Category: Aviation

Battle of Britain: The Hardest Day, by Alfred Price – 1980 (1979) [Phillip Emms]

The cover art of the 1980 edition of Alfred Price’s The Hardest Day – covering the events of the Battle of Britain on August 18, 1940 – depicts an aerial battle from a vantage point highly unusual for aviation art:  Rather than viewing aircraft engaging one another in combat from a far vantage point, Phillip Emms shows an air battle from inside of an aircraft.  In this case, the battle is seen from the viewpoint of the bombardier of a Heinkel III bomber.  He’s firing a nose-mounted 7.9mm machine gun at attacking Hawker Hurricanes of Number 32 Squadron, with the English coastline in the distance. 

To present the reality of the day’s air battles, below, you can read about the experiences (and the unhappy fate, of one) of four RAF pilots mentioned in Price’s book, accompanied by their photographs.  The images of Hugo, Russell, and Wahl are from The Hardest Day, while Solomon’s portrait is from Winston G. Ramsey’s The Battle of Britain: Then and Now.

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Author Alfred Price’s biography, from the book jacket:  “As an air crew officer in the Royal Air Force for fifteen years, Alfred Price logged more than 4,000 flying hours in 40 different aircraft.  He specialized in electronic warfare, aircraft weapons, and air-fighting tactics.  He has written more than 14 books on aviation, including Instruments of Darkness, The Bomber in World War II, and Spitfire: A Documentary History, published by Scribners.”

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F/O Petrus Hendrik “Dutch” Hugo (Survived)
Hurricane I R4221

When Pilot Officer ‘Dutch’ Hugo of No 615 Squadron first glimpsed the Messerschmitt 109, it was already too late to do much about it.  With ‘A’ Flight he had been orbiting at 25,000 feet, nearly five miles, above Kenley waiting for the enemy to come to him.  The Germans did, with breathtaking suddenness, from out of the sun.  Seemingly appearing from nowhere the Messerschmitt curved in behind Sergeant Walley on the starboard side of the formation, there was a flash of tracer and his Hurricane went down in flames.  Hugo swung his aircraft round to engage the attacker but another Messerschmitt hit him first: ‘There was a blinding flash and a deafening explosion in the left side of the cockpit somewhere behind the instrument panel, my left leg received a numbing, sickening, blow and a sheet of high octane petrol shot back into the cockpit from the main tank.  My stricken Hurricane flicked over into a spin and must have been hit half a dozen times while doing so, as the sledgehammer cracks of cannon and machine-gun strikes went on for what seemed ages.’

Without conscious effort Hugo turned off the fuel and opened his throttle, to empty the carburettor and so decrease the risk of fire.  The cockpit was awash with petrol and his clothes were saturated with it: the slightest spark would have turned him into a human torch.  Finally the engine coughed and spluttered to a stop, the propeller slowed until it was just flicking over in the slipstream, he switched off the ignition and the immediate danger of fire was over.  Hugo pushed the stick forwards and eased on rudder to pull out of the spin.  He was just straightening out when there was a colossal bang behind him and the now-familiar sound of cannon strikes.  ‘I had the biggest fright of my life – I knew I was completely incapable of movement as a particularly vicious-looking Me 109 with a yellow nose snarled about twenty feet past my starboard wing, the venomous crackle of his Daimler Benz engine clearly audible.  Round he came for another attack, and although I did everything I could think of, gliding without power has its limitations and the next moment earth and sky seemed to explode into crimson flame as I received a most almighty blow on the side of the head.’

Hugo came to, feeling sick and shaken, to find his aircraft spinning down again.  Through a red haze he saw that he was now at 10,000 feet, so he had time to take stock of the situation.  His head was aching savagely and the right side of his face felt numb.  When he touched it, he found a jagged gash from the comer of his right jaw to his chin.  His microphone and oxygen mask had been torn off his helmet and were now draped over his right forearm; the microphone had a bullet hole through it.  The cockpit seemed to be filled with a fine red spray; it took Hugo some time to realise that the cause was blood running down his chest being whipped up by the wind whistling through the holes in the sides of his cabin.  He slid back the canopy and gasped his lungs full of clean air.

The next thing Hugo knew was that the Messerschmitt was curving round for yet another attack.  Enough was enough, he decided to bale out.  Hugo rolled the Hurricane on to its back and pulled out the harness locking pin but, instead of falling clear, to his consternation he fell only about twelve inches – sufficient to project his head, arms and shoulders into the blast of the slipstream, which promptly slammed him back against the rear of the cockpit.  Before the astonished pilot could decide what to do next the Hurricane solved the problem for him by pulling through a half loop.  With a thump Hugo fell back into the cockpit, puzzled but at least able to reach the controls again.

Then he discovered why he had developed such a firm attachment to his aircraft: during the rush to strap in for the scramble take-off, sitting on his parachute in the seat, he had inadvertently taken one of his leg straps round the lever which raised and lowered his seat.  Now his own fate was tightly bound up with that of his Hurricane.  The next minutes saw Hugo, as he later described, ‘as busy as a one armed one-man bandsman with a flea in his pants’, trying to avoid the attentions of his persistent foe, finding and doing up his seat straps in readiness for the inevitable crash landing, and seeking out a suitable field.  Finally he put down his battered Hurricane in a meadow near Orpington, and was picked up and rushed to hospital.

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F/Lt. Humphrey a’Beckett Russell – (Survived)
Hurricane I V7363

Nearly four miles above the exploding bombs Oberleutnant Ruediger Proske, piloting a Messerschmitt 110 of Destroyer Geschwader 26, dived down to head off a re-attack on the bombers by No 32 Squadron’s Hurricanes.

Squadron Leader Don MacDonell, leading the eight Spitfires of No 64 Squadron, had heard his controller, Anthony Norman, call ‘Bandits overhead!’ (as the low-flying Dorniers of the 9th Staffel swept over Kenley).  To MacDonell, orbiting at 20,000 feet, the call seemed a little strange: ‘Instinctively I looked up, but there was only the clear blue sky above me.  I thought “My God!  Where are they?”‘  Then he looked down and saw a commotion below, too far away from him to work out exactly what was happening.  ‘I gave a quick call: “Freema Squadron, Bandits below.  Tally Ho!”  Then down we went in a wide spiral at high speed, keeping a wary eye open for the inevitable German fighters.’

