Combat Crew (3 page)

Balancing the bad news of the last six hours was my memory of how grand those Flying Fortresses looked in proud formation heading out toward Hitler-held Europe. The second morning we were at Bovingdon, the orientation base near London where replacement crews reported for induction into the 8th Air Force, we were awakened by the roar of many engines. In a matter of minutes the barracks was empty. The Fortresses were passing overhead on their way to strike the Mad Dictator, and none of us wanted to miss the sight. I have had many thrills in my life, but I believe that picture-perfect formation of American bombers headed for a clash with Goering's best was one of the most emotional experiences I have ever had. I wanted to be up there with them. All that day I worried about what those men were going through over the Continent. In the early afternoon I was in an aircraft recognition class when someone whispered, “The Forts are coming back.” In one minute the classroom was empty. Where were the proud eagles of the dawn? They returned, but not in the style I had seen that morning. A few were in formation, but most were scattered across the sky. There were feathered engines and many trailed smoke. But where were the other planes? I counted only half of the number that went out that morning. I did not know then that ships in trouble, or low on fuel, broke away from the formations as they approached England, looking for a landing field. For the next half hour, I watched wounded Forts straggle in, a few on two engines.

There was an agreeable surprise at Ridgewell. The food was good. The combat mess hall was a hundred yards from our barracks. We were in a country where part of the food had to be imported, and all of ours had to come by boat from the States. So those mess officers did a great job with the materials at their disposal.

On the way back from noon mess I said to George, “We're gonna have to get into Cambridge real soon and buy bicycles. I notice all the men here at the base have bikes.”

“John, when the other men get here, don't say anything about what the vets did to us last night.”

“You mean let 'em get the news on their own?”

“Right! It oughta be interesting to see how they handle it. One thing for sure, they're in for a shock!”

An hour or so later a truck pulled up near the hut and out jumped our four gunners. “Damn! I thought we were gonna get four good gunners and now you jokers show up again,” fumed Balmore. “Come see our Country Club Quarters.”

Now that the gunners were back, our crew was all together. James Counce and Carroll Wilson were our two waist gunners. Jim was twenty-three, single, and came from Corinth, Mississippi. He was an engineering student from the University of Tennessee. Jim served as second engineer and was fully as capable as I was, and a very solid man. Carroll Wilson, twenty, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, was assistant to Balmore in the radio room. Carroll was a likable youngster but had not grown up yet. He had married just before leaving for England. The tail gunner, Buck Rogers, thirty nine, was a rugged individual from a small Ohio town. I am not sure of his marital status. He had many rough experiences, but he was a loner and had little to say about some phases of his life. Nickalas Abramo, nineteen, from Massachusetts, operated the ball turret guns. He was an impetuous young man of Italian ancestry.

We were sitting around talking about going to Cambridge to buy bicycles, and the possibility of buying a radio for the hut. Suddenly the door opened and five or six vets entered. “What do you know? We got us some new gunners,” one of them said. “Where you guys from?”

I knew what was coming and glanced at George. We sat back in morbid fascination to watch how our four friends responded to “the treatment.” A few months later, initiating new arrivals was one of my favorite amusements.

If there was a crew favorite, I suppose it was Jim Counce. Carqueville had a special trick we played on Jim. I would go back to the radio room and make sure he was looking out of the waist window. Herb would put an engine into an extra-inch carburetor position to create some smoke on Jim's side of the aircraft. As soon as Counce saw it he started toward the cockpit, and Herb quickly switched back to automatic lean. By the time Counce reached the cockpit the smoke would be gone.

“Smoke? I didn't see any. John, did you see any smoke?”

“No. You're seein' things, Jim. Are you sure you're OK?”

“I did see smoke from number-three engine,” he would protest vigorously. Herb would look at me and shake his head as if to say, “I'm afraid Counce is cracking up.”

