The Wild Blue Part 5

McGovern and Rounds hugged each other.

McGovern shook hands with a man named Anton Sever, who had been on the ground giving signals to McGovern telling him to stay in the center of the runway. McGovern embraced him and thanked him for his a.s.sistance. Then he noticed that Sever had on English overalls with RAF insignia on it, plus a cap with a red star. "What are you doing here?" McGovern asked. "I'm a partisan squadron aircraft mechanic, Section B," Sever answered.

"Good boy," McGovern replied, shaking his hand once again.25 A truck picked them up. As they were driving to headquarters, another stricken B-24 came in to land.

Ashlock watched. It "went right into the mountain and everyone was killed."26 McGovern did not know that t.i.to was on the island and never got to meet him, but more than three decades later, President Jimmy Carter had a reception for t.i.to in the White House. McGovern, who was a senator at the time, was there. In his remarks, t.i.to expressed his appreciation for the American people and then added, "At least one of you, Senator McGovern, came to see me in World War II and now I'm returning the favor."

At the time McGovern hoped the British could repair his plane and he could fly it out the next day, but the ground crew said no, this runway is not long enough. They added that every four-engine bomber that had come to Vis was still there, and would be forever. The next day Cerignola sent a DC-3 to pick up McGovern and his crew.27 Some months later, the AAF awarded McGovern the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions that day at Vis. The citation praised him for his "high degree of courage and piloting skill."

McGovern got back to Cerignola on December 21. On Christmas afternoon, he saw his name on the a.s.signment board. The target was a refinery in Oswiecim, eastern Poland. Twenty-six B-24s of the 455th Bomb Group dropped fifty tons of bombs. Flak was intense and accurate. One B-24 was seen with a feathered engine heading toward an emergency landing field in Russia, then another was seen jettisoning equipment and heading east. A third bomber landed at Vis.28 On the way out, McGovern asked Rounds to fly the plane for a while. Rounds was so good at it that McGovern began increasing his time in control.

The mission took the bombers very near Auschwitz. Later, McGovern wondered why the concentration camp had not been the target. Neither he nor anyone else at Cerignola knew much about Auschwitz, but by that stage of the war rumors circulated about the ma.s.s killing going on there. President Roosevelt had been urged by Jewish leaders to bomb the place, but he refused. He said the United States had not built those bombers in order to hit concentration camps, that they were built for a strategic function. Besides, bombing Auschwitz would have killed many Jews as well as Germans. His att.i.tude was that the best thing America could do for Europe's Jews was to win the war sooner, that the quicker it was won the fewer Jews would be killed. Over the next four days, weather prevented any missions. Thus did 1944 come to an end. In December, the 455th had flown a total of sixteen missions with 359 aircraft deployed over target. They had dropped a total of 650 tons of bombs. The losses were fifteen aircraft, 111 crewmen reported missing in action, and thirty-two reported killed. It had not been a good month. The men at Cerignola looked forward to the new year, the one that they hoped would end the war.

So were the Germans shooting at them. Manfred Rommel, son of the field marshal, was an antiaircraft gunner at age fourteen. The others in his battery were about the same age. Rommel after the war became 82 the mayor of Stuttgart, a post he held for many years. When I would bring in veterans to meet him in his office, he would always a.s.sure them, "We always missed." That rea.s.sured them, but it wasn't true.

After the war, Dr. Schuknecht joined the Harvard faculty and became one of America's leading ear specialists.

CHAPTER EIGHT - The Isle of Capri.

"TONIGHT IS NEW YEAR'S EVE, "McGovern opened a letter to his co-pilot's parents. Their son had been hospitalized with pneumonia and McGovern wanted to rea.s.sure them. Lieutenant Rounds was recovering, McGovern wrote, then promised to "get him back to his usual top form in a few days."

"We are experiencing our first Italian snowfall," he noted. "I'm finding it pretty easy to get homesick tonight for those old snow-covered plains of Dakota." He added, "We haven't been doing a whole lot of flying lately" because of the weather. It "promises to be even worse." Another promise: "We're expecting to see you next spring, regardless of mud, rain, flak or what have you."1 Although there had been that mission on the day after Christmas to Oswiecim, Poland, that the Dakota Queen had partic.i.p.ated in, because of the weather on New Year's Day there was no mission to fly. On New Year's Eve and again on the first of January, 1945, there were parties in the officers and enlisted men's clubs, where records were set for sales. The dispensaries had the fewest number of men on sick call for more than three months.

Rounds was one of those out of the hospital and he was in high spirits. Defying the miserable weather - rain, sleet, fog - he told Bill Ashlock to help him spill a fifty-five-gallon drum of white gasoline on the field next to the cooking area. He wanted to spill the fuel and set it afire as a form of fireworks to celebrate the new year.

"Rounds, you don't have any idea what you're about to do," Ashlock said. "If that stuff gets in the air while you're pouring it, it will create an explosion and the flames are liable to cover a huge area. You don't want to do it." Rounds did want to do it. Ashlock recalled that "he did it anyway by himself."

Ashlock retired to his tent. A half-hour later he heard a "big whoomp sound." Rounds came running to the tent, "his eyebrows singed off, his face black. And he says, 'You know, you were right. That thing blew me about thirty feet through the air.'"2 It was an inauspicious start to the new year. And the weather through January was even worse than predicted. Only an occasional mission was attempted, and McGovern did not go on them. His tent-mate and close companion, navigator Lt. Sam Adams, did go on two missions. Because McGovern had flown as a co-pilot for five missions, he was five missions ahead of his crew in reaching the magic number, thirty-five. Adams hated to fly with any pilot other than McGovern, but he wanted to get home as soon as possible to take up his studies to become a Presbyterian minister. So he volunteered for missions as a subst.i.tute navigator. On his second subst.i.tute service, in the second week of January, Adams's plane was blown apart by German flak. There were reports, unconfirmed, that two or three parachutes had been seen after the plane exploded. McGovern and Rounds held on to the hope that Sam had made it out of the plane and came down by parachute.

83 They depended on subst.i.tute navigators on their missions, but for a few weeks they lived with Sam's empty bunk, his photographs, and his neatly hung clothing, waiting for word that he had made it. The word never came.3 "I had seen other men killed before," McGovern said, "but never anything like that.

