TARGET BERLIN
March 6, 1944
By
Marshall B. Shore, Lt. Colonel, USAF (retired)
Introduction
I had been scheduled to be the division lead Navigator of the 8th Air Force Task Force on the first daylight mission to bomb Berlin on March 1, 1944. This was a deep penetration to one of the most heavily defended targets in Germany, and the heart of all flyers skipped a beat when assigned to cover big "B" as we called Berlin in those days. The first scheduled mission was scrubbed in the briefing room due to bad weather. The second one, a day later was scrubbed with engines running at the end of the runway before take-off. The third missions was scrubbed while we were in the air as we were penetrating German territory by a radio message from Headquarters 8thAir Force encoded to all commanders on March 3, 1944.
The Command Pilot of the 95th Bomb Group, Lt. Colonel Griff Mumford, disregarded the recall message, even though everyone else had clearly heard it, and with 31 B-17s and 23 escort fighters kept boring on into the target area of Big "B". He climbed higher and higher over cloud cover until at over 29,600 feet, in the soup, they made a visual bomb run through a hole in the clouds and fired their red flares at the bomb release point for all planes in the formation to release their bombs. Hence they became famous for being the first to bomb Berlin in daylight. The rest of us returned to base with bombs aboard and the 390th Bomb Group scheduled lead of the Division was rotated.
It turned out that the message all had received apparently was sent up by the Germans as it was improperly coded. This coding error was recognized by T/Sergeant Frank
Atterbury, Radio Operator, of B-17 #231320, "I'll Be Around", and he so advised his pilot, Colonel
Mumford. This was the reason the 95th Bomb Group did not comply with the message of mission recall to which all other groups responded.
The Mission As I Saw It
On the 6th of March it was still my turn to fly and we went as lead of the 13th Combat Wing with a pathfinder crew flown in from
Alconbury. The pilot was Capt Edgar C. Englebrecht, flying Aircraft # 239876. Lt. Colonel Robert Tuttle was the Wing Air Commander, I was the command navigator and
Captain Harold Cummings was the lead bombardier. We were the wing that stayed on course and caught the brunt of the German fighter attack.
When the 4th Combat Wing ahead of us in the bomber stream went off course to the south of the briefed route we watched them fly over heavy flak areas at
Zwolle, Enschede and Osnabruck. They took heavy losses throughout their formations and B-17s were all over the sky falling out of their formations and crewmen were seen taking to parachutes. Nine aircraft of the 385th, 23 aircraft of the 447th and 9 more of the 482nd returned to base with heavy flak damage as a result of this navigational error caused by the loss of radar on their lead aircraft and other navigational problems.
Like most combat missions, books were written about the ones who sustained heavy damage and got into trouble. We had a saying that you would receive a medal if you managed to screw up a mission and get into trouble, fight like hell, do the job assigned and come home with your plane all shot up.
As we were the lead aircraft of the 13th Combat Wing on the planned route we were the first to see the onslaught of German fighters at
Haseleunne. We looked ahead to a solid stream of ME109s in Hermichen's attack formation lined up in trail boring in onus from dead ahead. With the rate of closure of around 450 miles per hour the forward pointing guns of all B-17s in our formation were lined up on each fighter as it approached firing range with its 20 mm cannons blazing away at us. I would hold my .50 caliber hand-operated machine gun with the ring sight, tracking each fighter for any deflection anticipated, and pulled the trigger until the fighter went out of sight flying through our formation.
As many as 91 of our formation gun barrels were pointed at each fighter as it came through. It wasn't very healthy for a German ME109 pilot to attack head on like that, but they did it and their losses as recounted in the book, Target Berlin, showed the results. We could count from 10 to 15 fighters at a time in sight in trail coming in out in front of us and more were swarming to get into position to continue their prolonged head-on attacks. ME109s went through every ten or fifteen seconds, their 20 mm cannons flashing brightly and it was easy to take aim at them.
