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

ON JANUARY 27 U-boat production in the yards at Wilhelmshaven was reported as proceeding normally. An inquisitive reconnaissance plane had spied a camouflaged pocket battle-ship, the Admiral Scheer, in drydock on the north side of the Bauhafen. The naval dockyards were busy with new construction. On this day the VIII Bomber Command for the first time joined the RAF in its attacks on the German homeland. The target chosen was Wilhelmshaven; the aiming point was the ways where U-boats were built.

The RAF night raiders, dropping well over a thousand tons of bombs during their 1942 attacks on this North Sea port, had inflicted considerable damage on the town itself and had blasted a naval munitions depot out of existence with one of the biggest bangs of the whole war. Some of the U-boats ways, the shipyards, and the drydocks, however, had escaped. Here was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the effective collaboration possible between area and precision bombing.

The dawn briefing for the attack had been prefaced by a day of momentous war news. The official announcements of the Casablanca meetings had established the "unconditional surrender" policy of the United Nations, the Russian communique had reported the imminent liquidation of the German forces trapped at Stalingrad and the British Eighth Army, after a pause at Tripoli, was once more moving in force toward the Tunisian border. There was a general "let's get on with the war" feeling in the air as the Group Commanders took their places before the combat crews in the briefing rooms and swung their pointers for the first time to a target on German soil.

To ground crews and flying men alike, this was a long-awaited day. Five and a half months of daylight operations over occupied territory had, to be sure, inflicted grievous wounds on the tentacles of the German war machine--but the body of the monster had yet to feel the weight of American attacks. Now the time for the assault was at hand. The constant concern of the crews attacking targets in France and the Low Countries for the lives and the property of our conquered allies would no longer be a worrisome factor.

The weather that day was far from ideal for high-level bombing. At altitude, the cold was intense. On this trip the crews for the first time tried rubbing the oxygen masks with salt to keep them from freezing. The trick worked. Despite all precautions, however, the knifelike temperatures took a heavy toll of men and machines--freezing gun and turret mechanisms, clogging camera shutters, fogging windshields and bomb sights, and stabbing through the heaviest clothing the combat crews could wear.

One of the navigators on the mission has recorded a memorable few minutes of that day's trip : At about 1030 the altimeter indicated 25,000 feet. The cloud cover had ended, far below us, and we could see the surface of the sea--like a sheet of glass. At 1045 the Captain warned the crew to be extra-alert. I looked out to the right and could see the outline of the coast of Germany and the row of islands that lay just off it. It was our first glimpse of Das Vaterland. At 1057 we were just over the islands and at 1100 the tail gunner reported flak at six o'clock, below. It was from the coastal islands and was the first time we were fired upon from German soil. At this time we were beginning to turn and we crossed the island of Baltrum and went into German territory. As we turned, the bombardier elevated the muzzle of his gun and fired a burst so that the tracers arched over into Germany. The first shots from our ship, Hell's Angels, but not the last !

Fifty-three planes attacked the installations at Wilhelmshaven, dropping their bombs through a film of cloud that lay like thin gauze over the target area. Two more attacked Emden. The Germans were ready. A smoke screen drifted lazily across the target, below the cloud layer,

Wilhelmshaven under cover. Forts find their target through Nazi smoke screen. Note smoke floats in harbor.

at both Emden and Wilhelmshaven. Flak was attentive, if not too accurate. More than fifty enemy fighters--including twin-engined types usually employed in defense against night bombers--rose to meet the formations. Returning gunners claimed twenty-two enemy aircraft shot down. Curiously, they also reported that the enemy pilots seemed inexperienced in contrast to those met over French targets. The Luftwaffe's first team, obviously, hadn't been at home to meet their first American guests.

The bombing on this first mission over Germany was only fair. Clouds hid much of the story the strike photographs, taken during the bombing, might have told, but they did show that while the pattern of the hits looked better, the placing of the patterns still left much to be desired. The American Plan was developing, but slowly.

Three bombers were lost at Wilhelmshaven. One, a Liberator, was destroyed as a result of a collision with a Focke-Wulf which had been shot down by another bomber, the first reported incident of its kind. These losses and the question of which plane had been first over German territory were the main topics in the messes that night. Pilots of several of the wing ships which had skirted the islands as the formation swung along the coast argued mightily, but the honor of being the first American bomber over Nazi soil finally went to the lead ship, piloted by Colonel Frank Armstrong and manned by an all-American crew representing eight states and the District of Columbia. As Colonel Armstrong had led the maiden raid over occupied territory this gave him a double first.

