The Boxcar Blues (33 page)

“
I’m not surprised. I
should have enough to get back to the base.”

Thirty minutes later he landed with his fuel
gauge on empty. When he looked the plane over, he counted fourteen
bullet holes including three in the engine cowling. After seeing
the damage the plane could take, and still get him home, he vowed
never to utter a bad word about the P-40.

Two weeks later, Catwalk
took off on a mission to escort bombers of the
55
^th
Bomb Wing to the Ober-Raderach Chemical Works in Germany.
This was another flight where they’d be going deeper into enemy
territory. Consequently, the fighting had becoming increasingly
intense. About the time that the bombers were releasing their
bombs, the formation was attacked by a flight of eighteen Germans.
For twenty minutes the fighting was constant as Catwalk and his
wingmen wrestled their P-40s through the skies to protect the
bombers. Possibly it was because they were over the Motherland, but
on this day the Germans seemed exceptionally intent on pressing the
attack.

Catwalk fired on one aircraft and thought
he’d hit it, but the German dived for the deck and left the area.
He then picked out another target who was lining up a P-40. He
fired a fifty degree deflection shot and saw the Messerschmitt
explode in his sights. Then came a call, “Catwalk, a Jerry on your
six!”

Catwalk broke hard right and dove for the
deck. When he pulled the nose around he saw a P-40 firing on the
last German, then he saw the telltale smoke and the pilot bailing
out of his injured aircraft.

When the skies cleared of enemy aircraft,
the P-40s resumed their escort formation. Catwalk then heard a
familiar voice on the radio, “Did I hear someone calling
Catwalk?”

Catwalk smiled when he heard Curly’s voice,
and said, “This is Lieutenant Jackson, which plane are you in?”

“
I’m in three oh two. Come
on over here.”

Catwalk looked through the flight of B-24s
and saw the aircraft in the lead flight. He pulled up next to it
and saw his old friend smiling at him from the left seat. He said,
“Hey old buddy, how long you been with this outfit?”

“
About seven months now.
We just got transferred to Ramitelli.”

“
We’re moving over there
next month when we get the P-51s.”

“
Good. Look me up and you
can buy me a beer.”

“
What do you mean, I buy,
Curly? I just saved your ass from getting shot up by Germans.
You’re buying.”

“
O.K., O.K., I’ll buy. You
hot-shit fighter pilots are all alike.”

Catwalk wore a smile all the way back to the
base. He couldn’t wait to see his old friend again.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Two weeks later, the
99
^th
transferred to Ramitelli Air Base where they upgraded to the
P-51 Mustang. This was a new fighter easily recognized by its huge
four bladed propeller, and considered to be the finest fighter ever
produced. When Catwalk first flew it he was amazed at the
improvement in power and handling over the P-40. Capable of over
four hundred knots and equipped with external long range fuel
tanks, which were jettisoned for combat, the men of the 99th were
now able to provide cover for the bombers on their entire
flight.

In an attempt to paint the
planes in a common squadron paint scheme, the maintenance men of
the 99
^th
had to find enough paint for all the planes. The only color
they found in sufficient quantities for the entire squadron was a
bright red called insignia red. So it was, the tails of the P-51s
were painted bright red. This became one of the most famous paint
schemes of World War II, and a paint job that the Germans grew to
hate.

Catwalk had just finished a test flight of
his new plane and was relaxing in the barracks when he heard a
familiar voice yell, “Where’s Jackson?”

He walked outside to find Lieutenant Curly
Levitz smiling at him from the street. “Hey, Cat. How you doing
man?”

Catwalk smiled at his old friend who, with
his fur lined leather jacket and Air Corps cap tilted jauntily on
his curly head, looked like a poster boy for bomber pilots. He
noticed Curly had also grown a mustache.

Catwalk shook his hand, hugged him and said,
“Good to see you again, Curly. Why haven’t you finished this war
off yet.”

“
They won’t give me enough
bombs. If I could get enough bombs, I’d blow the whole fuckin’
country away, and we could go home.”

