Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 (27 page)

 

 

His deputy, Major Brooks, leading the second element, saw Wood turn and
his heart sank. "They're going down the wrong valley," he said to his
navigator. "We're short of the I.P. Colonel Wood has made a mistake."
The meticulous Scorpions had fallen into the same error as the Liberandos
and were turning short of their I.P.

 

 

Brooks had to decide instantly whether to obey standing orders and follow
his leader on the wrong course or to continue straight on to the proper
turning. He decided to stick with Wood. A few miles from the big plant,
which was a cement factory in Targoviste, Wood recognized and rectified
his error by an immense and perfectly executed maneuver. He doubled his
twelve Liberators back in their tracks and S'ed over the next ridge,
Brooks leaping behind him with his seventeen ships. Brooks said, "I learned
a lesson in discipline. If I had left the formation, after he jumped
the ridge my force would have collided head-on with his."

 

 

The tricky, miniature weather changed like a magic-lantern slide. The skies
became transparent and the tail gunners saw the monastery gleaming in
the sun. Down the next ravine lay the stacks of Red Target. The Scorpions
tucked in tight and low, each ship in its slot in the three-wave surprise
for Steaua Romana.

 

 

Hurtling down the valley, propellers threw up chopped leaves like lawn
mowers. The fliers saw picnic parties; three richly caparisoned horsemen
sitting like statues as the prop-wakes tossed their horses' manes;
a small boy bolting in terror, then stopping and hurling a stone at them.

 

 

The flak batteries opened up. Machine-gun volleys poured into the first
wave. Captain Caldwell steered Wood's ship toward the boiler house at
the bottom of the diamond. He put the nose down and his co-pilot fired
the fixed forward guns at flak positions. The top turret joined in. Its
vibrations jarred bits of things down on Caldwell's head. Leveling
for the bomb run, he wiped dust from his eyes. "Push up over the
chimneys!" Colonel Wood commanded. "Go down to altitude!" pleaded the
bombardier, John Fino. Caldwell went in thirty feet from the ground,
helplessly looking at two guns firing into him from the top of a
boiler house. He was thinking of nothing but delivering the bombs.
His gunners shot the flak men off the boiler house, and Fino crashed a
thousand-pounder into it. The bomb, fused for an hour, did not need to
explode. The boiler burst and the plant blew out, flinging up a fountain
of debris.

 

 

Caldwell saw flames shooting out of the tallest chimney in the refinery.
Fino put his remaining bombs in the secondary aiming point and began
firing his nose gun, feeding it belts loaded successively with two
armor-piercing, two incendiary, and two tracer bullets. "I saw a tracer
carve a little hole in a storage tank," said the pilot. "It was a funny
thing. A squirt of oil came out. It became solid flame, hosing out in a
neat stream and spreading a big pool on the ground like molten iron. The
tank got white hot and buckled. Then I lost sight of it."

 

 

Captain Emery M. Ward's Liberator, carrying B Force Leader, Major Brooks,
whizzed across the burning target bearing the most secure and contented
man on the mission -- the tail gunner. He had been terribly airsick during
the low-level rehearsals and
mal d'air
had returned as they reached low
at the Danube. A sympathetic comrade, tunnel gunner Brendon D. Healy, said,
"I'll take care of your guns till we get near the target." The sick man
staggered forward and lay retching in the bomb bay. Healy became preoccupied
with flak gunners and forgot to change places with him until they were
well past bombing the powerhouse and boiler plant. He found the tail
man snonng soundly in the bomb bay. Healy said, "I guess he's the only
guy who got the D.F.C. for sleeping over Ploesti."

 

 

Lieutenant Stanislaus Podolak flew Sweet Adeline, named for his sweetheart
in the Army Nurse Corps. He carried two gunners from Columbus, Ohio: Paul
F. Jacot and Herman Townsend. A former aircraft welder, Richard Crippen,
knelt in the rear escape hatch and photographed the target as they bombed
the rear of a distillation unit. In the bail turret was Robert McGreer,
one of the three privates who flew to Ploesti. Podolak was low on fuel.
He asked navigator Gilbert Siegal to give him the heading for Cyprus.

