It was an early and dark March 4, 1944 at Thorpe Abbots, England. Day of the first Eighth Air Force maximum-effort bombing mission to Berlin. The ships were taking off one by one into the snowy morning gliding over the runway wet and slick. Pilot Reilly and crew craned their necks as the thirty-ton monster lifted into the air. The clouds formed a canopy at twenty-five thousand feet and the temperature was fifty-six below.
The Eighth Air Force was recalled. A few missed the recall and went on to Berlin. The Ninety-Fifth Bomb Group was leading with eleven B-17s of the “Bloody Hundredth” for a total of thirty-three planes. This was my 24th mission, the first without Jack Flanigan’s crew and without my lucky charm “Royal Flush.” Fortunately, the pathfinder mission to Berlin went uneventful for our plane. The flak was heavy for there were over four hundred anti-aircraft guns. The Hundredth lost one plane, the Ninety-Fifth lost five. The group received its second Presidential Citation for this mission.
Here we go again March 6, 1944. Talk about Blue Monday. Over eight hundred bombers of the Eighth Air Force formed over England. The flight plan was a straight line to “Big B” and back—maybe. Bucky Elton was leading the Hundredth’s “A” Group consisting of twenty-one planes. Swarthout was leading the “B” group of 21 planes. I was replacing the navigator on Dave Miner’s crew, leading the high squadron of the “B” Group. Miner’s crew and Flanigan’s crew lived together and this mission would finish our tour of duty.
We were fifty miles into German territory and somehow missed the fighter escort. The time was high noon and the area south of Bremen near Dummer Lake was a major checkpoint. The fighters hit the lead and low squadron from eleven o’clock. They were sufficient to completely wipe out or scatter the two lower squadrons. They charged in twelve at a time, over forty of them. Jones (Miner’s Bombardier) and I had a box seat while shooting at the enemy: fires, explosions, and gyration of the planes being shot down and thinking how lucky we were to be high and dry.
One amazing thing stays in my mind about Swarthout’s plane. Its vertical fin collided into a German Fighter, but somehow he managed to make his back to England. Out of the “B” group, fifteen bombers were shot down, and out of the Eighth Air Force a total of sixty nine were lost, the most ever in World War II.
The first enemy fighter I saw shooting at us was coming in on the high squadron less than five hundred yards straight out. I remember wishing I had Royal Flush’s manual nose guns because this plane was fitted with slow moving electric operated sights, which never had time to catch up with the target. As it turned out, this could have saved my life. By hitting the FW190 with rounds from our nose guns, we may have had a head-on collision. I am sure it was this first pass that killed Miner and copilot Kinsella. The FW held level and split off at less than fifty yards. The twenty-millimeter shells went into the windshield. We couldn’t hear a thing on the intercom after several loud explosions.
Several following passes came in higher, out of the sun, at one o’clock and further out, it seemed like they never stopped coming at us. Our right engines were on fire, I called this to Jones’ attention and said we had better get the hell out while stripping off my flak suit and looking for my chest-pack parachute. Jones answered that he had all the confidence in his pilot and crew, so we went back to firing the fifty-caliber machine guns. The last I remember (no oxygen) was the plane going into a sharp turning climb. Luckily, I regained consciousness just above lightly scattered clouds, we were briefed that scattered clouds would be at approximately four thousand feet.
Out of the clouds the B-17 was heading earthward in a straight gliding dive. Everything had occurred so rapidly that the natural fear one has approaching death hadn’t been felt. Time slowed down. The one thought which absorbed my mind was to find and get my parachute pack attached to my harness. I attached one hook, which proved sufficient. I could see the earth moving at a blurring speed. I dove out through the nose as the plastic cone had been completely shot out, pulled the ripcord, and the chute made a loud pop and at the same time the B-17 hit the ground with a thunderous explosion (over two thousand gallons of fuel on board). I was sure to go back to 25,000 feet when the bombs went off.
I landed less than a hundred yards of the burning plane. I could feel the tremendous heat, unhooked the chute, and ran for a ditch and hedgerow. I hit the ground several times, thinking that I was being shot at—turned out to be my ears clearing from the altitude. A FW190 hovered overhead while I was in the ditch taking off my shredded flying suit. The suit was denim and new for this mission but now it was a bundle of rags. Miraculously, I hardly had a scratch. The FW left the area and the B-17s bombs never exploded.
