Damned to Glory, by Colonel Robert L Scott, Jr. – 1944 (Chapter: “Assam Dragon”) [Lloyd Howe]

Sabre-tooth shark-mouths were an emblem of P-40 Warhawks in the 51st Fighter Group’s 25th Fighter Squadron.  Colonel Scott describes the use of 25th Fighter Squadron P-40s as a (highly) improvised method of delivering 1,000-pound bombs on Japanese bridges in Burma.  Lloyd Howe’s illustration nicely complements the text…

There’s a steamy river country
Rimmed by mountains all around,
Where the world humps up its backbone
Full five miles above the ground.
Flying there with Assam’s Dragons
Into India’s mold’ring clime,
“Brereton’s Bhamo-Busting Bombers”
Were “B-Forties”—every time.

ASSAM DRAGON

IT WAS the steaming month of March, up there in eastern Assam, where one finds Dinjan, Chabua, and Debrugarh and all those tea plantations strung along the Brahmaputra.  This was India’s most easterly extension, right into the horseshoe loop which the Himalayas make as they form the Naga Hills.  To the north the Great Mountains rose abruptly, in less than a hundred miles, to twenty-five thousand feet; then, further back, they jutted to the top of the world at twenty-nine thousand feet.  Out to the east was the “Hump,” where even the low hills were thirteen thousand feet and the higher ones were eighteen thousand.  To the south the jungle-covered hills were lower, but they were just as mean to cross.  On to the west there was low land, and it was all of India – some 2200 miles of arid, flat country to Karachi.  That is to say, it was dry now, for this was March, but in less than two months the monsoon would come and then everything would be as wet as the Brahmaputra.

But this was no time to let your imagination play over those things about mountains, and whether or not the annual rainfall was really 968 inches a year, as the missionaries and tea planters at Sadiya claimed.  No, for there was work to be done.

There were Jap supply lines radiating into northern Burma, and these must be severed.  About to tackle the job, Johnny Barr, operations officer of a P-40 fighter group, shrugged his shoulders and walked to his ship, on which was painted the wildest-looking, biggest-bottomed dragon any of us had ever seen.  Under this weird portrayal were the words “OUR ASSAM DRAGGIN.”

The P-40 roared down the runway with a pretty, yellow five-hundred-pound bomb and set its course toward Burma and the Chindwin, aiming for a railroad bridge over which Jap supplies were flowing.  Barr was determined to make that nice American bomb do a good job of ripping out that bridge.

Over his point of attack, Barr looked down on the high spans of the steel bridge.  These things are hard jobs for fighter ships and he knew it.  They have to be hit just right, too, or the bombing must be done over and over.  Johnny circled once; then he got the nose of his ship down and began to dive at the bridge like a comet.  His altitude needle started to spin round and round as he concentrated his aim – seven thousand, five thousand, two thousand – then at five hundred feet, Johnny cut his bomb loose.  Just as he began to climb, there was a blinding flash, and then a terrific explosion.  Parts of the bridge were blown high into the sky.

“That wasn’t a bad job,” he thought, and the big-bottomed dragon on the Warhawk probably grinned.  Anyway, Johnny turned it northwest and home, satisfied with the day’s work.

Two days later, Barr went over to appraise the damage his bomb had done.  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, astounded.  There, below him, was the bridge, showing no signs of having been blasted by a direct hit just forty-eight hours before.  Jap crews had repaired the damage and supplies again were flowing across.  It made Barr madder than hell.  Something had to be done – this couldn’t go on if the Japs were to be stopped from bringing in vital supplies to their North Burma bases.

As he dejectedly winged his way home Johnny’s mind was so immersed in thought that he couldn’t even hear the roar of his Allison.  What to do?  They certainly couldn’t afford to divert the few B-24s from their long-range objectives to blasting bridges near the American bases.  And the little P-40 certainly couldn’t carry any heavier bomb than the five-hundred-pounder she was already carrying.  Sure, the old pea-shooter was the most versatile plane of the war – it had been used for everything except as a lawn mower.  But a thousand-pound bomb!  Well, that was a little too much to expect even from such an accommodating standby.

Then the thought flashed: After all, why not?  It certainly wouldn’t hurt to try.

Barr could hardly wait to land his ship.  The moment the plane had stopped he crawled under the belly of the P-40 and meticulously studied every part of his ship’s bomb-rack, even the rivets.  Some of the boys who were standing around wondered what Johnny was up to now.

In a few minutes, Barr emerged from under the Warhawk.  He was all grin.  He signalled his crewmen to bring him one of the half-ton bombs that the mediums used, and as the enlisted men carted the heavy missile toward the ship, they probably grinned to themselves too.  Well, now, it just couldn’t be done – the Warhawk would never get off the ground with such a heavy load.  But they knew their commanding officer to be a determined man; so under his supervision they installed the thousand-pounder under the belly of the little fighter.  Why, it nearly touched the ground!  But perhaps they remembered then that not long ago another Warhawk had hauled one thousand pounds of cargo (unofficially known as “C-40”) in a bangalore drum strapped to its belly.  Maybe it could be done after all.

The next day, as Barr approached his ship, the P-40 looked to him as if it were very pregnant, and great beads of perspiration seemed to be dripping from the tongue of the dragon painted on the nose of his ship.  The “B-40,” like most bombers, would have to have fighter escort; so Johnny assigned one of his pilots to fly on his wing, and then he climbed into the cockpit of his plane.  As he taxied the new “medium bomber” into takeoff position – rather slowly and very, very cautiously – the men on the ground noticed that the heavy bomb missed touching the ground by a couple of inches.  It would take all of Barr’s long experience to take his ship off the ground without a mishap.  Their Commander was too good a man to lose in foolish experimentation – but hadn’t he insisted on taking the ship up himself?

