The Bomber Boys (12 page)

Jules Beck was still standing on the stabilizer of the quickly sinking bomber. The men in the rafts were shouting for Beck to,
“Dive in!” The radioman replied that his Mae West was only half inflated and explained, “I can’t swim!”

“Tough shit!” someone yelled. “You’re gonna drown if you don’t.”

Beck went into the cold salt water, and his friends pulled him on board a raft. Kauffman took a head count and found nobody missing. Peter scanned the faces of the men in his raft. There were no signs of relief after their narrow escape, only expressions of fear. He knew the same expression was on his face, too.

Someone cut the tether line connecting the rafts and the bomber. About four minutes after she had hit the water, the B-17
Ruthless
disappeared beneath the waves of the North Sea. A crewman began to crank the Gibson Girl signal unit. One of the Spitfires dove down close to the surface and dropped signal flares into the water. The two British fighters made one more low pass, waved their wings and then disappeared in the direction of England.

There was nothing the cold, wet airmen could do but to pray and wait. They had no food and worse, no fresh water. Peter watched the sun descending in the west.
Only a few hours of daylight left.
After dark they would be difficult to spot—just two yellow specks on a big dark blue canvas. He checked his watch. Two hours had passed. It seemed like a day.

Help showed up about two hours later in the form of the British patrol boat
Lord Keith
. It was close to darkness when the last American airman was pulled from his raft. The English sailors provided Peter and his crewmates with blankets, food and plenty of excellent rum. Once ashore, the airmen were taken to a nearby British air station where they received a warm welcome and dry RAF uniforms. After a hearty breakfast the following morning, Kauffman’s crew climbed aboard a truck and headed back to Grafton Underwood. On the ride to their base, Paul Spodar expressed the entire crew’s gratitude to their pilot
with a left-handed compliment: “You know, Junior, you’ve made some bumpy landings and that one was the bumpiest . . . , but it’s the best damned landing you ever made.” A couple of days later, each of the
Ruthless
survivors was granted a three-day pass to London.

 

 

 

Peter returned from London on the evening of October 9. He was awakened early the next day with the news of a mission to Münster, Germany. If any of the crew had butterflies about flying again, it was well hidden and soon they were in the air, all too busy to worry. The Luftwaffe put up a stiff defense to protect Münster, an important German railroad hub.

Kauffman’s gunners blazed away and shouted the location of enemy fighters over the interphone. With three missions behind him, Peter felt he could bring down one of the German planes. When an attacking Me-109 stayed a little too close for a little too long, the left waist gunner watched as his machine gun’s bullets found their target.

Peter could clearly see the .50 caliber rounds ripping into the enemy plane, and he kept firing until black smoke billowed through the air. The German fighter rolled over and spiraled toward the earth. Peter watched the burning plane fall until another enemy fighter flew by—that snapped the young waist gunner back into the fight. Münster was a tough run. Lots of fighters and lots of flak, but when Kauffman landed his B-17 back at Grafton Underwood, his crew agreed it was not nearly as rough as going into the North Sea.

For his action on the Münster mission, Peter was given an official kill for the Me-109 fighter he had shot down. He was also credited with the probable kill of another enemy fighter. Many gunners would go their entire tour of duty without an official kill. The boy from Brooklyn had shot down one, perhaps
two German airplanes and survived a B-17 ditching in just four missions. Still, if Peter considered himself lucky, it was only “lucky so far.” He always assumed that the next mission would be the worst, and on October 14, 1943, he was right.

The first indication that something out of the ordinary was brewing came early on that morning at the mess hall.

“How do you like your bacon?” the mess worker asked as he dumped a large helping of fresh scrambled eggs on Peter’s plate.
Bacon? Fresh eggs?
Something was up. The crews finished their breakfast in time for the seven o’clock briefing, where they were given the bad news.

“The target for today is Schweinfurt,” the briefing officer said calmly. The uproar among the bomber crews took Peter by surprise. There was moaning, yelling and cursing. What was so bad about Schweinfurt? The Germans had thrown everything at them over Münster—could Schweinfurt be worse? Peter got his explanation from a veteran member of the 384th after the briefing.

