Air Fronts: Theaters of Operation - European Theater of Operation: Target Germany - Parlous Days

WHILE THE planes and combat crews of the VIII Bomber Command were testing their strength and weakness over the submarine pens, the drab English winter was settling down on the bomber stations from which the big ships flew. In those short bleak days a pattern of life evolved for the men in the air and the men on the ground that was unique in many ways.

It was not merely the contrasts inevitable when half a dozen masculine American communities were suddenly set down in the midst of a country-side whose traditions go back a thousand years. Nor was it the strangeness of waging aerial war-fare under conditions where you could lunch at a Mayfair hotel one day and be a human clay pigeon five miles up over France the next morning. Those conditions still exist, but that first winter had an atmosphere all its own, a state of mind almost, that those who participated in it will never forget.

One factor in creating this state of mind was undoubtedly the sense of newness that pervaded the whole effort. Everything was new-living conditions, supply problems, weather, British customs, and combat flying where nobody knew what would happen next. New, too, was the realization for the combat crews that when a mission went out against Festung Europa, somebody was not coming back. That it was not a question--as it was in some theaters--of wondering whether any opposition would be met, but rather a grim speculation on which would be tougher, the fighters or the flak.

Another thing : in those days the whole VIII Bomber Command effort was incredibly small. Barely a hundred combat crews were available —and usually considerably less than that number of aircraft were ready to fly. The result was that personalities stood out with remarkable clarity, not only among the men but among the bombers themselves. Fortresses like Rose O'Day, Boom Town, Southern Comfort, Hell's Angels, Dry Martini, Wahoo; Liberators like Shoot Luke, Ball of Fire, Teggie Ann-the exploits of these aircraft and the men that flew them were as familiar in the First Wing--the old guinea-pig Wing--as the exploits of the Dodgers are in Brooklyn.

Later on, as the flood tide of replacements and new ships came sweeping in, individual identities began to be lost. The outlines blurred. This was inevitable and perhaps desirable as the VIII Bomber Command changed from a handful of pioneers to a tremendous and efficient machine of destruction. But during those dark winter months when there was no expansion, when at times there seemed to be no progress, the individual himself, whether Group Leader or tail gunner, assumed tremendous importance. It is not fair to name one without naming them all. Many are now dead, many missing. But living or dying, they did a remarkable job. Daylight precision bombing--and, more important, the free peoples of the world--owe them a great debt.

By rights there should have been a constant morale problem that winter. There was not. The reasons why there should have been-and the reasons why there was not--add up to a fairly complete picture of bomber-station life at that stage of the game.

The two worst intangibles that the fliers had to contend with were lack of replacements for casualties, and the psychological repercussion of missions that were "scrubbed" (canceled) at the last minute. In addition there were the comparatively minor discomforts of primitive living conditions, of colds and winter weather, of dispersal and mud, of lack of all sorts of supplies. Finally, there was the uneasy feeling, fostered occasionally by sharpshooting civilian critics, that perhaps through some fault of theirs the case for high-altitude daylight precision bombing was not being proved quickly or dramatically enough ? How else account for the scarcity of replacements ? How else explain the failure to grow ? The African invasion, obviously, called for planes and more planes. The Pacific needed

Sweating it out. till the mission be scrubbed

planes. The Russians had to have planes. But in Africa and Russia things were going well. In the Pacific the Japs were being held. Production figures from the home front indicated that planes were being poured out in an ever-increasing flood. Where were they ?

As the milk-run missions went on and enemy opposition became stiffer, American losses began to mount. They remained low in comparison to what they were to become later, but the total force engaged was so small that any loss was felt. In addition, the Germans adopted new tactics of hammering at a single Group, so that the casualties were likely to be concentrated at one bomber station.

When this happened, morale at that station did sag temporarily. The reason was not so much the casualties as the failure to replace them promptly. The fliers expected losses; it was part of fighting a war. But they did not like empty beds in the barracks to remind them of the men who were missing. As long ago as World War I it had been recognized that a unit could endure severe punishment if the vacant seats in the mess were occupied by the following morning. This "full breakfast table" policy was axiomatic with the RAF. But on the American stations the breakfast tables did not fill up very quickly. That was the grimmest part of those parlous days.

