by John Comer
“Major,” said Carqueville, “we’ve heard so many stories, how tough is it? What kind of losses are you having?”
The Major hesitated before answering and studied a large chart on the wall crowded with names. “See that chart? That’s the combat roster. We’ve been here sixty days, and so far we’ve lost a hundred and one percent of our combat personnel.”
That seemed impossible! Did he mean a lot of replacement crews had arrived and were already lost in addition to originals? Surely the Major would burst out laughing in a few seconds. I watched his face for some sign that it was a joke pulled on new arrivals. The smile did not come. The message was clear. I did not know then if that frightful loss figure was factual, or inflated to get across his point that the playing was over. (Those were his exact words! But later I found out that the early losses, while serious, were not that bad.)
The Major continued, “You’d know it anyway in two or three days. I guess it’s just as well to let you have it straight right now. Our strength is down and we are happy to have you with us.”
I glanced at the other men and noted that the color had drained from their faces. No one said anything as we loaded the baggage into a transportation truck. Each of us was trying to digest the startling high-loss situation and struggling, with scant success, to translate those figures into what they meant to us individually.
At the Squadron Headquarters we were greeted warmly by the Operations Officer. “I’m Lieutenant Franek. Welcome to the 533rd Squadron. We’re glad you’re here because we have only four combat crews in the squadron, and our minimum strength is supposed to be seven.”
Carqueville asked, “Have you any information on our four gunners? They were supposed to arrive about the same time we got here.”
“Yes, we do have information,” Franek answered. “They’re due tomorrow.”
That was the only good news I was to hear that day it was a great relief to know Jim Counce and the other gunners would definitely rejoin us. It would give our sagging spirits a lift just to see them again.
A truck transported us to the combat site, and the driver pointed out the small, metal Quonset huts that would be our quarters. The officers would be in one hut and the enlisted men in another, not far away. The driver said, “Note that here we are widely dispersed to prevent serious damage from German bombing raids. Personnel trucks make regular rounds of the field perimeter during the daytime, and early in the mornings when there is a mission. Combat personnel are quartered separately from the permanent personnel.” I picked up the nuance in his voice: what it meant was that combat people were not expected to be around very long.
The driver continued. “You men have a separate combat mess because your hours will be so different from the other men. As soon as you can manage it, I suggest you get into Cambridge and buy a used bicycle. It will make getting around the base a lot easier.”
“How far is Cambridge from Ridgewell?” I asked.
“About eighteen miles. A supply truck makes a run every day, and there’s also train service from a nearby village.”
I doubt if I ever had a more miserable evening in my life. The dingy hut, designed for twelve men, was a dirty, dimly lighted, depressing place. It was bare except for twelve crude cots. A single low-watt bulb hung in the center of the small metal building. I decided on a bunk and opened my bags, but before I could get my gear unpacked, some veteran gunners started drifting in to look us over.
“Where you guys from?” one asked.
Balmore answered, “I’m from New York, and Comer is from Texas.”
“That’s a helluva combination! You got some more men comin’ in?”
“Yes,” I said. “Our other four gunners will be here tomorrow.”
“Your pilot got a lot of high-altitude formation time?”
“Nope,” said Balmore. “Not much.”
A second man entered just in time to hear what George had said. “I feel Goddamned sorry for you guys if your pilot can’t fly tight formation.”
“Oh, I think he can do OK on formation,” I offered.
“It takes seventy to a hundred hours of high-altitude formation experience to be a fair pilot in this league. Your pilot got that many hours?”
“Far as I know he’s never been in a high-altitude formation, and has only a few hours of low-altitude formation,” I said.
“If they don’t find you a new pilot who knows what he’s doin’ at high-altitude formation you’re in trouble. Those Jerry sonnuvabitches can spot a new crew on their first circle aroun’ the formation and they — ”
They’ll tear into your ass on their first attack, interrupted another vet, “’cause they always pick the easiest Forts to knock down.”
