Forgotten Fifteenth

by Barrett Tillman

  Allied expectations for a Ploesti campaign proved excessive. At the time, many analysts believed that shutting off the Romanian taps could largely ground the Luftwaffe. While the Germans always rose to defend petroleum targets, they had other options—notably synthetic fuel plants, which had received a high priority from the late 1930s. Coal-derived gasoline was especially useful to Hermann Göring’s air force, and remained so throughout the war.

  The 1944 campaign lasted from early April to mid-August and involved 5,287 Allied sorties (229 British) that dropped 12,870 tons of bombs. The cost was steep: 237 bombers (fifteen RAF) and forty-nine fighters. The latter included P-38s employed as dive-bombers.

  The figure of most importance to the Luftwaffe was aviation gasoline received from Romania. The pre-campaign figure of sixteen thousand metric tons in both February and March was halved in April and May, dropping to a mere two thousand tons in June, but it rebounded to seven thousand tons in July. Total Wehrmacht gasoline exports dropped from fifty-eight thousand tons in March to twenty thousand in July, the last full month of the campaign, and twelve thousand in August.20

  The Fifteenth’s efforts produced results, but how much? A post-bombing analysis noted, “The August attacks left Ploesti in a highly vulnerable position. All but one of the larger refineries were incapable of any substantial production for some weeks or months. The single exception, Astra Romana, accounted for considerably more than half of the potential production of the next month.” The survey concluded, “One successful attack on it and Standard, comparable with the successful August raids on other installations, would have knocked production down to 15% of the base level for a substantial period.”21

  American airmen were eager to connect the dots between the end of the Ploesti campaign and the severe reduction in the area’s oil production. But that may be too simple a conclusion. With the Soviets steadily advancing into Romania, the Germans had little reason to exert much effort to repair the damage. Why give the enemy possession of working refineries? In any case, the question proved moot as Russian troops occupied Ploesti beginning August 30.

  Despite its success, the Fifteenth made its own job unnecessarily difficult. After the Ploesti campaign, interviews with Romanian officers noted several factors that eased the defenders’ burden. They included “airline operations” with predictable schedules (target times between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.), repeating routes and altitudes. Only five areas were identified as initial points, simplifying the defenders’ planning.

  Emphasis on visual bombing permitted flak batteries to gain accurate altitude information by optical range finding without reliance on radar. Given the technical limits of blind bombing, however, the attackers had no alternative.

  Still, despite shortcomings, the Fifteenth accomplished its primary mission. In Adolf Galland’s assessment, “Raids of the allied air fleets on the German petrol supply installations was the most important of the combined factors which brought about the collapse of Germany.”22 The German armaments minister, Albert Speer, agreed, stating that oil was the primary strategic target in the war. The CBO, he added, would have been even more effective had petroleum been targeted sooner.23

  Days after Germany’s surrender, Hermann Göring was interviewed by General Spaatz and other senior U.S. airmen. The deposed marshal, who had studied French, English, and Latin in school, was eager to talk. Asked if air attacks affected Luftwaffe training, he replied, “Yes, for instance the attacks on oil retarded the training because our new pilots could not get sufficient training before they were put in the air, where they were no match for your fliers.” American targeting, said the Luftwaffe, was “excellent. As soon as we started to repair an oil installation you always bombed it again before we could produce one ton.” That assessment was not quite accurate, as Ploesti demonstrated, but the lingering effect of sustained bombardment was undeniable.24

  THE MIGHTY EIGHTH VERSUS THE FORGOTTEN FIFTEENTH

  In the popular memory of World War II, there were two Army Air Forces: the Eighth and everything else.

  Many Fifteenth airmen felt like second-class citizens in the AAF, lamenting, “We were a poor boy outfit.” The sentiment found expression in a Mediterranean Theater ditty sung to the tune of “As Time Goes By.”

  You must remember this

  The flak can’t always miss

  Somebody’s gonna die.

  The odds are always too damned high

  As flak goes by . . .

  It’s still the same old story

  The Eighth gets all the glory

  While we’re the ones who die.

  The odds are always too damned high

  As flak goes by.25

  Seven decades later MTO veterans still wonder why they were so overlooked. Undoubtedly much of the reason has to do with geography. From 1942 onward, America and the world focused on the eventual Allied landings in northern France. Long before anyone heard of “D-Day,” the Soviets clamored for a second front, though the case has been made that the Combined Bombing Offensive represented a front in three dimensions for three years before June 1944. But boots on the ground were what most people looked for.