As they went by we could see our .50 caliber bullets raking the windshields, the cowling, and the fuselage of the ME109s. We worked like hell, sweated and cursed, and when not hit ourselves, managed to navigate to the Initial Point to begin our Bomb Run. As we approached the target area the anti-aircraft gunners began to take aim and the German fighters ceased their attacks. The German fighters did not follow us into the heavy flak defended target area which contain over 300 anti-aircraft cannons firing as rapidly as they could be reloaded and re-aimed.
The field order called for bombing the primary target, the VKF ball bearing plant at
Erkner, located at the Robert Borsch electrical equipment works at Klein Machnow. The secondary target, to be by radar bombing in case the primary target was not visible, was the center of Berlin, with our radar aiming point the Fredrichstrasse rail station. Our tertiary target or last resort target was to have been the steel cable manufacturing plant near the Falkenhagener Chaussee Army Depot in the Spandau district of Berlin along the Havel River.
Our Field Order had called for bombing the primary target visually if we could see the target. Harold Cummings was a good bombardier. He had been a highly successful bombardier and we felt confidence in achieving real success on this mission with him handling the Nordon bombsight.
Just prior to the Initial Point (IP) Harold and I could clearly see the primary target. However, a few minutes after turning at the IP and headed for the primary target it became obscure from our view due to scattered cloud cover below us. It was too late at this point to begin a bomb run by radar on the secondary target. Radar runs took longer and the "Mickey" (radar) operator could not line up on the secondary target after we left the visual IP. When I alerted Colonel Tuttle that we could not see the primary target any more and that it was too late to begin a radar directed run, he told me to stand by, that he would call the rest of the formation and tell them to follow his lead in a 360 degree circle to the right and we would drop one bomb each time our aircraft fired a red flare.
Harold and I conferred quickly and we began looking for the target of last resort that was in the direction of our turn to the RP. Looking out over Harold's shoulder I spotted the tertiary target and kneeled down and pointed it out to Harold. He immediately placed the cross hairs on the aiming point and the pilot was asked to center the pilot's direction indicator
(PDI). This was used by the pilot to follow the bomb aimers directed course to the release point determined by the Nordon bombsight. Word was then passed to Col. Tuttle, the Air Commander, and he called over VHF to the rest of our crews that we were on the bomb run and for them to tighten up the formation and prepare to open bomb doors for the drop.
This took place without anything more being said about doing a 360 over Berlin. Col. Tuttle had not had time to instruct the engineer on firing the red flairs and had not yet called the rest of the formation to follow us on the great circle over Berlin. Thank God! Flak was heavy between the IP and the target. We had already been hit with fragments of nearby exploding anti-aircraft shells several times. We were in a very tense situation. Planes were going down all around us both out ahead and to the rear of our formation as reported by the tail gunner.
After bombs-away we pulled off to the left, climbed 500 feet to get out of the flak that was coming up all around us and exploding at our bombing altitude. We headed for the rally point (RP). At the RP we had been briefed to take the lead of the Task Force bomber stream on the way home. We made the RP on course and on time. Of course, there was much confusion due to the combat situation. Over the target the flak was heavy, persistent and annoying. The German fighter pilots didn't fly into the Berlin flak with us. They waited outside the flak area, regrouped and got into position to hit us again on our withdrawal.
Combat degradation resulted in some bomb units falling behind their briefed times to be at the RP. We did some
s-ing back and forth along the withdrawal course so those B-17 groups following us could close up to a tighter bomber stream formation for better protection from fighter attacks. The 390th lost one aircraft on the withdrawal. 1Lt. Starks, a replacement crew, went down over
Quackenbrueck. Three of his crew were killed and seven became POWs.
Once on our way home with the flak behind us we felt better. We had hit one of our briefed targets and still had four good fans turning and were in a good tight defensive formation ready for any fighter attacks. Except for a couple of passes the fighters left our formation pretty much alone, probably because of our tight defensive formation. They pick on the battered formations that had lost many aircraft and on individual stragglers who had lost engines over Berlin and couldn't keep up. This was the way it was. Stragglers were always in deep trouble from individual fighter attacks. German fighter pilots were after a combat record and took the stragglers one-by-one in preference to hitting a full formation.
