Air Fronts: Theaters of Operation - European Theater of Operation: Target Germany - Luftwaffe over Lille

THE FIRST CLIMAX of the VIII Bomber Command's offensive against Nazi-dominated Europe came on October 9 when 108 heavy bombers-including, for the first time, the slab-sided Liberators-were dispatched against the steelworks and locomotive factories in the great French industrial city of Lille.

The choice of Lille as a target was dictated by several considerations : weather, accessibility (which made fighter cover relatively easy), the enemy's acute shortage of rail transport, and the fact that the great Fives-Lille steel company was a made-to-order target for high-altitude precision bombing.

For an aerial force that had begun operations barely seven weeks before with twelve planes, it was an amazing effort. The combat crews them-selves were impressed and excited by the size of the show. Pilots in wing ships, squinting up at the convoys of protecting Spitfires, shoved their propellers close behind the wing of their flight leader. Waist gunners, peering through their sun-glasses, nudged each other at the sight of more planes than they had ever seen in the skies before. There was an electric atmosphere about that mission. Even the ground crews felt it as they sprawled beside their bicycles on the empty airdromes, chewing blades of grass, "sweating out" the mission. It was a sense of growing strength, of greater strength to come. Air crews and ground crews alike would have stared in disbelief had anyone told them the truth-which was that for the next six mortal months the Lille mission was to remain the high-water mark, in terms of numbers, of the daylight bombing offensive.

For that reason-and many others-Lille was a landmark. It was more than just Operation 54, more than just another raid. At Lille, in fact, the word "raid" for the first time became inadequate. Lille was an air battle, the first head-on collision between the American spearhead and the massed strength of the Luftwaffe.

Judged by ground force or even naval standards, the actual numbers engaged in combat were small-a thousand American airmen, perhaps, plus a few score British fighter pilots against an undetermined number of Germans in the air and on the ground. But the combat personnel on both sides represented the apex of a vast pyramid of national strength. Behind the planes and the fighting airmen were ranged the opposing ground organizations, behind that the industrial capacity of the warring nations and even the peoples' will to win. In a very literal sense, the fighting strength of Germany and the United States first clashed in the cold thin air four miles above Lille. And the sparks flew. As one navigator succinctly put it, "Lille was our first real brawl."

As was to be expected in an initial operation of this size, mistakes were made. Abortives ran high. Traffic control over the target was bad; some of the planes never got the target in their sights. The unfortunate bombardiers who had to jettison their loads in the Channel on the way back were derisively christened "chandeliers" at one Fortress station.

Sixty-nine aircraft bombed the primary targets, inflicting considerable damage. Flak was not severe, although one excited crew member, on his maiden mission, described it as "the worst flak I've ever seen!" But attacks by enemy fighters were unprecedented in ferocity and duration. Four bombers went down-one Liberator with its No. 4 engine blazing and three Fortresses, two of which fell into the Channel.

At the subsequent interrogation no less than two hundred and forty-two encounters with enemy fighters were reported. The early claims were forty-eight destroyed, thirty-eight probably destroyed, and nineteen damaged. Later on, lntelligence Officers, striving to eliminate all possible duplication, reduced the official total first to twenty-five certains, thirty-eight probables, and forty-four damaged, finally to twenty-one, twenty-one, and fifteen.

Even reduced, these claims indicated such a dramatic victory over the Luftwaffe, such a complete reversal of the traditional bomber vulnerability to fighter attack, that the figures were viewed with more skepticism than enthusiasm by those unfamiliar with Fortress and Liberator fire power.

What the skeptics failed to realize was that with about a dozen .50-caliber machine guns in every plane, each capable of firing armor-piercing and incendiary projectiles at the rate of several hundred shots per minute, the big bombers could lay down a screen of fire that was murderous for fighter aircraft that pressed their attack to close range.

The men behind the guns were able to cover every angle of approach so long as the bombers flew a tight defensive formation. The result was a porcupine defense that left the Germans more or less baffled. A Nazi fighter pilot, captured soon afterward, said that he had heard that during the Lille attack the Forts had been found to have a very effective defense. No instructions had been issued to his unit, but the general belief was that a beam attack by fighters was safest and best.

Over Lille, the majority of fighter attacks came from the "six o'clock" position, and the tail gunners in the bombers had a field day. In one Fortress a 20-mm. cannon shell burst about eight inches from the tail gunner. One of the twin .50 calibers was knocked out, and the gunner's left side was riddled with shell fragments. He stuck to his remaining serviceable gun and shot down an FW before he was relieved by the navigator. The Fortress staggered home with one wing tip shot off, one engine crippled, and the stabilizer controls jammed. The crew claimed four enemy fighters destroyed, four more damaged.

