Air Fronts: Theaters of Operation - European Theater of Operation: Target Germany - Mission 95.

LONDON, June 22. Strong formations of United States Eighth Air Force heavy bombers successfully attacked targets in the Ruhr and Belgium today.

One large formation of Flying Fortresses without escort penetrated strong enemy anti-aircraft and fighter defense for an attack on the synthetic-rubber factory at Huts, near Recklinghausen. Another formation attacked the General Motors plant near Antwerp.

Bombing results were good and fires were started at both targets. The bombers destroyed a considerable number of the enemy. Many squadrons of USAAF. RAF, Dominion and Allied fighters carried out escorting and supporting operations. Twenty of our bombers are missing.

—From an Official Communiqué.   -

IT IS 1658 hours, June 21, 1943.* The daily Operations Conference at the headquarters of the VllI Bomber Command, somewhere in England, is about to end. In a square, high-ceilinged room buried beneath thirty feet of reinforced concrete, five men are seated at a table. This is the moment of decision.

The Commanding General stares at the wall map with its red-ribboned roads leading to and from the targets. He is weighing, judging, remembering his own trips across those cold seas and that unfriendly land. He turns to the Weather Officer.

"You say 6,10 cloud over target? Can you give me better conditions in other target areas ?" "No, sir, I'm afraid not."

"We'lI go to the rubber plant at Huls, then. Keep me posted on the weather."

* Times in this book are based on the twenty-four-hour military clock running from midnight to midnight; e.g., 0312 hours is 3:12 A.M., 1517 hours is 3:17 P.M

The group breaks up. A vast and intricate machine of destruction, set in motion early that afternoon when the stations were alerted by the warning order and the laden bomb trailers began moving from the dumps to the waiting planes, now begins its inexorable cycle. Behind are weeks of planning, ahead five hours of climatic action.

The action has begun but, like that of any well-planned drama, is slow at first. Field Order 95 becomes a yard-long message on the teletype. Miles away, at the several Air Divisional head-quarters, the operational staffs study its cryptic story. Targets and aiming points, fighter support, aircraft required, routes out and back, bombing altitudes, zero hour, radio procedure—each point is analyzed and discussed, translated from plan to practice. Here are the funnel and the sieve, where the whole is divided into its component parts. Each part must be practicable—in terms of planes and men and bombs and fuel, in minutes and seconds and rounds to be fired. Throughout the early hours of the evening, while the larks sing and the farm wagons creak home along the twisting lanes, the strategic plan for Mission 95 becomes a blueprint for action.

At 2330 Command calls. The weather is holding. It is 0105 of June 22, when the last detail is completed and the last annex written. Once more the teletype begins to clatter, this time speeding the Combat Order from the Air Divisions to the Combat Wings and their satellite Groups scattered over the wind-swept heart of England.

Group 500 is a typical station. A flat, grassy plain some two miles on a side, it is crisscrossed by concrete runways, encircled by a perimeter track, and dotted, on its edges, with dispersal areas where the bombers are parked. On the edge of the field proper are several cavernous hangars, administration buildings, and work-shops. Around the airdrome and blending with the plowed land and thickets of the countryside are the barracks and the mess halls for the 1600 officers and men who make up the complement of Group 500.

The station is dark and silent at 0105 on this June morning. A chilI wind ruffles the grass, an old moon hangs low over a neighbouring wood, and high in the clouded sky a nightfighter drones by on patrol. The plane guards wait watchfully

Bombing up. The warning order starts the laden bomb-trailers moving from the dumps to the waiting planes.

within the monolithic shadows of the bombers. A wandering jeep cruises the perimeter track behind two pale blue spots of light. In Hangar 1 a night crew is changing an engine on Rain of Terror. At the motor pool the truck crews, alerted doze fitfully. In the station headquarters building, behind the gasproof doors, the windowless offices which house the Message Center and the Operations Room are quiet, but bright with light. In the Message Center a sergeant and a pfc are talking shop, in Operations the Watch Officer is reading a book, and, down the hall, the Intelligence Duty Officer is writing a letter home.

The teletype at Group 500 begins its clatter at 0106 hours. At Group 501 it breaks the silence too, and at 653 and 187 and 404, at 203, 459, 366, and 724—at all the American airdromes spread abroad across this part of England. At each the scene is the same in its essentials; at each there is the same sequence of events. What Command has conceived, what Air Division has planned and scheduled, what Combat Wing has further detailed and directed, these Groups now trans-pose to action. The machine as a whole is now in motion. Command, its part in the drama completed for the moment, waits patiently; Division collects its papers and goes wearily to bed; on the dark fields where the bombers wait men begin to stir and prepare for their part in Mission 95.

S-2, the Intelligence chief of Group 500, is sleeping heavily when a, jeep driver shakes his shoulder. It is 0112 hours.

"An order coming through, sir. I'lI be waiting outside."

While S-2 fumbles in the dark for his clothes, the Operations Watch Officer is busy with his phones. The Group Commander and the Group Navigator are awakened, a dozen cooks are tumbled out of bed, and the motor pool comes alive. S-2 finds the jeep in the shadows of the Nissen hut. The tarmac road leads him and the jeep driver between two newly sown fields, past a sleeping farmhouse, close by the hulking shadow of a Fortress at its dispersalpoint, and to the blacked-out administration building. Once past the double door and the curtain, S-2 stops for a moment, to accustom his eyes to the light.