A third man came in. “Don’t worry about it, you might make it — sometimes a new crew does get back from its first raid. This week it wasn’t too rough: we only lost twenty Forts — mostly new crews!”
Another voice added, “As soon as the Jerries approach us they look for you fresh jokers.”
“How can they tell which crews are new?” asked Balmore.
“Damned easy, friend. Green pilots can’t stay in tight formation. They throttle-jock back and forth — might as well flash a neon sign!”
A new voice spoke up. “Relax! Don’t get lathered up. Mebbe your crew will be one of the lucky ones. We were once new and we’re still here!”
“When you hit a German fighter with some good bursts, what happens? Does it break off the attack?” I asked.
The six vets laughed uproariously. “Hell, no! You can see your tracers hit those 190s2 and 109s3 an’ they bounce off like it’s a Goddamned flyin’ tank! Those square-headed Krauts keep comin’ at you no matter what you throw at ’em!”
The most vocal of the group continued. “The worst bastards they got are Goering’s Abbeville Kids — those yellow nose and red nose M.E. 109s are the roughest you’ll ever see.” He turned to Balmore. “Hey, kid, you’re about my height. What size blouse you wear?”
George replied testily, “None of your damn business!”
“Don’t get your guts in an uproar, friend. I need a new blouse, so I spot all you new gunners my size — one of you jokers don’t get back, I grab me a blouse before those orderly room pimps get over here to pick up your gear.”
One of the vets explained it: “At the 381st they don’t issue any replacement clothes. If you tear your pants, or ruin a blouse, you sweat it out until a gunner your size don’t make it back.”
“That’s how we do it over here,” said another. “That way ain’t no red tape — say, any of you men wear size thirty-eight?”
“I do,” I replied. “But don’t get any ideas — ’cause I’m gonna make it!”
“Maybe! But the first rough raid will thin out these huts — a lot of you new bastards won’t get back — maybe one of you will be my size.”
“Say — there was a nice lookin’ kid had that bunk over there for five or six days,” one of the vets remarked. “Saw his plane blow up — no chutes!”
He pointed to an empty cot. “The fellow who slept there — they brought him back with no balls.”
“Well,” a voice added, “that poor bastard don’t have to worry no more about findin’ a prophylactic station open at four A.M.!”
Ribald laughter reverberated from the thin metal walls, but I couldn’t share in their hilarity. My insides were tightening into knots, and I wondered if all those tales were true. I knew they were trying to scare the hell out of us — and succeeding! I kept thinking about those high losses the Major told us about, and realized the vets didn’t need to embellish their stories. The plain, unvarnished facts were frightening enough for me.
“Hey, you guys gotta watch those ’lectric fly suits. If a shoe or glove goes out at fifty below zero you can lose a hand or foot. “
“But the big thing is an engine fire,” from another voice. “When you rookies see that fire you got mebbe thirty or forty seconds before the explosion!”
&n
bsp; The vets finally tired of their oft-repeated initiation game and drifted off. George looked at me for a long time without saying a word. He didn’t need to for I knew what his thoughts were. Sleep for that night was completely out of the question. The reality of what we faced was almost too much to absorb. Always ringing in my ears were the Major’s words: “We’ve lost a hundred and one percent of our combat personnel.” The vets told us we would get in about three missions a month, and the odds stacked up four to one that we wouldn’t make it! (Which later proved to be quite accurate.)
