special supplement - stripes/menu/...plotted and diagrammed everything that happens to the combat...
TRANSCRIPT
'••V' ; LOS ANGELES.Cal.—Mrs. DollyBriggs told police shepinned 54,500 to herslip and laid it on achair while she bathed.When she came outfrom splashing in thetub the slip and theS4.500 were gone—which made it. policeagreed, a mighty ex-pensive slip.
SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTThursday, Aug, 19, 1943
JERSEY CITY. N.J.•—Fifty per cent of allhard candy purchasedfor the army is pepper-mint flavored. theQuartermaster Corpsannounced. In onemonth alone, thearmy bought 9,000,000pounds of assortedhard candies. One-halfwas peppermint.
LAST week, over Germany, a youngAmerican kid had his arm'shot oft inthe ball turret of ar Flying Fortress.
He bled profusely, there was no chancethat he would live through the long flighthome. They wrapped that American kidup in a parachute and dropped him outover Germany. Maybe a German doctorwould get to him before he bled to death.
There is no way to tell wi th figures theyear's history of an air force in whichthings l ike t h a t are happening to the boywhose '37 Ford sits up on wood blocksin- his Dad's garage-
Maj. Gen. Ira C. Eaker, who helpedLt. Gen. Carl A. Spaatz put the EighthAir Force on an operational footing jus^a year ago, personally led the first USAAFheavy bomber raid on Europe last Aug.17- Since that time he has taken thebrunt of the responsibility for the experi-ments which have led to the acceptanceof the Eighth Air Force as one of' themost powerful striking forces in theworld.
Sceptical British experts have been con-vinced that day and night bombers areesserttial complements of an effective airforce and some have even gone overboardto claim that daylight precision bombingof industrial targets is more importantthan the gigantic RAF raids aimed at thewill of the Germans to resist.
Many of the men who commanded theoriginal bomber groups which operatedfrom England left the theater early inthe game to help out in Africa. Ahandful of colonels—Armstrong, Atkin-son. Overacker, Walker—came, startedthe business, and left. Col. Armstrong.now general, went home and returnedshortly af ter to take command of a newgroup.
The four uni ts which have done morethan their share of the hard work in thedaylight bombing experiment didn't startoperating unt i l late in October and earlyin November of last year.
It was Nov. 9 before the Forts werejoined by the B24s and struck with aforce of 100 bombers at the locomotiveworks at Lille. There were four Fortressgroups operating at that time. To thesefour outf i ts , still operating, goes the creditfor the success of the experiment. Theiroriginal commanders have become wellknown.
Col. Stanley B. Wray, Col. FrankArmstrong, Col. Curtis LeMay and Col.James Wallace were responsible for manyideas that came to them through theircommand or through their own ingenuity,many of which have been accepted asstandard procedure today.
The comparative handful of Liberatorswhich trailed along on Fortress forma-tions was commanded bv Col. Leon W.
Johnson and Col. Ted 1 imberlake. Somehave been relieved from their groupassignments to. do more important workin key positions.
In those early months, before the heavybomber raids grew to major aerial offen-sives. Eighth Air Force news releaseswere filled wi th the colorful but smallscale operations of the transferredremnants of the Eagle Squadron, s l i l )f lying Brit ish f ighters.-
Sam J u n k i n , of Natchez, Miss . , a RAFtransfer flying a Spit, was the first Ameri-can of the war to knock down a Germanplane while wearing a U.S. uni form.
Maj. Gregory Augustus Daymond, ofBurbank. Cal., met Mrs. Roosevelt on hertour of the Isles—during which she cameto the conclusion that American soldiers'socks were too thin—immediately af ter
* King George VI had pinned the first barto the British DFC to the major's brand-new American uniform. The major hadshot down seven German lighters whileserving with the RAF.
