The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945 (20 page)

On December 6, McGovern prepared to fly his first mission as pilot with his own crew. The target was the marshaling yards at Graz, Austria. He was “desperately eager to do everything right the first time out alone.” He confessed that “I was probably more nervous on that takeoff than any other missions that I flew during the war.” He was thinking about how he was going to get that big bird off the ground without Howard Surbeck there. It was by far the heaviest B-24 he had flown, what with the bomb load, a full crew, all that gasoline, the machine gun belts, the oxygen tanks, and more. This was not a stateside aircraft - it weighed 70,000 pounds, thirty-five tons. McGovern later said, “I don’t think any pilot in World War II ever made a takeoff in a B-24 that didn’t scare him.”5 On his first mission Lieutenant Fagan talked to his crew chief about the load.  The chief said, “As far as the total weight is concerned, you may as well know that these 24’s are overloaded about eight thousand pounds. Consolidated Aircraft says maximum takeoff weight is 63,000 pounds.  “If you don’t like it, what do you want to leave behind? Machine gun ammunition?  The flak suits? Take less gasoline? Or what? You’re going to have to take the bombs or there is no point in going.”6 McGovern found taxiing a B-24 a challenge. The taxi strips were just packed clay and dirt. He could not steer the B-24 with the nose wheel, over which he had no control. He would steer with the propellers - if he wanted to turn right he would cut back on the props on that side, speed them up on the left. The taxi strip was narrow and had a ditch on each side. The engineer, Sgt. Mike Valko, would stand behind the flight deck, open the overhead hatch, and put part of his body out of the plane to see if McGovern was getting too close on one side or the other (the pilot could not see the ditches from the cockpit). Valko would call out, “Too close on the right.” Or he would say, “A little bit left,” or “Right, right, right I said.”

Once on the runway, with three or four aircraft ahead of him waiting to take off, McGovern set the brakes and revved up the engines. Rounds went through the checklist with him. When that was complete and the plane in front had started down the runway, McGovern released the brakes. Beside him, he could hear Rounds praying. “Every takeoff I made in World War II was an adventure,” McGovern later admitted. A B-24 did not take off like a fighter. It started rolling slowly, only reluctantly picking up speed. He felt “this thing is never going to get enough speed to get off the ground - there’s just no way I’m going to make it.” The runway was too short - by later standards it was unsafe - but just at the end of it, now up to 160 mph, McGovern pulled his plane up into the air. He was just skimming the ground. He told Rounds, “Wheels up.” Rounds hit the switch and up they came, making for more speed and climbing ability. But McGovern didn’t dare pull it up any faster for fear of stalling and crashing, something that happened on occasion. “It seemed forever before I could climb.” For over a mile he was at treetop height. He did not dare keep the engines on full throttle because that would use up too much fuel, which would be needed later. “Wing flaps up,” he told Rounds, and when that was done the plane had more speed and less drag. Finally, mercifully, he started to climb.  The rallying point was over the Adriatic. Once over the water, McGovern had the gunners test their machine guns. He got the plane up, spotted the lead plane, slid into formation, wingtip to wingtip, almost touching, close enough so that a fighter plane couldn’t dive between them. That took almost an hour. Then the formation headed on to Graz (in southeastern Austria), over the Alps. On the way up to 20,000 feet theDakota Queen passed through clouds. For McGovern, on this and later missions, the weather gave him more worry than the possibility of heavy flak. If there had been a contest between weather and flak, “in the amount of shear sweat and fear that it produced, the weather won.” Once over the continent, the clouds gave way to blue sky. “You could look right down into those little villages.”

Rounds checked the instruments. So did McGovern. Every five minutes or so, he would press the button on his intercom and ask each crew member if everything was okay. When he needed specific information, he would ask. “Sam,” he would say to the navigator, “what is that formation off our right wing?” Or, “Tell me our location, Sam.” Or, to Sergeant Higgins, the radioman, “Have you picked up anything on the weather ahead?”

Rounds was all business. No jokes, no naps, no pranks. He was coordinated and an athlete and wanted to be flying his own fighter aircraft, but he was, in McGovern’s view, almost a perfect co-pilot. Not that he had a lot to do.  McGovern said he was there as a “standby. It was like being vice president of the United States. He was there in case of trouble only.” They had no conversation other than “watch engine number one” or something about the other planes in the formation or the readings on various instruments. On this first flight, McGovern did all the flying. Rounds, then and later, when he was free from concern, would read a Bible. McGovern thought that a bit much, given Rounds’s proclivities, but sometimes would be startled when Rounds would say, “Mac, listen to this” and read something from one of the Psalms. “Damn, that’s good,” he would exclaim.