When there are just three of you living together so closely in a tent in an olive grove in Italy, a h.e.l.luva long way from home, you really got to know one another. And then all of a sudden you see the empty bunk and it really gets to you."4 There were many empty bunks. Lt. Victor McWilliams was a pilot in the 741st Squadron. Once that January he was watching as other pilots and crew from the squadron took off for a mission that was ultimately aborted. One B-24 got into the sky but then turned around to come back to base. Suddenly, for no reason McWilliams could ever find out, the ten bombs in the plane exploded. "You looked up and all you saw was dust." Everyone on the plane was killed. Another plane was headed down the runway. The pilot got the nose up and the tail went down and "you knew he wouldn't make it. At the end of the runway he cut the throttle and the plane nosed over and caught fire."

McWilliams and four others dashed to the plane, picked up a piece of drill pipe and knocked the windows off around the c.o.c.kpit. The tail gunner meanwhile jumped out, as did a waist gunner, who broke his arm."But the c.o.c.kpit was on fire and the plane was burning. We hauled out the pilot. He was burned almost beyond recognition. We laid him on the ground. All the time he was saying, 'Just leave me in the plane, leave me here, leave me here,' because he knew he was gone." McWilliams and the others got him into the ambulance "and he didn't even last to get to the hospital. That was the first time I ever saw anybody burned up that way. His hands were just burnt down to nothing." Somehow the co-pilot got out. "I don't know how. Just one of these unexplained things."5 Lt. Francis Hosimer was a B-24 pilot in the 741st Squadron. He flew his first five missions as a co-pilot. On one of them, going over Vienna, his squadron was part of a four-squadron group. There was another group ahead of his. The flak came up, heavy. "Just while we were watching the group in front, three of the planes started burning.

They just kept flying on level, they didn't go down but then just burst into real bright flames almost like a flashgun going off. Very intense fire and there were no chutes coming out so that meant that thirty men died right there. The pilot looked over to me and said that is where we're going to be in a minute. I wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into." His plane was shot up but got through.6 The men of the 741st Squadron badly needed some rest. In mid-January, McGovern and Rounds learned that they were ent.i.tled to ten days off duty, in Rome, the Isle of Capri, or Naples. General Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces, ordered the U.S. Army and Army Air Forces to provide ten days leave for combat veterans. That was easier to do with AAF personnel than infantry, but still the attempt was made. Eisenhower also got involved in picking the hotels for his boys. On a cruise around the Isle of Capri, he spotted a large villa. "Whose is that?" he asked. "Yours, sir," was the reply. His aides had arranged it. "And that?" Eisenhower asked, nodding at another large villa. "That one belongs to General Spaatz."

"d.a.m.n it, that'snot my villa!" Eisenhower thundered. "And that's not General Spaatz's villa! None of these will belong to any general as long as I'm boss around here. This is supposed to be a rest center - for combat men - not a playground for the bra.s.s!"

He meant it. When he returned to sh.o.r.e, he wired Spaatz, "This is directly contrary to my policies and must cease at once."7 As a consequence of Eisenhower's orders, the Isle of Capri, Naples, and Rome were hosts to thousands of GIs in late 1944 and 1945. It was like a dream, or could be anyway. "'Twas on the Isle of Capri that I found her," Lt. Roland Pepin remembered of his trip to the famous island. "She told me she was a contessa and that her name was Monica." Pepin didn't care what she chose to call herself. He had a "torrid ten-day romance." Monica lived in a villa and Pepin stayed with her. She spoke English, French, and Italian, and took Pepin on sightseeing tours. They rented a boat and explored the caverns of the Blue Grotto. Pepin's conclusion, after ten days of living on a near-paradise, was that Eisenhower and his fellow generals were right to a.s.sign weary men to a rest and recreation interlude. For Pepin, "The salt, sun, sea, and Monica rejuvenated me into my former self, and I was ready to get on with the war."8 McGovern and Rounds took off for Capri, along with some of the crew. Radio operator 84 Kenneth Higgins was one of them. Like everyone, Higgins had been bored at Cerignola. "When we didn't fly a mission there wasn't a lot to do," he recalled. The weather precluded any softball games or other outdoor exercise. Occasionally the crew would go to the target range and practice with their .45s, but there wasn't much fun in that. So, "we would sit around and argue with each other and play cards or dice. One time we said no more cussing. Everybody cusses all the time so the first guy that does cuss has to put some money in the pot. Well that lasted about ten minutes." Being a Texan, Higgins always wore a pair of cowboy boots, whether he was in the plane, on the ground, or on leave. When he got to Capri, he kissed the ground and had a big gla.s.s of fresh milk. Italian kids came up to him to ask if he was a girl with those long boots and big heels and leather jacket. No, Higgins replied. He said he was just a cool cat. He too rested and rejuvenated. He got ready to return to the war. Fifty-five years later, when he was being interviewed, Higgins said that whenever things were going bad at work or home in his postwar career, he would settle down by thinking of the guy at the airfield who woke him up in the morning at four o'clock to say get dressed and go fly a mission. "There's nothing worse than that." So they could call him whatever names they wished in Capri, Higgins decided; he was going to enjoy himself.9 Everyone did.

Lt. Ted Withington, a prewar Harvard student who was by late 1944 a B-24 pilot in the 780th Squadron, wrote his parents about his experience. "Talk about wonderful vacations!" he declared.

"Nothing to do wedon't want to and lots of interesting things to do if we care to." It was a "week of luxury with no worries." He stayed in the AAF villa on "one of Europe's most beautiful Isles." He had taken a steamer from Naples, out into the Bay of Naples, past Pompeii and Vesuvius and out to Capri at the mouth of the bay. He had a "lovely room" overlooking the sea, complete with balcony. Most blessed of all, "You sleep as late as you want to, in real large beds withpillows & sheets! Maid and waiter service all the time. Thisain't the Army!"10 Radio operator Bob Hammer of the 742nd Squadron got to Capri right after New Year's. He loved it, especially that except for booze everything was free. There was a dance each night, alternating officers and enlisted men. Sergeant Hammer and his pilot went to all of them by wearing each other's uniforms. In the morning, they overslept and missed the ferry going back to the mainland. Again the next day they slept late. After missing the ferry three times, they finally caught it and then lucked out by catching a B-24 back to Cerignola. Fearing a court-martial, they were, on the contrary, not even reprimanded, as the 742nd had flown no missions due to weather while they were gone.11 As Lieutenant Withington put it, this wasn't the Army!

