Combat Crew (6 page)

The briefing on the target earlier that morning kept turning through my mind: “We're hitting an aircraft plant at the edge of Le Bourget airfield — near Paris. The fighter opposition will be plenty rough! This is your first real taste of combat so — !” The Abbeville Boys meant Goering's personal squadrons, the roughest Germany had to offer.

When I saw the French coast pass by underneath, I became more tense and keyed up. We had been warned repeatedly that German fighters liked to lurk in the area where we would have to look directly at the sun to see them. They would attempt to slip in on us undetected by most of the formation gunners. It was my responsibility not to let it happen. From my turret I had the only unobstructed view of the sky above in all directions. George Balmore, in the radio room, could see part of the area above and to the rear.

“Bombardier to crew! Bombardier to crew! Fighters twelve o'clock low! Can't make out what they are, but don't look like 47s!”

I stood up in the turret, looked down, and counted twenty or more that could be seen from my position. They were German fighters, all right! The enemy pilots knew that the P-47s were at the end of their short fuel range, and were patiently waiting for them to turn back. In a few minutes the escort dipped their wings as if to say, “Good luck! See you in England tonight,” and they were gone. I felt a knot in my stomach as the big Thunderbolts vanished to the north.

Immediately the enemy pulled up to our level and began circling to pick out positions for attack. Of course I was excited! It was my first time to see hostile aircraft in the sky!

“Copilot to crew! Throw the lead at those fighters if they come in!”

“Copilot to Turret.”

“Go ahead.”

“Keep your eye on those three fighters three o'clock high — I'll watch high and forward.”

“Copilot to Tail. See anything trying to sneak in back there?”

“No, clear below and behind.”

Suddenly Carqueville screamed over the intercom: “Fighter coming in twelve o'clock level — get him! Get him! Get him!”

I was tracking four suspicious fighters at nine o'clock and wheeled around just in time to get my sights on the fighter attacking us. It was headed straight for our nose spitting deadly twenty-millimeter cannon shells and thirty-caliber machine-gun bullets. I was so fascinated by the sight that I froze! Did not fire a shot! Neither did the Bombardier nor the Navigator — the only other guns that could bear on a frontal attack! Light flashes from the leading edge of the fighter signaled how many cannon shells were being fired at us. I could hear some projectiles striking the airplane. It was a spectacle that drove deep into my memory. The fighter turned his belly to us and slipped into a beautiful barrel roll under our right wind and dived out of range.

Carqueville was boiling mad! He exploded over the intercom: “What th' hell's the matter with you sonnuvabitches? You're supposed to be gunners! Why didn't you shoot? That fighter could've knocked us down! You let one more come in like that and I'll personally work you over — all three of you!”

He was furious and he should have been, because there was no excuse for failure to fire. I have relived those traumatic moments many times, and I can still feel the mesmerizing power that prevented my hand from pressing that firing switch. Why didn't we fire? I will never know for sure. We were seized by the paralysis so typical of what happens to a deer hunter the first time he gets a buck in his gun sights (or the commandment “Thou shall not kill!”).

The intercom came to life again. “Bombardier to Navigator and Turret: We blew that one! I don't know why but we did. But, believe me, it's not gonna happen again!” And it never did.

We were lucky to sustain that first attack with little damage, because the enemy had minimal opposition to divert his aim or tactics. There were three simultaneous attacks which cut down the fire that each fighter drew. The Germans were smart in choosing which way to come in, relying mainly on head-on confrontation. When several fighters attacked at one time the concentrated fire of the formation guns was divided, reducing the opposition to each fighter and disrupting the defensive tactics of the formation.

“Ball to crew — B-17 going down on fire four o'clock low!”

I looked down and it was sickening. Long streams of flame extended beyond the tail. I kept screaming to myself, “Why don't they jump? Jump! Jump, dammit! For God's sake, get out before it's too late!” But it was already too late. It was my first time to see men die in combat and it was a shattering experience. My stomach turned over at the thought of those ten men hurtling down to certain death. I wondered what flashed through their minds on that terrifying plunge to earth in their burning, spinning airplane.

