Category: Military History

Russian Submarines in Arctic Waters, by Ivan Aleksandrovich Kolyshkin (Иван Александрович Колышкин) (Translated by David Skvirsky) – April, 1985 [Christopher Blossom]

Bantam Books’ 1985 edition of Russian Submarines in Arctic Waters is an English-language translation of Hero of the Soviet Union Rear Admiral Ivan Aleksandrovich Kolyshkin’s (Иван Александрович Колышкин) book Submarines in Arctic Waters, the latter originally published by Progress Publishers in Moscow, in 1966. 

Nautical artist Christopher Blossom’s cover depicts the submarine S-103 (“С-103“), which served in the Soviet Navy from mid-1939 to January of 1956.  The image of S-103 below, from Evgeniy Chirva’s website “The Great Patriotic War Undersea – About Submarines and Submariners 1941-1945” (Великая Отечественная под водой – О подлодках и подводниках 1941 – 1945 гг.), was perhaps the inspiration for Blossom’s art.  Certainly Blossom’s evocative composition parallels the perspective, angle of view, and rocky coastline in the wartime photo of the submarine.   

The cover of the original (English-language) publication of Admiral Kolyshkin’s book (from Ainsworth Books) is rather rudimentary, showing the Naval Ensign of the Soviet Navy adjacent to the Kola Peninsula, the location of the headquarters and bases of the former Soviet Union’s – and now the Russian Federation’s – Northern Fleet.  (At Severomorsk and around Murmansk, respectively.)   

Here’s a map view of the Kola Peninsula.  Note that the geography of the area as depicted on the cover of the 1966 edition doesn’t – hmmm – match the actual geography of the Kola Peninsula and its adjacent coastline.  Artistic simplicity?  Cold War era misinformation?  Or, both?

References

Biography of Hero of the Soviet Union Rear Admiral Ivan Aleksandrovich Kolyshkin  – at WarHeroes.ru

Submarines in Arctic Waters – at Ainsworth Books

Russian Navy – at Wikipedia

Soviet Navy – at Wikipedia

“The Great Patriotic War Undersea – About Submarines and Submariners 1941-1945” – Великая Отечественная под водой – О подлодках и подводниках 1941 – 1945 гг.

 

Damned to Glory, by Colonel Robert L Scott, Jr. – 1944 (Chapter: “Wool of the Russian Ram”) [Lloyd Howe]

This is the third post presenting an excerpt from Colonel Robert L. Scott’s 1944 Damned to Glory, which covers the service and use of the Curtiss P-40 fighter plane in the air forces of the United States and Allied nations during the Second World War. 

While my two prior posts about Damned to Glory pertained to the use of the P-40 in the United States Army Air Force (51st Fighter Group, in Assam Dragon) and South African Air Force (during the “Cape Bon Massacre” of April 22, 1943, in Desert Rats), “this” post moves to Europe: It presents Colonel Scott’s chapter about the use of the P-40 in the Soviet Air Force (“Военно-воздушные силы”, or Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily (a.k.a. VVS)) in a chapter entitled “Wool of the Russian Ram”.  Scott relates accounts of the experiences of Soviet pilots (Aleksey Stepanovich Khlobistov, Petr Andreevich Pilootov, and Stepan Grigorevich Ridniy), and also mentions Pyotr Afanasyevich Pokryshev, all of whom piloted the Curtis P-40 in battle against the Luftwaffe. 

The chapter’s very title is a double entendre, for it’s illustrated by Lloyd Howe’s depiction of a Soviet pilot committing a “taran” – a controlled aerial ramming – against a German Me-109 fighter.  The illustration is based on an account Aleksey Khlobistov’s destruction of an Me-109 on May 14, 1942, while defending the city of Murmansk.

“Wool of the Russian Ram” follows below…

I have flown beside the Russian
At the siege of Stalingrad,
It was there I met the Prussian,
Heard the Hun cry “Kamerad!”
Impotence and rage might rankle
When my guns would freeze and stall,
Till I learned to ram the Heinkel,
Slashed his tail—and watched him fall.

WOOL OF THE RUSSIAN RAM

THERE’S a story that’s just about as wild as the winds of the frozen steppes of Siberia, a story vouched for by Johnny Alison and Herbert Zempke [Hubert Zemke].  Incidentally, these two and the same Phil Cochran of the Red Scarf Guerrillas once lived together as bachelors at Langley Field, around 1936.  How in heaven’s name this came about no one will ever know; the only good that could have come from this consolidation of talent was that one telephone-number could reach the three most eligible bachelors on the post.  Even then they branched out as the individuals and leaders they really were, and the house must have been as distinctly Alison, Zempke and Cochranish as were their respective techniques in flying.