The other great source of nerve strain was the missions that were called off at the last minute, usually because of weather. Combat crews declared, almost unanimously, that the feeling of let-down, the sense of anticlimax, that followed these cancellations was far worse than actual participation in a combat flight. The strain of sitting through a briefing, of enduring those stomach-tightening minutes of tension before take-off, the uncertainty of being told to stand by for an indefinite period of time, the final "scrubbing"-these things left the crews so limp that one Group Commander sent in a formal request to have diversionary sweeps credited to fliers as combat missions. The request was refused, but it indicated the seriousness of the problem. In the month of December alone such "scrubbings" occurred seven different times. And when they happened the ground crews which had loaded the bombs and groomed the bombers felt almost as deflated as the fighting men.

As for living conditions, they were "rugged," to use the favorite airdrome adjective, but the effect on morale was negligible. Nobody liked the mud--wet, sticky, the color of fresh cement. The blackout, no matter how you sliced it--and sometimes you almost could slice it--was a nuisance and a bore. The interminable distances on a bomber station that had to be traversed on foot with passing vehicles plastering you with freezing mud, the coal stoves in the Nissen huts that defied all attempts to keep them going over-night, the lack of hot water, the apparently permanent absence of sunlight--these things were subjects of universal lamentation and complaint, but nobody cared seriously about them. Again, it was part of fighting a war. Men actually came to take a melancholy pride in the duration of their particular cold in the head and boasted hoarsely about it to the boredom of their fellows. Those who lived on the more primitive stations made no effort to conceal their contempt for the "country-club set" who had been fortunate enough to draw RAF quarters with permanent buildings and (in one case) a real live butler.

More serious, because it actually affected operations, was the shortage of essential supplies and maintenance. At this time servicing planes for the embryonic Twelfth Air Force was a top priority with the Eighth Air Force in England, and often planes damaged in battle over the sub pens could not be made ready to fly again simply because there were not enough maintenance men to do both jobs. At one point the lack of equipment for cleaning machine guns became so acute that the gunners, having cleaned parts of their weapons with soap and water, took them tenderly into bed the night before a mission to prevent them from rusting. British generosity kept general supply from being a problem, but the British could not provide spare parts for American planes or specialized equipment such as oxygen masks.

One other potential morale-destroying problem was the matter of promotions. As was almost inevitable, the Tables of Organization set up in Washington on a theoretical basis proved inadequate in some cases. Bomber crews commanded by second lieutenants were not uncommon; some of them completed fifteen or twenty missions before promotions were forthcoming. The same bottleneck plagued the enlisted men. But in general, despite some plain and fancy grumbling, they didn't let it throw them. They went around chanting the lugubrious ditty :

Bless 'em all, bless 'em all,

The long and the short and the tall.

There'll be no promotion this side of the ocean, So cheer up my lads, bless 'em all !

and let it go at that.

"
Rugged" was the word. The coal stoves in the Nissen huts defied all attempts to keep them going overnight.

Tea, soldier? The British NAAFI helped out until.. .

There were various reasons why these trials and tribulations did not affect morale more seriously than they did. One was the efforts of such organizations as the British NAAFI (Navy, Army, Air Force Institute) which maintained canteens on the bleak, wind-swept bomber stations until the American Red Cross was able to take over and do a magnificent job. Another was the unglamorous task of the Special Services officer who arranged for movies, organized shows and dances, provided athletic equipment, and in general made it his business to keep station life from becoming unbearably drab or monotonous.

The chaplain was another factor. No one who watched the combat crews kneel to receive a final benediction before entering their planes ever doubted the value of these sincere, quiet men whose job included everything from running errands for pipe tobacco to sitting beside a dying airman in a hospital plane.

The work of the station doctors--the flight surgeons--was also a strong influence in keeping up morale. Psychiatrists as well as physicians, they knew their combat crews well, were quick to spot signs of flying fatigue. Often this was cured by the simple process of sending the flier to a rest home for a few days. In these rest homes the men loafed, read, slept late, fished, hunted -did whatever they pleased and usually came back to their units refreshed and ready to go again.

