Learning to Fly in Combat
...from The Wild Blue (Chapter 6) by Stephen E. Ambrose
Learning to Fly in Combat
The AAF policy in the Fall of 1944 was to have the pilots fly their
first five combat missions as co-pilots with a veteran and an experienced
crew. McGovern was, in his words, "lucky," because his pilot was Captain
Howard Surbeck of Washington state. He was older, twenty-four-years-old
to McGovern ’s twenty-two, "and he had circles under his eyes and he was
obviously feeling the strain of combat." He had flown 25 missions when McGovern
flew with him. It was his tent that Rounds, with McGovern on board, had
torn in half with his jeep, but Surbeck never mentioned it to McGovern.
Surbeck let McGovern do quite a bit of the flying from his co-pilot
’s seat, sometimes half the mission. The experience taught McGovern "more
about what it ’s like to have all that gear on and to go to 25,000 feet
in sub-zero temperatures and stay in formation and get shot at and all the
other things that go with combat missions." Surbeck "brought me along."
McGovern’s first mission was November 11, 1944 — Armistice Day. The
night before he checked and saw his name on the assignment sheet. The morning
began for him when the operations sergeant came into his tent at 4:00 A.M.
to wake him. On his first five missions, Rounds and Adams could stay in
the sack, as they were not going. McGovern went to the mess hall for a powdered
egg breakfast. Then he climbed into a truck for the drive to the group’
s operations room for the briefing. At the door, an MP examined his identification
and checked his name on the assignment sheet, then opened the door so McGovern
and those from his truck could enter.
Inside, the 300 or so crew sat on planks placed over cinder blocks.
When a staff officer announced that they were all present and accounted
for, the door was locked. The Group commander by the Fall of 1944 was Col.
William Snowden. He was in his mid-forties, a "grandfather" figure to the
pilots and crews. He had gray hair but a commanding presence. McGovern said
he had "the total confidence of everyone in our group. A good man and a
good leader. Just the way he moved around, he was reassuring without being
condescending."
When Colonel Snowden strode in, everyone stood at attention. Snowden
climbed onto
the platform, put the men at ease, and after saying good morning motioned
to a member of his staff to pull a draw string. Behind the curtain was a
large map of southern and central Europe. The pilots and crew members saw
their route and the target drawn on the map with erasable marks. When it
was Vienna, or Munich, or any other target known to be well defended by
antiaircraft guns, or if it was four or more hours flying time from Cerignola,
a dismal groan slowly became audible, but on this occasion there were murmurs
of approval because the target was Linz, Austria, not so terribly far away,
without any known antiaircraft batteries to fly over, and not so well protected
itself. It could be what the men called a "milk run." Later in the war Linz
would become one of the most heavily defended targets in Europe.
Colonel Snowden got the men to quiet down and gave way to the weather
officer, who described what the cloud cover and winds were likely to be
like over Linz.. Then he went over conditions on the route and what to expect
on the way home and what it would be like over Cerignola when they got back.
Next the operations officer described the nature of the marshaling yards
they were going after and explained that the mission was important because
the Germans were moving men and materiel through Linz on their way to the
Italian front. He warned the pilots and bombardiers to make every possible
effort to avoid hitting the cultural sites and educational buildings. By
this stage of the war, the bombardiers in the squadron would toggle their
switches when they saw the lead plane, with the best navigator and bombardier,
drop its bombs.
Next the men were told who would be the pilot of the lead plane. He
was always a good pilot. Sometimes he was a major, but often Colonel Snowden
would lead the missions — when that happened, the men would again mummer
their approval. The briefing would conclude with the group chaplain leading
them in a prayer.
Dismissal came from Snowden, but only after he had the men "hack" their
watches. They would pull the stems of their watches when the second hand
reached 12. Snowden would have them set the minute and hour hands to correspond
to his, then count to ten and call "hack," and they would push the stems
back in. They filed out of the briefing room, to go to another briefing
— one for pilots and co-pilots, another for radio operators, another for
navigators and bombardiers, still another for gunners.
The men climbed into trucks for the ride to the storage sheds just off
the runway where their flying equipment and parachutes were located. Each
crew got out and dressed for the mission. They were going up to 20,000 feet
or even higher and it was going to be cold up there, between 20 and 50 degrees
below zero Fahrenheit. McGovern and the others pulled on heavy winter underwear.
Next they put on long wool socks and a wool military uniform, slacks and
shirts -- olive drab. Then a leather jacket and leather trousers, both lined
with sheepskin, then sheepskin-lined heavy boots. Big, heavy silk-lined
leather gloves followed. The sheepskin-lined helmet came down over the ears.