Balancing the bad news of the last six hours was my memory of how grand those Flying Fortresses looked in proud formation heading out toward Hitler-held Europe. The second morning we were at Bovingdon, the orientation base near London where replacement crews reported for induction into the 8th Air Force, we were awakened by the roar of many engines. In a matter of minutes the barracks was empty. The Fortresses were passing overhead on their way to strike the Mad Dictator, and none of us wanted to miss the sight. I have had many thrills in my life, but I believe that picture-perfect formation of American bombers headed for a clash with Goering’s best was one of the most emotional experiences I have ever had. I wanted to be up there with them. All that day I worried about what those men were going through over the Continent. In the early afternoon I was in an aircraft recognition class when someone whispered, “The Forts are coming back.” In one minute the classroom was empty. Where were the proud eagles of the dawn? They returned, but not in the style I had seen that morning. A few were in formation, but most were scattered across the sky. There were feathered engines and many trailed smoke. But where were the other planes? I counted only half of the number that went out that morning. I did not know then that ships in trouble, or low on fuel, broke away from the formations as they approached England, looking for a landing field. For the next half hour, I watched wounded Forts straggle in, a few on two engines.
July 20
There was an agreeable surprise at Ridgewell. The food was good. The combat mess hall was a hundred yards from our barracks. We were in a country where part of the food had to be imported, and all of ours had to come by boat from the States. So those mess officers did a great job with the materials at their disposal.
On the way back from noon mess I said to George, “We’re gonna have to get into Cambridge real soon and buy bicycles. I notice all the men here at the base have bikes.”
“John, when the other men get here, don’t say anything about what the vets did to us last night.”
“You mean let ’em get the news on their own?”
“Right! It oughta be interesting to see how they handle it. One thing for sure, they’re in for a shock!”
An hour or so later a truck pulled up near the hut and out jumped our four gunners. “Damn! I thought we were gonna get four good gunners and now you jokers show up again,” fumed Balmore. “Come see our Country Club Quarters.”
Now that the gunners were back, our crew was all together. James Counce and Carroll Wilson were our two waist gunners. Jim was twenty-three, single, and came from Corinth, Mississippi. He was an engineering student from the University of Tennessee. Jim served as second engineer and was fully as capable as I was, and a very solid man. Carroll Wilson, twenty, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, was assistant to Balmore in the radio room. Carroll was a likable youngster but had not grown up yet. He had married just before leaving for England. The tail gunner, Buck Rogers, thirty nine, was a rugged individual from a small Ohio town. I am not sure of his marital status. He had many rough experiences, but he was a loner and had little to say about some phases of his life. Nickalas Abramo, nineteen, from Massachusetts, operated the ball turret guns. He was an impetuous young man of Italian ancestry.
We were sitting around talking about going to Cambridge to buy bicycles, and the possibility of buying a radio for the hut. Suddenly the door opened and five or six vets entered. “What do you know? We got us some new gunners,” one of them said. “Where you guys from?”
I knew what was coming and glanced at George. We sat back in morbid fascination to watch how our four friends responded to “the treatment.” A few months later, initiating new arrivals was one of my favorite amusements.
If there was a crew favorite, I suppose it was Jim Counce. Carqueville had a special trick we played on Jim. I would go back to the radio room and make sure he was looking out of the waist window. Herb would put an engine into an extra-inch carburetor position to create some smoke on Jim’s side of the aircraft. As soon as Counce saw it he started toward the cockpit, and Herb quickly switched back to automatic lean. By the time Counce reached the cockpit the smoke would be gone.
“Smoke? I didn’t see any. John, did you see any smoke?”
“No. You’re seein’ things, Jim. Are you sure you’re OK?”
“I did see smoke from number-three engine,” he would protest vigorously. Herb would look at me and shake his head as if to say, “I’m afraid Counce is cracking up.”
July 21
From the first night at Ridgewell, it became slowly apparent that Carqueville did not have the experience at high-altitude formation flying to be a first pilot in the big leagues of combat over Europe. It was difficult to understand how the training command in the States could have neglected the one indispensable requirement for a B-17 combat pilot. For the time I knew Herb in training, he was given no high-altitude formation practice. Only two hours of low-altitude formation flying! A copilot should have had fifteen or twenty hours of holding a B-17 in formation over twenty thousand feet.
Late in the afternoon Carqueville opened the door to our hut and stepped inside. I knew instantly he was upset. “I’ve been cut back to copilot. I’m takin’ Reese’s place.” (Reese had come down with an infection and was grounded for the time being.)
