We all hated fighters; but at least you could shoot back at them. Flak was the real enemy because while you were charging along, doing your best to fly close formation, some guy on the ground was using you as target practice, and there wasn't a damn thing you could do about it. Survival was simply a matter of being the luckiest duck in the shooting gallery, and the Regensburg area was one of the most intense shooting galleries on earth. It was defended by three concentric rings of gun emplacements comprising 600 heavy AA guns that ranged from 88mm to the more dangerous and radar-guided 110mm and 150mm. All of the guns had an accurate range up to 40,000 feet. The 88mm was used for barrage flak; they didn't aim at specific aircraft but tried instead to fill a given area—maybe a cubic mile on either side of the flight path—with explosions and shrapnel. The heavier 110mm and 150mm would accurately target specific aircraft or flights by radar. Regardless of the type of gun we faced, most of our survival depended on not being at the wrong place at the right time.
On those missions, when our group was in the middle of the entire bomber stream, we could easily spot our target 15 to 20 minutes before we reached the initial point (IP). The pillars of smoke from the bombs dropped by the aircraft ahead of us made the target stand out from miles away. If we were the lead group, we had to set up the run and pick the target for those who followed; the trick was to make the bomb run as short as it could be. During the run, we were absolutely stable; we wanted to give the flak gunners as little time as possible to aim their weapons accurately. Only when the bombs were away could we begin to take evasive action.
To hit our target from 25,000 feet, we had to maintain a very steady airspeed and a level attitude because a bomber is really nothing more than an artillery platform launching its shell in a vertical, rather than a horizontal, arc. While inbound to the IP and while on the bomb run, we would attempt to distort the German flak crews' estimate of our altitude by throwing aluminum-foil strips known as "window" out of our aircraft. The foil reflected the radar signals from the German 110mm and 150mm AA guns, thus giving a false altitude reading—we hoped! If these guns were allowed to lock on to our altitude, we would be absolutely hammered and would lose a lot of men and aircraft. A few planes might even suffer direct hits and then explode in a fireball that would throw debris through the rest of the formation.
If our altitude distortion efforts were successful, our aircraft would literally bounce up and down because of the regular AA battery bursts below us. We would then be hit only by metal shards that made jagged holes in our fuselage. Fortunately, because their momentum was largely spent, they did not penetrate the aircraft's heavy metal parts.
On one occasion while we bounced down "flak alley", the turbulence was so bad that our tail gunner's steel combat helmet was knocked over his eyes. At that instant exactly, a flak shard penetrated his turret, missed the heavy, bulletproof glass that protected him from direct rear shots, and dented his helmet right where his left eye was! How lucky! Had that helmet not been shaken over his eyes, he would have been killed instantly!
I, too, had a stroke of luck: I was the recipient of the entire top of a spent 88mm shell that had exploded far below our ship, but Ev and I had taken precautions to protect our genitals. Pilots' seats were protected on the rear and sides by a sarcophagus of half-inch armor plate, but nothing except the thin aluminum keel of our aircraft protected our vital parts. Cutting torch in hand, we had visited the old fighter junkyard at the northwest end of our airbase at Gioia del Colle. The Luftwaffe had dumped 109s there, and we had each cut a piece of armor plate out of the pilot's seat and later dropped it right under our pilot seat cushions. On our very next mission, the aforementioned 88mm shell hit the bottom of my seat, but it bounced off the armor plate. After that, my officers used the shell fragment as an ashtray—a very lucky ashtray!
Our course to the target took us right over the island of Split and then straight across the central Adriatic, across the Italian coast just southeast of Venice, over Bolzano, the Brenner Pass and on to the initial point. From there, we held a specific compass heading for 1 minute, 45 seconds to our Prufening Aircraft Factory target. As on all bomb runs, those 105 seconds seemed like an eternity.
Ev and I had the job of maintaining tight formation; our wingtips overlapped our lead element aircraft by about ten feet. Flak burst all around us, but we had to concentrate on flying formation. It didn't do a damn bit of good to look at the explosions or even to worry about them, as we were helpless to do anything about them; but believe me, we knew they were there. The sound of our engines was deafening, but in spite of that, we could hear the 88mm shells through our headsets. The shells left puffs of gray smoke in the sky, and as the intensity of the barrage increased, our sphincters got tighter grips on our parachute cushions; anyone who says they weren't scared to death in these situations is a liar!