Surbeck and McGovern wore Colt .45 pistols in a shoulder holster, then put
on backpacks containing their parachutes. The other crew members picked
up their parachutes in chest packs, which they carried into the plane by
hand. They could snap them on if needed. The parachute packers made their
standard joke when giving them out, "If it doesn’t work, bring it back
and I ’ll give you another."
Dressed, they walked to their plane on its hard stand. Surbeck, accompanied
by the chief of the ground crew, walked around the B-24, checking it out
visually. The navigator, bombardier, radioman, and gunners would check out
their equipment.
Later, when the plane had gotten up to 10,000 feet, the pilots and crew
put on their oxygen masks. It covered the nose. They plugged electric cords
from their electrically heated flight suits into an outlet on the plane
— the four engines created the power for the electricity. They could adjust
the heat, turning it down a little or up a bit as needed. Below 15,000 feet
the crew took off their oxygen masks. Surbeck and McGovern kept theirs on
until they were down to 10,000 feet. At that altitude, all the smokers lit
their cigarettes. The smoke was so thick it looked like there was a fire.
The bombs had been loaded during the night into the bomb bay by the
ground crew led by an ordnance officer. They assembled the bombs by taking
the stabilizing fins, stored in a separate box, and screwing them on the
bombs. Using winches and tractors, the ground crews had hoisted the unwieldy,
blunt-nosed 500 pound bombs into their racks. They were inserted into the
B-24's womb in a horizontal position and attached to the metal racks. They
had a cardboard tag between the bomb and the nose fuse, and at the back
end a wire-arming pin. The tail gunner would crawl out on the cat walk over
the bomb bay door to pull the tag and then the pin.
Climbing into the B-24 with those big heavy boots and the layers of
clothes was always cumbersome, as the men waddled ponderously. They carried
flak jackets, mandatory since Ploesti. The crew members had difficulty getting
themselves into and adjusted in their cramped positions, especially the
nose turret and the tail gunner. The belly turret gunner waited until they
were in the air before squeezing — with the help of the waist gunner
— into his bubble. Surbeck and McGovern settled into their seats, with
their parachutes serving as a sort-of back rest. The seats were encased
in cast iron. The iron came up to the knees, then under the seat and up
the back. It was there in the event that flak hit the plane on the bottom
side so that, in McGovern ’s words, "the pilot and co-pilot would have
some chance of survival because somebody has to fly the airplane. It wasn
’t that they were worth more than anybody else on the crew, but if both
got killed or badly injured, that plane is going to go down."
The moment Surbeck got into the plane, went to his seat, and put on
his earphones and mike — attached to his helmet — he was, in McGovern
’s words, "totally in command, of the officers and sergeants." McGovern
already knew that, but watching Captain Surbeck go through his routine reinforced
the point. McGovern explained, "It had to be that way because the pilot
was the only one with his hands on the controls that determined where the
plane was going to go and how it was going to be flown." Of course he had
help, especially from the navigator and bombardier, the radio operator and
the flight engineers, "but the request for their help came from Surbeck."
It was his job to check on the crew, frequently. He needed to make sure
that nobody ’s oxygen hose had come unhooked; if a tail gunner or someone
else failed to answer when the pilot called to him on the intercom, he might
well have passed out from a lack of oxygen or frozen because his electric
plug had come out, without ever noticing that his hose or wire was unhooked.
These and other things Surbeck did as a matter of routine, McGovern noted.
To get the engines started, Surbeck would signal to the flight engineer,
who would start the single-cylinder gasoline-powered unit on the B-24. It
was called the "putt-putt" and gave a boost to the batteries. Engine number
three, the one nearest McGovern, started first. It powered the generators
which helped start the other engines. When all were operating, Surbeck did
a "run up," checking on each engine ’s performance, magnetos, temperature
and pressure checks of fuel, oil and hydraulic systems. When a flare went
up planes began to move out of their hard stands over the taxiway and onto
the runway, looking like elephants getting ready for a circus parade. Surbeck
called out the final checklist to McGovern:
"Booster pumps" — "On"
"Mixture" — "Auto rich"
"Props" — "Full high"
"Superchargers" — "Set"
"Half flaps" — "Set"
and so on.
Surbeck lined his plane up on the taxi strip, behind some planes and
ahead of others — there were 28 in the group, seven in each squadron. The
454th Bomb Group was on the other side of the runway, parallel to the 455th,
so that the planes from each group could take off side by side. Setting
the brakes, Surbeck pushed the throttle to get the engines running at maximum.