From the 8th Pursuit Squadron at Langley, which was the first real P-40 squadron in the Army Air Forces, Alison went with Harry Hopkins to Russia.  Zempke joined him at Archangel in September, 1941, while poor Phil sweated the war out as he trained fighter pilots in the States.

P-40’s arrived at Archangel aboard transports, and Alison and Zempke helped put them together under a hard-fighting Russian officer, Col. Boris Schmirnoff.  Boris had fought the Japs in Mongolia, the Germans and Italians in the Spanish Civil War, and had operated against the Finns.  In his black Russian boots, which were always shined like a mirror, he was an inspiration of aggressive nature even to such stalwarts as these two Americans.

Here at Archangel, Alison and Zempke checked out 120 Russian pilots in ten days.  They were amazed, back there in 1941, at the ability of the Russian pilots to absorb instruction, and at their keen interest to get to combat and kill the Hun.  As a pilot’s joke, though, Johnny said the Red pilots knew only two positions for a throttle – “closed” and “full open.”

These Russian flyers were destined for great things.  From the check-out school, the Russian P-40 pilots were sent to Rostov-on-Don, where they lived in railroad cars when they were not in the air against the Germans.  One of these pilots was Senior Lieutenant Stepan Grigorievich Ridny, aged twenty-three.  Ridny’s squadron was equipped entirely with P-40’s, and it fought on the Moscow front.  There, in the first week, his squadron shot down nineteen Huns and lost three men and three ships.

In that early period of the war Ridny was one of the best-known pilots in Russia; he had been in the Soviet Air Force since becoming seventeen years of age, and he had been decorated with the Order of Lenin and had been created “A Hero of the Soviet Union.”  Short and strongly built, as he sat in the cockpit of the Kittyhawk, with his light brown hair blowing over his face, he looked the part of a great Russian pilot.  Born near Kharkov, he had met a few Americans and liked them.

From Rostov, Ridny was transferred with his squadron to Moscow, for the defense of that city.  There in P-40’s they shot down 29 German planes in two weeks.

On the Leningrad front, Major Peter Adrievich Piliutov took a lone P-40 aloft for a check flight and was attacked by six Heinkels.  He shot down two of them and damaged a third.  At the start of the new year of 1942, Piliutov’s squadron of Tomahawks supported the Russian ground troops and helped them to recapture three hundred square miles of territory from the invaders.  During the five-day drive over the frozen wastes of this northern section near Finland, the Tomahawks functioned perfectly.  Four of them shot down eight Messerschmitts and routed others at low altitude under the clouds.  On missions of a certain type the P-40 was successfully used there on skis.

But the prize air exploit took place on the Murmansk front, above the jagged ice of the frozen sea, where the P-40 squadrons were used to keep the Nazi dive bombers from attacking munition and food convoys.  It was near there that one of the Soviet pilots, Alexei Khobistoff, showed himself a man of stern determination, and proved too that his ship could “take it.”

The first time he “rammed” an enemy ship, Khobistoff declared it was an accident.  He had been trailing a Heinkel bomber for about fifty miles as it darted in and out of the low clouds of the north country.  When finally he pressed his trigger for the kill, nothing happened – the guns were either frozen or jammed.  He drew away and made another attempt, with the same negative result.  In the meantime, the German gunners fired at him, and his ship was hit repeatedly.

Undaunted, Khobistoff approached the Heinkel through one of its few blind areas and tried once more to make his guns fire.  As he took his eyes from the larger ship to turn the hydraulic charging instruments again, he struck the Nazi plane with the wing and prop of his P-40.  There was a noise like the end of the world, sparks flew from the friction of the steel propeller cutting into the Heinkel’s wing – and then the Tomahawk skipped on over, and into the low clouds.  By the time Khobistoff had regained control of the fighter, the Heinkel had crashed.  The Russian flew home to his base, where the American fighter was patched up and again flown into combat.

Later this same Russian in a P-40 again found himself in a desperate position directly astern of a German bomber.  He drew closer and closer to the tail of the enemy ship, and by expert flying passed his prop into the fabric rudder of the Hun.  Once again the German crashed, and again Khobistoff returned to his base, where mechanics repaired the plane.