In the Intelligence Room the Duty Officer has pinned a large piece of transparent talc over the wall map and is tracing the routes out and back with a red grease pencil. The white length of the Combat Order is on the table. S-2 studies it. This is a tough one. Two attacks, one on the edge of the Ruhr. Happy Valley. The other one on our old friends at Antwerp. Group 500 to go along with the main thrust, which means a long ride and plenty of flak and fighters. Zero hour 0800 going out over the English coast. That means take-off at 0700, briefing three hours earlier at 0400, and breakfast at 0330. It's now 0130. Better get set up for the Old Man.

The Flak Officer comes in, rubbing a rough chin and regretting the last beer, three hours ago. He looks at the order, whistles, and goes to his files. S-2 has the target folder out now. A large-scale map of the area. A photograph, crystal-clear, taken from a reconnaissance plane seven miles up. A row of smoke-stacks, casting attenuated shadows . . . gas tanks . . . cooling towers ... transformer station . . . hutments . . . acres of buildings, dispersed and camouflaged . . . a railroad siding. From off left enters a running gash—a pipe line, to the expert's eye. Top, left to right, courses the Wesel-Datteln canal. Off right, across the tracks, a coal mine. Around the whole lies the checkerboard of Prussian farm-land. A war plant cunningly (but not cunningly enough) dropped into the innocent countryside.

ln the target folder is a mimeographed brochure giving all the facts of this plant's secret life —when it was built, what it produces, the size and number of its buildings, how many men it employs, and what it does to maintain the German war effort. S-2 studies all this. On the pictures he marks the Mean Point of Impact, traces the course into, over, and out from the target. Then he sets about preparing his part of the briefing.

The Intelligence Room is filled with shifting movement now. The movement is intent and purposeful. It is resolute but glum—for this is the hour when men should sleep, not plan death and destruction. Outside, the station is still dark and quiet. The moon is down and the breeze has died and a thin sheet of haze lies over the run-ways. There is the faint and acrid smell of coal smoke in the air. In the Operations Room the Watch Officer is checking crew lists with a Squadron Commander. At another desk the Group Navigator marks a precise cross at a point on the North Sea and slides his parallel rulers down toward the German coast.

At 0148 the Old Man arrives at Intelligence. The Old Man is thirty-five. He likes to lead his boys on missions, and has, but a Group Commander's place is usually on the ground. Now, as he studies the routes on the map, he remembers his own trips—the boiling flak bursts, the attacks of the enemy fighters, the ice-like blue of the sky five miles aloft, and the unreality of the patterned earth below. Sucking a dry pipe, he stands for long minutes before the map. Then he sits down with the Combat Order and starts reading, slowly and with complete absorption. He might be memorizing the lines. And in a way, he is. For all through the long day to come phrases from this order will run slowly through his mind as, from his earth-bound post in England, he follows Group 500's course in the pattern of Mission 95.

0300 hours on a chill June morning is no time to get up. Group 500 does get up—with howls and curses, in deliberate silence, or with laughter. Each man faces the black morning in his own fashion, for each knows that Group 500 is going out. The weather has held. The combat crews—the pilots, the copilots, the navigators, the bombardiers, and the gunners—get into their flying outfits. First, the heavy underwear, then the bright-blue, electrically heated "zoot suit" of flannel, O.D. trousers or fleece-lined leather pants, and a sheepskin jacket. No two dress alike, each man catering to his whims and the requirements of his post. Heated gloves and boots in one hand, and Mae West and helmet in the other, they're ready for the truck to the mess hall.

By 0330 the barracks housing the combat and the maintenance crews are emptied and the mess halls filled. The station is awakening now, as the intimation of action spreads like an ever-widening ripple. Across the rolling plain of central England this gradual stirring is duplicated at each Group assigned to Mission 95. The tempo quickens; a note of urgency is for the first time apparent in the movement. At Group 500 the Flying Control Officer is bending over a plan of the field, plotting the marshaling of his forces with the deliberateness of a choreographer—each plane in its place on the perimeter track, each off at thirty-second intervals, and each in its place at 5000 feet.

At 0405 the briefing room is ready, maps spread upon the wall and benches ranged along the concrete floor. The crews drift in, blinking at the light, and fill up the benches—officer pilots, navigators, and bombardiers to the fore, and sergeant gunners at the rear. The square of transparent talc with its red route lines is pinned to the map. Group 500's crews look first at that. Then they look away and make small sounds of disapproval. FW's, here we come. . . . Johnny boy, you're touring Europe today. . . . Oh, oh, who thought this one up? . . . What is it, anybody know?

They are nervous now, like a relay runner waiting to take over the baton. Later, when their time to carry the action comes, they will be calm. But now they are nervous. And they are sleepy and filled with breakfast. Mission 95 is an alien and distasteful prospect while it remains lines on a map, target pictures, and precise descriptive phrases. Later, when it moves into their realm of planes and sky and sun and their own special skilIs, they will make it something of their own. But now, in this bare room, there is no suggestion of adventure, no challenge. So they sit waiting—talking, yawning, watching the little group of officers clustered before the map. When the Old Man turns and faces them there is a sudden hush. Through the blackout curtains there drifts, in the moment of silence, a sound that reaches every ear in the room. It is far away and muted. It is the sound of a Fortress engine at its dispersal point. The line crews are on the job. The combat men stiffen for a moment. Then they relax. They look up at the Old Man, who stands facing them gravely.

Back at Command, Weather is having a round-robin talk with the meterological officers of the Air Divisions and the Combat Wings. The weather chart is developing as predicted. A front is moving eastward across the Irish Sea, but planes will beat it back to base. Weather's final judgment: the attack is feasible. Mission 95 has conquered its first great enemy—weather.