McGovern and Rounds stayed on Capri for three days. They rode the funicular, took a tour of the Blue Grotto, and examined the ruins of Roman emperor Tiberius's castle. The second night one of his enlisted crew got drunk and into a brawl. McAfee, the ball turret gunner who was present, recalled that the culprit "wound up in the pokey on Capri, and McGovern had to get him out."12 McGovern and Rounds decided there was not enough action on Capri, so they hopped on a boat that was just crossing to Naples, where they caught a train to Rome. They registered at the Regina Hotel, which had been taken over by the AAF and is still in operation in a grand style in the twenty-first century. In 1945, every night starting at 6:00 P.M. the whole ground floor of the lobby was turned into a dance area. Girls from Rome were there, after pa.s.sing through a screening by the AAF authorities, designed to keep teenagers away.

Most of the women were in their mid-twenties.

They were beautiful but they were caught up in the desperation that comes to many civilians in a war zone. Many were educated, spoke at least some English, had lost husbands, fathers. Beer, vodka, scotch, gin, and more was flowing. There were free bedrooms upstairs. The fee for the women was $30, but they would take payment in cigarettes or mattress covers. The covers were very popular because the women could make clothing for all the family from them. Rounds had a great time, of course, but he also got up with McGovern each morning to go on foot for ten or twelve hours of sightseeing. Looking at every art gallery, every church, every statue, using their guidebook, every day for seven days. Rounds accounted for his interest in the city by explaining to McGovern that his father had told him if he ever got to Rome he must see this or that. So, Rounds said, "I don't dare go home without seeing this or that, my old man will kill me." With that much motivation, Rounds started reading up on the great artists.

85 McGovern meanwhile learned of a special audience for American servicemen in the Vatican with the Pope. He persuaded Rounds to go with him. After standing around waiting for an hour, Rounds stage-whispered to McGovern, "I"m getting the h.e.l.l out of here."

McGovern replied, "Look, this man is the head of state and he's the symbol of the Catholic world, and you will feel very silly if you go back to the States and you haven't met the Pope." He talked Rounds into waiting fifteen minutes. When that time was up, he asked him to stay for just fifteen more minutes.

"I wouldn't wait another fifteen minutes for Jesus Christ," Rounds shot back. But he said it too loud and "it stirred up quite a commotion among the devout Catholic troops." There were 500 or so at the audience. The Pope did soon arrive and shook hands with every one. He spoke English and blessed each of them.

Rounds said, "For the rest of my life I'll tell people I saw and shook hands with the Pope."13 To McGovern, Rounds's desire to see all he could in Rome was "an indication, a tiny one, that ours was the best educated army ever put into the field. And the best paid. We were paid way better than the British and enormously better than the Germans. I don't know if the Italian army ever got paid at all or the Red Army either."14 In the U.S. Army infantry, there was a certain amount of resentment of the AAF officers and men. How could there not be? No ground trooper ever wore cowboy boots, not even on leave, certainly not when up on the line. No one in the infantry ever reported back from a leave three days late without being severely reprimanded or possibly subjected to a court-martial. And the ages of the lieutenants, even the ages of the captains and majors in the AAF were astonishing to foot soldiers.

At a bar in Rome, two infantry officers from the U.S. Fifth Army, which was doing the fighting on the ground in Italy under the command of Gen. Mark Clark, approached McGovern. One of them sat down on the stool next to McGovern, reached out, and flicked the wings on McGovern's jacket with his finger.

"You fly boys think you're pretty hot stuff, don't ya." "No, not really," McGovern replied. "I think the Fifth Army is doing a heck of a job and I hope we can help."

"Bull," the infantry officer responded."You fly boys are just too good for us, aren't you." McGovern resisted the temptation to hit the man. When the leave was over it was back to Cerignola. For Lieutenant Pepin, a navigator, his first mission after returning was almost a disaster. It was on January 20. The target was the main marshaling yards at Linz, Austria. The flak was heavy. Shrapnel punctured some of his plane's hydraulic lines and the pilot was unable to close the bomb bay doors or lower the landing gear and could barely keep the Liberator in the air. He had managed to get back over Italy and close to Cerignola. He ordered the men to bail out. The plane was at 3,000 feet. "Petrified," Pepin related, "I was sitting with my feet hanging out of the bomb bay afraid to jump when the pilot pushed me into the wild blue yonder. Stark fear gripped me until my chute opened. The ground appeared to rush toward me and fear came again. My landing was the same as taking a wicked body check from a big hockey player." He rolled over several times, got up, and discovered that he was unhurt. Ambulances from the base came around to pick him up. "Every member of my crew survived and without injuries."15 On January 31, McGovern and his crew went up on a mission, to bomb the oil refinery at Moosbierbaum, Austria. There were nineteen B-24s on the mission, each carrying 500-pound bombs. They encountered moderate, but accurate, flak, and dropped on target.

On this mission, as on all the others, the ground crew noted that Lieutenant McGovern brought back theDakota Queen with more gasoline in his tanks than all the other pilots. In the ground crew's opinion, this was the mark of his flying ability. Ken Higgins remarked, "I don't know how you describe a good 86 pilot. I do know George, though, and as far as I was concerned, he was the best. Because he always got us back on the ground." Another member of McGovern's crew said, "If he ever panicked, I never knew about it. Whatever happened, that sort of nasal tw.a.n.g of his came over the intercom as clear and flat as it was on the ground."16 Valko disliked Seigal. He went to McGovern to ask him to get Seigal transferred out. McGovern put it up to the other enlisted men. "I decided they had to live with him," McGovern said, "so it was up to them to decide." The vote was four to one to drop Seigal. McGovern had him replaced with a tail gunner from another crew, Sgt. John B. Mills. Mills was tall and he had to hunch up a bit to get into position, but he liked being back there in the tail. In February and March, McGovern would sometimes tell him to get out of the cramped quarters when theDakota Queen was halfway back to base.

