Big Week: Six Days That Changed the Course of World War II (18 page)

In the aftermath of the September 6 mission, the Eighth Air Force initiated what amounted to a three-week intermission in Operation Pointblank, and a diversion of resources to two other activities, both over northern France—within the range of fighter escort. Of the two, Operation Starkey was part of the long-term Combined Bomber Offensive Plan, while Operation Crossbow was undertaken as an emergency measure.

Operation Starkey involved a series of attacks on the road and rail transportation network across northern France. These missions had several purposes. First, they were seen as a rehearsal for the types of operations that the Eighth Air Force would be called upon to conduct immediately ahead of Operation Overlord, the cross-channel invasion of northern France. Though this was not planned to take place until May 1944, a secondary purpose of Operation Starkey was to give the Germans the suggestion that it might take place sooner.

If the enemy were to be lured into believing this, they would divert resources to northern France from elsewhere. In turn, such a diversion of ground assets would please the Soviets, who were fighting a ground war against the Germans. Meanwhile, a diversion of Luftwaffe assets from the air defense of Germany would reduce the number of fighters that they could throw against Eighth Air Force bombers flying Pointblank missions.

Beginning in August, and continuing into September, VIII Bomber Command heavy bombers, as well as VIII Air Support Command medium bombers, conducted extensive Starkey operations against transportation and port facilities, as well as industrial targets and Luftwaffe bases. As Arthur Ferguson writes, “No pains were spared to stage a heavy air attack and to create the illusion of an impending major amphibious assault.”

Operation Crossbow was put together as a response to an entirely unanticipated threat. Allied photoreconnaissance aircraft had discovered that the Germans were constructing fixed launch facilities for V-1 cruise missiles and V-2 ballistic missiles in northern France. Knowing that these
weapons would be used against England, Crossbow was organized to take out the launch facilities. The first of several Crossbow missions was flown by 187 B-17s against a site at Watten on August 27. Because Allied knowledge of the “V Weapons” was still classified, the target was officially referred to as an “aeronautical facilities station.”

Attacking the sites proved ineffective because, like the U-boat pens, the V-1 sites were protected by thick reinforced concrete. Most V-2s, meanwhile, were launched from hard-to-locate mobile launchers. As it was, for reasons unrelated to Crossbow raids, the Germans would not start launching V-1s against England for another ten months, and the first operational V-2 launch was still more than a year away.

Operations against Germany resumed on September 27 and October 2 with two major efforts involving 246 and 339 heavy bombers respectively. These were not deep penetration missions like those of August. The target was the port city of Emden, the closest German target to the Eighth Air Force bases in England, and well within the range of escort fighters.

The missions did mark the first operational use by the Eighth of the H2S airborne ground-scanning radar that had been developed in Britain for use by the RAF in night missions. The H2S provided a crude—by today’s standards—image of cities and urban areas on a radarscope, thereby allowing a bombardier to conduct his bomb drop as though he could actually see his target. First used operationally by the RAF in January 1943, the H2S system was installed in one or two pathfinder aircraft that flew ahead of each bomber formation.

Meanwhile, the H2S concept was seen as a possible solution to the single most limiting factor in Eighth Air Force daylight bombardment operations—the weather. When a target was obscured by clouds, which seemed to have been the case more often than not, precision bombing was impossible, so bombers had to forgo an attack on their primary target to search for targets of opportunity. Though the RAF was acquiring H2S equipment as fast as it could be manufactured, the Eighth Air Force managed to get its hands on a small number of sets and began installing them in its bombers. Flying Fortresses thus equipped formed the nucleus of the 482nd Bombardment Group at Alconbury, which was specifically designated as a Pathfinder group.

In the meantime, because supplies of the H2S sets were so limited, the USAAF decided to seek development of a homegrown H2S analog. It so happened that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory, known as the “Rad Lab,” had been doing substantial research on the same technology. They were able to develop an improved variation on the H2S, which they called H2X, and which the USAAF later designated as AN/APS-15. The H2X used a shorter frequency than the H2S, and therefore provided imagery with higher resolution.