The gray core of winter now settled upon the area of operations. Rain, sleet, biting winds, and freezing banks of dun cloud spun out from the North Sea to cover both the bases and the targets. The weather men and Operations Staff at Command spent their days and nights watching the birth and life and death of a succession of storms which ranged from the arctic to the equator. In seventeen days but one operation was carried out. Emden was attacked despite icing conditions and temperatures that went below the recording capacities of the thermometers, 45 degrees below zero. Vapor trails formed by the bombers helped guide the enemy fighters in their attack.

The Command's bombing experts, with few results by which to judge the progress of their campaign for accuracy, shook their heads and ordered more practice missions, more runs over the target ranges. On occasion excellent results had been achieved during the earlier missions --on one Lorient attack six of thirty-six bombs dropped from 22,000 feet had hit a block of sub pens measuring 200 by 400 feet. Those exceptions had now to be made the standard of accuracy.

On February 16 the locks leading to the protective basin at the Saint-Nazaire U-boat base were the target. Weather was good and the bombing accurate, though the locks themselves escaped damage by one of the mathematical improbabilities which plague all bombardment tacticians. The enemy fighter pilots indulged in a little experimentation of their own during this operation, attacking the bombers in pairs and pouncing viciously upon any stragglers lamed by the flak barrage. Returning crews brought back the first word of German fighters attempting to drop bombs into the Fortress formations --air-to-air bombing. Eight bombers were lost.

Ten days later, over Wilhelmshaven, air mines made their appearance. Slightly larger than shoe-boxes, these mines were fired into the air above the formations by antiaircraft guns. After the burst the mines swung slowly earthward, each suspended from a small parachute.

This second Wilhelmshaven attack added a chapter to the saga of a now-lamented lady known as Southern Comfort. Having earned the reputation of being a "good steady ship," Southern Comfort had suddenly interrupted a decorous and conventional career by catching fire over a French target. Her crew brought her back safely. Over Wilhelmshaven, Southern Comfort showed that her spirit of adventure was not yet dead. Here is the story, as it was pieced together by the Intelligence Officers who interrogated the crew :

We had disposed of six of our bombs when the ship shivered and we knew we had been heavily hit. The bombardier sent away his four remaining bombs on the docks of Wilhelmshaven before turning to see if the navigator had been killed by the explosion of a 20-mm. shell in the nose.

The navigator was alive and uninjured, although the shell had exploded only three inches away from his head and dented the steel helmet he was wearing. The explosion drove his head down on the navigator's table, which broke under the impact of the helmet. The only ill effect he suffered was that he could not calculate the course of the plane for about twenty minutes. During this time the bombardier handled the navigator's gun as well as his own.

Fighter attack. A Messerschmitt 110 closes in on a Fortres formation. Primarily night fighters, these twin-engine planes have been modified to act as rocket carriers defending Germany against American daylight raids.

A moment later the right waist gunner phoned: "Sir, No. 3 engine has been hit and is throwing quite a bit of oil." The oil had spread over the wing. A tongue of flame appeared. The copilot closed the cowl flaps and pulled the fire extinguishers. The fire went out. The propeller of the crippled engine was now windmilling and chewing away at bits of cowling. Sparks were bouncing off the oil-covered wing.

At this point the pilot noticed that the rudder did not respond. Presently we found that four square feet of it had been shot away. When the tail gunner reported the condition of the tail, or rather the lack of it, he also reported that still another shell had burst just in back of him inside the fuselage.

There was no time to appraise the damage. Southern Comfort had lost air speed caused by the drag of the windmilling propeller, and an attempt to rejoin several of the formation s proved futile.

It was then that the pilot realized that if we were to return to England we were going to have to do it alone, crippled and out of formation. The loss of the supporting guns of other aircraft in the formation was serious, but more serious was the choice of course. We flew due north, to put as much sea between us and the enemy fighters as possible. Meanwhile the No. 3 engine was vibrating and the wild prop kept taking bites out of the cowling.

We were out over the North Sea when the pilot announced over the intercom: "Those who want to, please pray!" Not long after that we sighted land. We weren't sure, but we thought it was England.

