Soon we turned due east again preparatory to doubling back to the left on our bomb run. I shifted the lead temporarily to Dieterle. The maneuver was awkwardly completed chiefly because of the high altitude at which we were flying and the fact that the pathfinder pilot in the seat beside me was not used to flying wing position. In his meager experience he was used to leading, and it was evident he was a poor wing man. I flew the ship part of the time, though I wasn't very good either.
As we turned left to head toward the target, I noticed the last units of the other bombers had made their turn and were now very far in advance. We were just about completely snapped off the end of the long string of bomber formations of the three divisions. Anyway, I thought, we should have a good clear bomb run.
Just about that moment I got a call from Dieterle. “My navigator says he isn't sure where we are,” he said. “What position do you make us?”
Hastily consulting with my navigator, I reported to him that we were just about directly on course to our target, after having gone a little farther east and south than briefed. We could look out to the right front and see the vast, sprawling city of Berlin through the quartz-like air. Ahead and slightly to our right was a towering column of smoke. I watched it intermittently until suddenly it occurred to me that the navigator in Dieterle's ship apparently still hadn't found himself. He was just slightly south of the proper course and nearing the bomb release line. But as yet the bomb bay doors of the ship had not opened. It was apparent the navigator still had not spotted the target. I looked for the ball bearing factory, and like a flash it occurred to me: that column of smoke, which I could now see was an inky black cloud covering a large area, was what was left of our target. It would be impossible to pick any aiming point out of that inky blotch. Evidently in the clear visibility the first bombers had hit and the ones behind had hit again until now the factory was a completely leveled, flaming, smoking mass. The bombs of at least eight hundred heavy bombers had hit an area as big as a few city blocks.
“That black smoke is the target,” I shouted over the radio.
“I know it,” came back the reply. “We're past where we could make a good run on it now. If we hit it we'll have to circle to take a second run. What are your orders?”
We had been specifically briefed according to the division field order that no second runs would be made. I remembered that. Besides, though sometimes such appearance is deceptive, it was evident to my mind that there had already been many more than sufficient bombers over that target to do the job.
“Turn right and we'll fly over the center of town and make the delivery,” I yelled. The radio jamming at this point was terrible. My radio was dinning into my headphones the most horrible cacophony I had ever heard. I was afraid Jack might not get the message, but he did.
My pilot turned to me and said, “We're not supposed to fly over the center of Berlin unless it is overcast. We are a pathfinder crew. That's what we're here for. If we go over there now we'll be shot to hell by the flak and then ripped to pieces by fighters coming out.”
That was the only experience I ever had of reluctance on the part of a lead pilot. He was no more frightened than I. We had met a situation where there was only one thing left to do, and we would do it. In a few minutes we were within range of the outer circle of the heavy guns guarding Berlin. The first few score of bursts were surprisingly low. Then they crept up on us. On in we went. Berlin seemed the biggest city in the world. We flew on for terribly long minutes until finally we were passing over some large buildings almost in the middle of town. The formation was completely haywire. The flak bursts were so thick it seemed to me some of the shells must be colliding with each other. A couple of bombers I could see were already heavily hit. But being in the airplane next to the lead, I couldn't see far enough back into our disordered formation to gauge well the overall effect of this devastating fire.
We kept flying over heavily built-up areas. Why didn't the bombardier in Dieterle's ship let go? We knew now we were only bombing the city, and one place was about as good as another. What were they holding their bombs for? I called Dieterle.
“Why the hell don't you let them go? We'll be past the city in another hour of this kind of flying.”
“Sorry, the bombardier wants to bomb the railroad yards. Bomb line almost here.”
A few seconds later the bombs were away from the lead ship and in quick succession from every other ship of the gangling formation. We turned sharp left to head out to the west side of town. The flak was all around us, and we could see the sheets of flame in the explosion of many shell bursts. The ships kicked around in the air like canoes in a Lake Superior storm.
I took over the flying of our plane for a moment. I put on enough power to pull ahead a little and slid to the left and under Dieterle, then dropped down a hundred feet or so and headed straight west waggling my wings furiously. Then I pulled off some power and slowed up. Many of the pilots by this time had doubtless become confused as to who was leading. But immediately Dieterle pulled up on my right wing. I kept waggling my wings for a moment, and held a reduced power setting. Soon the others began forming on me in a good, tight formation. About that time we saw the edge of the field of flak just ahead. We flew through the last black bursts and out into the clear, clean air beyond. I held reduced power so the plane kept going as slowly as it could and be stable. Then I told the pilot not to put on any more throttle until I ordered it.
Once out of the flak, I looked around to take stock of our situation. Many airplanes showed gaping holes; many had feathered propellers marking dead engines. Some were smoking as if they were about to burst into flames, and a couple had gone down. I called all the aircraft in the formation and told them I would use as little power as possible so the cripples could stay with me, and I would let down slowly to 15,000 feet for those whose oxygen lines were out. Some had already dropped below us, but were staying abreast of us underneath. I knew as we let down they would be able to resume positions in the formation. I looked for friendly fighters and saw none. I looked for the other bomber formations, but they were long gone out of sight. I listened for calls from ships of our formation reporting enemy fighters about, and here I was not disappointed. But after listening for a few minutes to the calls of our crippled ships too far to my rear for me to see them from the cockpit, I was convinced there were really very few German fighters attacking. Our tail gunner reported moderate enemy activity, but that was all. I thanked goodness for what we had done in February to the German fighter production.