The Old Man is talking: "I don't need to tell any of you what we did at Kiel on the last mission. The bombing was good—some of the best we've done. I can't say as much for the formation we flew. We hashed all that over at the critique after the mission. I want you pilots and copilots to profit by that discussion today. Our target is the synthetic-rubber plant at Hüls, near Recklinghausen. A smaller force will be attacking the Ford and General Motors plants at Antwerp, approximately half an hour before your Time Over Target. There will be an RAF fighter sweep over this part of the Dutch coast at 1035, an RAF diversion in here, and one of our own Groups will fly a diversion to this point in order to draw off enemy fighters from this area. I want all pilots .. .

The pilot of Tarbaby is seated in the front row. A quiet young man of twenty-five in a leather jacket and O.D. trousers, with a white silk scarf draped about his neck. Two years ago he was an insurance adjuster, eight months (or was it eight years ?) ago he said good-by to his wife and small son in Savannah. The pilot is a conservative flier. He is also a worrier, in a mild way. Now, as he listens to the Old Man, he is fretting about Tarbaby's No. 3 engine, which has been giving them trouble. Hüls is the seventeenth mission for Tarbaby and its crew.

The Old Man: . . . fighter support by twenty-three squadrons of RAF Spitfires and three of Typhoons will be furnished for your withdrawal. They will meet you here, which will be approximately thirty minutes after you leave the target. That means you will go in and bomb unescorted. Our P-47's are furnishing withdrawal cover for the Antwerp attack. Are there any questions?

Ball Turret is the youngest, the smallest, and,

"I don't need to tell any of you what we did at Kiel on the last mission. The bombing was good and .. .

outwardly, the most intrepid member of Tarbaby's crew. Having been graduated from high school and worked a year with a well-drilling outfit, Ball Turret is Tarbaby's crack shot, with a claimed bag of five Nazi birds. He calls his twin fifties "Spit and Spat." Ball Turret had once operated on the principle that "anything without four engines oughta get it" and proudly claimed a string of near misses on a Spitfire and a chip off a P-47. Combat experience has chastened and reformed him. Seated in the rear row, sunk in oversize flying clothes, he is now trying his best to go to sleep.

S-2 takes the stand, pointer in hand. The lights are lowered. A picture of the plant at Hüls is flashed on the screen. This is the plant at Hüls. It produces approximately twenty-nine per cent of Germany's synthetic rubber and eighteen per cent of its total rubber supply. With Germany at present so short of rubber that she's trying to bring it through in blockade runners from the Far East, I don't need to emphasize the importance of this target. The plant area is a square, approximately 3500 feet on a side. Your approach will be in here. Your aiming point is here, on the gas plant. This is the butadiene plant and this .. .

The copilot of Tarbaby is twenty-one, big and blond, and was on his way to becoming a mining engineer when he started flying training fourteen months ago. He is boisterous, gregarious, and, privately, a little disappointed that there are no Dawn Patrols and champagne binges in this war he finds himself fighting. His one ambition is to be a first pilot—to sit on the left. He is wearing his flying boots, a sheepskin-lined jacket, and a Denver souvenir, a red scarf with Pinkie (last name forgotten) crocheted upon it. As S-2 starts, he is wondering where the hell his laundry is. But the problem of Hüls interests him and he begins to listen closely.

... across these railway sidings, which will be on your right as you cross the target, you will see the Auguste Viktoria coal mine, which serves the plant. This Group will be bombing from 25,000 feet. After bombing you will continue to this point, where a turn to .. .

Tarbaby's bombardier is called "Deadeye" because he is. Small and fair, he looks deceptively cherubic in repose. His capacity for watery English beer is a legend in Group 500. Sitting in the third row, he is wearing a disreputable coverall which he insists brings him good luck. His two loves are Tarbaby and the Dodgers, in that order. His eyes are closed now. He is memorizing, with infinite anticipation, the exact pattern of the gas plant at Hüls, near Recklinghausen.

Weather has taken the stand. He has been up all night, and looks it. A vertical cross section of the weather en route to the target—a layer cake of clouds and meteorological symbols from ground level to 35,000 feet—is shown on the screen. Weather talks rapidly, as though he were telling an old, old story: At base you'll have 6-8/10 thin cirro-stratus above 25,000. Visibility two miles in haze. Traces of strato-cumulus over the English coast going out. Thin patches of alto-stratus up here at 12,000 with tops at 14,000 and towering to 19,000 over the North Sea. Freezing level 11,000.. .

Radio is the one new man on Tarbaby's crew. The old Radio stopped a small piece of flak over Bremen and is now convalescing and writing jeering postcards back from an Air Force rest camp. This is the new Radio's first mission. He's twenty-three and has worked in the dispatching office of an airline on the West Coast back home. Right now he's frightened to death—and would admit it if anyone took the trouble to ask him. Weather finishes. Radio is wondering whether he ought to take his tin hat to the ship.

The Flak Officer stands before the map of enemy antiaircraft batteries, using a billiard cue as a pointer. He is apologetic, as flak officers usually are. We've routed you today so that the flak you get will be, in general, just deterrent. He waits for a laugh—and gets it. Here, where you cross this island just off the German coast, there's a four-gun heavy battery. If you stick to your course you'll be out of range. There'll be moderate heavy flak here and .. .

After Flak, the sergeant gunners leave the briefing. Ike and Mike, Tarbaby's waist gunners, trail along with them. Ike and Mike (christened George and Lester) both wear their lined trousers and jackets, for the subzero breezes blow at the open waist gates. As the recognized clowns of  Tarbaby, they are concocting a story of misadventures to hand to the new Radio during the first dull hour of flight. Ike and Mike consider themselves hardened veterans—and are. They hate flak and respect enemy fighters.