  The Italian slogging match failed to grab the public’s imagination. After all, Ernest Hemingway liberated the Ritz Hotel bar in Paris rather than a bistro in Rome. And despite the prize-winning reporting of correspondent Ernie Pyle and the popular irreverence of GI cartoonist Bill Mauldin, “the Med” simply could not compete with the perceived glamour of England. Perhaps a Fifteenth aerial gunner came closest to the mark when he asked, “If you were a war correspondent would you rather sip scotch in a London hotel or swig vino under canvas at Foggia?” The question answers itself.26

  In postwar popular culture, the Mediterranean air war remained thoroughly overshadowed by the Mighty Eighth. At least half a dozen films have portrayed the British-based bombing offensive, starting with three 1948 releases: the excellent Twelve O’Clock High, based on Beirne Lay’s novel; Command Decision, derived from a taut stage play; and the lightweight Fighter Squadron. John Hersey’s solid novel became The War Lover (1962), followed by The Thousand Plane Raid (1969), a forgettable TV movie. Most recently The Memphis Belle (1990) built on the fame of the wartime documentary. 12 O’Clock High also was adapted as a television series that ran from 1964 to 1967.

  Only three well-known aviation movies are set in the Mediterranean Theater—Catch-22, the 1970 satire based on Joseph Heller’s Twelfth Air Force experience, and two 332nd Group entries, the 1995 television movie Tuskegee Airmen and the disappointing 2012 feature Red Tails.

  Yet a few anomalies exist in the Eighth-Fifteenth rivalry. Every group but one in the Fifteenth received the Distinguished Unit Citation during the organization’s existence. The 451st received three, and sixteen others received two each, though the 376th Bomb Group, the First and Eighty-second Fighter Groups had two previous DUCs. The Ninety-eighth was the only group without a DUC during the Fifteenth’s career, but it had been decorated twice previously. In contrast, between November 1943 and V-E Day, less than two-thirds of the Mighty Eighth’s groups received the DUC. The reasons for the discrepancy remain unknown. In the period ten fliers from the Eighth earned the Medal of Honor. In addition to David Kingsley’s and Donald Pucket’s posthumous Medals of Honor, at least twenty-eight Fifteenth airmen received the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest decoration. Eleven of them perished and two others were captured.27

  Most of the other numbered air forces received even less attention than the Fifteenth. The Mediterranean Theater’s tactical air force, the Twelfth, was largely ignored, and its counterpart in the European Theater, the Ninth, always played second fiddle to the Eighth. From November 1943, the Ninth received two Medals of Honor, the Twelfth one.

  In the Pacific the Fifth Air Force received by far the most press—no surprise given the immense ego of the Southwest Pacific commander, General Douglas MacArthur. The other Pacific Theater air forces, the Seventh and Thirteenth,
were largely overlooked in the Central and South Pacific, while the small Eleventh battled the Aleutian williwaw far more than the Japanese. The spirit of the Flying Tigers lived on in Major General Claire Chennault’s China-based Fourteenth, which overshadowed the Tenth in India.

  Closer to home, the Sixth Air Force spent most of the war guarding the Panama Canal Zone. The First through Fourth Air Forces were regionally based in the United States. There were no sixteenth through nineteenth, but the Twentieth conducted B-29 operations from the China-Burma-India Theater and from the Mariana Islands.

  WHAT BECAME OF THEM

  Bomber crews usually were grateful to survive, but some fighter pilots never got over the raw thrill and heady satisfaction of flying combat: the challenge, the comradeship, the youthful sense of purpose. For a twenty-five-year-old male who had lived at four hundred miles per hour, shooting whatever crossed his sights, peace could be dull.

  Nevertheless, the huge majority of veterans, from the top down, adjusted. Ira Eaker was recalled to Washington at the end of April 1945, becoming Hap Arnold’s deputy and the chief of air staff. Eaker retired in 1947 and died forty years later.

  Carl Spaatz, who conspired with Eaker and Twining to bomb refineries rather than railroads, moved to the Pacific in the summer of 1945. He served in the same capacity as overall strategic air commander and witnessed Japan’s surrender in September. He succeeded Arnold as the air force chief in 1946 and retired in 1948, having realized his generation’s ambition of an independent air force.