2/Lt. Harvey Dalton Johnson, of West-ville. N.J., was posthumously awarded dieDSC after he crashedhis burning plane intoan empty field toavoid k i l l ing civiliansin a London suburb.He could havejumped.
I t wasn't unt i lmany months later,after Cols. Zemke,Peterson and Anderson began operatingwith their groups of P47s. that EighthFighter Command shook loose itsEagle Squadron tag and began to befelT as a power in its own right.Under the command of Brig. Gen. FrankO'D. Hunier they have done a workman-like job of sweeping France, Belgium andeven parts of Germany. Capt. CharleyLondon. Col. Chesley Peterson. Col.Arman Petersen. 1" Lt. Ed Beattie. AugustDe Genaro and Maj. Eugene Robertswere the early standouts.
Heavy bomber heroes began to be heardof in the Fall, as the Forts hit again andagain at the L-boat bases in France. Afew like Red Cliburn and Bob Riordanbrought their riddled Fortresses hometime ".after time while the majori ty ofthem brought them home with a few-flak holes, and, the minority didn't comeback.
Ground crewmen, wi th few chances todo anything but the unspectacular, all-important job of keeping the bombersin the air, slogged through the mud onthe fields, learned to like their old-and-mild at the local pub. waited for theircrew to bring their baby home and in afew cases distinguished themselves.
Pvt . Adam E. Gross, of Chicago, dis-t inguished h imse l f . The Germans locatedan" American airf ield one day lastOctober and bombed it. It was the firsttaste American airmen had of the bottomend of a raid. Many of the bombsdropped t h a t day were delayed actionHEs and didn' t go off right away. Bri t ishbomb disposal squads got to work im-mediate ly , llicy wanted someone todr ive the t r u c k to can the bombs awayt h o u g h , and P \ t . Gross was f i rs t in thel i n e of Amer ican vo lun teers .
Pfc Carmen D'Amami, another groundman. distinguished himself too. Af teran explosion on the field, a bomber wasleft burn ing wi th men unconscious in-side. D'Amami went in the bomber anddragged the men out while the fumes fromthe "gas tanks burned as they accumulatedover his head, threatening to explode anyminute.
It was in these early days that Maj.Harry Holt's squadron picked up the"Clay Pigeon Squadron" nickname. Therewas no particular reason for it, but some-how Maj. Holt's outfit always took the
By Andrew A. Ro@neyStars and Stripes Staff Writer
to go out the next day with the possi-bili ty of not returning were the men whowere convinced tha t they were on theright track. What they needed was morebombers for safety, they all lost friends,they got heart-rending letters frommothers and fathers of the lost men, butsomehow they kept heart, even kept asense of humor.
At night the men talked in their nissenhuts.
"See what the paper says? Christ I'dfeel like hell if I thought women wereshootin' all t h a t flak at us."
Or, "The only reason 1 dropped outof formation to help you was the 30 quidyou owe me."
Whatever the conversation was it hada sharp American twist to it. Deathmakes fighting men think about religion.Some of them were very religious. Inmany cases Catholic priests were busythe early morning before a mission givingblessing to Catholic crewmen. Most ofthem are not particularly religious butbelieve vaguely in a comforting, God-given guidance which they somehow asso-
ciate with home andthe church theyhaven't been to sincethey were 15. Manymore laughed at itand swore only by theability of their pilotand the accuracy oftheir .50 calibers.
stiffest setbacks. In the same groupanother squadron was beginning a longlossless streak that was to continue wayinto this recent July.
Bomber Command, w i t h Brig. Gen.Newton D. Longfellow and Brig. Gen.Hay ward Hansel! as top men. charted,plotted and diagrammed everything thathappens to the combat men. New ideaswere listened to. tried, and accepted orrejected.
The crew of the Fort was increasedfrom nine to ten men. as the waist at tacksby the German fighters made the need foranother wais t gunner obvious. Gunnersdevised thei r own feed carriages, andground crews went to work on naviga-tors" suggestions for working another guninto the nose to ward off head-on attacks.