“What!” Even though I was expecting it to happen, the news came as a shock. “It’s not fair.”
“Wrong! They had to do it. A pilot has to have a lot of formation time, and I don’t have it. Believe me, I don’t like it one damn bit, but that’s how it’s got to be.”
Jim spoke up. “We hate like hell to lose you. Now we’ll start all over with some pilot we never saw before. We could have made it with you I’m sure.”
“Thanks, Jim, but Hendricks couldn’t permit that risk. He made the right decision. Reese is goin’ to be the Assistant Operations Officer.”
Regardless of what he said I knew Carqueville was hurt. Who would be the new pilot? There was much conjecture and concern about what kind of man would take over the crew. The next afternoon Carqueville introduced us to the man who would hold our destiny in his hands. The officers had already met him. “Men, this is Lieutenant Paul Gleichauf, our pilot. He’s got the formation experience we must have if we are going to make it in this league.”
“Lieutenant, I’m John Comer, Engineer.”
“Glad to know you, John.”
The rest of the men introduced themselves and shook hands. It was an awkward moment, with Herb standing there watching his men accept a new leader.
“I’m glad to be your pilot,” said Gleichauf. “Looks like we’ve got good men, so I think we’ll do OK.”
There was more small talk but it was mainly verbal sparring while we sized him up, and the pilot got a good look at what he had to work with. Since Herb was to be copilot, it was much like a new football coach keeping the ex-coach as his assistant. Lieutenant Gleichauf was younger than I expected, but he did fit the image of an Air Force pilot more than Herb.
On the way back to our hut there was silence for a while, then George turned to Counce. “Well, what do you think of our new pilot?”
“Looks OK. He doesn’t talk much but we need the experience he has.”
“John, what do you think?”
“About the same as Jim — only thing, I wish he were a little older.” (Actually, he was twenty-four, and two years older than I thought at the time.)
Buck said, “That ain’t important — we go
tta have somebody who can fly tight formation. That’s what all the vets say — to hell with the rest of it!”
Paul Gleichauf was originally from Lakewood, Ohio — a suburb of Cleveland. He was a handsome young officer — dashing, slim, and very attractive to women. He came overseas as a first pilot several weeks ahead of us. Just before flying a new Fortress across the Atlantic, a heavy fire extinguisher fell on his foot. He arrived in England with a bad case of hemorrhoids, wearing a moccasin on one foot, and certainly in no condition to handle a B-17 on formation flights. By the time we badly needed a pilot he had recovered enough to resume flying status.
Lieutenant Gleichauf would have been dumbfounded had he fully realized the low level of combat “know-how” of his new crew. He was aware that Carqueville was short on formation flying, but he had no idea how little gunnery practice the crew had logged before coming to England. He would have been further dismayed had he known that our total experience with oxygen equipment added up to only thirteen hours.
Who was to blame for this woeful lack of training? How could the 2nd Air Force Training Command have been so ignorant of our needs? I suspect that the Command was overloaded with ex-educators who let their passion for classrooms supersede the substance of what was actually needed where we were headed. In a new situation people usually fall back on what they know best. What happened to the communications between the 8th Air Force and the stateside training command? Much time was wasted on classroom trivia and not enough on the essentials necessary for a crew to survive in combat with the enemy.
The 8th Air Force was made up of two units: Bomber Command and Fighter Command. Bomber Command was composed of three divisions,4 each of which had two wings. Three groups made up a wing. The bomber group was the basic fighting unit of the Command. A combat group had four squadrons who handled the personnel. At that date a group was expected to put up a minimum of eighteen Fortresses on a mission. Sometimes it would be a few more. In most cases a group occupied one air base, and had about two thousand men in combat and support personnel. We found out in the first week that we were in the 8th Air Force, First Division, First Wing, 381st Group, and the 533rd Squadron. The First Wing was made up of the 381st, the 351st, and the 91st groups.