It is 0450 as the gunners pile aboard the jeeps and trucks for the dispersal points. The eastern sky is pale with dawn now, though the field still lies in darkness. In the main briefing room Flying Control has concluded the preparation for Mission 95 with the time-tick, during which the crews set their watches. Twenty seconds before 0447 . . . fifteen seconds . . . ten seconds . . . five seconds ... four . . . three . . . two. The navigators have adjourned to an office and are laying out the routes on their maps. The bombardiers are in session with the Group Bombardier, studying the target pictures. The radio operators have collected the flimsies giving the call signals of the day.

Time Tick. There is a moment of quiet. . . .

The planning is over now. It is twelve hours since the Commanding General made his decision. An intention to attack has been translated into a program of assault. The execution of that program has been committed to the hands of the combat crews. On every station the planners are going wearily to breakfast. At the dispersal points of each of the hundreds of bombers assigned to the mission, the maintenance crews are making their last checks of planes and equipment. Inside the Fortresses the gunners are disassembling their weapons, cleaning them, and reassembling the parts with infinite care. Copilots are at the planes, checking instruments, engines, and flying controls. Pilots are gathered with their squadron leaders, discussing the details of the formations they are to fly. Group 500's base is encircled with the ragged sound of engines being started, roaring at full throttle and dying away. At Tarbaby's dispersal site the gunners have finished their chores and are sprawling on the engine tarpaulins. It is 0527. Someone says: "An hour and a half to go." They sit quietly, smoking, talking in snatches, and watching the ground crew polish the plexiglass in the nose and two turrets. At 0610 the low sun appears through the mist.

From the Control Tower the complete pattern of the runways and the perimeter tracks on Group 500's station can be seen. At 0630 the Operational Staff is gathered along the railed balcony outside the Control Room. The field lies quiet in the sun; an ambulance moves slowly across the turf which lines the runways. Flying Control, eying his watch, nods. A two-pronged red flare arches over the centre of the field. The stillness is broken. From each scattered dispersal point there wells a spring of sound. Ragged at first, it builds and blends into a concerted roar. Still no movement is seen. The ambulances wait at the far end of a long runway. And then the first plane appears on the perimeter track at a distant corner of the field. It is followed by another. And another. They form into an elephantine line, nose to tail, and trundle slowly along, starting and stopping with awkward precision. The squeal of brakes punctuates the roar of the engines. Two lines converge at the head of the runway, the gaps are closed, and then all movement ceases. In Tarbaby, which is to lead the Group, Pilot rests a forearm on the wheel and watches the second hand of his wrist watch. Two minutes and forty seconds to go.

A tense immobility settles over the field. Time has taken over Mission 95. On this field, at Groups 501 and 653 and 187, at 203, 459, 366, and 724—at Groups spread across fifty miles of England—the long lines of idling planes now wait. In each Control Tower the Operational Staffs wait. On the grass patches along the hangar lines, the ground crews wait. At the mess kitchens the cooks come to the door and look up expectantly at the empty sky. At Air Division the Operational Staff, eating breakfast, glance at their watches. At Command the Duty Officer sits watching the wall clock—waiting.

In Tarbaby, they are waiting, too. Ike and Mike are leaning on the right waist gate, taking the sun. Rear Gunner is squatting outside his tunnel-like post, taping together the cords from his earphones and throat mike. Ball Turret is visiting with Radio. In the nose, Bombardier and Navigator are arranging spare ammunition boxes. In the pilot's office a solemn group of three—Pilot, Copilot, and Engineer—is counting seconds.

At 0700 Tarbaby begins to move, leaving behind it a small cloud of blue smoke. Slowly, at first. Then with gathering speed. Tail up, it passes the Control Tower. There is a motion at the waist window as Ike gives the V-sign to his ground crew. Almost imperceptibly the plane becomes air-borne. As it clears the field boundaries, the reverberating echoes of its engines rock the field. The second ship is under way. Then the third, and the fourth. Each thundering run is an epic of suspense—ended by the lifting of thirty tons of bombs, plane, and men from the earth. The first plane is sweeping a huge circle around the field. The second and third gradually edge into a position behind it, forming a triangular element of three. The element moves off, followed by another. Now the circle of the horizon is speckled with the patterns of the other Groups. The sky is filled with the sound and the stately, shifting movements of Fortresses as they find their places in formation and move off in ever-diminishing perspective. By 0712 they have gone. The Old Man remains staring at the sky where his planes had been. "I hope," he says finally, "all those boys come back."

At 0723, as the last of its formation fades from view, Group 500 starts its vigil. It is to last five hours, and during that time the station will lead a double life. The routine of the base will go on as usual. But today, as on every mission day, there will be a communal preoccupation among the 1400 men who have been left behind. Nothing on the stations will seem quite as important as it might on other days, no action will have much significance—for when the combat crews flew away they took the life and the meaning of Group 500 with them. When they return, and only then, this life and meaning will settle to the earthbound station once again. Now the Old Man walks moodily down the hangar line, forgetting the jeep he drove to the Control Tower. The cooks, vacant-eyed, go back to their stoves. The ground crews, bereft, turn toward their barracks, where household chores may make the hours seem shorter.

Rendevous. The sky is filled with the sound and the stately movements of Fortresses swinging into formation.

Tarbaby, leading the twenty-two planes of Group 500, is at 9000 feet. The pattern of the element before it. A strict radio silence is being maintained, but there is shop talk going on over Tarbaby's intercommunication system. Roger's (acknowledgment of instructions received) are being traded.

