Big Week: Six Days That Changed the Course of World War II (33 page)

The clear weather that materialized in Thursday’s predawn hours allowed the Eighth Air Force to coordinate the activities of its three divisions with almost textbook precision. The 1st Bombardment Division successfully launched 231 Flying Fortresses, which headed south and east. With them for most of their penetration of the Third Reich were 238 2nd Division Liberators.

Leading the 2nd Division bomber stream to Gotha on Thursday was 14th Combat Wing, in turn spearheaded by the 579th Squadron of the 392nd Bombardment Group. The green flare shot from the tower was seen at 8:30
A.M.
and the Liberator pilots, led by the crew pilot, Lieutenant Jim McGregor, began their takeoff roll. The thirty-one aircraft of the 392nd took off at thirty-second intervals and formed up at twelve thousand feet.

“Turning to the southeast towards Gotha, the white snow-covered landscape four miles below looked cold and lifeless; only large communities, rail lines and an autobahn stood out in relief,” wrote Lieutenant Myron Keilman, also of the 392nd Group’s 579th Squadron, in the 392nd Bombardment Group oral history anthology
20th Century Crusaders
, compiled by Ian Hawkins. That day, he was flying deputy lead on Jim McGregor’s wing. At their altitude, the ambient temperature was forty degrees below zero, but there was hardly a cloud in the sky.

“The gray and white landscape 21,000 feet below looks cold and wintry,” George Webster writes, echoing Keilman’s description of the landscape that they saw so clearly from far above. “It seems quiet down there, but I know that air raid sirens blare in towns, and people hurry to hide in underground shelters. I see a countryside of dark forests and white fields dotted with cities and villages, all connected by roads and rail lines. While
I fill my log with everything that I see, I gaze at the Rhine River, spanned by dozens of bridges, and lined with cities pouring smoke into the air from factories. The sky is brilliant blue, but it is filled with myriad white trails high overhead. They twist and circle as our fighters battle what looks like an immense number of German attackers. I tremble from cold and fright. My headache is back, and it’s killing me.”

To again cite Glen Williamson’s metaphor, the Luftwaffe erected a substantial wall to protect Gotha and Schweinfurt from the other divisions, hammering the Eighth Air Force bombers almost continuously to and from the targets, and giving their fighter escorts a serious run for their money. Over Schweinfurt, the escorts lost ten of their own while downing thirty-seven Luftwaffe interceptors. The 1st Division lost eleven Flying Fortresses, but the 2nd Division paid a steeper price on the Gotha mission, losing thirty-three Liberators.

“The fighters’ wings blink as their many guns fire,” George Webster remembers. “Orange streams shoot toward the bombers like fire from hoses and smash into a B-17. Pieces of the unlucky bomber fly off in a cloud of smoke. Gunfire hits the Plexiglas dome of a bomber’s top turret, and it explodes in a white cloud that turns red with blood from the gunner’s head. The first bomber catches fire, then the second, each trailing a long stream of orange flame. Both B-17s wobble as blazes engulf them in seconds. No one gets out. The men are burning alive in there. In thirty seconds, the bombers are flaming torches, totally enveloped in fire. The blazing planes tip over and fall, trailing long tails of flame. Fighters wheel around and race back from the rear toward the hapless formation of bombers. Red tracers from bombers stray out toward the fighters. Orange fire spews from the fighters’ wings. It hammers a B-17, hitting wings and engines. Smoke and fragments erupt from the bomber. Fire spurts from its engines, and the big plane dissolves in a mass of flames.”

Meanwhile, over Osnabrück, on the approach to Gotha, the Liberators of the 2nd Division were also under attack, and flying without fighter support because they were ahead of schedule.

“My log records the first continuous opposition in the Osnabrück area at 1200 hours, noon,” Wright Lee of the 445th Bombardment Group reports. “Here we turned south, deeper into Germany. We were eleven
minutes ahead of schedule now and still had no fighter assistance. As we looked out of the windows, we saw enemy fighters coming up in droves. Bf 109s, Fw 190s, Ju 88s, and Bf 110s came zooming into our area and the individual attacks began. A B-24 blew up behind us and I logged it for the record. This was the first of five bombers which our 445th Group lost around noon within six minutes. It was later estimated that we had been attacked by 150 German fighters. It was impossible to individually log all of this activity but I did my best.”

As the 445th Bombardment Group was passing northeast of Osnabrück, Lee could watch the fighters taking off from their bases far below.

