The FReeper Foxhole Remembers "Little Friends" - USAAF Fighter Escorts - Dec. 11th, 2002

http://www.cebudanderson.com/europe.htm ^ | Scott Richardson

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for finding the Sea Fury pictures.

[lavaroise]

Bump

[Darksheare]

Sea Fury.

Lovely lines. Would be nice as a racer, nowadays.
There were a few prototypes with contra-rotating props and one "one off" that had a six bladed prop that I'm aware of.

Heard somewhere they were used after WWII for photo recon, since they came out too late for the war.
Not sure all the different configs on it, but it is one beautiful plane.

[Darksheare]

Okers. Probably. Been a year or fifteen since I read up on them.
I was, at the time, more interested in the planes that didn't make it into the war like the Horten Ho X and IX planes as well as the Sea Fury.

(Planes like the Fury make me jealous of pilots.)

[Bryan]

My father was the youngest of four brothers: Charlie (22), Melvin (20), Wendell (18) and Richard (15) on Pearl Harbor Day. The three oldest ones drove straight to the recruiting station and signed up. That was before the five Sullivan brothers died on the USS Juneau, so the policy was, if a family signs up together, it serves together.

All three became B-24 pilots. A B-24 was a lot like a B-17: ten-man crew, four engines, bristling with machine guns. We built almost three times as many B-24s. They had less armor but they flew farther.

Wendell was hit by an 88mm shell fragment in the left shoulder and it severed a nerve, much like Bob Dole's wound in Italy at the end of the war. His left arm was nearly useless but unlike Dole, Wendell wore it in a sling rather than letting it hang. He came home, sat on the front porch and told war stories. If it were a cartoon, there would have been smoke coming out of Dad's ears. He was still too young.

Later on, due to manpower shortages and Wendell's proven talents in this area, he was called back into service as an Operations Officer. When they were planning a raid, they would call all the pilots, co-pilots, navigators and bombardiers into an auditorium. The front wall was one huge aerial photograph of the target area.

Wendell had a pointer in his right hand and said, "This building here is the 16th century cathedral. Don't you dare break one stained glass window. These buildings over here are a school and an apartment complex full of women and children. This building complex in between here is the factory where they assemble the engines for the Focke Wulf fighter planes that shot your buddies down yesterday. Drop all of your bombs right there."

Charlie and Melvin kept flying, mission after mission. Charlie had all the good luck. God was looking out for him. His plane missed one mission because a shell fragment hit one of the engines. His bombardier missed another mission because the docs had to dig a tiny shell fragment out of his big toe, so Charlie flew with a replacement bombardier on that mission.

Melvin made up for it. He had all the bad luck. Time after time, his B-24 came limping home with one engine dead, another engine sputtering, and three or four dead men on board. Ground crewmen swarmed all over it. They patched it up, hosed out the blood, gave him replacement crewmen and sent him back out on the next run. Gradually, it wore on his nerves.

Then one day in January 1944, he just didn't come back. By that time Charlie was the squadron commander and he wrote Grandma a letter. Out of ten men, there were four parachutes. That was all they knew. As you're aware, the Nazis were too barbaric to pass along the names of POWs.

The truth was that there were five parachutes, sort of. Four men got out in a tight group. Then, several seconds later a fifth man came out of the wrecked plane. He was on fire and his chute was partially open. He plunged past the other four screaming. In his letter, Charlie didn't want to tell Grandma about that part. The word was that the pilot was always the last to jump.

When the four survivors landed, one of them snapped his ankle. There was snow on the ground and more falling. They were quickly rounded up by the Volksturm, a sort of National Guard. Fifty-year-old men with World War I rifles and uniforms. The Volksturm shared some sausage, bread and wine with them. It would be their last decent meal for a long, long time.

Along came an SS patrol. The man with the broken ankle was instantly bayonetted, because the SS Gruppenfuehrer didn't want to be slowed down. One of the other three spoke a little German and had the nerve to protest.

Then the Gruppenfuehrer told them to drop their pants. One of the three men had been circumcised. The Gruppenfuehrer looked at his dogtags, which said, "Goldstein." Another bayonet. Again the American who spoke a bit of German had the nerve to protest. This time, half of his teeth were knocked out with a rifle butt.