There never was-then or now-any question about the reckless, almost suicidal courage of the German fighter pilots. It was evident from the start that they had a healthy respect for Forts' machine guns, but this did not prevent them from pressing home their attacks with ferocity and skill.

The claims problem, once it had reared its ugly head, continued to plague Intelligence Officers. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that some overlapping of claims existed, and that unless very careful analyses were made, this duplication tended to increase in almost geometrical progression with the number of bombers engaged. With gunners from many planes shooting at the same target, this was inevitable. Another problem was establishing criteria for enemy planes definitely destroyed. German fighters had a trick, after firing a burst at a bomber, of flipping over on their backs and plunging straight down with smoke pouring from their exhausts. Some were even believed to carry smoke pots under their engine cowlings to complete the illusion. An inexperienced Fortress gunner, furthermore, might conceivably mistake the flame and smoke from the fighter's cannon for battle damage inflicted by his own .50 calibers.

After considerable study, the following system was adopted. An enemy aircraft was considered to be destroyed when : (1) it exploded in the air; broke up in the air; shed a wing or a tail section; the motor was shot out of a single-engined plane; (2) it was seen to be enveloped in flames, or the flames were very intense; (3) it was seen to crash on the ground or fall into the water; (4) the pilot of a single-engined fighter was seen to bail out.

In addition an elaborate method of checking and cross-checking to prevent duplication was worked out. The time of the encounter, the type of enemy aircraft claimed destroyed, the method of destruction, the geographical location of the engagement, the altitude at which the combat took place-all these factors were entered on diagrams in such a way that a virtual three-dimensional reconstruction of the action was achieved.

And gradually, although the claims remained high and even went higher, most of the doubters were convinced. Writing in midsummer of 1943 —almost a year after the Lille air battle-the military analyst of the The New York Times summarized the situation as follows : ". . the job of evaluating air losses is far from being an exact science. It is one subject to many errors, chiefly of observation, and the fliers themselves agree that precise calculations are probably impossible. The claims we have made, however, probably represent as close an approximation to the truth as can be made, given the visual reports of the fliers themselves as the only basis for the claims. If allowance is made for some error, perhaps considerable error, in the fliers' reports, it seems probable that our published claims of German fighter losses over western Europe are somewhat, though not much, too high. Certainly the figures cannot be out of line by more than 10 to 20 per cent, if that much; and even if we pare this margin from our ratio of superiority, the Forts and the Liberators are still turning in a handsome score."

If the reported totals were sometimes too sanguine, there was a final factor which undoubtedly cut down the rate of error. In all analyses of claims no provision was made for enemy fighters destroyed by bombers which themselves did not return. Observation suggests that each Fortress destroyed usually took at least one of its attackers down with it. This alone would have accounted for several hundred German fighters destroyed but not claimed during the first year of operations.

One effect of Lille was to focus public attention, perhaps too sharply, upon the Liberators and Fortresses as destroyers of enemy fighters rather than as precision bombers whose primary mission was to destroy targets on the ground. Decimation of the Luftwaffe was-and still is-a valuable by-product, but from the start the destruction of pin-point ground targets was the prime strategic purpose of the VIII Bomber Command. The C.G. had said, "There is no target that can be destroyed by gunfire that cannot be destroyed by bombs." The mission of the Command was to substantiate that statement.

The early attacks on Occupied France did prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was possible to hit a specific target from an altitude of four or five miles with enough bombs to do considerable damage. But compared to the accuracy achieved later, the bombing was not good enough to justify any complacency. Too many missiles fell outside the target area, even when a certain proportion was on or near the aiming point.

And since they were falling on French soil, nobody was happy about it.

The reason was plain inexperience under combat conditions. The bombardiers were well trained according to peacetime standards. The bomb sight was a precision instrument. But it was one thing to make a steady bombing run at 15,000 feet in the tranquil air of Texas or Colorado-quite another to attempt the same thing at 23,000 feet over enemy-held territory where the formation had to take violent evasive action to dodge flak and fighters up to the last few seconds that called for rock-steady flying.

On these early missions, furthermore, each plane carried its own bomb sight and bombed individually, thereby increasing the possible margin for error. Judged by European standards, the bombing in those early days was extraordinarily accurate. Judged by American standards, it was not good enough.

Another problem arising from inexperience was the failure of some gunners on the big planes to distinguish between friendly and enemy fighters. Spitfires that came too close or made the mistake of pointing inquisitive noses at the bombers were likely to get a hot reception. The Spits took to flipping one wing up to let the gunners see their characteristic eliptical shape. The Germans soon began to imitate the maneuver. With fighter planes driving in upon them, often out of the sun at 400 miles per hour; with only split seconds in which to make up their minds, the gunners could hardly be blamed for developing nervous trigger fingers. The Allied fighter pilots, by and large, displayed remarkable patience with their jittery big brothers.