Pilot to Navigator .. .

Go ahead, Pilot . . .

What's the rendezvous time? . . .

Navigator to Pilot: The rendezvous time is 0740. . .

Roger, Navigator, and thanks .. .

Copilot to Rear Gunner: How is your oxygen mask? Does it fit now? .. .

Rear Gunner to Copilot: Yes, sir. I tried it on before we took off .. .

Roger .

What's he need oxygen for—he couldn't hit anything, anyway .

Is that you, Deadeye? . . .

Roger .. .

Well, let's see if you can drop your bombs inside Germany today . . .

Roger, sir .. .

Oh, if you have a daughter, bounce her on your knee; if you have a son, send the bastard off to sea...

Pilot to crew: Can that chatter: you monkeys. Ten thousand feet. Prepare to go on oxygen .. . Rear Gunner: Roger .. .

Right Waist: Roger .. .

Left Waist: Roger, sir. A Group closing in high from eight o'clock, sir . . . *

Roger, Left Waist . . .

Navigator to Pilot: See that bunch ahead at eleven o'clock .. .

Roger, I have it .. .

*Fields of fire, and approach, are expressed by the clock system—twelve o'clock being the plane's nose, six o'clock its tail.

The rendezvous point has been reached and now the groups are winging in and orbiting in circles as they team up into Combat Wings of three Groups each. The Combat Wings move slowly southwestward in procession. In Tarbaby's waist Ike and Mike have put on the masks and adjusted their oxygen regulators to 12,000 feet. Bundled in heavy flying clothes, yellow Mae Wests, parachutes, and wearing masks, helmets, and throat mikes, they look like two men from Mars. The bladders hanging from the masks dilate slowly as they breathe. Resting against their guns, they are watching the passing groups and waving when a friend comes close enough to

Ready for altitude, looking like two men from Mars.

be identified. Ball Turret, curled in his plexiglas dome beneath the ship, is swinging himself slowly around and wagging his guns.

This section of Mission 95 is now a line of shifting islands in the sky. From his post in the upper turret of Tarbaby, the Engineer can see them spaced out behind to the point where they vanish into the haze line on the horizon. Amid-ships, Radio is swinging his dorsal gun into position. He is feeling better now. Ball Turret's nonchalance has stiffened him and the heady trickle of oxygen is singing in his blood. In the nose, Navigator is computing the drift. Bombardier, leaning over his sight, is watching the English coastline approaching far below.

By 0830 Group 500's station has adjusted itself to a morning of waiting. The Old Man has retrieved his jeep and is inspecting the bomb-storage areas. In the Briefing Room an Intelligence Officer reads Yank while he waits for abortives—any early returns to be interrogated. Down the hall a sergeant and a pfc are preparing coffee and sandwiches for the returning crews. Maintenance units are cleaning their barracks. Out-side Hangar 1, Rain of Terror, its new engine installed, now waits for a run-up test. At scattered dispersal points, line crews are working on the bombers left behind.

At Air Division, the Intelligence Staff is gathering to weigh and judge the validity of the claims of enemy fighters destroyed on the previous mission. The Air Division C.O. is having a tactical conference with his Operations Staff. At Command, the General is studying the day's first weather forecast, a file of priority targets beside him. Outside, his car is waiting to take him to British Bomber Command, where he will sit in on the conference planning the British bombing operations for the coming night.

At 0847 Mission 95, far out over the North Sea, has reached 24,000 feet in its slow climb and turned in toward the enemy coast. The temperature is 35 below zero and going down. Frost smears the windshield and the plexiglas nose. Cockpit windows have been opened to equalize the temperatures. Below, the metallic sea appears between patches of haze and fog. Through the high layer of drifting cirro-stratus the troposphere is a dark and sinister blue. Guns are being tested with short bursts that crackle startlingly through the engine's drone. Every man in the armada is at his post, scanning the bowl of space for enemy fighters. In the noses the navigators are watching for the first sign of the surf line on the Frisians, somewhere ahead. The formation has been spotted now on the German Radio Directional Finder screen. The unseen tentacles of the enemy's locator system, groping beyond the curve of the horizon, have touched them and pin-pointed this part of Mission 95 in space. Their course and height and speed are being plotted. From half a dozen fields the German fighters are taking off to meet the threat. Miles away to the southeast, the other section of Mission 95 has now left its target at Antwerp. A drifting pall of smoke covers the Ford and General Motors factories, while the Thunderbolts shepherd their charges across the Channel.

Back at Group 500's station, an abortive checks in at 0855. It makes a wide swing around the station, disappears, and then comes gliding down to the runway. In a distant corner of the field, the Old Man watches it. The Intelligence Officer on duty at the Briefing Room watches it. In five minutes the whole station knows that Mollycuddle has aborted. At Mollycuddle's dispersal point the line crew dourly watches its plane wheel into parking position. The engines cough and stop. From his high window the pilot looks down upon the group of unhappy faces below him. He makes a thumbs-down gesture. "That damn supercharger on No. 4 engine. She wouldn't give. Loused again. You boys have got a job ahead of you."

Five minutes later, in the Briefing Room, he is more specific: "We got almost to the coast on the way out. Thirteen thousand and on oxygen. Turned back at zero minus four. I would have gone on a little farther, in hopes that we could have got her working, but there was a spare to take our place. Just our luck, damn it. Yeah, the rest looked fine when we left them."