As we neared our home base an inquisitive Mosquito spotted us and finally came so close that we could see the pilot shake his head at our battle-scarred condition. He waved his hand and left. Shortly afterward, we picked up our field.

Southern Comfort landed with a gaping hole where the rudder should have been, a shattered nose section, a wing spotted with ragged shrapnel wounds, and its fuselage riddled from nose to tail with flak and cannon-shell holes. One shell had crashed through the fuselage directly behind the tail gunner's position, leaving a gash the size of a grapefruit. One by one, the crew climbed out--uninjured. They reported they'd made a pretty good bombing run.

This mission was the first occasion when accredited news correspondents were permitted to observe an American attack in action. Seven journalists of the little group who wryly called themselves "The Writing 69th" went to Wilhelmshaven. One, Robert B. Post of The New York Times, did not return and is listed as a victim of the enemy action he had gone forth to report.

March, destined to be a climactic month in the history of high-level precision bombing, started auspiciously. In southern Tunisia patrols from the American and British Eighth armies met on the Gafsa-Gabès road, and on the eastern front the Nazis scuttled westward out of the Rzhev salient. On the western front the RAF was preparing to launch, on the night of the 5th-6th, its pulverizing campaign against the Ruhr. On the 4th of the month the VIII Bomber Command set out on its first "D.P. job"--deep penetration attack.

The Hamm marshaling yards, which funnel the production of the Ruhr industries to the east and north of Germany, lie just outside the valley and 160 miles inside the outer ring of Nazi defenses. The network of tracks, the railroad shops, and the storage sheds constituted a difficult target to find and an even harder one to hit. Seventy-one planes left on the attack ; one Group of sixteen finally reached the target. Two other Groups, discouraged by soupy weather near the German coast, bombed the shipyards at Rotterdam, and one Group returned to base with its loads.

The twenty-two-year old leader of the little band which went on alone to pierce the Nazi defenses brought back a record of almost perfect bombing and the story of a decision which many older and more experienced pilots would not have cared to make. Losing contact with the accompanying Groups in the thick cloud over the North Sea, this young Squadron Commander found himself nearing the German coast.

The soup was getting thinner. We strained our eyes for a glimpse of the other Groups. Not a sign of them. We were approaching the coast now. We could barely see it through the haze. We crossed the coast. The navigator checked our position.

Where in the hell were the other Groups? Should we go on? The weather was getting better now. I asked the tail gunner how many ships we had. "Sixteen, sir." Sixteen Forts--against the best defenses Germany had to offer. Should I risk those 160 boys' lives to bomb Hamm? It was an important target, but the other Groups had apparently gone to attack an alternate. Nothing would be said i f I turned back. We went on.

That decision and his leadership of the attack resulted in the D.F.C. for the Squadron Commander and brought precision bombing one step nearer its goal. For the returning crews reported "bombs on the button" and subsequent reconnaissance photographs showed an excellent concentration among the railway shops and marshaling trackage. This profit was not achieved without loss, intense fighter opposition and flak barrages along the route in and out accounting for four of the attacking planes. As one gunner put it : Those fighters came closer than I've ever seen them in the movies. I could almost have shook hands with one of those fellows. Claims of  sixteen enemy fighters destroyed helped even the score.

One of the new armor vests then being tested by the Fortress crews saved a radio operator from serious injury that day. Developed by Colonel Malcolm C. Grow, a vest of heavy canvas is covered with plates of manganese steel which overlap, protecting the chest and back from low-velocity shrapnel and ricocheting missiles. In this case a fragment of an exploding 20-mm. cannon shell struck the vest just above the radio operator's right hip. The armor was dented, but the wearer escaped without injury. On another raid a 20-mm. exploded two feet from the chest of a bombardier wearing both the vest and a steel helmet. The vest "looked like a shotgun had been fired at it from close range" --but the bombardier was unhurt.

Flak vests. Two crew members inspect their armor.

Strike photo. Two hundred and sixty-eight tons of high explosive blast the submarine building yards at Vegesack.

