Philip Kaplan - The Bomber Aircrew Experience: Dealing Out Punishment from the Air

Copyright 2000, 2016 by Philip Kaplan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Rain Saukas

Cover photographs courtesy of Philip Kaplan

Previously published as Bombers: The Aircrew Experience

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0262-2

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0263-9

Printed in China

CONTENTS

DELIVERY

Bomb-Boogiie , of the 401st Bomb Squadron, 91st Bomb Group, Bassingbourn, England.

War is a nasty, dirty, rotten business. Its all right for the Navy to blockade a city, to starve the inhabitants to death. But there is something wrong, not nice, about bombing that city.

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris

The tumult and the shouting have died away. The B-17s and the B-24s will never again assemble into strike formation in the bitter cold of embattled skies. Never again will the musical thunder of their passage cause the very earth to tremble, the source of sound lost in infinity and seeming to eminate from all things, visible and invisible. The great deep-throated engines are forever silent...

from Heritage of Valor by Budd J. Peaslee, USAF (Ret)

Colonel Peaslee, air commander of the Schweinfurt attack of 14 October 1943, wrote those words in tribute to the men of the Eighth U.S. Army Air Force who participated in what many historians consider the most savage air battle in history, the second mighty U.S. bombing raid on the Vereinigte Kugellager Fabrik (VKF), Kugelfischer AG (FAG), Deutsche Star Kugelhalter, and the Fichtel and Sachs ball and anti-friction bearing works at Schweinfurt, Germany.

Why did allied planners conclude that these targets at Schweinfurt were of such importance to the war effort that a maximum effort attack had to be mounted that October day, even though the Eighth Air Force had suffered its worst losses ever when attempting a similar strike on the German town just two months earlier? Virtually all aircraft, tanks, warships, submarines, machines, and precision instruments were utterly dependent on anti-friction bearings in their performance. Like the weather, friction was a formidable enemy, as surely as any declared political foe. Germanys entire war machine (like the Allies) literally ran on these bearings, and it consumed them by the multi-millions.

It was known to the planners of Eighth Bomber Command that most manufacturers of Germanys military industrial complex maintained only a small on-hand stock of finished bearings. They knew too, that an effective attack on the German bearings industry would undoubtedly result in one effect of particular importance to the Eighth Air Force itself... a nearly immediate and crippling disruption of German fighter aircraft production. The American planners found that the German anti-friction bearings industry was highly concentrated geographically, with some 73 percent of her entire bearings output generated by plants in just six cities. Schweinfurt alone produced 42 percent of all bearings utilized in the German war effort, and, as a target, was irresistible.

On 17 August 1943, one year to the day after the first U.S. Eighth Air Force B-17 operation of the war, the first major American bombing raid on the German bearings industry was mounted as part of a two-pronged attack. A combined force of 376 B-17s took their bombs to Schweinfurt, and to Regensburg, where the target was a large and vital Messerschmitt fighter factory. On that day, 315 of the bombers successfully attacked their targets, delivering a total of 724 tons of bombs. Thirty-six heavy bombers of the Regensburg force and twenty-four from the Schweinfurt force (a total of 600 American airmen) fell to enemy flak and fighters, for a staggering 19 percent loss to the attacking force. Bombing results at Regensburg were judged good, with every significant building in the manufacturing complex badly damaged. The Schweinfurt effort, however, was not as successful, and those responsible for target selection at Eighth Bomber Command knew that the Yanks would have to go back to that town and try again.

The effort of 17 August, while useful and fairly effective, had resulted in losses that were clearly unsustainable. For nearly two months the heavy bomb groups of the Eighth lay incapacitated, unable to bring war to German targets. Grievously wounded, the Eighth slowly regathered strength and, by the second week of October, prepared to return to the fight with a renewed will and greatly increased firepower. On the morning of 8 October it sent a force of 399 heavy bombers to attack targets at Bremen and Vegesack with a loss of thirty aircraft. On the 9th 378 B-17s and B-24s were dispatched to hit targets at Danzig, Gdynia, Anklam and Marienburg, with a loss that day of twenty-eight of the heavies. It was followed on the 10th with an attack (the third major U.S. raid in as many days) by 236 bombers on the city of Mnster where another thirty aircraft were lost. Then came a three-day rest, a breathing spell in which the crews of the Eighth could regroup for what they were to face on 14 October. The survivors would always remember it as Black Thursday.

On arriving at our equipment room we were issued our Mae West life vest, parachute and harness, goggles, leather helmet, gabardine flying coveralls, heated suit, and a steel helmet that had hinged ear flaps to cover our radio headset. We were also given felt heated inserts to cover our feet inside our sheepskin-lined leather flying boots and silk insert gloves to wear under our heated heavy leather gloves. We also picked up our escape kits which contained a silk map which was highly detailed and could be folded quite small to take up very little space. The kit also held a razor, high-energy hard candy, a translation sheet in Dutch, Flemish, French, and German, and a plastic bottle and water purification tablets. We left behind our .45 calibre Colt Automatic and shoulder holster which had been issued to us to protect us from the German civilians and the SS. Intelligence had learned that our crew members who carried the weapons were sometimes shot because the presence of the gun gave the enemy an excuse to shoot them. In addition to all of our other gear, we brought our oxygen masks, headsets, and throat microphones, all of which were kept in our footlockers. After picking up our flight equipment, a six-by-six truck took us as a crew to our dispersal area and the hardstand where our B-17 was parked. It was about a five minute ride from the hangar and our equipment room. On the way out to dispersal, everyone was quiet. We all had our own thoughts.