在战斗中学会飞翔（英文版）Learning to Fly in Combat（2）
On November 17, McGovern flew his second mission as Surbeck’s co-pilot. The target was marshaling yards in Gyor, Hungary. Over the target the flak began. It was heavy and accurate. Sticking tight to the formation, his plane and the others could achieve a better bomb pattern but it also made a concentrated target for the flak gunners. "It was just solid black except for flashes of red where shells were exploding," McGovern remembered. The Germans were using a box-type defense. Each of the 88s fired into an area as the bombers approached, the shells traveling faster than the speed of sound and set to explode at the group’s altitude. "They just boxed it." The boxes were 2,000 feet deep and 2,000 feet wide, sometimes more. The German antiaircraft units employed almost a million personnel and operated over 50,000 guns, most of them the dreaded 88s. The shells were time-fused to explode at 20,000 feet, or above or below that altitude according to the flight pattern. As the shells exploded, sending out hundreds of pieces of steel shrapnel that had a killing zone radius of some thirty feet, the bombers flew into them. "Well they had filled that box," McGovern said. A standard expression from Surbeck or crew members was that "the flak was so thick you could walk on it." McGovern "often wondered if that’s the way hell looks." Another pilot, Lt. Robert Reichard, recalled that "the barrage was so intense that the daylight disappeared and it was as if someone had cut out the sun." The B-24's had nowhere to hide and with the ground 25,000 feet below, there was no place to dig in. The bursts around them posed a threat to the airplane, as it had ten 500 pound bombs and over 2,000 gallons of 100 octane gas on board. When the bombs dropped the plane jumped a few feet. "Everything improved when they went away," Lt. Vincent Fagan remembered. "The plane was 5,000 or 6,000 pounds lighter, we were leaving the flak instead of going into it and we could take evasive action — usually a diving turn towards the shortest escape route from the flak area." ____________________ One didn’t always get out of the flak. On his first mission, October 7, 1944, B-24 pilot J.I. Merritt, in Liberty Belle, flew over Vienna to hit an oil refinery. After dropping the bombs, he banked steeply to the left and headed toward the rally point and home. Sgt. Art Johnson, a waist gunner and assistant engineer, was on his twenty-sixth mission. He recalled, "We had flown through the worst of the flak. I sighed a bit, for this was my third time in the vicinity of Vienna and I knew about where the flak began and ended." Just then, there were four explosions in quick succession. Johnson’s oxygen hose pulled apart, his gun was knocked out of his hand, and he hit the floor, hard. Luckily his headset stayed connected and he heard Merritt ask, "Is everyone okay?" Johnson checked the tail gunner and the ball turret gunner, then pressed his mike. "Pilot from left waist — everyone okay back here." But he added, "Number three engine throwing oil and smoke, number four dead, holes in flaps and wings. Over." Johnson later found out that the first burst had exploded directly in front of the plane and the force of it took the top off the nose turret. The second burst came through and cut the nose wheel and tire in two, cut the interphone lines to the nose and also the oxygen lines. The third burst ripped up the underside of the right wing and exploded in number four engine. The gunner in the top turret, Sgt. Nick Corbo, had just breathed easy and said to himself, "We’ve made this one," when the bursts came. One piece of shrapnel exploded through the flight deck. Johnson and the other crew members began throwing everything that was loose out of the plane. Ammunition, guns, flak suits, anything and everything that was loose except themselves. Merritt fought the wheel as the plane heaved and slowed to the brink of stalling. Then it began dropping. Gasoline streamed from the riddled wing tanks, filling the plane with the reek of the fuel. Only one engine was still working, and that one hardly was. The plane had dropped from 25,000 feet to 12,000 and was still going down. Merritt managed to get up some speed and cross into Yugoslavia. Down to 2,000 feet and almost out of fuel, he called out over the intercom, "Bail out and good luck!" Johnson recalled that the right waist gunner was the first out, followed by the tail gunner and the ball turret gunner. "I was alone in back. I faced the front of the ship and put my head between my knees and out I went. The slipstream caught me and I went end for end. By the time I had slowed down a bit I had pulled my rip cord. One long pull. I was jerked straight up and down as the silk billowed open and I breathed a prayer of thanks." Johnson and the others, including Merritt and the co-pilot, landed more or less intact. They were picked up by partisans who managed to get them back to Italy, but not until November 26. Lt. Glenn Rendahl, a co-pilot from Hollywood, California, with the 514th Squadron, said that on his first mission, the flak "exceeded whatever we expected." On McGovern’s second mission one bomber of the group was lost. Again there were clouds, but the lead bomber had the Mickey radar and used it to find the railroad and dropped his bombs. The twenty-seven planes following did also. But because of the clouds, no observation of results could be made. ________________ On his first mission, navigator Pepin of the 741st saw a lot of flak, saw some B-24's get hit, but his plane managed to drop its bombs successfully. He felt a sense of joy as the plane headed home. The bomb bay doors were closing and the aircraft’s speed was increasing. "The going-home sight of the Alps in the early afternoon