From the first night at Ridgewell, it became slowly apparent that Carqueville did not have the experience at high-altitude formation flying to be a first pilot in the big leagues of combat over Europe. It was difficult to understand how the training command in the States could have neglected the one indispensable requirement for a B-17 combat pilot. For the time I knew Herb in training, he was given no high-altitude formation practice. Only two hours of low-altitude formation flying! A copilot should have had fifteen or twenty hours of holding a B-17 in formation over twenty thousand feet.

Late in the afternoon Carqueville opened the door to our hut and stepped inside. I knew instantly he was upset. “I've been cut back to copilot. I'm takin' Reese's place.” (Reese had come down with an infection and was grounded for the time being.)

“What!” Even though I was expecting it to happen, the news came as a shock. “It's not fair.”

“Wrong! They had to do it. A pilot has to have a lot of formation time, and I don't have it. Believe me, I don't like it one damn bit, but that's how it's got to be.”

Jim spoke up. “We hate like hell to lose you. Now we'll start all over with some pilot we never saw before. We could have made it with you I'm sure.”

“Thanks, Jim, but Hendricks couldn't permit that risk. He made the right decision. Reese is goin' to be the Assistant Operations Officer.”

Regardless of what he said I knew Carqueville was hurt. Who would be the new pilot? There was much conjecture and concern about what kind of man would take over the crew. The next afternoon Carqueville introduced us to the man who would hold our destiny in his hands. The officers had already met him. “Men, this is Lieutenant Paul Gleichauf, our pilot. He's got the formation experience we must have if we are going to make it in this league.”

“Lieutenant, I'm John Comer, Engineer.”

“Glad to know you, John.”

The rest of the men introduced themselves and shook hands. It was an awkward moment, with Herb standing there watching his men accept a new leader.

“I'm glad to be your pilot,” said Gleichauf. “Looks like we've got good men, so I think we'll do OK.”

There was more small talk but it was mainly verbal sparring while we sized him up, and the pilot got a good look at what he had to work with. Since Herb was to be copilot, it was much like a new football coach keeping the ex-coach as his assistant. Lieutenant Gleichauf was younger than I expected, but he did fit the image of an Air Force pilot more than Herb.

On the way back to our hut there was silence for a while, then George turned to Counce. “Well, what do you think of our new pilot?”

“Looks OK. He doesn't talk much but we need the experience he has.”

“John, what do you think?”

“About the same as Jim — only thing, I wish he were a little older.” (Actually, he was twenty-four, and two years older than I thought at the time.)

Buck said, “That ain't important — we gotta have somebody who can fly tight formation. That's what all the vets say — to hell with the rest of it!”

Paul Gleichauf was originally from Lakewood, Ohio — a suburb of Cleveland. He was a handsome young officer — dashing, slim, and very attractive to women. He came overseas as a first pilot several weeks ahead of us. Just before flying a new Fortress across the Atlantic, a heavy fire extinguisher fell on his foot. He arrived in England with a bad case of hemorrhoids, wearing a moccasin on one foot, and certainly in no condition to handle a B-17 on formation flights. By the time we badly needed a pilot he had recovered enough to resume flying status.

Lieutenant Gleichauf would have been dumbfounded had he fully realized the low level of combat “know-how” of his new crew. He was aware that Carqueville was short on formation flying, but he had no idea how little gunnery practice the crew had logged before coming to England. He would have been further dismayed had he known that our total experience with oxygen equipment added up to only thirteen hours.

Who was to blame for this woeful lack of training? How could the 2nd Air Force Training Command have been so ignorant of our needs? I suspect that the Command was overloaded with ex-educators who let their passion for classrooms supersede the substance of what was actually needed where we were headed. In a new situation people usually fall back on what they know best. What happened to the communications between the 8th Air Force and the stateside training command? Much time was wasted on classroom trivia and not enough on the essentials necessary for a crew to survive in combat with the enemy.

