Up Above the Clouds to Die: World War II's most spectacular air battle

Description: Up Above the Clouds to DieA tragic error. An epic battle. An oral history. World War II's Most Spectacular Air Battle35 B-24s vs. 100-plus FW-190 and Me-109s Read an excerpt “Another fighter came up under the tail of Isom’s ship but couldn’t get him so he swung around hard to his left and came in at us at 2 o’clock, with all his guns blazing . . .” --Paul Pouliot, co-pilot, Mercer's crew “There were planes blowing up. I saw engines go flying out of their holes. I saw parachutes. Parts of planes. It was just one hell of a mess. And we had our .50-caliber guns, we had eight of them shooting like hell. This is above 20,000 feet.” -- George Noorigian, bombardier, Mercer's crew “I flew alongside my victim and stared at the meter-high flames which were pouring out of this Liberator all the way back beyond the elevator. Then this great machine clumsily laid itself over on its back and went down.” -- Ernst Schroeder, fighter pilot, Jagdeschweder 4Chapter 1: Bandits at 6 O'Clock On the morning of September 27, 1944, thirty-nine B-24 Liberators of the 445th Bomb Group were scheduled for a mission from their base at Tibenham, England. Their target: Kassel, Germany; specifically, the Henschel factory where the dreaded Tiger tank was assembled. Four planes aborted, leaving 35 bombers to join up with some 280 other bombers from the Second Air Division.The target was obscured by a thick layer of clouds, causing the group to rely on a radar machine that enabled through-the-clouds bombing. Although there are several theories about what caused the group’s lead plane to fly off course, the most widely accepted explanation is that the radar machine malfunctioned.At the initial point, where the planes were to begin the bomb run, the lead plane made too wide a turn. Thirty-four planes had little choice but to follow, and the group became separated from the bomber stream.Major Don McCoy, the command pilot, now had to make a decision: Should he lead the group to a secondary target, or turn around and pick up the tail end of the bomber stream. He opted for the former. It was a decision that would cost him his life, along with the lives of 116 other flyers.Jack Mercer, a pilot; and Paul Pouliot, his co-pilot, wrote their accounts of the battle soon after it took place. I interviewed bombardier George Noorigian in 1999. Ernst Schroeder, a German fighter pilot, wrote his account for a 1989 issue of the 8th Air Force News. Jack Mercer And there we were – 26,000 feet, 10:06 a.m., Sept. 27, 1944, somewhere south of Kassel, Germany, flying above a nine-tenths overcast – and then “BOOM!”We had just completed our group turn away from the target and were beginning to get the formation tightened up. On this day we were flying the No. 3 position on the wing of squadron leader Cecil Isom. The officers in Isom’s crew shared the same Quonset hut with us and were good friends.Just then tail gunner Harry Lied broke in on the intercom with “Bandits at 6 o’clock level, ten or twelve across.” And thus began the most hectic eight to ten minutes imaginable, followed by two hours of “walking on eggshells” flying an aircraft that was a virtual time bomb.I immediately began an intercom check to assure all crew members were alerted, but before completing the “check-in,” Lied interrupted – “They’re firing – looks like their wings are on fire, they’re closing fast …” but the intercom went dead before he completed his message. Without the intercom I had no idea of the degree of destruction going on around us but I did see that the sky was filled with gun bursts like flak. My concentration immediately centered on those things necessary to keep us flying.We had taken a number of hits I knew. The controls went slack, the No. 2 engine began to run very rough and I could see the oxygen pressure had dropped considerably. As I struggled to find our problems I quickly realized formation flying was out of the question, and we had separated from Isom – about 200 feet below and to his left rear. I engaged the autopilot and to ensure adequate flying speed increased RPM and boost. By then we had FW-190s swarming around us and our whole plane was shaking from the firing of our .50s.While we were alerting the crew, co-pilot Paul Pouliot, who had been standing by on the fighter channels throughout the mission, began to contact fighter groups. The German fighters’ first pass knocked out all of our radios just as he made first contact, but Paul did not realize this immediately. He was trying so hard to reach someone he got red in the face as if he were trying to yell at them in frustration. So neither Paul nor radio operator Bob Bennett could let anyone know our position and situation.Basically the German fighters attacked en masse from the rear, lobbing their 20-millimeter shells into our formation until they came in range of our .50s, then they peeled off and came up under our formation – hanging on their props as they pumped shells into our bellies uncontested. This confirmed that they knew our ball turrets had been removed (to improve handling characteristics at high altitudes – and it sure did make the 24s easier to fly in formation). But the ball turrets wouldn’t have helped much this day – there were just too many German fighters.By then I could begin to