When the formation got to Graz the weather had closed in. Nothing but clouds.  The lead plane turned away. The lead pilot did not get on the radio to say he was taking the others back - they simply turned when he did. Over the Adriatic on the way home he jettisoned his bomb load, as did the other planes. For everyone involved it was a milk run - no fighters, no flak. Because they had crossed into enemy territory, however, everyone got a mission to his credit.  Back at Cerignola the weather was clear. McGovern told Rounds to put the wheels down. A light came on to tell him the wheels were down and fully locked. He checked to make sure his ball turret gunner was inside the airplane and his turret pulled up. He put the wing flaps down to 40 degrees. Rounds called out the airspeed - “We’re at 170 . . . 160 . . . 150 . . . 140.” McGovern eased back on the throttles. The plane was almost gliding. It was a good landing. When he pulled the plane onto its hard stand, the crew got out all singing and whistling. McGovern walked around the plane, something he did before and after every mission. Everything was fine.7 For this mission, McGovern was paid $9.70. He was earning $290 per month, including his overseas pay and flying pay.8 He sent $200 of that home to Eleanor each month.

After debriefing, on his way to the officers club, he stopped by the enlisted men’s tent to see how they were doing. They were already celebrating. McGovern and Rounds had a beer or two in the club to celebrate their first mission. No holes in the plane, no wounded crew, no danger, but credit for a full mission.  Wonderful.

Sgt. Eddie Picardo, a tail gunner on a B-24, later said that he did not know how to explain “the enormous feeling of relief that accompanies returning safe from a bombing mission. . . . Once on the ground, you started to live for the future again and plan what you might do once the war was finally over. . . . I’ve never had a feeling to compare with it.”9 After the mission on December 6, the weather closed in. Most days the assignment sheet had McGovern flying in the morning, but in the morning the clouds were too thick over the base, over the Alps, over the targets, and the mission was scratched. The tension and anxiety, the tossing and turning on the cots, had been for nothing. This was typical. One B-24 pilot, Lt. Walter Hughes, was wakened and briefed eighty-six times to achieve his thirty-five missions.10 None of these pilots or their crews were ever ordered to go on a mission. When they saw their names on the assignment sheet, they knew that they could back off by just saying no, I won’t do that. They were always asked. McGovern never said no, “and I don’t know anybody that turned one down.” On December 4, McGovern’s father died of a heart attack while he was pheasant hunting. Cables took what seemed forever in World War II, and it was not until December 14 that one reporting on the death arrived at the base. The intelligence officer took it to McGovern. The chaplain prayed with him, then said he could be exempted from flying the next day. McGovern said no, he would not take that excuse.

On December 15, the target was the railroad yards in Linz, Austria. At the briefing, the pilots and crews were told that the Red Army was on the move, that the Germans were going through Linz as they ran equipment to the eastern front, that they were also moving other troops and weapons to the western front through Linz, and thus the target was critical. So off they went.  It was at Linz on this, their second mission, that McGovern said “we got introduced to combat.” The flak was heavy. Up to that point, McGovern had thought that exploding flak “looked like firecrackers and rockets going off.” He learned better when a big slug of flak “came through the windshield, high and to my right. It hit just above my right shoulder and to the right of my head, and then fell down onto the floor between Rounds and me.” They looked down at it.  Rounds looked over to McGovern and just shook his head. McGovern did the same.  The shrapnel was “the angriest-looking piece of metal, just jagged on every edge and big enough to tear your head off if it had hit a few inches to the left or maybe a few more inches on Bill Rounds’s side.” It was freezing at 25,000 feet, probably 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and the cold rush of wind - despite all the sheepskin-lined jackets and pants they had on, and despite their electrically heated suits - was ferocious. McGovern managed to keep his plane in formation, but barely. “All I could do was just sit there and do my job,” he said. He hoped no more shrapnel would hit theDakota Queen. Two or three other pieces did, but no one was hurt.  McGovern got back to the base and made his landing “smooth as glass.” The men did not jump out and kiss the ground, but they were happy and reassured. He had done it twice. That night they talked about their lieutenant and how good he was. Other crews said their pilots “just bang us in.” From then on, McGovern said, “They treated me around that airplane almost with reverence.” They had developed, already, total confidence in their pilot. “Their lives were in my hands,” McGovern explained. “It wasn’t just that they thought they were. A mistake on my part and we’re all dead.”

