Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers

by Bruce Lewis

  I noted with alarm that a lot of our fire was falling astern of the target – particularly from our hand-held nose and waist guns. Nevertheless, both sides got hurt in this clash, with the entire second element of three B-17s from our low squadron, and one B-17 from the group ahead falling out of formation on fire, with crews bailing out, and several fighters heading for the deck in flames or with their pilots lingering behind under the dirty yellow canopies that distinguished some of their parachutes from ours. Our 24-year-old group leader, flying only his third combat mission, pulled us up even closer to the preceding group for mutual support.

  As we swung slightly outside with our squadron, in mild evasive action, I got a good look at that gap in the low squadron where three B-17s had been. Suddenly I bit my lip hard. The lead ship of that element had pulled out on fire and exploded before anyone bailed out. It was the ship to which I had been originally assigned.

  I glanced over at Murphy. It was cold in the cockpit, but sweat was running from his forehead and over his oxygen mask from the exertion of holding his element in tight formation, and the strain of the warnings that hummed over the interphone, and what he could see out of the corners of his eyes. He caught my glance and turned the controls over to me for a while. It was an enormous relief to concentrate on flying instead of sitting there watching fighters aiming between your eyes. Somehow, the attacks from the rear, although I could ‘see’ them through my ears via the interphone, didn’t bother me. I guess it was because there was a slab of armour plate behind my back and I couldn’t watch them, anyway.

  I knew that we were in a lively fight. Every alarm bell in my brain and heart was ringing a high-pitched warning. But my nerves were steady and my brain working. The fear was unpleasant, but it was bearable. I knew that I was going to die, and so were a lot of others. What I didn’t know was that the real fight, the Anschluss of Luftwaffe 20mm cannon shells, hadn’t really begun. The largest and most savage fighter resistance of any war in history was rising to stop us at any cost, and our group was the most vulnerable target.

  A few minutes later we absorbed the first wave of a hailstorm of individual fighter attacks that were to engulf us clear to the target in such a blizzard of bullets and shells that chronological account is difficult. It was at 10.41, over Eupen, that I looked out the window after a minute’s lull, and saw two whole squadrons, twelve ME-109s and eleven FW-190s, climbing parallel to us as though they were on a steep escalator. The first squadron had reached our level and was pulling ahead to turn into us. The second was not far behind. Several thousand feet below us were many more fighters, their noses cocked up in a maximum climb. Over the interphone came reports of an equal number of enemy aircraft deploying on the other side of the formation.

  For the first time I noticed an ME-110 sitting out of range on our level out to the right. He was to stay with us all the way to the target, apparently radioing our position and weak spots to fresh Staffeln waiting further down the road.

  At the sight of these fighters, I had the distinct feeling of being trapped – that the Hun had been tipped off or at least had guessed our destination and was set for us. We were already through the German fighter belt. Obviously they had moved a lot of squadrons back in a fluid defence in depth, and they must have been saving up some outfits for the inner defence that we didn’t know about. The life expectancy of our group seemed definitely limited, since it had already appeared that the fighters, instead of wasting fuel trying to overhaul the preceding groups, were glad to take a cut at us.

  Swinging their yellow noses round in a wide U-turn, the 12-ship squadron of ME-109s came in from 12 to 2 o’clock in pairs. The main event was on. I fought an impulse to close my eyes and overcame it.

  A shining silver rectangle of metal sailed past, over our right wing. I recognized it as the main exit door of a Fortress. Seconds later, a black lump came hurtling through the formation, barely missing several propellers. It was a man, clasping his knees to his head, revolving like a diver in a triple somersault, shooting by us so close that I saw a piece of paper blow out of his leather jacket. He was evidently making a delayed jump, for I didn’t see his parachute open.

  A B-17 turned gradually out of the formation to the right, maintaining altitude. In a split second it completely vanished in a brilliant explosion, from which the only remains were four balls of fire, the fuel tanks, which were quickly consumed as they fell earthward.