Suddenly the Bombardier called out: “Flak nine o'clock low! “

“Ball to crew — flak at eleven o'clock low.”

Huge puffs of black smoke began to burst around the formation. So that was flak! It was thicker than I expected, and a lot closer.

“Bombardier to Pilot — over.”

“Go ahead.”

“We're on the bomb run.”

That meant the planes had to fly a straight and steady course for several minutes to provide a stable platform for the Bombardier and the Norden Bomb Sight.

Bam!

The ship rocked and I saw a nearby burst of orange flame followed by boiling, black smoke. I had been told that the crew would not hear the shells burst. Well, I heard that one! Mostly I saw only black smoke explode into large globs and heard pieces of shrapnel striking the aircraft whenever a shell burst too close. Flying through the floating smoke made the field of fire seem worse than it was.

One battery of guns below began to move in closer and closer. They seemed to choose us as their special target and were firing five eighty-eight–millimeter shells at a time. As the bursts crept ever closer I could feel the hair on my head trying to push up against my helmet. All the German gunners needed to do was make one final correction, and they would have had us bracketed dead center.

“Radio to Copilot — can't we take some evasive action?”

“Hell no! We're on the bomb run.”

I prayed a little, but who knows whether it helped or not. At the time, a man with a religious background felt that it could help, and in that sense perhaps it was useful. Later, when I looked back on such moments more rationally, I wondered why I believed that through the mysterious phenomena we call prayer the Supreme Being could be induced to alter the Laws of the Universe — His Own Laws — just for me. Was I some special favorite? Was anyone praying for the protection of the innocent people who lived and worked too close to where our exploding bombs were landing? How strange and paradoxical for men to pray selfishly for their own lives, while doing everything in their power to kill other men, who in turn perhaps were praying to the same God.

I was suddenly jolted back to the urgency of the moment as I heard, “Bombs away!” The unexpected upward lurch of the aircraft, as the bomb weight fell away, startled me momentarily. As we turned left away from the target, I got a glimpse of several columns of smoke rising from the bombed area.

“Pilot to Tail.”

“Go ahead.”

“Did we hit the target?”

“Where we hit looks like factory buildings — don't know if that was our target.”

I dropped down out of the turret just long enough to have a quick look at the fuel gauges, and got a shock when I saw that we only had a third left. After hasty calculations of probable consumption going back, with the aid of letting down from high altitude, I felt that we could make it back to Ridgewell.

“Copilot to crew — Copilot to crew. Stay alert! They may hit us goin' back. Turret!”

“Go ahead.”

“Put on your sunglasses and watch that area around the sun. We don't want them slippin' in on us.”

Ten minutes later: “Fighters ten o'clock low!”

“What are they doin', Ball?”

“Only two of 'em — not tryin' to come in.”

“Bombardier to Navigator.”

“Go ahead.”

“When are the Spitfires due?”

“In about ten minutes.”

Some time later. “Ball to crew — ten fighters six o'clock low — could be Spits.”

“Navigator to crew: I think they're Spitfires, stayin' low to keep the Jerries from gettin' to us.”

The Navigator was right because no more Bogies climbed up to our level. Before long I could see the gleam of sun on water up ahead and I began to relax because we had our mission almost made. As soon as we were over the Channel, the likelihood of another attack faded out.

At Ridgewell Airdrome, nine happy men climbed out of aircraft number 765. Jerry was better than we expected, and flak was much worse: Regardless of our initial failure, we had met the enemy and returned safely … something many new crews failed to do.

The tenth man out of the plane was the Copilot, but he definitely was not happy. He was still fuming about our miserable performance on that first fighter attack. Carqueville glared at me, and stalked off without a word, but I got his message: “I expected more from you! Of all the people on this crew, I didn't expect you would screw up on your first combat action!”