"We're not going to see any fighter planes today," McGovern said, "so come on up and stretch out a bit." But Mills would be asleep. One good thing, according to McGovern: "He didn't get sick." On one mission, with Sam Adams gone, McGovern had a subst.i.tute navigator-bombardier. Weather forced his squadron to abort. The lead pilot said to jettison the bomb load. The standard procedure was to drop the bombs either over the Adriatic or an unpopulated area. Sgt. Tex Ashlock was watching the ground through the camera hatch when the bombardier let the bombs drop. They fell on a farmhouse. It disappeared in a rolling cloud of smoke. In Ashlock's mind it was murder, pure and simple.

When theDakota Queen got back on the ground, Ashlock grabbed the bombardier. "Listen, you son of a b.i.t.c.h," he yelled. "I saw what you did. I'm not going to have anything to do with you again. As far as I'm concerned, you're a disgrace to humanity."

When McGovern got out of the plane, Ashlock went to him to report on what had happened.

McGovern asked, "There isn't any doubt in your mind it was deliberate?"

"How could it not have been?" Ashlock replied.

McGovern thought for a few minutes, then said, "You know, if we bring charges, it's going to be your word against his - an enlisted man against an officer. It's going to be hard to make it stick without any other evidence of witnesses."

McGovern let that hang, then added, "I'll tell you one thing, though. We aren't going to fly with that guy again." And they didn't.17 For the 455th Group, according to its historical account,Flight of the Vulgar Vultures, "January was our least productive month to date." Fewest missions flown - seven in all - putting 168 bombers over targets, dropping a total of 200,035 tons of bombs. That was the lowest total since February 1944. The group could only hope for an improvement in the weather.18

CHAPTER NINE - The Tuskegee Airmen Fly Cover.

87 February 1945 FEBRUARY BEGAN WITH MARGINAL WEATHER. Then it got worse. The first mission for the 741st Squadron, on the first of the month, had as its target the oil refinery at Moosbierbaum, Austria, but the weather was so bad en route and at the target that the group leader decided not to bomb. All planes returned to base.

Oil refineries and the marshaling yards in Austria and Germany were the primary targets that month. On February 5, McGovern flew to bomb the oil storage facilities at Regensburg, Germany. Clouds covered the target but the squadron dropped its bombs, using the pathfinder method of following the actions of the lead plane. The results were un.o.bserved because of the clouds. No one in the squadron was lost.

Two days later, on another mission to Moosbierbaum, the flight leader's bombsight was inoperative so no bombs were dropped. The bombardiers dropped the bombs over water, then the planes returned safely. On February 8, twenty-four B-24s. .h.i.t the Matzleindorf marshaling yards at Vienna. The clouds covered the target, but the Americans dropped fifty-four tons of 500-pound bombs, again using the pathfinder method. The flak was intense but all the bombers made it through. However, one B-24 with the group's markings took a position off the number two man in one of the boxes. It was a plane that had been forced down, then repaired by the Germans. It shadowed the squadron, radioing down to the gunners on the 88s the alt.i.tude, direction, and speed of the squadron, which was a practice, that while not frequent, was used whenever the Germans had the opportunity. The lead pilot realized what was happening and told every gunner in the squadron to train on the German-manned B-24. As the gunners did so, the aircraft's pilot saw what was happening. He made a 180-degree turn and got out of there.1 By February 1945, the defensive capabilities of the Luftwaffe were almost nonexistent. The Germans had little or no fuel left for training pilots, and their ME 109s had just about been blown out of the air. What fighters were left had few runways available. For his part, McGovern never saw a German fighter attack theDakota Queen. Flak, of course, was another matter altogether. Following the Battle of the Bulge, as the Allies moved up to the Rhine and prepared to cross the river, the Red Army was headed toward Berlin and Vienna. The shrinkage of the front lines forced the Germans to pull back. The American, British, and Russian air a.s.saults on Germany were increasing in number of bombers flown and damage done. So the Germans concentrated their 88s around their cities, to defend their few remaining oil refineries and most of all their marshaling yards. That meant that even as the Allies were winning, their bombers were flying through ever heavier flak concentrations. And the Germans had developed a jet-propelled fighter, the ME 262, the fastest fighter in the world. Their problem was a shortage of fuel and trained pilots and airfields. Had the ME 262 been developed earlier it could have been a war-winning weapon, but it was not. When a group of the jets attacked an Eighth Air Force formation, it was havoc for the Americans, as the jets were three times faster than the American bombers. But that didn't happen very often. There were not enough of them.

One reason for the shortage was the sustained Fifteenth Air Force attack against factories making jets and against the airfields where they underwent final a.s.sembly. Altogether the Germans built 1,400 jets, but only a small percentage of them got into the air. The Regensburg airfield was one of their bases. A photo reconnaissance by the Fifteenth Air Force on February 8, 1945, showed 48 ME 262s on the ground. The Fifteenth mounted missions to hit them on the field. The 455th, and its 741st Squadron, partic.i.p.ated in the February attacks. The group destroyed twelve ME 262s and damaged four others.

Other partic.i.p.ants put more jets out of action. This proved to be a knockout blow. Individuals or small groups of jets continued to be seen, but no squadronsized formations.2 Indeed, as the official Army Air Forces history put it, "The few prize jet aircraft that appeared . . . offered little opposition but hopped almost comically from one airfield to another or to the emptyAutobahnen behind German lines."3 Pilot Lt.

88 Glenn Rendahl, in the 514th Squadron, 376th Bomb Group, flying out of San Pancrazio, Italy, near Taranto Bay, was attacked by ME 262s. In February 1945, he was on a mission to Austria when he had "runaway turbo" problems. He was over the Adriatic. "The cure for the turbos," he related, "was to move a good amplifier, after locking in its setting, from the slot for that engine into a slot in need of boost, then set and lock the desired setting there." He did so, but by the time he had fixed the problem he had lost 5,000 feet of alt.i.tude and some speed. His formation was out of sight. "We could never catch them, so we would just have to look for and join with another formation." As Rendahl gained enough power to start climbing again, "I took a look back over my left shoulder - just as you would before you pull a car out of a parking place." As he did, "Oops!" He saw "two German jet fighters with black swastikas on their sides sweeping in from our left and I saw their tracer bullets already coming into our plane."