  I saw blue, red, yellow and aluminium-coloured fighters. Their tactics were running fairly true to form, with frontal attacks hitting the low squadron and rear attackers going for the lead and high squadrons. Some of the Jerries shot at us with rockets, and an attempt at air-to-air bombing was made with little black time-fuse sticks, dropped from above, which exploded in small grey puffs off to one side of the formation. Several of the FWs did some nice deflection shooting on side attacks from 500 yards at the high group, then raked the low group on the breakaway at closer range with their noses cocked in a side slip, to keep the formation in their sights longer in the turn. External fuel tanks were visible under the bellies or wings of at least two squadrons, shedding uncomfortable light on the mystery of their ability to tail us so far from their bases.

  The manner of the assaults indicated that the pilots knew where we were going and were inspired with a fanatical determination to stop us before we got there. Many pressed attacks home to 250 yards or less, or bolted right through the formation wide out, firing long 20-second bursts, often presenting point-blank targets on the breakaway. Some committed the fatal error of pulling up instead of going down and out. More experienced pilots came in on frontal attacks with a noticeably slower rate of closure, apparently throttled back, obtaining greater accuracy. But no tactics could halt the close-knit juggernauts of our Fortresses, nor save the single-seaters from paying a terrible price.

  Our airplane was endangered by various débris. Emergency hatches, exit doors, prematurely opened parachutes, bodies and assorted fragments of B-17s and Hun fighters breezed past us in the slipstream.

  I watched two fighters explode not far beneath, disappear in sheets of orange flame; B-17s dropping out in every stage of distress, from engines on fire to controls shot away; friendly and enemy parachutes floating down, and, on the green carpet far below us, funeral pyres of smoke from fallen fighters, marking our trail.

  On we flew through the cluttered wake of a desperate air battle, where disintegrating aircraft were commonplace and the white dots of sixty parachutes in the air at one time were hardly worth a second look. The spectacle registering on my eyes became so fantastic that my brain turned numb to the actuality of the death and destruction all around us. Had it not been for the squeezing in my stomach, which was trying to purge, I might easily have been watching an animated cartoon in a movie theatre.

  The minutes dragged on into an hour. And still the fighters came. Our gunners called coolly and briefly to one another, dividing up their targets, fighting for their lives with every round of ammunition – and our lives, and the formation. The tail gunner called that he was out of ammunition. We sent another belt back to him. Here was a new hazard. We might run out of.50 calibre slugs before we reached the target.

  I looked to both sides of us. Our two wing men were gone. So was the element in front of us – all three ships. We moved up into position behind the lead element of the high squadron. I looked out again on my side and saw a cripple, with one prop feathered, struggle up behind our right wing with his bad engine funnelling smoke into the slipstream. He dropped back. Now our tail gunner had a clear view. There were no more B-17s behind us. We were last man.

  I took the controls again for a while. The first thing I saw when Murphy resumed flying was a B-17 turning slowly out to the right, its cockpit a mass of flames. The co-pilot crawled out of his window, held on with one hand, reached back for his parachute, buckled it on, let go and was whisked back into the horizontal stabilizer of the tail. I believe the impact killed him. His parachute didn’t open.
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  I looked forward and almost ducked as I watched the tail gunner of a B-17 ahead of us take a bead right on our windshield and cut loose with a stream of tracers that missed us by a few feet as he fired on a fighter attacking us from 6 o’clock low. I almost ducked again when our own top-turret gunner’s twin muzzles pounded away a foot above my head in the full forward position, giving a realistic imitation of cannon shells exploding in the cockpit, while I gave an even better imitation of a man jumping six inches out of his seat.

  Still no let-up. The fighters queued up like a breadline and let us have it. Each second of time had a cannon shell in it. The strain of being a clay duck in the wrong end of that shooting gallery became almost intolerable. Our ‘Piccadilly’shook steadily with the fire of its.50s, and the air inside was wispy with smoke. I checked the engine instruments for the thousandth time. Normal. No injured crew members yet. Maybe we would get to that target, even with our reduced fire power. Seven Fortresses from our group had already gone down and many of the rest of us were badly shot up and short-handed because of wounded crew members.

