More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Steinhoff had always hated The Party and had dealt with the Gestapo before. In Russia they brought their inquisition to his unit, then Fighter Wing 52 (JG-52), to investigate the supposed Jewish backgrounds of a few of his pilots. Steinhoff had declined to assist them and had said to the Gestapo leader, “You’ll be lucky if you leave Russia alive.” The man asked if the skies were that unsafe. Steinhoff said, “No, it’s because you just made enemies of forty fighter pilots who have never added a Ju-52 to their victory list, and I think that’s yours sitting on my runway.”
Franz and his comrades had tried to defend Sicily when the Allied invasion came two weeks prior, on July 9, but had been driven away by endless waves of Allied fighters. Franz had been shot down for the first time by Spitfires, but not before bagging one as a victory. He had bailed out and landed behind friendly lines, but had lost his fourth fighter of the war.
them. It was from Reichsmarschall Goering, a teletype sent from Berlin. It was addressed to all fighter pilots of the Mediterranean and read: Together with the fighter pilots in France, Norway, and Russia, I can only regard you with contempt. I want an immediate improvement in fighting spirit. If this improvement is not forthcoming, flying personnel from the commander down must expect to be remanded to the ranks and transferred to the eastern front to serve on the ground.
In northern Germany, British bombers were systematically incinerating the city of Hamburg with firebombs, night after night, while the Americans dropped iron bombs on the city’s factories by day. The paper tried to put a heroic spin on the tragic news, calling a one-sided catastrophe “the Battle of Hamburg.” They refused to mention that the bombs had produced a thousand-foot-high tornado of fire that had swirled and swallowed eight square miles of the city. They neglected to describe that the tornado had melted the city’s streets and sucked the air from bomb shelters, killing, in one week,
...more
On July 13, 1941, from the pulpit of St. Lambert’s Church in Münster, von Galen had said: “None of us is safe—and may he know that he [who] is the most loyal and conscientious of citizens… cannot be sure that he will not some day be deported from his home, deprived of his freedom and locked up in the cellars and concentration camps of the Gestapo.”
Sir Arthur Harris, the leader of the British Bomber Command, considered the bombing of Hamburg as payback for the German “Blitz” bombing of British cities that had cost the lives of forty thousand Britons.
Some children came to the fence to see the bear. Franz let Bobbi walk up to them. The children reeled back in fear. Franz promised them the bear did not bite, “He only licks.” One little boy stuck his fingers through the fence and squealed when Bobbi nuzzled them. Seeing this, the manager laughed, shrugged, and from that day onward the pilots and the Squadron 6 bear were allowed to swim.
Bobbi was a lighthearted distraction from the harrowing new mission facing Franz and his comrades. They saw their job as simple, to stop the bombs from dropping and killing the German people. And never could Franz have imagined that such a simple mission would soon pit him against his nation.
“I was so low that I was level with the clock,” Charlie would remember. “Looking back, it was an incredibly stupid move.”
She introduced herself as Marjorie Ketcham. She was a WASP based out of Romulus Army Air Field in Detroit. Charlie said he had heard of the WASPs, the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots. They were the girls who flew planes from factories to training units and deployment points to free up male pilots for combat.
Marjorie explained that WASPs were considered civil service employees and were required to buy their own uniforms. “If I die in a crash, my fellow WASPs will have to pass the hat to pay for my funeral,” Marjorie said. “Since I’m outside of the military, my coffin can’t even have an American flag on it.”
teetotaler
“Europe!” they shouted, backslapping one another. No bomber crews wanted to go west to the Pacific, where too much water lay between tiny island airfields. Charlie, in particular, feared the Japanese, after hearing stories of the atrocities they committed against captured airmen. Charlie and his crew debated their ultimate destination. Charlie hoped they were headed to England and to the unit from the newsreels—the 8th Air Force. Pinky hoped they were headed to the Mediterranean, where the Allies had recently invaded Italy. “There’s plenty of Germans to bomb there,” Pinky said, “And the best
...more
No man in the Army Air Forces was forced to fly in combat. He had volunteered for this. With that came extra pay and a sense of something intangible: pride. When Charlie reported to the 8th, he had landed himself in a unit that would lose more men in the war than the U.S. Marine Corps.
Every man in that room was trying to reach mission twenty-five and the end of his tour. Of the 379th’s original thirty-six crews, not one had completed its tour with all ten men unharmed.
Walt offered Charlie his flask but Charlie refused. Coming from moonshine country, he had seen how alcohol compounded people’s woes.
“If you have power to get to Sweden, you have power to try to get to England,” he told the men. This time, no one laughed. Sweden was actually far closer to Germany than England. But on Preston’s map, Sweden, like Switzerland, had a big black X through it. Both were neutral countries where a bomber crew could land and receive sanctuary if their plane was badly damaged, although the crew would be interned for the duration of the war. Preston hated the idea of the safe havens and had announced that after the war he would court-martial any crew that had fled to a neutral country.