When his turn to take off arrived, the roar was almost deafening. The plane
vibrated as every nut and bolt, every rivet and tube rattled and shook.
Twenty or at most thirty seconds after the plane ahead of him began
to roll down the runway, Surbeck released the brakes. A modern air traffic
controller, or a pilot of a commercial airliner, would be appalled at the
sight, but for the bomber pilots of World War II that was how close to each
other they were. Down the strip Surbeck started rolling, picking up speed
until he reached 160 mph. He had his flaps set at 20 degrees, brought the
engines to maximum power, and at the end of the runway he pulled the nose
off the ground and became airborne. With the bomb load, the full tanks of
fuel, the weight of the crew and their equipment, including the .50 caliber
machine guns and ammunition for them, Surbeck had to fight to gain altitude.
It seemed to McGovern that he would not get the plane above tree-top altitude,
but he did. Barely, but he did. Once the plane was in the air, even if only
just, McGovern as co-pilot had the task of raising the landing gear and
bringing up the flaps.
Surbeck circled, as did all the other pilots, their planes looking rather
like hawks over a marsh. And he climbed. The gunners tested their guns.
They were Browning M-2 .50 caliber machine guns. Each gun had about 150
working parts and the men had been required to strip and reassemble it blindfolded
wearing gloves. The guns weighed sixty-four pounds and fired 800 rounds
of ammunition per minute at a range of 600 yards. Sgt. Louie Hansen, a tail
gunner in the 743rd Squadron, once discovered that both his guns were jammed
— the cocking levers had been put in backward after the guns had been cleaned
from the previous mission. He described what he did. "There was only space
in the turret to get one hand through to a gun. I did one with my right
hand, the other with my left. Sweat started to trickle down my back, my
goggles steamed over which made no difference as there was no way to see
what I was doing. The intense cold made me afraid to remove my gloves. But
I got the job done and, as most combat crew members know, one can sweat
at 50 degrees below." Fortunately for Surbeck and McGovern, the guns on
their Liberator tested okay.
After an hour or so, Surbeck’s plane had become a part of the formation.
It was a squadron box of seven aircraft. There were two three-plane echelons.
The lead plane had a wingman just behind and on either side. Surbeck was
one of those on the wing of the leader. The second echelon was forty feet
below and forty feet back of the lead echelon. The seventh aircraft, known
as "Tail End Charlie," was behind the second echelon. Flying the wing, even
for Surbeck, was more difficult than being in the lead, but easier than
flying Tail End Charlie. As the last plane in the squadron, Tail End Charlie
was the most vulnerable if German fighters attacked, and it was the hardest
position to hold. Usually new pilots and crews got that assignment. On the
wing, Surbeck wanted to stay close to the plane he was flying on so as to
make as small and infrequent power changes as possible, to save the engines
and save fuel. Pilot Lt. John Smith, said that "in due course flying formation
became a reflex like driving a car." The group consisted of four squadrons,
the lead box, the high box, the low box and the middle box.
More climbing, to 20,000 and eventually 25,000 feet over the Adriatic.
Then off for the target. When the group got to the initial point it turned.
But clouds had moved in over Linz and the lead pilot decided to abort. He
turned, so did the others, and returned to base, still fully loaded with
the bombs.
________________________
McGovern’s first mission went better than that of Lt. David Gandin,
a navigator in a B-24. In his war diary, Gandin reported that when his Liberator,
called the Snafu, was over the target a piece of flak came through the cockpit
window. The pilot, Lt. Bill Marsh, lost the top of his head. The co-pilot,
Lt. Hilary Bevins, was on his first mission. He called to his radio man,
who came to the cockpit wearing a walkaround oxygen bottle "and removed
Marsh from the pilot’s seat. Bevins couldn ’t stand it with Marsh in the
seat and all the blood flowing around.
"Bevins moved over to the pilot ’s seat and kept in the formation until
it headed off.
All the compasses were out, so Bevins flew the opposite direction of
the setting sun. All the men were freezing because of the hole in the top
of the cockpit. The engineer was sick to his stomach from all the blood.
Bevins’ eyeball was scratched and Marsh’s blood was frozen on his hands."
When darkness descended, Blevin ’s flew opposite the North Star. Finally
Snafu got back to base — but Bevins had never made a night landing before.
"As he came in, he banked too far to the left and knocked off the left landing
gear, bounced over and did the same to the right one; the ship crash-landed
and caught on fire.
"Thank God all got out okay, though Bevins wouldn ’t leave till they
took Marsh’s body out also. The plane burned to a crisp."
亦凡公益图书馆(shuku.net)
下一章 回目录