the guillotine in the eyes of the Gestapo.”

  Egon had heard the rumors. The story of a woman in Germany who apparently had told the wrong joke in the wrong place—treason—and ended up paying for it with her head.

  Hitler and Göring stood on top of a Berlin radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on Berliners’ faces. Göring says,“Why don’t you jump?”

  As the Reich suffered loss after loss, gallows humor had become more rampant.

  Two friends, Luke and Karl, met in Munich. Luke had purchased a new car. He popped the hood to show Karl the engine.

  “But Luke,” his friend exclaimed, “it doesn’t have a motor.”

  “No matter. I’m not planning on visiting any foreign countries, and in Germany, everything is going downhill.”

  And another:

  “Have you heard? Switzerland has added a Minister of Naval Affairs, and they don’t even have a seaport.”

  “So what? Germany has a Minister of Justice.”

  Rödel’s admonitions brought home to Egon the extent to which his country had come undone. Though the Luftwaffe, and indeed many units of the Wehrmacht, carried on with a proud tradition of integrity and valor, they did so in service to a brutal police state.

  Still, the army, navy, and air forces fought fiercely and would continue to battle those powers that had mounted an offensive to bring Germany to its knees. Allied bombs fell on military and civilians alike. That assault would be challenged until the bitter end.

  Egon understood his duty and embraced it, for the sake of his wife and daughter if nothing else. The assault on the German people would not stand. He would bring down every single British and American fighter and bomber he could.

  They are my opponents . . . but are they my real enemy?

  That remained the question that conflicted him.

  5

  Benghazi, Libya

  Mid-July 1943

  Al, accompanied by Sorey, his copilot, filed into a threadbare briefing tent along with the other pilots and copilots from the Traveling Circus. The fliers—over seventy in all, Al estimated—appeared a ragtag group, more like refugees than military men. In deference to the intense African heat, many wore shorts, khaki shirts with the sleeves rolled up—though dozens showed up bare-chested—sandals, pith helmets, and dusty utility caps.

  A desert wind shook the tent and sent tiny clouds of dust and sand slithering across its bare floor. The men seated themselves in several rows of folding chairs that had been placed in front of a low, makeshift wooden stage—a briefing platform.

  Someone shouted, “Ten-hut,” and Lieutenant Colonel Addison Baker, the Circus’s commander, entered the tent and strode to the platform. The awaiting aviators stood at attention.

  Al had met Baker several times but didn’t know him well. Tall and square-jawed, he seemed a serious, responsible leader. Al guessed his age to be in the mid-thirties. He’d heard Baker had served in the Ohio National Guard and had owned a service station in Detroit, Michigan, before being called to active duty in 1940.

  Baker walked to the front of the platform. “Seats,” he said. He nodded at a sergeant on the platform who parted a curtain revealing a large map of North Africa, the Mediterranean, and southern Europe. Baker faced his audience.

  “I know you’re wondering what all the low-level flying practice has been about. And I know there’s been a lot of speculation and rumors about the reason for it. Here’s the no-bullshit skinny. It’s about an operation that’s been dubbed ‘Tidal Wave.’ Gentlemen, on August first, twelve days from now, we’re going after what’s been called ‘the taproot of German might.’ Specifically, the oil refineries and storage facilities of Ploesti, Romania. There are seven principal complexes there that crank out about ten million tons of oil every year, including ninety-octane aviation fuel, the highest quality in Europe. Most of it goes to the Nazis.”

  He stepped to the map. The sergeant handed him a long wooden pointer.

  “Here’s the target: Ploesti in southern Romania, just a short distance north of Bucharest.” Baker tapped the map with the end of the pointer. He shifted it to indicate North Africa. “And here we are in Libya. We would have liked to be able to launch from Crete, but the Krauts beat us there, and seem reluctant to lease any of their airfields to us.”

  A chuckle or two arose from the assembled airmen.

  Baker continued. “Here’s the attack route.” Using the pointer, he traced the proposed course over the map as he talked. “From Benghazi we’ll head north over the Med to the island of Corfu off the west coast of Greece. From there we’ll turn northeast, fly over southern Albania and Yugoslavia, then on into Romania. After we drop our bombs, we’ll return home by pretty much the same route in reverse. In all, it’ll be a twenty-three-hundred-mile roundtrip.”

  Someone in back issued a low whistle.

  Someone else said, “That’s at the extreme end of the Lib’s operating radius.”

  Baker walked back to the front edge of the briefing platform. “I know it is, gentlemen, and I’ll be frank. I’ve heard it said about this raid that coming back is secondary. Ploesti is that important. And not all of us will make it back, especially if we’ve suffered battle damage. A little bit of good news, however. We’re getting auxiliary fuel tanks installed in the bomb bays, so we’ll have a little extra range.”

  “And be flying incendiaries,” a voice said.

  The room fell silent.

  Al stood, and broke the silence. “So where does all this low-level practice figure in, sir?”

  “Good question, Captain. All five bombardment groups will cross the Med at low level to prevent radar detection. We’ll climb to ten thousand feet at Corfu, then stay at that altitude over Albania and Yugoslavia. Depending on the weather, we might have to go a bit higher crossing the Pindus Mountain Range along the Albania-Yugoslav border, but at this time of year the weather should be okay.

  “We’ll drop back down to three to five thousand feet in Romania until we reach the IPs. From there to the targets we’ll hug the terrain.”

  “Why low-level, sir? I gotta tell you, it sounds like suicide.”

  “The bombing has to be precise. Most of the targets are inside concussion walls. We’ve got to make absolutely certain we get our bombs inside those walls, otherwise we’re just blowing up buildings and making craters. We also want to minimize civilian casualties. Remember, they’re Romanians not Germans.”

  Al sat, leaned toward Sorey, and whispered, “Full bomb load, excessive fuel load, low-level flying that’ll burn fuel like crazy—this is madness. None of us will get home.”

  Sorey whispered back, “The brass don’t have to fly these m
issions. All they have to do is come up with these stupid-ass plans.”

  Outside, a B-24 cranked up its engines. The mechanical roar momentarily drowned out conversation among the men in the tent. Once the Lib had taxied away, Baker resumed his briefing.

  “I’ll go over the detailed attack procedures in a minute, but I want to touch on air defenses first. There have been no recent intel reports about antiaircraft defenses, but information from sources deemed reliable indicates the total number of heavy and medium flak guns is under one hundred.”

  As soon as Baker spoke the words, Al’s bullshit meter pegged. If Ploesti was indeed the “taproot of German might,” there’d be a lot more than “under one hundred” antiaircraft guns defending it. Even a second lieutenant could figure that out. He glanced at Sorey and rolled his eyes.

  Sorey leaned toward Al, shielded one side of his mouth with his hand, and spoke softly. “Even the weather guessers do a better job than the damn intel weenies.”

  Baker, on the platform, continued. “Specific info on balloon defenses is not available, but recent reports put the number at less than a hundred. They’re tethered by ordinary German-type three-millimeter cables. Another defensive tactic is expected to include smokescreens in the event of an attack. Also, we have reports that efforts have been made to camouflage the refineries by altering their vertical appearance, making them harder to identify.”

  “What about enemy fighters, Colonel?” a lieutenant in the front row asked.

  “There are six airfields around the refineries. Before we launch, we’ll get you updates on the number of aircraft located at those fields. It’s been reported that about half the fighters are manned by Germans, half by Romanians. But none has been in combat for at least a year, so they aren’t likely to be at their peak efficiency.