Mission 95 crosses the islands which line Germany's North Sea coast at 0900. They are at bombing altitude now. The Combat Wings, each one a rough arrowhead of three Groups, are spaced down from front to rear like a flight of steps. Though from the ground the muttering thunder of the formation can be heard over miles of the island chain, the planes themselves are barely visible—a procession of tiny specks moving inexorably across the sky. To the left of the formation dark smudges of flak appear. From his gate in Tarbaby, Left Waist notes this with satisfaction. Mission 95 is out of range of that particular battery. The navigators are on the beam.

The islands lie behind and the Zuider Zee lies beneath when, at 0903, the first enemy fighters hit Mission 95. They come in high from the south, like a pack of gnats, cross over the procession at 3000-yard range, and disappear in the glare of the sun. The guns on the Forts silently swing around, following their course. There is a moment of waiting. The fighters pick their objective—a group near the tail of the procession. They swing around, peel off, and come hurtling down in line astern.

Warnings flood the intercommunication systems of twoscore planes. Here they come, high at nine o'clock ... Roger ... 190's at eleven o'clock. They're after that Group ahead . . . Focke-Wulfs —ten o'clock . . . Roger . . . Three thousand yards. Two thousand yards. One thousand yards. The guns of the Group attacked open up with a few short bursts. Smoking tracers fill the air around the leading fighter. The Focke-Wulf is firing now—the four 20-mm. cannon flashing orange from the wings, the two machine guns projecting bright tongues of flame from the fuselage. Six hundred yards. More of the Forts' fifties are finding the range. The sky is criss-crossed with tracers. The fighter bores in. The puffs of his explosive 20-mm. ammunition are creeping up on the wing ship. A burst of machine-gun fire rakes the plane amidship, making crackling noises like a stick against a picket fence. Four hundred yards. The Focke-Wulf does a half-roll, exposing his armored underbelly to the defensive fire. He drives in for another two hundred yards, guns blazing. He dives, followed by the fire of the ball turrets, until he is lost to sight against the shimmering water below. The action of the attack, from the first to the last shot fired, has taken place in just four seconds. Another Focke-Wulf is coming in now. A third and fourth and fifth, a dozen, follow it. Meanwhile, the first is climbing, to re-form for a second attack.

At the conclusion of this first contact, Mission 95 is still driving on, outwardly unchanged. But in the Group attacked one plane has an engine out, with its propeller feathered, in another the engineer is working frantically to stop a leak in the oxygen system, and in a third a tail gunner lies dead at his post. A Focke-Wulf has gone down like a flaming arrow into the waters of the Zuider Zee and another, crippled, is fighting for altitude as it makes for land.

From his place at Tarbaby's dorsal gun, the new Radio watches the beginning of this distant action and follows it until the fighters dive below his line of view. He is sweating, despite the cold. And he is anxious. He swings his gun around, searching the oblong of visible sky. Rear Gunner is describing to the crew what he can see of the action in the rear. They're coming down again. At the same Group, I think. Looks like they're bunching up and hitting them from six o'clock. There goes a Fort out of formation. They're ganging up on him. He breaks off suddenly as Copilot comes in on the line. Copilot to crew: Fighters at two o'clock, level. Repeat. Fighters at two o'clock, level.

It is 0912 as the second group of attackers appears. The head of the bomber column is skirting a tongue of land on the Zee's east shore. More flak appears. Puffs of oily black and brown smoke spread across the sky just ahead of the lead ship. The Forts drive through it. One ship wobbles, drops out of position, and then slowly regains its place. Tarbaby cuts through a spent flak burst drifting past like a dirty veil. The lead Wing swings down and to the right—every plane in place—in a sweeping evasive movement. Tarbaby leads Group 500 in a climbing turn to the left. The gunners are firing steadily as the fighter attacks develop. Five thousand feet above the twisting, turning units of Mission 95 three twin-engined enemy fighter-bombers are jockeying for position as they prepare to bomb the formation. Another Fortress has gone down, its right wing trailing a bright sheet of flame. A burning fighter leaves a line of smoke across the sky. The pattern of the German countryside is now beneath the action. The battle of Mission 95 is on.

At 0940 the Old Man once again climbs the stairs of the Control Tower at Group 500's station. The second of the three crises of the day's vigil is at hand. The first was the take-off. Now comes the T.O.T.—the Time Over Target. The third will be the Group's return to base. The Old Man is nervous. Instinctively he seeks the company of his Operations Staff, the comforting familiarity of the Control Room. He glances at the wall clock, drums on a desk, wanders out to the balcony and studies the blank sky, leans on the rail and stares at the cabbage patch around the flagpole. Four hundred miles away, blanketed by a self-imposed radio silence, his boys are over the target at Hüls, near Recklinghausen.

The plant at Hüls is visible through Tarbaby's nose. It is 0940. Mission 95 has run the gauntlet of half a dozen flak barrages and fought off constant fighter attacks for forty minutes. Deadeye is flying Tarbaby with his automatic-flight-control equipment. 0942. He scrubs at the frosted plexiglas with a piece of waste. White cumulus cloud towers over the plant. One corner of the target is blanketed. More flak is coming up. The smoky splashes of the first bombs are visible.

Strike!  Cloud towers over one corner of the plant.

The target is in the bomb-sight's field of vision. Dead-eye finds the aiming point and pushes a switch. The bomb-bay doors grind open. The indices are moving, together. Deadeye checks the rows of red lights above the rack switches on the bomb indicator. He moves a knob. Tarbaby  swings a little to the right. Bombardier to Radio: Start camera . . . Radio to Bombardier ... Roger .. . Camera started.