While Barr “revved up” the plane, the boys said a silent prayer and held their breath.  As Johnny poured the coal to the little ship she groaned, hesitated for a few seconds – then she was off.  Slowly, she gained altitude and was airborne.  Johnny circled the field.  He saw that the men were waving a frantic “good luck” to him, and he dipped one of his wings in salute.

Soon the “B-40” and its fighter escort were mere needle-points in the deep blue sky, and then they disappeared on a course towards Mogaung.  Johnny knew the exact spot he had reserved for his thousand-pound bomb.  After carefully checking around, he nosed the “B-40” down and then pulled his bomb-release.

The terrific explosion nearly flipped the little fighter on its back.  Somehow, Johnny felt that his bomb had done the job, but he couldn’t be sure until the “recco” photos came out of the lab.  They showed that the explosive had done more than wreck the trestle; one abutment no longer existed – there was a huge gap in the steel structure where the thousand-pounder had connected.  The attack had been a complete success.  He was certain that now it would take the Japs more than forty-eight hours to repair that bit of “dental” work.  You see, after this mission, the “B-40” boys became known as “the dentists” because of the devastating work they had done on enemy bridges.

Barr now called for five volunteers to build up a team, and the moment he had finished his talk five pilots stepped forth.  From that day on, Jap bridges have no longer offered a problem for the P-40 boys of the Assam Draggin Group – they have simply been atomizing them.

Yes, that’s one of the ways time is passed over there in eastern Assam, where the tea plantations flourish under the shade of the smaller jungle trees.  It’s where the rainbow and the supply line come to rather disappointing ends, and where we have to use substitutes for everything.  Here some inspector may some day find an airplane landing-light being used in a movie projector; he may find some salvageable item, perhaps a copper and asbestos gasket, being worn on the ear or the ankle of some local head-hunter tribesman.  For everything is an item of barter.

The point of this story is not just that Peashooters carry bombs, for they do that all over the world – bombs, and cargo, and extra people in baggage compartments.  But out here these same Peashooters have operated successfully for a year now as medium bombers specializing in carrying the thousand-pound American bomb payloads in addition to their full service of fuel and ammunition.  It’s not a fair-weather occupation, but it’s just as much a part of the business of Assam nowadays as is the curing of the finest tea in the world.

When the first “B-40” raids went into Burma, the Jap radio in Rangoon broadcast that we had a “new type medium bomber.”  But after the Japs had lost a dozen or so Zeros to these “bombers,” which maneuvered as fighters when they had dropped their bombs, the entire subject was promptly dropped by the radio commentator.  Out there now it’s taken very much as a matter of course that P-40s can carry anything from bathtubs and refrigerators to half-ton bombs.  Sooner or later some pilot is going to get a two-thousand-pound bomb on a P-40 – probably has already, but no one knows definitely of its having been done.

Nothing in this war surprises anyone any more.  Oh, periodically some new “Joe” may show mild astonishment – some head-hunter, when he sees a P-38 go over and observes the double tail and hears the whistle of the wind through the tail boom, may mutter: “Big bellied bird – havum two tails – huntum Jap Feller.”  Then perhaps they speak of the thousand-pound bomb-loads on the little Warhawk, but they show only mild wonder too.  “Double airplane bird which drops half – BOOM!!”

So the Yanks are off with their P-40’s and their “Assam Dragon.”

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An excellent photograph of a 25th Fighter Squadron P-40K: Aircraft 42-9870, “Mimi”, assigned to Earl J. Harrington, the squadron commander.  The caption of the image (Army Air Force Photograph A-56074AC / A2508) “Received on March 9, 1944, from the 16th Army Air Force Combat Camera Unit,” states: “Installation of the mail belly tank on a Curtiss P-40.  Left to right: M/Sgt. William C. Land of Montgomery, La., line chief, supervises S/Sgt. Wilbert W. Froelich of St. Louis, Mo., crew chief, in installing the tank, while 1st Lt. Southwell (in cockpit) receives a last minute official letter from Cpl. Harold O. Pendergrass of Lexington, Ky., clerk in the Operations office.”  (China.)  (Information from Gmasher: https://www.fold3.com/profile/Gmasher)

Reference

Rust, Kenn C. and Muth, Stephen, Fourteenth Air Force Story, Historical Aviation Album, Temple City, Ca., 1977

Damned to Glory, by Colonel Robert L Scott, Jr. – 1944 (Chapter: “Desert Rats”) [Lloyd Howe]

This illustration, for the chapter “Desert Rats”, illustrates the “Cape Bon Massacre” of April 22, 1943, when a force of Royal Air Force and South African Air Force Kittyhawk fighters shot down 14 Me 323 transports of Kampfgruppe zbV [“zur besonderen Verwendung” – “For Special Use”] 323.

As described by Colonel Scott…

The Warhawks of the 57th had taken a terrible toll from the enemy that day.  [April 18, 1943]  Intelligence figures showed that some fifty-eight transports and sixteen Messerschmitts had been destroyed, in addition to the three Snappers which the Spitfires had shot down.

The next day was the first anniversary of the organization of one of the South African squadrons of the 7th Wing, and Col. Doug Loftus, the Wing Commander, decided to lead the patrol.  Shortly after dawn the Springbok lads ran into another Axis convoy and practically annihilated it.  Out of some twenty transports they destroyed fourteen, and again enemy carcasses were strewn on the sea and along the beaches of the Bay of Tunis.

But this day was only a prologue for the Safricans.  Three days later, they spotted what looked like a convoy of monstrous ships –  a formation of some thirty-one giant, six-engined, six-wheeled Messerschmitt-323s, and fifteen-plus fighters, over the same spot.  The ensuing battle – if you care to call it such, for it was nothing but wartime murder – offered an incredible sight.  The huge ships looked like so many defenseless birds.

