Escape from Paris

by Stephen Harding

  2. Natural had been built in Seattle by Boeing, whereas its replacement was built under license by Douglas Aircraft in Los Angeles. The former was a B-17F-65-BO, and the latter a B-17F-45-DL; so many incremental changes were made to the Fortress throughout its production life that production block numbers—the second numeral in each designation—were added so that mechanics could properly maintain the slightly different systems on each variant. The final two-letter combination simply indicated the company that built the aircraft—Boeing (BO), Douglas (DL), and Lockheed-Vega (VE), the latter in Burbank, California.

  3. While the name was enclosed in painted quotation marks on the nose of the B-17, we will dispense with them from this point on in the text.

  4. Colonel John G. “Dinty” Moore served at 4th Wing headquarters until October 1943, when he was given command of Base Air Depot No. 3 in Wharton, England. In December 1943 he returned to the United States, where he served in the office of the chief of the air staff for the remainder of World War II. He retired in 1947, and died in Colorado Springs on September 27, 1975.

  5. Lingering Contrails, 48–49.

  6. Castle was one of the inspirations for the character “Brigadier General Frank Savage” in Twelve O’Clock High by Bernie Lay Jr. and Sy Bartlett. Like Castle, Savage replaced a beloved group commander and was tasked with straightening out a “hard-luck” unit. Initially resented by the men in the unit, Savage proves himself in combat and succeeds in winning his men’s respect. He eventually has a nervous breakdown, however, and is himself replaced.Castle’s story ended differently. He left the 94th Bomb Group on April 17, 1944, to take command of the 4th Bomb Wing and was promoted to brigadier general the following December 14. Ten days later Castle was shot down and killed while flying as copilot on a B-17 of the 487th Bomb Group during a mission against the airfield at Darmstadt, Germany. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that day, and California’s now closed Castle Air Force Base was named for him.

  7. The Combined Bomber Offensive, April Through December 1943, 8.

  8. Ibid., 203. Owing to the transfer of all Britain-based B-24 groups to North Africa, there were no Liberators flying bombing missions from the United Kingdom at that time.

  9. Ibid., 210.

  10. Most of the airman from the east side of the airfield (332nd and 333rd squadrons) would walk or cycle to the Fox and Hounds in Thurston, just down Mount Road. Those from the west side of the field (331st and 410th squadrons), like Joe Cornwall, favored the aforementioned Sword in Hand or the fifteenth-century Fox on Eastgate Street.The African-American troops assigned to the 94th—most of whom handled the transport and unloading of ordnance in the Bomb Storage Site to the east of the perimeter track—were billeted away from the main airfield, in Tostock and Drinkstone, and drank in the Bear pub in Bayton. In keeping with then current American racial attitudes and segregation policies, the USAAF designated the Bear as a “colored only” establishment and the Fox and Hounds as “white only.”

  11. Le Bourget was also the eastern terminus of Charles Lindbergh’s epic 1927 trans-Atlantic solo flight.

  12. Narrative Mission Report, VIII Bomber Command Mission, 72.

  13. Interview with Nathaniel Gypin, 2017. Hereafter cited as Harding-Gypin 2017.

  14. While the overwhelming majority of USAAF aerial gunners were enlisted men, it was not unheard of for officers to complete the required training and win gunner’s wings. Among the officers who did so was Captain Clark Gable, a member of the Hollywood-based 1st Motion Picture Unit who earned his wings as part of his preparation for making a film about gunners in action. On personal orders from USAAF commander General Henry H. Arnold, Gable traveled to England in early 1943 and was embedded with the 351st Bomb Group at Polebrook, Northhamptonshire. He flew at least five combat missions, and he and his camera operator shot some fifty thousand feet of film. While the resulting movie—Combat America, released in January 1945—was overshadowed by William Wyler’s better-known Memphis Belle, many of the images Gable and his team captured have become staples in any film about the Eighth Air Force in World War II.