was far more beautiful than the morning one." The radiomen tuned to the Armed Services Radio station in Foggia and over the intercom the crew listened to the latest hit records. Both danger and the crew’s stamina diminished on the home-bound run and "our elation and silliness increased." Everyone was "tired, hungry and thirsty," as their breakfast and coffee had been hours ago. Finally Pepin could see Cerignola and his plane circled the field. Then, and on later missions, "My favorite sight and sound was hearing the tires touch the steel mat on landing and seeing the props come to a halt." After nine hours of "grueling, horrendous, nerve-wracking flying, the mission was over." ________________________ For Sgt. Robert Hammer, now a radio operator with the 742nd Squadron, his first mission was in late September: target, the airfield outside Munich. Two of the men in his crew, a bombardier and a flight engineer, were on their last missions before going home. A fighter escort joined them "and we were bouncing gaily along in the blue" when dead ahead a thick, coal-black cloud appeared. "Take a good look at it, fellows," the veteran bombardier called over the intercom, "because it’s flak and you’ll be seeing plenty of it from now on." Hammer was appalled to see the squadron of B-24's ahead fly directly into the stuff. Fools, he thought. Why don’t they just fly around it? He saw two planes get hit and start down. Shortly after, "we were heading for that same suicidal cloud." The plane started "bucking like a rodeo bronco." There was a crack. Hammer looked quizzically at the veteran engineer, who pointed to a hole an inch long and a quarter-inch wide made by shrapnel. After what seemed an eternity that in fact had lasted for less than ten minutes, the bombs were away and Hammer’s plane turned for home. "We were combat veterans now." __________________________ Radio operator Sgt. Howard Goodner flew his first mission in October, 1944. His plane was a B-24 flown by Lt. Richard Farrington, his squadron was the 787th, a part of the 466th Bomb Group, Eighth Air Force. Low clouds covered the airfield and when Farrington got his craft off the ground, he could not see. Flying blind as he climbed, relying on his instruments, following his heading, Farrington was quickly covered with sweat. Up, up, up he went, until he got above the clouds. No amount of practice could have prepared the pilot and crew for what they encountered — B-24's, glittering like mica, were popping up out of the clouds over here, over there, everywhere. They formed up and straightened out for the target. Farrington called out over the intercom, "This is it, boys. We’re on our way to the war." Ahead shells were bursting all over the sky, sending out shards of shrapnel. The lead squadron of B-24's penetrated the flak. "Mary, Mother of God," one crew member mumbled into the intercom. "Mary, Mother of God, get me out of this." Farrington took them right into it. Jarring detonations erupted around them. The plane bumped and shuddered. But it kept flying straight and level, until the bombs were released. Farrington banked, got away from the flak, and headed home. Sergeant Goodner reached into his jacket pocket for the Tootsie Roll he carried with him. It was frozen solid. When the plane landed, Goodner had his first mission behind him. _____________________________ On November 18, McGovern was Surbeck’s co-pilot on another milk run. The target was the German airfield near Vicenza, Austria. The weather was fair and the bombing was visual. Over 50 per cent of the bombs fell in the target area causing extensive damage to the installation. Flak was light and generally inaccurate. No German fighters were seen. The group returned to Cerignola without casualties. McGovern flew again the next day and it was no milk run. The target was a refinery near Vienna. Because of cloud cover, the lead plane used its Mickey and no results were seen, but dropping bombs by radar instead of visually meant few of them hit what they wanted to hit and the damage was minimal. Flak was intense but inaccurate and all planes returned to base. On November 20, on McGovern’s final mission as a co-pilot, the target was factories at Zlin, Czechoslovakia. It was a secondary, or alternative, target, but the original objective had been obscured by clouds, so the lead pilot took the group to Zlin. There the weather was clear and the bombing was done visually, with excellent results. Best of all, there was no flak over Zlin. All planes returned safely. After debriefing, McGovern would meet with Rounds, Adams, and his crew. They fired questions at him about what it was like, most of all the flak. "They were filled with questions every day," McGovern recalled, "waiting for me when I came back." Once the session was over, McGovern would steer his way into the officer’s club for a Coca-Cola or a beer. There he would listen to the veteran pilots talk and ask his own questions. It was shop talk. From almost every one of the discussions he would absorb information. The topics were the B-24's, the crews, the Germans. What rpm at what altitude? Why was this gauge or that instruments malfunctioning? Is there any way to stay straight and level over the target and still avoid the flak? How long can an engine be on fire before it detonates the gas tank? What can you do when a bomb gets stuck in the bomb bay? How does the plane fly with only three engines operating? With two? When the hydraulic system has leaked or been shot out, how do you get the wheels down? McGovern had flown four missions on four days. These consecutive missions were about the absolute limit. They left the pilot and his crew haggard, worn, jumpy, frazzled and spent. But each one of the attacks counted toward the thirty-five missions that, when