Air Fronts: Theaters of Operation - European Theater of Operation: Target Germany - Battles in the Sky

VEGESACK STRENGTHENED the faith of the believers in the American Plan for high-level, precision bombing. Winston Churchill sent a message to the Commanding Generals of the European Theater of Operations and the Eighth Air Force : "All my compliments to you and your officers and men on your brilliant exploit, the effectiveness of which the photographs already reveal." Britain's Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, also sent his congratulations.

Answering these messages of encouragement, American air chiefs promised that : "We will repeat these efforts many times and on an ever-increasing scale."

These promises bore fruit during the last nine days of March. Wilhelmshaven was attacked a third time, with a good concentration of bombs around the shipyards on the Bauhafen. The marshaling yards and locomotive shops at Rouen were hit hard by a force of seventy Fortresses protected by a small armada of Spitfires. The shipyards at Rotterdam were bombed, with only fair results, in cloud conditions which all but blotted out the target. From all these attacks, eight bombers did not return. One of these losses was Southern Comfort, the lady whose first two misadventures were related in the preceding chapter. Southern Comfort's, last flight was an epic of misfortune which deserves retelling.

On her way to Rotterdam, Southern Comfort was attacked over the North Sea by a number of enemy fighters. During the latter stages of the fight the radio operator discovered the ship was on fire. I was shooting my gun. I saw our rudder hit and then I looked down and saw fire between No. 1 and No. 2 engines. At first it was behind the vents, inside the wing, and then it started coming out.

As the enemy attack slackened, the pilot turned out of formation and swung back toward the English coast. Solid overcast swallowed the plane. The fire, apparently feeding on oil and not gasoline, was now "very persistent in character." The rear gunner, who had been with Southern Comfort through all her troubles. recalls : It didn't bother me so much this time, because I knew what it was. We had plenty of time to arrange everything and I just sat there waiting for the signal to leave. Most of the rest of the crew gathered into two groups, one around the navigator's escape hatch in the forward end of the ship and the other about the door at the rear of the, fuselage.

We were in the clouds at about 15,000 feet, reports the pilot, dropping fast and on- instruments. We couldn't see a thing, but the navigator said it was about time we were over the coast. He gave me a heading to fly, but the tail was a little shot up and I couldn't do much. I looked at the wing and could see the metal buckling and the flames getting around, so I decided all God's children ought to have wings.

As the alarm bell rang, the radio operator, who had been sending SOS signals, was waiting for an answer. He screwed his key down and prepared to jump with the rest. They were all out in less than a minute, each man instantly disappearing into the thick bank of clouds. The pilot waited until the last man had jumped--or until he thought the last man had jumped. Then he trimmed the ship so that it was flying level and followed the others overboard through the forward escape hatch. Later it was discovered that the left waist gunner, last man to leave by the door at the rear of the ship, had delayed to change his parachute. When he looked around he found himself in a pilotless and deserted air-plane. He left immediately.

The pilot remembers the long trip earthward : It was like flying in a void. Just gray mist. You couldn't see anything. We weren't sure whether we were still out over the water or not. Somebody said there are no atheists in, foxholes. Well, there aren't any in parachutes, either. I guess it's the same whether you're down looking up, or up looking down.

The bombardier's main thought was to get back home before his roommates started dividing up his clothes. I could see one of them wearing my bathrobe. I finally hit a tree in an orchard. I looked down and there were a lot of firm-looking people waiting for me. They were all right, though, once they found out what side I was on.

Air-Sea Rescue. British launches save ditched crews.

Three of the gunners came down together, one of them with a five-foot rip in his parachute. The waist gunner reports : We had quite a trip down. Ball turret was a man who was always griping about something. Well, there he was, griping again about the holes in his chute. So I yelled to him: "Listen, can you swim? Because if you can, you'd better get ready."

The three gunners came down just off the perimeter track of a British airdrome near the coast. The waist gunner, whose face was frozen and whose flying boots had been ripped off when he jumped, was dragged over some bushes and into a muddy creek. A group of workmen pulled him out. It was just like a New York subway--I didn't know what I was getting into.