December 16 was a cloudy, cold day all across Europe, but the 741st and the rest of the Fifteenth Air Force flew anyway. It was the day the Germans took advantage of the weather to counterattack in the Ardennes, launching the Battle of the Bulge. The target for McGovern and the others was the oil refineries in Brux, Czechoslovakia.

One B-24 broke its landing gear on takeoff. It jettisoned its bombs in the Adriatic, then crash-landed at the Gioia, Italy, airfield. Another bomber had engine trouble and had to return to Cerignola.

McGovern got theDakota Queen into formation in a broken cloud cover, but “all of a sudden everything just goes blank.” The formation had flown into complete cloud cover. McGovern held his position, number three, but when they got above the clouds he discovered that they were flying at the same altitude but the plane that was number two had crossed him and was on his left side. “I was just petrified with fear at the sight.” The lead pilot saw the situation and called on his radio, “What’s going on here?” McGovern motioned to the other pilot that he should go up while theDakota Queen went down, and they crossed again until they got into their proper position. “That’s as close as I ever came to being killed and getting my crew killed and losing our bomber,” McGovern said. He was shaking with fear and the “knowledge of how little control we had over our fate when the weather took over. There was nothing you could do when you flew into a cloud except pray because you couldn’t see anything.” On this occasion, Rounds said to McGovern,”God took care of us.” Over Brux the flak was intense. “They’d lay that stuff up there,” according to McGovern, “and it was almost as if an artist had drawn it.” To McGovern, it seemed that the German gunners were getting better after each raid. “They were laying that shell in there closer to you.” He “uttered many a prayer going down that bomb run, sort of an instinctive thing you would do.” There was a bizarre array of color, ranging from blue sky over-head to white clouds below to solid black from the flak directly in front, then the huge, angry flashes of red when another shell exploded. “Hell can’t be any worse than that,” McGovern said later. The pilot and crew had heart rates that almost went through the roof, yet unless shrapnel hit the plane there was no sound other than the engines. Mike Valko stood between and slightly behind McGovern and Rounds, watching the instruments. McGovern glanced at Valko. His face was white.  Everyone else was scared too, but except for Rounds and Valko, McGovern couldn’t see them.11 The lead bomber for the 741st was using a Mickey radar, so although Brux was covered by clouds he made his drop and the others followed. In another squadron, however, the lead bomber’s bomb bay door was stuck, so it dropped no bombs.  Since the pilot did not break radio silence to explain, none of the planes in the squadron dropped their bombs. In all the B-24s dropped sixty tons of bombs on the target, while those in the squadron that did not release their bombs dropped them on targets of opportunity on the way back.  Except for McGovern’s squadron. Two or three other squadrons had completed their run and it was the 741st’s turn. Ahead, it was solid black except for flashes of red where shells were exploding. McGovern was flying number three, off the right wing of the lead bomber. He thought, Nobody’s going to get through this flak.  But just then, the leader began making a gentle turn. He bypassed the target “and we threw our bombs into the field.” McGovern guessed that the leader’s thinking was, I’ve got this whole squadron up here following my tail - there’s no way we’re going to get through this and the damage they’re going to do to us is greater than we’re going to do to them. We may not even hit the target, can’t see it, for sure. I’m not going to take these guys into a place where I know none of them are coming out.

Whatever the leader thought, not one of the men following his plane ever said a word about it. Every pilot and co-pilot, every nose gunner and bombardier and navigator knew exactly what happened. None of them uttered a word of criticism.  McGovern said his own thinking was, “I’m not sure to this day that he wasn’t right in avoiding that almost suicidal bomb run.”12 There were other mishaps. On another mission, Lt. Donald Currier reached the bomb release point when a B-24 drifted right over his squadron. Over Currier’s head, the plane dropped its stick of 500-pound bombs. Currier was looking out his window at the time and saw the first bomb strike his wingman at the top turret. There was a tremendous explosion and the plane disintegrated into flaming pieces. It happened in an instant. Currier found it hard to believe that the guys who had trained with him and occupied the tent next to him were gone.  Just gone.