After a plane returned the crew was not through. A truck carried the men to Operations for interrogation. Hot coffee, hot chocolate, and Spam sandwiches were waiting, one of the few times Spam ever tasted good! All of the crews gathered in the waiting room and milled about, swapping stories and checking up on other crews' versions of incidents. The Colonel was there, looking the men over:

“Nice going, Jim.”

“Good formation, Lieutenant.”

“Nice shooting, Sergeant.”

If he spotted a man who looked shaky, he often patted him on the back with some remark to boost him up. Colonel Joseph Nazzaro was a fine Commanding Officer. He had the respect of the men in his command. The Colonel was from a military family, but no typical brass hat. He was the quarterback on the 1933 West Point football team that lost only one game — 13 to 12 to Notre Dame. (He later became a four-star general and succeeded General Curtis LeMay as head of the Strategic Air Command.) The Colonel was my idea of what a combat commander should have been. I never heard one bitch about him from anyone in his command that made any sense.

In our Group Interrogation Room the atmosphere was loose and free from any kind of restraint. Here the complete picture of the raid was placed on paper. No one crew could see everything accurately, so the final group picture of the mission was composed from the data supplied by various crews. Often there were new items to report which set in motion the network of Air Force Intelligence (S-2) which was constantly striving to stay ahead of the enemy. A new defensive weapon or method was pounced upon as soon as it showed up, in an effort to find the best counter-method before the Germans had time to exploit a temporary success.

If a gunner thought he had shot down a fighter he had made his claim at the interrogation, where the briefing officer could get confirmation from other gunners who might have seen the incident. Wilson was positive he had badly damaged a fighter.

“What kind of fighter was it, Sergeant?” asked the interrogation officer.

“F.W. 190, an' I got in three heavy bursts. I could see 'em hittin' it an' pieces flyin' off.”

“Well, Sergeant, the enemy fighters who intercepted us today were all M.E. 109s with liquid-cooled engines. The F.W. 190 has an air-cooled engine, but the only fighters today with air-cooled engines were our P-47s — did you hit one of them?”

“Oh, no! I'm sure it wasn't a P-47 … I — uh — maybe there wasn't as much damage as I thought. I — uh — withdraw the claim.”

Balmore said, “Go ahead with your claim, Wilson. Maybe you can get credit for downing a P-47.”

It was after interrogation that fatigue really hit me. But the day's work still was not over. Wearily, we went back to the aircraft because the guns had to be cleaned and checked for worn parts, and stowed in oil-soaked cloths. They must be ready for another raid the next morning in case one was scheduled. It was twilight when I got back to our hut. Total exhaustion, such as I had never experienced before, so numbed me that I did not bother to go by the mess hall or take the time to wash. The long hours since the call at two-thirty A.M., the debilitating rigors of high altitude, the intense cold, and the wearying fatigue from fear and tension combined to hit me hard. I literally fell into bed, with part of my clothes on, and in two minutes was oblivious to everything, including the noise and hubbub of men coming and going.

After that first combat experience, I realized a peculiar phenomenon of the mind: It is more traumatic to listen to a factual telling of a hair-raising experience than actually to go through the same thing yourself. The difference is that when listening to such a story, one has no escape mechanism. However, when living through a harrowing experience, the mind is too occupied with defense and physical actions to provide full accommodation for fright.

Originally I had some reservations about Nick Abramo, because the ball was so important to the crew. Hanging down there all alone, cut off from the rest of the aircraft, was an unenviable position. By the time we got back from Le Bourget I was satisfied that we had a reliable man guarding the approaches to our plane from below. I guarantee that no other man in the crew would have voluntarily entered that risky, cramped, overexposed contraption. The ball required the knees to be brought upward on each side of the Sperry Computing Sight. Over a long flight the gunner became uncomfortable due to the inability to stretch out his legs to relieve cramped muscles. He was more exposed to the fury of bursting flak shells than anyone else on the aircraft. Almost three-quarters of the ball hung suspended in space, creating a horror of exposure from which there was no protection.