About a week later, as he flew top-cover out over the harbor to protect a convoy arriving from America, his squadron engaged many Messerschmitts.  In the hotly contested battle, Khobistoff shot down two Huns, but was in turn wounded, and his Tomahawk was set on fire.  I imagine that right about there any other man would have opened the hatch and jumped.  But not this Russian.  He turned the burning fighter and dove straight down on the tail of an Me-109.  As the whirling propeller of the P-40 made contact, the tail of the Hun flew into pieces – Khobistoff had rammed to destruction his third enemy aircraft.  Then he jumped clear of the burning Tomahawk.  As his ‘chute opened, he saw the Messerschmitt strike the muddy beach of the harbor, and his flaming P-40 streaking like an avenging devil right after it.

Alexei Khobistoff was in the hospital a few weeks, but here’s hoping somebody sent him another P-40 when he was released.

To substantiate these three collisions, two of which were intentional, there are official Soviet records.  Moreover, the Russian Air Force has published for its pilots a directive on “Ramming Procedure.”  In several instances during the siege of Stalingrad, there were other pilots who rammed German planes and not only escaped with their lives, but in some cases flew their damaged planes back to the home base.  One of these was Russia’s outstanding Ace, Major Alexandrevich Pokryshev (Pyotr Afanasyevich Pokryshev), who has fifty-nine German planes to his credit.

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Comments…

Herbert Zempke is almost certainly – well is certainly! – “Hubert Zemke”.  (Veritably: “Oops.”)

Stepan Grigorievich Ridny is Hero of the Soviet Union Stepan Grigorevich Ridniy (Степан Григорьевич Ридный).  Born in 1917, he was killed in action on February 17, 1942, while serving in the 126th Fighter Aviation Regiment.    

Peter Adrievich Piliutov is Hero of the Soviet Union Petr Andreevich Pilootov (Петр Андреевич Пилютов).  Born in 1906, he died in 1960.  

Alexei Khobistoff is – as alluded to above – Hero of the Soviet Union Aleksey Stepanovich Khlobistov (Алексей Степанович Хлобыстов).  Born in 1918, he was killed in action as a Guards Captain on December 13, 1943, while serving in the 20th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment (1st Composite Aviation Division, 7th Air Army).

Major Alexandrevich Pokryshev is twice Hero of the Soviet Union Pyotr Afanasyevich Pokryshev (Пётр Афана́сьевич Покры́шев).  Born in 1914, he attained 30 or 31 aerial victories, eventually commanding the 159th Fighter Aviation Regiment (275th Fighter Division, 13th Air Army).  He died in 1967.  

The painting below is a depiction of Major Pokryshev flying his P-40E (“white 50”, bearing stars indicating 15 aerial victories) during an attack against a pair of Heinkel He-111 bombers, during his service in the 154th Fighter Aviation Regiment.  The painting, entitled “Curtiss P-40 – One of many Lend-Lease P-40 used by the Soviets in WWII, claims a He 111 over the Eastern front“, is by aviation artist Darryl Legg.

An abundance of information exists about the tactic of aerial ramming as practiced by the Soviet Air Force in the Second World War.  Notable sites include Aeroram.Narod.RU, AirAces.Narod.RU, and TopWar.RU.  Valeriy Romanenko covers Soviet use of the P-40 in “The P-40 Fighter in Soviet Aviation” (“Истребители Р-40 в советской авиации”) in a very detailed 5-part series, commencing at AirPages.RU/US/P-40. 

Fire Mission, by William Mulvihill – 1957 [Unknown artist]

Suddenly he looked up and he was all alone. 
The men in front of him had melted away
as if some giant hand had swept them to the ground,
leaving him alone and vulnerable,
towering above them. 
But he was not alone:
as he struggled to get down to the slushy road
he saw Meringo falling sideways and someone running heavily for the woods. 
The terrible whirring of the shell beat into his ears,
shaking his brain,
paralyzing him. 
He hit the ground, tried to claw his way into it,
praying and cursing in the same breath. 
If someone got killed it would be him for he was slow and stupid –
a stupid, dumb jerk. 
He stopped breathing, this was his last instant on earth:
the shell would land directly on him,
the smooth, metal point splitting his backbone and then exploding. 
He sobbed for he was afraid. 
He wanted to live. 
He wanted to get up and go away to where shells never fell. 
It wasn’t right for him to die here,
to die on this stupid road in the goddam slush
with everybody else in Rear Echelon like the tank guys and Bannion
and the cannoneers and the civilians in France
and that fat, chicken-hearted T/5 back in England
who led them to the train when they got off the boat in Southampton. 
WHERE WAS THAT SONOFABITCH ANYWAY?