“
How do you like the
B-24s?”

“
Well, it can carry the
biggest bomb load farther and faster than anything else, but it’s a
bitch to fly. Every position in the plane is cramped and
uncomfortable, and most of our flights are six to eight hours; I
don’t see how the turret gunners do it. There ain’t any heat and
it’s not pressurized so you gotta wear an oxygen mask that usually
freezes to your face. If you gotta pee, you use a tube in the back
that always freezes up. Compared to those little sports roadsters
you guys are flying, this thing is the pits. They call it; The
Agony Wagon, but we can sure do some damage. We made a run on
Ploesti last week; we came in at three hundred feet and the blast
from our bombs almost flipped us over.”

“
Well, you wanted to be a
bomber pilot.”

“
Yeah, but I thought the
damn things at least had heaters in them. How do you like the P-51?
I heard those things can do four hundred knots at sea
level.”

“
That’s right. It’s a
screamer; the greatest plane I ever flew. The Germans aren’t going
to get anywhere near you guys now.”

“
You guys are getting such
a reputation that our pilots are requesting you for our escort. I
heard the Germans call you guys Schwartze Vogelmensschen—The Black
Birdmen.”

“
Curly, this is the most
courageous group of men and talented pilots I’ve ever seen, and
most of the military brass is too ignorant to realize
it.”

“
I know what you mean.
Just hang in there, man. This war ain’t gonna last
forever.”

“
Did you get to see Billy
Sue before you shipped out?”

“
Yeah. We sat down and had
a nice talk. I even met my son, talk about a cute kid. She gave me
a picture to take with me.”

Curly showed him the picture, with a measure
of pride that Catwalk had never expected. Catwalk said, “He’s a
beautiful boy. Good thing he got Billy Sue’s looks.”

Curly ignored the jab. “I’m gonna marry her
right after the war, Cat.”

“
Were you sober when you
decided this?”

“
Sober as a
preacher.”

“
Good for you. You won’t
find a better wife anywhere.”

“
Hey, Cat, I gotta run.
I’m briefing an hour. I’ll see you at twenty thousand
feet.”

“
You be careful now,
Curly.”

“
I will. I’ll bring you
that cold beer when I get back.”

Three days later the
bombers again made a raid on the Ploesti oil refineries, with the
99
^th
flying escort in the new P-51s. The Germans were prepared for
this raid however, and the allied aircraft faced numerous dangers,
any one of which could send them to a fiery death.

Large smudge pots had been lit throughout
the refinery so the smoke obscured the critical targets. This meant
the bombers had to go in low and blind. Flying in close formation,
through the thick smoke they ran the risk of colliding with each
other, or getting knocked out of the sky from the blast of their
own bombs. They also faced the gauntlet of heavy ack-ack fire from
anti-aircraft guns and more German fighters than they’d ever
encountered.

Fifty-three P-51s flew escort that day for
seventy-two B-24s. As soon as he saw the heavy opposition, Catwalk
had a bad feeling about this raid. He knew the bombers and the
P-51s would suffer heavy losses.

When the German fighters came at them in
force, he jettisoned his external tanks and tightened his belts in
preparation to engage the enemy. Heavy smoke from ack-ack shells
and bombs covered the entire area. Towers of fiery bomb blasts
leaped up at the fighters who were often down on the deck trying to
protect the bombers. Weaving through the smoke were more planes
than Catwalk had ever seen; a midair collision was almost
certain.

He engaged his first German and fired a
burst at three hundred yards. He thought he’d scored a hit, but the
German tried to run. Catwalk used the awesome power of the P-51 to
close the distance and fired again. This time the enemy aircraft
started smoking, then crashed into the refinery. He turned to
engage another Messerschmitt, then saw a B-24 explode in mid air, a
victim of anti-aircraft fire.

Tracers flew by his canopy—a German was on
his tail. He added power and pulled back on the stick to fly a
tight loop and position himself on the tail of his aggressor. Two
bursts didn’t score, but the aircraft dove for the deck and Catwalk
lost him in the smoke.