Stories of Forts and Libs returning ona wing, an engine and a prayer becameeveryday shoptalk at the fields. Theywere often exaggerated by the time theygot into pr in t—i t always took wings,usually two motors, and the crewsseldom prayed.
No one knew better than the men atthese few operational fields what thelosses were, and those men who were due
All the dogs inEngland who don't belong to anyone inparticular found a home at the U.S. fields.There are from 20 to 30 dogs at everystation, some with owners, some squadronor group property. Some just there.
Some of the dogs live the life of staffsergeants, eating the same food, sleepingin the same nissen hut , attending classesand. in at least five cases, going on raidswith special home-made oxygen masks.
There was always sbme new piece ofequipment for the men. The demand-typeoxygen masks began to replace the oldadjustable valve type. Many of theveterans didn't trust the demand masks,although if used properly they helped con-serve the oxygen supply.
It was the same wi th Col. MalcolmCrow's steel-lined flak suit. Many of themen were sceptical. They didn't think itwas practical, but as the lives of menwere saved because they had the vest on,others became convinced that the suit wasworth the work of the extra weight. Somestill were not convinced.
The history of the first year is studdedwith individual heroes whose deeds makethe peace-time headliners such as Corri-gan, Wiley Post and even Lindbergh looka l i t t le pale.. Many of them have had only
a few lines of notice, some of theiractions have never come closer to printthan the mimeographed citation that wentwi th the award.
The crew of Old Bill, a Fortress pilotedby Capt. Bill Whitsun, is probably themost decorated crew in the ETO. Theyhave on their collective chests eightSilver Stars,'two DSCs and seven PurpleHearts. The crew of the Liberator ShootLuke has a few, too. They claim fiveDFCs, three DSCs, four Silver Stars,seven Purple Hearts, and a basketful ofAir Medals.
There are s t i l l other heroes who havehad a lot of publicity and deserved everyline of it. The Mathis brothers. Markand Jack, for instance. Mark swore toavenge the death of his brother Jack, whodied a hero over his bombsight atVegesack. A few raids later, after doinga job of bombing, Mark, too, was lost.There are sad stories like that. But thereare brighter stories.
The story of Snuffy Smith is a happierone. Snuffy is one of the Eighth AirForce's favorite characters. He saved aFortress and the lives of eight men, buta few weeks later he overstayed a leavea few hours, and his commander decidedthe little sergeant gunner was getting toococky so he put him on KP.
Henry Stimson, Secretary of War, cameto England and hung America's highestaward for valor—the CongressionalMedal of Honor—around Snuffy's neckwhile Lt. Gen. Jacob Devers and -aplatoon of generals looked on. Snuffytook medal, ceremony and all calmly.
A paragraph of proper names is packedwith between-the-lines power in verbs andadjectives: Arizona Harris, Joe Boyle,Jack • Ryan, Bill Casey, Jimmy Verinis,Ross Bayles, Bill Murphy, Bob O'Connor,Doug Venable, Floyd Thompson, GeorgeStallings, Gl Jones, Bill Calhoun, Johnde Russy, Robert W. Smith, Joe Strick-land, Mack McKay, Bob Solitunik, BillHicks. Oscar O'Neill, Dick Willis, HenryW. Terry', Billy South worth, Roy Sugg,William Sault—that is anybody's list, menwho have died, men who are prisonersand men who are unconscious heroes stilldoing a job.
They are heroes who have performeddeeds of a caliber which would, in ordi-nary times, make them national heroes.They are sergeant gunners and colonelobservers.
The Eighth Air Force history is a storyof men necessarily buried under thedamnably cold heap of statistics the Alliesare Irving to pile higher than Axisstatistics. " When the pile is higher theairmen can go home, and if that Americankid was saved by a German doctor maybehe can get a license to drive his '37 Fordwith his one arm.