  Almost disinterestedly I observed a B-17 pull out from the group preceding us and drop back to a position about 200 feet from our right wing tip. His right Tokyo tanks were on fire, and had been for a half-hour. Now the smoke was thicker. Flames were licking through the blackened skin of the wing. While the pilot held her steady, I saw four crew members drop out the bomb bay and execute delayed drops. Another bailed from the nose, opened his parachute prematurely and nearly fouled the tail. Another went out the left waist-gun opening, delaying his opening for a safe interval. The tail gunner dropped out of his hatch, apparently pulling his ripcord before he was clear of the ship. His parachute opened instantaneously, barely missing the tail, and jerked him so hard that both his shoes came off. He hung limp, whereas the others had shown immediate signs of life, shifting around in their harness. The Fortress then dropped back in a medium spiral and I did not see the pilots leave. I saw the ship though, just before it trailed from view, belly to the sky, its wing a solid sheet of yellow flame.

  Now that we had been under constant attack for more than an hour, it appeared certain that our group was faced with extinction. The sky was still mottled with rising fighters. Target time was 35 minutes away. I doubt if a man in the group visualized the possibility of our getting much further without 100 percent loss. Gunners were becoming exhausted and nerve-tortured from the nagging strain – the strain that sends gunners and pilots to the rest home. We had been the aiming point for what looked like most of the Luftwaffe. It looked as if we might find the rest of it primed for us at the target.

  At this hopeless point, a young squadron commander down in the low squadron was living through his finest hour. His squadron had lost its second element of three ships early in the fight, south of Antwerp, yet he had consistently maintained his vulnerable and exposed position in the formation rigidly in order to keep the guns of his three remaining ships well uncovered to protect the belly of the formation. Now, nearing the target, battle damage was catching up with him fast. A 20mm cannon shell penetrated the right side of his airplane and exploded beneath him, damaging the electrical system and cutting the top-turret gunner in the leg. A second 20mm entered the radio compartment, killing the radio operator, who bled to death with his legs severed above the knees. A third 20mm shell entered the left side of the nose, tearing out a section about 2 feet square, tore away the right-hand nose-gun installations and injured the bombardier in the head and shoulder. A fourth 20mm shell penetrated the right wing into the fuselage and shattered the hydraulic system, releasing fluid all over the cockpit. A fifth 20mm shell punctured the cabin roof and severed the rudder cables to one side of the rudder. A sixth 20mm shell exploded in the No 3 engine destroying all controls to that motor. The engine caught fire and lost its power, but eventually I saw the fire go out.

  Confronted with structural damage, partial loss of control, fire in the air and serious injuries to personnel, and faced with fresh waves of fighters still rising to the attack, this commander was justified in abandoning ship. His crew, some of them comparatively inexperienced youngsters, were preparing to bail out. The co-pilot pleaded with him repeatedly to bail out. His reply at this critical juncture was blunt. His words were heard over the interphone and had a magical effect on the crew. They stuck to their guns. The B-17 kept on.

  Near the initial point, at 11.50, one hour and a half after the first of at least 200 individual fighter attacks, the pressure eased off, although hostiles were still in the vicinity. A curious sensation came over me. I was still alive. It was possible to think of the target. Of North Africa. Of returning to England. Almost idly I watched a crippled B-17 pull over to the curb and drop its wheels and open its bomb bay, jettisoning its bombs. 3 ME-109s circled it closely, but held their fire while the crew bailed out. I remembered now that a little while back I had seen other Hun fighters hold their fire, even when being shot at by a B-17 from which the crew were bailing. But I doubt if sportsmanship had anything to do with it. They hoped to get a B-17 down fairly intact.

