To Kingdom Come (12 page)

Major Ralph Jarrendt was leading the 388th that morning in
Gremlin Gus II.
At exactly 0530, Jarrendt thundered forward at full power between the twin rows of amber runway lights. He was followed at forty-second intervals by the rest of the lead squadron:
Iza Angel II
, commanded by George Branholm; Earl Melville in
Shedonwanna?
; Roy Mohr in
Shack Up
; and Bill Beecham in
Impatient Virgin
.

Demetrios “the Greek” Karnezis came next in
Slightly Dangerous II
.

After the eight bombers of the high squadron were up, it was the low squadron’s turn. Al Kramer led the way in
Lone Wolf
. After Kramer’s bomber clawed its way skyward to join the other two squadrons, Ted Wilken shoved the throttles forward in
Patricia
, and the B-17 began lumbering down the strip, followed by Dick Cunningham in
In God We Trust
, Lew Miller in an unnamed plane, James Roe in
Silver Dollar
, and Mike Bowen in
Sky Shy
.

It was 0540.

As soon as they were all in the air, the 388th began circling over Knettishall until each pilot found his respective slot in the group formation. When they were all in proper position, Ralph Jarrendt led them toward their first rendezvous point with the 96th group.

By then, the night mist had finally dissipated, giving way to a beautiful morning, with puffy cumulus clouds dotting the sky. Looking west, Joe Schwartzkopf, the big bear of a radio operator in Ted’s plane, could see dozens of Fortresses climbing up from their fields across the English Midlands.

At five thousand feet, the bombers burst through the last bank of clouds into a bird’s-egg blue sky. In every direction Joe looked, other bomb groups were banking gently in slow lazy turns as they spiraled ever upward into the crowded sky.

There was something comforting to him about the huge mass of bombers forming in the sky over England. Seeing them all come together, it was hard to believe that all the enemy fighters in Germany could challenge their impregnability.

When
Patricia
reached twelve thousand feet, Ted ordered the crew to put on their oxygen masks. Each mask was supplied by a rubber hose connected to metal oxygen canisters anchored along the plane’s fuselage. At more than two miles above the earth’s surface, it was impossible to breathe for long without one.

Once his face was encased in the mask, Warren felt cut off from the world below. From then on, his life was dependent on the continued expansion and contraction of the bladder beneath his chin. The crew would now be on oxygen all the way to the target, and most of the way back.

One by one, Warren asked the crew members to confirm that their oxygen masks were working.

At fifteen thousand feet, frost began to appear on the interior of the Plexiglas windows in the plane, and the men used scrapers to clear them. The air temperature was already far below zero degrees Fahrenheit. If a crew member removed his sheepskin-lined gloves for more than a minute or two, he would suffer severe frostbite.

As zero hour approached, several groups had failed to reach their rendezvous in the allotted times. It was 0734 when the lead plane of the 96th Bomb Group turned onto the compass heading that would lead the armada across the English Channel toward France.

Eight miles back in the bomber train, General Bob Travis sat in the copilot’s seat of
Satan’s Workshop
, the lead plane of the 303rd Bomb Group and the lead bomber of the First Bombardment Wing. Travis was now in direct command of all nine bomb groups following behind him. So far, his first combat mission was going smoothly.

Flying in the low group behind General Travis, Jimmy Armstrong was getting the feel of
Yankee Raider
as he flew for the first time as an element leader. Unlike
Sad Sack II
, the cockpit of
Yankee Raider
smelled rank, but so far it was handling well.

In the waist compartment of
Yankee Raider
, Reb Grant was enjoying a sight that never failed to give him delight as he gazed out at all the heavy bombers surrounding him. In the rarified atmosphere in which they were flying, each of the B-17s was trailing four beautiful white contrails, long cones of condensed water vapor produced by the exhaust gases from the airplane engines. To Reb, the fluffy plumes looked like silvery comets slashing across the blue heaven.

Once they were out over the English Channel, Jimmy Armstrong gave the order for the gunners to test fire the plane’s eight machine guns. When Reb cut loose with his .50s, the vibration rattled his teeth and filled the compartment with the stink of cordite.

It was 0750.

The 96th Bomb Group was halfway across the English Channel when one of its Fortresses suddenly peeled away, banking into a 180-degree turn and heading back toward England. Its departure was quickly followed by another bomber in the high squadron of the 388th.

Under Eighth Air Force operational guidelines, if a pilot concluded that his plane could not complete the mission because of an unexpected problem, he was permitted to turn back.

Prior to the beginning of the air offensive against targets inside Germany, a few pilots aborted each mission. In the wake of the disastrous crew losses in July and August, the number of aborts had grown exponentially.

Now the migration became a steady stream.

As the twenty-mile-long bomber train continued east across the channel, a smaller train of bombers was already heading back, flying well below the attacking force, as if not wanting to be noticed.

Within the 100th Bomb Group, which had valiantly earned the sobriquet “Bloody 100th” due to its severe losses on previous missions, seven Fortresses out of the twenty-one planes flying in the group turned back. The remaining pilots in their combat box were forced to tighten up to fill the vacuum.

The exodus became contagious.

Five Fortresses aborted from the 390th group, four from the 95th, seven from the 94th, six from the 385th, and eight from the 305th based at Chelveston. More pilots continued to peel away as they neared the enemy coast.

The reasons for each pilot’s decision extended to a wide range of problems. Low fuel pressure was reported in the left outboard engine of one Fortress, a ball turret gunner’s hand had begun to swell at eight thousand feet due to past frostbite in another, an oxygen leak, a runaway propeller, high oil temperature in a right outboard engine, a sick tail gunner, a malfunction in the bomb bay doors, low oil pressure, a supercharger problem, a loose ball turret hatch, an intercom malfunction, a bomb bay switch failure, more oxygen leaks.

