The US Eighth Air Force in Europe: Eagle Spreads it's Wings: Blitz Week, Black Thursday, Blood and Oil v2

398 Pages·2013·36.74 MB·English

by  Bowman

Contents
1. The Raid That Failed
2. Consider Yourselves Already Dead!
3. Night and Day
4. The Long Fall
5. Complete Your Tour with a Trip to the Ruhr
C 1
HAPTER
The Raid That Failed
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.’
Macbeth, Act IV
Captain Bill Cameron was slightly puzzled. And the twenty-three-year old pilot
from California was not alone. After six months of combat operations in very
cold and hostile winter skies over Europe, the combat crews at Shipdham were
told that for the time being, at least, there would be no combat. And it was
springtime. The ‘Eightballers’ did not understand then that this relatively
pleasant interval was designed to prepare them for an exceptional mission, one
that would put it on the line for all of them. There were new crews and new B-
24Ds to replace those that had been lost and losses had been severe. Fate had
spared Cameron. In the words of Ernie Pyle it could be said that, ‘He is a
fugitive from the law of average.’ He was the only remaining pilot originally
assigned to the 67th Squadron, which had lost five of its original nine crews
including his own. After the loss of Little Beaver on 14 May 1943 Cameron was
made an aircraft commander and with Lieutenant Bill Dabney, an American
transfer from the RAF, a new crew was formed. They were given a new
Liberator, which Cameron christened Buzzin’ Bear. The name was partly
inspired by the grizzly bear, which first adorned his home state’s flag in 1846.
Also, Cameron was a product of UC Berkeley, ‘The Golden Bears’. ‘Buzzing’ or
low flying was a popular trait among pilots. If he got through his next few
missions Cameron knew that he would be able to return home; to Hanford, not
far from the central Pacific coast that stretches from the Monterey Bay south
through Big Sur to San Luis Obispo Bay. In his novels John Steinbeck
immortalized Monterey’s Cannery Row and the Salinas Valley. Henry Miller,
another author who found a home on the Central Coast, called this place ‘a
paradise’. Cameron would one day make his home here in Carmel with wife,
Alison, one of General ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stillwell’s daughters after a combat career
that stretched to twenty-nine months and thirty-eight missions and would be
equalled by few in the 8th Air Force. Courage and compassion were
characteristics that Cameron combined throughout his long combat performance.
The ‘Flying Eightballs’ were shifted, without explanation, to low-level
formation practice over the green fields of East Anglia. It was the same story at
Hethel and Hardwick. Between 11 and 25 June 1943 the 389th flew into their
base at Hethel, just outside Norwich, to begin low level training alongside the
‘Flying Eightballs’ and the ‘Travelling Circus’. Colonel Jack W. Wood, the
thirty-six-year-old 389th CO, a veteran pilot from Fairbault, Minnesota, who had
graduated from Flight School in 1928, was under pressure to get his group
operational. A temporary ground echelon was seconded to Hethel pending the
arrival of the regular ground personnel. After a five-day orientation course crews
began flying low-level practice missions over East Anglia at less than 150 feet
en route to their target range over the Wash. Rumour and speculation increased
as ground crews sweated to remove the Norden bombsights and replace them
with low-level sights. Heavier nose armament and additional fuel tanks in the
bomb bays gave the men clues as to their new role. ‘Since everything was Top
Secret’ wrote ‘Tommie’ Holmes, ‘we were told only that we were going to
Libya.’ Only higher headquarters knew what was in the offing. Early in June
General Brereton was informed that the three Groups would be joining his 98th
‘Pyramiders’ and 376th ‘Liberandos’ Bomb Groups for a second attack on the
important strategic oilfields at Ploesti in Romania, which produced 60 per cent
of all Germany’s needs.1 By increasing the Liberator’s fuel capacity to 3,100
gallons they could just make it to the target from North Africa.
