Posted on 06/22/2016 9:29:31 PM PDT by Lorianne
I read a book “The Thousand Plane Raid”, and in it I recall there were men bailing out of the plane, one had to sit on the floor, and the next person had to nearly sit on his shoulders to get out. It was apparently a very small, awkwardly placed hatch. I have heard there were four escape hatches, but they must have been difficult to get out of.
IIRC, that 25 mission limit for 25 missions in the USAAF didn’t even make it out of 1943. They upped it fairly early on, and there was quite nearly a mutiny...aircrew morale was very low at that point.
I can only imagine the discord a moving target like that would cause.
Fighters couldn't escort the bombers for the entire trip in '43. They were debating ending daylight bombing missions at that point.
Neither did Major Major. lol
If I’m not mistaken, RAF bomber crews had a “quota” of 30 missions on their first tour. If they survived—and very few did—their next assignment was (typically) in a training unit, preparing new pilots, flight engineers, navigators, bomb aimers and gunners for combat.
Of course, training duties were not without risk; many instructors who survived an operational tour died in accidents due to crew mistakes or mechanical issues.
When I read about the loss of this Lancaster, my first thought was they were an early victim of “Schrage Musik” the upward firing cannons installed on German night fighters, beginning in 1943. But a quick check revealed that the Luftwaffe didn’t claim its first kill with that system until June of that year, about two months after the Lancaster crew went down.
Freeman Dyson, bomber command’s leading operations analyst, said his biggest failure during the war (and that of leadership) was ignoring intel reports about night fighters equipped with upward firing cannon which began to filter in during the summer of 1943. An attack from a Schrage musik-equipped fighter was terrifying; suddenly, the bomber began to disintegrate around the crew, as dozens of rounds tore into the aircraft from below. Many crew members died instantly, while others could not escape from their aircraft when the wing fell off and the Lanc went into an uncontrollable spin, or a round detonated the bomb load.
Still interesting that the Germans managed to hit the bomber with multiple AA shells. Usually, one well-placed 88mm round was enough to do the job; bombers that took multiple rounds were often “coned” by search lights that blinded the crew and made it easier for AAA crews to target them.
It would be interesting to know what German AAA defenses in that area looked like. The crash site is south of Frankfurt, so the flak guns were probably part of the city’s defenses. Guessing the bomber stream’s egress was designed to carry it south of the city—and the heaviest concentrations of flak, search lights and night fighters. I wonder if the RAF had grown a bit complacent and used that routing a few too many times and the Germans set a flak trap, or perhaps there were other targets near the crash site, and the egress route carried the unfortunate crew through that area. BTW, the crash site is about 210 miles west of the target area, so the crew was well into their return flight when they were shot down.
Brave men all. Bomber Command’s cumulative KIA rate in World War II was 44%—more than 55,000 men. You had better odds as an infantryman in the trenches of World War I, although some of the best crews racked up amazing sortie totals. Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who led the “Dambusters,” logged more than 170 missions before being killed in a Mosquito pathfinder late in the war. Leonard Cheshire, who survived the war, flew 103 missions; his last was as the British representative on a B-29 that was part of the Nagasaki mission.
Yeah. It was pretty crazy...they hadn’t come to the conclusion that heavily armed formations of bombers could not stand up to a swarm of determined fighters. (Naval personnel quickly learned early on that determined anti-aircraft weapons were no match for a determined air attack...and they altered their tactics rapidly.)
After those horrible raids on Schweinfurt...they began the big push to get escorts, but men still had to die until they became available.
THAT is war, unfortunately.
I had the pleasure to get to know a
man who flew 53 combat missions in
a Mitchell bomber over Europe. He passed away a little over a year ago. I asked him what the little ribbon on his lapel signified and was humbled by his reply of the
Distinguished Flying Cross.
As I recall from reading one of his books a long time ago, Dyson worked in “operations research” for Bomber Command, dealing with things like the percentage of crews who survived bombing missions. It was discovered that if the escape hatch was enlarged by only 2 inches, many lives could be saved. This change was recommended to higher-ups, but it was never implemented. Dyson seemed bitter that, despite this failure, the head of Bomber Command was later knighted. Dyson later became famous for work in mathematical physics and is a well-known “climate skeptic”.
Very interesting! I saw the name, and was thinking...where do I know that name from???? Great post!
PING!! (Unless this is too “modern” for GGG...)
I think ours was 25 to begin with, then went to 50.
They asked Adolf Galland (Luftwaffe General) what the German count was and he said "We flew until we died."
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