It was hard for some of the men still headed to Germany not to envy them.

As
Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti
approached the coast of France, Andy Andrews tuned his radio compass to a program he had become familiar with on the BBC. It was called
Whistle While You Work
, and delivered only popular musical favorites. For one solid hour, there was nothing but music, music while you worked. Andy grinned as he imagined housewives all over England doing their ironing while he was on his way to bomb Germany.

The Golden Eagle

Tricqueville Air Base
Normandy, France
Jagdgeschwader 2 “Richthofen”
Major Egon “Connie” Mayer
0800

T
he air base’s Teletype machines had begun chattering well before dawn.

Using long-range receivers, Luftwaffe air controllers had monitored the testing of aircraft radios by American ground crews at more than a dozen bases in England, clearly indicating a major strike was under way.

At 0600, the Luftwaffe’s radar platforms deployed along the “Atlantikwall” of France began monitoring several large masses of aircraft over southern England. In the next hour, it grew to the largest concentration of aircraft the radar controllers had ever recorded.

“It will be a good day for hunting,” declared an eager pilot of Jagdgeschwader 2 “Richthofen” after the fighter unit was put on full alert. JG 2 “Richthofen” was one of the elite fighter wings in the Luftwaffe; it had been named in honor of Freiherr Manfred von Richthofen, the famed “Red Baron,” who had scored eighty victories before his death in the First World War.

For Egon “Connie” Mayer, JG 2’s commander, every day was good hunting. He was as naturally gifted as any combat pilot in the war. Since 1941, he had shot down seventy-seven Allied planes, including forty-eight English Spitfires.

In contrast to many of the other leading aces of the Luftwaffe, who had racked up their victories against the poorly trained and equipped Soviet air force, Connie Mayer had scored all his aerial victories on the western front.

A recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, he was one of the most decorated pilots in the Luftwaffe. Unlike some of his more flamboyant contemporaries, he never felt the need to exaggerate his accomplishments, and evidenced no desire to join in the spirited competition of those who sought to become Germany’s highest-scoring ace. As a matter of personal honor, he never made a victory claim that couldn’t be confirmed.

For Connie Mayer, fighting one’s enemy wasn’t a contest between medieval knights or modern gladiators. Germany was at war. He was a professional. His job was to help destroy the Allied planes attacking the Fatherland.

Born in 1917, he had grown up near Lake Constance in the alpine foothills close to the Swiss border. An exceptional skier, he had joined the Luftwaffe in 1937. Only twenty-six years old, he looked much older, the direct result of four years of arduous combat.

With the exception of his eyes, he looked more like an earnest peacetime lawyer than one of the most celebrated fighter pilots of the war. His eyes were hawk’s eyes, intense and aware, which contributed to the deadliness of his aim and his tactical brilliance in the air.

He now had four fighter groups under his command, all of them based in the western quadrant of France. Their job was to defend the Paris region and the U-boat pens along the coast of France. Since the start of the war, the pilots of Jagdgeschwader 2 had achieved almost two thousand victories.

The once boundless confidence enjoyed by the Luftwaffe after the fall of France in 1940 was long gone. As the enemy grew ever stronger, it became clear to Connie Mayer and the other frontline commanders that Germany would eventually be defeated unless Hitler’s claims of new secret weapons could change the balance. Mayer had become increasingly skeptical of the Führer’s boasts.

He knew the personal odds. Most of his closest comrades were already dead. Two of them, Helmut Wick and Wilhelm Balthasar, had been killed while commanding Jagdgeschwader 2. Connie Mayer had now flown more than three hundred missions and been shot down four times, surviving against the odds. It was only a matter of time before his luck ran out.

Since the Americans had begun their daylight bombing campaign, JG 2’s principal assignment was to intercept and destroy the Allied bombers attacking the Fatherland, and particularly the Flying Fortresses of the Eighth Air Force.

In November 1942, Connie Mayer became the architect of a bold and unorthodox strategy that was to alter the course of the air war. After his first few encounters with the Fortresses in their tight combat box formations, Mayer concluded that the approach then being employed by the Luftwaffe was ineffective and too costly in pilot losses.

Up to that point, German fighter pilots usually made their attacks on the B-17s from the “six o’clock low” position, coming in from behind with cannons and machine guns blazing, one plane at a time.

This left the fighters vulnerable to the .50-caliber machine-gun fire from the bomber’s tail gunner, as well as to the massed firepower of the other Fortresses in the same combat box.

Mayer believed that attacking a Fortress from the front would provide the best chance of destroying its vital systems, including the cockpit controls, the engines, and the fuel tanks. He concluded that the Fortress’s most vulnerable spot was its nose, which was equipped with only a single .30-caliber machine gun manned by the crew’s bombardier, who was not a trained machine gunner.

Making a frontal attack against a Fortress required extraordinary daring and skill. The fighter pilot had to line up his target while the two planes were closing at a combined speed of 600 miles an hour. He had only a few seconds to open fire with his cannon and machine guns from a distance of about one hundred yards, and then dive away to avoid ramming the bomber.

Mayer added another difficult component to his tactical maneuver as well. He advocated rolling the fighter onto its back just before commencing the attack, because the belly of the Fw 190 was armor-plated, and largely impervious to the .30-caliber machine gun in the Fortress’s nose.

Mayer also conceived the strategy in which attacks would be made by three or more fighters, flying wing tip to wing tip. This dangerous aerial ballet would concentrate more firepower on each target, and potentially force the unnerved bomber pilots to take evasive action, breaking up the combat box. If the formation’s integrity could be compromised, the individual bombers would become more vulnerable.