Forgotten Fifteenth

by Barrett Tillman

  The AAF conducted a survey of more than eleven hundred B-17 crew casualties in 1944. The results were surprising. Ball turret gunners, exposed to the world while hanging beneath the aircraft, represented less than 6 percent of all aircrewmen killed or wounded. Curled up in their cramped cocoon (forty-four inches in diameter), sitting on steel behind two-inch laminated glass, they were well protected.

  Especially vulnerable were bombardiers (17.6 percent of casualties) and navigators (12.2 percent), who rode in the nose, most exposed both to flak and fighters, especially when Luftwaffe squadrons began making head-on company front attacks. Similarly, tail gunners—inevitably the primary target of enemy fighters attacking from behind—took 12.5 percent of the killed and wounded.39

  THE WEATHER WAR, CONTINUED

  Despite the coalition’s best-laid plans, the supposedly balmy Mediterranean climate offered no advantage over the fogbound British Isles. Most of Europe had cloud cover 85 percent of the year—310 days. Italy, presumably, was sunnier, but not by much. In its first two months of operations, the Fifteenth launched worthwhile heavy bomber missions on thirty days versus twenty-six by the Eighth (excluding harassment missions and leaflet drops). Italian-based B-25 and B-26 medium bombers flew more missions, but they could not achieve what Allied planners desired, and only ten of the Fifteenth’s missions struck beyond Italy.40

  Veterans of North Africa required some adjustment to the Italian climate. Tunisian summer temperatures ranged between sixty and 105 degrees Fahrenheit in 1943, with five days of rain or fog per month. November’s range was a pleasant fifty-three to seventy-seven, with thirteen days of poor weather. In contrast, Foggia’s temperatures in late 1943 ran from barely above freezing to seventy-five degrees, with twenty days of rain or fog in December.41

  The Foggia plain was scenic but it could be hostile. Winter brought a blanket of snow little different from Britain’s. Mostly living under canvas, men stuffed their “ticking” with straw for mattresses and often slept fully clothed. Aircrews often wore flight suits to bed, and some scrounged used parachutes since the silk or nylon provided extra warmth. Tents were heated by improvised stoves fueled with oil drained from the sumps of aircraft engines. Warm months brought dysentery and malaria.

  At year end Doolittle had nine operational airfields, including the administrative base at Foggia itself. The satellite fields mostly lay within thirty-five miles northwest to southeast of Foggia. Most of two bomb wings were gathered around Foggia, including four B-17 groups of the Fifth Wing. Three Liberator outfits of the Forty-seventh Wing also were on hand in time to spend the holidays in Italy. The irony was not lost on the men—many observing their first Christmas outside America, dropping ordnance on their fellow men. Actually, the results were desultory, as B-26s and “heavies” attacked rail yards in northern Italy without notable effect. Some planes failed to find any targets through the weather.

  In December 1943 the Fifteenth Air Force counted 4,500 officers and 26,880 men with 739 B-24s and 200 B-17s with 1,115 crews. The latter represented 35 percent of the force’s total personnel of 31,380. Doolittle wielded a sizeable command, but it was still feeling its way while anticipating great events in the coming year.42

  A DISTANT GOAL

  In its first two months, the Fifteenth lost more than seventy aircraft including twenty-six Lightnings. But transfers affected inventory more than attrition did. With the departure of the B-25s in November, the Fifteenth numbered 564 aircraft, 5,000 officers, and 33,000 men. Jimmy Doolittle thus ended the year with 370 fewer aircraft than when he began.43

  At year’s end, for the Eighth and the Fifteenth, strategic bombardment remained a massive asset in search of an achievable mission. Some important targets had sustained heavy blows, but none was destroyed. Air commanders were beginning to grasp the unpleasant reality of strategic bombing: there was no magic bullet, no airborne stake to be driven through the monster’s industrial heart. Each target would have to be struck again and again, until at length the Axis’s pulse ceased.