While MacDonell’s Spitfires were speeding down, the Messerschmitt 110s of the close escort had succeeded in getting between No 32 Squadron and the Dorniers.  So Flight Lieutenant ‘Humph’ Russell, 26, shifted his sight on to one of the twin-engined fighters wheeling in front of him.  He loosed off a 6-second burst and watched his incendiary rounds ‘walking’ along the fuselage of the enemy aircraft.  Several of the German rear gunners replied with accurate bursts, however, and the Hurricane was hit wounding Russell in the left arm and right leg.  Smoke began to fill the cockpit so he opened the hood, released his straps and leapt out.  Russell’s parachute opened normally but when he looked down he noticed that his leg was bleeding profusely.  In his right hand he still clenched the ripcord of the parachute and now he tried to use it as an improvised tourniquet.  It was useless: each time he knotted it, the stainless-steel wire simply unravelled itself.

In an air action events follow each other with great rapidity: almost everything described in this narrative, from the time the 9th Staffel had begun its attack on Kenley until now, had taken place within just five minutes: between 1.22 and 1.27 pm on that fateful Sunday afternoon.  The only events to continue outside this time span were the longer parachute drops: a man on a parachute falls at about 1,000 feet per minute and Russell, Gaunce, Lautersack and Beck had all baled out from above 10,000 feet.

After his unsuccessful attempt to improvise a tourniquet for his bleeding leg with his ripcord, while hanging from his parachute, ‘Humph’ Russell came to earth beside the railway track just outside Edenbridge.  A railwayman working on the line was the first to reach him and, as luck would have it, the man had just completed a course in first aid.  Delighted to have a chance to exercise his new-found skill, the man tore strips from the parachute and expertly bound up the wound, Russell was then rushed to the local hospital where he was treated by ‘an excellent doctor who saved my leg, and kept me supplied with Sherry all the time I was in hospital!’

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P/O Neville David Solomon (Killed in Action)
Hurricane I L1921

As the German aircraft reached the coast near Dover other British squadrons made contact.  Here the haze patches were quite thick in places and fighters of both sides blundered about seeking out the enemy.  Flight Lieutenant Harry Hillcoat of No 1 Squadron led two other Hurricanes in, to finish off a straggling Dornier of Bomber Geschwader 76; it plunged into the sea off Dungeness.  Then one of Hillcoat’s pilots, Pilot Officer George Goodman, spotted a Messerschmitt 110 flying low over the sea, streaming smoke from its left motor; probably it was a fugitive from No 56 Squadron’s snap attack a couple of minutes earlier.  Goodman went down after the German fighter, which jinked to avoid his fire but without success.  After Goodman’s first burst the left engine caught fire, after his second the right engine followed suit.  Then his Hurricane was hit, as a Messerschmitt 109 came round to attack from behind and forced the British pilot to look to his own survival.  Goodman hauled his fighter round in a steep turn to the right, and as he did so he caught a glance of the Messerschmitt 110 he had hit striking lie sea.  ‘In the turn I made half a mile on the Me 109 and tried to climb in order to bale out, but saw the Me 109 gaining rapidly on me so I pulled the plug and made for home with the enemy aircraft gaining I lightly,’ he later reported.  As Goodman pulled up over the coast at Rye the German pilot, probably running short of fuel, broke off the chase. 

For 28-year-old Sergeant John Etherington, flying a Hurricane of No 17 Squadron, the business of blocking the German withdrawal seemed rather like standing in the path of a cattle stampede.  Enemy aircraft of all types began streaming past, suddenly emerging out of the haze and then disappearing back into it.  At first it was not too frightening.  ‘As we moved out over the Channel four Messerschmitt 109s passed a little way under us going south.  We were there looking for bombers and left them alone; they took no notice of us,’ Etherington recalled.  Then Green Section, at the rear of the squadron formation, came under at-link from enemy fighters, followed by Blue Section; Yellow Section broke away to give the others support.  That left just Red Section continuing in search of enemy bombers: Squadron Leader Cedric Williams the squadron commander, Etherington, and Pilot Officer Neville Solomon weaving from side to side in the rear guarding their tails.  Solomon suddenly disappeared.  I never saw what happened to him, nor heard a peep from him.  It was his first operational mission and we never saw him again,’ Etherington remembered, ‘so I began weaving from side to side to cover the CO’s tail.  There were just two of us, and what seemed like hundreds of enemy aircraft.  I thought “How can we possibly get out of this?” And then, suddenly, the CO wasn’t their either.’ 

Cedric Williams had stumbled upon three Dorniers emerging out of the haze and went in to attack one of them, opening fire at 400 yards and closing in to 250 yards.  The Dornier’s left engine caught lire and he saw the bomber dive steeply away.  Then, as he was breaking away, Williams saw that he was being attacked by a Messerschmitt 109.  He pulled his Hurricane hard round to avoid the enemy fire, and three more Messerschmitts joined in.  After a hectic series of diving turns, which took him almost to sea level, Williams succeeded in throwing off the pursuit.  The Dornier he had attacked belonged to Bomber Geschwader 76 and one of those on board, war correspondent Hans Theyer, described how the aircraft had been attacked soon after leaving the coast of England: ‘We fired every gun that could be brought to bear, losing off magazine after magazine.  Then the “gangster” came in behind our fin, carefully, so that we could not fire at him.  He fired some bursts, then turned away.’  With the Dornier’s left motor badly damaged the German pilot, Unteroffizier Windschild, took the bomber down in h steep spiral turn and crash-landed near Calais.

After a frightening few minutes, both Williams and Etherington succeeded in joining up with some of the rest of the Squadron near Dover. 

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Sgt. Basil E.P. Whall – (Survived)
Spitfire I L1019 “G”

Dunlop Urie had got the twelve Spitfires of No 602 Squadron off from Westhampnett after the impromptu scramble.  Now, in position over Tangmere at 2,000 feet, he suddenly caught sight of a succession of Stukas swooping down on Ford airfield, five miles to the east.  Urie pave a quick call ‘Villa Squadron, Tally Ho!’ and led his squadron round to engage the bombers as they pulled out of their dives and passed low over the streets of Middleton-on-Sea and Bognor.  Urie himself fired bursts at five of the Stukas before he ran out of ammunition.  Sergeant Basil Whall, 21, singled out one of the dive-bombers, made four deliberate attacks on it and saw his tracers striking home.  The Stuka curved round towards the coast and Whall watched it go down and make a gentle landing on open ground behind Rustington, not far from the Poling radar station.