I did my best to keep the formation well grouped and fly it in such a manner that the cripples could stay up. Many of the cripples did manage to stay with us, but there were reports of two ships falling back. One of these had three good engines, and I couldn't imagine why it couldn't hold on. Had I flown any slower it would have been to the detriment of the main formation, because our planes would have been unstable flying so close to the stalling point. That makes formation flying much more difficult. The way the main formation was moving, several ships with only three engines seemed to have little difficulty staying up. We kept getting reports of attack after attack on the two that dropped back until at last their calls were heard no more. From one I picked up that familiar last call: “Ship on fire, crew bailing out.” At rather frequent intervals I called our Ground Sector Control to tell them we were a lone formation of bombers considerably behind the rest of the formations, without friendly fighter support and under enemy attack.
When our wing first left the Berlin area I still felt we wouldn't make it home. But it finally dawned on me that for some peculiar reason there were only a few Jerries left to attack us. My hopes continued to rise by the minute for the next three-quarters of an hour. In that time we would have been gutted, had there been any reasonable force of enemy fighters about. To me it looked like a bad guess on the part of the German Ground Sector Control. It was evident they were much weaker than they had been only a week or so before, and they had spent
most of their available force attacking the formations ahead. After all, we had been at least in the area of the other bombing units until we made that last turn north to go over the center of Berlin. It was only then that we got too far behind for any support from friendly planes.
It was likely that many of the Jerries had been used to stop the first attacking units which started in on their bomb run. Many times that was their plan—to blunt the head of the column. And by the time we came over the majority of them were either shot down, damaged, or on the ground refueling. Their short range wouldn't permit them to fly long without landing for fuel.
Coming out we went three-quarters of an hour without friendly fighter support. Each minute was an agony, but finally my calls for help began to bear fruit. At length we saw a few ships headed toward us in the distance; they looked like our fighters. Two formations of four were coming our way, and they were flying just like the boys from the tall corn fly them. They slid in from an angle, flipping up their wings in a saucy-looking maneuver whose purpose is to let us see the white stars on their undersides. They don't want the combined turrets of a bomber unit to let loose on them. As soon as we were sure who they were the relief we felt was something beyond explanation. I took the formation on down to 12,000 feet upon getting the support. I knew the pilots who had been flying without oxygen at 15,000 must be tired. We could risk a slightly lower altitude with friendly fighter cover.
I sat back in my seat, unbuckled my safety belt, and took off my oxygen mask to give my face a rest. I called the boys in the back of the airplane to tell them our altitude so that they could take off their masks if they wanted to. We felt ourselves as good as home now that we could look up at those big, beautiful Thunderbolts in pairs crisscrossing over our heads. A song was running like a continuing nervous tremor through my mind, though until this moment of relaxation I had taken little note of it. It was “Room with a View.”
During the remainder of the-trip home we met a few patches of moderate flak, but we didn't suffer from them. In that last hour and a half of the flight my eased mind covered many things. I felt this would be the last hard raid of my tour, and now I believed I would live to see the show out. I had felt that at the moment I saw that first Thunderbolt a hundred miles back. Here was a life not ended, but before me.
Soon, through a few bursts of flak from the coastal defense guns, we passed out over the beaches of France. Those few flak bursts looked downright funny compared to the ones we saw over Berlin. And then there was the lovely coast of England followed shortly by the familiar, wooded surroundings of our home station. I called the engineer and told him to make a careful inspection of the plane. We had felt many shell bursts close to the ship. We hadn't noticed anything wrong with the way it flew, but I didn't want to take any chances. If a plane is crippled it's good to know it before landing. After we had put the landing gear down I told the engineer to check the tires carefully.
Soon he returned to the cockpit and said all was well. No evidence of any real damage, just a lot of small holes all over. I relaxed. You can tell to look at a tire when a bomber is in the air whether it is punctured or not. If it has been holed by flak or fighter shells it will assume an unusual configuration in the slipstream. So we were okay. We led the formation over the field and peeled off. The pilot set a nice glide on his final approach to the runway and we touched down easily. It seemed almost a perfect landing for the first hundred and fifty feet. Then the ship began to wobble peculiarly. It was going down on the right wheel and had a strong tendency to pull off the runway to the right. The pilot didn't seem to be making the proper effort to stop it, so I took over.
I jammed on the left brake and threw on power on the number four—right outboard—engine. It was evident our engineer had been wrong. We had a flat right tire. As the Lib slowed down and the wings lost their lift it came down hard on the rim. We could feel the grinding of the tire as it buckled under the weight and finally tore off. I knew we had to get the ship clear of the runway. Had I known we had a flat tire, I would have waited for the others to land. We couldn't afford to let our ship jam traffic. There were other runways, but none so long as the one we were on. If we got off the runway we would bog down immediately and doubtless other ships would be coming in in worse condition than we.