At one station fairly remote from a hospital a veteran bomber named Ball of Fire-too weakened by battle damage for combat flying--was kept standing by as a hospital plane.

Red Cross clubs and clubmobiles took over the task.

If one of the returning aircraft fired the red flare that signified wounded aboard, Ball of Fire was ready to take off at an instant's notice. As a result the casualty was at the hospital within minutes, instead of jolting over the English roads in an ambulance for the better part of three hours.

Another factor of incalculable value in maintaining morale was the attitude of the British. Their kindness and hospitality during those gray winter months were amazing, especially since they themselves were subject to the strictest sort of food rationing. This did not prevent them from taking in stray Americans, entertaining them, even feeding them to the extent of presenting them with a real egg-the kind you break.

But the basic reason why there was no serious morale problem during those cold, static months was to be found in the character of the men themselves, the men on the ground as well as the men in the air.

In some ways the men on the ground had the short end of the stick, especially the enlisted men. There was no glory in the anonymous but necessary job of packing a parachute or driving a truck or guarding a Fortress in the rain-swept hours between midnight and dawn. Nobody handed out medals to the man who picked the sullen, slippery bombs out of the mud and washed them off so that no blemish should keep them from falling true and hoisted them into the yawning bomb bays with apparatus that had been known to slip and let a thousand-pound bomb fall and crush the bomb loader's feet.

Bomber mascot carries his master's oxygen mask.

Nobody complimented the weary-eyed assistants in the photo labs, working frantically to get the bomb-strike photos of the day's mission processed in a minimum of time. Nobody wrote glamorous newspapers stories about the cooks.

But the American G.I., the American Sad Sack, the American soldier by whatever name he might be known, went on doing his job with a particular brand of American know-how, with a maximum of adaptability, with a minimum of fuss. He took part in intersquadron sports. He grumbled about the lack of mail, and the mud, and the alleged monotony of the chow. He moaned about the promotion situation. He acquired a dog of dubious ancestry and promoted it from time to time until it got to be a second lieutenant, at which point it usually ran away. He went to the station movies and sat on backless benches, lost in rapt contemplation of some part of the American scene. Sometimes he "pulled a short mission," going in to town on foot or in a liberty bus to do a little pub-crawling or have a date with a girl. Once in a while he married the girl. Now and then he would stare at the mud outside his Nissen hut and think about planting some grass or flowers there in the spring. Sometimes he thought about the war and wondered how long it would last. There were times when it seemed perfectly capable of lasting forever.

If he was the adventurous type he might apply for combat duty as an aerial gunner. He might get it. If so, he never forgot his allegiance to his old unit. He might become a tail gunner and live apart with the noncommissioned combat personnel, but if he had been a clerk he never failed to keep his old friends-and they never ceased to feel a possessive pride in him.

Bomb washer: mud may keep bombs from falling true.

The flying officers--the pilots, copilots, bombardiers, and navigators who manned the bombers--looked, for the most part, as if they might have stepped out of any American law school. On the whole they were quieter, less individualistic than fighter pilots; one reason, no doubt, was the absolute necessity for teamwork in their grim and temporary profession. There was not much of the swashbuckler about them. They were scientists, skilled and versatile; their training was reflected in their faces.

On the station between missions they were relaxed and friendly. The peacetime condescension of the flier to the nonflying man had disappeared. In wartime, fliers soon learned how important the ground men really were. Combat aged them quickly. They lost some of the puppy playfulness with which they arrived. Not all, though. Their sense of humor never deserted them. The names they gave their planes bordered on the classic : Wabbit Twacks, Quitchurbitchin', Fearless Fosdick, Impatient Virgin, Lady Halitosis -the German fighter pilots must have been sorely puzzled. They wrote pointed and some-times unprintable comments on the bombs they dropped. Frequently they dropped brickbats, American flags, and other mementos along with the bombs.

