The left wingman in the fourth wave was Sad Sack II, piloted by Henry
A. Lasco and Joseph A. Kill, both of Chicago, flying their seventh
mission. Riding the left waist gun with them was Charles Decrevel of San
Francisco, who had served in the Royal Air Force. Their story brings
us close to what the red harvest of Ploesti was like for the men who
went down.
DECREVEL. Other planes were riding on black flak like trucks on a highway.
We caught a hail of small-arms fire and something went through my thigh.
I was strafing gun crews on a roof top and noted out of the corner of
my eye that my interphone box was vanishing from the wall. I donned my
parachute pack and stuck my head out the window. I noted a tree at eye
level. Therefore I heroically decided to stay with the ship.
LASCO. Our target was on fire, with very black smoke and fire high in the
sky. Colonel Johnson headed into this conflagration and we followed.
KILL. I wasn't paying any attention to where we're going except to watch
a couple of rivets on the lead airplane. I glanced up ahead and thought,
"How in Christ's name can we get through that?" I can't push her down,
so I holler to Lasco to get on the controls with me.
The bombardier [Dale R. Scriven] is calling for corrections on the target
-- the boiler works and tool shed. The back end calls that the tail gunner
[Thomas M. Wood] is dead. Scriv hollers, "Bombs away!" and the navigator
[Harry W. Stenborn] is badly shot through the chest. Lasco shouts,
"Number Two is out. She won't feather." And we hit the inferno, nothing
but smoke and flame.
LASCO. Coming out of the smoke we entered a group of six ships.
Eighty-eights were firing at us at short range. The top turretman
[Leonard L. Raspotnik] and radioman [Joseph Spivey] were hit. Joe Kill
and I decided to head for Turkey.
DECREVEL. A few minutes after we left the target, I began to wish
I had jumped. I had grave doubts that anyone was alive on the flight
deck. Wherever I looked I could see holes as big as my fist and our left
wing was almost scraping the ground.
KILL. Sad Sack II was vibrating badly and was extremely rough to handle.
"There's a good cornfield over there," Lasco hollered.
DECREVEL. Seven to nine Me-109's were queuing up to take shots at us. They
made level dead-astern attacks. The first one broke away and I caught him
with a long burst in the belly at no more than thirty yards. He appeared
to come apart like a dropped jigsaw puzzle. The next one was hit by Al
Shaffer, my buddy at the other waist gun, who was standing on one leg,
the other being almost shot off. The next Messerschmitt broke off on
my side in a chandelle, and I knocked some pieces off his tail. My aim
was off. The interior of our plane was full of little white puffs like
firecrackers going off. Ammununition was exploding in the boxes and I
felt fingers plucking at my clothing. I received shrapnel in the back,
head and knee and was floored by a thirteen-millimeter in the butt. The
parachute pack saved me in that area.
The fighter attacks seemed to subside somewhat. I don't know whether we
had thinned them out or some had gone off looking for easier kills. There
was one left hanging back about sixty yards or so with his flaps down and
all his guns blinking. He really had to slow down for us. There wasn't
much left in our plane but daylight. It felt like we were hanging in a
total stall with one wing touching and all as good as dead.
LASCO. We were very low to the ground, probably fifty feet, when an Me-109
circled around us and came in shallow at ten o'clock on my side. I saw his
wing light up and felt a tremendous sock on the jaw. I was shot through
both cheeks and upper palate. I had no strength. I couldn't see anything.
KILL. Lasco called for flaps. No flaps. I reached down and started
pumping them by hand. We were headed for a cornfield. I glanced up at
Lasco. He was lying over the control column, all bloodied. I was coming
to horizon level. We were left wing low, headed straight in. I kicked
hard right rudder and picked up the wing.
DECREVEL. The pilot must have cut all his engines to crash her in, because
I beard a scream. The navigator was kneeling on the catwalk and holding
on to the open bomb door. He looked like he had caught an eighty-eight
right in the chest. The flesh was stripped away and I could see the
white ribs. I wanted to help him, but there wasn't time. We were all dead
anyway. I had made up my mind to shoot it out with that sonofabitch on
our tail. I leaned out the window and swiveled the gun parallel to the
fuselage and fired inside the fin and below the horizontal stabilizer. We
hit the ground and my last view of aerial combat was of our left rudder
disappearing in a puff of smoke. I tumbled head over heels in flame and
tearing metal and hit the forward bulkhead with a sweet black thud. Then
immediate consciousness and a vision of green corn and blue sky from
a bed of hot coals. No airplane to speak of, just a pile of burning
junk. Stagger out of it, trying to run. Stop, look back. No Shaffer. Go
back, drag him out. Dump him about fifty yards off. There's not enough
airplane left to blow up, but ammunition is going off all over the plane.