Away on the eastern side of the engagement Basil Whall had seen ‘his’ Stuka set down gently beside the radar station at Poling.  Then he opened his throttle and swung his Spitfire round to chase after the fleeing dive-bombers, like a hound after hares.  He rapidly overhauled Helmut Bode’s Gruppe moving away from Poling and, picking out one of the Stukas, closed in to 50 yards through accurate return fire and put a burst into it.  The dive-bomber burst into flames and crashed into the sea.  Whall’s Spitfire was also hit, however, and started to trail smoke.  Losing height, he hauled the wounded fighter round towards the shore.

From his vantage point at a searchlight on the coast to the east of Middleton-on-Sea, 23-year-old Lance Bombardier John Smith had watched the dramatic fight overhead and the German withdrawal.  Then he caught sight of a single aircraft about a mile out to sea, flying west.  It turned towards the coast, descending the whole time, then turned again and flew eastwards along the shore line.  By now Smith could see that it was a Spitfire, its propeller blades almost stopped and smoke trailing from the engine; the flaps were lowered but the undercarriage was up.  Obviously the pilot was bent on setting it down in shallow water.  With a splash the aircraft alighted, then the starboard wing struck a submerged groyne.  The aircraft leapt back into the air, spun horizontally through a semi-circle, and flopped into the sea going backwards.  Smith sprinted down the beach and waded out to the Spitfire, which had come to rest about 20 yards out in waist-deep water.  He scrambled on to the wing, to see the dazed pilot still in his cockpit: ‘I could not release the canopy from the outside but in no time at all the pilot opened up, unstrapped himself and with very little assistance from me (in fact I was in his way, if anything) climbed out.’  Sergeant Basil Whall of No 602 Squadron, having accounted for two Stukas and had his Spitfire shot up in the process, was safely down.

References

Franks, Norman L., Royal Air Force Fighter Command Losses of the Second World War – Volume I – Operational Losses: Aircraft and Crews 1939-1941, Midland Publishing, Leicester, England, 2000

Price, Alfred, Battle of Britain: The Hardest Day – 18 August 1940, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, N.Y., 1980

Ramsey, Winston G., The Battle of Britain: Then and Now, After the Battle Magazine, London, England, 1980

Air Combat at 20 Feet, by Garrett E. Middlebrook – 1989 [Fred Moore]

“May you live unenvied,
and pass many pleasant years unknown to fame;
and also have congenial friends.”
– Ovid

“A tribute which bears full truth and honesty
will refuse to apply the conventional words of courage,
gallantry, heroism and bravery to the acts
which every fallen soldier was performing at the time of his death.
Some of our beloved comrades died embittered, scared and lonely deaths.
None ever “gladly” died because they were inspired by patriotism.
But they all died in the fulfillment of their duty.”
– Garrett Middlebrook

Like R.E. “Peppy” Blount’s We Band of Brothers, Garrett Middlebrook’s Air Combat At 20 Feet is an account of the experiences of a B-25 Mitchell “strafer” pilot in the Pacific Theater of War, an aspect of Second World War military aviation history that’s generated far fewer first-hand accounts than – for example – fighter combat in general, or, the Eighth Air Force’s aerial campaign against Germany.  Perhaps this has been because the magnitude of Pacific Air Combat involved smaller numbers of men and aircraft – and thus total cumulative losses of either – than strategic bombing in Europe; possibly because due to factors of distance, climate, and living conditions, the Pacific engendered less attention and both public and media awareness than air combat in Europe.  And, maybe this is because – well, just an idea – in light of the above, in the decades following WW II, veterans of “strafer” units felt less impetus to preserve their memories in written form, out of the perception that the public would simply not be that interested in their memoirs.  (I don’t know.  Well, like I said, just an idea!)

But, there isn’t necessarily a relationship between quantity and quality, for Garrett Middlebrook’s book is almost singular in its nature (Peppy Blount’s book sharing the other half of the literary spotlight), and definitely singular in its historical, emotional, and literary quality.  At over 400 pages long and dense with detail, the book’s foremost aspect to me is actually the depth and sensitivity of Middlebrook’s writing, which – though very rich in detail about his military experiences – in a not-so-subtle way, directs a greater focus on recollection of his fellow aviators, both those who survived, and those who did not, in what might be deemed an understandably cathatric fashion.  Two such individuals, among many, are Major Ralph Cheli and navigator 2 Lt. Louis J. Ritacco, both of whom were murdered while POWs.  Another notable aspect of the book is that it provides a platform for Garrett Middlebrook to present thoughts of a philosophical nature, in forms of either lengthy musings, or dialogues with fellow members of the 405th Bomb Squadron, about the cruelty and comradeship inherent to war, government, economics, and, human nature.  To give you an inkling of the depth of his thoughts, this post includes – below – some passages from the book.

As for the book’s cover art, well, it’s unusual.  Though the B-25s (on front and rear covers), and Japanese Oscar (on the rear cover; the covers don’t form a continuous painting) are aren’t perfectly proportioned compared to the appearance of the actual aircraft, the symbolism of both covers is very striking, as are the colors that were used to create these compositions.  They’re both simple and complex at once, and reminiscent of the style of “Grandma Moses” (Anna Mary Robertson Moses). 

My only criticism of the book is its paucity of photographs, for images of the many men mentioned within its pages would give the text even greater impact.  And, though the book does feature an image of Garrett Middlebrook’s crew, it’s strangely lacking a good image of Garrett – himself. 

This blog post rectifies that:  Here’s a portrait of Garrett sitting in the pilot’s seat of a B-25.  It’s U.S. Army Air Force photo “A47039 / 4002”, from Fold3.com.  The caption?  “Captain Garrett B. Middlebrook, Springtown, Texas, Fifth Air Force bomber pilot who has been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by General MacArthur “for extraordinary heroism in action” in New Guinea.”