At Hardwick, Colonel Addison Baker led his Liberators flying wing tip to
wing tip at 150 feet over the hangar line on the base, which served as a target.
On some days the 44th and the 389th joined the ‘Travelling Circus’ in flights
over the base in waves of three aircraft. Crews had been trained in the art of
high-altitude precision bombing and were quite unused to low-level flying. On
25 June two 389th Liberators were involved in a midair collision. One made it
back to Hethel but the other crash-landed and one man was killed. When they
departed for North Africa at the end of June the 389th, the youngest and most
inexperienced of the three Groups, had completed only two weeks’ training in
Norfolk.
By 25 June forty-one Liberators were available at Shipdham for the Ploesti
mission, which was codenamed Operation Statesman. Five days later the three
groups began their flight to North Africa via Portreath in Cornwall. Forty-two B-
24s took off from Hardwick and thirty more left the runways at Hethel.
However, a few 389th aircraft remained behind in Norfolk for training and air-
sea-rescue duties. For the 93rd the long overseas flight meant a return to the
African desert they had forsaken in February 1943. The 124 Liberators flew to
Libya, where they came under the control of the 9th Air Force. After weeks of
preparation the ‘Eightballs’ took off singly early one dark morning and flew, at
very low altitude, to an airfield in the southern part of England. The next day,
they crossed the Bay of Biscay, again low enough to escape German radar and
passed through the Straits of Gibraltar to Oran in Algeria. The Oklahoman,
which was flown by twenty-four-year-old Lieutenant John ‘Jack’ C. Martin Jr,
was commandeered by Colonel Jack Wood when his aircraft lost an engine and
went with the rest of the Group to Benina Main, one of Mussolini’s former
airfields, fifteen miles from the coastal city of Benghazi. This left Jack Martin’s
crew in Oran with an engine change to do. The Oklahoman, whose insignia was
an Indian maid, sitting on top of a covered wagon, was named by Martin, who
though he was born in Richmond, Virginia, was educated in Tishomingo,
Oklahoma, graduating from high school there in 1937 and from the Murray State
School of Agriculture in 1939. Before enlisting in the AAC he was a printer and
photo-engraver on the Madill Record. He had met Vae Hogan at Lowry Field
where she was a lieutenant in the Station hospital and they married on 25 May
1943 just before he left for overseas duty. Martin’s kid brother was a private first
class with the marine paratroopers in the south Pacific. By the time Martin and
his crew arrived at Benina in Colonel Wood’s aircraft the 389th would have
flown four combat missions.
It was nearly dark when Bill Cameron and the crew climbed down from the
Buzzin’ Bear and waited to be directed to their billet. As they waited – and
waited – Sergeant Gerald Sparks, the radio operator from Meridian, Mississippi,
entertained them with his guitar. Eventually, someone came by in a truck and
threw off a large canvas bundle, which they were informed was their ‘billet’.
Cameron knew then that they were not destined to feel at home in this strange
new environment – and they never did. Hundreds of wrecked Axis aircraft still
littered the area for hundreds of miles around and the words ‘Believe, Obey,
Fight’ were inscribed on the walls of the hangars. ‘Tommie’ Holmes wrote: ‘We
had no idea what a contrast in climate we would encounter and how very hot and
desolate this land would be. The temperature would rise to 130 degrees and we
would be assaulted by lots of hot wind, dirt, grasshoppers and scorpions.’ The
9th Air Force accused the 8th of being undisciplined and given to gross
exaggeration of ‘kills’, while the 8th complained when it was discovered that the
98th were withholding the best rations. By using up the less desirable items and
keeping back the best foodstuffs, only the choicest rations would remain for the
98th when the ‘Eightballs’ returned to England. Colonel Leon Johnson took the
matter up with Colonel John ‘Killer’ Kane, the ‘Pyramiders’ CO, but things did
not improve during the stay of the ‘Eightballs’ at Benina Main. One of the 389th
personnel claimed that the only thing that resembled food was the bread baked
every day.