KILL. Lasco was blindly thrashing around, pinned in his harness. All I
could do was tell him I couldn't get out. Both my legs were broken and
the right foot was out of the socket at the ankle. Lasco got loose and
unfastened my legs from a tangle of wires and cables. He grabbed me under
the arms and dragged me through a hole in the side. Then he wandered off.
LASCO. I went to look for aid as Joe's legs were bad and my mouth was in
not too good shape. I saw some peasants, who ran away and threw stones
at me.
KILL. Two peasants jumped me and tore off my watch and ring, emptied
my pockets, and then belted me a beauty. I guess they figured I was
about gone anyway, what with the legs, a cracked forehead and bad burns.
Surprisingly, I didn't go out, although I prayed for unconsciousness.
DECREVEL. Drag Shaffer a bit further. Strip off my smoldering outer
gear. Shaffer hollering like hell. His leg looks like hamburger.
No morphine. I give him a cigaret, tell him I'll go for help. See an
Me-109, having a look at me about fifty feet up. I give him a great big
R.A.F. salute just for laughs.
Sit down, drag out my compass, maps and money, plan a course for Yugoslavia.
Crazy! Shock wears off. I must get to a hospital quick. Burns hurt real bad
in the hot sun. Have almost a full pack of cigarettes. Must smoke them all
up before the enemy takes them away. Get cracking! Keep walking! If you lie
down you'll never get up and they won't find you until they harvest this
corn.
Stumble into the edge of a village. Start hollering. Nobody appears,
only eyes peeking through the window blinds. Holler some more. Crazy
with pain. Stagger down main street, see sign,
Gendarmeri
. Holler
real angry. Finally soldiers appear. I hold up hands and holler, "Nix
arme!" Soldiers hang back. I drag out a dollar bill and hold it for the
world to see. Ah! Immediate warm welcome and smiles. Total population
turns out. Many questions. "Amerika komm? When Amerika komm?" Take me
into village pub. Drinks for all. Only when they had spent all my escape
money do they consent to get me aid. Out into the hot village street
again. Fainted. Un-American? Too many brandies? Loss of blood? They
fetch a horse cart and I ride in style. Feel like I'm dying. Don't want
to die in horse cart. See nice farmyard with a big shade tree and pretty
girl leaning over fence. Parade halts while I rest under tree and get
a glass of milk from girl. Willing to die on the spot with pretty girl
holding my head. Soldiers impatient to move on. News drifts in that more
Americans are in a churchyard up the line. Parade from my village meets
parade from next village. All hands into churchyard for gay festival
while our top turretman dies.
KILL. In the churchyard, Lasco was still in a stupor so I wrote out our
names. For some reason I was thinking sharper than I ever had. I listed
them all as officers and put an "O" in front of each name. This I had
heard was wise, because it would give the enlisted men officer treatment
in POW camp.*
* Sad Sack Ii's sergeants spent their captivity in the officers' camp.
DECREVEL. Some hours later buses cart us to Bucharest military hospital.
Sweet morphine at last!
LASCO. The man in the next bed said, "My name is Al Shaffer. I am on
Lieutenant Lasco's crew." I couldn't talk. I showed him my dog tags.
"God, Lieutenant, I didn't recognize you," Shaffer said.
The last wave over White Five consisted of four planes led by Rowland
M. Gentry in Porky II. His orders were to bomb from 400 feet at the top
of the stepped-up formation that had been adopted for the five Eight Ball
waves. The last wave was well exposed to the German gunners. Gentry led
a V-flight with a plane piloted by Charles Hughes and Sylvester S. Hunn
on his left, and, on his right, George Winger, flying a B-24 that was
unaccountably painted bright orange. It stood out among the others like
a tangerine in a basket of limes and pears and attracted every German
gunlayer who caught sight of it. Completing this vulnerable quartet was
Robert Felber, flying a spare ship, F for Freddie, which had been added
to the force the night before. Felber was alone, on the rear high left
of the element, with the smallest chance of getting through.