The airman explained that the Eighth Air Force had flown a dual mission to Schweinfurt and Regensburg back in August. The Regensburg formation had lost twenty-four bombers, and thirty-six more had gone down on the Schweinfurt run. A total of sixty American bombers and six hundred airmen gone in one day.

Schweinfurt was deadly for two reasons. It was deep inside Germany, requiring the attacking bombers to fly a long route directly over or in the vicinity of numerous German airfields. Hundreds of enemy fighters would be within striking distance. The second reason Schweinfurt was such a tough target was the same reason the Americans were determined to bomb it—the German city was home to three ball-bearing factories.

Ball bearings were essential to the production of Germany’s aircraft, weapons and transportation equipment. To destroy
these factories was to severely injure the German military’s ability to wage an offensive war and defend the fatherland. Schweinfurt would be fortified with every antiaircraft gun and fighter the Luftwaffe could muster.

Peter had already written four letters home. One was to Helen, and the other three were addressed to his sisters. Regulations forbade any airman from writing any information about a particular mission. Peter would not have done so anyway. Why worry Helen and his family any more than they were already? As always, he mentioned mostly things about life on the base and the personality traits of his crewmates. Before departing for Schweinfurt, he gave the letters to a friend on the ground crew to mail. A Catholic priest was on hand to give absolution to anyone who sought it. There were quite a few takers.

Kauffman’s crew climbed aboard a gleaming B-17 with the serial number 42-29870. (It was listed by the last three digits on the squadron formation plan.) There was one change in the crew for the Schweinfurt mission. The crew’s regular bombardier, Lecroix, was on the sick list. Sergeant David Dannerman, a toggler, would be Lecroix’s replacement.

At more than twenty-six thousand feet up, the temperature was at least thirty below zero, but Peter found he was perspiring so much that his oxygen mask was repeatedly slipping down his face. He was nervous and on edge—they all were. Waiting for the enemy fighters to appear was as bad as the combat. Then the wait was over.

From his left waist position, Peter could see almost half of the 384th Bomb Group B-17s and even some of the forward and rear groups. It was the forward groups that the German fighters struck first, flying head-on through the bomber formation in waves.

Peter watched as one American bomber after another began to roll over and go down. He wiped the condensation from his
glasses and tried to count parachutes coming from the dying Fortresses. Sometimes he saw a few—sometimes he saw none. The worst feeling was to see a B-17 just disintegrate into a tomb of boiling fire and black smoke, knowing that the men inside had ceased to exist in the time it took to snap your fingers.

“They’re shooting rockets at us!” It was the voice of Stanley Ruben, the tail gunner. Peter could see the source of the rocket attack. Twin-engine Messerschmitt 110s were flying well out of range of the bomber gunners, lobbing in their rockets. In frustration he swung the .50 caliber waist gun around, looking for something to shoot at. Two Me-109s came in, their machine guns and cannons firing. Peter squeezed the triggers, and his mind went blank as he became lost in the life-and-death struggle of air combat.

 

 

 

The American bomber force that crossed the border into Germany on that Thursday morning numbered 257 aircraft. The Luftwaffe attacked with more than four hundred fighters. Many of the enemy fighters flew initial assaults on the B-17s, then landed to refuel and hit the bomber formation again. Even this all-out effort could not stop the B-17 formation from reaching Schweinfurt, but the price paid was high. Twenty-eight bombers were shot from the sky without ever reaching their target.

During the American Civil War, one of the early battles that shocked the world was fought near the small Shiloh church in western Tennessee. More than thirty-four hundred men died during the Battle of Shiloh. Nowhere on the killing field had the fighting been more intense than around a small briar thicket held by Union soldiers. Time and time again, the Confederates charged the thicket only to be repulsed by a shower of lead.

One young rebel staggered back into his lines and exclaimed, “It’s like a hornet’s nest in there!”