  Jimmy Doolittle remained one of the most celebrated aviators of the twentieth century. His unique record included command of three air forces—the Twelfth in North Africa, the Fifteenth in Italy, and the Eighth in Britain. He retired a year after V-E Day, a reserve lieutenant general, and returned to Shell Oil. He was the first president of the Air Force Association and served as a consultant to the U.S. government on scientific research, commercial aviation, and intelligence. Four decades after the war, Congress elevated him to full general, though reportedly some members were uncertain why he received the honor. He died in California in 1993, age ninety-six.

  After Italy, Nathan Twining ran the Air Materiel Command, and in 1947 he became head of Alaskan Air Command. Still a three-star, he was preparing to retire in 1950 when the air force vice chief, General Muir Fairchild, died unexpectedly. Twining was promoted to full general and filled out the term, becoming chief of staff in 1953. Four years later he became the first airman named chairman of the Joint Chiefs, holding the position until 1960. He died in 1982, age eighty-four. His younger brother Merrill was a Marine Corps lieutenant general.

  Dean C. Strother, chief of XV Fighter Command, rose to four stars and held NATO positions as well as leading North American Air Defense Command. He retired in 1966 and died in 2000.

  John D. Ryan, briefly CO of the Second Bomb Group, lost a finger to flak and moved up to Fifth Wing staff. He headed the Strategic Air Command from 1964 to 1967 and was air force chief of staff from 1969 to 1973. In the latter role he was criticized for failing to support General John Lavelle, who conducted “protective reaction strikes” into North Vietnam. Ryan’s son Michael also served as chief from 1997 to 2001.

  Colonel Arthur Agan, the First Group CO captured in March 1945, became a lieutenant general and retired in 1970 after leading the Aerospace Defense Command.

  Among the twenty Mustang aces of the Thirty-first Group, George Loving achieved three stars and retired in 1979 after thirty-six years of commissioned service. His highly readable Mediterranean memoir, Woodbine Red Leader, was published in 2003.

  Curly Edwinson returned to the States after the Eighty-second Group tangled with Soviet fighters in November 1944. His career was unharmed, and he held numerous other commands, including a P-47 unit prepared to fight the Soviets in earnest during the Berlin Airlift of 1948. When not flying he pursued his passion for skeet shooting and became world champion in 1952. He retired as a brigadier general in 1961 and passed away in 1985.

  Some outstanding leaders never advanced far beyond their wartime ranks. They included the popular, puckish Bob Baseler of the Checkertail Clan. He remained a lieutenant colonel until 1952 and retired as a “bird” colonel a decade later. He died of cancer in 1983.

  Among the Fifteenth’s top fighter aces, Sully Varnell was killed in a P-40 crash in Florida in April 1945, age twenty-three. John Voll retired as a colonel and died in 1987. Herky Green retired in 1964 after thirteen years as a colonel. He wrote a memoir and died in 2006.

  Leslie Caplan, the dedicated 449th Group flight surgeon captured in 1944, was awarded the Legion of Merit for his stellar work in captivity. After the war he was treated for tuberculosis and later received a psychology degree in Minneapolis. He died in 1969, only sixty-one, and is buried in Arlington Cemetery.

  One of Caplan’s POW patients, B-17 gunner Bill Hess, recovered sufficiently from his frostbite to resume civilian life. He went on to serve in the Korean War then pursued a career in the petroleum business in his native Louisiana before retiring to Texas. Hess fought the lingering effects of frostbite—and the VA bureaucracy—for decades. Finally in 2003 he contacted a neurologist who examined him closely. She was appalled: “This has been going on for how long?” After a detailed assessment she certified him 40-percent disabled below the knees.

  Although he was a bomber crewman, Hess became a world authority on fighter pilots. He wrote or coauthored twenty books on World War II aviation and was secretary-historian of the American Fighter Aces Association. He became close friends with a onetime enemy, Me 262 pilot Franz Stigler.

  In recalling the Luftwaffe corporal who fed him and the paternal sergeant who guided him through a potential lynch mob, Hess concluded, “Most people will look out for themselves. But when you have somebody who’s as cold and miserable and starving as you are, and he shares his last scrap of food, that is a friend.”28

  Ariel Weekes, who bombed the Daimler-Benz tank works in March 1945, looked on wryly when Daimler purchased Chrysler in 1998.