We returned to base on schedule and were the lucky ones on this mission. We lost only two aircraft on that day. The book "Target Berlin" depicts our aerial combat in World War II in a very realistic manner. Lt. Colonel Robert M. Tuttle, our Wing Command Pilot, in his mission summary reported that we were under attack by German fighters for five hours and during two of these hours the attack by German fighters was bold and vicious.
A summary of the action in Chapter 8 of "Target Berlin " showed that on March 6, 1944 a total of 814 8th Air Force heavy bombers and 644 fighters drawn from the 8th and 9th Air Forces and the Royal Air Force were scheduled that day. A total of 702 bomber sorties penetrated enemy territory. During the course of action the raiding force lost 69 bombers and 11 fighters. 283 bombers and a number of fighters returned to their bases badly damaged.
Of the 701 men on board the US aircraft lost in action 229 were killed or missing, 411 taken prisoner, 13 who came down in Holland evaded capture, 8 more were picked up from the North Sea by the RAF rescue service and 40 landed in Sweden and were later repatriated. From the aircraft which returned, 3 crew men were killed, 29 wounded and 4 bailed out of a 390th Fortress over Holland and were taken prisoner. The loss rate for bombers in this mission was 10% and for our fighters it was 1.33%.
None of the targets were hit effectively and the war production of the three primary targets was not curtailed. Had the skies been clear over the target area this attack would have been more effective. The value of this mission can only be measured in the effect it had on the morale of the German people seeing their capitol city bombed heavily in broad daylight and the heavy loss of German fighter aircraft that attacked the American bomber formations.
The German fighter units flew 528 sorties of which 369 probably made contact with the enemy. In the course of actions, 66 German fighters were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Of these, 27 were shot down by our fighter escorts and two by return fire from our bombers. Three German fighters were lost in collision with our bombers. The German fighter losses were 20% for that day.
After the Mission
Lt. Col. Tuttle was our Group Operations Officer. Immediately after our debriefing with the lead crew he asked me to meet him in his office in about five minutes. I reported, came to attention in front of his desk and saluted. With eye-to-eye contact he asked me if I realized that I had disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer during combat. This stunned me slightly and I did not reply immediately. Then he asked me why I had changed his plans by seeing that the lead crew made a run on a last resort target. I replied to the effect that nowhere in the field order or in the 8th Air Force SOP for combat crews was there an occasion to do a 360 degree turn directly over one of the most heavily anti-aircraft defended target areas in all of Germany. I said that if we had made the turn we would have been from twelve to fifteen minutes late at the Rally Point and that we could not have been there to help from the task force into an organized withdrawal stream. He said that he appreciated an honest reply and with that I was dismissed.
After a drink and dinner at the officers' club I had a good shower and turned in for some shuteye at about 9 P.M. At 2 A.M. I was awakened by the charge-of-quarters and informed that the Frag Order was coming in for the next mission. I rode my British bicycle down to the operations building and was sitting at the large conference table in the War Room when Col.
Wittan, the Group Commander, came in and sat down across the table from me. After he had read through the short Frag Order he laid it on the table and looked over at me with a smile. He said that Col. Tuttle had come to see him that evening and told him about what happened on the mission between the IP and target. He told him about interviewing me after the mission. Then he broke out in a big grin and said that I had done a good job and he would take care of the situation by seeing that I would not have to fly with Col. Tuttle again.
Postscript
Shortly after that incident Lt. Col. Robert M. Tuttle was promoted to Colonel and assigned as Commander of another Bomb Group. Within two months of assuming command he was leading a Wing on a deep penetration to a target at
Burx, Czechoslovakia. The date was 12 May 1944. I understand that the lead group he was flying with missed getting their bombs out on the first pass and a circle was made over the target area for a second run on the primary target. Missing the rest of the groups at the Rally Point his group was coming home alone when hit by fighters. The lead aircraft went down and Col. Tuttle spent the rest of the war in prison camp.
|