  15. Jefferson Davis Dickson was being modest in saying he’d done “pretty well” for himself in France, for in the interwar years he had become a millionaire and perhaps the best-known and most successful sports promoter in Europe—indeed, as of the summer of 1943 he was still the owner of record of the Palais des Sports complex in German-occupied Paris. Widely and respectfully referred to as the “ringmaster of Paris,” he was fluent in French and spoke passable Spanish and Portuguese, was personal friends with members of several royal houses, and was respected and admired throughout the upper levels of European society. He had happened to be in New York when the United States entered the war, and despite his age—and the fact that he had a wife and infant daughter—had immediately offered his services to the USAAF. Though initially trained as an air intelligence officer, his considerable skills in both still and motion-picture photography had brought him to Anderson’s attention and led to his current position.Details surrounding Jeff Dickson’s USAAF service in England and his participation in the July 14 mission are drawn from several sources, including a June 20, 1943, letter Dickson wrote to his wife, Louise; a March 26, 1945, letter to Louise from Major David F. Doyle, who had served with Dickson on the 4th Wing staff; Dickson’s Individual Deceased Personnel File; Missing Air Crew Report No. 116; USAAF Escape and Evasion Report No. 125; and various newspaper articles reporting on Dickson’s participation in the July 14 event.

  16. This account of Jeff Dickson’s pre-mission introduction to, and interactions with, Purdy’s crew is taken from an April 18, 1944, letter written to Louise Dickson by an officer in the 331st Bomb Squadron. Unfortunately, the person’s identity is unclear, since there is no salutation that might indicate whether the writer was known to Mrs. Dickson, and because the bottom half of the second page is missing, there is no signature or title. Hereafter, this letter will be cited as Unknown, to Mrs. Dickson.

  17. Harry Lewis Eastman had been a Michigan State Police officer at the time of Pearl Harbor. He resigned and enlisted in the USAAF, and was trained as an aerial gunner at Las Vegas Army Airfield, where he first met Joe Cornwall. Eastman was initially posted to Biggs Army Airfield, Texas, as a flexible gunnery instructor. When the 94th Bomb Group arrived at Biggs in November 1942, one of the 331st Bomb Squadron crews was short a gunner due to illness, and Eastman talked his commanding officer into letting him fill the vacancy. Eastman, Cornwall, and Davitt became fast friends, and tended to spend a lot of off-duty time together. Details on Eastman’s life, USAAF career, and time as an evader were provided to the author by his nephew, Byron Higgins, and by Roger Lynch, a lifelong friend of Higgins who also knew Eastman. The interviews are hereafter cited as, respectively, Harding-Higgins 2017 and Harding-Lynch 2017.

  18. Details on the July 14 raid—including numbers of 94th Bomb Group aircraft involved, routes to and from the target, bomb loads, and so on—are drawn from HQs., VIII Bomber Command Tactical Mission Report for Mission No. 73, July 14, 1943, hereafter cited as Tactical Mission Report 73.

  19. Because they were not normally exposed to the harsh cold that flooded the rear part of the B-17, the officers in the front of the aircraft tended to favor their dress caps rather than fleece-lined flying helmets. The officers would remove the stiffeners that gave the cap its clean, rounded shape, allowing the sides of the cap to be “crushed” downward so that the wearer’s radio earphones would fit over it.

  20. Tactical Mission Report 73, “Bombing Data.”

  21. All times used in this chapter are drawn from Tactical Mission Report 73. The times mentioned in conjunction with Luftwaffe aircraft movements are based on Allied intercepts of German radio communications—both between the German intercept controllers and the fighters, and among the individual fighter pilots themselves—and the intercepts are quoted in Tactical Mission Report 73’s “Enemy Air Action” section.

  22. While brief
, an Fw 190’s firing pass could be catastrophic for the target aircraft. In a three-second burst, each of the German fighter’s four MG 151 20mm cannon spat out 130 explosive rounds, while in the same few moments the aircraft’s two MG 131 13mm machine guns each added forty-five bullets to the lethal mix.

  23. Descriptions of the events aboard Salty’s Naturals are drawn from the accounts rendered by Joe Cornwall and Larry Templeton in Escape and Evasion Reports 125 and 86, respectively (hereafter cited as E&E 125 and E&E 86); and from Templeton’s “If Memory Serves Me Correctly.” Ralph Saltsman’s recollections of both the July 14 air battle and its aftermath are drawn from his unpublished 1945 typescript “My Story” and his two postwar, self-published accounts, Good Time Cholly II and Return to Normandy.