“Print received from B.P.R. (Air Forces Group), date unknown.”

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Some passages, with mention of Major Ralph Cheli…

Even though I could not conquer my fear of death,
I felt it would be a sin and a violation of my manhood not to fight to live,
even though I might only extend my life one day or one hour.
It would also have been a grievous sin if I did not give all I had by way of experience,
skill, innovative methods, leadership and calm, collective demeanor to my comrades.
Perhaps if I did all that I could to assuage their fears and motivate them to fight,
one more crew would survive.
Besides, it only made sense that I had a better chance to survive if I did all those things.
I thought of Cheli; I knew he had experienced fear,
but he had controlled it never allowing it to surface in an apparent way.
Perhaps, I thought, notwithstanding centuries of rhetoric about courage,
all it really amounted to was the concealment of personal fear.
In all probability, that was all Cheli had done –
concealed his fear and kept it hidden even when he was going down.

For over a year I had lived within a few yards of the jungle
together with the other crewmen in my squadron.
Although we were all male and far from home and civilization,
we did form a little social community.
Values still existed, morals still prevailed
and it was important to me that my comrades respected me.
Respect was not something they accorded to me ceremoniously;
instead, they showed it only if I earned it through leadership
and I had to prove that leadership again on each mission.

When I came to grips with myself,
I knew I could not lose their respect nor fail to perform my duties to them.
I admitted to myself at last,
that although I fought first for personal survival,
I was also duty-bound to the survival of the group. (pp. 401-403)

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Here’s the insignia of an original (early 1945) Australian manufactured 405th BS “Green Dragon” squadron patch (from Flying Tiger Antiques).

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Images of Garrett Middlebrook with two crews, from the book Sun Setters of the Southwest Pacific Area – From Australia to Japan: An Illustrated History of the 38th Bombardment Group (m), 5th Air Force, World War II – 1941-1946, As Told and Photographed by the Men Who Were There.  Most, if not all, of the men in these images are mentioned or described in Middlebrook’s book. 

Captions appear below both photos.

The crew of 1 Lt. Garrett Middlebrook.  Front, from left, are S/Sgt.Robert J. Kappa, engineer-gunner; Sgt. Robert T. Lillard, Jr., radio operator; Sgt. George R. Pizor, gunner.  Back, from left, are 1 Lt. Middlebrook, pilot; 2 Lt. Leonard D. Perry, bombardier; 2 Lt. Louis J. Ritacco, navigator, and an unidentified airman.  (George Pizor collection)

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Capt. Garrett Middlebrook and his crew.  Front, from left, are S/Sgt. Robert S. Emminger, gunner, and T/Sgt. Robert T. Lillard, Jr., radio operator.  Back, from left, are 1 Lt. Everett L. Moffett, navigator, Capt. Middlebrook, pilot, and Capt. William H. Tarver, pilot and aircraft commander.  (Garrett Middlebrook collection)

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1 Lt. Louis J. Ritacco.  He was a member of Major Williston Madison Cox, Jr.’s crew in B-25D 41-30118 (“Elusive Lizzie” / “Miss America”), which was shot down by anti-aircraft fire during a search and destroy mission near the town of Madang.  One member of the crew of six was killed when the plane was ditched, and the five survivors swam to nearby Wongat Island, where four (including Major Cox) were captured later that day.  Lt. Ritacco evaded capture for several days, but without food or water, was forced to give himself up to the Japanese.

Eventually, Major Cox was flown to the Japanese base at Rabaul, and from there placed upon a transport ship and taken to Japan where, at Omori POW camp, he spent the remainder of the war as a POW.

Lt. Ritacco and his three surviving crew members remained at Madang, where – with another member of the 38th Bomb Group who was also a POW, 2 Lt. Owen H. Salvage – they were murdered by their captors on August 17, 1943.

You can read much more about this story at the history of B-25D 41-30118 and its crew, at Pacific Wrecks. 

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This image shows Louis J. Ritaccco as an Army Air Force aviation cadet…

…and his tombstone, at Saint Mary’s Cemetry, Rye Brook, New York, as photographed by FindAGrave contributor James Mayer. 

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And, below is Williston M. Cox, Jr.’s Aviation Cadet portrait.

Williston Madison Cox., Jr. passed away in 1980.  Of all the members of the 38th Bomb Group taken prisoner by the Japanese, he was the only man to survive captivity and return to the United States. 

The above two portraits are from the United States National Archives’ collection “Photographic Prints of Air Cadets and Officers, Air Crew, and Notables in the History of Aviation”, about which you can read more, here.  The story of Major Cox and his crew is addressed at length by Garrett Middlebrook. 

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EPILOGUE

The painful irony of war is that, aside from human loss,
suffering and agony, it creates more problems than it solves.
The victors, becoming powerful and dominating,
form new rivalries more intense than those which existed with the vanquished.
The peace treaties which are imposed upon the vanquished
are enigmatic riddles bereft of reason and certain
only to permit clever and ambitious politicians to start the next cycle of international friction
as a means of maintaining power.
Of course, in the process the memory of the war dead from the previous war must be dimmed;
otherwise enthusiasm for the next war would never be tolerated.

But we combat veterans dare not let their memory fade,
for God help a nation which forgets its war dead.
Hence this chronicler acknowledges a debt of immense gratitude to
the fallen World War II Service men and women.

A tribute which bears full truth and honesty
will refuse to apply the conventional words of courage,
gallantry, heroism and bravery to the acts
which every fallen soldier was performing at the time of his death.
Some of our beloved comrades died embittered, scared and lonely deaths.
None ever “gladly” died because they were inspired by patriotism.
But they all died in the fulfillment of their duty.
Courage, valiancy, dauntlessness, heroism and bravery are words used by the living
to try to place the altar of patriotism on the field of battle.
It does not belong there and it will not accurately reflect the sacrifices of our fellow comrades
even if it is erected.

