Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers (29 page)

Confronted with structural damage, partial loss of control, fire in the air and serious injuries to personnel, and faced with fresh waves of fighters still rising to the attack, this commander was justified in abandoning ship. His crew, some of them comparatively
inexperienced youngsters, were preparing to bail out. The co-pilot pleaded with him repeatedly to bail out. His reply at this critical juncture was blunt. His words were heard over the interphone and had a magical effect on the crew. They stuck to their guns. The B-17 kept on.

Near the initial point, at 11.50, one hour and a half after the first of at least 200 individual fighter attacks, the pressure eased off, although hostiles were still in the vicinity. A curious sensation came over me. I was still alive. It was possible to think of the target. Of North Africa. Of returning to England. Almost idly I watched a crippled B-17 pull over to the curb and drop its wheels and open its bomb bay, jettisoning its bombs. 3 ME-109s circled it closely, but held their fire while the crew bailed out. I remembered now that a little while back I had seen other Hun fighters hold their fire, even when being shot at by a B-17 from which the crew were bailing. But I doubt if sportsmanship had anything to do with it. They hoped to get a B-17 down fairly intact.

And then our weary, battered column, short 24 bombers, but still holding the close formation that had brought the remainder through by sheer air discipline and gunnery, turned in to the target. I knew that our bombardiers were as grim as death while they synchronized their sights on the great ME-109 assembly shops lying below us in a curve of the winding Blue Danube, close to the outskirts of Regensburg. Our B-17 gave a slight lift and a red light went out on the instrument panel. Our bombs were away. We turned from the target toward the snow-capped Alps. I looked back and saw a beautiful sight – a rectangular pillar of smoke rising from the ME-109 plant. Only one burst was over and into the town. Even from this great height I could see that we had smeared the objective. The price? Cheap, 200 airmen.

A few more fighters pecked at us on the way to the Alps, and a couple of smoking B-17s glided down toward the safety of Switzerland, about 40 miles distant. A town in the Brenner Pass tossed up a lone burst of futile flak. Flak? There had been lots of flak in the past two hours, but only once do I recall having seen it, a sort of side issue to the fighters. Colonel Le May, who had taken excellent care of us all the way, circled the air division over a large lake to give the cripples, some flying on three engines and
many more trailing smoke, a chance to rejoin the family. We approached the Mediterranean in a gradual descent, conserving fuel. Out over the water we flew at low altitude, unmolested by fighters from Sardinia or Corsica, waiting through the long hot afternoon hours for the first sight of the North African coastline. The prospect of ditching, out of gasoline, and the sight of other B-17s falling into the drink seemed trivial matters after the vicious nightmare of the long trail across Southern Germany. We had walked through a high valley of the shadow of death, not expecting to see another sunset, and now I could fear no evil.

With red lights showing on all our fuel tanks, we landed at our designated base in the desert, after eleven hours in the air.

The B-17 Flying Fortress was just that – a flying
fortress
. It bristled with guns and was weighed down with protective armour plating. Half its crew of ten were gunners, if you include the radio man. In addition, the engineer, bombardier and navigator all had guns to fire when not otherwise engaged! It was a ‘labour intensive’ operation involving the services of forty aircrew in four B-17s to carry much the same load of bombs as one Lancaster flown by seven men.

Yet, because American policy decreed that their heavy bombers would fly by day, those aircraft just had to have the maximum fire-power if they were to survive the onslaughts from the vicious guns and cannon of the German single-engine fighters. What is more, it was essential that the fire power from each B-17 Fortress formed part of a concentrated onslaught against the fighters. To achieve this, they flew in protective formation.

Even with all this armament, the early raids into Germany resulted in catastrophic losses for the US 8th Army Air Force. As we have said, it was only after the introduction of the long-range fighter escorts that the situation changed. Then, in the end, through guts and determination the 8th finally won mastery of the daylight skies over Germany.