It was a favorite strategy for the German fighter pilots to catch stragglers flying alone. It was often an easy kill. Rendahl called over the intercom, "Jerry's at seven o'clock level, when are you guys going to start shooting back?" The upper turret gunner called back, "Hold your fire, here comes three of our P-51 escorts from high overhead." With the P-51s coming at them, the Germans turned and ran, then dove for the ground of northern Yugoslavia just to the east. The three P-51 escorts stayed right on their tails until they all went out of sight. Rendahl managed to hook up with another formation "and added our bombing strength to their mission in what we regarded as a very useful contribution."

Later, Rendahl praised the P-51 pilots: "If we had not had an escort trio watching us from above, and timely enough to be there quite soon after the shooting started, we would have surely been subdued by two of the n.a.z.is' latest jet fighters doing what they specialized in. Without the intervention of our escorts and their willingness to risk their lives for those of us whom they had never met, we would have been most fortunate to end up in the Adriatic Sea below us. Or we might have stretched it to Trieste, which was then German-occupied.

Most likely, some of our crew would be lost either way."4 The P-51 pilots were African-Americans of the 99th Fighter Squadron, Fifth Air Force, flying out of Terni, north of Rome. They were called the Tuskegee Airmen and they were justly famous. The men of the bombers seldom saw them, because they stayed up high to watch over the formations. As Rendahl put it, "When you needed them they came, and with a full head of steam." He called the performance of the Tuskegee Airmen "exemplary." He felt that "their vigilant watch over us that day saved ten of us from a potential tragedy. We, plus all our families, will forever be grateful to them." He added, "The important thing is that when our nation goes to war, real patriotism has only one race. You are either American or you are not. There are those who want to kill you, and then there are those who want to save your life. It is that simple, and undeniable."5 Pepin of the 741st Squadron spoke for many. "It was a favorable day for us when we caught escort protection from the men from the 99th Fighter Squadron. Because of the P-51's long-range capabilities, they were able to escort us to and from most of the targets. It was quite a vision to observe these great pilots engage the German jets and prevent them from attacking us. We would watch them as they dispersed the enemy with their superior skills. They never let the Germans get close enough for our gunners to fire at the enemy." Unfortunately, Pepin added, "they could give us no protection from the flak; we just had to plow through and pray a good deal."

The U.S. Army in World War II was a segregated force. In Pepin's words it was "still practicing discrimination. But those P-51 Negro fighter pilots did not discriminate." Once late that winter Pepin was in Foggia when he and his buddies met some of the 99th Fighter Squadron pilots. "We showered them with our thanks and respect. The drinks were on us."6 The men of Tuskegee admired the B-24 pilots and crews without stint. Lieutenant Edward Gleed said, "We didn't want any part of that flak" the bombers flew through. "It was a horrendous sight to see six B-24 Liberators with all that flak starting to come up and - bang - there's only five airplanes left and one big ball of smoke." Lieutenant Herb 89 Sheppard said his most vivid memory of the war was "the sight of bombers being hit by an 88 and the bombs going off - a big red eruption with black smoke going by you." Lieutenant Jefferson recalled, "Planes fell in flames, planes fell not in flames, an occasional one pulled out and crash-landed, sometimes successfully, sometimes they blew up. Men fell in flames, men fell in parachutes, some candlesticked [when their parachutes didn't open]. Pieces of men dropped through the hole, pieces of planes." The Tuskegee Airmen prayed and wept. "Have you any idea of what it's like to vomit in an oxygen mask?"

According to Jefferson, "These bomber guys had seen the inside of h.e.l.l."

The African-American pilots loved their P-51s. Lt. Woody Crockett called the plane "a dream. It could climb, turn, and fight at low level and at high alt.i.tude." The Mustang carried six .50-caliber machine guns, three in each wing. Lt. Lou Purnell said, "If that plane had been a girl, I'd have married it right on the spot. d.a.m.n right! It was like dancing with a good partner." They painted their tails bright red. Lt. Herbert Carter explained, "We wanted the American bombers to know we were escorting them. The red tails would also let the German interceptors know who was escorting those bombers." Their task was to protect. Their orders were to stay with the bombers, whatever happened. "Protect them with your life"

was the saying. They flew about 5,000 feet above the bombers, meaning they flew at 30,000 feet or even above. Lieutenant Sheppard felt "the extra five thousand feet gave us an edge if we had to ward off attack. If you have speed, you can get alt.i.tude, and if you have alt.i.tude, you can get speed. That P-51 really accelerated when you put its nose down. Man, alt.i.tude just disappeared like smoke in the wind."7 On a February mission, McGovern heard in his briefing that the 99th would fly as escorts. After dropping the bombs and turning for home, he looked out the window and saw German jets looming in the distance.

"Our group leader tried to establish radio contact with our fighter escorts," McGovern said, "but couldn't. There was some pretty harsh language on the air, questions about where the 'blasted n.i.g.g.e.rs'

were. Just then, the squadron commander of the black pilots broke in and said, 'Why don't you all shut up, white boys? We're all going to take you home.' And they did. They drove off the enemy fighters."8 Ken Higgins looked out and saw the P-51s flying at the side of theDakota Queen. The black pilot saw the camera in the camera hatch and called up on the radio, "Is that a camera in there?" Higgins said yes, and the pilot said, "How about taking my picture?" Higgins did.

Over the radio, he heard some fighter pilots talking: "Red Tail One to Red Tail Two. Is that you behind me?" Another voice: "Who that?" And the first voice: "Who that? Who say that?"

The colonel in the lead B-24 cut in: "Get off the radio. No speaking on the radio. Get off."

The fighter pilot came back on: "Who that?" he asked. In Higgins's view, "That would keep you going, you know. A little levity here and there didn't hurt." Like Pepin and everyone else in one of the bombers, Higgins had the deepest respect for the men of the 99th. He pointed out that, among many other things, "they made it a point when they were in a town, they were dressed immaculately. I mean their bra.s.s was polished and their clothes were pressed. They were really sharp. They made it a point to be that way."

Higgins added, "There was a lot of talk during the war about blacks being cowards and stuff like that. I never saw any of that. Never did I see any cowardliness."9 Neither did anyone else. Sgt. Erling Kindem of the 742nd Squadron was on a February mission against Vienna. He later wrote in his war diary, "Before reaching the target, a 'phantom' B-24 joined our formation." It was a downed bomber the Germans had restored and were flying to radio back to base the formation's alt.i.tude, speed, and direction. Fortunately, the Tuskegee Airmen were flying as escort. Kindem's pilot reported to the black pilots in their P-51s the information. The leader responded, "I'll go scare him out but you tell your boys not to point their guns at us."