 

 

Crews coming off the target saw Robert W. Horton's Liberator crash-land
with wings aflame, and later reported, "there seemed no possibility that
anyone survived." Yet, top turret gunner Zerrill Steen was alive. His
turret remained in place on the impact and Steen stayed in it, firing his
machine guns at flak towers after the crash. He used up all his ammunition
while flames converged on the turret. Steen broke out of the plexiglass
dome between his guns and jumped through the fire. He ran, stripping
off his flaming clothes. Romanians found him lying in a stack of hay
and took him to a hospital. He was the only survivor of Horton's craft.

 

 

An American of Greek extraction, John T. Blackis, took Scheherazade
toward a boiler house. His bombardier, Milton Nelson, phoned, "The
bomb bay doors are jammed. The Tokyo tanks are stuck against them and
they won't roll up." Blackis told engineer Joseph Landry, "Clear the
bomb doors." Landry got down from his turret just as the flak opened
up. Radioman David L. Rosenthal impulsively climbed into the turret,
although he had no experience with machine guns, and started hammering
the flak towers. Navigator Arthur H. Johnson reported to the pilot,
"We can't get the doors open." Blackis said, "Okay, drop them right
through the damn doors." Landry manually disengaged the bombs from the
slings and they plunked through the bottom. Johnson said, "Coming off
target we picked up comstalks on the hanging parts of the doors." Landry
found himself an unemployed top turret gunner. The radio operator was
firmly in charge, by now dueling with fighters. Rosenthal was credited
with destroying a Messerschmitt in his first gunnery lesson. Scheherazade
flew the whole way home alone.

 

 

As Captain James rode away from a flaming cracking plant, radioman
Zimmerman saw only one other B-24 going with them. "His bomb doors hung
open and Number Three was stopped. It was Captain Bob Mooney. We flew
right wing on him for many miles at low level. We gained a little altitude
and Mooney's ship sent me an Aldis lamp signal: 'Pilot dead. Wounded
aboard. Trying for Turkey.' I blinked him, 'We're short on gas. Will
join you for Turkey.'"

 

 

In the other ship the pilot's head had been shot off by a 20-mm. shell.
A long, gawky co-pilot, Henry Gerrits, was flying it while helping
the bombardier, Rockly Triantafellu, pull the body from the left-hand
seat. Gerrits was flying on three engines, and with five sergeants
prostrated by wounds. Gas streamed from a hole in a Tokyo tank.
Triantafellu covered the pilot's body and stuffed his leather flying
jacket into the rift in the tank.

 

 

Crossing Red Target were a pair of fledgling second lieutenants,
Pilot William M. Selvidge and co-pilot Bedford Bruce Bilby, on their
fifth sortie. Selvidge remembers the mission as a "rather long day,
most of which I spent looking at the flight leader on whom I was flying
formation." Bilby did most of the close flying, since the element leader
was on his side. "I think I was less concerned with getting shot," said
Bilby, "than I was with keeping closed up. I was bucking to get my own
crew, and I was scared to death I would be chewed out if I didn't keep
it tucked in. I never did see our target, the left rear of a distillery,
or where our bombs hit. My eyes were glued to the element leader during
the bomb run." Scrupulous formation-keeping had its reward; they were
not hit, and Bilby got his own crew five missions later.

 

 

Lieutenant Kenneth Fowble led the second wave into Red Target. Sitting
beside him was the command pilot, Major Ardery, who had bumped Fowble's
regular co-pilot, Robert Bird, out of his seat. However, Bird had insisted
on going with Fowble to Ploesti and was riding in the rear, coiled in
the ball turret.

 

 

The two planes bracketing Fowble were captained by devoted friends,
Robert L. Wright and Lloyd D. ("Pete") Hughes, the last pilots to join
the Scorpions before leaving the States. Before missions they would
flip a coin to see which whould fly the favored left-wing position on
Fowble. The winner that morning was Hughes, a slight, dark-complexioned
youngster with a gay smile.

 

 

As antiaircraft fire laced into them on the target run, Hughes was hit
in the bomb bay tanks. In Old Buster Butt, navigator James H. McClain saw
"a stream of gas about the thickness of a man's arm coming from Hughes's
bomb bay tank. The lead aircraft of the flight ahead bombed a boiler.
It exploded in front of us. Hughes stayed in formation." Ardery noted
"raw gasoline trailing from Hughes's plane in such volume that his waist
gunner was hidden from view. My stomach turned over. Poor Pete! Fine,
conscientious boy, with a young wife waiting for him at home. He was
holding formation to bomb, flying into a solid room of fire, with gasoline
gushing from his ship. Why do men do such things?"