They teased each other constantly. In the mess one day a pilot got up disgustedly, complaining that the navigators talked too much shop. The navigators, in a huff, said they would organize a table and eat by themselves. "Well," said the pilot with a wicked grin, "see that you have it near the door. Otherwise, you guys'll never find it."

Actually they all talked a lot of shop. After a mission, they huddled around the narrow circle of warmth cast by the iron stove in the officers' mess, and the talk flowed like a river :

Don't give me that stuff about flak being just a deterrent; boy, I'd rather face the fighters any day.

And this sergeant gunner of mine didn't know it was the General, see? And there they stood, raising their earphones to holler in each other's ear. Man, it was a wonderful sight. . .

If we had one more gun mounted right here; look, lend me a pencil. . .

The President says we built 49,000 military planes last year. Wish the Old Man would. . .

Next time we oughta bomb downwind; bet we'd be in and out before they knew it. . .

I'll mount the gun myself; hell, I'll even buy it. .

I tell you, it's just like shooting grouse, only these babies shoot back. . .

I'm gonna change the name of my ship from the Green Hornet to the Homing Pigeon. . .

Why couldn't some of those Mosquitoes go in low and polish off the flak while we. . .

You know those bombs that fell on the railroad tracks ? Well, I heard a freight train had to stop and an express came along and ran into it. Neat, huh?

And what's more, she gave me a real egg for breakfast, with a shell on it. . .

Every time I'd bank the flak would follow me like Mary's little lamb. . .

You gotta hand it to Jerry; he's a beautiful flier, and boy, has he got guts. . .

Mud. . . Mud. . . Mud. . . Mud. . . Mud. . . Mud.. .

There was never any attempt to belittle the adversary, to pretend that the Germans were not good. Later on, when some misguided company at home put out an advertisement showing an inane-looking bomber pilot grinning cheer-fully and demanding, "Who's afraid of the new Focke-Wulf?" somebody pinned it on the bulletin board with a laconic note underneath. "Sign here," the note said. Every combat officer in the Group signed; the Group Commander's name led all the rest.

This was a great joke, of course, but underneath it lay the seriousness with which the fliers took their jobs. There was a little if any of the hysterical gaiety that traditionally clothed the death-and-glory boys who flew the crates of World War I. The attitude seemed to be : "We have a tough job to do here, and we're doing it, but we find no glory in it." Now and then, for a few hours, the atmosphere at a station might become tense and dramatic. There was one cold winter night when the boys came back from a mission that had cost them some of their best crews, and they took candles and climbed on one another's shoulders, and smoked the record on the ceiling in great wavering capitals, proudly, and in some cases not far from tears. . .

But now at that same station the missions are recorded in precise painted letters on the mess-hall wall. Neat and small and somehow different.

It is dangerous to generalize about these men because no two were alike, even though they all had something in common. There were vivid characters like the big Irishman who always showered and shaved carefully before a mission because, he said, there was a telephone number in Paris that he intended to investigate in case he was shot down. He even made up a small toilet kit which he attached to his parachute--presumably in case his hair was mussed during the descent. Well, his plane did go down, and it is said that when last seen he was happily walking in the general direction of Paris.

There was the case of the pilot who was wounded in the ankle and flew on several missions with his foot in a cast. There was another who, coming from a long line of teetotalers, went around for days in a state of high agitation because a whisky company, having read of his exploits, wrote and told him they were sending a case of their finest to his home in North Carolina. There was a navigator who wrote 2500 letters in nine months. There was a full-blooded Japanese-American who was a tail gunner-and a good one. There was a Filipino gunner, and later on an American Indian or two, and at least one Chinese. The New World melting pot was well represented.

There was never any doubt in the minds of those airmen as to the ability of the Forts and Libs, given sufficient numbers, to penetrate to the heart of Germany unescorted and in day-light. It was that conviction, plus their sense of humor, that kept them going.

But there was still skepticism in high places. Even those who were now ready to concede the value of daylight missions were also swayed by arguments in favor of night bombing. Thundering across the Channel, the RAF was spreading ruin and terror throughout Germany. Influential voices were raised, suggesting that the best way to use the comparatively small American force would be to incorporate it in the RAF's night efforts.