The B-24 Liberator was the 8th Air Force’s other ‘heavy’. It was not quite so strongly protected as the Fortress although superior in some other ways. It carried more bombs, had a greater range and was slightly faster. Yet the Fortress crews welcomed the presence of ‘Libs’ with a cynicism born of combat; on a mission they would say, ‘The B-24s are our best escort. When they’ re around the fighters always go for them, and leave us alone!’

There is no doubt that it was the gunners who made the ‘day-light’ policy work. It is impossible to pay sufficient tribute to their
skill and fortitude while fighting in the most fearsome air battles the world has ever known.

Harry Slater of the 94th Bomb Group gives a comprehensive picture of the ‘aerial gunner’ in the 8th AAF during World War Two:

The typical profile of the gunner was that he was young, carefree, adventurous and fearless. It is worth noting, however, that the true profile encompassed a much wider range. Many of them were as young as 17, but there were also many from all age groups with varying backgrounds and inner emotions. S/Sgt. Cole of the 385th Group was 48 years old, and our own Albert Herndon at 44 served as engineer and top gunner on Arthur Allen’s crew. Herndon was a World War One veteran and hard of hearing, but Allen never considered replacing him because he excelled in duty performance and crew dedication. …

Each gunner position on the B-17 had its own characteristics. The tail gunner was likely to be young, small and wiry, though this wasn’t always the case. … Once at his station the man could only see to the rear. He could not see any of his fellow crewmen from this position. Consequently, when emergencies were encountered, he was on his own with the loneliness of the proverbial Maytag repair man.

A fighter coming in from the rear was an easy target, with accurate determination of the instant he came within range the most important. Luftwaffe pilots soon learned of this deadly tactic and altered their approach so as to attack in a turn from above or below.

The two waist gunners working in their close quarters enjoyed a sense of togetherness, but without any comforts. The designers of the B-17 had given little thought to comfort except for the pilots. The waist position was bare aluminum with a narrow walkway from which the gunners worked. There was no place to sit down. Sitting or lying on the cold walkway was a rustic rest to say the least. In the early B-17 models, the open windows were opposite each other. During battle the men were constantly bumping rears. It was like operating two jack hammers in a phone booth. On later E models the windows were staggered. This helped the situation.

The waist was one of the most dangerous positions during battle. With the open windows, there was no structural protection available. The cold was almost as hazardous as enemy flak and fire. Shell casings were ejected on the floor. During a prolonged fight the footing was like walking on marbles. Every shot from the waist required deflection skills. …

The radio operator’s life was morse code and static-ridden high frequency radios. This, in itself, was a full-tune job and vital to crew and formation welfare. For most of the war the radio operator had a top gun in his rather comfortable compartment. In the great battles it was often necessary for him to man his gun and he was not immune to the flak and fighter threats that might penetrate his area while deciphering an important message.

The ball turret was a position given many descriptions by gunners of the day. It was deadly against low attacks and was probably a little safer than the other positions. It was a glass ball with two fifty-calibre guns, extended in flight to hang below the belly of the aircraft. It was electrically operated and could be rotated in every direction below the aircraft. The gunner entered from the top, assumed the foetal position, closed the hatch and was on his own. There were no comfort facilities, so once in the turret, it took a great determination to endure the threats and pains of nature’s call.

Mechanical malfunction could render the turret inoperative and, if not aligned with the escape hatch, it was a frightening circumstance. There are no official recordings of a ball turret gunner being left at his position during bale out or other emergency, but it was a horrifying possibility.

The top turret, located behind the pilots, was manned by the engineer. Aside from his gunner duties, this man was the technical expert on the aircraft. He monitored every system, including the pilots’, at all times. Turret time during battle was just an added duty. But the top turret was deadly, versatile and necessary in fighting off enemy attacks from any direction. During firing it was an aural chorus of humming gears and chattering fifties that could be heard and felt throughout the aircraft. It was routine to fire at a passing fighter, leave the turret to switch fuel tanks and synchronize
the props, and be back in the turret in time to counter the next pass of a fighter.

In the nose section, the bombardier and navigator each had a gun, and, on later models, the deadly chin turret. But their duties were so demanding, especially in lead positions, that they did not man their guns until absolutely necessary. After a few months of the war, the bombardier was not supposed to leave his bomb sight for any reason during the bomb run. But once the bombs were dropped, many bombardiers and navigators scored well against the onslaughts of the Luftwaffe.