But the Shrine of Duty,
embossed with walls of shining gold,
stands proudly upon that hallowed ground.
It stands because our war dead performed their duty to their comrades
and their commitment to themselves.
We do them a grave injustice if we condemn them for lacking the qualities we have selected for them.
They gave all they had to give
and their names must forever be spoken softly and reverently or else evil will fall upon this country,
for if we do not revere our war dead, we are unworthy of their sacrifice. (pp. 449-450)

References

Middlebrook, Garrett, Air Combat at 20 Feet – Selected Missions From a Strafer Pilot’s Diary (A World War II Autobiography) [2nd Printing – Expanded Edition], Garrett Middlebrook, Fort Worth, Tx., 1989

Hickey, Lawrence J.; Janko, Mark M.; Goldberg, Stuart W., and Tagaya, Osamu, Sun Setters of the Southwest Pacific Area – From Australia to Japan: An Illustrated History of the 38th Bombardment Group (m), 5th Air Force, World War II – 1941-1946, As Told and Photographed by the Men Who Were There, International Historical Research Associates, Boulder, Co. (and) The 38th Bomb Group Association – (or) Albert A. Kennedy, Sr. (or) David Gunn, 2011

Day of Infamy, by Walter Lord – 1957 [Ben Feder] [Updated, with new detail…]

First created in December of 2017, this post – now updated – illustrating Walter Lord’s Day of Infamy has now been updated to include a portrait of the author (actually, John Walter Lord, Junior) – from the book’s cover, as well as the book’s interior/cover maps of Ford Island and, the Pacific Ocean route of Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack force.  I’ve also included the descriptive blurb from the book’s cover, and, quotes from book reviews also carried  within the cover. 

Though intended as popular literature, I t h i n k (?) that this book was the first serious study of the attack on Pearl Harbor prior to the publication of Gordon W. Prange’s At Dawn We Slept in 1981.

DAY OF INFAMY
By Walter Lord
Illustrated with Photographs

Sunday, December 7, 1941 – a day no one will ever forget – the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  Now, a book has been written that does full justice to the epic events of that incredible day.

In DAY OF INFAMY Walter Lord traces, in brilliant detail, the human drama of the attack: the spies behind it; the pilots on the Japanese aircraft carriers; the crews on the stricken warships; the men at the airfields and bases; the Japanese pilot who captured an island single-handedly when he could not get back to his carrier; the generals, the sailors, the housewives and children responding to the attack with anger, numbness, and magnificent courage. 

DAY OF INFAMY is an inspiring human document, a thrilling account of how it is to live through history.  It is certain to be one of the most popular, important, and lasting books of our time.

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DAY OF INFAMY combines the careful scholarship and deep understanding of human nature that led to such comments as the following concerning Mr. Lord’s book, A Night to Remember:

“…a magnificent job of re-creative chronicling, enthralling from the first word to the last.”  The Atlantic

“The quality of Mr. Lord’s work seems all the more remarkable when one reflects on the fact that he has invented nothing, not even a single conversation.”  The Wall Street Journal

“…breathlessly exciting…with a suspense, a drive and a compelling reality which make it endlessly fascinating as well as brilliantly informative.”  Boston Herald

“…a panorama of many individuals, introduced to the reader by name, and of their briefly told acts, reactions and words.  The result, almost to the reader’s surprise, is a mosaic picture, clear in form and in the sense of movement and direction.  It took skill to do this…his timing is sure and the unity and continuity are never lost.”  Baltimore Evening Sun

“…the rarest of reader experiences – a book whose total effect is greater than the sum of its parts.”  The New York Times Book Review

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Rear cover…

Walter Lord brings to this story of December 7, 1941, the same restless search for truth – the same devotion to facts – that made A Night to Remember, his best-selling account of the Titanic, one of the truly memorable books of the decade.

In piecing together the saga of Pearl Harbor, Mr. Lord has traveled over 14,000 miles, has talked and corresponded with 577 of the people who were there.  He has obtained exclusive interviews with members of the Japanese attacking force.  He has spent hundreds of hours with the Americans who received the blow – not just the admirals and generals, but the enlisted men, the housewives, the children too.  He has spent weeks in Hawaii, going over each of the bases attacked.  He has pored over maps, charts, letters, diaries, official files, newspapers, and some 25,000 pages of testimony.

Mr. Lord’s meticulous research has uncovered many facts about that famous day that have never been known before.  The events and characters are presented in a new light – with detachment and restraint.  Stripped of legend, the human drama of Pearl Harbor is not a story of military defeat, but one of the truly great epics of American history.

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Photograph of Walter Lord from the book’s rear cover.  This is the same image which, in appreciably cropped form, appears in the Wikipedia entry for Lord.  The map before him appears to show Oahu.

Hero From the Sky: The Navigator, by Jules Roy – 1954 [Unknown Artist] [Revised Post]

This post has been updated to include book reviews, from The New York Times Book Review, of The Navigator, by Guy Murchie (July 31, 1955) and Orville Prescott (August 10, 1955), respectively.  Whereas the “initial” version of the post (from 2018!) included the reviews as scans, this revision includes the reviews in full text form.  See below…

the-navigator-jules-roy-1955-1956-unknown-1_edited-2You disappeared, just like that.
For the whole evening the plane’s letter designation
and the name of the skipper remained on the bulletin board,
and those who had returned cast a sympathetic but relieved look at it.
Death was all very well for others.
Then the missing vanished.
The ground staff hastily packed up their belongings and arranged them,
carefully labeled, in the appropriate shed.
The names of those who had disappeared were mentioned for some time,
and then individual preoccupations took the upper hand and life went on.
Life?
No, only unthinking people could call it life.
Call it, rather,
forced labor under the threat of pitiless masters forever invisible
who struck down the offender or the laggard.
None of those already fallen into the molten fires returned,
and after all it was probably no more terrible than that.

the-navigator-jules-roy-1955-1956-unknown-2_edited-1As for the navigator, he never handled a weapon.
His war consisted in plotting courses,
measuring distances, degrees, and minutes
and taking bearings on stars while sitting over a charge of explosives
which might blow him sky-high at any moment.
During flights this thought sometimes made his heart miss a beat,
but then he would shrug his shoulders.
If he were not here, he would be somewhere just as bad.
If he refused to fight he would be shot.
Any attempt to escape the universal holocaust would mean
his being hunted and tortured wherever he went.
It was better to fight in a cause that still represented a certain freedom
and respect for the individual conscience.
Besides he had no choice.
He would never grow used to another country;
his own was enough for him.
This was how he solved the question – not very satisfactorily, he knew.
But how else could he solve it?