The movies may get the visuals right, but being there is something entirely different. In the first place, we were all kids who were facing our own mortality far earlier than we should have. Just flying close formation is dangerous enough. Right, left, up and down: other airplanes are only yards away. In the best of conditions, close-formation flying requires almost mind-numbing concentration; toss in the violent turbulence of flak and the difficult becomes nearly impossible. You're also fighting the controls and throttles to avoid sliding out of position. This is all stirred together by a thing called fear that, oddly enough, most of your mind forgets because you're doing your job so intently that there isn't time to think about it; your mind pushes the fear off to the side so you're able to deal with what is going on. If you make a mistake, you'll probably not only kill the ten men in your own crew but also those in the airplane you hit.
But there is no turning back! Our group—every one of the aircraft that arrived at the target area—plowed through this intense artillery barrage. It was the most dangerous part of the mission, and when we were most vulnerable. After a couple of eternities, our bombardier, Hotch, called out on the intercom, "Bombs away!" Sweeter words were never heard.
Immediately after "bombs away," our flight leader began strenuous evasive action and swung our flight to starboard and then suddenly to port, all the time varying our altitude. One moment we would be climbing, and in the next, we would be diving. Once past the outer ring of flak batteries, we settled down to our planned withdrawal, and we maintained 24,000 feet until we had crossed the Alps at the German/Austrian /Italian border. Then we set up a gradual descent on a southerly heading that would bring us down to 10,000 feet by the time we reached the Adriatic.
Shortly after we reached the Adriatic, several squadrons of our "little friends" joined us to provide top cover on the way home. Having survived the insanity over the target, I ran a quick head count over the intercom and found that my crew and our airplane had come through unscathed. Inside, I felt a silent prayer of thanks float upward. And my butt finally let go of the parachute.
In spite of very heavy fighter and flak opposition, we had succeeded in pasting the Prufening Aircraft Factory and had returned with minimum losses—six aircraft downed, and only five aircrew wounded enough to require hospitalization. Our critique by Eaton ended with some levity.
Col. Eaton's 1st pilot and crew commander on this maximum-effort mission was Capt. Sid Winski. Winski apparently had to relieve himself just prior to our arrival at the IP. Group commanders like Col. Eaton are not expected to fly the aircraft over the target; that just isn't their job! The first we heard of this "pit stop" was when Eaton was on stage during our post-mission critique addressing all group officers who had participated in the Regensburg mission. He suddenly turned, pointed at Winski, and said in a very loud voice: "Winski, the next time you have to relieve yourself on the bomb run, do it in your pants!" This was one of the funniest moments in our combat experience. You see, Eaton, though he had trained to fly Liberators, did not do so regularly, as did our crew commanders, including me. For Winski to expect Eaton to take over the controls while he emptied his bladder was asking a lot. But that isn't the end of the story.
Ignorant of the details, I thought that Winski had actually left his seat, attached the walk-around oxygen bottle to his mask and proceeded to the waist compartment and used the relief tube. Not until many years later, in September 1990, at the 451st Bomb Group Reunion at Fairmont Airbase, Nebraska—where we, the original cadre of our combat group, took our operational training—did I have an opportunity to learn more. It was there I talked with the then retired Gen. Eaton about it. I asked: "Gen. Eaton; do you remember the time that Winski excused himself just prior to the bomb run on a mission to Regensburg to relieve himself?" Gen. Eaton chuckled and smiled broadly as he replied: "Of course, I remember that incident very well, and I remember calling him down for it!"
"General, did Winski actually leave his seat to go to the waist-section relief tube?" The general laughed again—this time, very heartily.
"No, what he did was to remove his steel helmet, place it upside-down between his legs and then urinate into the helmet! However, because the liquid froze on contact, he couldn't get the helmet on again!" The general guffawed; I had never seen him laugh as much!
It's funny what we remember about life-and-death experiences. Maybe it's nature's way of protecting us from the darker parts.
