by John Comer
January 16
In a state of depression I looked up Shutting. I had avoided him the day before because I could not talk to anyone about it until I accepted the facts.
“I tried to find you yesterday, John,” he said. “That was terrible about Balmore and Counce. They were the best.”
“It hit me hard. One of them would have been bad enough, but both the same day on different planes!”
“Maybe Jim bailed out.”
“No! He’s gone. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do. I’ll try to see Mary Balmore if we land in the vicinity of New York and the Counce family later when I can.”
“John, we were just lucky that we made it. Think about how many we knew who didn’t.”
January 20
In the dim predawn light, I stood high on the stern deck of the S.S. Frederick Lykes and watched the shoreline of England dissolve in the distance. As I stared into the dark swirling mists, memories began to cloud my vision. Once again I saw the Forts flying in perfect formation with long trails streaming far behind them in the sky. Once more I heard the distinctive drone of Fortress engines. And I saw faces — unforgettable faces I would never see again: Herb Carqueville, Pete Ludwigson, Major Hendricks, Feigenbaum, Pope, and many others. All lost over Europe. More than anything, I saw Jim and George. I could almost hear their voices, those comically contrasting accents of the Bronx and Mississippi. We had shared a unique and special brotherhood, forged by circumstances and tested by adversity. It was a gift of friendship beyond anything I had experienced before. And I knew it could not be replaced.
As I remembered them, I felt an overwhelming sadness, and turned away from the others nearby to hide the tears that I could not blink away. At that moment I experienced an intuition of startling clarity. Suddenly I realized that we would meet again. I did not know how or when, but I knew! “Death is not the end, but only the beginning of a new dimension.” How many times had I heard that Christian refrain? But I suppose that I had never fully accepted its meaning until that moment. There was no longer any doubt. I felt a certainty and a peace. The sense of gloom lifted and I was a different person.
Yes, we would meet again. And until we did, I vowed to keep my memories of them from fading. I named my firstborn son James Balmore Comer. And because of them and their families, I wrote this book.
Epilogue
I have often been asked: Why did you volunteer for more combat? The story is that when I returned from England to the U.S. I had no idea I would soon be on the way back overseas. I was assigned as a flight engineer instructor at a new combat crew training base at Gulfport, Mississippi. They put three of us together as a team: an excellent instructor pilot, myself, and a veteran radio operator. Each day we would get a new group of four or five new copilots and radio operator students. The radio people did their thing back in the radio room. I took these green kids out to the aircraft and gave them practice starting engines. Then the major came out and we gave these youngsters landing and takeoff practice for four or five hours. None of these men had ever been in a big airplane before so they were confused about the controls and instruments. I would stand over them and tap their hand if they made the wrong move or got confused over which control the pilot was talking about.
A B-17 has a large horizontal fin that tapers quite high as it gets to the tail. A crosswind blowing against this very large surface will push the tail crosswise on landing unless the pilot exerts extreme rudder pressure. We always had a crosswind at that field so those kids were in trouble on almost every landing. You would not believe how often we had to suddenly pull up and go around for another try. And you would not believe how often we came sliding in with the nose fifteen to twenty-five degrees angle to the runway. I got to where I would yawn if it was only fifteen degrees.
One day after an extra-hazardous landing and two shaky takeoffs I ran into an instructor pilot I knew well at Operations and complained, “One of these days one of those kids is going to wipe me out! It would be safer back in combat!” He replied, “I have been trying to get transferred to combat — if you could find some more gunners that want to go back I think they would let us make up a new crew.”
That night at the barracks I passed the word around and six of us agreed to give it a try. Sure enough it worked! Within a week we were on our way across the Atlantic, flying a new B-17 to Italy.
And it was safer over there than waiting for some green kid to end my days.
After the War:
Status of Crew Members as of 1986
Paul Gleichauf, Pilot: Remained in the Air Force and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. When I located him he was living at El Paso, Texas. When I finished the first rough draft of Combat Crew, I took the first copy to him. I was very sad to learn that he had a brain tumor and could not last much longer. He died two months later. We keep in touch with his wife.
Herbert Carqueville, Copilot: M.I.A. No trace of the aircraft or crew was ever found.
Carl Shutting, Navigator: Became a therapist and worked in the schools of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he died of a heart attack in the mid-seventies.