The climax of the controversy resulting from this proposal came in mid-January when General Eaker, who since November had been acting as Deputy Commander of the Eighth Air Force in the absence of General Spaatz, flew to Casablanca to attend the now-famous conference. Within a few hours of arrival he was handed a set of questions by General Arnold. On the answers to those questions depended the future of the VllI Bomber Command.

The conference of the Combined Chiefs of Staff was taking place in the Anfa Hotel on a hilltop overlooking the ocean a mile or two south of the city. Around it were little villas of Moorish design, shaded by palm trees, and many of these had been taken over for visiting officers. The C.G. of the Eighth Air Force found himself in one named "Le Paradou"--The Paradox! An additional touch of irony was added by the fact that two months before the Anfa had housed the German Armistice Commission--the black-out curtains still bore the bold imprint of their German origin.

Surrounding the whole establishment was a barbed-wire fence with tin cans full of pebbles strung every two feet and armed sentries not much farther apart. Inside were the heads of the British and American governments, the Combined Chiefs of Staff, statesmen, expert consultants.

The key questions that had to be answered regarding the VIII Bomber Command's showing to date were concerned mainly with the relatively few missions, the fairly high rate of abortives, and the choice of French rather than German targets.

The answers to these questions were plain, and the C.G. gave them. He pointed out that both weather and the low replacement rate were factors in holding down operations. The rate of abortives, largely attributable to the maintenance hours spent on Twelfth Air Force air-craft, was going down steadily as operational lessons learned were put into practice and mechanical kinks were ironed out. As for choice of targets, that had been dictated partly by the priority given to attacks on the sub pens, partly by lack of long-range fighter support to cover the small bomber force available. The C.G. added that as a result of the experience gained over the U-boat pens, his combat crews were now sufficiently experienced to undertake the day-light invasion of Germany.

Cold hands. A mechanic warms up between jobs.

To those who favored switching the American bombers completely to night operations he presented seven carefully reasoned arguments :

1. Day bombing permitted destruction of relatively small targets like individual plants and factories that could not be found, seen, or hit at night.

2. Day bombing, being much more accurate than night bombing, meant that a smaller force could destroy a given target. This economy, in turn, would mean that eventually simultaneous attacks could be made on several targets, splitting enemy defenses and reducing losses.

3. Day bombing, or the threat of it, kept enemy defenses alerted twenty-four hours a day, with the consequent loss of man-hours in production.

4. Day bombing would reduce airdrome, air-space, and communications congestion in the United Kingdom. As the aerial strength of both the RAF and the USAAF continued to grow, problems arising from such congestion would become more and more acute.

5. The combat crews of the VIII Bomber Command were not equipped or trained for the totally different technique of night bombing. Switching them over would involve a long training period at a time when delay was unthinkable. The losses from crashes during the transition period would probably exceed losses from enemy action.

6. Day bombing imposed a serious strain on the fighter strength of the Luftwaffe. The number of enemy fighters destroyed could hardly fail to have a cumulative effect on the morale of Nazi fighter pilots. At night the heavy defensive armament of the Fortresses and Liberators would be so much dead weight.

7. Finally, day bombing offered unique opportunities for co-operation with the RAF. The two types of bombing were complementary. Abandoning one would weaken rather than strengthen the other. Already joint operations had been planned that would demonstrate the value of this sort of combined operation.

Day bombing, the C.G. insisted, was the bold, the aggressive, the offensive thing to do. American bombers could, and doubtless would, operate at night, but day bombing was their specialty.

In the end he convinced his listeners. So far as the VIII Bomber Command was concerned, the Casablanca Conference settled two things--for the time being, at least. The necessary planes were going to be sent, and they were to be used for day bombing.

The planes, naturally, did not appear over-night. It was weeks before the promised flow of heavy bombers began to arrive. Meanwhile, for the airmen and the ground crews on the muddy stations, unaware of the Casablanca decision, the parlous days continued. But one day late in January the word came that they had been waiting for : "The target for today is Germany."