The Confederates finally captured the Union thicket, but Southern dead carpeted the ground around it. The Hornet’s Nest came to symbolize the sacrifice and brutality of war. For the American bomber crews, Thursday, October 14, 1943, was beginning to resemble a Hornet’s Nest.

There was no escape from the enemy fighters. Like hornets, they were everywhere—above, below, in front, behind, on the sides and in the middle of the bombers. Even when the B-17s reached the outskirts of Schweinfurt and began to enter the heavy flak area, some of the German fighters boldly followed them.

Giles Kauffman was one of the pilots who was able to get his aircraft over Schweinfurt and drop his bombs on the target. It was no small accomplishment, since the flak over the city was the thickest he had ever seen. Some of the flak bursts came very close to his aircraft. None of the crew reported damage, but the number one engine was acting up as he banked his Fortress and headed for England.

At his waist window, Peter spotted a small stream of smoke trailing the outside engine on the left wing. He also felt something thick and wet running down his left cheek and an uncomfortable stinging sensation from his ear. When he checked the area with his hand, the fingers of his glove came back bloody. He concluded if he was still alert and standing then it was not a serious wound. Probably a nick, likely from the same explosion that had damaged the number one engine, which was now emptying a much larger amount of black smoke into the sky.

That one is finished,
Peter thought.

On the other side of the airplane, Spodar was having his own problems. His machine gun was jammed and despite his best efforts, it would not function. Luckily, there was a short period of relief from attack as the bomber completed its turn and struggled to maintain formation altitude.

The German fighters were concentrating their attacks on the
loaded incoming bombers. It would not be long, though, before refueled Luftwaffe planes would be coming up to attack the homeward-bound B-17s. Spodar decided if he could not function as a gunner anymore, at least he could make sure everyone else had plenty of ammunition. He keyed his interphone mike as he tapped Peter on the shoulder.

“Pete, I’m going to get some more ammo.” Then Spodar headed for the radio room.

We’re going to need it all,
Peter thought.
With just three engines, we’ll end up on our own, and those Luftwaffe fighters are going to be all over us.

Spodar had just disappeared when Stanley Ruben’s voice came over the interphone. “Hey, guys, I’m out of ammo back here!” Peter glanced down at his feet—there was one full box of ammunition left.

“Hang on, Stan, I’ll get you some,” Peter assured the tail gunner.

He pulled off his headset and disconnected from the main oxygen supply. After he hooked up to a walk-around bottle of oxygen, Peter carried the heavy ammunition box to the back of the bomber. When he reached the tail section where the low ceiling would not allow him to stand, he got down on his hands and knees and pushed the ammo rearward. Burdened with dragging along the oxygen bottle, it was an awkward process. Peter had finally managed to get the box into the entrance of the tail gunner’s area, when he met Ruben crawling out.

Peter pointed to the ammo box and motioned for his friend to go back, but Ruben shook his head and pointed toward the front. Without his interphone, Peter was deaf to what was happening. Something was up, and once he backed out of the tail section it was easy to figure out what it was.

Martinez was out of his ball turret, and he worked on opening the escape door behind the right waist gun position. Through
his left waist window, Peter could see most of the bomber formation above them. Kauffman’s B-17 was losing altitude rapidly and now two engines were trailing black smoke.

Peter grabbed his Air Force-issue shoes hanging nearby and attached them to his parachute harness. Flight boots did a nice job of keeping an airman’s feet from freezing at high altitudes, but they would not be worth a damn if he had to walk, or if necessary, run.

Spodar and Beck showed up from the radio room. Like Peter, Spodar had been unaware they had been ordered to bail out until he walked into the radio room and saw Beck putting on his parachute.

As the five airmen huddled around the escape door, it somehow opened up before the hinge pin was completely removed. The outside air currents jerked the door rearward and Martinez’s parachute harness became caught. The ball turret gunner was half in and half out of the airplane, with the wind pinning him against the door. If they could not get the hinge pin loose and release the escape door, each of them was going to have the same difficulty that Martinez was encountering.