“Outside of the greater Osnabrück fighter defense sector, I looked down and it almost made me sick to see what more was in store for us,” he continues. “The fighters were taking off in pairs, one twosome after the other, and all circled and climbed to get into the fight. They were all around us and still we had no help, all because we were ahead of schedule.”

Another 2nd Division, 14th Combat Wing Liberator outfit, the 392nd Bombardment Group, reported that the fighter escort caught up with the bombers as they neared the target, and as Luftwaffe activity increased.

“Fighter attacks became more persistent,” Myron Keilman writes of the 392nd’s approach to Gotha. “By the time we reached our Initial Point to begin our bomb run, the sky around our three squadrons was full of busy P-38s and P-51s fending off the enemy fighters. Our little friends dived down past our lead ship, chasing the Bf 109s and Fw 190s which were making head-on attacks. Our gunners got in a lot of shooting, too. The staccato of the turrets’ twin .50s vibrated throughout the airplane. It was really frightening.”

As the 392nd Bombardment Group made a gradual left turn over the IP, red flares from McGregor’s Liberator were the indicator that it was time for the bombardiers to open their bomb bays. In the noses of the Liberators, the Norden bombsights were uncovered, gyroscopes were stabilized, and bombing switches turned to the “on” position.

“I’ve got the target!” Keilman recalls of the lead bombardier’s words. In the crystal clear air, this came as no surprise. How could he not?

“Lieutenant Good’s target folder didn’t contain a snow-covered, wintry view of the Messerschmitt Aircraft Plants,” Keilman writes in Hawkins’s
anthology. “He had to use his keen judgment and trained skills in locating the briefed aiming point. Only his one eye, peering through the bombsight optics, could determine where to place the cross-hair. He gave a running commentary to the command pilot and crew of what he saw and what he was doing in steering the lead B-24, and the following formation of bombers, to the bomb release point. But only he, the lead bombardier, knew for sure what was viewed through the bombsight.”

“On airspeed, on altitude,” lead pilot McGregor replied, handing control of the Liberator to the bombardier at 160 mph and eighteen thousand feet. “You’ve got the airplane.”

“The bombs were smack ‘on target,’ but the battle wasn’t over,” Keilman continues. “No sooner had the 14th Wing left the target’s flak than we were again attacked by enemy fighters…. The interphone was alive with excited calls of enemy action. Head-on and tail attacks, in singles and ‘gaggles.’ Rockets, 20mm cannon shells, and machine gun fire were all encountered as the battle progressed. Seven of our B-24s were shot down and many of us were shot up.”

Meanwhile, the 2nd Combat Wing suffered a snafu over the target when the lead bombardier passed out from an oxygen system failure and accidentally began dropping bombs on the wrong target. The Liberators following him proceeded to do the same, but the 445th Group lead bombardier noticed the error and led his group to the correct target.

“The upcoming target was clear and easily identified,” Wright Lee remembers. “The Bf 110 factory buildings were snow covered but stood out clearly. The interphone suddenly crackled and over came, ‘Bombs Away’ from the pilot. I hit the salvo handle and away they went at 1:19
P.M.
from 20,000 feet. I leaned down over the glass bottom of the nose and watched as our bombs fell toward the target, both of us moving forward at about the same speed. Then they hit the buildings which seemed to disintegrate and fly into the air. Black smoke and flames accompanied the explosions. For a second I thought that what I was seeing was flak bursting and jumped back. Then I realized that it was the target ‘exploding.’ Lieutenant Cassani, bombardier in our lead plane, had done a great job.”

The 445th Bombardment Group would receive a Distinguished Unit
Citation for this mission because of its having deviated from the erroneous target to the correct one.

Exiting the target area, however, the 445th once again was piled on by the Luftwaffe.

“We passed over the town of Gotha and made a sharp right turn,” Wright Lee remembers. “Fighters resumed their attacks with a vengeance. As I looked out of the window at our lead plane not more than 100 feet from us, I saw its nose suddenly light up with a blinding flash… then nothing, no explosion. The plane’s bomb bay doors opened and the landing gear was lowered as they continued in formation. After a few seconds the plane’s wing wagged, the signal for the deputy lead to take over. The injured ship gently moved to the left and our ship moved with it…. A tense drama was unfolding in the lead ship, [which was] now aborting…. The blinding flash which I saw was a 20 mm shell exploding in the cockpit, injuring Major Evans, the pilot and our Squadron Commander, but missing Captain Bussing, the copilot. With all of this confusion, Major Evans gave the order to ‘lower the wheels… we’re going down.’ The lowering of the wheels was an International Code that the plane was surrendering in the air and would fight no further and would make a landing. Opening the bomb bay was a precaution in case of an explosion and to allow any man to leave the plane via parachute.”