______________________________

Orville Prescott’s review…

Books of The Times

By ORVILLE PRESCOTT

The New York Times Book Review
August 10, 1955

WHEN lieutenant Ripault came to his senses be was lying on his face in a beet field.  His parachute lay collapsed on the ground beside him.  There was a bright light not far away and at first Ripault thought that it was probably the Ruhr city of Duisburg burning.  Duisburg had been their target.  But soon the French navigator serving with a Free French unit in the R.A.F. realized that he was not in Germany but in England, that the fire was not a burning city but a burning Halifax bomber.  He remembered then that there had been a collision in midair, that he had jumped first as he was supposed to do and that as far as he knew he was the sole survivor of two planes.  What happened to Lieut. Alfred Ripault during the next few days is the story told by Jules Roy in his odd little novel, “The Navigator.”

Jules Roy is French.  In 1943 he enlisted in the R.A.F.  He left the air force wish the rank of colonel ten years later.  He is the author of several books about fliers and flying and of a play about Jet pilots, “Les Cyclones,” which has had a long and successful run in Paris with M. Roy in the leading role.  “The Navigator” is his first noveL

Novel Acclaimed in France

This book has been highly praised in France, and Andre Maurois has said that Kipling would have liked it and that Conrad might have written it Neither of those speculations seems at all likely to me.  Kipling, who loved an impressive array of technical data, would have flinched from M. Roy’s fuzzy and obscure approach to a navigator’s duties.  Conrad, who valued moral courage above all virtues, would never have written a story with so equivocal an ending.

When Ripault so narrowly escaped the death he had prepared himself to meet he felt lost, out of contact with the world.  The shock was great and he felt numbed.  And then when his commander assigned him as navigator to a pilot with a reputation for incompetence, Ripault pleaded sickness and stayed in bed.  The plane was shot down.  His comrades in the squadron felt that Ripault was guilty of something close to murder.  But had he refused to fly or was he truly unable to fly?  Was he a victim of nervous shock or was he merely afraid?  M. Roy does not tell us, and the reason he does not is that he makes no attempt to clothe his hero in the flesh and blood and personality of a specific human being.

The navigator of this story (and he is usually referred to as the navigator) is only a symbol of a man afflicted with problems.  He longs for friendship and love.  He does not want to be killed.  He resents bitterly the unfavorable judgment of his fellows and of his commander, who puts him under arrest.  But always, although his situation ought to be poignant and dramatic, it remains still, silent and remote.

Lonely Figure in an Intellectual Game

Ripault shambles like a robot through these carefully written pages, a lonely figure in silhouette who fails to command our sympathy because he seems as small and impersonal as a chessman.  The knight or bishop in a game of chess has problems also and moves about from square to square in an effort to solve them; but one doesn’t care about them because they are only figures in an intellectual game, which is exactly what Ripault is.

“The Navigator” has some effective scenes describing the operations of a bombing squadron in wartime.  It builds up to a climax that might have seemed dramatic if it were not so mechanically contrived.  A pilot who reports that he is unable to see the ground lights is suspected of being afraid.  He, too, is judged unfavorably, and Ripault longs to help his fellow in misfortune. 

His recognition of common humanity, of human feeling, brings him back to life from the half-life in which he had been living for a few days.  That seems reasonable enough.  But, this affirmation of the value of life and of brotherhood is rejected a few hours and a few pages later – by the author, I think, rather than by Ripault.  The navigator, who has just found his bearings, turns away from the very things he wants most and- chooses death instead of life.

What M. Roy is driving at is not clear.  The best guess I can make is that under the stress of war and the constant threat of death some men choose defeat.  Comradeship and even the possibility of love, both of which Ripault had, are not enough; they are not worth the fear and the repeated risk of death.  Death itself faced too often becomes less terrifying, and men like Ripault welcome it.  If this interpretation of M. Roy’s solemn and dismal little book is not accurate he has only himself to blame.  “The Navigator” belongs to that increasingly numerous school of fiction that asks questions without answering them and makes of ambiguity a virtue.

THE NAVIGATOR.  By Jules Roy.  Translated by Mervyn Savill.  177 pages.  Knopf.  $3.

______________________________

…and Guy Murchie’s.

Hero From the Sky

THE NAVIGATOR.
By Jules Roy.
Translated from the French by Mervyn Savill.
177 pp.  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf.  $3.

By GUY MURCHIE

The New York Times Book Review
July 31, 1955

THE intimate war lives of the French flying officers in the Royal Air Force have at last been brought fittingly into literature in this exciting first novel by one of them.

I Judge by the paucity of convincing reference to actual navigation that Jules Roy was not himself a navigator, but his restrained love story and engrossing picture of life on an R.A.F. base in England near the end of World War II seem real enough, as indeed his eighteen years of air force experience would lead one to expect.  His hero, Lieutenant Ripault, usually referred to as “the navigator,” lands in a beet field by parachute on the first page almost on top of the house where “the girl” Rosica lives, quite conveniently alone and hospitable.  From here the story flows rapidly forward, taking in the air base with its tense rivalries and thinly disguised struggles for survival, as much the psychological and spiritual ones as the more obvious material conflicts of flame and flak.

Although slightly amateurish in dialogue – something which Mervyn Savill’s translation could hardly have overcome – Colonel Roy’s story has a simple dignity and a sustained suspense that will easily hold the reader’s attention throughout its 177 small pages.  Despite such distractions as “the enchantment of the night, of an unknown woman dragged from her sleep, whose dressing-gown invited one to remove it,” the navigator struggles to win his personal war, to prove by courage and compassion that he is a better man khan most – even if he does not-live to reap his earthly reward.

It matters little when “the airspeed indicator showed 220 m.p.h.” in his Halifax bomber, that he reached the startling deduction that “at this height that meant 222 m.p.h. ground-speed.”  Or that “the projection of the sidereal angles on the Greenwich meridian gave two very approximate positions when it was a question of following a route fringed by hostile fighters and antiaircraft guns.”  For the navigator was guided by “the radio navigation apparatus, whose flickering signals on a green screen enabled him-to calculate their position.”