  24. In his various accounts of the collision, Saltsman identified the German fighter as a Bf 109, but official after-action reports based on the observations of other aviators in the formation state categorically that it was an Fw 190. While the identity of the German pilot is not known for certain, the most likely candidate appears to be JG 2 enlisted pilot Gerhard Nuss. He was wounded in action against B-17s on that day in that area, and bailed out of his Fw 190 in the vicinity of Louviers—not far off the 94th Bomb Group’s flight path. Most of the German fighter fell to earth on the rue des Jardins in Tourneville, barely one mile north of the Salty’s Naturals crash site.

  25. Purdy’s heroic efforts were seen by many of the other pilots in the formation, who reported their observations upon return to England. As a result, Purdy was posthumously awarded a second Distinguished Flying Cross, under authority of Eighth Air Force General Order No. 226 of December 16, 1943. In a sad irony, the ceremony for the award of his first DFC had been scheduled for July 15, 1943.

  26. As outlined in Pilot’s Flight Operating Instructions for Army Models B-17F and G, the standard bailout procedure consisted of two steps. If it became necessary to abandon the aircraft in flight, the aircraft commander was to give three short rings on the aircraft’s alarm bell, at which point the members of the crew were to don their parachutes and move to their designated exit points. A second, long ring on the bell was the signal to jump. Most actual bailouts in combat were not conducted in quite so orderly a manner, of course.

  27. While it might seem more logical for the gunners to simply dive out their respective waist windows, to do so would have run the very real risk of getting entangled in the long metal belts of .50-caliber cartridges feeding each gun, or of damaging the parachute.

  28. E&E 125.

  29. In E&E 125 Joe Cornwall stated that he and Santangelo had been trapped in Salty’s Naturals until the bomber had fallen to about 1,000 feet, at which point the two airmen bailed out. However, the narrative mission report compiled by the 94th Bomb Group Intelligence Office and accounts by other airmen on the July 14 mission to Le Bourget state categorically that the first two jumpers to leave Purdy’s aircraft did so at about 15,000 feet. The discrepancy in Cornwall’s account is likely due to the confusion, stress, and anoxia-caused disorientation he experienced in the minutes following the collision with the German fighter. Indeed, in later years Cornwall told relatives that the drop from the doomed bomber seemed to go on forever.

  30. “If Memory Serves.”

  31. German troops arrived on scene fairly soon after the crash of Salty’s Naturals, but not soon enough to prevent two local French hooligans—Bouteloup and Serin—from looting the bodies of wallets, cigarette lighters, and watches. When tried after the liberation, the thieves claimed they had only been collecting the dead men’s valuables to prevent their theft by the Germans.The Germans recovered five bodies from within the wreckage—Purdy, Jones, Lichtenberger, Marquardt, and Smith. The body of Carroll Harris was laying about twenty feet from the remains of the bomber, while Jeff Dickson’s body was found in a stand of trees about 100 yards from the crash site—whether thrown clear by the explosion of the aircraft’s bombs or during the B-17’s descent is unclear. Sprague’s body was discovered in a field about a mile from the wreckage. Eight bodies were buried late on July 14 as “unknowns” in the French military section of Évreux’s Saint-Louis Cemetery, in graves 208 to 215. Santangelo’s body was buried with the others about three weeks later. Details drawn from the May 14, 1945, letter to Louise M. Dickson from John Harding.

  32. Sprague’s horrific fall to earth was reported by several of the 94th’s aviators in their postmission reports. In parachuting circles, the malfunction the radio operator experienced is known as a “streamer.”

  33. Harrison’s B-17F, serial 42-3190, is often incorrectly said to have carried the name Mr. Five by Five. That was actually the name of Harrison’s usual bomber, serial 42-29717, which had been badly damaged during the 94th’s June 22 mission against the German rubber-production facilities at Hüls. Mr. Five by Five was eventually repaired and transferred to the 92nd Bomb Group at Alconbury. It was shot down on February 25, 1944, during a mission to Stuttgart, Germany.

  34. Details of Harrison’s encounter with Mayer, and the ultimate crash-landing in France, are drawn from Escape & Evasion Reports 91 (Harrison) and 98 (Turner). They are hereafter cited as E&E 91 and E&E 98, respectively. French author Loïc Lemarchand’s Bel atterrissage capitaine! is a delightful in-depth look at the Harrison crew’s postcrash exploits.

