Combat Crew (44 page)
Authors: John Comer
When we lived at Nashville, Tennessee, a few years after the war, the Carl Shutting family also lived there. We became very close friends with Carl's wife, Mary Katharine Shutting. Carl Shutting, the onetime clown and other things, was now a practicing therapist â a walking example of all the virtues (as so often happens to one who was not that great when younger).
William Cahow stayed in the Air Force and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel and presently lives at Fresno, California. I see him at all the 381st reunions and of course we refly the October 14 raid to Schweinfurt.
Woodrow Pitts retired as a Master Sergeant in the Air Force with a long record as flight engineer. He lives at Pasadena, Texas, and we get together once in a while and relive those days in England.
I located Hubert Green one month too late. He had just passed away. Hubie retired as a police captain at Middletown, New York. His lovely wife and two sons and their wives attended the reunion at Asheville, North Carolina, last year.
It was the same thing with Bill Kettner. I located him too late. But Mrs. Kettner came to the Asheville meeting last year from her home in Florida.
Ugo Lancia lives in New Jersey and ran a successful oil business until recently. His health has not been good lately, but plans to attend the Boston reunion. We have exchanged letters and talked by phone. He told me that Tedesco passed away a few years back.
John Comer flew twenty-five combat missions over occupied Europe and Germany in 1943, including the infamous raid on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing plant that is still referred to in the Air Force as Black Thursday. After completing his tour with the 8th Air Force, Comer returned to the States and was assigned to train new pilots. Believing this duty to be the most hazardous of all, he volunteered to return to combat and flew fifty more missions in Italy for a total of 75. He retired in 1974 after a successful career in sales and lived in Dallas, Texas. He published his World War II memoirs in 1986 and found a worldwide audience. He died at the age of 95 in 2005.
Cover artist: Geraldine Aucoin Abramo, an accomplished portrait artist, created this scene of a flak attack over the target from John Comer's account of Mission #8 in which her husband, Nicholas Abramo, was wounded and won the Purple Heart. Abramo's injuries and subsequent imprisonment as a P.O.W. contributed to his death in 1968 at the age of 45.
1
A flight engineer operated a Sperry Computing Sight in the top turret of a B-17. This sight automatically computed the proper lead and all other factors needed to strike the target. All the operator had to do was to spot the correct enemy fighter and feed the wing length into the sight. From that point the sight took over as long as the electric reticles were framed on the ends of the wing of the fighter, and as long as the sight was tracked smoothly. Thus, depth perception was not such a vital requirement.
2
Focke-Wulf 190 (F.W. 190)
3
Messerschmitt 109 (M.E. 109)
4
Later the number of divisions and wings was increased.
5
As explained in
Decision Over Schweinfurt
, by Thomas Coffey â David McKay Co., Inc. â New York. The conference was in January and General Eaker was anxious to make good on his promise to the P.M. But he had an unexpected blow: Some of his Groups were transferred to the North African invasion. So he had to wait several months for more aircraft. Meanwhile the 270 single-engine fighters available to meet the Fortresses over Europe in early April increased to over 600 by the end of July.
6
The only account I have seen about this incident was in,
Decision Over Schweinfurt
by Thomas Coffey.
7
I was actually beyond walking down the catwalk. I lurched toward the cabin door like a drunk on a diving board. It was a very close thing! Carqueville insisted then and later that no one helped me. But I have seen too many men in that same state of anoxia, and none of them could have made such a connection after they became unconscious. Either the copilot or the navigator had to help me, but neither would admit it.
8
The number of planes lost in the waters of the Channel varies with different reports. Edward Jablonski in
Flying Fortresses
(Doubleday & Company) states that 118 men were plucked from those frigid waters by the efficient Air-Sea Rescue teams.
9
A fix was a matter of triangulation â a known distance between two radio stations and two angles created by the angles of the radio beams reaching the two stations.
10
The official roster of missions shows Lille-Nord on this date. My diary shows an airfield in Belgium. Perhaps different formations hit both targets that date.
11
I had ruined my only blouse on a recent bicycle accident on the way back from the pubs one very dark night.
12
No trace of Carqueville or Hendricks was ever found. In 1982, while attending a memorial service at the beautiful American Cemetery near Cambridge, I found their names carved on the long white stone wall dedicated to all of the service people who were missing in action in that part of the war. I looked at those two names a long time, and memories, long buried by the passage of years, came flooding back.
13
Dead reckoning means navigating strictly by instruments, speed, time, etc., without any chance to correct the course for changes in wind direction or velocity.
14
The name of a book written about this mission by Martin Caidin.
15
Until I read
Decision Over Schweinfurt
, by Thomas Coffey.
16
Inside the Third Reich
, by Albert Speer.
17
Long after the war I visited Schweinfurt. It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The burghers were on their way to church. The city was so quiet and tranquil that it was hard to imagine the carnage that once rained down on it. The streets and buildings looked as if nothing had disturbed them in the last hundred years. The bearings factories were still there, now turning out assemblies for Mercedes-Benz and BMW vehicles, instead of Hitler's fierce war machines. I rode slowly through the city and let my mind drift back in time to August 17 and October 14, 1943. The faces of fine men lost those two days flashed through my mind; some I could recall distinctly and others would not quite come into focus, like a television picture out of adjustment. So many men lost and so many families bereaved! Did those two gigantic efforts of men and machines really shorten the war and save far more lives than they cost? There was no answer.
18
Fingernail-sized compass included in bailout kits.
19
The lead aircraft in each group, and the deputy lead also, was equipped with the special Pathfinder radar to aid the Navigator. Waves bouncing back from the ground were converted into a scan of the surface below that could be interpreted by a trained operator. He could in effect see the ground through clouds or darkness. Later the Americans dubbed the process “Mickey.”
20
The demand-type oxygen regulator opened and closed by means of inhaling and exhaling. Up to that time it had been considered impervious to freezing, but the temperature that day was extremely low, perhaps a little beyond the capacity of the regulator to handle. It was the lowest I encountered in seventy-five missions over Europe.
21
The official roster of missions shows Cocove, France. My diary shows we went to Calais Dec. 24, 1943.
22
If Sigmund Freud were alive I think he would agree that combat fatigue is caused by the traumatic memories buried in the subconscious.
23
At a 381st reunion in San Antonio I met Gordon Crozier, pilot of the aircraft that George was in. Gordon told me that all of the crew was able to bail out except Balmore. He personally examined Balmore and confirmed that he was dead. All other crew members survived as prisoners of war.
