Now, nearing Ploesti, the flak men attended to luckless Brewery Wagon.
A well-timed 88-mm. shell burst in the nose, killing Wright and bombardier
Robert W. Merrell. The explosion destroyed an engine and set two others
afire. The plane almost turned over. Palm and co-pilot Love fought to
recover the ship. "Tramping the pedals was like fighting a bucking horse,"
said Palm. "Although the bombardier was dead, we were obsessed with
doing good with our bombs. I was not getting much pressure on the right
pedal. I reached down. My right leg below the knee was hanging from a
shred of flesh." Palm jettisoned his bombs.
The rogue ship was floundering around west of Ploesti, where the Mizil
Messerschmitts were diving on the Circus. As Uncle Willie Steinmann
roared away from his pass at the Circus, making up his mind to go hunting
singles, he espied highly eligible prey, a sandy bomber heaving along
at low speed with smoke trailing from two engines. Brewery Wagon was
nearing the end of her poor luck.
Steinmann attacked according to a theory he had worked out from studying
Liberator models -- obliquely from the rear at a high angle, in order
to hit the right wing root and cockpit. "I went in," said Steinmann,
"and raked the tail and walked my fire across the B-24. He crashed
immediately."
As Brewery Wagon hit the earth, Love flooded the engines with foam,
preventing an immediate explosion. Palm ripped out the cockpit window
with one hand, "something I couldn't do under normal circumstances with
both hands in a week," he said. He dived out headfirst and hit the ground
in a football shoulder roll. Love and engineer Alec Rockinson carried
Palm away in a fireman's carry, and they hid in a cornfield. From the
broken ship came radioman Harold Block and gunners Austin Chastain,
Clay Snyder, William Thompson and Dallas Robertson. The latter had a
piece of 20-mm. shell in his skull.
German riflemen ran toward the dazed sergeants. Palm drew his .45 and
leveled it at the Germans. Rockinson, who was at his feet, putting a
tourniquet on Palm's leg stump with a web belt, said sharply, "Don't do
that, sir." It was the first time he had ever called the pilot "sir."
Palm put away his gun. The Germans flushed Palm's trio out of the corn and
manhandled them. A big Romanian soldier menaced the Germans with his gun
and they let go of Palm, who was bent over, holding his leg on with both
hands. A German pulled a knife and with a swift motion cut away Palm's
wrist watch. The Germans departed, leaving the Romanian with his captives.
During Palm's misadventure the main Liberando formation continued to fly
toward Bucharest on the wrong course. "On the way we found that altitudes
of five to ten feet, allowing for fences, cattle and buildings, were the
only means of survival," said Appold. "In the haze and low altitude, I
could see only the rear elements of Section A up ahead. Barwell continued
to gun the flak crews with short economical bursts."
In the flagship, General Ent and K.K. Compton now realized the magnitude
of the navigational error. From the haze ahead there loomed the towers
of a city. They were not the stacks of Ploesti, but the Orthodox church
spires of the Romanian capital.
K.K. Compton said, "At this point, General Ent went on the command
channel, acknowledged the error at Targoviste, and turned the formation
north toward Ploesti. We were completely disoriented on our briefed
target, White One, the Romana Americana refinery. We decided it was best
to attack Astro Romana, the number-one objective of the mission. It
was Kane's target, but we did not know where he was. For all we knew,
he had been forced to turn back. So we looked for the fractionating
columns of Astro Romana as we headed north."
Norman Appold obediently winged over and took his element north with
K.K. Compton. The little pilot said, "My apprehension grew as I thought of
our predicament. What was General Ent going to do -- circle Ploesti to the
north and try to bomb on the briefed axis?" Other Liberando pilots were
equally baffled over what the command intent might be. No explanation was
forthcoming from the flagship, which had reverted to radio silence. The
cautious Ent was not going to announce his new objective on the open
radio for the Germans to hear.