By the third week of September 1943, the Rad Lab had installed a dozen H2X sets in a dozen Flying Fortresses, and the aircraft were on their way to England. Here, they joined the H2S-equipped bombers in the 482nd Bombardment Group. General Eaker was already making plans for a squadron of bombers equipped with the H2S, and two with the H2X system.

Aside from an experimental flight of a single H2S-equipped bomber in August, the September 27 mission marked the first use of Pathfinders at part of a bomber formation. Emden was picked in part because it was a port city, and the ground-scanning radar displayed especially high contrast between land and sea.

More than 300 Flying Fortresses from the 1st and 2nd Bombardment Divisions took part in the raid, with a pair of Pathfinders assigned to lead each division. It was customary for bombardiers in the formations to follow the example of the lead bombardier, and such was the case here, except that in this case, the lead bombardier “saw” his target only on a radarscope.

On October 2, the VIII Bomber Command launched another mission to Emden, this time with 339 bombers led to the targets by Pathfinders.

“Although by no means completely successful, these two initial attempts at radar bombing gave room for restrained optimism regarding the new techniques,” Arthur Ferguson writes, summarizing the ORS report on the Emden “blind bombing” missions. “Three of the four combat wings that bombed on an H2S plane achieved the reasonably small average circular error of from one-half to one mile. Difficulty in the fourth sighting resulted in an abnormal error of two to three miles. Results were less encouraging for the combat wing that attempted to bomb on flares dropped by the Pathfinder planes. Confusion [at the beginning of the
bomb run] during the first mission and a high wind during the second, which blew the smoke of the markers rapidly from the target area, help to account for an average error of more than five miles. One of the leading combat wings did considerable damage…. More encouraging than the bombing was the fact that the enemy fighters, since they had to intercept through the overcast, fought at a distinct disadvantage. Overcast bombing was obviously a safer type of bombing than visual.”

Promising results had been achieved by formations that were led directly by a Pathfinder, but it was determined that the smaller the number of bombers led by a Pathfinder, the more condensed and more accurate the bombing pattern would be.

There was also a good deal of optimism with regard to improving technology in aircraft armament. By the autumn of 1943, the Eighth Air Force was beginning to receive new-model Liberators and Flying Fortresses equipped with the long-awaited powered nose turrets, each armed with a pair of .50-caliber machine guns, to counter the nagging and serious threat of head-on attacks by Luftwaffe interceptors.

An improvement over the first generation B-24C and B-24D Liberators, which had been in USAAF service around the world in 1942 and early 1943, the second generation, which started arriving in the field by the autumn of 1942, all had powered nose turrets. Most of the Liberator nose turrets themselves were based on the design of the tail turrets, which had been developed for the Liberator by Emerson Electric.

There were three major second generation Liberator variants, which were similar to the point of being hard to distinguish visually. These included the B-24G, built by North American Aviation in Dallas; the B-24H, built by Ford at Willow Run, Consolidated, in Fort Worth or by Douglas in Tulsa, using Ford subassemblies; and the B-24J, initially built only by Consolidated in Fort Worth and San Diego, but later by the other manufacturers. Of a total of more than 18,000 Liberators, 6,678 were of the B-24J variant.

The new B-17G Flying Fortress, meanwhile, retained the same Plexiglas nose as the previous B-17 variants, but had a powered Bendix “chin” turret located beneath the nose. The nose of the B-17G also retained the “cheek” guns that had been introduced on the sides of the nose in late-production
B-17Fs. Aside from the chin turret, the B-17F and B-17G were largely similar, including improved Pratt & Whitney R1820-97 engines, and had the same Boeing model number (299P). Seventy percent of all Flying Fortresses were of the B-17G variant, of which 2,250 were built by Lockheed Vega, 2,395 by Douglas, and 4,035 by Boeing.

The B-17Gs began arriving in England for Eighth Air Force assignments in August and September, 1943, with the second generation Liberators coming on line over the next few months. Many of these newer Liberator variants would also go to the Fifteenth Air Force, formed in the Mediterranean Theater in November.