The Spits, commanded by that legendary American figure, Lance Wade of Arizona, who had fought in the Battle of Britain, in the East African campaign, and in the Western Desert, took on the enemy fighters and Lance chalked up his twenty-first confirmed victory.  The Springbok pilots were led by Major Jack Parsonson of East London, South Africa.

This enemy aerial fleet had just that morning left its base in Sicily; they were winging their way toward Tunis when the British pilots jumped them.  When spotted they were near the coast, just about fifty feet above the water.  Parsonson immediately ordered a head-on attack to break up their tight formation.  The Allied pilots dove into their ranks, and within seconds five of the huge flying locomotives hit the sea in flames.

Then the Safricans went in from all sides and hunted them down like wolves until they had destroyed every one.  It was a terrible slaughter – the sky was filled with a welter of propellers as the lumbering transports went hurtling down into the sea.  Looking over the nose of his ship, Rosie DuToit saw hundreds of enemy soldiers spilling out of their planes into the water, struggling in vain to get away from the gunfire of the Kittyhawks.

It was just like shooting pigeons, only a bit easier.  The fight had been going on for about five minutes when DuToit heard someone call over the radio: “There are three of the blighters left.  Has anybody got any more ammunition?”

Someone had.

Meanwhile the Spit boys were busy with the fifteen-plus enemy fighters, and dogfights were going on up above.  But the fight seemed to have been knocked out of the Messerschmitts, and they fought half-heartedly.  This was a big day for a number of the Polish boys flying Spits – they went after the enemy fighters with vengeance; three of them accounted for two apiece out of the ten shot down.

As DuToit and his fellow-pilots left the scene, all they could see was great patches of burning oil, and hundreds of Nazi soldiers struggling in the water.  By the flame that surrounded the wrecks the boys could tell that the transports had been loaded with gasoline; some of them might also have been carrying light tanks and other armor to reinforce Von Arnim’s ground forces.  With the transports had gone down some 60,000 gallons of badly needed gasoline – all within a few miles of the Axis panzers on the Tunisian wedge.

By coincidence, the Spitfires of No. 1 Squadron were over the nearby coastal city of Hergla at 7:55 a.m., waiting to escort Warhawks of the American 79th Fighter Group.  But the Americans were late that morning, and when the similar-looking Kittyhawks flew by, the Spitfire pilots mistook their identity and joined them as escort instead.

Off Cape Bon there was a slight mist over a perfectly calm Mediterranean.  At 8:30 a.m. about 10 miles out, a Spitfire pilot beheld a remarkable sight: 15 giant Me-323s flying in V formations made up of 11 in front with a smaller V of five tucked behind, like a chevron.  They were losing altitude rapidly, preparing for a landing on the peninsula.

Somehow the Kittyhawks missed the transports at first, so the Spitfires made a fast diving attack that downed two Me-323s.  Then, with No. 2 Squadron’s Kittyhawks joining the Spitfires to fend off a dozen Messerschmitt Me-109 and Focke-Wulf FW-190 escorts, the Kittyhawks of Nos. 4 and 5 Squadrons came around to take their turn at the transports.

I first ordered a head-on attack to break up their tight formation, and at once five of them crashed into the sea, recalled Major John E. Parsonson, leader of No. 5 Squadron.  Then we went in from all sides and hunted them till we had shot them to bits.  Amplifying on that last part, Parsonson said, we hunted them like wolves.

Since many of the Me-323s were carrying fuel, the South Africans found it frighteningly easy to set them ablaze.  One good machine-gun burst was usually all it took to set fire to the wing fuel tanks of one of the transport’s six engines, after which the flames inevitably spread to the cargo of metal drums.  Whole burning planes plunged nose-first into the sea, making enormous expanding ripples on the calm surface.  One Me-323, catching a full blast from a Kittyhawk at a 250-yard range, simply disintegrated in midair in a blinding flash.  Still others broke in half at the wing, and the two pieces spun crazily down.

The transports that were carrying troops were harder targets, and the South Africans expended a great deal of ammunition bringing them down.  Lieutenant Britten recalled that when he slew his giant it didn’t catch fire all that easily.  But when they finally did go down, scores of troops would tumble out into the water, trying to escape.

By 8:50 a.m. the massacre of the giants was over.  In that short 20 minutes, 14 of the 16 Me-323s had been destroyed.  The Germans lost 119 airmen; only 19 crew members were rescued from the waters off Tunis.  And during the encounter, Nos. 1 and 2 squadrons contributed to shooting down six of the escorting fighters, so Nos. 4 and 5 squadrons finished off the transports almost undisturbed.

It was only afterward that a few 109s and Fw-190s found their way down to our level, Britten recalled, and I clearly remember doing a head-on attack with an Fw-190.  Fortunately for both of us neither of us was able to get our guns on to each other, but the Fw-190 passed so close above that I heard his engine.

For the price of one fighter lost in action on April 22, the South African Air Force had achieved a decisive victory in the battle over supplies.  A few days later, one of the surviving Gigants was destroyed in an Allied strafing attack on Tunis, leaving only one Me-323 to return to Trapani airfield.  Kesselring was aghast when he learned what happened to his Me-323s.  He was forced to stop all daylight air convoys immediately and to switch to a smaller number of night flights.  Even those convoys, however, were subject to attack from night fighters based at Malta.