John J. Purus, Bombardier: After a 1951 reunion in New York with the Comer and Balmore families all contact was lost.
George Balmore, Radio Operator: K.I.A. January 11, 1944.
John Comer, Flight Engineer-Gunner: Was a sales manager, then a zone manager, for Sherwin-Williams Paints for twenty-five years before retiring in Dallas, Texas.
James Counce, Waist Gunner: K.I.A. January 11, 1944.
Carroll Wilson, Waist Gunner: Completed his missions as a radio operator on another crew. He retired as a Master Sergeant in the Air Force with some rough later experiences. He was an air attaché with army that was hit by that devastating attack by the Chinese and had to fight their way out under difficult conditions. We visited with him a year ago at his home at Nashville, Tennessee.
Nicholas Abramo, Ball Turret: Was wounded, recovered, and resumed combat action. He was wounded again, had to bail out, and became a P.O.W. He died in 1968 at the age of 45 having never fully recovered from wounds received in battle.
Harold Harkness, Ball Turret after Abramo was wounded: He is now retired from the U.S. Post Office and lives at Aztec, New Mexico.
Buck Rogers, Tail Gunner: He was grounded when he did not recover from severe injuries early in his missions. After the war no contact.
John Kels, Copilot after Carqueville became a first pilot: No contact.
George Reese, original Copilot: Operations officer during the action and once in a while our Copilot — a lawyer in New Orleans.
Raymond Legg: After I left England, Raymond was shot down with another crew. All of the crew got out of the aircraft safely but were killed by enraged German civilians in the vicinity of Berlin.
Mitchell La Buda, Waist Gunner: He is retired and lives at Northfield, Illinois.
Bill Brophy, Radio Operator: Presently lives at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
I kept up a long relationship with the Balmore and Counce families. Both of the Balmores have passed on. I attended Mr. Balmore’s funeral in New York. I have visited the Counce family many times. Last year we saw Mr. Counce at Corinth, Mississippi, just three weeks before he died. We still stay in touch with Jim’s younger sister, Amy.
When we lived at Nashville, Tennessee, a few years after the war, the Carl Shutting family also lived there. We became very close friends with Carl’s wife, Mary Katharine Shutting. Carl Shutting, the onetime clown and other things, was now a practicing therapist — a walking example of all the virtues (as so often happens to one who was not that great when younger).
William Cahow stayed in the Air Force and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel and presently lives at Fresno, California. I see him at all the 381st reunions and of course we refly the October 14 raid to Schweinfurt.
Woodrow Pitts retired as a Master Sergeant in the Air Force with a long record as flight engineer. He lives at Pasadena, Texas, and we get together once in a while and reliv
e those days in England.
I located Hubert Green one month too late. He had just passed away. Hubie retired as a police captain at Middletown, New York. His lovely wife and two sons and their wives attended the reunion at Asheville, North Carolina, last year.
It was the same thing with Bill Kettner. I located him too late. But Mrs. Kettner came to the Asheville meeting last year from her home in Florida.
Ugo Lancia lives in New Jersey and ran a successful oil business until recently. His health has not been good lately, but plans to attend the Boston reunion. We have exchanged letters and talked by phone. He told me that Tedesco passed away a few years back.
About the Author
John Comer flew twenty-five combat missions over occupied Europe and Germany in 1943, including the infamous raid on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing plant that is still referred to in the Air Force as Black Thursday. After completing his tour with the 8th Air Force, Comer returned to the States and was assigned to train new pilots. Believing this duty to be the most hazardous of all, he volunteered to return to combat and flew fifty more missions in Italy for a total of 75. He retired in 1974 after a successful career in sales and lived in Dallas, Texas. He published his World War II memoirs in 1986 and found a worldwide audience. He died at the age of 95 in 2005.
Cover artist: Geraldine Aucoin Abramo, an accomplished portrait artist, created this scene of a flak attack over the target from John Comer’s account of Mission #8 in which her husband, Nicholas Abramo, was wounded and won the Purple Heart. Abramo’s injuries and subsequent imprisonment as a P.O.W. contributed to his death in 1968 at the age of 45.
