Forgotten Fifteenth

by Barrett Tillman

  “I dragged the airplane in on the landing approach,” Brown said. “We made what I thought was a pretty good power-on, nose-high landing on the right wheel. When the plane touched and slowed, the left wheel came down and we veered to the left on the strip . . . Upon impact the nose wheel collapsed and we skidded to a stop with the nose telescoping up towards the flight deck. I can remember watching the nose section coming up and hoping that the plane would stop before our legs were crushed by the instrument panel. After an eternity, we stopped.”

  The group commander, Colonel Robert Eaton, expressed concern over the nonstandard parachute braking procedure, but Brown noted, “We completed the landing with no further injuries to the crew.”35

  THE LUFTWAFFE IN CRISIS

  While American airmen enjoyed more amenities on the Foggia fields, their Luftwaffe counterparts faced a grim present and an uncertain future.

  When German fighters rose to defend petroleum targets, the Jagdwaffe’s mission was twofold: to protect the Reich’s vital lifeblood and to permit air operations to continue. Both proved a losing battle.

  Faced with reduced oil in 1944, the Luftwaffe had no choice but to cut training—the bedrock of every air force. Hundreds of bomber pilots converted to fighters, but they could not make up the deficit among growing monthly losses. Something had to give, and that meant training hours.

  The 1944 Luftwaffe curriculum was cut to 111 hours over eight months—half the figure of two years before. Many new Jagdflieger reported to their units with merely twenty hours in Messerschmitts or Focke-Wulfs. In contrast, their newly arrived opponents averaged about five hundred hours, often with more than two hundred in fighters with far better gunnery training.36

  The Yanks also were better trained in instrument flying—a crucial skill in cloudy European skies. Thus, by summer 1944 the typical German fighter pilot was triple damned: outnumbered by better-trained opponents flying generally superior aircraft.37

  KILLING BOMBERS

  With fewer well-trained fighter pilots, the German Air Force needed a simple yet effective way to shoot down four-engine bombers. The answer had been found in Northern Europe in late 1942 when Focke-Wulf 190 pilots began attacking Viermots head-on rather than from behind. The originator of the procedure, Lieutenant Colonel Egon Mayer, was credited with twenty-six bombers before his death in 1944.38

  Frontal attacks on bomber formations had the advantage of concentrating the firepower of multiple fighters on the few targets at the head of the stream. Sweeping in three, four, or more abreast, the Jagdflieger accepted the limited firing time in a combined 400 mph closing speed or more. If they pressed close enough, their concentrated machinegun and cannon ammunition could cripple or kill a four-engine plane in seconds.

  However, the Americans took corrective measures. In B-17G models, a remotely operated “chin” turret was mounted with two .50 calibers able to sweep the forward quarter of airspace. Aimed by the bombardier, the new turret augmented the top and belly turrets that also could shoot straight ahead.

  One of the senior Luftwaffe leaders was Colonel Johannes Steinhoff, who commanded Jagdgeschwader 77 in the Mediterranean. A thirty-one-year-old sophisticate considered one of the handsomest men in the Luftwaffe, he spoke impeccable English and enjoyed hosting downed opponents. His combat philosophy was based upon centration—maintaining one’s own force while dispersing the enemy. Collisions occurred, but determined fighters pressing their attacks through the formation often caused individual bombers to break away, trying to avoid collisions. A lone bomber was easy meat.

  In describing the challenge of destroying four-engine bombers, Steinhoff said, “The best way to attack a bomber is from directly overhead because the gunners cannot get a good shot at you, and it gives the fighter a bigger target and more firing time. But that required more training than we could afford, especially with fuel shortages. So we used the company front technique.”39

  A junior pilot in JG 3 was Lieutenant Oskar Boesch, who volunteered for the wing’s Sturmstaffel, the squadron sworn to ram bombers if pilots ran out of ammunition. Describing the ramming mindset, he recalled, “You are twenty years old and you think you are rough and tough. You can drink all night and please the girls, then in the morning you climb into your 190 with a huge hangover. You turn the oxygen regulator to 100 percent, and when you take off to engage 500 Viermots, you are immediately sober!”40

  British and American airmen flew a specified number of combat hours or missions before rotating out, perhaps to return, perhaps not. The Germans had no such luxury. Perennially short of experienced men, the Luftwaffe left many pilots in combat indefinitely. The Darwinian nature of the air war produced enormous casualties, but it also yielded a few hundred Experten, unexcelled masters of aerial combat.

