The Mighty Eighth at War: USAAF 8th Air Force Bombers Versus the Luftwaffe 1943-1945

419 Pages·2010·5.06 MB·English

by  Bowman

First Published in Great Britain in 2010 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Copyright © Martin W. Bowman, 2010
9781783830015

The right of Martin W. Bowman to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
PROLOGUE - The Forts Fly High by Bruce Sanders
CHAPTER 1 - Mission 115
CHAPTER 2 - Black Thursday
CHAPTER 3 - 127 Ways to Die
CHAPTER 4 - Big B and Beyond
CHAPTER 5 - Assaulting the Westwall
CHAPTER 6 - The Oil Campaign
CHAPTER 7 - Milk Runs to France
CHAPTER 8 - Blood and Oil
CHAPTER 9 - Days of Reckoning
Index
PROLOGUE
The Forts Fly High by Bruce Sanders
In the summer of 1941 the Berlin correspondent of the Italian newspaper La
Stampa began giving his readers pep stories. One of them was to the effect that a
Nazi fighter pilot had alone brought down no less than nine Flying Fortresses out
of a squadron of twelve in one single engagement. Actually, for the day he
mentioned the Air Ministry stated the weather was so bad that not a single
British bomber was operating.
But that is by the way.
A year later the absurdity of the claim was manifest to the whole world. For in
the summer of 1942 the American Army Air Corps, based in Britain, began
active co-operation with the RAF in attacking the strongpoints of the European
mainland. The Flying Fortresses of the Americans flew high, by daylight, and
their crews indulged in high-altitude precision bombing. Armed with .5-inch
machine guns, they were able to trounce soundly any fighter opposition that
came up to deny them right of way. In proportion to the numbers of aircraft
employed and in view of the fact that the Fortresses were flying on offensive
operations, it was the fighter defence that was defeated.
At first, the Forts flew with fighter protection, as when they roared over
Rouen on the afternoon of 17 August and bombed the marshalling-yards, with
their commander-in-chief, Brigadier-General Ira C Eaker, leading in an aircraft
named Yankee Doodle.
It was a highly successful debut. Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, on behalf of
Bomber Command, sent General Eaker the following message of congratulation:
Congratulations from all ranks of Bomber Command on the highly
successful completion of the first all-American raid by the big
fellows on German-occupied territory in Europe. Yankee Doodle
fellows on German-occupied territory in Europe. Yankee Doodle
certainly went to town and can stick yet another well-deserved
feather in his cap.
Bomber Command was no longer alone on the offensive. The four-engined
bombers of the American Air Force had joined in the invasion of German-held
skies. The Americans systematically went to work, testing out their aircraft and
teaching their bomber crews the art of modern war. For two months the Forts
flew into Europe and strafed military targets in the hinterland. At the end of that
time the Office of War Information in Washington issued a considered statement
to the American public on the performance of the Fortresses and other American
warplanes. It was a frank statement and it held many criticisms of some existing
types of United States aircraft. But of the heavy Boeing B-17s it had this to say:
The actual employment of the B-17 (the Flying Fortress) over
Europe has exceeded even the fondest expectations of its American
proponents. It has shown the B-17 capable of high-altitude day
bombing of such precision that it astounded Allied observers. The
public is already familiar with some of the B-17’s feats, such as the
recent flight over occupied Europe wherein gunners in a flight of B-
17s engaged forty German fighters. Ten Focke-Wulfs were knocked
down and eight more claimed as probables. All the B-17s returned to
their British bases, although one had been hit by six cannon-shells
and over two hundred machine-gun bullets. In the October 10th raid
over France – the largest and most damaging raid ever staged over
Europe – 115 Flying Fortresses and Liberators, B-24s, accompanied
by Allied fighters, proved their ability to fight their way through to
the target and back again against large and fierce opposition by the
Nazi’s newest and best Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. We lost
only four of our bombers, while over a hundred enemy planes were
destroyed or damaged.
Possibly the Berlin correspondent of La Stampa rubbed his eyes when he read
the announcement.
Two months later, in December, the Fortresses were probing deeper into
Europe under the daylight skies of winter. The crews had learned much. The
pilots of the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs were still learning. On the
pilots of the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs were still learning. On the
afternoon of Sunday the 20th the Forts flew to Romilly-sur-Seine and attacked
the German air depot there. They roared high over Paris, with Focke-Wulfs
streaming after them and circling on their flanks, seeking for an opening through
which to dart with cannon spurting. But again the Nazi fighter pilots came off