  John Mullins, a pilot of the First Fighter Group, completed his tour in time to celebrate his twenty-first birthday at home. In the 1990s he wrote a unit history, An Escort of P-38s, and returned to Italy to research the book. Along the way Mullins tried to locate “Sergeant Tony,” the youngster the group had adopted.

  As Mullins’s wife, Phyllis, explained,

  When we went to Italy and the area doing his research, we stayed in a hotel in Foggia where the only one speaking English was the desk clerk. John asked him about Tony Casstriota, did anyone know him? It turned out that he owned a dry goods store right there in town. With much arranging via phone, we arranged to meet Tony at his store. I’m certain he didn’t remember John as he was during the war-time . . . but when we opened the door of the store, there was Tony and his wife all dressed what looked to us as their Sunday best . . . along with two of their grandchildren. Tony didn’t remember any of the English he knew back in the day, so it wound up that the hotel desk clerk would translate by phone everything spoken between John and Tony.

  After we left, John and I agreed the entire time we were together the Casstriotas seemed honored with our visit, and we were glad we’d made the effort.

  John Mullins died in 2004.29

  Three Fifteenth Air Force men became United States senators, all Democrats: B-24 pilots Lloyd Bentsen of Texas (449th Group) and George McGovern of South Dakota (455th Bomb Group) and navigator William D. Hathaway of Maine (376th Bomb Group). Hathaway was unseated after one term but McGovern and Bentsen became professional politicians, and both ran for president. McGovern won the Democratic Party’s nomination in 1972 and lost in a landslide to the ex-navy man Richard Nixon. Bentsen, as Michael Dukakis’s running mate in 1988, uttered one of the most famous political put-downs of all time when he informed his opponent, Senator Dan Quayle, that he was “no Jack Kennedy.” Bentsen died in 2006 and McGovern in 2012. At this writing Hathaway is still living.

  FRIENDS AND ENEM
IES

  Aleksandr Koldunov, who tangled with Curly Edwinson’s Lightnings, remained active into the Cold War. Twice a Hero of the Soviet Union, in 1977 he was promoted to marshal of aviation, leading the air defense command, and wore another hat as deputy defense minister. In 1978 his command shot down the errant Korean Air Lines flight 007. When the German teenager Mathias Rust landed his Cessna in Red Square in 1987, humiliating the Soviet defense establishment, Koldunov was forced to resign as chief marshal of aviation. He died in 1992.

  Colonel Gotthard Handrick, the Olympic champion who directed Vienna’s air defense, settled in Hamburg after the war. His family received food and clothing from his 1936 American pentathlon rival, later Major General Charles Leonard, and eventually became a sales representative for Daimler-Benz.

  When the war ended, Adolf Galland had barely recovered from a combat wound and accepted the risk of contacting the Americans to surrender his command. Widely admired, he died in 1996. His friend Colonel Johannes Steinhoff, who had lain near death with severe burns from a jet crash, rose to command the postwar Bundesluftwaffe and was chairman of the NATO military committee upon his retirement in 1974. He wrote two books detailing his wartime service and often attended history symposia in Europe and the United States. He passed away in 1994.

  In the 1980s, the former Me 262 pilot Franz Stigler described his “discharge”: “I did what any American fighter pilot would have done. I got on my motorcycle with my girlfriend and I went home.” He became well known as the Luftwaffe ace who had spared an Eighth Air Force B-17 over the North Sea in December 1943, and he died in 2008.30

  Constantin Cantacuzino, the Romanian ace who helped organize the POW airlift from Bucharest, remained in the cockpit after his nation switched sides. He added some German aircraft to the nearly forty Russian and American planes he had downed, then resumed his airline career. He came under unwelcome scrutiny from the new Communist regime, however, and decided not to make a return flight from Italy in 1947. He settled in Spain, continuing to impress audiences with his low-level aerobatics, but died following surgery in 1958. He was only fifty-two. Married several times, he produced a daughter, the novelist Oana Orlea, while another wife became the mother of American television star Linda Gray of Dallas fame. Cantacuzino was reunited with his American POW conspirator, Colonel James Gunn, at least once after the war. Gunn died in Texas in 1999.