With my escape map, candy bar, etc. I started walking down the hedgerow toward a timber growth. The home guard was coming across the field, so I just kept on walking. They called “Hite.” I waved at them and kept on walking. Their second shout brought rifles to the shoulders of two soldiers and my hands to high heaven. While I was being searched I looked up and could maybe eighty or ninety parachutes floating down. The soldiers kept the civilians at bay for they were mostly from bombed-out Bremen and were carrying pitchforks, clubs, etc. They paraded me up a little one-way street of a village named Addrup.
I was glad I wasn’t wearing my Royal Flush flight jacket with the picture of Hitler, Tito, and Mussolini in a toilet bowl being flushed. The number of Germans that spoke English surprised me, and most all had the same question: why did America want to bomb Germany? I would say, “Democracy” and they would yell “Jew-lover” and spit in my face. Two soldiers put me in a wire closure. Later, at dark about fifteen Russians showed up, they were working as forced labor in the farm fields. The Russians would say, “You Roosevelt, me Stalin.” Later, a truck took me to an airfield where in a gymnasium there were well over a hundred US Airmen. We were put on a train to Frankfurt.
How did I bale out of the nose section of a fortress in a dive? Easy. The plexiglass nose cone was gone and all I had to do was miss the vertical fin, wings, props, stabilizers, etc. What happened to Jones the bombardier? I later discovered the German’s found his body without a parachute. The side fuselage door was the other escape exit being used. Gas and fire had been flowing past it and the first and third gunners were burned, but survived. I later saw them at La Havre, France on our way home.
At Frankfurt I was stripped and searched. My clothes were returned to me minus my shoes. I was led to a 3X6 foot cell with a wood platform for a bunk and no covers, but at least the room was warm. During the night they tuned the heat off and I woke up freezing. I began pounding on the door and the guard who spoke some English opened it. I was delighted to see my shoes by the side of my door. I asked him about the heat and he showed me a thermostat and instructed me not to pound on the door for attention but to pull a rope and a wooden arm would rise just above my shoes in the hallway.
After four days of this, plus a bowl of cabbage and potato soup each day, a soldier took me to be interviewed. There I received my first demonstration of a “Heil Hitler Salute” and heel clicking. This German officer acted like he was overjoyed to meet me. He offered me chocolates, cigarettes, his version of “real” friendship. Almost starved, I popped those chocolates as fast as I could. He showed me pictures of B-17s on the ground in England. He knew our squadron leader Blakely just made Major, but what he wanted to know from me was why I was flying with Miner’s crew on their last mission, and what was the target. They were very well informed; he showed me a file that included information on most members of Flanigan’s crew.
He kept asking me again about the target so I pointed to a section of Berlin. He blew his top and yelled for the soldiers to take me back to my holding area. The next day brought the same routine without the goodies. I stuck with my story and he yelled that this area couldn’t possible be our target because it was a residential area and was where his family lived. Out again I went, only to have him come to my cell to inform me that I had been telling the truth. He was just informed that he lost his family in one of the raids. Our target on March 6th was a factory about ten miles outside of Berlin.
On the eighth day they released me to the compound. I had my first cold shower and shave. In the mirror, I realized why everyone noticed me. The whites of my eyes were fire red from broken blood veins from the wind rushing through the open nose section. It took almost nine months for my eyes to clear up.
We rode crowded boxcars from Frankfurt to Barth and Stalagluft I. This was on the Baltic Sea, it was freezing cold and snow on the ground. Small world, I was greeted at the barbwire gate by a fellow from my hometown, Washington, Iowa and my ole sidekick Scottie who had been with me off and on since Santa Ana, California. At prison camp I was issued two blankets, a GI overcoat, a mattress cover to be filled with straw, the top bed on a double bunk with boards for springs, and fifteen more roommates in a 12X14 room. The blankets, coat, straw, and I were pretty thin fifteen months later when the Russians liberated us during May, 1945. It was like a dream come true when B-17s arrived to fly us to Reims, France for our first good meal and freedom, although our stomachs could only hold about 4-ounces of food.
My crew began flying the Royal Flush in early September of 1943. The Flush was shot down on its seventy-fifth mission, while flying with its third crew.
I was recalled for Korean Service May of 1951. Separated from the Air Force for the second time September 1953, served in the Air Force reserves and retired as a Major in 1959.
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