sense the unbelievable catastrophe taking place in the sky to our right and high. Our position in the formation on the extreme low left gave us a near complete view of the entire group that was left – but all I could see was Isom. Planes on fire, planes blowing up, parachutes cascading from damaged planes, 20-mm shell bursts like heavy flak, smoke – but the most eerie – the sight of two groups of four props corkscrewing forward from their ships but maintaining formation, and then slowly turning over to a horizontal plane as they lost forward momentum and began floating downward like loose windmill blades. No doubt these aircraft were lost because pilots did not follow proper procedures for increasing power rapidly. They sheared their props by ramming thrust to the wall before increasing RPMs sufficiently.In the ensuing air battle we encountered two special situations which we will always remember. Apparently one of the FW-190s misjudged his vertical attack from below on Isom’s ship which was about 200 feet ahead of the position we were able to maintain. He nearly stalled out, then rolled out directly towards us at 12 o’clock level firing wildly when he saw he could not complete his attack on Isom. Both Paul and I were trying frantically to get some gunner’s attention, but what can you really do to contact a gunner some 20 feet away when you have no means of communicating? Here was this guy looking right down our throat firing away like mad and we could do nothing. We both knew we had been had! But suddenly both the nose gunner (Ted Hoiten) and top turret (flight engineer Kenneth Kribs) picked this guy up. They both fired in a continuous burst for such a long time I wondered why their guns didn’t burn up or jam. Finally after what seemed like an eternity this guy blew up – and we flew safely through his debris.Near the middle of the attack I found an FW-190 camped very close under our left wing – far enough forward that I could look very clearly into his cockpit (nearly could read his instruments). We knew previously that the Germans were wanting a PFF (or radar) ship, and this guy was apparently looking us over. He was able to get in a position where neither the left waist gunner, the top turret nor the nose turret could touch him because the Jerries knew our ball turrets had been removed.He looked quite comfortable sitting so close under our wing knowing our guns could not touch him. Boy, I’ll remember that portrait – the piercing eyes looking out over his oxygen mask, his goggles on top of the black helmet – and again so clear that I could have read his instruments if I had the time to look more closely. Oh, how I wished for the .45 they took away from us before D-Day. I would have even used the “Very” pistol or maybe thrown a rock or something if I had it. Just to do something.I used the autopilot aileron control to lower the left wing towards the 190 as quickly as possible. Apparently the pilot flinched and drifted from his safe position so that Harry Wheaton (left waist gunner) got a good shot at him. Suddenly, without any sign of damage to the FW-190, the canopy came off and the pilot ejected into space – no more than 100 feet from us. Apparently Harry’s shots hit his ejection control. The last I saw of the German pilot his chute had opened and the 190 was headed straight down, still with no outward appearance of damage.As soon as we could be sure the attack was over I asked Paul and Kribs to check on each crew member and for damages. I wasn’t about to leave the cockpit so long as we didn’t know what was wrong. I tried to stay close to Isom (the only remaining ship in our squadron) but could only keep him in sight – formation was out of the question. George Noorigian Mercer was up in the front. I was in the back, in the waist. Normally I would be in the nose with the navigator, but the B-24s are different. The 17 had room up there, but the 24s were terrible for the bombardier. They had a nose turret, so you couldn’t see anything. You had to look down underneath. But when you flew on a mission, you didn’t have to worry about bombing yourself. The lead bombardier, just like the lead navigator, the lead pilot, you just followed them. So instead of being up there in that hole, they said I could go into the turret in the front. But there wasn’t much room, and if I had to get out of it, forget about it. So I said, “Give me a waist position.” So I went into the right waist. And I wanted a gun, a .50-caliber gun. In case something comes up, I wanted a gun.That’s where I flew most of my missions. And according to Mercer, we were credited with seven planes, and I was credited with one Focke-Wulf 190. And the co-pilot verified it. See, the co-pilot was on the right side, and this fellow was coming in. They were coming in so close, they were coming in between us. Not this long-distance, they were right on top of you. In fact, I looked up, out the window, and I saw this FW-190 with the big swastika on it, and I could see the pilot, real clear. He was hunched over.And that day, the squadron was in the low position. There’s low and medium high and high. Usually you wanted to go into the high position because of anti-aircraft, but this day we were in the low position, which was a good idea because the German fighters came from up above [actually they originally came from below] and they