Hunn saw waves three and four going in ahead of him. Two ships disintegrated
at the same time. "Another was literally pulled to the ground by some
force," said the co-pilot. "It didn't stall or drop off. It was pulled."
As Hunn's bombardier was set to release his bombs, Winger's orange ship
was knocked aside by an explosion and crossed directly beneath him.
The bomb-aimer held off until it had cleared him. In the target smoke,
explosions killed two gunners and set half Porky II's engines on fire.
E.C. Light in the top turret and the right waist gunner, Charles T. Bridges,
remained in action. On the other side of the target three German fighters
came up at them from the deck. Bridges, the veteran of 53 missions with
the Royal Air Force, got in his last rounds of battle. The fighters left
Porky II burning in a cornfield with the nose buried in the ground and
the tail standing. Bridges staggered out of the wreck as it exploded.
The remaining three ships of the last wave came through still in the air.
The orange ship was even brighter now. Its Tokyo tanks were aflame. Hunn
said, "Winger climbed steeply to about five hundred feet. It must have
taken him and the co-pilot enormous effort to get her high enough for
people to bail out." Two men came out the waist ports and their parachutes
opened as the orange ship crashed and exploded. Winger and his men had
completed 27 missions and were legally "retired." The two chutists who
had received the gift of life from their pilots were gunners Michael
J. Cicon and Bernard Traudt. Traudt was a seventeen-year-old with a
perpetual grin. He landed unhurt, concealed his parachute, crawled under
some bushes and went to sleep. He had gotten no sleep the night before.
The Hughes-Hunn ship and the spare, F for Freddie, left Ploesti and their
two crashed sister ships behind. They ran alongside some barracks from
which soldiers ran out firing machine guns, rifles and pistols. The air
gunners mowed them down in bloody windrows. F for Freddie was almost
untouched, but Hunn looked back in his fuselage and was surprised how
bright it was. Ground fire had turned it into a sieve.
The withdrawal plan of Tidal Wave called for all the B-24's in the
simultaneous bombing front on the White Targets to continue beyond Ploesti
for five miles and then wheel sharply right and take up orderly course
formation to the southwest and Corfu. Leon Johnson had not the slightest
opportunity to execute this order. His surviving machines were all over
the air, dodging fighters and flak, or crippled and dying. By now there
were about 125 enemy fighters in the immediate area of the turning point
for withdrawal. Among them was young Gerhartz, who sighted a covey of
Liberators "very fast, very down." As he lined up behind them, he noted
that his fuel exhaustion light was on and looked at his chronometer. He
had been aloft for an hour on an hour's fuel allowance. He turned and
skimmed back across the fields to Mizil, not daring to climb, expecting
to stall and belly-land any minute. Nearing his home sheep pasture, he
lowered his wheels. As they touched earth the motor coughed out. Gerhartz
rolled on momentum almost to his revetment. His dog ran to the plane.
Hans Schopper picked up a bomber flying 150 feet from the ground and
assailed her from the rear high right, simultaneously pressing his cannon
button on the control stick and squeezing the machine trigger. "I got him
good in the right wing," said the veteran. "I gave the whole plane a good
raking, and swept over top of him. His machine guns were after me, coming
close, but not hitting. I full-powered a steep banking climb to the right
and looked over my shoulder to see if another attack was necessary. Both
of his wing tanks were blazing. He tried to gain altitude. He flew on
about five hundred meters, crashed, and burned in a field. Nobody had time
to jump. Apparently he had dropped his bombs. There was no explosion."
B-24 pilot Sylvester Hunn said, "We looked for a plane to tack on to.
We picked one and he was shot down. We picked another and he was knocked
down. A fighter got on our tail. Tracers were zooming above and around
the cockpit. Hughes and I were giving it all the left rudder we could
in evasive action. Our tail gunner reported the attacker suddenly hit
the ground like a ton of brick. The gunner didn't claim him." Hunn,
a hundred feet from the ground, saw a Liberator bisecting his course
fifty feet below with a fighter in hot pursuit. "The B-24 dropped lower
and the fighter went into the ground up to his neck." Hughes sailed into
the sanctuary of a cloud and surveyed their situation: not enough gas
to reach Libya, a large hole in the left stabilizer, a control cable
hanging by a thread, and waist gunners Stanley G. Nalipa and Robert
L. Albine wounded. They headed for Turkey.