His squadron was “now grouped in a gigantic gleaming tide, flowing toward the coast,” a mission from which he was destined never to return.  Yet all unheeding his natural apprehension, “each pilot would fly by the phosphorescent needles of his instruments.  The gunners would begin to revolve in their turrets, keeping a closer watch.  Only the navigators could see clearly.  They traced their routes without sharing the anxieties of the others, in a peace that isolated them from the world.”

Even in the last few moments before the squadron comes on target, this sense of isolation persists in the mind of the protagonist.  “Ripault went back to the cockpit.  He leaned against the side window.  The plane, with all lights extinguished, was flying in complete darkness, except for pale sprays of pink and blue sparks from the exhausts.  The earth below them seemed dead, but the stream of planes must have been deafening it with its terrible thunder * * * They might have been flying a practice flight over England, with the same budding tremor running through the machine.”

While undeniably there are subtleties of philosophy in the talk and thought of the intense characters in this moving tale, one cannot feel that their recurrent immaturity is entirely a product of the war, or that Lieutenant Ripault’s unprofessional technique in the air is a mere rhetorical vagary.  Perhaps most significant of all, the final choice of the French navigator to die in his flaming plane rather than jump back into the war recalls the defeatist decisions of Jules Roy’s modern France which, however rationalized, have not entirety escaped the stigma of morbidity that the rest of the world is bound to ascribe to them.

A veteran flier, Mr. Murchie is the author of “The Song of the Sky.”

Those Who Fall, by John G. Muirhead – 1986 [Cover by Eric Joyner, Interior Illustrations by Susan Coons]

This post has been updated to include Tom Ferrell’s laudatory review of Those Who Fall, from The New York Times Book Review.  The review follows…

‘I Drop Bombs.  That’s My Job’

THOSE WHO FALL
By John Muirhead.
Illustrated.  258 pp.  New York:
Random House.  $18.95.

By Tom Ferrell

The New York Times Book Review
February 15, 1987

PEOPLE who have been in battle have a claim on our attention, as the Vietnam veterans keep insisting.  This is not because we are grateful, or even because we should be.  There’s a terrible disproportion between risk and gain, increasing with time.  The Americans in a World War I cemetery lost all they had to lose, but it would be a bold and speculative accountant of history who might try to show just how we are better off in 1987 for men who died very young in 1917.

John Muirhead isn’t dead, though men were killed in his plane and more than enough airmen went down in flames before his eyes.  He too has trouble defining his claim on our attention.  This is how “Those Who Fall” begins:

“I suppose I am like most men who soldiered for a time.  I think that something unusual happened to me; some particular meaning was revealed to me so I should set it down.  Men have been boring their wives, their children, and other men with these kind of stories from Marathon through Chickamauga, and I’m no different from the lot.  Having survived it all, I can’t leave well enough alone, but must ponder on it and remember and talk at least about one part of it that was, I think, a kind of glory.”

Mr. Muirhead, whose first book this is, is now a retired engineer.  In early 1944 he was a B-17 pilot based near Foggia, Italy, flying missions up the Adriatic and over the Alps to targets like Regens-burg, Munich and Wiener Neustadt.  For combat soldiers, the men of his heavy bomber group enjoyed reasonable material conditions: hot meals, dry beds in which they could safely sleep, even hot water at times.  Then they would rise, before dawn, to start a long day’s ride over an armed and hostile industrial society, 10 men in a contraption 75 feet long and weighing not all that much more than a New York City bus.

The chief hazards were fighters – Germany still had at that time enough planes, pilots and fuel to mount a vigorous defense – and flak.  “We edged past Pola,” Mr. Muirhead writes, “and were saluted with a barrage of flak that for all but a few bursts fell short of the low-left squadron.  Three stray shells exploded in the center of the formation.  I could see the orange flame in the middle of the black puffs.  Two successive bursts erupted off the tip of our right wing and magically an array of star-shaped holes appeared in our windshield.  …  It never seemed to us that the flak came from anything on the ground.  Not from guns that men fired.  Flak came from the sky itself; it blossomed there.”  Things got rapidly worse and stayed worse for hours; on this trip to Regensburg, a particularly horrible one, Mr. Muirhead’s left waist gunner was killed, one engine was shot out and his group lost 11 of 21 planes.

• • •

Fear and self-induced amnesia became the poles of Mr. Muirhead’s service life.  He avoided knowing the other members of his crews.  He tells us, repeatedly, that he forgot why the war was being fought and didn’t want to know.  “I work in this little parish,” he tells a nonflying officer friend.  “I’m employed to fly a bomber from here to there.  I drop some bombs there, and then I come back here – if I’m lucky.  That’s my job; I’m used to it.”

On June 28, 1944, he was shot down over Bulgaria, surviving with most of his crew.  Defeat brought a kind of relief, but apparently not only because capture enhanced his chances of living out the war.  “Peace and comradeship,” he writes, could now replace professional relations among his crew and his new acquaintances in captivity.  Though he nowhere says so, I suspect he was glad to see his responsibility diminished.  Another pilot’s error in formation that had destroyed two B-17s and 20 men returns oppressively to his memory several times in his narrative.

His P.O.W. camp was atop a hill, with splendid views; but life in it was very lousy, literally.  Also hungry and unmedicated, though it isn’t clear that his Bulgarian captors were in much better case; the Germans had stripped their unfortunate ally to support their own military machine as their situation deteriorated on both fronts.  In September, with the Russians massed on the Bulgarian border, the camp commandant opened the gate and released the prisoners.  What happened after that Mr. Muirhead doesn’t say.

WE haven’t been bored; the battle stuff has been keenly drawn, the terror and desperation, some of it quiet, are as real as can be.  There’s a lot of soldierly helling around and a lot of funny obscene conversation, funny in the way reflex obscenity can be when it supplants or augments official military jargon (there’s also a lot of effortful, quasi-poetic writing, much of which deserves good marks for trying).  And there’s enough nuts-and-bolts matter about caring for planes and running the squadron to fix the whole tale solidly in the slot of 1944 material technology.  All excellent of its kind, and it is a kind, the kind that feeds little bookstores and catalogue houses specializing in “militaria” and “aeronautica.”

