When Heroes Flew

by H W Buzz Bernard

  Fiegel sat in silence for a while, tapping a pencil softly on his desk. Finally he said, “Quite a story.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “You’ve no reason to lie. But it’s probably a story that shouldn’t go beyond you and me and your crew.”

  “Sir?” Al didn’t understand. It seemed to him that the tale of a Luftwaffe fighter pilot who’d spared his American enemy should be a headline maker.

  “While it’s a great story,” Fiegel responded, “one of bravery and honor and compassion, it’s one that would probably be better left untold until after the war is over. Couple of reasons. First, it might give American bomber crews a false sense of hope that in similar situations there might be other German pilots who would act the same way. I seriously doubt that’s the case, so it would be a dangerous mindset to harbor.

  “Second, we should probably think about the German, too, or at least his family. You know, wife, children, mother, father, brother, sister, whatever. It wouldn’t take much for the Luftwaffe to figure out who the pilot involved was, and once they did it could get really ugly for anyone connected to him, even in his military chain of command. The Gestapo and SS aren’t exactly your friendly local sheriffs.” Fiegel shook his head slowly, as if envisioning a firing squad or brutal prison camp.

  Al nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I get it. I guess the Germans wouldn’t necessarily hold him—his name was Egon Richter, by the way—in the same regard we do.”

  “They wouldn’t.” Fiegel glanced at the papers on his desk again. “Okay, just to clarify one thing, since the report seems a bit, uh, lacking in spots, you did shoot the German down, didn’t you?”

  “My waist gunner, Sergeant Ned Resser, a kid from Texas, nailed him with the last few rounds we had.”

  “So I guess the fighter pilot . . . Richter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Richter must have decided the battle was over for both of you. You were both going down, enough blood had been shed, so why not call it a day? Truce.”

  “That’s my take on it.”

  “I’ve heard rumors the Luftwaffe operates under its own code of honor, but I would never have expected something like this.”

  “I doubt it’s mentioned explicitly in the code,” Al said.

  Fiegel chuckled and slid the British Navy report off to one side of his desk and retrieved another set of papers.

  “On another matter,” he said, “I’d like to nominate you and your crew for Distinguished Service Crosses. What you accomplished was nothing short of remarkable. Getting your bombs on the target in Ploesti, fighting your way back to the Ionian Sea, knocking a Messerschmitt out of the sky when you were barely flying yourself. Absolutely astounding. Extraordinary. I applaud you, Captain Lycoming. You and your men.” Fiegel’s voice rang with sincerity and admiration.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “One small problem.”

  Al had a pretty good notion what that might be. Again he said, “Sir?”

  “I’ve gone over all the records and orders I could turn up and haven’t been able to find a Benjamin Smith, first or second lieutenant, listed anyplace. But you had him on your manifest as your copilot. Could you help me out here?”

  Al held his voice steady. He’d rehearsed his story. He hated lying, but in this case, something less than the whole truth might be the best policy. “Probably not, Colonel. We lost our copilot, Lieutenant Sorenson, to dysentery just before Tidal Wave launched. And you know how short of crews we were. This new guy turned up at the last minute. Said he was a replacement pilot from England. I really didn’t know anything about him, but we were desperate, so we kinda shanghaied the guy and jammed him into the right-hand seat. The mission always comes first, right, sir?”

  “Always.” Fiegel held Al in a steady gaze. “What happened to him?”

  “After the raid, after the Brits fished us out of the drink, he said he should probably return to his original unit in England.”

  “And that was?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “I see. And I suppose you didn’t get his serial number either?”

  “Sorry, sir. I guess I had other things on my mind.”

  “I’m sure you did.” Fiegel retrieved the Naval report from the edge of his desk and studied it once more. “It says here a female, who identified herself as a nurse, was pulled out of the water along with Oregon Grinder’s other survivors. A nurse. Really?”

  “A volunteer observer.”

  “I wasn’t aware we had any female nurses in Benghazi.”

  Al swallowed hard.