Across Ent's new course north lay Lake Znagov, where a party of German
officers were swimming on their day off. Oberleutnant Hermann Scheiffele,
adjutant of the Fifth Flak Division, assumed that the engine noise came
from Heinkels on an unannounced test of the defenses. "Suddenly twenty
or thirty bombers swept over us very low," said Scheiffele. "I clearly
saw up through their open bomb doors and recognized them as B-24's." He
and Leutnant Egon Schantz, armament inspector of the division, jumped in
a car in their bathing suits and drove pellmell for Ploesti. When he saw
the colossal mushroom of smoke over the Circus targets, Scheiffele said,
"Nobody can be alive in that sea of fire." But he found that only the
outlying tank farms were burning and that it was possible to drive into
the refinery compounds. The quick-fused bombs were done exploding. In
the sepulchral gloom, Scheiffele and Schantz saw big yellow time bombs
scattered around on the grounds. A stocky, bespectacled man hailed the
car -- their commanding general, Julius Kuderna from Vienna. "Schantz,"
he said, "find out how these bombs can be disarmed before they explode."
The armament inspector rallied some fire police from an underground
shelter and led them and the general behind a blast wall, saying,
"Everyone else stay here. I am going to have a look at that bomb over
there" -- pointing to a thousand-pounder about 600 feet from them. He ran
to the bomb, examined it, and returned. "It has a new kind of detonator
that I have never heard of," said Schantz. "The nose has two separate
screw turnings, one back of the other. I think one stops the time clock
and the other sets off the bomb immediately. Schütz!" His best man,
fireman Schütz, moved in close to listen over the roar of flame.
"I am going to the bomb and remove the first screw turning," Schantz
told him. "You remain here. If it is the wrong one, you'll know how to
handle the other bombs."
Peering around the blast wall, Scheiffele saw Schantz kneel and examine
the nose "for a long time." He saw the armament inspector "seize the first
screw with both hands and turn it slowly." The nine-inch nose came off
and Schantz ran back, holding it to his ear, exclaiming, "I can't hear
the clock." The detonating system inside was a silent, acid-melting type,
and, if it exploded, the effect would be that of a hand grenade. "Let me
try to hear," said Scheiffele. He held it to his ear, waving off others
who wanted to listen. "All right, that's enough," said Schantz. "Why,
is it dangerous?" Scheiffele asked. The inspector said, "If there is a
clock in there, you could be minus your head." He placed the detonator
on the other side of the blast wall. General Kuderna said, "All right,
Schantz, get your men organized to take care of the other bombs." The
firemen, encircled in flame, roofed with smoke, dispersed to disarm them.
At the time the Liberando force had alerted this bomb team at Lake Znagov,
the Circus was still struggling to deliver Schantz's bombs.
Hurtling nearer to the target city, the Liberandos saw through the
haze on their left front an apocalyptic event taking place -- the
Circus fighting the city guns. The scene sharpened through Appold's
windscreen. "Flights of three or four, or sIngle planes, were going in
different directions, streaking smoke and flames, striking the ground,
wings, tails and fuselages breaking up, big balls of smoke rolling out of
the wrecks before they stopped skidding," Appold said. K.K. Compton was
nearing this slaughter at White Five. His new target was its neighbor,
White Four, where the Liberandos faced the same ferocity of guns. "A
few miles from Ploesti," said Compton, "we entered so much antiaircraft
fire that General Ent decided that the defenses, now thoroughly alerted,
were too formidable."
Red Thompson, piloting the flagship beside Compton, got a dash of rain
on his windshield, distorting the red-balled horror at White Five. He
glanced at the general on the flight deck. Ent looked at his watch, went
to the radio desk, and opened the group frequency. "This is General Ent,"
he said. "We have missed our target. You are cleared to strike targets
of your choice."
The Liberando pilots, released from discipline, followed a common instinct
to veer off east, away from the web of flak and blocking balloons. The
formation came apart, scattering over open fields where there was only
light infantry fire from the ground. K.K. Compton salvoed his bombs
on what looked like a power or pumping installation. Many other pilots
followed suit; there were no targets ahead and the sooner they got rid
of the bombs, the better were their chances of getting back.
Appold, however, radioed his section, "Hold on to your bombs. We're
going to use them. Hang on to me. Keep formation." He saw A Section
making another sprawling turn, to the north, and turned hard inside
them, his wingmen, Robert H. Storz and Lyle T. Ryan, hugging his wing
tips. Barwell phoned from the top turret, "There are four planes still
with us, Norm." Appold led them north at high speed, perilously low.
Ent's wandering Liberandos passed east of a large isolated refinery
and Appold skimmed across the fields west of it. It happened to be
their briefed target, White One, the Romana Americana refinery. Nobody
recognized it from the opposite angle of approach. Even if they had,
few planes had any bombs left.