  On December 31, 1943, that goal was still a long way off.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE WINTER WAR

  JANUARY–MARCH 1944

  On January 3, 1944, only two months after establishing the Fifteenth, Jimmy Doolittle turned the command over to Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining. “General Jimmy” was headed for England to replace Ira Eaker as commander of the Eighth Air Force. Eaker was taking over the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, a position he would retain almost until V-E Day. Doolittle, who had had a rocky start with the commander of the European Theater, later wrote, “I was pleased that I had finally sold myself to Ike.”1

  TWINING

  Forty-six-year-old Nathan F. Twining, whose family had served its country since before the Revolution, had the military in his DNA. His older brother was a naval officer and his younger brother a Marine Corps general. An uncle, also Nathan, had been an admiral.

  A lifelong outdoorsman, Twining had enjoyed a rural Wisconsin upbringing. In 1916, as a young rifleman, he was drawn to the Oregon National Guard, which emphasized marksmanship. His unit was activated that year for the Punitive Expedition in pursuit of the Mexican bandit jefe Pancho Villa. The army failed to catch its man, but the expedition was not entirely fruitless, for it gave Corporal Twining his first exposure to aircraft.

  The promising youngster received an appointment to West Point but missed the Great War, graduating a week before the 1918 armistice. He finished in the top 40 percent of his 311-man class, earning notice for football and hockey.

  An infantry officer, Twining applied for pilot training four years running, and his persistence paid off. He pinned on his silver wings in 1924 and immediately became a flight instructor. Twining proved an inspiring teacher: he passed up Christmas leave to help a student overcome an injury, earning the man’s lifelong loyalty. The subordinate, Elwood Quesada, who became a lieutenant general, recalled, “I never knew Nate to indulge in a self-serving act as a junior officer or a senior officer.”2

  During the 1930s Twining commanded two attack squadrons and survived Franklin Roosevelt’s disastrous attempt to have the army take over civilian airmail flights. He continued his professional education with courses at the Air Corps Tactical School and the Command and General Staff College, where colleagues recognized him as a comer.

  Known as an able staff officer, Nate Twining worked under Hap Arnold in the Army Air Corps’s building period, 1940–1942. He was promoted to brigadier general in June 1942 and gained a combat command, leading the Thirteenth Air Force in the Southwest Pacific for most of 1943.

  The veteran airman nearly lost his life early that year. Flying from Guadalcanal to New Caledonia, his B-17 ran out of fuel and was ditched in the ocean. Twining and thirteen others survived six days at sea before rescue. At year’s end he took leave in the States and was unexpectedly tapped for the Fifteenth Air Force. Though he had clashed with Arnold during a pioneering flight to Alaska in 1934, the AAF chief appreciated his Pacific record. Twining asked to spend Christmas with his family, and Arnold “compromised” by allowing him to spend the morning at home. Then he boarded a transport plane for Italy.

  The new commander arrived during a time of transition in the European air war. On January 1, 1944, the Eighth and Fifteenth were placed under Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz as commander of United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe (USSTAF). In turn, “Tooey” Spaatz reported to British air marshal Sir Charles Portal, air representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Britain.

  American air commanders now faced a two-front political war. They devoutly wished to avoid the control of Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, the accomplished political infighter and dagger man heading the Allied Expeditionary Air Forces in the forthcoming invasion of France. Similarly, they wanted to be relatively free of the U.S. Army Ground Forces, which meant Eisenhower. Yearning to demonstrate what strategic bombing could accomplish, the airmen hoped to keep the distraction of supporting the l
and war to a minimum.

  When Twining relieved Doolittle, the Fifteenth organizational chart was filled in. Twining’s chief of staff was Brigadier General Robert K. Taylor, an experienced administrator who had served briefly in England. Brigadier General Charles F. Born was Twining’s “A-3,” assistant chief of staff for operations and training. A former cavalryman and West Point assistant football coach, he arrived in a lateral move from XII Bomber Command.

  A key player was Major Roy W. Nelson Jr., who had been weather officer of North African Coastal Command. A fast climber, he was less than four years out of West Point when he joined the original Fifteenth Air Force staff. Given the Joint Chiefs’ expectation that the Italian climate would permit more flying than Britain, Nelson’s responsibilities were grave.