The shell exploded and he was deaf and blind and dying.
He never had a chance and it was so terribly sad and it served his mother right.
Then he opened his eyes and saw feet moving around him.
There was the taste of clay in his mouth
and the stench of the powder was so strong that it was hard to breathe.
One by one the other men got up,
brushing the flecks of mud from their clothes.
He quickly did the same.
No one had been hit. (pp. 73-73)

– William Mulvihill –

“FIRE MISSION is a magnificent and moving novel of men at war.  In the winter of 1944, the Allied armies were slugging it out with the Wermacht in the long drive to the Rhine.

“FIRE MISSION is the story of one American artillery battery: four 105 howitzers, and a hundred officers and men – and what happened to them in the last few weeks of a great battle.

“FIRE MISSION is no book of cowards and heroes, but of ordinary soldiers – men who have endured war and found satisfaction in their efficiency as a fighting unit, and pride in themselves as men.”

We Band of Brothers, by Ralph E. “Peppy” Blount – 1984 [Allain Hale]; Warpath Across the Pacific, by Lawrence J. Hickey – 1984 [Steve W. Ferguson]

While the Second World War air war over Europe – particularly that waged by the United States’ 8th and 15th Air Forces, and the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command – has generated an abundance of memoirs, biographies, historical works, and, works of fiction in the seven-odd decades since that conflict ended, others theaters of World War Two military aviation have resulted in relatively fewer literary works.  Perhaps this has been due to the sheer number of men and aircraft involved in military campaigns in the European Theater (at least in comparison to the Pacific and Asia); the precedence of the European Theater over Asia in terms of overall Allied and particularly American military strategy, and post-1945; the combined effect of both of these aspects of the war on cinematic and television entertainment, literature, popular culture, and publishing.

In cinematic terms, think of Daryl Zanuck’s 1949 film 12 O’clock High, itself inspired by and adapted from Bernie Lay, similarly-named 1948 novel, about the experiences of American airmen during the early phase of Eighth Air Force Operations in Europe, which itself inspired the similarly-named television series which ran on the ABC television network between 1964 and 1967.  I don’t believe that the Army Air Force’s other numbered Air Forces – the Fifth; the Seventh; the Tenth; the Eleventh; the Thirteenth; even the European-based Ninth and Twelfth – were ever the objects of such attention.  Not that it was not merited…

Still, accounts of the Pacific air war do exist, and are not really difficult to find.  One such work is Ralph E. “Peppy” Blount’s 1984 We Band of Brothers, recounting Blount’s experiences as B-25 Mitchell strafer / attack-bomber pilot in the 501st Bomb Squadron of the Fifth Air Force’s 345th “Air Apache” Bomb Group.  Not a purely straightforward chronological narrative of Blount’s experiences (though it is substantive in historical terms), the book accords notable attention to the reactions, feelings, and thoughts of Blount and his fellow 501st Bomb Squadron (and by extension, 345th Bomb Group airmen “in general”) airmen to the psychological stress of combat, and especially the loss of friends and comrades – of whom, given the duration and nature of the 345th’s war – there were very many.

The book’s cover, by Allain Hale, is shown below.

______________________________

From Peppy’s book, here’s a photo of his crew:

“My original crew that was formed at Columbia Army Air Base, Columbia, S.C.  This picture made in November, 1944.  From left to right (standing): R.E. Peppy Blount pilot; P.O. “Arky” Vaughn, navigator; Harold Warnick, engineer-gunner, and squatting in front, Henry J. Kolodziejski, armorer-gunner and Joseph Zuber, radio-gunner.  We were a B-25H crew which was the B-25 with the 75-millimeter cannon in the nose and no co-pilot.  By the time we got overseas, a couple of months later, they had done away with the B-25H and replaced it with the B-25J which had fourteen forward firing .50 caliber machine guns and a co-pilot.”

______________________________

Coincidentally (or, perhaps not-so-coincidentally?!) Blount’s book was published in 1984, coincident with the release of Lawrence J. Hickey’s monumental Warpath Across the Pacific – The Illustrated History of the 345th Bombardment Group During World War II.  Among its extensive photographic coverage of the airmen, aircraft, and combat missions of the Air Apaches, the book includes seven photographs pertaining to a mission by the 499th and 501st Bomb Squadrons to Saigon, French Indochina, on April 28, 1945, two of which – with transcribed caption – are shown below.

