Graham M. Simons - B-17 Memphis Belle

First printed in Great Britain in 2012 by

P EN & S WORD A VIATION

an imprint of

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Copyright Graham Simons, 2012

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84884 691 3

eISBN 9781783038244

The right of Graham Simons to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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CONTENTS

The Memphis Belle - one plane and one crew; in one Squadron, in one Group of one Wing of one Air Force.

So goes a quotation from the documentary film made by Academy award-winning Hollywood director William Wyler in 1943 and released in 1944 to a public that was both stunned and amazed by the graphic, accurate images of war it contained.

Without doubt Boeing B-17F 41-42285 Memphis Belle and her crew generate an image that is an all-American icon - and very rightly so too! Indeed, it has been claimed that the Memphis Belle is in the top five of the most famous American aircraft of all time, a statement that we would not disagree with in the slightest! It can easily be placed alongside the original The Wright Brothers Flyer, Lindberghs Ryan NYP Spirit of St Louis , Chuck Yeagers Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis and Enola Gay , the Boeing B-29 flown by Paul Tibbetts that dropped the worlds first atomic bomb.

The legend was created by a little booklet, produced by the American War Department which states that In September, 1942, a new Flying Fortress was delivered at Bangor, Maine, to a crew of ten eager American lads headed by Robert K. Morgan, a lanky 24-year-old AAF pilot from Asheville, N. C .

Proudly, the boys climbed aboard, flew their ship to Memphis, Tenn., christened her Memphis Belle in honor of Morgans fianc, Miss Margaret Polk of Memphis, and then headed across the Atlantic to join the U. S. Eighth Air Force in England .

Morgan had told them it was rough where they were going. There would be no room in the Memphis Belle for fellows who couldnt take it. The boys said they were ready .

They took it. Between November 7 and May 17, they flew the Memphis Belle over Hitlers Europe twenty-five times. Bombardier Vincent B. Evans dropped more than 60 tons of bombs on targets in Germany, France and Belgium. They blasted the Focke-Wulf plant at Bremen, locks at St. Nazaire and Brest, docks and shipbuilding installations at Wilhelmshaven, railway yards at Rouen, submarine pens and power houses at Lorient, and airplane works at Antwerp. They shot down eight enemy fighters, probably got five others, and damaged at least a dozen .

The Memphis Belle flew through all the flak that Hitler could send up to them. She slugged it out with Goerings Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. She was riddled by machine gun and cannon fire. Once she returned to base with most of her tail shot away. German guns destroyed a wing and five engines. Her fuselage was shot to pieces. But the Memphis Belle kept going back .

The longest period she was out of commission at any one time was five days, when transportation difficulties delayed a wing change. When the tail was destroyed the Air Service Command had her ready to go again in two days .

Only one member of the crew received an injury. And that says Staff Sergeant John P. Quinlan, the victim, was just a pin scratch on the leg .

The Memphis Belle crew has been decorated 51 times. Each of the 10 has received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal and three Oak Leaf Clusters. The 51st award was Sergeant Quinlans Purple Heart .

Sadly, the truth does not match the legends, but that does not detract for one moment the bravery of all the men involved.

From late 1942 through to the autumn of 1943 a legend was born created in combat during the days when The Mighty Eighth Air Force was nothing but a piddling little force the aircraft and crew became known to everyone. The aircraft, the returning crew and the little Scottie dog created a legacy that is now iconic. Without doubt today - almost seventy years after much of what recorded here happened - many of the general public think they know the story of the aircraft and its crew. If you stood at Mud Island, Memphis, Tennessee when the aircraft was on display there, if you go today to see it at the Museum of the United States Air Force just outside Dayton Ohio, or if you talk to the visitors at the Tower Museum Bassingbourn England, it is very clear that they are not only very familiar with the story, they are very comfortable with all that they think they know. One is almost certain that many feel that they are making a pilgrimage, either to see the aircraft, or to visit its spiritual home at USAAF Station 121. However, much of what they think they know is in fact based on what at best can be called propaganda - at worse plain and simple lies.

When all the layers of embellishments, fantasies, rhetoric and propaganda are removed, after all the political machinations and commercialisations are discarded, then perhaps something approaching the true legacy can be seen - and just what an incredibly important one it is as well, for it could be argued - and it is a view that we as authors and historians firmly take - that this single aircraft and her returning crew played a hugely important part in keeping the United States of America in the European conflict, and thus allowed the war there to be won.

Bring all of this together - the combat missions, the War Bond Tour and the William Wyler movie - and this then, is without doubt the direct and lasting legacy of those men and women who built, serviced, supported and who flew 41-24485 into combat. They enabled the aircraft and crew which toured the USA to keep the American public on the side of the Army Air Force during those dark days of 1943 when good news was such a scarcity - and through deliberate timing in the general release of William Wylers movie, the War Department prepared the American public for the coming invasion of Europe in 1944.

Say these words loud and proud - and let them resound long, loud and clear into the future - those returning ten men and little Scottie dog aboard that single aircraft kept a nation supporting its Eighth Air Force in the European Theatre of Operations. They solely were the spark, the trigger, the catalyst that allowed the build-up to defeat Adolf Hitler and Nazism. Through William Wylers movie, they also put the American nation in a positive frame of mind for the invasion of Europe.