  Meanwhile, Doolittle had built the Fifteenth to 37,700 men, including 1,100 crews for more than 900 heavy bombers. A heavy bomb group was eventually allocated 465 officers and about 1,800 men—a total of some 2,260, including nearly a thousand crewmen. Twining took that inheritance and built upon it, for building was necessary. Early in the new year, he obtained essential support infrastructure of two air depots and three air service groups with more to come.

  Maintenance kept an air force moving. In Italy as elsewhere, combat squadrons and groups provided organic first- and second-echelon maintenance and repairs at the unit and base level. Service groups provided third-echelon aircraft maintenance plus material and engineering support to combat units. Fourth-echelon depot-level work—heavy maintenance and complete engine overhauls—was beyond the capacities of combat and service groups. Newly arrived aircraft often passed through depots to ensure compliance with recent requirements.

  Combat missions were conducted by aircrews, but no flying was possible without the “wrench benders” on the flight line and in the hangar—the men who skinned their knuckles trying to dislodge a stubborn cotter pin, who had permanent grime under their fingernails from changing oil or greasing brake pads.

  With most of the airfield construction finished or nearing completion, airmen had more time for recreation. Bingo games became a popular indoor activity, safely out of Foggia’s cloying mud if not free of chilling temperatures. In January the Fourteenth Fighter Group reported, “Italians are working on a permanent kitchen with cement foundation and brick walls. The 48th [Squadron] bar is being put up at one end of the long mess hall.”3

  Twining enjoyed opulent quarters in Bari: a four-story building overlooking the harbor and a carpeted office with a large, modern desk and draperies flanked by maps and organizational charts. But he was no rear-echelon commander. He took pains to encourage his command, preferring a personal touch when possible. He made the awarding of medals and commendations an opportunity to assess personnel, morale, and readiness. Nevertheless, Twining cut his airmen little slack. Surveying the units on hand and those en route, he wanted new bomb groups to fly a combat mission within ten days of arrival, men and aircraft permitting.

  BOMBING CIVILIANS

  Early in the new year, the Fifteenth was ordered to bomb Balkan cities, especially the capitals Bucharest, Romania, and Sofia, Bulgaria. The administrative and transportation centers of each city were legitimate targets, but their civilian population areas seemed another matter to some fliers.

  Neutral until 1941, Bulgaria joined the Axis but retained diplomatic relations with Moscow until September 1944. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff thought that hammering Sofia might inflict enough psychological and political damage to prompt Bulgaria’s withdrawal from the Axis.4

  The Twelfth Air Force had first sent B-25s against Sofia in November 1943, and the Fifteenth attacked rail yards through the end of the year. None of the missions inflicted substantial damage, raising doubts that the result was worth the effort. The early missions had disrupted the city’s life and forced thousands to evacuate. But the government was no more responsive to civilian wishes than were other Axis regimes, and it remained in Germany’s orbit.

  Despite Bulgaria’s stubborn resistance, Allied air commanders persisted in their effort to force its submission. On January 10 aircrews were briefed to bomb obviously non-military areas. The 301st Group noted, “Some airmen were not too happy about bombing civilians, but ‘orders seem to be orders.’”

  The 140 Fortress crews followed orders and strewed 418 tons of ordnance across the capital. A bombardier recorded, “We were ordered to string our bombs through the downtown, which we did. News reports said much damage and a panic among the people.”5 The Fifteenth’s strike was followed by a Royal Air Force attack that night. Residential areas were destroyed, utilities were seriously interrupted, fires blazed out of control, and many civilian workers were unwilling to return for a week. Nevertheless, the city continued to function, so the bombers would return.

  SUPPORTING SALERNO

  On January 22, Twining’s airmen were briefed for attacks on transport centers along Italy’s north-south communications routes. Stalled around Salerno on the west coast, the Allies opted for a seaborne envelopment, going ashore at Anzio, seventy miles from Rome. The Second Group laid down an excellent bomb pattern on the Campoleone railway station, smothering rail lines, bridges, and a transformer station.

  Free of flak and fighters, bomber crews coming off coastal targets gaped at the assemblage of sea power off Anzio: ninety ships plus landing craft embarking forty thousand Allied soldiers. The Twelfth Air Force flew interdiction missions, trying to prevent German reinforcements from reaching the beachhead. Lightnings searched at low level, strafing trains and vehicles.