Further information about the “Cape Bon Massacre” can be found at History.net and WW2Aircraft.net, while Colonel Rosy du Toit’s obituary (he died in April, 2009) can be found at the Telegraph

Reference

Green, William, The Warplanes of the Third Reich, Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1972

Damned to Glory, by Colonel Robert L Scott, Jr. – 1944 [Lloyd Howe]

Though primarily known for his 1943 book God Is My Co-Pilot, Colonel Robert Lee Scott, Jr., was the author of some twelve other works, the central themes of which were his experience as an Army Air Force fighter pilot (which included command of the 23rd Fighter Group), and, military aviation and flying “in general”. 

Scott’s second book, Damned to Glory, was published by Blue Ribbon Books in 1943.  Probably inspired by a central aspect of his experiences in China – flying the Curtiss Warhawk fighter plane – the book is a literary paean to the P-40:  The aircraft is presented as a symbol and embodiment of American technology, industry, and democracy, through accounts of the plane’s use by the air forces of the United States and its Allies (Royal Air Force, South African Air Force, and the Soviet Air Force).  The book’s chapters are thematically arranged, each covering use of the Warhawk in a specific theater of war, or, by a specific military air force, with some of the chapters (you’ll see in three following posts) being introduced by a brief poem, likely of Scott’s authorship. 

Strikingly, given that the book was published in the midst of WW II, the dust jacket clearly – and I believe intentionally – shows a damaged P-40, its pilot dead or mortally wounded, as the aircraft enters an uncontrolled dive while under the guise of other pilots.  Perhaps this depiction fits the book’s very title: Damned – to Glory.  Perhaps – this will remain conjecture – Colonel Scott and Blue Ribbon Books wanted to visually convey the message that despite the (by then) reasonable confidence in an eventual Allied victory, that victory would not arrive without sacrifice and cost. 

Particularly notable are Lloyd Howe’s interior illustrations.  One per chapter, reproduced in black and white, perhaps the original works were done in water colors, or, were pencil and / or charcoal sketches. 

While these illustrations are not accurate in terms of dimensions and proportions of aircraft (either Allied or Axis), they solidly convey a sense of action and location, and are stylistically similar to the “box art” of plastic model kits – ahhh, remember Airfix, Aurora, Monogram (my favorite), and Revell? – of the 1950s through the 60s. 

It’d been my intention to present scans of each image in Damned to Glory through a succession of posts, but – (!) –  my copy of the book is too fragile to scan each of these illustrations without damaging the spine.  So, while only three interior images are presented in the following posts, these images are representative of Lloyd Howe’s artistic style.  Each image is accompanied by text from its relevant chapter. 

Click ahead, and enjoy. 

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A P-40 “sharkmouth” emblem is embosed upon the front cover…

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…while here is Scott’s introduction…

Ghost Ship

WHILE the thunder of her sixteen hundred horses shook the earth, she stood quivering with anticipation, her lines as graceful as those of any living thing.  She was poised for action.  The pilot who caressed her controls could feel under his hand the throbbing pulse of her life as the mighty Allison in her vitals roared its defiance.  From the pointed nose of the spinner, back along her streamlined breast, she was a thing of beauty.  Small as she looked to the casual observer, the pilot knew that there was tremendous power enclosed within her delicate skin.

Man had labored for years over drafting-boards to work out her design, that she might be ready when war should come to threaten his way of life.  Man had formed with loving care the engine which was her heart, the wings which were her means of sustentation, the driving prop which was her means of motion through space.  Then man, now become her creator, had trained himself again as a specialist, that he might become her pilot and thus become her very soul.

She drank her food from great tanks of high octane gasoline which had the potentiality of an explosive.  And within her slender wings, that seemed hardly large enough to support her weight, were enclosed six fifty-caliber guns, which, when discharged at their rated normal of over six thousand rounds per minute, gave her the fire-power of one entire infantry battalion.  Underneath these slender wings she could also carry nearly a ton of deadly bombs, which could blast a capital ship from the seas or deliver a city to destruction.  From her twelve beautifully flared nostrils, she exhaled thousands of staccato explosions per minute, and her breath, hot with the passion of battle, pushed her to greater speed by the jet effect produced.  When master pilots rode her into combat at high speed, the tips of her laminar-flow wings would sweat a gauze-like vapor which became a frozen mist behind this rocketing projectile.

Her function in life, the prime reason for her existence, was to carry her guns into range of a hostile bomber, hurtle it from the skies, and by this same method destroy all who came out to oppose her own bombers.  It was her destiny to die, if need be, in gallant battle, that her bomber convoy might go on with its terrible cargo of death to wreck the industry of the enemy.  In case she must carry the bombs herself, after their delivery she must become a fighter again, ready to use her guns and sting the enemy with death.

Her every feature had a strangely feminine beauty, an arrogant grace like that of some high-born vestal who, by her very place in life, knows her own destiny.  Standing there atremble, she seemed like some aristocratic priestess who, though selected’ to die, would know how to make her sacrifice worth while.

She was an American fighter plane, the ten thousandth of her line.  Constructed from elements which had come from every part of the globe, she was the creation of American minds, of skillful American hands – more than that you could not ask.  Pilots called her “Warhawk,” and the Army charts spoke of her as P-40.  Friends called her tender things that were sacred to them; her enemies, Jap and Hun, called her terrible names that meant tough, strong, fast, wicked and dirty.  The pilot who flew her, whether he was an American, a Russian, a South African, or any other of the Allied Nations – for they all flew her – became her animating spirit.

These pilots, and they are legion, have fought the enemy with her on every front in this war.  They are her judges; throughout this story they will bear witness that those ten thousand P-40s have fought a glorious fight.  The materials which made her were gathered from the many countries of the earth, and now, on battle scenes around the world, they have been returned as debris and the rusting dust of war.  Dust shall return to dust.  But by actual statistics, for every one of these Warhawks destroyed in battle, thirteen and one-half enemy planes have paid the penalty.  With no disparagement of other American planes, this gallant, global ship must be considered one of the greatest American fighter planes.  She was in production when the trial of war came and other fighter ships were merely on the plotting boards.  Her test was made in battle.