second best. The American bombers kept close ranks and the Focke-Wulfs were
given little chance to demonstrate their killer propensities.
One of the Forts flying on that occasion was captained by Captain Allen
Martini. His aircraft was already famous in its squadron as Dry Martini and his
crew were known as the ‘Cocktail Kids’. They had been together as a combat
crew for several months when they went on the ‘pranging’ job to Romilly, and
sitting hunched up over his cannon in the Fort’s tail was a bright-eyed Filipino,
Staff Sergeant Henry Mitchell. Mitchell was a man with a long score to settle
with the Axis. His father was a major on the staff of General MacArthur during
the Pacific battles but it was believed that his wife and child were prisoners in
the hands of the Japanese. Henry himself was on a merchantman when the ‘Wild
Eagles’ of Tokyo descended on Pearl Harbor. He enlisted for service in the
American Army Air Force as soon as he got ashore.
That afternoon he showed the race-prejudiced Aryans of the Luftwaffe that
the colour of a man’s skin has little to do with his ability to shoot straight. His
straight shooting was largely responsible for the safe return of the Dry Martini.
The Cocktail Kids and their Fortress comrades played the old year out to the
tuneful rattle of their .5-inch guns. On 30 December the Forts flew high over
Lorient and gave the submarine pens a heavy strafing. On that occasion the
Flying Fortress Boom Town got badly shot up but returned to Britain’s friendly
shores covered in glory.
Boom Town winged over the pens on schedule and the bombardier let go the
bomb load. Over the intercom the crew heard him shout excitedly, ‘Bull’s eye!’
While the words were still in their ears flak tore into the Fort’s hull and German
fighters swooped down to attack.
The bombardier died at his post. The navigator, Lieutenant W M Smith, of
Ashland, Wisconsin, was wounded in the arm. A shell splinter passed out
through his flight jacket, knocking him off his seat. As he lay prone, stunned for
the moment, bullets from the fighters tore through the space where he had been
sitting a moment before. Then an exploding shell ripped the base out of the ball-
turret. Sergeant Green, the ball-turret gunner, had his oxygen mask destroyed
and his cases of spare ammunition were jammed so tightly against his side that
he thought his leg had been torn off. Blinded by spurting oil and cordite fumes,
he thought his leg had been torn off. Blinded by spurting oil and cordite fumes,
he stayed there, perched over space, covering his target area with his gun. In the
tail-turret Sergeant Krucher, of Long Island, was badly hit, but he remained
sighting his gun as a Focke-Wulf swooped to finish off the mauled Fortress.
Krucher waited until the Fw 190 was closing up in his sights and then gave it a
long burst. His bullets ripped off half of one of the German’s wings and the
fighter went spiralling down. Staff Sergeant Stroud, of Kansas, manning the
right waist gun, covered another Fw 190 that attacked from the front. Stroud
coolly waited until he could see the German pilot’s helmeted head in the Focke-
Wulf’s glasshouse.
‘He came in at twelve o’clock,’ Stroud said afterwards, explaining the angle at
which he saw the German in his gun-sight. ‘As he banked and started in on our
tail I let him have it. It looked as if part of the fuselage came off and he fell off
toward the sea.’
Boom Town’s pilot, Captain Clyde D Walker, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, headed
out to sea as the enemy fighters came on in pairs, attacking furiously. The first
blast of fire had broken the driving shaft of one engine and another had been hit
on the top cylinder, so that it had only emergency power left to struggle with as
the pilot opened the throttle.
‘The prop would run away when I advanced it a bit,’ was how Walker
explained the predicament in which he found himself. Oil pressure was dropping
and a shell splinter had made a large dent in a blade of a third engine. There was
also a gaping hole in the nose of the aircraft and the bomb-doors had been badly
shot up. The de-icing system had been punctured, the radio equipment badly
damaged, and the control cable knocked off the elevator. ‘They missed the pilot
and co-pilot,’ Walker explained. ‘That’s all. And the co-pilot had a piece of flak
in his parachute.’
But he did not give the order to bale out. If he could get Boom Town back
across the Channel he was going to, despite wintry weather conditions and the
worst the Nazi airmen could do.
Walker pushed his aircraft into a cloud bank and cleverly manoeuvred to
evade another onslaught from the whirling Focke-Wulfs. Another Fort came
close, to cover the staggering aircraft, but when Walker came out of the cloud
formation he was alone and Boom Town was dropping at the rate of 2,000 feet a
minute.
The crew were at their posts, facing looming disaster, ready to fight off any
further attack that might mature, for they knew the Focke-Wulfs’ liking for lame
ducks. All, that is, except the bombardier and Sergeant Krucher, who had been