D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (39 page)

"Have you gone out of your mind, man?" the twenty-three-year-old Jahnke replied. "If we had always surrendered in Russia in this kind of situation the Russians would have been here long ago."

He called out a command, "All troops fall in for entrenching!" Just as they were getting into the work, here came another wave of Marauders. The men huddled in the sand. Jahnke sent a man on a bicycle to report to battalion HQ, but he was killed by a bomb.

As the bombardment ended and the sky brightened, Jahnke could see the naval armada slowly emerging out of the dark and headed straight toward La Madeleine. The sight shattered any morale the Germans had left. Jahnke's men had believed that La Madeleine, with its mighty cannon, was impregnable; now the fortress was destroyed and they were brought face to face with the reality of the naval forces rising up out of the sea. And all Jahnke had to oppose the invaders were two machine guns and two grenade launchers.
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The American Marauders had done an outstanding job of destroying Rommel's fixed fortifications at Utah before the Germans had an opportunity to fire even one shot.

Another twin-engine bomber, the A-20 Havoc, was also effective in low-level missions, led by the 410th Bomb Group (known, at least to themselves, as "The World's Best Bomb Group," and awarded a Presidential Unit Citation). The 410th blasted Carentan, making it all but impossible for Colonel Heydte to move vehicles out of the city into the battle.

After making the bomb run, the bombers continued across the Cotentin Peninsula, then turned right, flew around the tip of

the peninsula and then north to home base in England. That gave them another never-to-be-forgotten sight. As Lieutenant Delong described it, "Out over the French countryside, scattered everywhere, were parachutes, and pieces of crashed gliders. I don't believe I saw an undamaged one. I had this sick feeling that things were not going well."
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Lt. Charles Middleton saw parachutes "everywhere, and parts of gliders scattered all over. You could see where they had gone through the hedgerows, leaving wings behind, some burnt and some still intact although not many." Then he saw the most improbable sight: "Not far from the battle zone a farmer was plowing his field. He had a white horse and was seemingly unconcerned about all that was happening around him."
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By 0800, many crews were back at base, having a second breakfast. In an hour or two, they were in the air again, bombing St.-L6 and other inland targets. The RAF returned to Caen, trying to concentrate on the railroad station. The Germans in Caen, in retaliation, took eighty French Resistance prisoners out of their cells and shot them in cold blood.

In contrast to the near-total success of the B-26s at Utah, the great bombing raids by B-17s and B-24s of June 6 against Omaha and the British beaches turned out to be a bust. The Allies managed to drop more bombs on Normandy in two hours than they had on Hamburg, the most heavily bombed city of 1943, but because of the weather and the airmen not wanting to hit their own troops most of the blockbusters came down in Norman meadows (or were carried back to England), not on the Atlantic Wall. Yet the B-17 pilots and crews did their best and in some cases made important contributions, certainly far more than the Luftwaffe bomber force.
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At the top of the elite world of the Allied air forces stood the fighter pilots. Young, cocky, skilled, veteran warriors—in a mass war fought by millions, the fighter pilots were the only glamorous individuals left. Up there all alone in a one-on-one with a Luftwaffe fighter, one man's skill and training and machine against another's, they were the knights in shining armor of World War II.

They lived on the edge, completely in the present, but young though they were, they were intelligent enough to realize that what they were experiencing—wartime London, the Blitz, the risks—was unique and historic. It would demean them to call them

star athletes, because they were much more than that, but they had some of the traits of the athlete. The most important was the lust to compete. They wanted to fly on D-Day, to engage in dogfights, to help make history.

The P-47 pilots were especially eager. In 1943 they had been on escort duty for strategic bombing raids, which gave them plenty of opportunity to get into dogfights. By the spring of 1944, however, the P-47 had given up that role to the longer-ranged P-51 (the weapon that won the war, many experts say; the P-51 made possible the deep penetrations of the B-17s and thus drove the Luftwaffe out of France).

