This post is dedicated to the passengers and crew of the Nine-O-Nine who lost their lives on October 2, 2019.
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| The Nine-0-Nine |
There they were, sitting on the tarmac. One Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress,
and one Consolidated B-24 Liberator, both looking and sounding almost exactly
as they did before taking off into the skies over Europe during WW2. These
large, four-engine heavy bombers with turrets and machine gun barrels poking
out in just about every direction left no doubt whatsoever about what these menacing-looking
airplanes were built for. Both of these aircraft are huge, even by modern
standards; both of them have wingspans that exceed 100 feet. The B-24, coming
later into service and somewhat larger than the B-17 in addition to being
faster and longer ranged, differed from the Boeing by its twin tail and
generally blunt appearance, while the single-finned B-17 is fairly slender and
elegant by comparison. Both of these aircraft were manufactured in staggering
numbers; almost 13,000 B-17s were made, while the B-24, at approx. 20,000 units
built, was the most-produced U.S. combat aircraft of WW2.
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| B-17F |
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| B-24D |
Among the reasons why so many of these expensive and complex war machines
were made was because of sheer combat and operational losses. The air space
over Europe was far from placid, and during the summer and autumn of 1943, being
a heavy bomber crewman in the USAAF (United States Army Air Force) was nearly the
equivalent of being handed a death sentence.
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| B-17 going down |
The skies over certain parts of
Germany and other Axis-occupied areas were almost literally raining with
shot-down American B-17s and B-24s. The losses were so bad that the American
daylight strategic bombing campaign over Germany was suspended until early in 1944,
when sufficient numbers of long-range escort fighters, primarily the P-51
Mustang, became available.
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| B-24s attacking Ploesti |
The first of several aerial debacles for the U.S. that year came on
August 1, 1943, when 178 B-24s of the U.S. Eighth and Ninth Air Forces were
launched from Benghazi, Libya, against the oil-producing Romanian city of
Ploesti in Operation Tidal Wave. Romania
supplied about a third of the crude oil used by the Axis powers, and several
large refineries were clustered in and around Ploesti. Conceived as a daring
low-level coordinated attack by five B-24 groups that would use the element of
surprise to destroy and/or severely damage the refineries, the plan turned out
to be excessively complex and was a total disaster.
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| Brewery Wagon on the ground in Libya |
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| Brewery Wagon and other B-24s just before flying to Ploesti |
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| Brewery Wagon on the ground in Romania |
The Americans, suffering
several mishaps en route and making serious navigation errors in the target
area in addition to severely underestimating Ploesti’s defenses, paid a heavy
price. Almost 60 B-24s, over 30% of the original force, were shot down, while
most of the rest were badly damaged and many of those never flew again once
they made it back to base. Most of the returning B-24s had several dozen bullet
and shell holes in them, while others had several hundred. Five Medals of
Honor, the most for any single aerial combat mission of the war, were awarded
to participants of the Ploesti raid, three of them posthumously. Some of the
pilots in Operation Tidal Wave went
on to become general officers in the postwar USAF, including Leon Johnson (Four
stars, and besides Colonel John “Killer” Kane, the only other Medal of Honor
recipient who survived the mission), Keith Compton (Three stars), and George
Brown (Four stars; also the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1974 to
1978).
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| B-17s attacking Schweinfurt |
On August 17, 1943, the Eighth Air Force struck another particularly well-defended
target located in a small Bavarian city deep in Germany named Schweinfurt. Schweinfurt
was the center of German ball bearing production (the first machine to produce ball
bearings in mass quantities, the ball grinding mill, was invented there in 1883),
and such a tight cluster of critically-important factories and their associated
facilities was irresistible to American planners. The Germans, like they did at
Ploesti, anticipated air attacks on such an obvious strategic target (the Americans
had launched a small raid with 13 B-24s against Ploesti the year before, which
alerted the Germans to future U.S. intentions) and had heavy and extensive air
defenses in place.