As Lee watched, the 389th Bombardment Group, flying forward and right of the 445th and leading the 2nd Combat Wing, took the brunt of the Luftwaffe attack. “Men were bailing out randomly from all positions in these planes, nose to bomb bay to tail,” he writes. “Some chutes opened right away but other men fell free, arms and legs dangling as they dropped in the sky. Some came very close to our planes, perhaps one hundred feet, but I didn’t see any hit. The sky was a mass of parachutes and I estimated that twenty-five were all around us…. Out in front at ‘twelve o’clock high’ I watched as ten Bf 109s lined up ready to attack. Down they zoomed, heading straight for us, and I could almost feel the bullets hit me, but by some miracle they missed and [the German fighters] sped by to our side and under us, so near that I could see the black crosses clearly and the pilots’ faces looking out of the cockpits.”

Among the faces of the Luftwaffe fighter pilots bedeviling the 1st and 2nd Divisions on Thursday were those of several aces whose toll of Eighth Air Force bombers was already in double digits, such as Hermann Staiger of Jagdgeschwader 26, whose eventual score of sixty-three victories would include twenty-six four-engine bombers. On Thursday, he downed a 1st Division Flying Fortress south of Quakenbrück-Rheine near Münster.

The
Gruppenkommandeur
of Jagdgeschwader 11’s III Gruppe, Anton “Toni” Hackl, credited with thirty-four heavy bombers during his career, took out a B-17 straggler late in the afternoon, fourteen thousand feet over Glückstadt in Schleswig-Holstein.

“The sky around us filled with fighters slashing through bomber formations, and bomber gunfire spurting toward fighters,” George Webster writes, painting a hellish portrait of a hellish bomb run. “Bombers catch fire, and fighters trail smoke as they fall toward the earth. A fighter pilot jumps from his stricken fighter and opens his parachute. A bomber’s tail gunner fires a long burst at him. The pilot’s body jerks and hangs limply from his parachute. Fighter pilots must have seen the killing, because two Fw 190s attack the tail gunner’s bomber. Their guns smash the tail gunner’s position to shreds and hit the engines until the B-17 explodes in another ball of fire.”

Another Luftwaffe ace, who had been with Jagdgeschwader 26 for about a year,
Oberleutnant
Waldemar “Waldi” Radener caught the Schweinfurt mission both coming and going, downing one bomber on the way south plus another bomber and an escort fighter over Wetzlar in Hesse about two hours later.

Oberleutnant
Rüdiger von Kirchmayr of Jagdgeschwader 1, who had destroyed a 2nd Division Liberator over the Dutch coast on Monday, claimed another over Westphalia on Thursday. These were two of an eventual ten heavy bombers that he claimed. The total of twenty-six heavy bombers credited to
Oberfeldwebel
Anton-Rudolf “Toni” Piffer of Jagdgeschwader 1 would include a 2nd Division Liberator that he shot down on Thursday over Diepholz.

The man who did the most damage to the Eighth Air Force on Thursday was Walter Dahl, flying a Bf 109G-6, armed with a 30mm MK 108 cannon. He was the
Gruppenkommandeur
of Jagdgeschwader 3’s III Gruppe,
which was reassigned to
Reichsverteidigung
duties from Kursk on the eastern front during the summer of 1943. Dahl had shown an aptitude for battling bombers and had led the III Gruppe to intercept the USAAF offensive against Schweinfurt and Regensburg on August 17.

Dahl claimed four on February 23, plus one of the escorting P-38s. As Luftwaffe records show, he shot down two B-17s in the space of four minutes around noon and two more in the space of eight minutes about an hour later—while chasing down the P-38 in between. He was eventually credited with costing the Americans as many as three dozen four-engine bombers.

As they had done on Sunday, the 3rd Division sent 236 Flying Fortresses across the North Sea, to pass over Denmark and drive south toward the Baltic coast.

The 3rd Division targets, beginning with Tutow, were all related to the production of Focke-Wulf Fw 190s. The most distant of these was the Luftwaffenfliegerhorst Kreising complex at Krzesiny, just outside the city of Posen. Known as Poznan before the war, when it was part of Poland, it would become and remain Poznan, Poland, again after the war.