swooped down on the squadron, on the whole group.Within less than ten minutes, 25 of us were shot down. There were planes blowing up. I saw engines go flying out of their holes. I saw parachutes. Parts of planes. It was just one hell of a mess. And we had our .50-caliber guns, we had eight of them, shooting like hell. This is above 20,000 feet. It was one hell of a mess.We got one shot from a Messerschmitt that came in. He was on the left side. It wasn’t on my side. He came in low, and the Messerschmitt had four 20-millimeter cannons. Four of them! Along the wing. And he gave us a shot there, the one hit the tail, you know the double tails they have? The one hit the tail, and it made a mess out of the tail.The second one came in – I was sitting when I was firing. There’s no seats in the back, and we had boxes of what they call chaff. The chaff you distributed in certain positions, and what that did was knock out the radar. They would throw out bunches of it, and from the ground, especially when you had cloud cover, it would look like there’s a squadron of planes there. So we had boxes of chaff and I sat on a box with my .50-caliber gun. Another one came in on the side of the plane, blew a hole I could put my head in it, and it went into the box. It went into the box and blew up. But the box of chaff, what it did, it blew in such a way that it blew the other way. It’s a lucky thing I’m still here. And when it blew up, one section of the plane in the back was all full of oxygen tanks because we had to be on oxygen over 15,000 feet. And it blew out five or six tanks. Blew them out! Everything is white smoke. And the radio went out.You didn’t know what the hell was going on in the front. Everything was white smoke. And I had a flak jacket on. We all had parachutes, but we could not put the parachute on because the parachute was attached to the flak jacket in the front, so when you put your flak jacket on, there was nothing you could do unless you took the parachute off. So I said to the other gunner, “Take the damn jacket off! This goddamn plane’s gonna blow up!”He took it off so I could put the chute on. I didn’t want to be up in the air with a flak jacket with no chute. You didn’t know whether you were gonna get out alive or not. But it blew out the tanks over there, and it made a hole in the side of the plane. And another one came through the bomb bays, where the gasoline tanks are, it made a hole in one of the bomb bays and went into one of the tanks. It knocked out part of the hydraulic system. But it went into the tank, and since there was no fire, it made a big hole in the tanks. Those are self-sealing tanks, but this hole that went in, the 100 octane gas was just going all over the plane. Hundred octane. Eight .50-caliber guns going.I was ready to jump out of the goddamn thing. The plane was gonna blow up. And another one came in and it went into one of the engines, like Mercer said, it hit the prop. And when we landed, you should have seen the mark that was on that prop. But that’s what happened. So I’m here by the grace of God. Paul Pouliot Early in the morning on September 27, about 3:30, the “Gremlin” (as we call the boy from operations) came into our Nissen hut. The door creaked lightly and I heard his shuffling footstep in the dark going around the edge of George’s bed to turn on the lights. Someone was going on a mission. The lights went on and he came toward our end of the barracks, shook Jack, our pilot, and said to be ready for briefing at 4:30.Instead of getting up immediately, I covered up my head with the blankets for a last luxurious minute in the sack, all the time shivering at the thought of getting up in the cold. Finally we could put it off no longer. Jack was the first out, as usual; myself next, then George (the bombardier) and finally the boy who really loves his sack time, Milton (a good navigator even so).I went to the washroom to scoop a couple handfuls of water on my face, then stubbed my way down the long path to the mess hall, where the boys were already waiting in line. I pushed a plateful of messy looking powdered eggs aside, and ate a peanut butter sandwich between gulps of G.I. coffee. We hurried so as not to miss the briefing.Cigarettes were tossed at the briefing room door, no smoking allowed. The lights blinded us temporarily as we entered. It was crowded as usual, but not very noisy. Everyone is tense and anxious just then, to know where we are going. At 4:30 sharp, the door was closed and the briefing officer stood up. A hush came over everyone, as he raised the curtain and disclosed our route on the large map covering the front wall. The target was Kassel, Germany.He gave us the usual briefing information – route to the target and back, flak, possible enemy fighters, escort, bomb run, target photos. All in all, it didn’t look so bad. After getting material from weather and operations, we split up to get specialized briefings for additional data. Jack and I stayed with the other pilots to get information on taxiing times and position.Together with the others again in the locker room. I went to the equipment room and asked Shorty to give me a 34-38 heated suit and gloves. The pants would barely fit as usual. We waited until everyone was ready, then a waiting truck took us to our plane. It took a while for everyone to make sure his