  Initially the landings met almost no resistance, but a ferocious German counterattack brought the Allied advance to a sudden halt. On February 17 the Fifteenth dropped nearly a thousand tons on German positions, also targeting enemy logistics in northern Italy and France. But the Army Air Forces had bigger tasks than supporting ground forces, and Twining’s bombardiers would soon have more important targets in their crosshairs.

  ESCORTS

  Twining brought along a former Thirteenth Air Force subordinate, Brigadier General Dean Strother, to run fighter operations. Consequently, Strother established the 306th Fighter Wing at Fano with authority over the four existing groups.

  The fighters’ mission was to protect the bombers, and the Fifteenth generally adhered to the doctrine of close escort that Eaker had imposed when running the Eighth. With only four groups, however, Strother was limited in his immediate options and could not yet duplicate Doolittle’s aggressive policy for British-based fighters.

  There was more to the escort mission than simply running interference. The Fifteenth’s intelligence shop analyzed German radio traffic and determined that interceptors tried to hit the heavies about fifteen minutes before they crossed the target. Consequently, on January 30 the Americans shifted tactics, putting fighters over half a dozen Luftwaffe fields around Udine in northeastern Italy.

  Bob Baseler’s 325th Group had flown thirty-seven previous missions in P-47s without much luck, clashing with German fighters only six times. The dry spell ended spectacularly on January 30, when the Fifteenth bombed enemy airfields around Udine. Baseler proposed a maximum effort with sixty planes, flying low over the Adriatic to avoid enemy radar, then climbing “on top” and dead reckoning above the clouds. His navigation was perfect: arriving ahead of the bombers, he caught gaggles of enemy aircraft swarming up to meet the B-17s. From a beautiful altitude perch, the Thunderbolts waded in.

  The result was bedlam. For thirty-five minutes the Checkertails chased a variety of “bandits” amid a promiscuous barrage from German flak gunners. The opposition offered a smorgasbord of Axis aircraft: eight types of fighters, bombers, transports, and liaison planes.

  Captain Herschel Green, a twenty-three-year-old Kentucky sharpshooter who had honed his aim in P-40s, perfected his technique in Thunderbolts. Previously grounded with malaria, he shook off the bug and waded into a flock of trimotor Junkers 52s fleeing the area.

  Green told rapt reporters, “W
hen we spotted the Ju 52s beneath us, I was so anxious to get to them that I dove too fast and passed them over. I turned and came back to the first four. It was like climbing steps, shooting all the way. All four blew up in my face. I then chased a Macchi 202 at treetop level before catching him after a five-minute chase.”6

  Reforming his flight, Green caught a Dornier bomber, his sixth kill of the flight. His three wingmen claimed seven more. Herky Green became the Fifteenth’s first ace and the first “ace in a day.” There would only be two others.

  In all, eighteen of Baseler’s pilots claimed thirty-seven planes for the loss of two. The Eighty-second Group Lightnings, escorting Liberators, tangled with some aggressive Messerschmitts and claimed six. Major Charles Spencer, a squadron commander flying his last mission, downed a 109 but was last seen descending out of control. In contrast, Lieutenant Maurice Morrell scored on his first mission.

  January 30 established a benchmark: forty-five shootdowns in one day remained the Fifteenth’s record for the rest of the war.

  BOMBER BOXES

  Twining’s command, though new, was maturing. Shortly after arriving, he had decided upon a smaller tactical formation than the Eighth, which had a far greater proportion of B-17 groups. The Liberator usually cruised five thousand feet lower than the Fortress, as the hefty B-24 became sluggish at higher altitudes. Whereas VIII Bomber Command employed a fifty-four-plane formation, the Fifteenth (which had no separate bomber command) favored forty planes in a six-box arrangement. Two twenty-plane components flew in trail, each comprising three squadron boxes. The center squadron with six planes, called “Able Box,” was led by the mission commander with his deputy as a wingman. On either side were seven bombers: Baker Box to the right and Charlie to the left. The second element was similarly composed with Dog, Easy, and Fox Boxes.