The bombardier and the other waist gunner landed in a swamp, the bombardier's chute pulling him along for 200 yards before it collapsed. I don't know why I should have landed with my mouth open, but I did, and it filled up with sewer water.

The navigator and the radio operator came out of the clouds over a broad estuary and dropped into the water. At that moment a new Air-Sea Rescue launch happened to be cruising the inlet on a test run. As the two men hit the water the launch came alongside the gunner and picked him up. A minute later they also had the navigator in the boat. They got a couple of cash customers on their first day out. I didn't exactly cut a path when I hit, but I feel sorry for those poor surfboards and aquaplanes.

The only fatality among the crew was Southern Comfort's top turret gunner, who apparently slipped out of his parachute harness as he neared the ground. The burning plane gracefully circled a small village three times and then crashed in an open field--the last considerate act of a gallant lady.

Before the war the Renault works, in the Billancourt section of the Paris suburbs, was the largest producer of automobiles and trucks in France. After the German conquest the works were turned over to the production of tanks and army lorries for the Nazi forces. Their output was estimated at 1000 trucks, tanks, and armored cars a month. On the night of March 3-4, 1942, the RAF bombed the plant, causing great damage. The Germans, with French labor and French money, rebuilt the works in nine months. With typical Teutonic efficiency, they even managed to increase its production rate to an estimated 1500 trucks and tanks a month. This represented ten per cent of the Nazi production.

At 1350 hours on the 4th of April, eighty-five Fortresses droned over Dieppe, on the Channel coast of France. From their altitude at 25,000 feet they could see the black patch of Paris in the coils of the Seine ninety-five miles to the south. The sky was a cold, cloudless blue. Spitfire fighter squadrons surrounded the formation, some of them visible and others simply vapor trails in the upper sky. It was a pleasant, uneventful flight. Three diversions flown over the North Sea had apparently flushed some of the usual Nazi fighter opposition. The rest must have been caught flat-footed, for the Forts arrived over the edge of Paris at 1412 without having seen an enemy plane. By this time their fighter support had reached its operational limits and with-drawn, and the bombers were unescorted.

Flak was moderate and not too accurate. Everyone enjoyed the view. The untraveled gaped at the Eiffel Tower, Sacre-Coeur, Notre Dame, and the Bois from their perches five miles above the city; the cosmopolites among the crews spotted the Left Bank, the Montmartre, and the Champs-Elysees and reminisced over these scenes of happier days. One excited pilot who had worked in Paris before the war even managed to identify the street on which he had lived for two years.

At 1414 the Forts were over their target--the wedged-shaped concentration of Renault factories which all but fill a loop of the Seine at the city's edge. Before the last Group left the target, several minutes and 251 tons of high explosive later, the entire area was blotted out by a pall of black smoke. On the run north-

Precision bombing. These pictures, smuggled ow of France, show results of Fortress attack on Renault factory.

west to the French coast the German fighters made up for their earlier inattentiveness : continuous attacks were hurled at the Forts all the way to Rouen, where the withdrawal support of friendly fighters was picked up. Four bombers were lost. American gunners claimed forty-seven enemy fighters destroyed. Strike photos and later assessment pictures showed heavy destruction at the works, with scarcely a major building escaping severe damage.

As an example of precision bombing Renault met the standard set at Vegesack, Rennes, and Hamm. But four or a dozen or two dozen successful attacks do not make a bombing program. Nor could a bomber force which had to stretch to put a hundred planes over a target expect to make much of an impact on so large an enemy. By April the men and the bombers promised at Casablanca were beginning to arrive in the United Kingdom--in a trickle at first, at flood tide later. They had to be established, indoctrinated, and taught the rules for fighting the Nazi. While it waited for these new recruits, the VIII Bomber Command went about its work.

An aircraft and aero-engine repair works near Antwerp was the next target. The bombing, once again, was good; the plant was severely damaged. A Wing Leader, veteran of many raids, accompanied this mission as an observer and kept an informal, running record of one sortie :

Stood behind pilot while he took off

Made sign language to pilot to be on the alert for enemy attacks through thin overcast as we made the diversion run.

Pointed out two "smoke trails" coming out of France high to our left.

