The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945 (13 page)

There were more advantages, or so it was argued among the Allied high command.  Basing a large heavy-bomber force in Italy would ease the congestion in England brought on by the airfield requirements of the Eighth Air Force. Better weather conditions in Italy than in England would make it possible to strike more blows against the enemy. From Italy two of the largest German aircraft factories, which together produced 60 percent of the enemy’s fighters, would be in range.  The Germans would be forced to move half of their fighters to the southern German front, thus relieving the hard-pressed Eighth Air Force. American bombers flying from Italy would enjoy the shield of the Alps against the German radio warning system. Further, a major new base around Foggia could be quickly brought into being by stripping the six groups of heavy bombers assigned to the Twelfth Air Force in Libya. Those groups would serve as a nucleus for the new force, and fifteen additional groups could be diverted from current allocations to the Eighth.

Despite these points, Gen. Ira Eaker had strenuous objections to the plan. He was naturally alarmed at the prospect of losing bombers previously earmarked for his Eighth Air Force. He said sending them to Italy would violate the basic principle of concentration of force. He doubted that the necessary fields could be provided in Italy and wondered where on earth the AAF would get the ground crews necessary to keep the bombers flying. And he questioned the weather argument. He said that the critical factor in daylight attacks was weather over the target in Germany, not weather in England. He pointed out too that the Alps would constitute a serious obstacle to the safe return to base of damaged aircraft.16 General Arnold ignored Eaker. In mid-October he sent Eisenhower a directive for the establishment of a new air force in Italy with a primary mission of strategic bombing. Gen. Carl Spaatz would take command of the United States Army Strategic Air Forces in Europe, while Gen. James “Jimmy” Doolittle, who had led the famous B-25 attack on Tokyo in 1942, would replace Eaker as commander of the Eighth. The new force, to be called the Fifteenth Air Force, would be commanded by Gen. Nathan Twining. Eisenhower agreed.

At the end of November, with an advanced echelon already established at Bari, on the Adriatic south of Foggia, staff officers and other supporting personnel began moving to Bari. On December 1 the Fifteenth Air Force opened its headquarters there, where it would stay until the end of the war.  That fall, to prepare for the coming of the heavy bombers, engineers began the construction of heavy bomber fields around Foggia. In spite of great difficulties imposed by rain and mud, insufficient equipment and personnel, and poor transportation, plus bomb damage to the airfields previously used by the Germans, by the end of December the engineers were completing construction on more than forty-five airfields (including ones for medium bombers in Sardinia and Corsica). The work ranged from repairs and drainage to putting down paved or, more often, steel-plank runways. And they laid pipelines for aviation gasoline from Bari to Foggia.

Thus was the Fifteenth Air Force born. Initially it consisted of six heavy bomber groups and two fighter groups, but it would soon become the second largest air force in the world, behind only the Eighth in total numbers of planes and personnel. By April 1944, it had twenty-one heavy bomber and seven fighter groups.

Even on “moving day,” December 1, 1943, the Fifteenth struck a blow, bombing ball bearing factories, bridges, and railway facilities in northern Italy. But the next night, the Luftwaffe sent a flight of bombers to Bari. About thirty Allied ships were being unloaded and when darkness fell lights were turned on to keep the unloading on schedule. At 7:30 P.M. the German bombers struck. In twenty minutes, without loss to themselves, they left nineteen transports destroyed and seven severely damaged. Two ammunition ships received direct hits, as did a tanker carrying oil, causing an immense fire. Over 1,000 workers were killed and it took several weeks to bring the port back to full operation.17 Welcome to the war. The Fifteenth went to work anyway. Just before Christmas 1943 it carried out a mission against the Messer-schmitt plant at Augsburg. In the new year, it supported American landings at Anzio, south of Rome. In these and other missions, it used the new Sperry bombsight plus radar, which allowed the lead bomber to pinpoint the target through cloud or smoke cover - or so at least it was hoped. In February, the Fifteenth joined with the Eighth in the first coordinated attack of the U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces in Europe. It was the “Big Week,” when the Eighth and Fifteenth targeted German aircraft factories and a ball bearing plant at Steyr, Austria. On the last day of the Big Week, more than 1,000 bombers, a record, from the two air forces struck Regensburg, Augsburg, Fürth, and Stuttgart. The damage done was frightful to behold. So were the losses. On the record-breaking day, sixty-four bombers were lost, thirty-three of them from the Fifteenth. The week’s total cost to the Fifteenth was ninety aircraft and their crews.