  Fiegel continued. “Apparently she went back to England, too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fiegel, looking pensive, leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him. He remained silent for a short while before speaking again. “You know, there was a WAFS pilot who flew in here a couple of weeks before the raid. She’s the one who landed the B-24 without hydraulics.”

  “I know,” Al said. “I watched the landing. A lot of guys would have struggled doing what she did. She made it look like a grease job.”

  “But I don’t suppose you would ever, not in million years, consider taking a WAFS pilot on a combat mission, would you?”

  Al attempted to sound offended. “That would be highly irregular, sir.”

  “Yes, it would be.”

  “Besides, it would have been impossible.” Al recalled the conversation he and Vivian had had prior to Tidal Wave.

  “How’s that, Captain?”

  “Well, since WAFS aren’t allowed to transport planes overseas, Miss Wright could never have been here. Correct? And if she were never here, she certainly couldn’t have flown on the Ploesti raid. Agreed?”

  Fiegel sighed. “I think what you’re saying is, like the tale of the German not blowing you out of the sky, some stories are better left untold.”

  “At least for a long time.”

  Fiegel drummed his fingers on the desk. “Well, I’m afraid I won’t be able to put ‘Lieutenant Smith’ in for a Distinguished Service Cross if we can’t find him. It’s a shame.”

  “It is, sir.”

  “Okay, one final item you can help me with.”

  Al waited. A heavy truck rumbled by on the road outside the tent, and a mini-dust storm blustered into the interior, coating everything in a fine, brown grit. Colonel Fiegel seemed not to notice. Perhaps he’d become acclimatized to such events.

  “You were on Lieutenant Colonel Baker’s wing when he and Major Jerstad went down in Hell’s Wench, correct?”

  “I was. And I have to tell you, sir, I’ve never witnessed bravery such as those two men displayed on their run-in to Ploesti. Their plane was fully engulfed in flames. Normal human beings would have bailed out. But they pressed on, jettisoned their bomb load, and as Colonel Baker had promised, led the Traveling Circus to the oil refineries before they crashed.” Al shook his head in slow motion, still amazed at what he had seen. He knew he would never forget. “I could have never done anything like that, Colonel,” he added.

  “Few men could have. That’s why I’m putting them in for the Medal of Honor.”

  “That should be a lead-pipe cinch.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Al stared at Fiegel. “What?”

  “I’ve heard rumors that at high levels there are some people who think maybe Baker’s actions to break formation and then hit the wrong targets, ones not assigned to the Circus, make him ineligible for the award.”

  Al leaped to his feet. “For Christ’s sake, sir, he broke formation because Colonel Compton fucked up and headed in the wrong direction.”

  “Captain, take it easy. Sit down. And be careful about saying who fucked up. We don’t have all the facts yet.”

  “Sorry, sir.” Al sat. “It’s just that I was there. I saw what happened. The Liberandos turned at the wrong IP and headed for Bucharest, not Ploesti. Colonel Baker had the guts to break off that goofy follow-the-leader shit we were d
oing and take the Circus to the right target. Yeah, we didn’t hit the refinery assigned to us, but given there was more flak than breathable air over Ploesti, I think we did a hell of a job.”

  “You did. I don’t disagree. And that’s why I need your help. The more first-hand, eyewitness input I can get about what happened, the better the chances the award will have of getting approved. I share your outrage that people who didn’t have their lives on the line, who weren’t taking fire, who didn’t have a dog in the fight, would make a technical judgment regarding the bravery of men who sacrificed everything.”

  “I agree one hundred percent. I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

  “Good. I’ll make arrangements to get you and your crew back to England within the next few days.”

  “Thank you, sir. And I know this isn’t how you wanted to assume command of the Circus, but congratulations. I’m looking forward to serving under you.”

  “I appreciate that, Captain. See you back at Hardwick. Okay, that’s all. Dismissed.”

  Al stood and saluted.

  Colonel Fiegel returned the salute.

  Al pivoted and walked toward the tent’s exit.