Charlie went to say “Good luck,” but Walt cut him off mid-sentence. “We never say that,” he said. Charlie apologized. “Go get ’em,” Charlie said awkwardly, searching for words. “That’s better,” Walt chuckled. “Never say ‘good-bye’—it’s bad luck.”
“How’s she doing, Chief?” Charlie asked. “Good enough, sir,” Shack said. He warned Charlie that engine four was acting up when they started it. “She seems okay now, but I’d watch her,” he added. Shack seemed a bit distant, and Charlie suspected why. Rumor had it that Shack had lost three planes so far—three crews. Shack said the bomber was new to the group, a transfer from another unit, and that he was just learning her quirks. His words struck Charlie like a waiver.
Gunners feared assignment to the ball turret, although time would prove it was actually the safest gun position.
The 8th Air Force measured error in hundreds of yards and even miles.* The Germans on the ground measured that same error in city blocks and civilian casualties. At that time in the war, 54 percent of the 8th Air Force’s bombs were landing within five city blocks of their targets. The other 46 percent fell where they were not supposed to. But one thing could be said for the American bombing method. The 8th Air Force always aimed at military targets, even if that target was nestled in the midst of a city.
As the throbbing plane warmed up, Charlie silently prayed or, as he referred to it, conducted a “short briefing with my Third Pilot.” Beneath the layers of his life vest and parachute harnesses he patted the chest pocket of his leather jacket, assuring himself that his Bible was still there.
From twenty-three bases across the breadth of England, nearly 475 bombers climbed through the clouds. Making matters more harrowing, as part of the “Round the Clock” strategy, the Americans were going out at the same time the British bombers were coming home from their night raids. It’s a sky full of terror, Charlie thought.
Eighth Air Force historians Philip Kaplan and Rex Smith would describe precision daylight bombing with this comparison: “Consider that trying to drop bombs into a 2,000-foot circle while speeding past at an altitude of 25,000 feet in a bomber under fire was much like trying to drop grains of rice into a teacup while riding past on a bicycle.”
“Oh shit,” Pinky muttered, pressing his face to his window. “A shell passed clean through the wing! It didn’t explode, but we got a helluva hole!”
Like the men in every other plane, the crew of The Pub began scanning the skies for enemy aircraft and their own fighter cover. But neither could be seen. They did not know it, but their friendly fighters had departed early, “because of excessive headwinds they had to buck on the way home,” the group’s lead navigator would note.
Charlie pulled back on the throttle, but the engine did not power down. “The controls are shot out,” Charlie said. Engine three was frozen at half power. With one engine out, one irregular, and now one at half power, Charlie knew they were on the verge of a complete disaster.
The shell fragments blasted the bomber’s skin outward. Both gunners’ flak vests had shielded their vitals from shoulder to groin but the vests had not covered everything. When Jennings sat up he saw Russian holding his left thigh skyward, groaning through his mask. His lower leg hung by just a few strips of tendon.
Crawling closer, Blackie saw that the tail gun position had been destroyed; the glass was gone, and the metal walls had been hacked open to the sky. A cold breeze blew from one side to the other. Only direct hits from several cannon shells could have done this. Blackie turned Ecky by a shoulder then reeled back in fright. Ecky’s head had been nearly severed and dangled onto his chest.
Pechout was intensely focused on his radio that had been blown into pieces. He was in shock and had removed his gloves to try to reassemble the radio, to obey Charlie’s last order to keep calling for help. Blackie assured Pechout he had done his duty. He gently lifted his friend from his seat and set him on the floor. Blood trickled from one of Pechout’s eyes where a tiny steel shell fragment was imbedded. His fingers were frostbitten and bleeding, missing skin from handling the frozen metal radio. Blackie found Pechout’s gloves and slid them back over the wounded man’s hands.
One more bomber victory would push him through “magic 30” and qualify him for the Knight’s Cross.
The sergeant returned to his men and shook his head, unable to understand Franz’s obsession. But to Franz, the Knight’s Cross was more than a bragging right. It was a sign of honor that he had done something good for his people.
His B-17 on fire and under fighter attack, Walt held the plane steady so his crew could attempt to bail out. His radio operator and both waist gunners escaped before the bomber fell into a spin then exploded. Walt and six of his crewmen were killed.
At three thousand feet, The Pub did something that no B-17 missing a stabilizer should have done. She stopped diving. For reasons inexplicable, her wings began to flutter. The plane flirted with the idea of lift.
Frenchy returned shortly. “We’re chewed to pieces,” he said. “The left stabilizer is all but gone. The hydraulics are bleeding from the wings. There’s holes in the fuselage big enough to climb through, and up front the nose is open to the sky. I don’t know how Doc can work with his charts whipping all over the place.” Charlie saw Frenchy wincing and barely able to stand, so he told him to go lie down in the waist with the others. Frenchy insisted on staying near his guns.