Now when faster and higher-climbing fighters are taking over, she merely salutes them, as they go climbing into the very heavens beyond the stratosphere with the knowledge she helped to teach them.  If she were human, which she very nearly is, she would have tremendous stories to tell of her fighting days and of her continuing battles, for P-40’s are still roaming the skies of nearly every battlefront.

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…while the rear dust jacket has an excellent image of Colonel Scott seated in a P-40N.

 
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Here’s a better view of Scott’s portrait.  (Notice the absence of a gunsight.)

Elusive Horizons, by Keith C. Schuyler – 1969 [Harry Schaare] (Revised content – June, 2018)

elusive-horizons-keith-c-schuyler-1969-harry-schaare_edited-2


The author:  Keith C. Schuyler, Sr. at his typewriter, in an image (UPL 6809) from the American Air Museum in Britain.  Though undated, given the design of the telephone and manual (!) typewriter, and pack of Camel cigarettes (how refreshingly politically incorrect!) the picture presumably dates from the 1940s.  Perhaps Mr. Schuyler is seen typing the very manuscript which is the feature of this blog post?

Keith Schuyler, Sr., born in 1919, passed away at the age of 89 in November of 2008, and is buried – alongside his wife, Eloise Jean (Helt) Schuyler – at the Elan Memorial Cemetery in the east-central Pennsylvania town of Lime Ridge, his simple and unadorned tombstone belying the profundity of his wartime experiences.  Mrs. Schuyler’s biography – she had a very busy and full life – can be found here

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We hadn’t had a piece of flak.
I was straining to keep from peeling away from my element.
The mission was over.
Still we continued in a straight line,
the same heading on which we had bombed.  Then it came.
At first the flak was off to our left,
big black mushrooms that indicated at least 128-mm guns.
At the first bust, our lead ship finally began his bank to the right.
But it was too late.
By the time the movement had been relayed to me
and I whipped along behind the spear of bombers,
the ground gunners had us bracketed.
The big bursts were right among us.
And, they followed us even as we crossed the coast.
Then we were almost out if it.
Maybe it was a desperation try,
because the flak was drifting toward the rear of the formation.
Maybe it was the last volley of four.  But – it was there!

Even as I watched the element lead directly ahead of me,
instinctively holding close formation although our bombs were long gone,
minutes behind us, it happened!
He caught a direct hit just starboard of the number three engine.
The wing flipped up as though on a hinge,
and the hinge was a bolt of orange-red flame and black smoke.
The extra lift of the good wing threw the bomber into a right snap roll
before the pilot had a chance to catch it.
And from the moving picture screen of my windshield,
the Liberator twisted down out of sight.
Instinctively I ducked aside as debris from the doomed one
crashed into my center windshield and shattered the bulletproof glass.

“He’s spinning, still spinning,”
I heard as from a distance over my interphones.
The airplane was as good as dead, and now it had no personality.
My crewman spoke of her pilot.  Now it was “he” spinning.
And he was a crew of ten men whirling
like the burning winglet of a maple seed.
Human flesh was being smashed by centrifugal force
against the metal guts of the dying one
as her crew tried to scramble for the exits.
Then came the inevitable “There she goes; blew all to hell!”

Use of “she” exonerated the pilot of any part in this sordid happening
as again, in this desperate instant when she gave up in a ball of flame,
the Liberator had her last identity.
We were well out over the water when it happened,
and any who got out would … my thoughts were cut off by the interphone:
“No chutes.”

Ahead, the wingmen of the fallen bomber held their positions.
There was only a piece of empty sky ahead of and between them
where moments before the leader of their element
had marked trail for us.  I couldn’t stand that empty sky,
and I forced the reluctant Wasp Nest into the blank hole.
Still the question burned into my brain, “Why didn’t he turn?”
It came out later that the lead ship
wanted to get good pictures of the bomb drop.
I hope the pictures were good.

The kid who went down was on his 24th.

**********

From Missing Air Crew Report 4257: “Aircraft No. 467 was observed to receive a direct hit by flak between #3 and #4 engines.  The right wing fell off and the aircraft tipped on its left wing and started down in a tight spiral.  It became enveloped in flames and exploded.  No parachutes were seen.”

**********

From 44th Bomb Group Roll of Honour and Casualties:

Date: 27 April 1944
Target: Moyenneville, France
Squadron: 67th Bomb Squadron
Aircraft: B-24J Liberator 41-29467

This day was the first of the double-header days for the Group, with two separate missions being flown.  One plane was lost on the first mission due to the moderate to intense, accurate flak, which hit Lt. Clarey’s aircraft.

Crew

Pilot: CLAREY, HOWARD A. Jr., lst Lt.; Yardley, PA – KIA

Co-Pilot: RHODES, CARL E., 1st Lt.; Birmingham, AL – KIA

Navigator: FORREST, GEORGE W., 2nd Lt.; Upper Darby, PA – KIA

Bombardier: HINKLE, GLENN E., 2nd Lt.; Burlingame, CA – KIA

Flight Engineer: SHIRLEY, RAYMOND, S/Sgt.; Lexington, KY – Prisoner of War

Radio Operator: CHAGNON, PAUL L., S/Sgt.; Salem, MA – Prisoner of War

Gunner (Nose Turret) LYTLE, LESLIE L., Sgt.; Portland, OR – KIA

Gunner (Right Waist) RIEGER, MARTIN A., S/Sgt.; New York, NY – KIA

Gunner (Left Waist) PHILLIPS, ALLEN W., S/Sgt.; Richmond Hill, NY – KIA

Gunner (Tail Turret) YOUSE, CHARLES M., Sgt.; Sunbury, PA – KIA

Radio operator Paul Chagnon was the first man to escape from the falling aircraft, followed by the engineer, Sgt. Raymond Shirley.  The pilot, Lt. Howard A. Clarey, Jr. also managed to free himself from the doomed ship but his parachute did not open, or did not have time to open.  It could have been that he was knocked out by the explosion and never regained consciousness, but the two men who survived to become POWs did not know for sure.