Then the two survivors were marched to a POW camp, which was loaded with Russian POWs. The Russians had formed into several gangs, much like the gangs that run our prisons today. The two American aviators were supposed to be sent to a Luftstalag, but that never happened. The Russians kept stealing their food.

The two Americans came up with a strategy. The little one (Murphy from Brooklyn) was the tail gunner. He would steal a guard's cap and go running around the courtyard laughing. The guards would stampede out of their barracks to chase him down. Then the big, quiet American would slip in the back door of the empty guards' barracks and steal every scrap of food he could find. Murphy would spend 24 hours in solitary, but when he got out, he had food waiting for him.

Finally, the big guy came down with typhoid fever like the Russians. He could barely move. There was no medicine and Murphy decided he had to make something happen. He went in the back door of the guards' barracks. The guards were sitting there in their underwear, cleaning their rifles and polishing their boots. He grabbed a medical kit which had a bottle of Bayer aspirin and a bottle of antibiotics. Then he grabbed the only food in sight: a big bag of onions.

Murphy ran out the back door and the guards chased after him in their underwear. He ran into the prisoners' barracks and dropped everything on the big guy's bunk. He raced out the back door and was instantly shot in the back of the head.

The Russians started to gather around the big guy's bunk and he pulled out a hidden knife that he had made out of a spoon. With the last scrap of his strength, he sat up in his bed and snarled at them in German: "The first man close enough gets his throat cut! Which one of you is brave enough to die, so that his friends can eat an onion?" The Russians backed off.

Two weeks later, American GIs liberated the POW camp. Uncle Melvin was calmly eating the last of his onions. He was surrounded by Russians who had died in their bunks of typhoid fever. He was liberated in March 1945. The war ended in Europe in May, and in the Pacific in September. But he didn't come home until Thanksgiving, because he insisted on being able to walk up the front steps by himself. He was 6'5" and when he signed up, he weighed 250 pounds. When he was liberated, they weighed him in at 113.

[nicollo]

From the article,

The Eighth's fighter pilots forced Luftwaffe commanders to transfer desperately needed day fighter units from the Eastern and Mediterranean fronts. This had a detrimental effect, especially on the Eastern Front, where Luftwaffe fighter pilots were out numbered two to one at the Battle of Kursk in early July 1943. History records the engagement at Kursk as the largest tank battle of the Second World War, but fails to mention it marked the decline of the Luftwaffe fighter strength on the Eastern Front. Eighth fighter pilots were not deterred by the increased strength of Luftwaffe day figher units in Germany and the Western Front in 1943. In stead, they threw themselves at the enemy, and not only won air superiority, but achieved air supremacy.

This conforms to the theory of "Keeping Pressure on Schwab" from the great movie, "O.C. & Stiggs," a National Lampoon creation.

Everything we do in life in some small way changes the world. Cumulatively, these changes add up to massive interaction, conflict, and change. This is why regulated economies don't work, for when behavior is channeled into similar patterns there is less pressure on contradictory paths, and thus less creativity. In Stiggs’ terminology, less pressure on Schwab. Schwab no longer has to worry about someone stealing his lobsters or skinny dipping in his pool. He can focus better on running his insurance company which can thereby get away with canceling the policy on O.C.’s grandfather, and O.C. will then have to move to Arkansas and live with an uncle who has twelve cars in the front yard. By keeping pressure on Schwab, Schwab is less able to operate as he wants. When the world is predictable our behavior becomes less dynamic. Regularity limits action and negates counteraction and diversion. Stagnation results, and Schwab gets away with it.

The War on Terrorism is case in point. We are attacking from every angle, warfare, diplomacy, surveillance, finance... we're going at them from above, below, and behind their backs. Previously, the pressure on the terrorists was channeled. Now it is unleashed.

When Grant took over as Major General in the Civil War, he was able to fully employ Gen. Scott's "Anaconda" strategy, the stranglehold on the South. This was keeping pressure on Schwab on a massive scale, from every possible direction, in every possible place. Grant was the first Northern general to pull it off with the armies (Lincoln’s Navy did a fine job on their end). Grant was magnificent at keeping pressure on Schwab. Vicksburg is a great example: he waged not a battle, he waged a campaign. A battle is retail. A campaign is wholesale. To get to Vicksburg, Grant tried nine different ways, and he failed in them all. The tenth worked. It only worked because of the other nine failures. Another example is the infamous "Crater" attack at Petersburg, the underground bomb that was to blow a hole through the Confederate lines. Unto itself, it was a fiasco. As part of the general campaign it kept the pressure on the enemy -- they could never know what to expect from the maniacs across the lines.