Kindem's diary went on: "The P-51s came in and over the radio the German phantom pilot said he was 90 from the 55th Wing and got lost. But the 55th Wing wasn't flying that day and the plane had no tail markings. The fighter pilot squadron leader gave him some bursts from his guns and warned the phantom to turn back. He added, 'You will be escorted.' The German pilot replied that he could make it alone.

The P-51 pilot said: 'You are going to be escorted whether you want it or not. You're going to have two men on your tail all the way back and don't try to land in Yugoslavia.' The phantom protested and said he wanted to drop his bombs. The response from the fighter pilot was: 'You ain't gonna drop no bombs.' The phantom left with his escort and we heard nothing further from the event."10 Back in October 1944, Lt. C. W. Cooper - the "old" infantry officer (he was twenty-eight years old) who had after some time with the troops volunteered for the Army Air Forces and trained as a navigator - shipped over to join the 741st Squadron at Cerignola. It was a long trip by a leaky cargo ship. He was in command of fifty-five replacements, all soon-to-be crew members of the B-24s. "They were h.e.l.l to take care of," he recalled, not like the infantry enlisted men he was accustomed to leading. After disembarking at Naples, Cooper and his men traveled by truck to a staging base in southernmost Italy. They arrived in November. The first officer he saw was "a big, raw-boned second lieutenant, with red hair and a red beard. I said, 'Golly, that guy's still a second lieutenant, he must be thirty-five years old.'" Cooper and his crew boarded the lieutenant's B-24 and flew toward Cerignola. As they were landing, Cooper heard the lieutenant say to his co-pilot, "Have you got runway on your side?" The co-pilot said,"Yeah." The pilot said, "I've got some over here too," so he set the plane down. Later when the pilot had completed his missions he shaved and to Cooper's astonishment, "He was an eighteen-year-old kid!" Cooper and the crew lined up for their first meal at Cerignola. The man in front of Cooper asked, "You haven't eaten here before, have you?" "No," Cooper replied.

"Well, we've been eating here quite a while," the man said. "Tell you what you're supposed to do. If you have a bug in your food when you get it first, you throw the food out. After about a week though, if you have a bug in your food, you go ahead and eat the food. And then the third week, you look and there's a bug in you food, you make him stay and don't let it get away because it's good, it's got nutrients."

On an early mission Cooper's plane climbed well above freezing alt.i.tude. "I think our bombardier may have been reading a comic book or sleeping back there. Anyway when you go through the level where things will freeze, you keep working the bomb bay doors so that they won't jam on you, they won't ice up." Cooper's plane got to the target "and the bombardier hadn't done what he should have done going to that level, and the bomb bay doors had frozen. He couldn't get them open. So he dropped the bombs through the bomb bay doors." In other words he hit the toggle switch and the bombs just broke through the aluminum. The wheels, when let down, were below the now broken bomb bay doors flapping in the breeze. "We didn't know whether it would be enough room or not. If those things. .h.i.t the runway, they may cause a spark and there may be a buildup of gas in the bomber and b.l.o.o.d.y, we would've had it."

Fortunately the plane landed safely. Cooper was so good as a navigator that he soon was flying on the lead plane on his missions. He did so on six missions. "The pressure was really on then, because you had to be absolutely right where you were supposed to be at all times. I wasthe navigator." He was struck by the difference between being an infantry officer and a pilot. "The pilot didn't exercise command like an infantry platoon leader," he felt. "In the infantry, you're under pressure all the time. For us, we were only under pressure when going on a mission." In the infantry, a lieutenant told his platoon what to do and how to go about it. But "the pilot had to recognize the role of each air crew member and not get in the way."

Cooper thought the biggest difference between the infantry and the Army Air Forces was that "you are individuals when you're on a crew. The pilot's not going to tell me how to navigate, he's not going to tell Ken Higgins how to run his radio. Those were our specialties and we did our job." Cooper added, "It was a whole different situation than it was in the infantry." B-24 crews socialized together, mixing regardless of rank. Never had Cooper seen such a thing in the infantry.

Cooper had eleven missions behind him. Compounding the tension of navigating the lead plane, with six 91 other navigators watching in their following planes, was the reality of flak. On nearly every mission, his plane took various. .h.i.ts, losing power on one or two engines, and in other ways making what he was doing in the most dangerous place in the world even more fearful. So was the possibility of accidents.

One time Cooper saw a B-24 drop its bombs right on top of a plane flying below, setting off a flashing explosion that destroyed everything except the engines. Cooper watched as they fell. A few days later, Cooper flew a mission, got back to Cerignola, and was told to make up a route for the mission the next day. "I noticed that one of the turning points they gave us was right over a flak-up area in northern Yugoslavia. So I thought, That's no good." He called Wing Headquarters: "Say, you gave us a wrong turning point -" "Don't say any more," the officer at Wing shot out. "Don't say any more. Our telephone lines are bugged all the time so no more. We will get you a correction." The men at Wing Headquarters had already spotted the error, which had come about because two towns in Yugoslavia had the same name. One had heavy flak, the other nothing. The turning point was changed. Radiomen on the B-24s kept changing their frequencies so that the Germans would have a hard time listening. Occasionally, they could pick up and get on the German frequency. On one of Cooper's missions, a German-speaking radioman came along. Cooper listened as he went to work: "He got on the radio, on their frequency, and he heard a German commander talking to his fighter planes, directing them toward our formation. So the American, identifying himself in German as their ground control officer, ordered them, 'Return to base, immediately.' So these fighter planes took off to go back to base, and before their real commander could get it corrected, they were already gone, and couldn't get back up there to us." Cooper added to the story that he knew of at least one other native German speaker in the 455th Group who used that technique.