  Yet even the heroes with Knight’s Crosses at their throats sustained losses. Lieutenant Franz Stigler, who finished the war in jets, said that he was shot down so often that he should have received paratrooper pay. The top bomber slayer, Major Georg-Peter Eder, was downed seventeen times, sustaining wounds on all but three occasions. Yet he thrived against the Viermots, credited with thirty-six among his total seventy-eight.41

  Sergeant Konrad Bauer was shot down seven times, losing two fingers on his right hand while downing fourteen bombers.

  Not even vision problems grounded some determined aces. Lieutenant Ekkehard Tichy continued flying after being wounded in one eye and collided with his ninth bomber, possibly owing to impaired depth perception.

  Lieutenant Hans-Heinrich Koenig was half-blinded as a night fighter but converted to day flying and ran his tally to twenty Viermots, when he was killed attacking a B-17 at close range.

  Likewise, Lieutenant Rudolf Klemm lost an eye to “friendly” flak but continued flying to lead a squadron.

  Major Gunther Specht, barely five feet tall, led a wing despite the loss of an eye and died fighting over Belgium in 1945.

  In all, nine of the top twenty-five bomber killers died in action—a 40-percent casualty rate.42

  In the second half of 1943, with an average 4-percent loss rate, it had been statistically impossible for many U.S. bomber crews to complete a twenty-five-mission tour. But in the first half of 1944, the attrition lines had crossed on the air war chart. In May, with Mustangs fully operational, Luftwaffe losses reached 25 percent pilots and 50 percent aircraft per month. The Jagdflieger had become an endangered species: the strategic air campaign could only go one way, and the tide ran increasingly against Germany.43

  CHAPTER FOUR

  EAST TO PLOESTI

  APRIL–JUNE 1944

  The Fifteenth Air Force had a priority target: oil. In fact, the Second World War was about oil. The war would not have been possible without it.

  The importance of oil had been recognized decades earlier. Shortly after the Great War, the French diplomat Victor Henri Berenger wrote, “He who owns the oil will own the world, for he will rule the sea by means of the heavy oils, the air by means of the ultra-refined oils, and the land by means of petrol and the illuminating oils. And, in addition to these, he will rule his fellow men in an economic sense, by reason of the fantastic wealth he will derive from oil.”1

  Oil was first refined in Scotland nearly ninety years before World War II erupted in Europe, but the first commercially successful refinery opened at Campina, Romania, in 1857, ironically (in view of later events) with heavy American financing. Campina was a few miles north of a city called Ploesti.

  The world’s dependence upon petroleum grew enormously over the next six decades, and oil and gasoline fueled the twentieth-century engines of war. Navies began converting from coal- to oil-fired ships before World War I, and fuel oil was essential to submarines. The importance of fossil fuels grew with the number of military vehicles and aircraft. By 1914, no major nation could conduct conventional warfare without a petroleum industry. The only major mode of transportation not reliant on oil was the railroads, which in Europe remained largely steam powered until mid-c
entury.

  Anticipating a shortage of oil, Germany developed synthetic petroleum before the war and in 1940 established ties with Romania. Hitler’s eastward drive in 1942 was aimed at the oil fields of the Caucasus rather than Moscow.

  In 1941 the Roosevelt administration embargoed oil and gasoline shipments to Japan in response to Tokyo’s depredations in China. Because America provided 80 percent of Japan’s fuel, the geopolitical clock was running: the Imperial Navy had perhaps two years’ worth of oil stockpiled. The attack on Pearl Harbor, accordingly, was intended to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet while the emperor’s forces seized the petroleum wealth of the East Indies. In Asia as in Europe, oil determined the fate of nations.

  FROM CRUDE TO GASOLINE

  Refining oil was, and is, a complex process. The crude product undergoes atmospheric distillation to separate water and chemicals, and under intense heat it produces a variety of fuels.