Keeping Pressure on Schwab is applied chaos. The European theater WWII air war, wonderfully described in this article, was exactly that. Every allied raid, whether successful or not, meant a slight, even the slightest, German weakening somewhere else. Commutatively, and over several years, it broke the Germans. We waged a total war, Grant's innovation.

Other cultures tend to seek massive, concentrated organization. They prefer to focus their energy rather than disperse it. We'll have to go back to Alexis de Tocqueville for this, but suffice it to say this is because those cultures do not empower the individual. They do not believe in the individual. American culture seeks the individual. It upholds him. That's why the fighter pilots compelled the factories to change the gun sights, as described. While the engineers wanted manufacturing and design uniformity, the pilots wanted to live. Their interest prevailed. It probably would not have prevailed in other cultures that do not perceive the individual.

Keeping Pressure on Schwab means unleashing everything at one's disposal. It means experiment and failure. It has no limits. It brings innovation. It brings failure. By doing so, it brings success. It is only possible with a democracy.

Thanks, Sam, for this article. I really enjoyed it.

[Darksheare]

"never know what to expect from the maniacs across the lines."

That is exactly the philosophy I served by while in uniform.
And I always strove to be the maniac across the lines.

[SAMWolf]

I just read a lot about WWII.

After a while it gets hard to remember every designation for every weapon and I have to verify it. That's one reason I have a good library at home.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks Nicollo. Interesting post. I like the way you tied in the war on terrorism.

[SpookBrat]

Nicki Sixx is 44 today? No way! I'm getting old.

[Darksheare]

Yes. I've read too much and forgotten too much myself.
And I'm handicapped by not having a library on hand.
(Jealousy here..)
Find any of the pics of the Horten flying wing? Also called the Gotha?

[Jaidyn]

Your post was so fascinating (what is the right word) that I printed it for others to see. My father guarded Japanese in the Philipeans and his stories were humorous and enlightening compared to the horrendous life these brothers had. My father's brother's stories were unlike his. One time my uncle told of the first time he killed a German in France. As his eyes glistened in remembrance he described killing a blonde blued-eyed man, younger than he, with like appearance. He said for an instant, he felt the youth could have been his younger brother. He went on to kill others but the first one ate at him for a long time. That was the only time he ever related his WWll experiences to us.

[Jimmy Valentine]

GOSH!! You forgot one! I was born today 12/11/46 0430 hrs, freezing rain. Still here still kicking!

Regards.

[Peaches]

Thanks for the ping, AntiJen.
Thank you both for continuing to bring us this thread honoring our veterans.
Without Veterans there would be no America! Thank you Vets from WWII, Korea, VietNam; Desert Storm and our new veterans from the present war.

[GWfan]

My beloved Uncle was a navigator on a B-24 in WWII. He is gone now, but I read all the letters he wrote to my Grandma. Of course he couldn't tell the family what he was doing, but I could tell from his letters that he was very home sick and that he was scared. Dad told me later what he did during the war and that he flew missions over Germany. I am sure he appreciated these 'little friends'.

[BradyLS]

That is a cool pic. I understand the preferred tactic was to get alongside, place your wing under its wing, and "flip" the thing into the ground (or sea) with a wing-waggle.

[Bad~Rodeo]

"NO ...WEAPON IN THE ARSENALS OF THE WORLD IS SO FORMIDABLE AS THE WILL AND MORAL COURAGE OF FREE MEN AND WOMEN"

Ronald Reagan

(thanks for the ping)

[Light Speed]

Great thread todays Foxhole....things are comming together well.
Misty..you are on a roll today with the pics...looks like I have some catchin up to do!...just kidding.
Sam...good to see the British kites...they were little buddies just as much.

When an enemy was a friend
German ME-109 pilots act of chivalry saves U.S. B-17 crew

[scaredkat]

Please remove me from the ping list. Thanks. I will check in from time to time.

[SAMWolf]

This one?