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| Schweinfurt ball bearing plant |
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| 88mm Flak in action |
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| Flak bursts over Schweinfurt |
The Schweinfurt mission counted on what was intended to be a more-or-less
simultaneous attack on the Messerschmitt 109 aircraft factory in another Bavarian
city deep within Germany named Regensburg; by drawing German fighters away from the Schweinfurt
force, it was theorized that by diluting the defenders, losses to both of the
attacking forces would be reduced. However, an unusually heavy fog in England that
morning caused delays that ruined the timing considered critical for the
mission to succeed, but the decision was made to proceed anyway. The delays
also negatively affected the coordination of the fighter escorts (P-47s and
Spitfires) that were supposed to protect the bombers up to the limits of their
endurance, which roughly coincided with the German-Dutch border; the fighters
had to land to rearm and refuel, causing more delays. The mission was off to a
bad start.
Unknown to the Americans, in response to their steadily rising strength and
increasingly accurate bombing, the Luftwaffe had recently heavily reinforced
its defensive strength in the West, especially after Operation Gomorrah; for over a week in July 1943,
the British Royal Air Force, with assistance from the USAAF, bombed the major
port city of Hamburg around the clock, the destruction being greatly amplified by
a firestorm that destroyed huge parts of the city and killed tens of thousands
of people.
Although the Germans were already well-aware of the vulnerability of
Schweinfurt’s ball bearing plants, their concerns were heightened by an event earlier
in the war. During their 1940 bombing campaign against Britain (the Blitz), the Luftwaffe struck a factory
that made bearings for the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine; the attack did
catastrophic damage, and only emergency supplies of bearings furnished by the
United States avoided a major disruption of Merlin production. Ironically, the
Germans discovered the true effectiveness of their raid on the ball bearing
factory by a British radio broadcast.
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| German radar on the French coast |
In addition to greatly increasing the number of fighters (over 400 of all
types) and antiaircraft guns, the Germans had
several other things working in their favor. German radar was capable of
detecting large formations of aircraft assembling over England, which almost
invariably gave them their first warning that heavy bombers were on their way
to attack a target somewhere in Occupied Europe. Although the Americans usually
flew dogleg courses with the intention of confusing the German defenses about
their intended target, the Germans often deduced at least the general area of
the coming attack and deployed their fighters accordingly. As at Ploesti, the
Germans were aware of a large incoming force of heavy bombers and their
probable target long before the Americans thought they did, and like Ploesti,
that greatly contributed to the disaster.
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| German model of a B-17's fields of fire |
The Germans, having gained much respect for the defensive firepower of the
B-17, began to use new tactics and weapons against them. Despite bristling on
almost all sides with M2 .50 caliber machine guns and most of them having wide
fields of fire, Luftwaffe pilots found a weak spot; the direct front of the
aircraft was where the bombers could bring less guns to bear at its most
vulnerable point, which was of course the cockpit. The Germans increasingly
made head-on attacks, singly and in groups, with devastating effects. The .50
caliber machine guns on the bombers had a longer range than the 7.92mm machine
guns and 20mm cannons that German fighters were usually armed with at the time,
and Luftwaffe fighter pilots, usually eager to avoid the combined firepower of
a tight formation of B-17s, rarely passed up an opportunity to make a head-on
attack.
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| A B-24 during a head-on attack |
In addition to experiencing their formidable defensive armament, the Germans
also found the sturdy American heavy bombers frustratingly difficult to shoot
down, often requiring copious expenditures of ammunition to do so. To address
this, the Germans started to make factory and field modifications to their
aircraft, adding underwing cannons and heavy artillery rockets to their light
and heavy fighters. Although these supplemental weapons reduced the speed, agility, and
endurance of the aircraft equipped with them, the absence of Allied escort fighters and proximity to their own
airfields made these disadvantages acceptable.