He turned his attention to the gun
emplacements that were throwing a large hail of fire at the B-24s.
He raked one with a short burst and saw the gun cease firing.
Trying to spot another gun emplacement amid the heavy smoke and
bomb blasts, he saw instead two German aircraft that’d drawn a bead
on him; with guns blazing.

Again Catwalk applied power and pulled a
hard right turn to evade the Germans. Another P-51 appeared behind
the Germans and fired a long burst that blew one aircraft to
pieces. Catwalk chased the second aircraft until he was within
range and knocked him out of the sky with a thirty degree
deflection shot.

Searching for another German, Catwalk felt
his plane rocked by an ack-ack shell that must have been close. He
wondered if he had any damage. Thoughts of his own condition were
abandoned as he saw a Focke-Wulf going after a bomber. He gave
chase hoping he could get to the German before he fired at the
lumbering bomber.

The B-24 dropped his load as the German
fired from a long distance, but missed the vulnerable bomber.
Catwalk came around until he had him broad side in his sights, then
fired. The enemy never knew what hit him. As the fiery remains of
the aircraft fell to the ground, Catwalk saw another B-24 enveloped
by his own fiery bomb blast and crash into the refinery. He briefly
wondered if Curly had made it through the raid, then thought, this
is not time to think about that, there was work to be done.

Catwalk chased off two more Germans as the
last of the bombers dropped their lethal loads into the blazing
inferno that was once an oil refinery. Seeing the damage had been
done, and that they were outnumbered by superior aircraft, the
remaining German aircraft fled the area.

The surviving B-24s flew out of the range of
ack-ack fire. The worst was over. The P-51s formed around the
bombers and Catwalk noticed how much smaller the bomber formation
had become. At his count thirty two B-24s had been lost in the raid
and several were wounded, not expected to make the flight back to
the base. He saw three bombers with props feathered drop out of the
formation enroute to the base.

As soon as he landed the men wanted to toast
his three confirmed kills in one day, but Catwalk begged off. He
explained about Curly then took a jeep over to the bomber side of
the base. He asked a crew that had just deplaned, “Do you know if
three-oh-two made it?”

The ten man crew looked beat and bedraggled;
worn out and wasted. A sergeant said, “Sir, I don’t know who made
it and who didn’t, but if you were flying our cover, thanks.”

“
Don’t mention it. I’m
glad we could help.”

The sergeant then looked down the flight
line. “I don’t see three-oh-two. He might have crash landed on the
way home.”

Catwalk drove the length of the flight line
and didn’t see the aircraft. He then went into the flight
operations tent and asked a clerk, “Was Lieutenant Levitz flying
three-oh-two today?”

“
He sure was, but they
didn’t return.”

A captain looking over a wall chart said,
“He had two engines shot up and landed in a field, deep inside
enemy lines, about five miles from the refinery.”

Catwalk knew there was no chance they could
make it back from deep inside enemy territory. Curly was
undoubtedly a prisoner of war—if he hadn’t died in the crash or
been shot already.

He returned to his barracks and thought
about whether to write Billy Sue. She’d want to know and he didn’t
want her reading an ambiguous account in the newspapers. He wrote
her, trying to sound upbeat, telling her that Curly might be able
to make it to allied territory before being captured. Although he
knew it was a reality, he didn’t mention that Curly might not have
survived the crash landing.

After writing Billy Sue, Catwalk wrote a
long letter to his Mom, then got drunker than he’d even been in his
life.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Weeks passed and Catwalk heard nothing about
Curly, but he wasn’t surprised. Information on POWs was hard to get
and often misleading. His only recourse was to pray for his friend
and hope, if he was alive, that he was treated humanely.

In spite of the cost in allied lives, the
Ploesti raid had been a huge success. Since the raid there had been
fewer German aircraft sighted on their missions and a lack of fuel
was given as the reason. This was the first clear indication that
the allies were winning the war in Europe and it made a noticeable
difference in moral.