  35. Among the other JG 2 pilots believed to have taken part in the attack on Harrison’s aircraft was Leutnant Horst Zettel. The young pilot was killed on July 27, 1943, when his Fw 190 was shot down by a Spitfire during a swirling dogfight that also claimed the lives of three other JG 2 pilots.

  36. “My Story,” 3; Good Time Cholly II, 2.

  37. Frank’s colorful abandon-ship announcement figures prominently in a 1976 letter from bombardier Burnett to Ralph Saltsman. Details on Burnett’s and Wholley’s actions during the event are drawn from the same letter.

  38. Davitt’s recollections are included in his Escape & Evasion Report No. 99, hereafter cited as E&E 99.

  39. “My Story,” Good Time Cholly II, op. cit.

  40. To “salvo” bombs means to emergency release them before the bombardier has sighted the intended target. This was done both to lighten the aircraft and to make it possible for crew members to bail out through the bomb bay without obstruction.

  41. Credit for downing Watts’s aircraft is usually given to Egon Mayer, who claimed two B-17s that day, though JG 2’s Leutnant Wilhelm Flegel von Farnholz has also been mentioned as the responsible pilot.

  42. While the 94th Bomb Group was the only participant in the Le Bourget raid to lose aircraft, the groups attacking Villacoublay and Amiens/Glisy lost a combined total of five B-17s. The four groups attacking Le Bourget, for their part, claimed a total of forty-one German aircraft destroyed, twenty-eight probably destroyed, and thirty-two damaged, according to Tactical Mission Report 73. The actual number of enemy aircraft shot down during the course of the Le Bourget raid is unclear, though it was certainly far fewer than forty-one.

  CHAPTER 4

  1. The Fortress crashed in La Californie, a small valley under cultivation about a mile to the southwest of the township of Saint-Germain-des-Angles, about four miles northwest of Évreux.

  2. E&E 125. Additional details on Cornwall’s experiences after his bailout are drawn from Harding-Gypin 2017.

  3. Some sources indicate that the woman who first helped Joe Cornwall was a Mme. Quelevee.

  4. Details on Templeton’s activities are drawn from E&E 86, from his undated letter to Louise M. Dickson, and from “If Memory Serves.”

  5. Details of Harrison’s crash-landing and of the subsequent activities of him, David Turner, Jefferson Polk, and Charles McNemar are taken from, respectively, Escape & Evasion Reports 91, 98, 109, and 110—hereafter cited as E&E 91, E&E 98, E&E 109, and E&E 110.

  6. Harrison stood about five feet ten inches tall and weighed 245 pounds—all of it muscle.

  7. The German ace’s visit to Harrison’s aircraft was photographed by a Luftwaffe propag
anda team, and the images were splashed across military and civilian newspapers throughout Germany and the occupied countries. The Germans repaired the damaged B-17 (serial 42-3190) and put it into service with the special-operations unit Kampfgeschwader 200. The aircraft was reportedly used in the Mediterranean area to drop agents behind Allied lines. Its ultimate fate is unclear.

  8. The account of Saltsman’s postlanding activities is based on “My Story” and Good Time Cholly II, op. cit.

  9. Houlbec-Cocherel is just over ten miles east of where Salty’s Naturals crashed.

  10. Davitt’s account is drawn from Escape & Evasion Report No. 99, hereafter cited as E&E 99.

  11. Eastman and Davitt were not told the family’s name for security reasons. Ralph Saltsman learned it during his 1993 visit to the Normandy crash site of Good Time Cholly II, and mentioned it in Return to Normandy.

  12. The priest was Alphonse Pasco, the doctor was Suzanne Huet, and “Merlin” was Louis Maury.Trying to determine an individual’s membership in a particular réseau can be challenging for several reasons. First, there was an obvious need for secrecy, so many people never identified themselves as having worked for a particular network, even after the war. Second, many people worked on behalf of more than one network—indeed, several individuals who after the war were listed as members of Turma-Vengeance were also identified as having been members of the Bourgogne (Burgundy) and Comète (Comet) escape lines. Information in this and following chapters regarding the creation, organization, activities, and membership of Turma-Vengeance is drawn primarily from Fonds Turma-Vengeance. Réseau Turma-Vengeance. Listes, Rapports et Comptes-rendus des Activiteés des Membres du Réseau, and Vengeance: Histoire d’Un Corps Franc.