This was Lt. Clarey’s 28th mission, having flown all previous missions as a co-pilot for Lt. McCormick.  This was his first mission with a new crew, which was on its fifth mission.

In a letter dated December 4, 1992, Ray Shirley wrote: “At briefing that morning we had been told that there was one battery of four guns at the target.  We were on the bomb run.  Paul Chagnon, radio operator, was on the catwalk holding the bomb bay doors open, I was in the top turret.  Immediately after dropping our bombs, we took a direct hit just outboard of #3 engine and lost the wing from there out.  I saw it start spinning like a seed pod falling from a tree in the fall season.

“I was thrown forward in the turret as the aircraft started spinning to the right and I started coming out of the turret during which I saw Chagnon bailing out from the catwalk with my chest chute.  Someone pulled the plane out briefly and then we started spinning again to the left.  I managed to get Chagnon’s chute from his position, got it on and went to the catwalk to bail out.

When I bailed out, Lt. Clarey was on the catwalk to bail out when I left the ship.  I finally found the ripcord and started my descent slipping the chute on the way down and ending up with a badly sprained right ankle upon landing.  I took up bowling after the war to strengthen it up.

“After getting to the ground, Chagnon came to help me and French civilians were trying to help us.  They carried our chutes off and, of course, were speaking French.  Chagnon had been born in Canada and had been brought up on French until they moved to the U.S. when he was six or seven years old.  But that day he didn’t remember one word of French so the civilian efforts were of no avail.  Anyway, Chagnon was helping me.  Then the French abandoned us as the German military began to arrive at the scene.

“Chagnon and I approached a barn, which we hoped to get into and hide.  As we rounded one corner of the barn, the Germans came around the barn corner at the opposite end with their little ‘burp guns’ and that was it.  They put us into a small truck, the bed portion had a cover on it, and inside the truck was Lt. Clarey’s body.  His chute had failed to open.  We saw no other bodies other than that of Lt. Clarey.

“The Germans took us to a building with an underground bunker where we stayed one or two nights, then through Paris to Dulag Luft and from there to Stalag Luft VI via the 40 or eight rail cars.  We were subsequently evacuated from Luft VI to Luft IV via that damned freighter down the Baltic.  From IV, I was shipped to Luft I, again on a 40 or eight-rail car and Chagnon wound up on one of those forced marches as the Germans fled from the approaching Russians.  The Germans abandoned us at Luft I just a few hours before the Russians arrived.  We were eventually evacuated to Camp Lucky Strike in France.”

schuyler-keith-c-crew-davis-jay-l-f-2-l-1-captionPhotograph of crew from 1992 hardcover edition of Elusive Horizons

**********

“…over Holland or very close to it,” Rauscher had said.
The long-defeated Dutch were still our allies.
A B-24 Liberator could cause a lot of damage when it hit.
I started a 180-degree turn.  Let her blow in Germany!

I took a quick glance back through the fuselage.  It was empty.
It was the emptiest airplane I had ever seen!
In that brief second, I felt as lonely as I had ever felt in my life.
I flicked on the aileron switch of the automatic pilot,
always set for emergency.
As I rose hurriedly from my seat, I felt something grabbing at my waist.
It was the cord to my heated suit.
Carefully I reached back and unplugged it so that the cord wouldn’t break.
Then I was on the catwalk of the bomb bays, sat down,
to roll out, forward into the clouds.
The wind swept my legs back.
I gathered my feet under me on the catwalk
and dived headfirst through the opening.

As I tumbled below and away from our airplane,
I had the sensation we once had as kids
when we would dive under a high waterfall to get to the recess behind it.
Then I extended my arms, as I had been taught,
to get into correct forward position before opening my chute.
I was in no immediate hurry.
I had told the crew to delay their chute for a number of reasons.
The Kraut was still hunting for us,
and he might foul a chute accidentally in the clouds.
Or, as some had been in the habit of doing,
he might gun the men in their chutes.
The less time we hung in the sky,
the less time the Germans would have to get to our landing site.
And we could spare a moment or two to slow down
to the terminal velocity of a falling human body
of about 120 miles per hour. 

I almost waited too long.
When in good position,
I grabbed the ring on the harness of my back pack,
pulled, and felt the snap.
I braced for the shock, but nothing happened.
I looked at my harness.
The cable was still trailing from its sheath!
When I pulled again, the cable came free.  I clung to the ring.
Somewhere I had heard that a good jumper does not lose his ring.
I wondered why I couldn’t see or hear our airplane.

Years later,
Renfro said he said it blow all to hell as he was coming down in his chute.
The 190 did come in on Schow.  Hanging helpless, Schow just waved.
The German waved back.  He had his kill – chalk up one more B-24.

Strung out behind me were the other parachutes,
some still higher than mine.
I reached for my leg straps,
to free them so that I could take off when I hit.
But the ground was coming at me.
I braced with bent knees, hit, and somersaulted in approved fashion.
Military chutes let you down hard.  But I was okay.
Quickly I gathered my parachute
and tried to hit it from possible spotting planes.

Of to my left about a hundred yards was a farmhouse,
and when the German woman on the porch saw me look her way,
she went inside.

The sun was now shining brightly.  It was about 1 P.M.
I squinted toward the western horizon.
There were bombers still in view sailing serenely into the west.  B-17s.
For an instant, I felt lonely.  I thought of home.
They would worry when they got the word.