As our plane careened down the strip, the left brake smoking and the right tire gone, it slowed up quickly. We were approaching the crossway intersection of another runway. Just as we came abreast of it I released the brake pressure on the left brake and pulled off the throttle to let the ship spin around in a sharp right turn of slightly more than ninety degrees. Then I hit the left brake again for a moment and gave the right outboard engine another blast of power. It straightened us out and pulled us clear of the path of other ships coming in behind. As soon as we were well away from the long runway I cut the engines. We were right in front of the tower. Sweat was running down my forehead in such volume that it was getting in my eyes. My clothes were made for the freezing cold of high altitude, not for such exertion on the ground. I looked toward the railed balcony of the control tower and saw Colonel Arnold and General Timberlake waving to me.
I climbed out of the sad-looking bomber; it was listing at a steep tilt with its right wing down. I gave it a hasty once-over and noticed gas dripping from a hole in the wing. We had fuel cells punctured. I saw a lot of holes; they were everywhere, though most of them were small. The ship had taken quite a beating to carry out its mission. Before I left it to walk over to the tower, I told the crew chief standing by to save me a sample of the flak. I knew he would find some in it, and I thought a piece of that flak would be a proper memento of an ordeal which someday I might not mind remembering. I walked over to the tower and climbed the stairs to be greeted by the broad smile and sparkling eyes of Colonel Arnold. “Hope you had fun today, Phil.”
General Ted was smiling, too. They were naturally too rapt in attention to the landing progress of the other airplanes to want a full account of the mission at that time. Together we watched the rest of the landings. Some ships were okay and some were crippled in different degrees of seriousness. Finally, the last one expected in had landed, and then the general, Colonel Arnold, and I piled in the general's big Packard and drove to the wing headquarters to go over the results of the mission. Dieterle and his navigator and bombardier joined us there. With those three aiding me I tried to piece together the way things went. I covered every detail as well as I could. When all of us got through I think we had given a pretty accurate and detailed picture.
My pathfinder crew left to eat, and I never saw them again. I was frankly disappointed in the way that crew functioned, but perhaps it was not their fault. I felt the injustice of the situation applied to them as well as to our wing. Someone in authority had designated that crew of clearly inadequate combat experience to lead a combat wing on a very intricate mission. The crew had done the best it could. One thing which remained in my mind was the fact that the engineer who had inspected the tire wasn't even able to tell it was punctured.
The mission was considered a great success. The bombers ahead of us were credited with 100 percent destruction of the ball bearing factory. Thus our scattering of bombs on Berlin resulted in more damage than we could have expected had we bombed the bomb craters of units ahead of us. The Air Force lost thirty-eight bombers and sixteen fighters on the mission, and that was less than expected.
My mind was relaxed, but I was tired, and the feeling of satisfaction permitted my tiredness to descend upon me with appalling suddenness. As I left the operations office of the wing, General Ted complimented me and Colonel Arnold slapped me on the shoulder, laughed and said, “My God, you must have had a time of it today. Go get something to eat and see if you can find a sack to crawl into. I'll see you tomorrow.”
After that mission I walked about the station with more general confidence than I'd had since the day of my abort on the first Norway raid. From a strictly objective assessment of results, maybe my decisi
on on that sad occasion was right. Nevertheless I had done injury to myself by that decision. For a while after my trip to Berlin I didn't fly operationally. But in my job as group operations officer I had found that there were other duties to perform which were just about as trying. Once or twice I found these other duties almost more than I could take. It was my job to visit the scenes of accidents in order to be able to make the necessary reports. Sometimes that meant I had to view the remains of my friends strewn across the English countryside. One such occasion particularly stays in my mind.
I could have committed murder when I saw that macabre display. The ambulance had visited the scene of the accident when I got there, but the attendants had missed some of the remains of the crew members. I tramped over a tremendous barley field in which small bits of a great Liberator were scattered like seeds from the hand of Satan. I had seen half of a pink hand, upturned and mysteriously unbleeding. It looked like something out of a landscape by Dali, except in this case it was part of someone I knew. As soon as I had seen enough to make a report I met an Englishman who had the land under lease. He had planted the barley in the field and was obviously a farmer of considerable holdings. He became annoyed when he found we had not brought the proper forms with us for him to fill out his claim of damage to the barley crop. He was impatient at a delay of twenty-four hours in getting the form, and clearly indicated he thought that the payment of his claim should be given immediate precedence over all else. Two officers who were with me placed themselves one on one side and one on the other and drew me away from him. If they hadn't I might have scattered him about to keep company with the remains of our crew.
But again we had an accident. One of our ships returned from a raid hideously crippled. At an altitude too low to permit the crew to jump out, it began to go to pieces. It was headed down toward a small village. The pilot, from undeniable evidence, made a superhuman effort and forced his plane over the inhabited area. It crashed just past the last house and burned with all personnel aboard. The next day a beautiful wreath arrived. It was sent by the villagers with a card bearing these words: “With heartfelt sympathy and as a token of sincere appreciation from the residents of Taverham, Norfolk, for self-sacrifice made by this crew of our American Allies.”
Bomber Pilot Page 21