completed, would allow McGovern to return to the States. When he had time to write to Eleanor, McGovern noted the number in his letter — number five after the mission to Zlin. "I worried, as any wife would," Eleanor said three decades later. "I would feel a stab of fear whenever someone knocked at the door or the telephone rang. The first thing I would do when I got a letter from George was to scan through it for a number — the number of missions completed. That was the first thing I wanted to know. Then I’d go back to read the letter." ___________________________ On December 16, radio operator Sgt. Mel TenHaken flew his first mission, against a refinery at Brux, Czechoslovakia. Because the crew were new, the pilot, Lieutenant Cord, was a veteran ofthirty-one missions. TenHaken’s regular pilot flew as co-pilot that day. There was another newcomer, a photographer on his seventeenth mission. Theirs would be one of the last two planes on the bomb run and his photos would be among the official records of the raid’s effect. When the Group formed up and headed toward the target, TenHaken saw "a seemingly endless line of planes. I had never seen this many in one place at one time." He thought that "obviously Rosie the riveter back home had been very busy." The bombers were at 25,000 feet, just below the 26,000-foot ceiling for the craft. On his B-24, TenHaken was in charge of the haff, what he had called "Christmas tree tinsel" back home. Its purpose was to confuse German radar, which otherwise would lock onto the group and know what altitude to set the fuses for the shells to explode. The chaff was in packets, each one wrapped and tied with a plain brown band, each one crimped to open in the wind and allow the foil to drift down in individual pieces. Most veterans thought the chaff didn’t do much if any good, but they tossed them out of the plane with great gusto anyway. When his plane got to the initial point and turned, then straightened for the bomb run, TenHaken saw "numerous little puffs ahead forming a black cloud shaped like an elongated shoe box." The leader of his squadron was flying through it. Those behind were about to enter the German box. It was time to pull the flak jackets on. These were for the crew, whose members did not have the cast iron protection the pilot and co-pilot did. The jackets consisted of irregularly shaped metal plates stitched between two sheets of canvas to form a vest. To TenHaken, "their purpose seemed primitive, identical to that of suits of armor." They weighed about twenty pounds each. Most veterans decided early on not to wear them, but to put them between their seats and their butts, thus protecting the most important part. Over the target, with flak bursting from the shells all around his plane, TenHaken started dropping the chaff packets through one of the waist windows. After dropping one, he tried to count to ten as he had been told before letting the next one go, but in the midst of the flak he seldom got past two or three. Then the plane to his right got hit. "A flak explosion at its number three engine had blown the right wing from the body. The scene was incomprehensible — the wing tumbled over and down, and the fuselage was nosing into a dive." There were no parachutes. "The bam-bam-bams and poof-poof-poofs were exploding everywhere; it was inconceivable to fly through this unscathed." The bomber lurched. Have we been hit? TenHaken wondered. Through the intercom, he heard the bombardier say, "Bombs away." ("The most beautiful words in the English language," according to one pilot). Then the bombardier continued, "Now let’s get the hell out of here." After a pause, he came on the intercom again to say, "I wasn’t supposed to add that last part." Lieutenant Cord banked the plane into a steep dive to the right. TenHaken thought, thank you, God. Cord came on the intercom to ask each crew member to report any damage. None. When they were out of the flak, TenHaken lifted his oxygen mask and shouted above the engine noise to the photographer, "You’ve been through seventeen of these now. Was this flak typical, lighter, worse, or what?" The photographer grinned and shouted back, "It wasn’t light. Each mission seems to get worse, but I can’t believe they could get more up here than they did." Over the intercom, Cord asked, "Flight engineer back there?" He wanted to know what the trouble was with the gas gauges. Number three engine sputtered and quit. "Get something to three," Cord ordered. "I’m trying," the engineer answered. "I’m trying." Cord realized what had happened. On the intercom he said, "The bastards hit our gas lines over the target. They’ve just vibrated loose." The number two engine quit. The engineer repeated that he was trying to transfer the gasoline flow. He could not. "We’re losing altitude and control," Cord yelled. "We’re at sixteen thousand; a couple seconds back, we were at eighteen." He added, "Stand by to bail if necessary." Then number four engine quit. Then number one. There was a long moment of quiet, only the sound of the wind that buffeted the plane about in the glide. Then "the terrible clanging of the bail-out bell crashed the quiet." Everyone got out okay, landed safely, and became POWs. For TenHaken, the co-pilot, and the rest of the crew, it was their first mission. It was number thirty-two for Lieutenant Cord. For the photographer, number seventeen. For all of them, it was the last. "Anon" made up words to sing to the tune of "As Time Goes By": You must remember this The flak can’t always miss Somebody’s gotta die. The odds are always too damned high As flak goes by. . . It’s still the same old story The Eighth gets all the glory While we’re the ones who die. The odds are always too damned high As flak goes by. _______________________