The smoky splashes of the first Group's bombs are visible through the bomb sight. They spatter the area. Deadeye grins. His hand is on the trigger of the sight. He makes a small adjustment. Then another. The cross-hairs are on the gas plant. The sight is at work, computing speed and drift and bomb fall. The indices are together. The red lights on the indicator panel fade. Tarbaby, freed suddenly of the bombs' weight, rises buoyantly. Deadeye says: Bombs away. Let's get ourselves out of here.

Behind Tarbaby the other bombardiers of the group, seeing the leader's bombs away, snap their switches. The loads fall, the clusters of 500- and 1000-pounders arching toward the earth in a slow curve. Navigator makes an entry on his log: "Bombed 0943. 25,000 feet." Throughout Tarbaby there runs a current of elation. Pilot smacks the control wheel with his fist. Copilot raps the instrument panel for luck. Ike and Mike turn, thumbs up, and grin at each other behind their masks. Top Turret-Engineer says to him-self: Now, No. 3, get us home. Lower Turret and Rear Gunner are silent as they try to follow the fall of the bombs. The camera motor whirls unheard, taking a picture every six seconds. Radio, a veteran now, announces: Enemy air-craft at four o'clock, high. Look like Me-109G's. It is 0944. The last of the Groups has cleared the target area. In just under four minutes more than 400 tons of high explosive have been dropped on the synthetic-rubber plant at Hüls near Recklinghausen. As the last Combat Wing in line leaves the area a tower of smoke 7000 feet high mushrooms over target.

Nazi rubber burning. A column of smoke 7000 feet high mushrooms from the camouflaged buna factory at Hüls.

At 0944 the Antwerp section of Mission 95 is near the English coast on its return trip. One hundred tons of bombs have been dropped on the two plants producing motor transport for the German army. Hits have been scored on both the Ford and General Motors factories. Thunderbolt fighters, picking up the harassed Groups shortly after the bombing and driving off the fighter attacks, have now formed flying shields above and below the formation. One enemy fighter has fallen to the bombers' guns; the Thunderbolts have brought down six without loss to themselves. Now within sight of friendly shores, the escort and the escorted are about to part company.

By 1012 the main section of Mission 95 has left Hülls far behind and is over Dutch territory on the long trip home. An hour's persistent attack by flak and fighter has dealt severely with the formation. Fifteen bombers have fallen along the route, the holes they left being immediately plugged by the next plane in line. As they approach the rendezvous with the friendly fighters, the defensive fire power of Mission 95 has not noticeably weakened. But the strain imposed by altitude and the enemy is beginning to tell. In the lead Group all eyes are turned to the west for the first sign of the Spitfires. The formation is at 18,000 feet and dropping steadily as it heads for the Dutch coast.

In Tarbaby the mission, so far, has gone well. Copilot, taking advantage of a lull in the fighter attacks, has just completed a check of the plane. A piece of flak has torn a hole in the vertical stabilizer, a 20-mm. ricochet has holed the plexiglas in the nose and there is a line of machine-gun bulletholes in the fuselage amidships. No. 3 engine is running rough, but not dangerously so. The only personnel casualties are Rear Gunner, who reports a frostbitten left hand suffered when clearing a gun stoppage, and Ball Turret, who claims he is dying of hunger and where are the sandwiches. As Copilot regains his seat, Pilot points upward through the windshield. A banner of vapor trails is sweeping in from the west. Pilot to crew: Looks like friendly fighters coming in high at eleven o'clock. Repeat. Possible friendly fighters coming in at eleven. Watch your firing. Spits will be giving us close support. Typhoons in the lower box . . . Top Turret to Pilot: Enemy ,fighters coming in high at seven o'clock. Focke-Wulfs at seven. Watch it, Left Waist. They're after us. As Pilot swings Tarbaby's nose sharply to the left there is a rending explosion and the ship quivers. The intercom sputters and then goes dead.

At Group 500's base—at Groups 501 and 653 and 187, at 203, 459, 366, and 724, and at all the other fields which have dispatched planes on Mission 95—the long wait is almost over. The time is 1150. Ground personnel has gathered in bunches along the hangar line. The Operations

Wounded aboard. A red warning flare, shot from a returning Fortress, burns a bright arc through the air.

Staff lines the balcony of the Control Tower. On the roof, Flying Control is ready, with a short-range radio, to "talk" the planes in. At the end of the runway the ambulances wait, their engines turning over quietly. Near the tower the squat cleat tracks, waiting for accidents, chug noisily. Minutes pass. The sky remains empty. All eyes are turned to the east. Suddenly someone calls: "There's one. A single."

The bomber comes in low and fast. It circles and disappears below the tree line. Then its engines are heard coughing and it appears above the edge of the field, gliding for the runway. A red flare burns a bright arc through the air. The plane touches, bounces, and settles to earth. An ambulance is racing across the grass, for this flare is the sign of wounded aboard. Halfway down the runway the big ship slows abruptly, with a squeal of brakes. Wheeling slowly, it turns off the concrete and trundles across the turf. Before it comes to a stop the ambulance has circled to its position beside the door.

They come, then. First gnats on the horizon. Then geese in the sky. Finally, Forts overhead. One Group. Two Groups. Then half a dozen, each one sliding up from the eastward line of the earth. The first to pass overhead is counted and recounted. One abortive. If that's us, we've lost three . . . That's not us . . . There's 653 just over those trees . . . Where the hell are our boys? The ambulance leaves the stricken ship in the middle of the field and comes racing toward the hangar line. On the tower roof, Flying Control is silent at his mike. His head is cocked as he listens to the air-to-ground conversations in his head-phones. He lifts his binoculars and stares hard at the eastern horizon.