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| FW190 with a 210mm rocket being loaded |
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| FW190 with 30mm MK103 |
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| ME109 with underwing 20mm cannons |
Meanwhile, the Germans developed
and fielded new weapons specifically designed to efficiently shoot down heavy
bombers, replacing the 7.92mm with 13mm guns on most of their fighters,
and starting in late 1943 their 20mm cannons were increasingly replaced by one
of the most fearsome aerial weapons of the war; the 30mm MK108 cannon. Introduced
later in 1943, this light, compact, short-barreled weapon fired an oversized
projectile filled with an abnormally large explosive charge. Although it had a low muzzle velocity and a fairly short range, it could destroy
a heavy bomber with only a few hits.
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| MK108 30mm cannon |
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| 30mm round for the MK108 |
All of the elements were in place for a massacre, and much like Ploesti,
the Regensburg/Schweinfurt raid was a costly failure, with over 60 bombers
being shot down (out of 376 that were launched) and many never flying again.
The result of the Regensburg attack was some consolation, as the damage
inflicted on the Messerschmitt plant was considerable. However, Colonel Curtis
LeMay, the commander of the Regensburg strike force whose aircraft, rather than
returning to England, flew instead to bases in North Africa in an experiment
called “shuttle bombing”, was promised extensive repair and maintenance
facilities there, but instead found the “bases” were little more than dirt
strips. Although this resulted in several more B-17s being written off, the
hard-driving LeMay insisted that his damaged and depleted force stick with
their original mission of bombing a target near Bordeaux in France on their way
back to England, which they did several days later. One of LeMay's pilots who "liberated" a donkey while in North Africa told the control tower at his home base in England, "I'm coming in with a frozen ass."
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| Schweinfurt from the air |
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| Schweinfurt from the ground |
Because the factories at Schweinfurt, although heavily damaged, were far
from being destroyed and German ball bearing production was considered such a
critical war resource, the Americans decided to attack Schweinfurt a second
time on October 14, 1943. The results were worse than that of the August 17
mission, with over 70 B-17s being shot down and most of the rest damaged to
various degrees and many never flying again.
After this, the Americans
finally had enough. The heavily armed B-17s and B-24s, regardless of the
tactics they employed, were clearly no match for the single and twin-engine
German fighters. The YB-40, a B-17 modified to serve as a gunship with up to 18
.50 caliber machine guns, was a failure because being so heavily loaded with machine
guns and ammunition, it couldn’t keep up with the formations it was supposed to
protect. However, the so-called “chin” turret on the nose was incorporated with
several other features into the definitive version of the Flying Fortress, the B-17G.
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| YB-40 |
No more American heavy bombers appeared until early the next year, while
the Germans, under heavy pressure from all fronts, were reduced to impotence.
Anti-aircraft artillery, or flak, began to replace German fighters as the big
bomber’s biggest opponents. Many American fighter pilots, lacking opposition from German fighters, were lost while attacking ground targets.
All of these air raids, while extremely costly to the Americans and failing
in their primary purpose, were not without gain and had immediate effects. The
German minister for war production, Albert Speer (who should have swung like
the rest of them, but was handsome and charming, and charmed his way out of the
noose) said after the war that he worried more about American bombing by day
than the British bombing by night. Speer said that from the summer of 1943
onward, the air space over Germany had effectively become another war front due
to the resources required to defend it; hundreds of planes, thousands of men
and guns, millions of rounds of ammunition, and most critically, millions of
gallons of fuel that could have been put to use elsewhere were deployed against
the American and British heavy bombers. Speer also said that had the Americans
concentrated on a single target until it was completely destroyed rather than
attacking sporadically, the war would have been shortened by a considerable amount of time. The airmen suffered severely, with several tens of thousands of them being killed and many more wounded and/or taken prisoner, but their efforts resulted in many instances like the picture below.
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| The end of the war in Dresden |