Through March, April, and May the Fifteenth stayed at it. In that period it received twenty-five sets of the new APS-15 radar, known as “Mickey,” complete with operators. On April 5, 1944, 230 bombers from the Fifteenth raided Ploesti - the first time it had been hit in eight months. More Ploesti missions were carried out on April 15 and 24, on the last raid using the Mickey for the first time. On D-Day in Normandy, June 6, 1944, the Fifteenth raided Ploesti again, then again on June 23 and 24, and again on July 9 and 15. Losses mounted - ten B-24s on one mission, fourteen on another, twenty on another, forty-six on the July missions - this out of a force of between 200 and 300 bombers. Missions against other targets in the first half of 1944 were equally costly. Meanwhile the Eighth Air Force, which had spent much of the time before D-Day bombing tactical targets such as bridges and railroads in France in preparation for the assault, did its own strategic bombing and suffered similarly heavy losses.  The campaign in France was called the “Transportation Plan” and was much objected to by General Spaatz, who wanted instead of hitting bridges and trains in France to be conducting strategic missions inside Germany. But Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, had insisted on the Transportation Plan. To him, the closer to the front lines the bombers did their work, the better. After many loud arguments and only after threatening to resign his post if not given temporary command of the AAF in Europe, Eisenhower got what he wanted. But only for the invasion. On June 8 Spaatz issued an order that remained in force until the war ended - the primary aim of the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces would be to deny oil to the enemy. Following that order, Ploesti and other oil refineries were the major targets.  How could the Germans take such punishment? How could they defend their country?  Where did they get the fighters? The pilots? The antiaircraft guns? Their tanks and trucks? Their ammunition? These questions were difficult for the AAF to answer, especially since the feeling had been that just one more blow - or two, or three - would do it and the Germans would pack it up.  Nothing like that happened. The Germans made vast efforts to disperse their aircraft factories and at the end of 1943 were producing twice the number of fighters estimated by the Allies. At that stage of the war, German fighter pilots were among the best in the world. German technical knowledge and skill were equally outstanding. They were bringing a rocket-propelled fighter, the ME 163, and a jet-propelled fighter, the ME 262, on line. Despite many attacks on aircraft-producing factories, the Germans built 2,177 single-engine (propeller-driven) fighters in June 1944 (compared to 1,016 in February 1943) and more than 3,000 in September. The jet aircraft were the most serious threat and the Fifteenth went after the jet factories in Friederichshafen in a series of July raids. A postwar assessment determined that these missions destroyed 950 jet aircraft, fewer than the estimates at the time but still an impressive result.

The raids on ball bearing plants had caused much physical damage but had hardly interrupted the flow of ball bearings to the factories where they were needed.  Indeed, German armaments production increased sharply in early 1944 and threatened to rise even more during the second half of the year. Having France, the Low Countries, Norway, and central and eastern Europe as a source of almost unlimited slave labor helped.18 Oil was the critical item. Ploesti remained the principal target. It was attacked by the Fifteenth Air Force, but following the April attacks the Germans began to experiment with a new defensive measure, which for at least a time worked well. Whenever their warning system indicated the approach of the Fifteenth’s air fleets over Yugoslavia heading toward Romania, the Germans would use the time available to them before the bombers were over Ploesti - about forty minutes - to light hundreds of smoke pots around the refineries, so that when the bombers were over the target most of the area would be concealed. As a counter, the Fifteenth began using more radar-equipped leading planes and raised its level of accuracy. But the German counter was to move additional antiaircraft batteries into and around Ploesti, along with fighter aircraft, making it the third best defended target on the continent. Second was Vienna, also a crude oil refinery site often struck by the Fifteenth. First was Berlin.  The Fifteenth countered with new techniques, most of all the use of diamond-shaped formations that gave some additional security to the bombers and greater precision in its attacks.

In July 1944, the Fifteenth lost 318 heavy bombers in its many missions against refineries scattered across southern Europe. It was the worst month of the war for the Fifteenth, which had a higher ratio of loss than the Eighth. The AAF thought, however, that it was doing great damage to the refineries, especially because of its use of radar to overcome the smoke screens. The results may not have been quite as good as hoped, but still they were spectacular. It was the sustained offensive by the Fifteenth that finally rendered Ploesti all but useless to the Germans. By September 1944, a total force of 59,834 airmen from the Fifteenth had flown against Ploesti, dropped a total of 13,469 tons of bombs, at a cost of 350 heavy bombers. The Fifteenth had flown twenty daylight missions against Ploesti. Later estimates were that these raids denied the Germans 1.8 million tons of crude oil. When the Red Army took Ploesti on August 30, the Russians reported that the Ploesti refineries were idle and ruined. This was the payoff of the Fifteenth’s sustained campaign.