  Just as he prepared to step out, he heard Fiegel call after him, “And if you ever turn up anything on Lieutenant Benjamin Smith—initials B.S., I might note—please let me know.”

  Al almost gagged. B.S.? He’d never thought about that when he’d come up with the off-the-cuff name for his couldn’t-have-really-been-there copilot.

  “I will, sir,” he choked out, “but I suspect that might be a lost cause.”

  “Why do I think you’re right about that?” Fiegel responded in a subdued tone.

  Al walked out of the tent into the sun, heat, and dust of Benghazi. He looked forward to his return to the green coolness of England.

  27

  Casper Army Air Base, Wyoming

  Early 1944

  Al, flying out of England with the Eighth Air Force, completed his twenty-five combat missions and returned to the States in early 1944. Promoted to major, he became heavily involved in training B-24 crews at Casper (Wyoming) Army Air Base. Sarah and Al Junior joined him there, where they remained until the end of the war.

  Shortly after being posted to Casper, Al learned that Lieutenant Colonel Addison Baker, the pilot of Hell’s Wench and commander of the Traveling Circus, and his copilot, Major John Jerstad, had both posthumously been awarded the Medal of Honor, America's highest and most prestigious military decoration.

  Al also heard that despite the objections of some high-ranking officers that Baker’s actions—breaking formation and bombing an unassigned target—should have disqualified him for the medal, that the words of the men who had flown with Baker and witnessed his bravery and leadership ended up overriding any opposition. To Al, Baker and Jerstad represented the very essence of what the Medal of Honor stood for.

  In addition to Colonel Baker and Major Jerstad, three other individuals who had flown on the Ploesti raid received the Medal of Honor. The five medals were the most ever awarded for a single mission on a single day.

  Though he had met them only once or twice, Al knew two of the other recipients, Colonel John Riley Kane, “Killer” Kane, and Colonel Leon William Johnson. Both of the colonels, Kane of the Pyramiders, Johnson of the Flying Eight Balls, had courageously led their respective bomb groups into the hell of Ploesti and murderous antiaircraft fire that awaited them there. Both of the officers and their crews survived the mission, though Kane’s Liberator, Hail Columbia, crash landed on Cyprus while attempting to make it back to Benghazi.

  The fifth Medal of Honor for the Ploesti attack, like those awarded to Baker and Jerstad, came posthumously to Second Lieutenant Lloyd “Pete” Hughes, a young pilot with the Sky Scorpions.

  In addition to the five Medals of Honor awarded for Tidal Wave, all men who flew the mission received either a Distinguished Service Cross or Silver Star.

  Al’s proudest postscript to the raid, though he would relate it only if asked, was that every crew member of Oregon Grinder—the mysterious Lieutenant Smith excepted—became the recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross.

  Four hundred and thirty survivors of the raid received Purple Hearts, the military decoration awarded to those wounded or killed in combat. Among the survivors, Al and his tail gunner, Sergeant Billy Cummings of Sumter, South Carolina, each received the decoration.

  Al knew full well his copilot had earned a Purple Heart, too, taking a piece of shrapnel to her head, but since she hadn’t officially flown the raid . . .

  Shortly after receiving his Purple Heart, Al boxed it up and sent it to Vivian care of the WASPs—Women Airforce Service Pilots—in Sweetwater, Texas. The WAFS, for which Vivian had been flying at the time of Ploesti, had been absorbed by the WASPs upon their formation just a few days after the Ploesti raid in August 1943.

  He advised Vivian it would be okay to display the decoration, but also suggested she should remain vague about exactly how she’d earned it.

  The cost of Operation Tidal Wave had been horrendous. Three hundred and ten men lost their lives. Over one hundred were taken prisoner after crash landing in Romania.

  Forty-one B-24s were shot from the sky by withering antiaircraft fire and relentless enemy fighter assaults. Only half the bombers, eighty-nine, made it back to Benghazi in the immediate aftermath of the raid. Of those eighty-nine, only thirty-three proved to be combat ready the following day. Most had been too heavily damaged to be able to fly another mission without extensive repairs or maintenance.