The Waist Gunner

Odell Franklin Dobson was born in Virginia on 11 March, 1922. He had wanted to fly from an early age, and, as soon as he was old enough, volunteered for the Army Air Corps and was accepted for a pilot’s course. For reasons he was never able to understand, he was ‘washed out’ after initial flying training. Swallowing his disappointment, he wangled himself onto a course as a ‘ball turret’ gunner – for which one of the physical requirements was a height not exceeding 5ft 6in – Odel was 6ft 1½in! Fortunately for him, he finished up as the left waist gunner on a B-24 Liberator.

After a number of missions over Europe, the bomber in which Odell had been flying became too battle-damaged to be repaired. As a replacement they were offered ‘Ford’s Folly’ by their CO. The old girl had quite a history. She was the first B-24 Liberator to be built by the Ford Motor Company of America. Early into battle, she had flown more missions than any other American bomber in the European theatre – seventy-nine raids at that time. She was a wreck and should have been written off. Yet when the ‘Old Man’ offered her to First Lieutenant C. A. Rudd, Odell’s pilot, he accepted her. The bait was just too tempting to be ignored. ‘Push her total up to a hundred missions,’said the Squadron Commander, ‘and you and your crew can take her back to the States on a War Bonds Tour.’ The idea appealed to the men very much. They would be wined and dined and feted like heroes by their fellow countrymen – and women!

After all they had made enough fuss of the ‘Memphis Belle’ –
Starred her in a movie and all that kind of stuff – and she had only done twenty-five missions when they sent her home. So ‘Rudd’s Ruffians’, as the crew were known, figured old ‘Ford’s Folly’ would go over real big in the States when the time came.

The following is what happened to Staff Sergeant Odell Dobson, waist gunner, on what turned out to be the last mission flown by ‘Ford’s Folly’. This is a passage from my book
Four Men Went to War:

It was the second Sunday in September, 1944. All the enlisted men from the crew of ‘Ford’s Folly,’ with the exception of Odell, were away from base on day pass. Odell had decided to stay around and take it easy, so he was far from pleased when pilot and navigator, Lieutenants Rudd and Dawson, strolled into his hut late in the afternoon and asked him if he would help them swing the compass and calibrate the instruments on their bomber. Irritably he threw down his book and followed them out to the hard stand where ‘Ford’s Folly’ was parked. It was dark long before they had finished their work, yet they were not particularly concerned, because it was after 5 o’clock and no battle order had been posted, which normally meant no operational flying on the following day.

On this occasion they were wrong. At 10 o’clock that night they were told that ‘Ford’s Folly’ was scheduled for a raid in the morning. Earlier that day it had been too cloudy to verify the sun compass, there had been no chance to carry out a flight test and guns and turrets had not been checked. As Odell said later, ‘If Rudd had been smart, he would have refused to fly the ship on that mission.’ The First Lieutenant would not have been alone in backing down – the Group had called for maximum effort, but only twenty-four out of fourty-eight aircraft took off the following morning.

As usual, after pre-flight breakfast, they were briefed. Here they were told that their target was an ordnance manufacturing depot near Hanover. It was still very early in the morning when Odell went over to the flights to oil and install his guns in ‘Ford’s Folly’. Sergeant Modlen, the nose-turret gunner, was a ‘washed-out’ navigator who acted as standby for Lieutenant Dawson, the regular navigator, in the event of an emergency. Part of Odell’s duty was
to check the nose-turret guns for Modlen while he attended the navigators’ briefing. Odell fixed Modlen’s guns, but did not bother to check the electrical circuit to the nose-turret. Then, feeling tired, he took a blanket and went for a nap in an adjoining wheat-field while he waited for the rest of the crew to show up. Just before take-off, always a time of tension, the flyers were more than usually apprehensive – it was mission 13.

Nervousness was cloaked by flippant observations; Maynard, upper turret gunner and engineer, said This is not mission 13, it is mission 12a.’