Footnotes
1 A flight engineer operated a Sperry Computing Sight in the top turret of a B-17. This sight automatically computed the proper lead and all other factors needed to strike the target. All the operator had to do was to spot the correct enemy fighter and feed the wing length into the sight. From that point the sight took over as long as the electric reticles were framed on the ends of the wing of the fighter, and as long as the sight was tracked smoothly. Thus, depth perception was not such a vital requirement.
2 Focke-Wulf 190 (F.W. 190)
3 Messerschmitt 109 (M.E. 109)
4 Later the number of divisions and wings was increased.
5 As explained in Decision Over Schweinfurt, by Thomas Coffey — David McKay Co., Inc. — New York. The conference was in January and General Eaker was anxious to make good on his promise to the P.M. But he had an unexpected blow: Some of his Groups were transferred to the North African invasion. So he had to wait several months for more aircraft. Meanwhile the 270 single-engine fighters available to meet the Fortresses over Europe in early April increased to over 600 by the end of July.
6 The only account I have seen about this incident was in, Decision Over Schweinfurt by Thomas Coffey.
7 I was actually beyond walking down the catwalk. I lurched toward the cabin door like a drunk on a diving board. It was a very close thing! Carqueville insisted then and later that no one helped me. But I have seen too many men in that same state of anoxia, and none of them could have made such a connection after they became unconscious. Either the copilot or the navigator had to help me, but neither would admit it.
8 The number of planes lost in the waters of the Channel varies with different reports. Edward Jablonski in Flying Fortresses (Doubleday & Company) states that 118 men were plucked from those frigid waters by the efficient Air-Sea Rescue teams.
9 A fix was a matter of triangulation — a known distance between two radio stations and two angles created by the angles of the radio beams reaching the two stations.
10 The official roster of missions shows Lille-Nord on this date. My diary shows an airfield in Belgium. Perhaps different formations hit both targets that date.
11 I had ruined my only blouse on a recent bicycle accident on the way back from the pubs one very dark night.
12 No trace of Carqueville or Hendricks was ever found. In 1982, while attending a memorial service at the beautiful American Cemetery near Cambridge, I found their names carved on the long white stone wall dedicated to all of the service people who were missing in action in that part of the war. I looked at those two names a long time, and memories, long buried by the passage of years, came flooding back.
13 Dead reckoning means navigating strictly by instruments, speed, time, etc., without any chance to correct the course for changes in wind direction or velocity.
14 The name of a book written about this mission by Martin Caidin.
15 Until I read Decision Over Schweinfurt, by Thomas Coffey.
16 Inside the Third Reich, by Albert Speer.
17 Long after the war I visited Schweinfurt. It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The burghers were on their way to church. The city was so quiet and tranquil that it was hard to imagine the carnage that once rained down on it. The streets and buildings looked as if nothing had disturbed them in the last hundred years. The bearings factories were still there, now turning out assemblies for Mercedes-Benz and BMW vehicles, instead of Hitler’s fierce war machines. I rode slowly through the city and let my mind drift back in time to August 17 and October 14, 1943. The faces of fine men lost those two days flashed through my mind; some I could recall distinctly and others would not quite come into focus, like a television picture out of adjustment. So many men lost and so many families bereaved! Did those two gigantic efforts of men and machines really shorten the war and save far more lives than they cost? There was no answer.
18 Fingernail-sized compass included in bailout kits.
19 The lead aircraft in each group, and the deputy lead also, was equipped with the special Pathfinder radar to aid the Navigator. Waves bouncing back from the ground were converted into a scan of the surface below that could be interpreted by a trained operator. He could in effect see the ground through clouds or darkness. Later the Americans dubbed the process “Mickey.”
20 The demand-type oxygen regulator opened and closed by means of inhaling and exhaling. Up to that time it had been considered impervious to freezing, but the temperature that day was extremely low, perhaps a little beyond the capacity of the regulator to handle. It was the lowest I encountered in seventy-five missions over Europe.
21 The official roster of missions shows Cocove, France. My diary shows we went to Calais Dec. 24, 1943.
22 If Sigmund Freud were alive I think he would agree that combat fatigue is caused by the traumatic memories buried in the subconscious.
23 At a 381st reunion in San Antonio I met Gordon Crozier, pilot of the aircraft that George was in. Gordon told me that all of the crew was able to bail out except Balmore. He personally examined Balmore and confirmed that he was dead. All other crew members survived as prisoners of war.