Looked at Belgium as we crossed the coastline --wondering how those people were doing down there.

Threw kisses at Spitfires as they circled above. . . . Cursed an FW 190 as it came in to our right and released an aerial bomb. . . . Watched the first enemy attack develop ahead of the formation . . . . Pointed out attackers to the pilot.

Watched fire front cannons as Germans increased their attack. . . . Flinched as a 20-mm. shell damaged the oxygen and hydraulic system. . . . Looked at pilot and copilot to see how badly they were wounded.

Began to. feel "queer.". . . Checked oxygen supply—pressure was down to 100. . . . Tried to attach oxygen lead to emergency supply bottle. Could not get it to fasten.

Copilot reached for emergency oxygen bottle. . . . Gave it to him. . . . Asked for a "whiff" and he gave it to me. It seemed to do some good.

Pilot told me that navigator had been hit and wanted some assistance.

Got another "whiff" of oxygen from copilot and started to forward compartment.

Crawled through hydraulic fluid on hands and knees to navigator. . . . Used oxygen-mask connecting hose as tourniquet on navigator's leg. . . . Helped to take navigator's parachute off and stretched him out. . . . Rearranged tourniquet and gave it to bombardier to hold. Had my own thumb caught in it.

Took navigation data out of navigator's pocket and tried to locate our position on the map.

Crawled back to pilot's compartment to give him compass course on the paper.

Lost information on the floor and crawled back for it.

Rearranged tourniquet and continued to nose of aircraft.

Called pilot and informed him that we would be. forced to land at the first RAF station because navigator was seriously wounded. . . . Gave pilot course to fly.

Crawled over to navigator and slapped his face. . . . Looked at his eyes. . . . Requested pilot to "let down" as rapidly as possible as all oxygen for navigator had been used.

Held navigator's arm while bombardier tried to give him a "hypo." . . . Fluid ran out before the needle got in.

Pilot called to report afire had started in the cockpit. . . . Just sat until medium altitude was reached.

Crawled back to pilot's compartment and notified him that I would stand by rear door with fire extinguisher ready.

Sat behind ammunition box for crash landing. Opened door and ran around to front of airplane after it had stopped—no fire.

Placed $400 in the back seat of an automobile and walked away and left it. Forgot what my driver's name was.

Money was handed to me later.

Drank coffee and ate doughnuts.

Began to function normally.

If the success of the March series of attacks had proved the potentialities of precision bombing, it also put the enemy thoroughly on guard. The Nazi Command now realized that every target--no matter how small--within range of the Forts was endangered. Flak and fighters were the obvious defensive answers, so they began building up their defense concentrations around the vulnerable areas. Bremen, with its shipbuilding plants, Diesel-engine factories, and its storage installations, was one of the centers of this defense network.

Bremen had one other attraction as a target. On the outskirts of the city were an airfield and a large factory. The plant was a Focke-Wulf unit—one of the most important of the assembly plants producing FW 190 fighters. At mid-morning on the 17th of April, 115 Fortresses set out from their English bases to bomb this factory. Eight planes returned early, 107 reaching the target.

Shortly after leaving the English coast, on their way out over the North Sea, the formations were sighted by a Nazi reconnaissance plane which alerted the German defenses along the entire North Sea coastal area. With the approaching bombers spotted so far at sea, the Germans were now faced with the problem of guessing just which way the cat would jump. If the attackers' goal could be correctly surmised, they could then draw in fighters from outlying areas and effect a concentration of their defense.

Apparently the Nazis guessed right on this occasion. The bombers met the most vicious and concentrated series of fighter attacks they had as yet encountered. Here is a navigator's story of the action that day :

Up ahead, finally, I made out through the haze and cloud something that had possibilities of being a city. We spotted the target. Just about then somebody on the ship called out that there was a group of B-17's on our left and another on our right. But they were moving just a bit too fast for Fortresses, and somebody from the cockpit called out the disconcerting news that they were enemy fighters flying up ahead in formation, evidently getting in position to attack us head-on.