The 8th Air Force was made up of two units: Bomber Command and Fighter Command. Bomber Command was composed of three divisions,
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each of which had two wings. Three groups made up a wing. The bomber group was the basic fighting unit of the Command. A combat group had four squadrons who handled the personnel. At that date a group was expected to put up a minimum of eighteen Fortresses on a mission. Sometimes it would be a few more. In most cases a group occupied one air base, and had about two thousand men in combat and support personnel. We found out in the first week that we were in the 8th Air Force, First Division, First Wing, 381st Group, and the 533rd Squadron. The First Wing was made up of the 381st, the 351st, and the 91st groups.

It took me a while to get used to Gleichauf's cockpit procedure. He was as different from Herb as day is from night! He had none of the easygoing, relaxed characteristics of most four-engine pilots. He was all business from the moment engines started, and prone to issue short, concise orders, which at first sounded irritable on the intercom. But I knew we were lucky to get Gleichauf's kind of experience and ability.

Herb Carqueville was from Chicago, where his family operated a lithographing business. Prior to the war he was quite active in the business, and expected to return to it when the war was over. A good relationship developed between Carqueville and me, partly because both of us had been in the business world for a number of years. Herb's background gave him a different perspective from young men fresh out of college. At twenty-seven, he acted more like a mature man of forty.

Our Navigator, Lieutenant Carl R. Shutting, was from Chattanooga, Tennessee. I had a mental picture of a navigator: he would be a neat, orderly, well-organized person with cold, mathematical efficiency, and precise methodical habits. Carl Shutting was at the opposite end of the spectrum from such an image. He had been married before entering the service, but had recently been the recipient of a “Dear John” letter. Carl was twenty-four, and prior to the war had worked in the post office in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Johnny Purus, the Bombardier, was from the Boston area. He was in his early twenties, and as dependable as a person could be. He was a bit shy, soft-spoken, and not easy to evaluate immediately. For a short period he had worked as an aircraft mechanic, but not on B-17s. It was good to have another man with mechanical aptitude on the crew. There might come a time in the future when his help would be crucial.

When the war broke out I was thirty-one, married for not quite two years, and living in Corpus Christi, Texas. My education had been at Trinity University and the University of Texas. I was a competent outside salesman for machine tools, equipment, and auto parts. I had a solid background in the field of mechanics and supply, and also some electrical experience (fortunate because a B-17 was operated and controlled mainly by electric circuits). My position was flight engineer and I fired the top turret guns. The turret was mounted in the cockpit directly behind the pilot and copilot.

It did not occur to us that we were already on combat status. No one had told the gunners a single thing about the 381st procedure for gunners. In fact we had not seen a gun since we reached Ridgewell. We were still waiting for the briefing that the Operations Officer promised shortly after we arrived. I understood that we would get at least one gunnery practice flight that would outline the 381st gun armament procedures. We should have asked questions. Where did the crews keep the guns? Where did we get parts or supplies needed on a mission in a hurry? What about the briefing procedures on mission mornings. Did we report to the Briefing Room or go to the aircraft? But military life discourages initiative, so we waited and waited for the instructions, so vital, that never came.

At 0230 (two-thirty A.M.) the lights snapped on and six startled men roused enough to hear the Operations Officer:

“Now listen to this, Comer, Counce, Balmore, Abramo, Wilson, and Rogers. You're flyin' 765 with Gleichauf. Briefing at 0400 hours. Chow's ready now. Come on! Out of that sack!”

“This is a combat raid!” said Counce. “Why didn't they tell us we were on combat status. No one has told us one thing! Do we go to the briefing with the officers?”

“Don't know,” I answered. “We gotta catch Gleichauf before he gets to the Briefing Room and get orders.”

There were fresh eggs for breakfast but I was too nervous to be hungry. I watched the men come and go in anxious fascination. Our crew seemed to be the only newcomers there. I had a tight feeling in my chest and was beginning to feel nauseated. I envied the confident air of the vets who appeared totally unperturbed. I wondered if I would survive long enough to develop such a carefree attitude. Probably not! I was under no illusions as to what generally happened to new crews. Not many made it back!