One of the pilots Cooper flew with was, in his view, wishing he were up in the sky in fighter planes, not B-24s. He took chances, in turns, wagging his wings, climbing or diving. One February day, when Cooper was not on the plane, that pilot took it up for a practice run. As a stunt, he began buzzing Wing Headquarters. Wing called Group Headquarters on the radio to say, "There's a plane buzzing us and it's your plane. Get this d.a.m.n plane out of here." The group commander, furious, ordered, "Ground that pilot when he gets back to base. n.o.body in his right mind would do that." Even before the B-24 landed, there was a jeep waiting for the pilot. Cooper recalled that "they took him into headquarters and grounded him right there on the spot. And they kept him grounded for quite a while and then when they did let him fly again on a combat mission, they gave him a plane that was doubtful whether it'd get up there or not."11 The day the pilot was grounded, Cooper was moved out of his tent and out of his crew and sent to George McGovern's tent. From now on he would take Adams's place permanently, as McGovern's navigator. The next night, February 19, he wrote his buddy, Lt. Joe Prendergast with the 4th Infantry in Germany. He told Prendergast, "My new pilot is a honey - very sincere, a mature man, and a good pilot.

He's married and expecting a baby in three weeks so he'll add a thousand feet for safety." As Cooper signed off on the letter, McGovern came into the tent. He had just been promoted to first lieutenant.

Cooper added a postscript: "Mac, my new pilot, just came in and let me pin his thirty-minute-old silver bars on him. I'm sure glad 'cause he rates." Sometime after sending the letter, Cooper got the V-Mail back. Scribbled on the front beside Prendergast's name was a note: "Killed in action. J. A. Wesolowski, Capt., 4th Inf."12 When Cooper met McGovern and Rounds, he knew he had joined an experienced pilot and co-pilot. He went through details of what he had done up to that point, then listened. He was impressed by McGovern, "serious without being obnoxious." Rounds had more of a wait-and-see quality to him. Cooper later said that Rounds "would go in all directions at once. I quickly called him 'Rounds the Rounder.'"13 On February 20, McGovern and his crew stood down. The next morning, at 4:00 A.M. they were up, getting ready. The briefing officer informed them the target that day was the marshaling yards in Vienna.

He was answered with groans. Vienna still had one of the heaviest flak concentrations in Europe. Among the bomber crews in the formation was one with Lieutenant Hammer as radioman. He had had a dream the previous night, which he related to his crew as they were waiting to take off. He had dreamed that the 92 target would be Vienna. And it turned out to be true. The other crew members, Hammer confessed, were "amused - in a sickly sort of way."14 Off they went anyway, along with twenty-six other B-24s.

TheDakota Queen was in the middle of the 741st Squadron's box. The flak over Vienna was, according to the 455th Group's account, "intense and accurate."15 Some fourteen of the bombers were hit out of the twenty-one that got over the target. Hammer was in one of them. As the plane pulled away from Vienna, number three engine quit. Lt. Ray Grooms, the pilot, and Lt. Jim Connelly, the co-pilot, tried unsuccessfully to feather the propeller. The windmilling prop cost the plane alt.i.tude and speed and it dropped behind the remainder of the squadron. Grooms ordered the crew to jettison everything possible, but still the plane lost alt.i.tude and just did get over the Yugoslavian mountains. Grooms decided not to try to cross the Adriatic; his navigator told him there was an emergency landing field under American control at Zara, just ahead. He headed for it, but as he checked his systems he discovered that the hydraulic system had been damaged. He had no brakes.

He snapped out orders to his waist gunners. Remove the waist windows. Tie a parachute to each waist gun. Be ready to toss it out and pull the rip cords on my word. They acknowledged. In Hammer's words, "Shortly after the wheels made contact with the ground we got the word and threw them out and pulled rip cords. The one on my side opened first and we veered crazily in that direction until the pintle holding the waist gun to its mounting was sheared cleanly in half. The pintle, made of solid steel, measured two inches in diameter at the point of breakage. The other parachute finally opened and braked us down."* Once out of the plane, the crew members told Hammer "that I could, in the future, keep my dreams to myself." GIs in trucks and jeeps picked them up and took them immediately to a C-47, which was soon in the air. Hammer and his buddies got to sleep in their own bunks that night, back in Cerignola.16 TheDakota Queen had taken only a few hits from shrapnel, which made holes in the wings, but McGovern was on the ground to welcome Hammer back. On February 24, McGovern, Rounds, Cooper, and the crew flew a mission headed toward the marshaling yards in Vienna, but bad weather forced them and the other planes to abort. On the twenty-eighth it was back into the air, with the target the marshaling yards in Isarco Albes, in northern Italy. The flak was not as heavy as over Vienna, but it was there. They returned to Cerignola safely. In the winter of 1944-1945, the 741st improved its living conditions. By then every tent had either a wooden or a concrete floor. The food was better and had come to include steak, fresh chicken, real eggs, and ice cream. Squadron officers started to give cla.s.ses in algebra, business administration, aircraft maintenance, history, and the Italian languages. The ground crews flocked to the Italian instructions, as they had come to the conclusion that since there was no hope in their going home before war's end, they might as well understand what the natives were talking about.

Still the rain came down. It created much mud, especially around the new mess hall. Two GIs were heard discussing the mud. One said he had stumbled into it and had sunk in ankle deep. The other GI said he had gone in as well, but the mud was up to his knees. The first GI said, "Yeah, but I went in head first." The men put out a group newspaper, called theJournal, and each squadron also had one. The 740th Squadron's was calledIl Castoro Ardente, meaningEager Beaver. The 741st called its paperStagrag. The papers were typed and run off on hand-cranked mimeograph machines. The January 1945 issue of theJournal carried an article written by Maj. Al c.o.o.ns, the group intelligence officer. One year had pa.s.sed, he opened, "a year that most of us would rather not have lived as we did, had the world we inherited been one in which free choices were possible. At the same time, it is a year most of us would not have spent otherwise, given the world as it was in February 1944." He then wrote of all the territory liberated in Russia, France, Belgium, and elsewhere, and noted that the Fifteenth Air Force had made its contribution to the victories. He gave credit for this accomplishment to the pilots and their crews, to the ground crews, to the clerks, cooks, communications personnel, "and all the rest." But, c.o.o.ns went on, "all of us have a responsibility for the failures - the briefings that were inadequate, the truck drivers who were late in getting the crews to their briefings, the crew members who stayed in the pad when they should have been familiarizing themselves with their planes or their guns or their targets, 93 the cooks who didn't have breakfast on time and the linemen who failed to check the plane carefully.