 

 

The waiting flames touched off the geyser of gasoline and Hughes's ship
became a blowtorch. Fire streamed from the trailing edge of the left wing
and from the top turret and waist windows, Hughes's comrade, Wright, said,
"Pete got his bombs off just fine."

 

 

Beyond the target the burning ship slowed to about 110 mph, seemingly
under control. The witnesses had the impression that the pilots were
steering for a belly-landing in a dry river bed. McClain said, "Pete
was doing a good job. The flaming plane came to a bridge and actually
lifted over it. He came down beyond the bridge to land. His right wing
caught the riverbank and the plane cartwheeled to its flaming end."

 

 

The other B-24's settled beyond the trees too quickly to see what was
happening in the blazing creek bed. Hughes's last exertions had cheated
death of two of his crew. Out of the fire came gunners Thomas A. Hoff
and Edmond H. Smith and bombardier John A. McLoughlin. The officer died
of burns but the sergeants lived.

 

 

Hughes was later awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor. The citation said,
"Rather than jeopardize the formation and success of the attack, he
unhesitatingly entered the blazing area, dropped his bombs with great
precision, and only then did he undertake a forced landing."

 

 

The final bombs of Tidal Wave were deposited in the powerhouse and boiler
of Red Target by Vagabond King, piloted by John B. McCormick. Sergeant
Martin Van Buren * was kneeling on his chute to activate the K-2 target
camera, when a shell burst under him. The chute stopped most of the
fragments. As crewmen gave him first aid, Van Buren crowed, "Now I'll
have one more medal than you guys."

 

 

* Not related to his namesake, the bachelor fifteenth President of
the United States.

 

 

Vagabond King bombed amidst exploding kettles and the crumble and crash of
a high smokestack. Pilot McCormick thought that "from an esthetic point
of view, the best thing was the incendiaries flickering up and down in
the smoke like fireflies." Tail gunner Paul M. Miller, the last man in
the Tidal Wave force, looked back at Vagabond King's 45-second bombs
exploding, and phoned the pilot, "They didn't give us too much time for
the getaway." McCormick had this topic much on his mind. "I didn't know
whether we were going to get back," said he. "My crew was prepared for a
crash-landing before we left Africa. We had everything with us that we
would need for a month -- clothes, hiking boots and rations. Our plane
was in bad shape. We got into formation on the treetops with another
wounded ship and three good ones that stayed outside to protect us,
and got a heading for Cyprus."

 

 

Coming off the target, Philip Ardery entered "a bedlam of bombers flying
in all directions, some on fire, many with smoking engines, some with
gaping holes or huge chunks of wing or rudder gone; many so riddled their
insides must have been stark pictures of the dead and dying or grievously
wounded men who would bleed to death before they could be brought to land;
pilots facing horrible decisions -- whether to crash-land and sacrifice
the unhurt to save a dying friend or to fly on and let him give his life
for the freedom of the rest."

 

 

The Sky Scorpion strike on Red Target was one of the two classically
executed performances of the day. The Steaua Romana refinery was totally
destroyed and did not reenter production for six years. Colonel Wood's
group lost six of twenty-nine planes.

 

 

 

 

Few people in the target area realized what was happening that Sunday.
Many who saw the Liberators thundering close above thought it was
a supernatural visitation. Romania was steeped in illiteracy and
fascist-controlled ignorance. War was an unseen, bloody maw in the east
into which its men vanished, but this apocalyptic event in the air did
not seem related to war. Even the German technicians found the raid hard
to believe. Werner Nass's impression of the charred and shrunken corpses
of a B-24 crew as "men from Mars" typified the reaction. Werner Horn,
seeing the colossal machines sweeping over, had the initial notion that
"the Americans were out joy riding," as though they had come a thousand
miles to amuse themselves by buzzing the country. Most Romanians, obsessed
with the death mill in Russia, assumed the planes came from there. One
who thought so was Princess Caterina Caradja, doyenne of the ancient
house of Cantacuzene. She lived on a thousand-acre estate at Nedelea,
ten miles northwest of Ploesti.