“The main target of the April 28, 1945, attack on Saigon, French Indochina, was this 500-ton freighter anchored in the river two miles east of the navy yard.  The top photo was taken from #199 as 1 Lt. Ralph E. “Peppy” Blount of the 501st pulled up sharply just after dropping his three delay-fused 500-pound bombs.  As shown below, two bombs were direct hits and a photo taker later from high altitude showed the ship over on its side in the water.  Strangely, the ship, although clearly sunk, does not appear in wartime Japanese ship-loss records.  The 499th and 501st Squadrons received Distinguished Unit Citations for this mission.  (John C. Hanna Collection)” 

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Warpath includes 53 color photographs of Air Apache B-25s and crewmen (from Kodachrome? – remember Kodachrome?!), and, 48 color profiles, as well as four paintings of Air Apache B-25s in combat – the profiles and paintings all by Steve W. Ferguson. 

One of the paintings, depicting Peppy Blount’s strike against the un-named freighter, is reproduced below.  It’s a superb piece of art, in terms of the use of color (the sky, transitioning from pale to darker blue going “upwards” is very realistic), getting the technical details of the B-25 “just right”, and visually depicting aspects of an anti-ship mission: the explosions of anti-aircraft fire, waterspouts from the surface of the Saigon River thrown up by shells aimed at the B-25, and the trails of tracer bullets from the B-25 and ship.  

Most notable is the perspective and orientation from which the action is being viewed. The overwhelming majority of illustrations of aircraft – particularly military aircraft; especially military aircraft in flight; specifically military aircraft in combat – are rather “static” in appearance, showing aircraft as viewed from head-on, at a frontal angle, or viewed as if from another aircraft flying a parallel course.  However, Ferguson’s painting shows B-25J #199 from a rear angle, as if the viewer is following the aircraft and being visually led into the image.  This is enhanced by the single 500 pound bomb that has just left the plane, and the aircraft’s bank to the left. 

______________________________

Peppy Blount’s B-25, damaged during the mission, is shown below.

“1 Lt. Ralph E. “Peppy” Blount, Jr. (second from right) and his crew looked over damaged to the 501st’s #199 after landing at Puerto Princesa, Palawan, from the Saigon mission.  The damage to the horizontal stabilizer was caused by a collision with the mast of a large sailboat on the Dong Nai River.  Blount was credited with inflicting fatal damaged to a large freighter which was sunk a few miles away in the Saigon River.  The crewmen were from left: T/Sgt. Joseph F. Zuber, radio-gunner; 1 Lt. Nat M. Kenny, Jr., navigator; Blount, pilot; and 2 Lt. Kenneth R. Cronin, co-pilot.  The engineer on the mission, T/Sgt. Harold E. Warnick, is not shown.  (John C. Hanna Collection)”

______________________________

As recounted in Warpath, the Saigon mission cost the 501st three B-25s and crews.  These men were:

B-25J 43-36173 (MACR 16178)
Pilot – 2 Lt. Vernon M. Townley, Jr.
Co-Pilot – F/O Hilbert E. Herbst
Bombardier / Navigator – 2 Lt. Robert L. Burnett
Flight Engineer / Gunner – Cpl. Harry Sabinash
Radio Operator / Gunner – Cpl. Seymour Schnier

B-25J 43-36020 – “Reina Del Pacifico” (MACR 16179)
Pilot – 2 Milton E. Esty
Co-Pilot – 2 Lt. Marlin E. Miller
Navigator – 1 Lt. Joseph M. Coyle
Flight Engineer / Gunner – Sgt. James L. Golightly
Radio Operator / Gunner –T/Sgt. Henry C. Wreden

B-25J 43-36041 – “Cactus Kitten” (MACR 16256)
Pilot – 2 Lt. Andrew J. Johnson
Co-Pilot – 2 Lt. Paul E. Langdon
Bombardier / Navigator – 2 Aubrey L. Stowell
Flight Engineer / Gunner – Sgt. Alfredo P. Parades
Radio Operator / Gunner – Cpl. Lester F. Williams

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Here is Steve Ferguson’s profile of un-nicknamed B-25J 43-36199 (#199).