  Petroleum distillation produces three main products, depending on how they are separated into fractions, or distillates. Light distillates are most valued, as they include gasoline, especially the high-octane variety used in aviation. Middle distillates include diesel and kerosene, while heavier distillates provide fuel oil and lubricating oils. Heavy products, requiring less refining, are cheaper to produce than the lighter fractions.

  The refineries of Europe produced different types of petroleum, but they all shared a basic design. Crude oil was super-heated, to as much as six hundred degrees centigrade (1,100° Fahrenheit) and pumped into a distillation tower, where the heavier fractions sank to the bottom and gases rose to the top. A cracking unit broke large hydrocarbons into smaller ones, yielding gas oil and lubricating oil. A refinery required one or more boiler houses, generators, and pumping stations, plus many pipes and holding tanks.

  Through much of the war, bombers targeted specific portions of a refinery, but inevitably the effort was wasted. With decent visibility, a crew could land some of its bombs inside the refinery’s bounds, but striking a boiler house, for instance, was difficult. Eventually airmen learned to “hold in the middle” and trust in the unavoidable dispersion of bombing.

  The heart of Axis oil production was Ploesti, a city of eighty thousand located thirty-five miles north of Bucharest. Around 1900, Romania had become the first exporter of gasoline, and by 1941 ten major refineries surrounded Ploesti. Those refineries, in order of importance, were Astra Romana, Concordia Vega, Romana Americana, Phoenix, Colombia Aquila and Creditul Minier (at Brazi), Standard Petrol, Unirea Sperantza, Xenia, and Dacia Romana.

  Prewar British assessments had identified the Ploesti complex as a vital target, but it lay far beyond the range of bombers based in Britain, and Greece fell to the Nazis before any missions could be mounted. The RAF’s first bombing campaign against oil sites, in 1940–41, accomplished nothing. The effort lacked aircraft, bombs, and especially persistence.

  The Soviets had flown some small-scale missions against Ploesti after Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, and ten American bombers had struck the Astra Romana plant in June 1942. None of those raids accomplished much. It was clear that a far stronger effort was required.

  TIDAL WAVE

  Thus began the notorious mission of August 1, 1943. Operation Tidal Wave was a spectacular low-level attack against the greater Ploesti complex, flown by nearly 170 Liberators. Launching from Benghazi, Libya, the bombers targeted seven of ten refineries. Two were knocked out. Creditul Minier never returned to service and Colombia Aquila was inoperable until July 1944, shortly before Romania capitulated. Steaua Romano, badly damaged, never regained full production.

  Tidal Wave reduced Ploesti’s potential production by more than 40 percent, but the Romanians and Germans were persistent and competent. The other refineries took up the slack, and by the following April, Ploesti’s production was back at pre-attack levels.2

  Some fifty-five Tidal Wave Liberators were shot down, crashed, or were interned upon landing in Turkey. Of 1,765 crewmembers, 310 were killed and 186 captured or interned—an appalling 28-percent loss rate.3

  It was clear that Ploesti’s refineries were not going to be destroyed in one or even ten missions. Like other industrial targets, the oil beast had to be hacked to pieces or crushed to death; the Allies couldn’t shoot it through the heart. But before bombs could fall on Ploesti again, another battle had to be fought and won.

  APRIL ONSLAUGHT

  There was a political battle to be fought in the spring of 1944 before Ira Eaker and Nate Twining could loose their bombers. Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, in London was concerned with how to support the impending Normandy landings. Should they reduce Axis oil production or interdict German transport in northern France? The players in the drama, below Eisenhower, were two Britons and an American: Eisenhower’s deputy commander, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder; Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, chief of the Royal Air Force; and Lieutenant General Carl A. Spaatz, overseeing all American strategic air operations in Europe.