Group 500 comes up the sky slowly. Then it is overhead with a roar. The counting is repeated. Three missing ... No, one came back early. Well, that makes two . . . You counting this one out here? . . . Sure, that still makes two short .. . Maybe they landed someplace else .. .

Group 500 circles the station, its formation precise and proud. The elements break off. Flying Control is talking now. Are you receiving me, T .for Tommie, are you receiving me? Over to you. Over . . . You may come in now, T for Tommie, you may come in. Use runway 2. Use runway 2. Over. Over.

Twenty minutes later the last plane to return is down. Refueling crews are already at work, maintenance men are clambering over their ships, measuring battle damage for patches, and the Engineering Officer has finished counting noses of the Forts out of action and those that can be readied to fight the following day. Group 500's dispersal areas are tenanted once again. All but two. The count is final. Two lost. At these two dispersal points the line crews of the missing ships wander aimlessly over the splotched concrete and scuffed turf where they have worked for so many weeks. There is little said. Yeah, he was a good guy . . . Well, she made eighteen, anyway . . . A good ship. Bet she gave them bastards a run for their money. Finally, like men lost in thought, they gather their toolboxes and pile them into a waiting jeep.

At the Briefing Room the combat crews are gathering. Coffee mugs and sandwiches in hand, they mill around. Little groups form, dissolve, and re-form. There is some talk and laughter, but not much. These are tired men. Their faces are drawn, their hair is matted and tangled, and in their eyes is a deep weariness. They scuff about awkwardly in the heavy flying boots or sit with hunched shoulders, staring at the floor. Later they will come alive, but now they show only patient acquiescence as they await their turn for interrogation.

At the Hot News desk a pilot is giving his report. We pin pointed her at 3 East, 51 30 North. She must have been hit in the last attack, just as the Spits met us. Stayed in formation awhile and then dropped out about the time we left the coast on the way back. My navigator says the two out-board engines were out at the time. Didn't see her ditch. The Spits covered her on the way down, so I guess they got Air-Sea Rescue on the job by this time. Yeah, Tarbaby, that's her.

The interrogation of the crews is under way—each crew at one of the big tables scattered around the room. Bombing altitude ? Position in formation? Number of enemy fighters seen ?   ,   Where did you hit flak —altitude,  position, time? How was the bombing? Encounters: How did he come in ? When did you start firing? Do you claim him as destroyed? Any flame? Did the pilot bail out? Did you see the ship crash? Any suggestion or comments on the operations ? 

Standing by for crackups.

Before Questioning . . . Combat makes men hungry.

"I gave him a burst at 400 yards and he blew up."

The questions are brief and pointed. The answers, at first, are terse. Then the crews loosen up and become more voluble as they relive their part of Mission 95. The Interrogation Officer waits, looking from one to another, jotting down the pertinent facts on his form. Two stories conflict. They are contrasted. A compromise is reached. Finally it is over and the crew straggles away from the table. Another group takes its place.

By 1230 the interrogation of all the crews is completed. Hot News, with reports of plane crashes and convoys sighted, has been phoned to Air Division for immediate action. Intelligence has completed the Flash Report giving the story of the Group's part in Mission 95 in tabulated form. The combat crews, having washed off the grime of flight, are spreading to the messes. The loudspeaker system has announced a pilots' meeting at 1430 hours. In the station darkroom the photographic sergeant pulls the first dripping negative of the day's strike photographs out of its acid bath. He holds it to the light, studies the chiaroscuro of clouds and smoke and earth, whistles, and goes back to work.

As the afternoon wears on, Group 500 settles down to its accustomed ways. At the dispersal points battle damage is being repaired, empty shell cases are swept out, tanks filled, guns cleaned, and engines tested as the bombers are readied for the next mission. The Intelligence Staff is checking the encounter reports before forwarding them to the Air Division. The Old Man is preparing a tactical report for the Combat Wing Commander. The men of the combat crews, with an afternoon off, are prowling the station in search of news and amusement. Sooner or later the path of each brings him to the door of Intelligence, where he asks about the strike photos. The pictures, still damp, arrive at 1500.

The strike photos are delivered to Command by parachute at 1602. The daily operations conference is about to begin. Weather has just submitted his forecast. The front is moving over central England. Bases will be closed in. The Groups will have a day of rest. Meanwhile, the planning for the next attack will go on.

The Commanding General places the strike photos on the table before him. On the table, too, is the Flash Report from the Air Divisions.

"Here you are, gentlemen. The accomplishment—Hüls well hit, with bombing concentrated in the target area. We'll have to wait for reconnaissance photographs and a complete damage assessment, but it looks to me as if we had dealt the plant a crippling blow. The cost—20 bombers lost, three men killed, 19 wounded, and 191 missing. Our claims total 46 enemy fighters destroyed, 23 probably destroyed, and 44 damaged. The British Air-Sea Rescue has just reported picking up eight men of a Fortress crew off the coast. Now, on this next attack ..' ."

Mission 95 is completed.

Hüls: Indications are that this plant is at present inoperative. A high proportion of the bombs dropped fell within the target and considerable damage is seen throughout the plant. The full extent of the damage to several buildings can-not be completely assessed from photographs. Many of the most important plants and buildings have been damaged, including the Arc, Converters Plant, the Butylene Glycol Plant, the Aldol Plant, the Aerylonitrile Plant, the Butadiene Plant, the Acetaldehyde Plant, the Polymerisation Building, and the Gas Compression and Fractionation Building . . .

FROM AN OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mission's end: A member of the ground crew collects expended catridge cases from the waist of a Fort.