  Twenty-two Liberators landed at other locations, spots such as Cyprus, Malta, Sicily, and Palestine. Eight ended up interned in Turkey, three crashed while attempting to make it back to North Africa.

  The mission marked the end of low-level bombing ventures against Ploesti. Now only high-level missions, as in the rest of Europe, appeared in the skies over Romania. Al assumed some of the men he now trained would get their chance to attack “the taproot of German might.” He hoped none, however, would go through the hell he did.

  A question often asked in the aftermath of the raid, one Al often posed to himself, had it been worth it? Had Operation Tidal Wave been a success? He didn’t know. How in the hell do you balance the loss of human life against refining capacity? There is no objective measure for that.

  Al knew there were many who looked solely at the numbers, the statistics on the bombing efficacy of Tidal Wave that indicated only forty-two percent of Ploesti’s refining capacity had been destroyed. Worse, he’d heard that after six months, the damage levied by the Americans had been repaired and the refineries put back on-line . . . churning out more petroleum products than before the raid.

  Al maintained his own definition of success. Despite the mission getting colossally fucked up, the target had been hit. American airmen had, in the face of ramparts of death, exhibited remarkable ingenuity and exceptional bravery. That, to Al, defined success, and always would. Operation Tidal Wave would always remain the most memorable accomplishment of his life.

  Epilogue

  United States of America

  1946 to 1973

  Al, like millions of other men, mustered out of the service in 1946. He returned to Oregon where he went to work for the US Forest Service. By the early 1970s, he’d become head of the Pacific Northwest regional office located in Portland.

  He kept track, as best he could, of the men he’d flown with on Oregon Grinder.

  George, the plane’s navigator and Al’s best friend, returned to Brooklyn where he became a novelist, penning dramas based on his war experiences. While he met with a modicum of success, he found he couldn’t compete with the likes of Herman Wouk (The Caine Mutiny), James Joyce (From Here to Eternity), Leon Uris (Battle Cry), and Nicholas Monsarrat (The Cruel Sea).

  He discussed with Al whether to do a tell-all about Oregon Grinder and Ploesti, but they both decided, even with the war a quarter century in the rearview mirror, that the story of the r
aid and their tales surrounding it—a female pilot in combat, a Luftwaffe officer who had spared American lives—remained a bit too controversial to put in front of the general public, let alone a military audience.

  George instead turned to writing noir mysteries and found his true calling. Two of his novels made it to the silver screen, one starring Humphrey Bogart and the other Jimmy Stewart, who, ironically, had flown B-24s in the war.

  Sorey, Oregon Grinder’s copilot, except on the Ploesti mission, hooked up with Western Airlines and did quite well, remaining with the airline as it grew from a large regional operation into a major carrier. Last Al heard, Sorey, now a captain, flew a regular route between Anchorage, Alaska, and Seattle. And true to their vow made during the war, Al and Sorey and their families attended the Pendleton Roundup as often as they could.

  Kenny Brightman, the bombardier from Georgia Tech, became an engineering professor at North Carolina State University (formerly North Carolina State College) in Raleigh. He sent Al a Christmas card every year, highlighting the events of the previous twelve months.

  Billy Cummings, the tail gunner from South Carolina, recovered from his head wound—though he suffered a mild case of what later became known as PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—then took advantage of the GI Bill by returning to college. He earned a degree in psychology, went into the real estate business, and hooked up with some guys trying to develop an island in the Low Country of the state into a high-end resort. Al had never heard of the place, Hilton Head Island, and hoped Billy knew what he was doing. Real estate development . . . easy way to lose your shirt, Al thought.

  Blaine Witkowski, Stumpy, the bottom turret gunner, returned to New Jersey where he founded a chain of successful steak houses. One thing he told Al, he always made sure he had a good stash of Mosel Valley wines in his restaurants, in deference to the German who had spared their lives.