We did get plenty of protein. The swarms of locusts made up for the lack
of mutton, beef or pork. It took a few days to get acclimatized. You
could tell a rookie in the mess. He can’t eat after a few locusts land in
his greasy mess kit; a veteran of a few missions will remove the locusts
and continue eating; an old timer cannot eat without a few locusts in his
mess gear.
There were two proven methods of cleaning your mess kit. Either
scrub it with sand and make it glisten, or mix up a packet of powdered
lemonade in your cup and let it stand overnight. It would glow in the
morning. If the powdered lemonade dissolved the grime in your cup,
imagine what it did to your stomach.
One afternoon, crews at Benina Main were hastily summoned to report to the
briefing room. Bill Cameron learned that his crew would join his CO, Jim Posey,
and another crew in a low-level sortie over Benghazi. Apparently, the natives
were demonstrating in the town, putting pressure on the British for more local
control. Buzzin’ Bear, living up to its name and the other two aircraft, buzzed the
city in a show of ‘gunboat diplomacy’. After missions over such targets as
Messina, Catania, Foggia and Naples, Bill Cameron completed his required
twenty-five in a borrowed ship, the Suzy-Q, over Rome on 19 July. He recalls:
We then plunged into low-level formation practice once again but this
time it was over the dry Libyan Desert. It occurred to me at the same
time that I was not really expected to fly this low-level mission,
whatever the target was. But I was swept up in the preparation for it
primarily out of loyalty to my crew and perhaps some curiosity that
caused me to want to see it through. For almost two weeks, B-24s in
small groups were crisscrossing the desert in all directions, practising
low-level formation flying.
‘Tommie’ Holmes wrote:
While practising in the desert we flew very low, which we enjoyed but I
am sure some of the crew were somewhat upset or nervous about flying
into the ground. We did hit two hawks, one hitting the No. 2 engine prop
governor and a second hawk coming through the Plexiglas window in
the nose, leaving blood, guts and feathers through the entire airplane,
even to the tail. Luckily, no one in the nose was injured.2
Bill Cameron recalls:
Eventually the groups became larger as the training progressed toward a
full-dress rehearsal involving the total force of B-24 Liberator bombers.
Five bomb groups were to be involved in our still-undisclosed mission –
three groups in their dull green-hued aircraft from England and two units
stationed in Africa. The airplanes of the latter groups were dust
coloured, almost pink and were easily distinguished from the England-
based B-24s. All of these were B-24Ds – lighter and faster than the
models that came later with the nose turrets and other modifications.
Target models had been set up in the desert. When we were
considered ready, the entire force of 175 bombers took off, assembled in
group-formation and lined up one group behind the other. Proceeding
just as we would against the actual targets in Romania, we arrived at the
practice IP and each unit then swung approximately 90° to the right.
This manoeuvre put five units of aircraft flying side by side at very low
level and racing toward our simulated target. In this manner, all our
aircraft were streaking over their small targets at nearly the same
moment: The units were then to turn to the right, which meant that once
again the five groups would be lined up one behind the other, as they left
the target area. A day or two before the mission, we were brought into
the briefing room and the great secret was unveiled. The presentation
was quite elaborate and included movies of models of each of the
several refineries we were to attack. The movies simulated the view of
the target, as a pilot would see it approaching at very low altitude.
Everything would depend on surprise and exact timing. It was explained
that the defences were relatively light and we would not have to concern
ourselves too much about Romanian antiaircraft because Sunday was a
day of rest for Romanians – even in time of war. Some of the edge was
removed from this optimism by Major General Lewis E. Brereton, who
addressed us all at an open-air meeting in the African sunshine, where he
stressed the importance of our target by saying that our success would
justify the loss of every aircraft! He did not mean of course that such
losses were expected but it gave us something to think about.
‘Tommie’ Holmes recalls:
We continued to practise low level flying and in between, flew about