When Doc drew their course on the violently convulsing map, he was so fixated on the flak rings that he had failed to see that the course he drew would dodge the village of Jever, but not its German airfield.
Charlie knew his odds had been better down along the treetops. At least there the flak gunners would have had a tougher time aiming at him. But he had made his choice, to sacrifice himself and Russian if need be, to allow seven men to jump.
Franz had seen planes come back from battle shot to pieces. But he had never seen anything like this. Every foot of the bomber’s metal had silver holes where the bullets had entered and flaked away the paint. Franz became entranced with wonder. Pushing the rudder pedal and nudging the throttle forward a bit, Franz swung his 109 past the tail and flew along the bomber’s right side, parallel to the fuselage. Franz scanned the craft for guns that the bomber’s crew could still turn on him. He saw that the waist gun was missing, blasted from its mount. He saw that the top turret was empty and that
...more
The Franz Stigler who went to Africa to avenge his brother’s death would have had an answer. He would have destroyed the bomber and killed its crew. But there, in the desert, and over ancient Sicily, the last of Europe’s Knights had taught Franz Stigler a new code. Their code said to fight with fearlessness and restraint, to celebrate victories not death, and to know when it was time to answer a higher call.
Kicking the rudder, Franz moved a few feet away from the bomber’s wing so his silhouette could be seen from above and below. He knew that if another German fighter came along it would not interfere with him there. He reasoned the same for the boys on the ground. Germany’s flak gunners were the best in the world and would know the silhouette of a 109 by heart. If they spotted him they would know he was one of theirs. But when they saw the bomber on his wing, would they hold their fire?
No one knew what to do, not even the battery commander. Everyone in the German Air Force knew they had B-17s of their own, shot down planes that had been rebuilt to fly clandestine operations or be used in training, so fighter pilots could practice flying against the plane they would meet in combat. The battery commander knew there could be any number of explanations, but one thing was certain: there was a Messerschmitt 109 about to fly over him and he could not fire on one of his own. “Hold your fire!” he shouted.
Flying over the sea was a scary prospect for Franz in his small fighter. He could not imagine what the bomber pilots were thinking in their plane that was slowly falling apart. “Sit out the war!” he wanted to shout to them. “It’s better than a watery grave!” But the B-17 copilot just looked at him, perplexed.
Franz knew what was coming. Taking one last look at the American pilot, he did the only thing that came to mind. He saluted him. The American pilot stared back with a genuine look of surprise. “Good luck, you’re in God’s hands,” Franz said. Banking his fighter, Franz peeled up and over the bomber then dove away, leveling out in the direction of Germany.
“I think he flew up to salute us,” Blackie said. “To say, ‘I gave you my best and you survived.’” “What do you think, Doc?” Charlie asked. “Pretty damn brazen,” Doc said. “Shades of Eddie Rickenbacker.” Doc was referring to Rickenbacker, America’s top WWI ace and most chivalrous pilot. The legend went that Rickenbacker was so overjoyed when WWI ended that he flew over the trenches to watch the soldiers from both sides meet in no-man’s-land to celebrate their survival.
The Germans did claim the bomber as destroyed and gave credit for the victory to Lieutenant Ernst Suess, a sixty-seven-victory ace. That morning Suess had picked up his pregnant wife at the train station in Oldenburg so they could spend Christmas together. During his attack on The Pub, his plane was damaged and Suess bailed out. According to his comrade, Viktor Widmaier, Suess’s parachute failed to open and his comrades found him, dead, in a field west of Bremen.
“I look out and there’s the world’s worst nightmare sitting on my wing,” Charlie would remember. “That little sucker looked like he owned me and belonged there.”
The crew roamed the length of the plane, gathering anything they could expel. From the waist windows they tossed machine guns, flak vests, and oxygen bottles. Belts of bullets trailed through the sky. The men got on their hands and knees and scooped brass shell casings into helmets and shoveled them out to sea.
Each time Charlie felt The Pub shudder and drop a few feet, he touched the Bible in his pocket like a transmitter on a microphone hoping it would beam his prayers up faster. He asked his “Third Pilot” to stay close.
The fighter pilot looked forward. Turning back to Charlie, he pointed ahead. Charlie looked through the windshield and his jaw dropped. He squinted and leaned forward. There, in the center of the horizon, was a small swath of land catching sun through a break in the clouds. It looked like a small island. Slowly the island seemed to stretch wider and wider as the clouds above it spread open, allowing more sun to reveal the beautiful green pastures of England. Pinky grinned. Frenchy clutched Charlie’s and Pinky’s shoulders. Charlie tapped his Bible in thanks.
The two P-47s were ahead and to his left, circling at one thousand feet. “Are they trying to tell us something?” Charlie asked aloud. He did not wait for Frenchy’s or Pinky’s reply. Charlie muscled the sluggish controls and turned toward the fighters. Passing just above a thick grove of trees, he saw what the circling fighters were trying to show him. Below them, lay the smooth gray runway of an airfield.