With the promise of such a technological marvel as blind bombing now a reality, and with more and better aircraft flooding into the bases in East Anglia, those who had theorized and prophesied the validation of the daylight strategic doctrine were optimistic. Against a technologically static foe, all of this would have added up to a decisive turning point.

However, the Germany of 1943 was not a technologically static foe. Though they had been slow to exploit radar technology, they now had an increasingly effective radar early warning system to track incoming Eighth Air Force and RAF bombers. The Luftwaffe had also gotten its hands on a British H2S set, taken from a downed bomber, and they were learning how to direct interceptors to attack Pathfinders by homing in on their radar.

Meanwhile, just as the bombers were increasingly better armed, the Luftwaffe was matching the Allies move for move with other weapons and tactics of their own.

If the enlarging and improving Eighth Air Force was cause for optimism in the fall of 1943, that feeling was tempered by the knowledge that the Luftwaffe still controlled German airspace, and nose turrets alone would not change that. The German interceptor pilots would remain the masters of the skies in the heart of the Reich until there were American fighter pilots to challenge them in those skies. Until the P-51 Mustang arrived, no American fighter pilots could go there.

On August 1, the Luftwaffe had painted Black Sunday black, and they had painted August 17 with paint from the same bucket.

No matter how the Eighth Air Force went about its business and structured its missions, there would continue to be days like this so long as the bombers went deep into the Reich without fighter escort. Ira Eaker knew this. Fred Anderson knew this. Dick Hughes knew this, and it was why he continually tormented over “sending young men to their deaths.”

However, to suspend the Combined Bomber Offensive, or to limit Eighth Air Force participation to easier targets in France, would have been no option. Operation Overlord was coming, and work needed to be done before D-Day arrived. If the Combined Bomber Offensive and Operation Pointblank were unsuccessful, or if those who planned them threw in the towel, then tens of thousands of young lives could be lost in the cross-channel invasion. If Overlord failed, all those lives would have been lost in vain. With weather and sea conditions what they were in the English Channel, and with the time needed to regroup from a failed Overlord, it would be 1945 before it could be tried again.

There was nothing to do but press on.

There would continue to be days like Black Sunday on the road to Big
Week and Overlord. Beginning on October 8, there would be a whole
week
like Black Sunday. The week that came to be called “Black Week” was, on the planning papers, a miniature prototype of what was to come in Big Week. In other words, it was planned as a sustained series of maximum efforts.

It had not been long since a three-hundred-plane raid was an isolated milestone, but this week was planned to be a series of back-to-back missions comprised of numbers in excess of three hundred. Normally, the force would be compelled to stand down after such a mission. By October, the Eighth Air Force had enough resources to keep going—despite the losses. The latter phrase contained the darkest implications of the week.

On Friday, October 8, a record number of heavy bombers, one shy of four hundred, went out from East Anglia. The targets were familiar, the Focke-Wulf plant and the shipyards in Bremen, and the Bremer Vulkan shipyard, which built U-boats in Bremen’s northern suburb of Vegesack. Of the planes that took off, 357 made it through to bomb their targets.

The Luftwaffe and the flak batteries on the ground had seen them coming, though not as well as they might have. Just as the Yanks had borrowed H2S radar bombing technology from the Brits, so too had they borrowed technology for
confusing
radar. The British called it “Window,” and today we call it “Chaff.” In 1943, the Eighth Air Force, who first used it on October 8, called it “Carpet.”

The concept was as brilliant as it was simple. Just as metal foil reflects light, so too it reflects radar, creating false echoes. The RAF had been studying the concept since 1937 but did not use it operationally until the summer of 1943, out of fear that the Germans would start using it against England. By that time, British air defense radar had improved toward a point where the value of using Window outweighed the potential negatives.

Window, which consisted of metallic coated sheets of paper, was successful in fooling the Luftwaffe at night, because the night fighters depended on their radar to find the bombers. The Eighth Air Force, whose Carpet consisted of narrow strips of aluminum foil, would not foil the German interceptors when they could
see
the bombers visually, but it was harder for the flak batteries to target them.