Bomber gunners in combat have from two to five seconds to identify these as hostile or friendly fighter planes.

 If you know planes, test yourself: (1) Focke-Wulf 190, (2) Thunderbolt (P-47), (3) Spitfire, (4) Messerschmitt 109.

This patience was gradually rewarded as increased combat experience and more intensive aircraft identification lectures had their effect.

Considering the speed with which most of these aerial encounters took place, the volume of cross-fire hurled in every direction, the tension and strain of high-altitude flying-it was remarkable that more self-inflicted damage did not occur. Members of one Fortress Group (those who are left) still grin when they recall a critique that was held after a certain mission. At the end of the meeting, when the Group C.O. asked if anyone had anything more to say, a tall, gangling pilot who had led an element in combat that day arose and stalked to the front of the room.

Fixing a piercing gaze upon the pilots of the two wing ships that had flanked his own bomber, he drew from his pocket a battered metal object and held it up for all the room to see. It was an American .50-caliber slug that the pilot had found in his own plane. One of the wing-ship pilots got up, red-faced, and whispered in the ear of the Group C.O. Whereupon the C.O. hastily remarked that it would probably be better if nobody had anything more to say. The meeting was adjourned, with laughter.

One thing apparent from the start was the amazing durability of the American bombers. This was demonstrated more than once before they were battle tested at all. A few days before the first combat mission on August 17, a Fortress was making a high-altitude training flight :

We were in formation at 32,000 when my No. 4 engine ran away. I feathered the prop and when it came into full feather position we saw that one of the blades had broken off.

I rang the alarm bell as a safety precaution and put the plane into a glide. At 30,000 feet the No. 3 engine blew up and caught fire. I rang the alarm bell again and ordered the men to bail out. I started the plane down in a circle to the left, keeping the two good engines down. By the time I reached 14,000 feet, fire had spread all the way back to the ailerons, over to the No. 4 engine and all along the side of the fuselage. At 12,000 feet the No. 2 engine sputtered, backfired, and then quit. This made me sort of mad. Up till then I'd been too scared to do anything. I looked over at the No. 3 engine. It was hanging over the side of the wing, held by a few cables. The oil tank was visible and on fire. I started to get out of my seat to bail out, but the wings were still on and I thought I'd try to get it down.

Control was nearly impossible, since the bottom of the right wing had been blown off and a piece of cowling had knocked off the vertical fin. I broke through the cloud layer at 9000 feet and looked for a field. It was a heavily wooded area, but I spotted a pasture about 800 feet long. I circled the end of it, losing altitude, and as the tires had been destroyed by fire I came in with a wheel-up landing. The entire right side of the airplane was in flames by this time. I started to leave the ship. The place where I had landed was the rifle range of a British Rifle Brigade. About five hundred of them were there, and as I came out they came running up, about a dozen of them with fire extinguishers. Though the gas tanks were leaking we managed to get the fire out.

The will to keep flying, the determination implicit in that phrase "the wings were still on and I thought I'd try to get it down"-these characteristics became even more evident when the going began to get tough across the Channel. The 20-mm. cannon shells of the German fighters peeled the metal covering off the wings and fuselages of the Forts and Libs like skin off an onion. Flak knocked whole cylinders out of engines that still kept turning. Tail assemblies were shot to ribbons, hydraulic systems were knocked out, control and oxygen lines were blown away-still the big ships came home, flying on the stamina that had been built into them.

Battle damage: a German 20-mm. shell peeled the metal covering off this bomber like skin off an onion.

Pilots found that on three engines they could maintain formation, although a feathered propeller soon became to German fighters what the proverbial red rag is to a bull. Even on two engines a bomber had a fair chance of struggling back across the Channel-if it had enough initial altitude and (an even bigger "if") the enemy fighters left it alone. Planes were landed with only one engine functioning, once or twice with no power at all.

Crews who managed to nurse their crippled planes across the Channel were as good as safe, and even some of those who failed to make it across the "Ditch" ("The shortest stretch of water in the world when you're going out-the longest when you're coming back!") lived to fly again, thanks to the efforts of the British Air-Sea Rescue Service-a joint RAF-Royal Navy organization whose fast, yellow-decked launches maintain a vigil round the coasts of the United Kingdom.