From Warpath: “…this aircraft was a favorite of the irrepressible 1 Lt. Ralph E. “Peppy” Blount, who flew it on the April 28, 1945, raid on shipping at Saigon for which the Squadron received a Distinguished Unit Citation.  Blount sank the principal target, a 5,800 ton freighter, and although badly damaged by AA, was attacking a second ship when he collided with its mast, breaking it off.  He flew homeward for several miles with seven feet of it lodged in the horizontal stabilizer.  The plane made the 700 miles back to base despite severe damage to one nacelle and the tail.  …  The crew of #199 on that mission was: Blount, pilot; 2 Lt. Kenneth R. Cronin, co-pilot; 1 Lt. Nat M. Kinney, Jr., navigator; T/Sgt. Joseph F. Zuber, radio operator – gunner, and T/Sgt. Harold E. Warnick, tail gunner.”

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Artist Steve Ferguson’s biography, from the dust jacket of Warpath Across the Pacific.

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Finally, a closing passage, presenting Peppy Blount’s memory of a friend, 1 Lt. Melvin R. Bell. 

On February 20, 1945, Bell’s Mitchell (B-25J 44-29374; MACR 15334) was lost during the 345th’s mission to the marshaling yard at Kagi, Formosa, and along the western coast of the island.  Among a group of seven 501st B-25s that were attempting to attack Chosu Airdrome (about forty miles south of Kagi), the right engine of Bell’s B-25 was knocked out by anti-aircraft fire.  The 501st immediately left the target area and escorted Bell to an air-sea rescue point near North Island, where he ditched his B-25.  

But, only two of Bell’s five crewmen (T/Sgt., Glenn C. Allen, and S/Sgt. George A. Harvey) returned.  Bell, 2 Lt. Alvin G. McIver (copilot), 2 Lt. Robert L. Bacon (bombardier), and S/Sgt. Alphonse R. Ostachowicz (flight-enginner / gunner) did not survive the ditching. 

As told by Peppy Blount:    

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“Have you heard anything from Thatcher and Bell?” I asked immediately.

“Not a thing –
but the squadron radio is monitoring the channel
and the moment we know anything, it’ll be reported here.
Where did you hit today?”

“We came across the target in a northeast to southwest pass,”
as I pointed to a large, aerial photo of the Jap air base we had hit only three hours before. 
Following the debriefing I returned to my tent
and didn’t get the news about Bell until an hour later
when I met Thatcher coming from debriefing as I was going to chow.

“What happened to Bell?” I asked immediately
and the expression on Thatcher’s face told me the answer
without his having to speak a word.

“The Catalina Playmate got there in time, but it was no use,”
answered Thatcher. 
“Bell simply could not hold his altitude on one engine and finally had to ditch her. 
You know how rough that water was today and he went in pretty steep,
missed the top of the wave,
hit in the valley between two waves,
and that was it. 
They didn’t have a chance, with surface winds of thirty-five miles an hour. 
The ship nosed straight up,
the top turret came forward,
crushing the cockpit,
and the only survivors were the two men in the rear of the airplane,
the radio man and tail gunner.”

“Did he say anything else after I left?”

“You heard the last thing he said,” replied Thatcher,
“that it looked like this deal had turned to clabber! 
Sounded just like him, didn’t it?

“Yeah!  Just like him.”

I had lost my appetite. 
His last words had been a beau geste benediction to an inevitable,
even expected,
plight that each of us would be in tomorrow – the day after – or next week.

Later than evening,
one by one,
we straggled into Bell’s tent until it was full.
Each of us wanted it to appear as if we had wandered in,
but each of us knew that it was on purpose,
and out of respect for a dear friend.
Ike Baker had already gathered his personal things to be sent to his family;
the remaining items of clothing and toiletries had disappeared among his friends
almost as quickly as they had been displayed,
including a month’s supply of Brown Mule plug chewing tobacco.
I wouldn’t have been surprised to have heard him observe:
Here I’m not dead more’n a couple of hours
and already you‘ve picked me clean, like a flock of buzzards!
Only an empty, lonesome bunk with mosquito netting,
a folded air mattress,
and some make-shift shelves behind the bunk that more nearly resembled an apple crate,
gave moot evidence of the absence of our friend.
Although the seven or eight of us who “just happened” to show up by accident
after chow that evening sat on every extra stool,
and overflowed on to his other tentmate’s sacks –
out of conscious respect,
not one sat on Bell’s empty bunk.  (We Band of Brothers, pp. 257-258)