  Spaatz favored the “oil plan,” attacking refineries in Germany and the Balkans. In early March, Air Marshal Sir Douglas Evill, Portal’s main staffer for the combined bombing offensive, urged “immediate clearance be given for the early attack of Ploesti by the Fifteenth Air Force.”4

  Tedder, at Eisenhower’s right hand, understood the vulnerability of Axis oil to prolonged air attack. But he reckoned, correctly, that enemy petroleum production could not be crippled sufficiently before D-Day, and he clashed with “Tooey” Spaatz. Once Eisenhower approved the “transport plan,” Spaatz complied—with a subtle wink southward in Eaker’s direction. Between them, the two air commanders agreed, “We mean to finish off this job in the Ploesti area with the first favorable weather.”5

  The oil component of the transport plan focused on railroads transporting fuel from Axis refineries. Spaatz, Eaker, and, by implication, Twining seized the opportunity to get their way. They sent bombers to pound the marshalling yards at Ploesti, Bucharest, and elsewhere, knowing that America’s vaunted precision bombing was seldom precise and that “spillage” would inflict damage on nearby refineries.

  Aircrews quickly discerned their superiors’ intent. Navigators and bombardiers studying their target folders in April noted several aim points perilously close to refineries. “It was obvious,” recalled one flier based at Manduria, “that no one would be upset if the whole damned place went up!”6

  The officers’ guile amounted to insubordination, which was especially rare at the two- and three-star level, the preserve of company men jealous of their careers. But Spaatz and Eaker were willing to press the limits of their orders.

  Their scheme would not be easy. By April, Ploesti was defended by 150 Axis fighters and 220 or more antiaircraft guns, including 140 of the heavy-caliber variety (88, 105, and 128 mm). An AAF evaluation board conceded, “Damaging oil refineries successfully by aerial bombardment is one of the most difficult missions assigned a strategic air force. Where a target such as Ploesti is so heavily defended that it requires a large proportion of blind or obscured bombing from high altitude, this difficulty is accentuated.”

  Another problem was the weather. The route from Foggia to Ploesti passed through western Yugoslavia, the rainiest spot in Europe. Clouds often built up twenty thousand feet, and from April to August (the window available to Twining) there were only twelve to fifteen days a month that were not completely overcast. Visual bombing was going to be a problem.

  The attackers recognized the difficulties. Some refineries were porous targets with considerable open space, and their vulnerable points could be widely separated. In one study of nearly twelve thousand bombs dropped on synthetic oil plants, only 155 (12.9 percent) struck within the refinery perimeters, and only forty (3.6 percent) hit something vital.7

  TARGET PLOESTI

  On April 5, Twining sent three bomb wings with nine B-24 groups and four B-17 groups to Ploesti, inaugurating a four-month campaign. During the nearly six-hundred-mil
e outbound leg, weather diverted four Liberator groups, but the other nine pressed ahead.

  The bombers met serious opposition. Romanian fighters attacked head-on while twin-engine Luftwaffe interceptors lobbed rockets from both sides. Anti-aircraft fire over the target was predictably heavy though largely ineffective, as was the smoke screen the defenders spread.

  The 230 Allied bombers unloaded 588 tons of ordnance, ostensibly on the rail yard, but photo interpreters later plotted sixteen hits in the Standard refinery and a few random hits at Concordia Vega, northeast of town.

  The 450th Group put up an unusually large formation: forty Liberators took off “to bomb Ploesti Marshalling Yard and adjacent industrial area.”8 The Cottontails (named for their white rudders) lost six aircraft, the heaviest losses of the raid. The Liberators were largely unescorted, though P-38s joined on the way home. Luftwaffe squadrons jumped the group twenty-five minutes out, executing a surprise attack from twelve o’clock high, shooting three Liberators out of formation. The mission report concluded, “The attack was coordinated and the fighters came through in twos, threes, and fours. They would rally to the rear of our formation, make a side pass, gain altitude and use the same tactics again.”

  Closer to the drop point, fifty or more single- and twin-engine interceptors rolled in, some pressing fifty feet from the bombers. The Americans respected the enemy’s skill and motivation, noting, “No break-off in intensity was noted over target, and enemy fighters flew through flak to harass our formation. . . . The fighter pilots were either very experienced or were driven by desperation.”9

  Despite the smoke screen, many bombardiers dropped visually. Observers reported good coverage with hits on distillation units and storage tanks and damage to rail facilities. But the group paid a price: only seven parachutes were seen dropping from the six downed bombers, and nineteen planes took flak damage.