The first rescue of Americans by their Allies took place on the day of the Lille mission. The pilot of the Fortress that fell in the drink told the story :

The fun began as we started home. We were getting plenty of heavy flak and were under constant attack by enemy fighters. We seemed to be getting away with things very nicely until a Focke-Wulf 190 winged us with an explosive cannon shell, slightly wounding the bombardier. Then we started to get other hits. One went into our out-board engine, which started smoking badly. The generators were knocked out and the intercom system went dead.

The copilot and I found that we couldn't hold our altitude. We were losing about fifteen hundred feet a minute, and the English coast was a long way off.

After discovering I couldn't talk to the crew on the interphone I turned the controls over to the copilot and went aft. We had only about five thousand feet at this point, and there wasn't any time

Dinghy drill: when the order comes, "Prepare to ditch," every crew member must know exactly what to do.

to waste. I got hold of the top turret gunner and told him to get the rest of the gunners together in the radio compartment. Then I climbed down the nose to call the bombardier and the navigator. Then I went back to the controls and got ready to "ditch" the ship. We had had ditching practice just the day before, so everyone knew what he had to do, We jettisoned the waist guns and adjusted our parachutes and Mae Wests. The water looked cold, and I remember thinking it also looked hard. There were waves, and I had heard that when you land on water and hit a wave the effect is very much like flying into a stone wall.

It was. We laid her in a belly landing, as slowly as we could, with the tail well down. But even at that we hit so hard that it threw the crew all over the ship. A couple of them were stunned for a moment. The navigator was flung from the radio compartment into the bomb bay and knocked unconscious. The top turret gunner had a Very pistol in his lap. It flew up and cut his head. I think all of us were more or less dazed momentarily.

The men tried to launch the rubber rafts; but they had been so damaged that, with the exception of one which could be only partially inflated, they were entirely useless to us. Then came another problem. When the men started dropping into the cold water, they realized that the heavy winter equipment some of them were wearing was too heavy for their Mae Wests to support. Splashing around in the icy water, the ones in lighter clothing managed somehow to hold the others up while they got out of their leather jackets, trousers, and flying boots and struggled into their life preservers again.

The copilot had been hurt in the landing, and I saw him float out of a window and drift under the wing of the ship. I swam after him and managed to grab him and drag him over to the partially inflated dinghy. Then the navigator's log floated past, so I retrieved that. About then every-thing began to seem perfectly logical. It's funny, but I was doing some very careful reasoning. The trouble was I didn't always get the right answer.

The ship went down in about a minute and a half, I imagine. Landplanes always sink fast when you "ditch" them. I ordered some of the men into the partially inflated boat. The rest held on to the edges of it. One of the gunners was bent, bound and determined that we were going to let him sink. He'd go down and then come up and spit sea water, and then go down again; but he kept trying to make us let him go. It took a direct order to make him behave. He thought he was hurting our chances of survival.

Then came the worst part-waiting for help to get there and wondering if any help was going to come. What we didn't know was that we were as good as rescued already. Some time before our ship hit the water the machinery of H.M. Air-Sea Rescue Service started to roll. The lead plane in our Spitfire escort had told them that we were going down over the Channel and gave them our approximate location. We were in the water only thirty-five minutes. During that time one of the RAF Spitfires was circling to indicate our position. Soon a small boat with a rescue crew already on deck came foaming up to us.

Right here a strange thing happened. The men on the boat made no sound and scowled at us with cold and gloomy faces. I didn't get it, until one of my men in the water called out something to them. Then one of the rescue crew yelled, "Hell, they're Yanks!" and after that everybody grinned at us and started calling, "Hold on, Maties! We'll have you out of there in half a mo'!"

We, found out later why they had been scowling at us. They thought we were Germans because of the powder-blue color of the electrically heated jumpers that a couple of the gunners wore. It seems they pick up Germans too, but somehow they can't develop any wild enthusiasm about the job. Our rescue constituted a special occasion for this crew because, they told us, the crews of various Air-Sea Rescue boats had organized a pool to be won by the first crew to pick up some Americans.

So the curtain came down on Lille. It was not an ideal demonstration of high-altitude precision bombing, but it proved certain things that up to then had remained in the realm of theory : that American bombers, even under intense attack, could hit any target they could see; that the big ships could fight their way through the heaviest opposition without undue loss, inflicting serious damage on enemy fighter strength; that the crews could face severe attacks and remain full of fight; that the planes themselves were admirably suited to complement the RAF's night saturation raids by attacking small, heavily defended European targets.

At Lille, for the first time, the pattern of the rapier thrust by day and the bludgeon smash by night began to emerge clearly. It began to look as if Germany, having sown the wind, was about to reap the whirlwind.

Hi-yah. An American bomber crew down in the Channel is picked up by His Majesty's Air-Sea Rescue Service.