References

Hickey, Lawrence J., Warpath Across the Pacific – The Illustrated History of the 345th Bombardment Group During World War II, International Research and Publishing Corporation, Boulder, Co., 1984

Blount, Ralph E. Peppy, We Band of Brothers, Eakin Press, Austin, Tx., 1984

January, 2019

Five Down and Glory, by Gene Gurney – 1958 [Bob Blanchard]

Bob Blanchard’s art for Five Down and Glory depicts a P-38 Lightning fighter plane passing before the smoke trail of a fallen Japanese single-engine fighter.  But, a closer look reveals that his P-38 does not have the appearance of a typical P-38 fighter. 

Instead, the plane has a striking resemblance to the one-of-a-kind P-38E “Swordfish” (41-2048) Lightning, nicknamed “Nosey” because of its elongated central fuselage pod housing a second crew member.  “Nosey”, which test pilots observed to have better flying qualities than standard P-38s, was used to investigate different airfoil sections.  Its distinctive configuration is obvious in the image below, from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.   

Lockheed P-38E “Swordfish” Laminar Flow Wing Testbed. (U.S. Air Force photo)

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From the fabric and tubing biplanes of World War I, through the thunderous era of the Thunderbolts and Mustangs and Lightnings of World War II, to the silver-sleek jets knifing through the thin air seven miles above the Korean peninsula, FIVE DOWN AND GLORY presents the sweeping story of America’s ace fighter pilots.

In forty years of air war, less than one percent of all American fighters [sic] have become aces – yet these few men have accounted for thirty to forty percent of all enemy aircraft destroyed!  What is even more surprising, ninety-three percent of these aces are living today – their mortality rate being far below that of the average military pilot.

FIVE DOWN AND GLORY is not only an exciting, detailed record of the flaming air battles in which these men won glory but the only published compilation – from official sources – of the victories of every American fighter ace, for every war, every theater and every service in which aviation was a fighting part.”

Reference

Kinzey, Bert, P-38 Lightning in Detail and Scale – Part 1: XP-38 Through P-38H, Squadron / Signal Publications, Carrollton, Tx., 1998

Dirty Work, by Larry Brown – 1989 [Glennray Tutor]

“I was in a rifle company. 
Joined the marines when I was eighteen. 
I had to go. 
The army was fixing to draft me. 
Back when they had that lottery system, my birthday was number one. 
And hell, I’d already had my physical. 
I was 1-A. 
So I knew I was gone. 
The lady who ran the draft board in town called my mama and told her I had about two weeks to join something if I wanted to, because after that the army would get me. 
So I joined the marines. 
I figured they were the toughest thing going. 
My old man, he … he really resisted me going. 
Both of them did. 
It was getting worse and worse all the time. 
I guess you were over there before I was. 
He was in World War II. 
He stayed in for four years. 
Walked all the way across Europe with the infantry, was wounded once. 
He knew what it was like to have to fight with a rifle. 
He taught me how to shoot. 
We’d hunt squirrels with a .22. 
Shoot em in the head.
“He was in prison for a while. 
A long time ago. 
Twice.

“I was over there within six months. 
Did it smell like something dead the whole time you were over there? 
Same here. 
I thought I’d never get out of there alive. 
I couldn’t sleep for a long time. 
I couldn’t sleep at all without a rifle next to me. 
I was usually always the biggest so I usually always kept the M60. 
Twenty-six pounds. 
I loved that damned gun. 
Kept it clean. 
I could by God shoot it, too.”

– Larry Brown –

____________________

Larry Brown (Photo by Susie James)

Regeneration, by Pat Barker – 1991 (April, 1992) [Robert Clyde Anderson]

“Robert, if you had any real courage you wouldn’t acquiesce the way you do.”

Graves flushed with anger.
“I’m sorry you think that.
I should hate to think I’m a coward.
I believe in keeping my word.
You agreed to serve, Siegfried.
Nobody’s asking you to change your opinions,
or even to keep quiet about them,
but you agreed to serve,
and if you want the respect of the kind of people you’re trying to influence –
the Bobbies and the Tommies –
you’ve got to be seen to keep your word.
They won’t understand if you turn round in the middle of the war and say
“I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind.”
To them, that’s just bad form.
They’ll say you’re not behaving like a gentleman –
and that’s the worst thing they can say about anybody.”

– Pat Barker –