Then I suddenly realized that I was alive and well.
I felt ridiculously happy.
Like the night I ran down the hospital steps
away from all that I loved most,
I felt a serenity completely at odds with my situation.

 

I had crossed another horizon.

schuyler-keith-c-crew-davis-jay-l-f-4-r-captionPhotograph of crew from 1992 hardcover edition of Elusive Horizons

**********

From Missing Air Crew Report 4464: At 14:00 hours A/C 279 (“I”) was observed straggling, low and to the right of the formation in the vicinity of 52 40 N, 05 18 E.  #2 engine was feathered but apparently under control.

**********

From 44th Bomb Group Roll of Honour and Casualties:

Date: April 29, 1944
Target: Berlin, Germany
Squadron: 67th Bomb Squadron
Aircraft: B-24H Liberator 42-100279, “Tuffy

Specific target was the underground railway in the heart of Berlin.  Our formation of 21 aircraft encountered moderate to intense flak and from 30 to 50 enemy aircraft sustaining their attacks from Berlin back to Holland, most of this time unescorted.  Three of our aircraft did not return.

Crew (All survived as Prisoners of War)

Pilot: SCHUYLER, KEITH C., 2nd Lt.; Berwick, PA
Co-Pilot: EMERSON, JOHN F., 2nd Lt.; Santa Monica, CA
Navigator: RAUSCHER, DALE E., 2nd Lt.; Goodland, KS
Bombardier: DAVIS, JAY LARRY, 2nd Lt.; Cleveland, OH
Flight Engineer: SANDERS, WILLIAM L., S/Sgt.; Karnak, IL
Radio Operator: ROWLAND, LEONARD A., S/Sgt.; Portland, OR
Gunner (Ball Turret) REICHERT, WALTER E., Sgt.; Farragut, ID
Gunner (Right Waist) COX, GEORGE G., Sgt.; Louisa, KY
Gunner (Left Waist) RENFRO, GEORGE N., Sgt.; Handley, TX
Gunner (Tail Turret) SCHOW, HARRY J., Sgt.; Austin, MN

2nd Lt. Schuyler was the pilot of TUFFY.  His navigator, Dale E. Rauscher relates his experiences, “Our aircraft was under control as we dropped behind the formation.  We had been badly damaged by flak and we were unable to keep up with the formation. We were doing okay until about ten or twelve FW 190s spotted us and came in at us head-on.  Their first pass hit us pretty badly, although no one was killed or wounded.

“There was cloud cover at about 5,000 feet, so Schuyler put the nose down and we headed for the clouds.  I think only one enemy aircraft followed us, and he kept coming in on us each time we came out of cloud cover.  We had iced up and had to come out of the clouds to try to get rid of a little ice buildup. We played hide and seek in the clouds for awhile, but finally ran out of clouds.

“Our gun stations were out of ammunition, fuel tanks had been hit and we had two fires in the tail section, so we were told to bail out.  We had about fifteen minutes of fuel left when we finally abandoned ship.  As we had been flying all over the sky and in every direction while trying to shake off those fighters, I was not positive where we were, but we were about forty or fifty miles east of the Zuider Zee.  We bailed out safely and were all captured a short time later.”

The plane crashed at 1400 hours, 10 miles east of Holland at Tilloy – Floriville, County of Meppen.

Lt. Keith C. Schuyler, pilot, has written a book of his wartime experiences titled “Elusive Horizons” and gave permission to include some of his account of that day.  “Berlin was always a rough one.  This was a symbol of Germany’s might.  There were still plenty of German fliers willing to die for Berlin for ideological reasons.  There were plenty more who had lost their grasp on symbols but flew and fought us in exquisite machines that were manufactured out of the best parts available.

“We were told that we could expect heavy fighter opposition.  The Luftwaffe had been unusually quiet for the past week, and we expected plenty of trouble today.  ‘You will have fighter cover much of the way, but you know they can’t stick around long,’ we were told.

“Some fighters were overhead, friendly fellows cutting contrails back and forth in a protective web that made you feel good.  Then Larry Davis, bombardier, cut in on the interphone, ‘Fighters!  A whole swarm of them!’  I didn’t see them at once.  Larry pinpointed them, “Straight ahead, low at twelve o’clock!’

“Then I saw them … and took a deep breath.  Coming up at us like a swarm of bees was a literal swarm of at least forty German fighters.  And they were headed directly at our formation!  Like specks at first, in almost an instant they materialized into wings and engines.

“Then there was a hellish roar as everything became a confusion of sound and motion.  Like entering a tunnel with the windows open on a train – dust, noise, and debris became indistinguishable.  Right over my windshield a German fighter came apart in a glimpse of flame and junk.  That was Larry’s.

“A B-24 that had been lagging at seven o’clock, drew in close at five o’clock just as a German came through.  The fighter smashed head on into the big one right at the nose turret and both planes exploded in a ball of flame.  Then it was over.  For us.

“Somehow, after you have dropped your bombs, you get the feeling that everything is all right.  If your airplane is working as it should, it becomes more a matter of whether you have enough fuel for the trip back.  At least that is the feeling you have. But deep down inside you know it is not over.  This is not a game.  They want to punish you for what you did if they can.  So they try.

“Somehow our lead plane took us over Brandenburg on the way out, so the Germans would now get another crack at us with their flak guns.  Although it was heavy, we seemed to be getting by without incident.  Then I noticed four bursts off our left wing, maybe a hundred yards out, and just below our level.  Then four more, closer.  Fascinated, I watched as four more burst just ahead of and below our left wing, possibly 30 yards away.  I didn’t see the next bursts – but I heard them.  And our ship shook to the concussions.  Immediately, #2 prop ran away.  The torque, as the propeller screamed up to over 3,000 rpm, dragged at our wing, and I leaned into the rudder, then hit the feathering button.  We were hurt again – badly.