The P-47 Thunderbolt was a single-engine fighter with classic lines. It was a joy to fly and a gem in combat. But for the past weeks, the P-47s had been limited to strafing runs inside France. The pilots were getting bored.

Lt. Jack Barensfeld flew a P-47. At 1830 June 5, he and every other fighter pilot in the base got a general briefing. First came an announcement that this was "The Big One." That brought cheers and "electric excitement I'll never forget," Lt. James Taylor said. "We went absolutely crazy. All the emotions that had been pent-up for so long, we really let it all hang out. We knew we were good pilots, we were really ready for it." °

The pilots, talking and laughing, filed out to go to their squadron areas, where they would learn their specific missions.

Barensfeld had a three-quarter-mile walk. He turned to Lt. Bobby Berggren and said, "Well, Bob, this is what we've been waiting for—we haven't seen any enemy aircraft for two weeks and we are going out tomorrow to be on the front row and really get a chance to make a name for ourselves."

Berggren bet him $50 that they would not see any enemy aircraft.
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Lieutenant Taylor learned that his squadron would be on patrol duty, 120 miles south of the invasion site, spotting for submarines and the Luftwaffe. They would fly back and forth on a grid pattern.

"We were really devastated," Taylor remembered. "I looked at Smitty and Auyer and they were both looking at the ground, all of us felt nothing but despair. It was a horrible feeling, and lots of the fellows were groaning and moaning and whatnot." Taylor was so downcast he could not eat breakfast. Instead of a knight in shining armor, he was going to be a scout.
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The first P-47s began taking off at about 0430. They had not

previously taken off at night, but it went well. Once aloft, they became part of the air armada heading for France. Above them were B-17s. Below them were Marauders and Dakotas. The Da-kotas were tugging gliders. Around them were other fighters.

Lt. (later Maj. Gen.) Edward Giller was leader for a flight of three P-47s. "I remember a rather harrowing experience in the climb out because of some low clouds. There was a group of B-26s flying through the clouds as we climbed through, and each formation passed through the other one. That produced one minute of sheer stark terror."

It was bittersweet for the P-47 pilots to pass over the Channel. Lt. Charles Mohrle recalled: "Ships and boats of every nature and size churned the rough Channel surface, seemingly in a mass so solid one could have walked from shore to shore. I specifically remember thinking that Hitler must have been mad to think that Germany could defeat a nation capable of filling the sea and sky with so much ordnance."
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Lt. Giller's assignment was to patrol over the beaches, to make certain no German aircraft tried to strafe the landing craft. "We were so high," he remembered, "that we were disconnected, essentially, from the activity on the ground. You could see ships smoking, you could see activities, but of a dim, remote nature, and no sense of personal involvement." Radar operators in England radioed a report of German fighters; Giller and every other fighter pilot in the area rushed to the sector, only to discover it was a false alarm.
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Lieutenant Mohrle also flew a P-47 on patrol that day. "Flying back and forth over the same stretch of water for four hours, watching for an enemy that never appeared, was tedious and boring."

In the afternoon, Barensfeld flew support for a group of Dakotas tugging gliders to Normandy. The P-47s, flying at 250 miles per hour, had to make long lazy S-turns to keep the C-47s in visual contact; otherwise they would overrun the glider formation. "Battle formation, 2-300 yards apart, then a turn, crossover, then we'd line up again. We were so busy we had no sense of time. Of course, we were looking for enemy aircraft, there weren't any. Mouth dry. Edge of seat. Silence. Very exciting time."

The gliders cut loose. Barensfeld descended to below 1,000 feet to shepherd them into Normandy. But for the gliders the ground was rough and the hedgerows too close together. "It was

very disconcerting to see one cut loose, make the circle and hit a hedgerow. I thought, 'My God, this invasion is going to be a failure if they are depending on these gliders for any sort of part.' "
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The P-38 Lightning was a twin-engine, twin-boom, single-seat fighter designed by the legendary Clarence "Kelly" Johnson of Lockheed (he later designed the U-2 spy plane). The Germans called it
Gabelschwanz Teufel
(Fork-tailed Devil). Because of its distinctive shape, the Lightning was given the role of close-in support. The thought was that antiaircraft crews on the Allied warships would recognize the shape even if they failed to notice the white bands painted on the wings and booms.