White One was third in economic importance among the seven objectives
of Tidal Wave, but it was first in propaganda value. Repeatedly the
planners had told the airmen, "You've got to hit White One." The plant was
owned by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. If it were not bombed,
German Propaganda Minister Goebbels would have a sharp wedge to drive
between the Allies, simply by broadcasting that the Americans had hit
British and French refineries while sparing their own. Among the Tidal
Wave planners there were large stockholders of Standard Oil and in the
B-24's there were many smaller ones, all intent on blowing up their
Romanian holdings. But all the ships, including Appold's, blindly flew
past White One and the great refinery fell behind, untouched.
General Ent instructed his radio operator to send a prearranged code
signal to Brereton in Benghazi. It consisted simply of the letters
"M.S." standing for Mission Successful. Few Liberando men could agree
with that. Red Wicklund in the flagship, pilot William Zimmerman and
John E. O'Conner, a gunner in Chum V, were heartsick. They had been to
Romania with Halpro and had now missed the target a second time after
perilous flights that would total 5,000 miles before they got home.
In the Liberando rear, pilot Myron R. Conn was carrying the legendary
Ploesti stowaway who has not been previously identified but has
inspired several romances of the great raid. The facts are as good
as the fiction. He was an elderly squadron Intelligence officer named
L.J. Madden, a "retread" from World War I. K.K. Compton had refused him
permission to accompany the mission, but the gaffer slipped into a berth
by pulling seniority on Conn. Both were first lieutenants, but Madden's
commission antedated the pilot's by a quarter of a century.*
* Madden returned safely to Benghazi and K.K. Compton chose
to overlook the matter.
K.K. Compton's main Liberando body passed Ploesti and climbed the
foothills northeast of the city. A single Romanian fighter approached,
and frustrated Liberando gunners gave him a concert. The playboy
jitterbugged to escape destruction and ran away. Teggie Ann turned west
and the ships behind winged over and began packing up again. Small-arms
fire was thickening and big flaks were banging away in the west. Red
Thompson saw pink bombers coming down from the north on a convergent
course. "They were evidently being led by Killer Kane," said the pilot,
"at what I judged was fifteen hundred to two thousand feet altitude --
nice fat targets for any defense. I was pulling up to get over cows
and hedgerows."
At this phase of battle all order seemed lost. Tidal Wave's planned
simultaneous strikes had become a mistimed farrago of groups entering
Ploesti from several sides. The leading Liberandos were west-bound,
north of the city, the battered Circus was reeling off the target through
Ploesti streets, and three more forces were swooping down on the briefed
target run from the northwest. And Norman Appold was about to skip-bomb
from the northeast.
He had found a target of opportunity while his five-plane privateering
force drove up the east side of the city. Among the targets flashing by he
saw the last objective he could possibly reach, a plant on the north edge
of town. "Looks like dry bones over there," he said. "Tabby, we're going
for that target. Are you set?" The bombardier, Clarence R. Tabb, said,
"I'm okay." Appold had picked Concordia Vega, Target White Two, which had
been assigned to Baker, the Circus leader. Concordia Vega's stacks and
silver balloons were silhouetted against the black smoke from Baker's
pyre on the far side of Ploesti. Appold radioed his followers, "Let's
tuck in now. Stay with me and keep close. Course two-three-oh. Out."
The orderly turns of the mission were plotted on a three-mile radius,
but there was no time for that if he was to hit the refinery swiftly
sliding astern. "The turn was hard on Ryan," said the little pilot. "He
had been hanging on my left all the way. I climbed a few feet over him on
the sharp turn and leveled out full throttle." A mile and a half ahead
were invisible balloon cables and an unknown power of guns. Appold went
in ten feet from the ground.
High on the black picture through his windshield, Appold saw green
insectlike shapes coming straight toward him out of the oily clouds on the
far side of the city. They were Ramsay Potts's survivors, groping out of
White Four without suspecting they were on a collision course with another
formation. Appold was committed to his bomb run and could do nothing
about the green ships. He put them out of his mind to be dealt with a
few seconds later. Now a swarm of blond insects came buzzing down his
windshield from the high right. Killer Kane was lowering the Pyramiders
through the northern flak to carry out his orders at White Four, which
Ramsay Potts had just set in lofty fires. Appold said, "I could not think
about Kane's planes and the new dangers of collision. Directly in front of
us, measured in hundreds of yards, was the target we had picked. So up,
gently, the elevators for a smooth ride over the towers, and a shout,
'Tabby, let's get them all in there!'"