Hamm showed what could be done, by even a small force. On March 8, at Rennes, an important marshaling yard through which the Germans rout supplies for their Brittany bases was plastered from end to end by 500-pound bombs from half a hundred Fortresses. Returning from Rennes, one bomber pilot had the unique experience of thumbing a ride from an RAF Typhoon. With one engine shot out, the Fortress was barely skimming the Channel waves when the friendly fighter was sighted, some fifteen minutes off the English coast. A flare was fired, but it failed to attract the Typhoon pilot's attention. When the fighter came around again the Fortress pilot frantically waved his handkerchief at the cockpit window. This had the desired effect. He came up beside us and rocked his wings. Then he went ahead as if to say "Follow me," and led us to a base in southern England.

Hamm and Rennes were the promises. Vegesack, ten days and three attacks later, was the fulfillment. A total of ninety-seven bombers --seventy-three Forts and twenty-four Liberators--attacked the Bremen Vulcan shipbuilding yards which line the Weser some few miles north of Bremen. This works, fourth-ranking producer of U-boats, was thus the object of the largest force the VIII Bomber Command had at that time managed to put over a single target. Two hundred and sixty-eight tons of high explosives were dropped, inflicting what assessment reports later called "extremely heavy damage." This included the complete destruction of the works powerhouse, two-thirds destruction of the ship-building shops, and damage to a number of submarines building on the ways. Two bombers were lost on this most successful of all attacks to date, while American gunners claimed fifty-two of the opposing fighters shot down.

As was the case on most missions, the returning bombers brought their inevitable quota of wounded back from Vegesack. One Fort also brought Jack Mathis home.

Jack Mathis was one of two tall brothers from Texas who came to England to fly as Fortress bombardiers from the same station. Jack is gone now and Mark is missing from a later raid. Here is the story of Jack's last flight as told by the navigator who flew beside him :

We ran into very little trouble on our raid on Vegesack until we started on the bombing run. A very heavy barrage of flak was thrown up at us just as we reached the target. Flak hit our ship and sounded like hail on the roof I glanced at Lieutenant Mathis, who was crouched over his bomb sight, lining up the target. Jack was an easygoing guy and the flak didn't bother him. He wasn't saying a word just sticking there over his bomb sight, doing his job.

"Bomb-bay doors are open," I heard Jack call up to the pilot, and then he gave instructions to climb a little more to reach bombing altitude.

Damage assessment. Flying unarmed reconnaissance planes, daring pilots return with proof of a wrecked target.

On the bomb run, that flak hit us. We were seconds short of the bomb-release point when a whole barrage of flak hit our squadron, which we were leading.

One of the shells burst out to the right and a little below the nose. It couldn't have been over thirty feet away when it burst. If it had been much closer it would have knocked the whole plane over.

A hunk of flak came tearing through the side of the nose. It shattered the glass on the right side and broke through with a loud crash.

I saw Jack falling back toward me and threw up my arm to ward off the, fall. By that time both of us were way back in the rear of the nose--blown back there, I guess, by the flak blast.

I was sort of half standing, half lying against the back wall and Jack was leaning up against me. I didn't know he was injured at the time.

Without any assistance from me he pulled him-self back to his bomb sight. His little seat had been knocked out, from under him by the flak, and he sort of knelt over the bombsight. He knew that as bombardier of the lead ship the results of the whole squadron might depend on his accuracy. And he didn't let anything stop him. Part of my job as navigator is to keep the log of the flights, so I looked at my watch to start timing the fall of the bombs.

I heard Jack call out on the intercom, "Bombs

--" He usually called it out in a sort of singsong. But he never finished the phrase this time. The words just sort of trickled off, and I thought his throat mike had slipped out of place, so I .finished out the phrase, "Bombs away!" for him. We don't start our evasive action to avoid the flak until those words go up to the pilot--and we all love that evasive action.

I looked up and saw Jack reaching over to grab the bomb-bay door handle to close the doors. Just as he pushed the handle he slumped over backwards. I caught him. That was the first indication that anything was wrong. I saw then that his arm was pretty badly shot.

"I guess they got you that time, old boy," I remember saying, but then his head slumped over and I saw that the injuries were more serious than just some flak in the arm. I knew then that he was dead. I closed the bomb bay and returned to my post.

When the damage assessment had been made from the reconnaissance photographs and the results of the Vegesack attack were known, the Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force, parent of the Bomber Command, made one of his few categorical statements to the press. "The men and the machines," he said, "have proven themselves." This operation was "a successful conclusion to long months of experimentation in daytime, high-level precision bombing. After Vegesack comes a new chapter."