But although they were closer to the action, the P-38 pilots found their high expectations quickly deflating. First, there were too many ships at sea with too many overanxious gun crews who had too much ammunition—the P-38s got shot at by their own gunships, and they found no German aircraft to shoot at themselves. "We circled and weaved in the air over our ships," Capt. Peter Moody said. "We were somewhat envious of the fighters who were allowed to break free and fly over the French coast looking for targets of opportunity. At one point I heard a British controller radio to one of his aircraft: 'Roger, Red Rover, you're free to romp and play.' "
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From the point of view of Lt. William Satterwhite, flying a P-38 over Omaha Beach, "German resistance appeared to be devastating. Landing craft were being capsized, some were exploding, and the contents, including men and equipment, were being spilled into the surf in great numbers and quantity."
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The Allies put 3,467 heavy bombers, 1,645 medium bombers, and 5,409 fighters into the air on D-Day. Not one plane was shot down by the Luftwaffe. The flak batteries managed to shoot down 113 aircraft.

Overall, except at Utah, the contributions made by the Allied air forces on D-Day could not be characterized as critical, because they had accomplished the critical mission in April and May 1944. They had isolated the battlefield from much of the French railway system, they had made it difficult to impossible for German trucks and tanks to move by day, they had driven the Luftwaffe out of the skies of France.

What they had not done was develop a workable doctrine for

the use of the heavy bombers in tactical support of ground troops, nor had they developed a working method of communication between the soldiers on the ground with those eager-to-shoot P-38 pilots over their heads. Techniques were developed, later in the war, that worked; in December 1944, in the Battle of the Bulge, the air-ground coordination was outstanding, and critical to the victory. But those techniques were not there on D-Day.

But what the air forces had accomplished before D-Day more than justified their cost. How completely the Allies controlled the skies over the battlefield was illustrated dramatically by the single Luftwaffe bombing mission against the beaches. It came at dusk on D-Day. LSTs were jammed together offshore at Omaha, Higgins boats were on the coastline, with jeeps, trucks, aid stations, tanks, men, and other equipment pressed together on the beach. A lucrative, can't-miss target.

Four twin-engined JU-88s appeared over Omaha Beach. The sky was suddenly ablaze with tracers, as every man on a machine gun or antiaircraft gun in that vast fleet opened up. "The barrage was magnificent, thunderous, and terrifying," said Lt. Donald Porter, a fighter aircraft controller on an LCI waiting its turn to go into shore. "The low trajectory of the streams of tracers, mostly .50-caliber machine guns, had us ducking. The Germans were coming in at a very low altitude so our firing was just clearing our own ships. I was huddled on the small and crowded deck with only my helmet and two blankets for protection."

Porter looked up and saw tracers converging just overhead. At that instant, "the JU-88 burst into flame from wingtip to wingtip. It seemed that the flaming plane would crash right on us and our guns were firing into him even as he burned." Some 100 yards away from the LCI, the German plane slid over and "plunged into the water with a hissing sound. Our guns were still firing into him as he hit the sea about fifty yards to the starboard."
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The staggering amount of hot metal the fleets poured into those JU-88s sent a signal: whatever happened on the ground, the skies above Normandy belonged to the RAF and the U.S. Army Air Force, while the Channel belonged to the Royal Navy, the U.S. Navy, and the Allied warships.

P-47 pilots were not the only ones who felt a disappointment at not being able to participate more directly in D-Day. Ground crews all over England stayed busy, refueling planes and repairing

flak damage, making a direct contribution but still feeling a bit out of it. Staff officers, in London and throughout England, from the different nationalities and services, often despised by the line officers, had done their work in advance and on D-Day could only be spectators. The amount of sheer grind that the staff officers had put in denied some of them even the role of spectator.