These failures have softened the blows against the enemy, they have cost the lives of Americans and our Allies." c.o.o.ns concluded, "All that we have learned in one year of combat can be used to insure that the second year will be a short one." TheJournal carried one article about Demo, who was the first mascot of the 742nd Squadron. Demo had flown from Africa when he was just a puppy. "Demo refused to leave the empty tent when his masters failed to return from their mission . . . brokenhearted . . . waiting. Demo never went hungry. Someone always remembered and carried food to the little soldier on guard."17 McGovern wrote an article called "This Thing Called Spirit" for the second issue ofStagrag. He gave various tips on how to keep morale high. "First of all," he wrote, "we can make sure that we don't go stale on life. We can keep alive and interested in what is going on around us. The army already has plenty of Joes who exist just to eat, sleep and b.i.t.c.h." He urged his readers to keep posted on the war fronts and on developments in the States, to read best-sellers, "of which the squadron is well supplied," try to improve personalities by "using a little tact and thought in our relations with others," plan postwar careers, and even write forStagrag.

"A second aid to good spirit is to refuse to let our b.i.t.c.hes and troubles get us down." He concluded that "our primary source of satisfaction comes from being true to ourselves and the best that is in us. The finest praise any man can receive is to be satisfied himself with what he has accomplished. . . . Combat may be rough, but it won't be half as rough if we go through it in the right spirit. Let's make it easy on ourselves!"18 February 12, 1945, was the first anniversary for the 455th Group flying out of Italy. On February 22, it flew its 200th mission. It came at the end of thirteen consecutive days of combat flying - theDakota Queen had gone out on five of them. Group commander Col. William Snowden led the wing over Linz. It was a common practice in the 455th for a major or a colonel, sometimes even a general, to fly the lead.Ole Tepee Time Gal flew her 100th mission over Linz. By early 1945, she plusGlamour Gal andBestwedo were the only B-24s left out of the original twenty-four.

Despite the losses, in its second 100 missions the 455th dropped 4,412 tons of bombs in 2,521 sorties.

Bombing accuracy was improving. In the period from December 1944 through February 1945, the group greatly exceeded the average performance of the Fifteenth Air Force as a whole. But a total of forty-seven bombers had been lost, mostly to flak. Considering that the group put up sixty B-24s for its 101st mission, those losses were high. Shortly after the 200th mission, the group had a party to celebrate.

Italian laborers put up tents and bandstands. Entertainers were hired to perform. The airmen pitched in to do their specialities. There were shows of all types, contortionists, muscle acts, rifle ranges, ring games, and variety shows. Four different movies were shown in the wine cellar used for the mission briefing room. There was plenty of beer. It was a chance to relax, eagerly seized by these airmen far from home and living dangerous lives. For that day, at least, they could be the boys they were.

February was over. The 455th Group had flown twenty-six missions, seven aborted.

It had put 505 aircraft over the targets and dropped 840 tons of bombs. It lost five B-24s that month and had forty-one men missing in action, one man killed in action in a plane that got back to base, and sixteen severely wounded. The history of the group comments,"With weather conditions as they were, it speaks highly of the support given by the ground echelon as well as the effort put forth by the crews. With better weather on the horizon, things would only get 94 better."19 According to Francis Hosimer, "It was a standard procedure to fasten parachutes to the waist guns and throw them out after landing whenever your hydraulic fluid was gone."

CHAPTER TEN - Missionsover Austria.

March 1945 BUT THE APPROACHING END OF WINTER brought little improvement in the weather. In the first two weeks of March, the 455th flew thirteen missions, five of them aborted due to weather. On another three, the bombers went after alternate targets when the primary was socked in. Marshaling yards were generally the target; occasionally the bombers went after refineries. TheDakota Queen was part of the force on March 4, when the target was marshaling yards at Wiener Neustadt, Austria. On this mission, McGovern saw a B-24 flying on his wing "just peel off in flames. The plane took a hit right near the fuselage and the number three engine broke off. The plane just went into a spinning fall. Didn't see any chutes."1 On that mission, ball turret gunner Sgt. William McAfee, who had just turned twenty-one, got unplugged from his electric suit. McGovern called on the intercom to check on the crew and McAfee informed him that he had no heat. He told McAfee to come up to the c.o.c.kpit because "you'll freeze to death back there." Hesitant to get into the c.o.c.kpit, McAfee instead changed shoes with waist gunner Ashlock and radioman Higgins. "I'd just stick my foot in their shoes long enough to get it thawed out a little bit, then I'd give it back to them." McGovern kept checking on him until a.s.sured that he was okay.

In a 1999 interview, McAfee recalled the incident, then commented, "McGovern took good care of me.

That was one thing he did. He was like an old mother. He was supposed to bring us back in one piece and he did."

McGovern, at age twenty-two, was a year or more older than everyone on the crew except Cooper and Valko. But he was responsible and he knew and had learned to respond to that. As McAfee said, "We were much, much too young to even know anything about what was going on or anything. We did what McGovern told us to do and that's all."2 McGovern, in his autobiography, Gra.s.sroots, wrote: "The members of my crew were boys when we entered combat. They emerged as serious men." He felt that they, "like hundreds of others, were welded into a highly competent team by their common yearning to survive."3 McGovern had his own special reason to survive. On March 5, Cooper wrote a letter home. "My new crew and I get along swell," he said. "Mac is still sweating out a cable telling of a new son or daughter.

Still sweating out his missions so's to get home."4 About this time, McGovern had a snapshot taken of 95 himself standing outside his tent. C. W. Cooper sent a copy back to his fiancee. On the back of the picture, he wrote, "The best B-24 pilot in the world." McGovern never would accept such a judgment.

He knew there were better pilots than he in the 741st, starting with Lt. Charles Painter, and certainly in the 455th. Painter, McGovern said, was a "big guy. One thing I remember about those pilots is that most of them were big and had been athletes. I was one of the few skinny debaters who had never been an athlete." Still, it was good to have the approval of one of the old men of the crew, especially when Cooper was a former infantry officer and now one of the top navigators in the Army Air Forces.

After the March 4 mission, McGovern stayed on the ground for nine days. There was little to do but wait, "and yet you had to be available to fly every day even though you didn't get off the ground. You had a lot of time to think." For one thing, he wondered why the Germans didn't surrender. He knew they had been beaten, if only because "they did not have sufficient fuel to keep their fighter planes in the air."