But what about the glory?  Promised at the start, it begins to glimmer in the P.O.W. camp when the men win a tiny victory over toilet regulations.  “To endure we sought to win such trifles to measure the day.  We had become aliens of the poorest kind, and we had to find more than bits of bread to live on.  …  The last hour, the last minute, the last second of the last day, would come to pass, opening the way for us.  That would be the moment of our glory, our long-remembered glory.”  And so it proved, when Mr. Muirhead and two comrades, with four legs among them, walked out the prison gate and across their hilltop – a victory parade without a band.  Military memoirs don’t dare to dress themselves in glory much any more, and maybe you had to be there, but Mr. Muirhead has the courage to trust his memories.  I’m convinced he was there.

Tom Ferrell is an editor of The Book Review.

I suppose I am like most men who soldiered for a time.
I think that something unusual happened to me;
some particular meaning was revealed to me so I should set it down.
Men have been boring their wives,
their children,
and other men with these kind of stories from Marathon through Chickamauga,
and I’m no different from the lot.
Having survived it all, I can’t leave well enough alone,
but must ponder on it and remember and talk at least about one part of it that was, I think,
a kind of glory.

On the twenty-third of June, 1944,
I ended my time as a bomber pilot flying out of Italy with the 301st Bomb Group,
and became a prisoner of war in Bulgaria.
My last mission was to Ploesti.
Although that name had its own dreadful sound,
the other places and other names all took their toll
whether you feared them or not.
It mattered very little when you finally bought it.
The odds were, one always knew, that something was going to happen.
It was not felt in any desperate way,
but rather it came as a difference in consciousness
without one’s being aware of the change.
In the squadron we learned to live as perhaps once we were long ago,
as simple as animals without hope for ourselves or pity for one another.
Completing fifty missions was too implausible to even consider.
An alternative, in whatever form it might come, was the only chance.
Death was the most severe alternative.
It was as near as the next mission,
although we would not yield to the thought of it.
We would get through somehow: maybe a good wound,
or a bail-out over Yugoslavia or northern Italy; the second front might open up,
and the Germans might shift all their fighters to the French coast.
We might even make it through fifty missions – a few did.
But such fantasies didn’t really persuade us,
not with our sure knowledge that we were caught in a bad twist of time
with little chance we would go beyond it.
Our lives were defined by a line from the present
to a violent moment that must come for each of us.
The missions we flew were the years we measured to that end,
passing by no different from any man’s except we became old and died soon.

I don’t know whether any of this is true or not.
Everything happened that I have said happened,
but it’s memory now, the shadow of things.
The truth lives in its own time, recall is not the reality of the past.
When friends depart, one remembers them but they are changed;
we hold only the fragment of them that touched us and our idea of them,
which is now a part of us.
Their reality is gone, intact but irretrievable,
in another place through which we passed and can never enter again.
I cannot go back nor can I bring them to me;
so I must pursue the shadows to some middle ground,
for I am strangely bound to all that happened then.
We broke hard bread together and I can’t forget:
Breslau, Steyr, Regensburg, Ploesti, Vienna, Munich, Graz,
and all the others; not cities,
but battlegrounds five miles above them where we made our brotherhood.
It’s gone and long ago; swept clean by the wind, only some stayed.
Part of me lives there still, tracing a course through all the names.
I don’t know why.
What is it that memory wants that it goes through it all again? 
Was there something I should have recognized? 
Some terrible wisdom? 
The kind of awful knowledge that stares out of the eyes of a dying man? 
I was at the edge then and almost grasped the meaning,
but I lived and failed the final lesson and came safe home.
I linger now, looking back for them, the best ones who stayed and learned it all.
“It was as if in greeting that three of the tiny creatures came out from the boards around the stove and scurried toward me.  I was sitting on Mac’s bunk.  He used to feed them crumbs every time he came in the tent.  A fourth mouse joined his friends and, while they nibbled happily, I began the sad chore of going through Mac’s belongings.”  (pp. 66-67)

“I don’t have any damn matches.”

“I handed him mine.  He took them without a word; he struck five of them before he got the pipe going.  He had forgotten his cigarette, which was still smoldering on the bomb cart where he had placed it.”  (p. 114)

“The ground was rushing up at me!  I was moving toward a high ridge!  I swept over it, and then I plunged through the upper branches of a giant pine; mu chute caught and was held fast while my inertia drove me over a deep, rocky gorge.  My forward motion was violently snubbed, and I was sent rushing back toward a massive trunk.  I missed it by three feet, but continued to swing wildly beside it.  After a time, the motion ceased.  I hung there over the steep incline of the gorge.  The base of the tree reached deep into the slope; it was much too far to drop.”  (p. 194)

__________

In this strange life, we lived in the narrow dimension of the present.
We didn’t seek the future, for it was not there;
and if we could not move into it or beyond it,
we could not return to our past.
We were dull and listless,
but we did not have the true languor of young men
whose dreams were of worlds ahead of them,
and who saw the present only as prelude to it.

 If we were without dreams, without a past or a future,
and were caught in the stillness of the present,
our vision then became wise.
There was peace in the absence of clamor;
there was serenity in the days without battles.
If this tattered place where we lived
were to be the full measure of our lives,
we would find some sweetness in it.
A small mouse nibbling a piece of biscuit in my tent
was as wondrous as a unicorn.
The soiled streets of Foggia were full of light,
and one time when I was walking there,
I heard the pure voice of a woman singing.
I learned each day of the goodness of life.
I cherished what was given to me,
holding it just for the moment it was given,
for I knew it was fragile and could not be held for long.

__________

The Muirhead crew prior to departure for Italy.  Author John Muirhead is in front row, far left, holding headphones. Notice that the aircraft in the background is a B-24 Liberator, which the author initially flew before assignment to the 301st Bomb Group.  (USAAF photo, from dust jacket of Those Who Fall.)

The Missing Air Crew Report (MACR) – #16203 – covering the author’s final mission:  Target Ploesti, Roumania – Date June 23, 1944.  John Muirhead, as pilot, is listed first in the crew roster. 

The second page of the MACR, listing the crew’s enlisted personnel (flight engineer, radio operator, and aerial gunners). 

Eyewitnesses to the loss of Muirhead’s B-17, S/Sgt. William E. Caldwell and S/Sgt. Anthony J. Petrowski. 

John Muirhead, mid-1980s.

 

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.

______________________________

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. 

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.

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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.”

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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. 

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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)”

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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