By this time the bombardier was on the bomb sight and we were settling down on our bomb run. And then the flak began to come up at us. It came up so thick and fast that it looked as though we had run into a thunderhead. . .At the same time we were hit by fighters coming head-on into us. Just before our bombs went away our No. 4 engine was hit, and oil started pouring all over the place. Vibration caused by the windmilling propeller seemed to be about to shake the ship to pieces. When the bombs finally went, none of us felt them give the ship the jar they usually give it, as we were already bouncing around like a stovepipe hat in a March gale.

The sky was literally swarming with fighters. The pilots made old Queenie hurl herself around the sky in evasive action dodging the oncoming pursuits until we must have looked like a small plane doing acrobatics. The pursuits came in so fast that at times the navigator and I had to be content with taking shots at every second or third plane making a pass at us. And the way we were thrown around in that nose from the evasive action made us feel like a pair of dice.

All this time I was trying to navigate us out of that place by the fastest route possible. I'd get a check point and then grab my gun and start spraying lead out like a hose. They had every kind of plane in the Luftwaffe up there trying to knock us down. Bombing was excellent. As the English say, we really pranged the target. Not one of our bombs was off the target area.

The factory was pranged, as later reconnaissance proved. Damage was so extensive that most of the buildings hit were left unrepaired for some months, indicating that production had ceased. Coming as it did, when the German aircraft industry was turning more and more to fighter production, this loss of productive capacity must have been sorely felt.

The price paid for this damaging stroke was a high one. Sixteen Forts were lost--making it

Practice makes perfect. Gunners at combat school.

Fighter Cover. Distant Thunderbolts, leaving vapor trails, guard the flank of a Flying Fortress formation.

the most expensive American attack of the war at that time. Returning crews brought back heartening reports of many parachutes being sighted during the action. Interrogators, comparing notes, calculated that a total of seventy-five chutes were seen during the two hours the fighters were in contact with the Fortresses. Some of these, undoubtedly, were Nazi pilots jumping to safety from the sixty-three fighters the Fort crews claimed as destroyed that day, but the majority were probably American air-men. Though the exact number of crew members who survive battle crashes will not be known until the end of the war, it is thought at present that they will probably total more than fifty per cent of those now listed as missing in action.

If this blow at the Focke-Wulf plant demonstrated, once again, the capabilities of high-level daylight bombing, it also threw into bold relief the dangers peculiar to the American Plan. Here, in a well-designed and ably executed attack, the problem of profit versus loss became a prime consideration. No air force can afford to pay too dearly for any gain. The Germans had discovered that during their daylight attacks in the Battle of Britain. The designers of the American bombing campaign had anticipated the development of the situation which now confronted them and realized that attrition due to the massing of the Nazi defenses would call for tactical changes in their plan of action.

These tactical modifications had been prepared, but men and machines were needed to put them into effect. On half a dozen stations newly arrived Groups were flying practice missions and familiarizing themselves with the navigational problems and the operational technique of the European Theater; at the Combat Crew Replacement Center additional Fortress teams were learning the fine points of bombing and defense from the veterans of the early raids over the Continent.

Early in May three attacks were made on targets in occupied territory. On the first of these, an assault on the sub-base installations at Saint-Nazaire, one of the Forts carried a new crew member on his maiden trip over occupied territory. Little Sergeant Maynard Smith, curled up in his ball turret, wasn't sure whether he liked the whole business or not. When his Fort was hit by flak shortly after making its bomb run, Smith had to hand-crank his turret to get it back into the ship. Once there, he found that the flak burst had injured the rear gunner and a 20-mm. shell had started a fire in the radio compartment. The intense heat soon forced both waist gunners and the radio operator to bail out.

Smith gave the rear gunner first aid, jettisoned the oxygen bottles and ammunition in the radio compartment, fought the fire, and manned the waist guns against an attack by a formation of FW 190's. When the pilot finally brought the plane down on an English airdrome, Sergeant Smith had everything under control. He had earned the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest honor.

On the second May attack, another raid on the Ford and General Motors plants at Antwerp, the new American Thunderbolt fighters accompanied the Forts for the first time. On the third May attack, four new Fortress Groups made their first mission and helped hammer French airfields. The plans, the men, and the machines were now ready—something new was about to be added to the attack upon Germany.