“A hole in #2 cowling gave visual evidence that we had caught plenty from the last volley of flak, the manifold pressure on #4 was down badly.  The supercharger had probably been knocked out.  Although the engine was running smoothly, it would not do much more that carry its own weight at over 20,000 feet.

“Normally, we wouldn’t have too much to worry about, but we were still a long way from home.  The disruption in power had dropped us back behind the formation and there was no chance of catching up.  I personally called the lead ship.  ‘Red leader, we’ve got some problems back here.  Can you slow down a little?’

‘We’ll try,’ the answer came back, ‘but we can’t cut it back much.’

“But it soon became evident that we couldn’t keep up.  We kept dropping back – slowly, inexorably … If we were hit in the wings as much as I feared, there was a good chance that we would be losing fuel from the wing tanks.  I called Sanders, our engineer, who climbed down out of his turret to check the gas supply.  His report confirmed my suspicions.  There was a serious imbalance in the gasoline tanks to indicate that we were losing some somewhere.  I asked Rauscher, navigator, for our estimated time of arrival in England and his fast mental calculations convinced me that we were not going to make it home.  We’d be lucky to stretch our glide to make the North Sea.  But I kept this news away from the crew.

“Again it was Larry who alerted us to fighters, ‘Off to the left.  They are hitting the group off to the left.’  There were eight of them!  And had they elected to come at us singly, subsequent events might have been different.  But they came straight on, strung out wing to wing, like a shallow string of beads.  FW 190 they were!  And I had only an instant to make a decision of how to deal with them.

“Get ready, I called.  I, too, got ready.  I didn’t make my move until I saw the leading edges of the FW’s start to smoke and yellow balls begin to pop around out wings.  Then I dove straight for the middle of the string of beads!  Either they would get out of the way or we would take a couple of them with us.  They scattered!

“Deliberately, I held the nose of the bomber as straight down as I could manage.  But she was trimmed for level flight and wanted to come out of the dive.  Jack Emerson saw my quivering arms and added his strength to keep the nose down.  I wanted those fighters to think they had us.  The strategy worked on five out of the six remaining, but that one was destined to give us more trouble than all of the others combined.  He did not believe us.

“I heard Jack shout under his oxygen mask and I felt the controls wrenched from me for an instant.  Jack had seen him coming from his side and he rolled the bomber into the attack.  Tracers cut by the left side of the fuselage as the tortured Lib responded.  We kept the pressure on the elevators and the nose toward the ground as I watched the air speed pass the red line.  Then it touched 290, which gave us somewhere around 400 mph at our altitude.  Below us I could see a solid cloud cover and it was our only refuge.  But in one of the frequent paradoxes of war, to gain them was also our undoing.  Our precious altitude, needed to get us somewhere near home, was being used up in a desperate effort to escape the more obvious danger from the fighters.”

The cat and mouse drama continued for a considerable time, including the added problem of icing, and then the clouds ran out.  The tail gunner, Schow, later told Lt. Schuyler, “The fighter came in at 5 o’clock.  I started firing but the tracers bounced right off him.  And then, when I was just pressing triggers, nothing was happening.  It was only an instant before I could find the extent of damage.  A 20 mm had hit us in the right elevator.  It blew my hydraulic unit onto the floor, clipped off my left gun, cut my mike cord about an inch and a half from my throat, and generally took my plexiglass.

“I tried to fire my right gun manually, but it, too, was ruined.  So I got out of the turret, went to the waist, where another fire had started, put on my chute and told Sgt. Cox to relay the news to the pilot, but Cox had already done that.”  Both men then attempted to extinguish the two fires, waist and turret.

“With only 50 gallons of fuel left, two fires and only one gun left firing, the time had come.  We were close to being over Holland – possibly 40 miles away from the Zuider Zee.  “I started a 180- degree turn.  Let her blow in Germany!  A quick glance back through the fuselage – it was empty.  Flicked on the aileron switch of the automatic pilot, always set for emergency, rose hurriedly from my seat; then onto the catwalk in the bomb bay.

“As I tumbled below and away from our airplane, I was determined to delay the opening of my parachute.  And I almost waited too long!  Later, I was told our ship blew all to hell.”  All ten men survived to become POWs.

References

Missing Air Crew Report 4257

Missing Air Crew Report 4464

44th Bomb Group Roll of Honour and Casualties, at http://www.8thairforce.com/44thbg/lundyroh.pdf

 

 

 

Incredible Victory, by Walter Lord – 1967 and 1976 [Unknown Artist, and, Robert McGuire]

1967 edition (art by unknown artist) features SBD Dauntless Dive-Bomber and Mitsubishi Zero Fighter

______________________________

1976 Edition (art by Robert McGuire) features TBD Devastator Torpedo Bomber

We Are of Clay, by 2 Lieut. Charles J. “Chick” Rainear – 1945 [James C. McKell]

we-are-of-clay-charles-j-rainear-0“They would not find me changed

from him they knew

Only more sure of all I thought was true.”

– Robert Frost

______________________________

We Are of Clay - Charles J Rainear 1_edited-1(Frontspiece)

My life is at variance with my thoughts

Unsubdued by nature, yet struggling to get free.

All the world is verily a stage to me

I cannot turn but look, and then I’m caught.

______________________________

We Are of Clay - Charles J Rainear 2L’Envoi

If you have courage, I have too,

And your strong mind I’ll lean upon

When the going’s rough –

You may be the many and I the few,

But faith in one’s enough.

The Lady Be Good – Mystery Bomber of World War Two, by Dennis E. McClendon – 1962 (1982) [Richard Groh]