  And then our weary, battered column, short 24 bombers, but still holding the close formation that had brought the remainder through by sheer air discipline and gunnery, turned in to the target. I knew that our bombardiers were as grim as death while they synchronized their sights on the great ME-109 assembly shops lying below us in a curve of the winding Blue Danube, close to the outskirts of Regensburg. Our B-17 gave a slight lift and a red light went out on the instrument panel. Our bombs were away. We turned from the target toward the snow-capped Alps. I looked back and saw a beautiful sight – a rectangular pillar of smoke rising from the ME-109 plant. Only one burst was over and into the town. Even from this great height I could see that we had smeared the objective. The price? Cheap, 200 airmen.

  A few more fighters pecked at us on the way to the Alps, and a couple of smoking B-17s glided down toward the safety of Switzerland, about 40 miles distant. A town in the Brenner Pass tossed up a lone burst of futile flak. Flak? There had been lots of flak in the past two hours, but only once do I recall having seen it, a sort of side issue to the fighters. Colonel Le May, who had taken excellent care of us all the way, circled the air division over a large lake to give the cripples, some flying on three engines and many more trailing smoke, a chance to rejoin the family. We approached the Mediterranean in a gradual descent, conserving fuel. Out over the water we flew at low altitude, unmolested by fighters from Sardinia or Corsica, waiting through the long hot afternoon hours for the first sight of the North African coastline. The prospect of ditching, out of gasoline, and the sight of other B-17s falling into the drink seemed trivial matters after the vicious nightmare of the long trail across Southern Germany. We had walked through a high valley of the shadow of death, not expecting to see another sunset, and now I could fear no evil.

  With red lights showing on all our fuel tanks, we landed at our designated base in the desert, after eleven hours in the air.

  TEN

  Gunners of the United States 8th

  Army Air Force

  The B-17 Flying Fortress was just that – a flying fortress. It bristled with guns and was weighed down with protective armour plating. Half its crew of ten were gunners, if you include the radio man. In addition, the engineer, bombardier and navigator all had guns to fire when not otherwise engaged! It was a ‘labour intensive’ operation involving the services of forty aircrew in four B-17s to carry much the same load of bombs as one Lancaster flown by seven men.

  Yet, because American policy decreed that their heavy bombers would fly by day, those aircraft just had to have the maximum fire-power if they were to survive the onslaughts from the vicious guns and cannon of the German single-engine fighters. What is more, it was essential that the fire power from each B-17 Fortress formed part of a concentrated onslaught against the fighters. To achieve this, they flew in protective formation.

  Even with all this armament, the early raids into
Germany resulted in catastrophic losses for the US 8th Army Air Force. As we have said, it was only after the introduction of the long-range fighter escorts that the situation changed. Then, in the end, through guts and determination the 8th finally won mastery of the daylight skies over Germany.

  The B-24 Liberator was the 8th Air Force’s other ‘heavy’. It was not quite so strongly protected as the Fortress although superior in some other ways. It carried more bombs, had a greater range and was slightly faster. Yet the Fortress crews welcomed the presence of ‘Libs’ with a cynicism born of combat; on a mission they would say, ‘The B-24s are our best escort. When they’ re around the fighters always go for them, and leave us alone!’

  There is no doubt that it was the gunners who made the ‘day-light’ policy work. It is impossible to pay sufficient tribute to their skill and fortitude while fighting in the most fearsome air battles the world has ever known.

  Harry Slater of the 94th Bomb Group gives a comprehensive picture of the ‘aerial gunner’ in the 8th AAF during World War Two:

  The typical profile of the gunner was that he was young, carefree, adventurous and fearless. It is worth noting, however, that the true profile encompassed a much wider range. Many of them were as young as 17, but there were also many from all age groups with varying backgrounds and inner emotions. S/Sgt. Cole of the 385th Group was 48 years old, and our own Albert Herndon at 44 served as engineer and top gunner on Arthur Allen’s crew. Herndon was a World War One veteran and hard of hearing, but Allen never considered replacing him because he excelled in duty performance and crew dedication. …