On August 30, with the Red Army overrunning the country, Romania abruptly

changed sides in the war. That development in turn led to a buoyant episode for

the Fifteenth Air Force. There were over 1,000 AAF men who had bailed out over

Romania and were being held there as POWs. Those in camps near Bucharest were in

danger of being evacuated to Germany or having to spend a long time in Russian

hands before they got home. One of the internees, Lt. Col. James A. Gunn III,

took matters into his own hands. He climbed into the radio compartment of an ME

109 after painting it with the Stars and Stripes. He had persuaded Captain

Cantacuzene, a prince of the royal family of Romania, who was the top Romanian

ace against Allied aircraft, to be his pilot. Cantacuzene flew Gunn to Italy and

managed to land safely. Gunn talked General Twining into sending a rescue

mission. Twining had the Fifteenth hurriedly convert fifty-six of its B-17

bombers into transports and had Cantacuzene fly a P-51 (there was no suitable

fuel for the ME 109) to the airport outside Bucharest to see if it was clear of

Germans. It was and the B-17s started coming in. The POWs, happy beyond belief,

crowded into the bombers, twenty of them in each plane, and flew back to Italy

in relays. In all 1,274 of them got out over a three-day period. Deloused, fed,

and treated as necessary in hospitals, they were soon on their way to the

States.19

The losses the Fifteenth inflicted on the German refineries vastly aggravated

the fuel crisis faced by the Germans, bringing the enemy’s fuel position to the

point of catastrophe. In his memoirsInside the Third Reich, the Nazi production

czar Albert Speer said: “I could see the omens of the war’s end almost every day

in the blue southern sky when the bombers of the American Fifteenth Air Force

crossed the Alps from their Italian bases to attack German industrial

targets.”20 Eighth Air Force attacks on the armaments industry, especially tank,

truck, and aircraft factories inside Germany, also led to shortages for the

enemy. Strategic bombing was paying off, which helped Spaatz ward off proposals

to attempt to terrorize the Germans into capitulation through night bombing of

cities.21

American losses mounted. In the summer of 1944, out of its 2,100 operational

heavy bombers, the Eighth Air Force lost more than 900. The 1,100 operational

heavy bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force suffered a still higher ratio of

losses. But the German losses were even higher. TheLuftwaffe had combat losses

in personnel that climbed from 31,000 to 44,000 per month between June and

October.22

The presence of the American P-51 long-range fighters, beginning in mid-1944, provided the American bombers with air cover all the way to the target. They made a critical contribution to the German losses. Indeed, some historians contend that it was the coming of the P-51 that made the continuation of the strategic bombing campaign possible. It surely helped, but the biggest problem for the Germans was fuel. The Ploesti raids, and others, had the enemy down to 20 percent of the fuel needed to continue the war. Training in tank warfare, for example, became for the Germans a luxury beyond reach. The German army had to abandon most of its trucks and other vehicles and revert to being a horse-drawn army.

For the airmen, what mattered most was the cutbacks theLuftwaffe was forced to adopt, especially in its training period for pilots, which was reduced to a few insufficient days. Further, along with a severe shortage of good pilots, morale in theLuftwaffe was declining or becoming almost nonexistent. German pilots were not rotated out of combat and made into instructors after a certain number of missions - they continued to fly until killed, which a steadily growing number of them were.23 Increasingly, the Germans had to rely solely on their antiaircraft guns to defend their cities. They had come to realize that it was not possible to stop an Allied bomber from dropping its eggs on a target. Their goal was to cause the casualty rate to be high enough to force the Allies to discontinue the raids, something they could never accomplish.24 But if the Germans were having morale problems, so were the Americans. The airmen suffered greatly, from the intensive scale of operations, from high operational losses, sometimes from the lack of sufficient fighters for escort, from the almost unbearable pace of missions on consecutive days. General Arnold had long planned to provide two crews for each bomber so that every man would feel that he had a chance of surviving his tour of thirty-five missions, but trained crews were not being produced fast enough and it was not until December 1944 that the Fifteenth Air Force attained the ratio of two crews for each bomber.