individual equipment was in working order. That done, we assembled in the dark to talk over the mission. All agreed it would not be so bad. The boys did their usual amount of fooling until starting time came.At 6:15 we got into the airplane. After a few backfires all four engines purred smoothly. We ran the props through and checked the mags, making sure that all the instruments were in good order. Brakes off, and we taxied into position in the line of waiting planes. At 6:30 promptly the first 24 of the group lumbered down the runway, using most of the field’s length. One by one, the others took off and started the climb to assembly altitude. Finally, our turn. Racing engines strained against the brakes, and we were accelerating down the runway. The plane rose beautifully into the air. Wheels up, then flaps. I increased the power to climb and get into formation, which is the most laborious flying of the whole mission. A single red flare identified our group. To save gasoline, we cut down the power again and got into No. 3 position of the low left squadron, then spent some time circling over England before heading for the North Sea, according to schedule.We flew a straight course and made landfall. No flak at the enemy coast, so we felt pretty good. A heavy layer of low cloud formed a complete undercast. All the time we were climbing to briefed altitude, finally leveling off at 22,000 feet. The group formation really looked good today as we resumed our course to the target.After 35 minutes we turned to the right to reach the initial point of the bomb run. Bombing was to be by pathfinder methods. All the squadrons got into formation. Finally a turn to the left, and the lead ship opened his bomb bay doors, a signal for all the rest to do the same. At this point everyone is at a peak of nervousness, expecting to see flak at any moment. For some reason my fingers got very cold, and I borrowed the radio operator’s gloves to keep from freezing. I was flying the bomb run today, so I got into a close formation with the lead ship.After what seemed like ages, the smoke bombs from the lead ship left and it was bombs away. The smoke streamers looked like rockets. We made a turn to the right and resumed our course out. Again I remarked how good the formation looked.Everything was quiet all around for about ten minutes. Then suddenly the tail gunner of Isom’s ship to our right fired at something, and our own plane started to quiver as the gunners opened fire. Small white puffs of smoke appeared throughout our formation. I had my radio tuned to the fighter channel, and called for escort. They answered immediately. I said we were being attacked by bandits, but before I could give them our position, we were hit in the waist and the radio went out.To our right was just plain hell. Planes were going down, some in flames, others just exploding. The air was full of exploding 20 millimeter shells. I thought the whole German air force must be in the air at the same time. The tail gunner said later they were coming in 15 abreast, wave after wave, and I saw them as they broke away past us, iron black crosses standing out on wings and fuselage. The first pass they made took most of our squadron with them. Isom’s ship and ours were left with no one to protect us from the rear, and still the Nazis came at us.Our plane shook like a leaf in a good blizzard from the guns all firing at the same time. On the right, a B-24 with its No. 3 tank on fire blew up and three of the men got out of the waist. The others didn’t have a chance.The air was full of debris of burning planes and chutes. We saw engines torn away from their mounts on one plane. At least three of the boys pulled their chutes too quickly, the silk caught on fire and they plummeted to earth.The enemy had a rough time of it also. On my right where the main fight was occurring I saw a FW-190 going down in flames. A German plane in a death spin crashed into another enemy fighter and they went down together. The whole scene was unreal and unbelievable.Meanwhile our nose gunner, Ted Hoiten, was frantically busy keeping the fighters off Isom’s tail. His plane was slightly higher than ours and a little to the right. FW’s were coming up from beneath and trying to get him from the belly. When one of them stalled out in front of us I saw Ted’s guns blazing and his turret shaking from the long burst that he gave the Nazi as he hung there trying to pump Isom’s ship with 20-mm shells. Then the fighter caught on fire, fell over on its back and went down to disappear in the clouds.Another fighter came up under the tail of Isom’s ship but couldn’t get him so he swung around hard to his left and came in at us at 2 o’clock, with all his guns blazing. It looked as though the leading edge of his wing was on fire. I thought that we had had it, but our engineer, Kenneth Kribs, turned his top turret violently and took on the attacking plane. Again our plane shook from a long burst. The Nazi plane kept on coming closer and closer and Kribs still kept shooting; then suddenly there was nothing in front of us but debris. Another attack came in from the left waist and I could feel several hits. That one destroyed our controls, damaged our rudders, hit the hydraulic reservoir, and broke several of the oxygen bottles in the waist. Jack switched on the automatic pilot, and we found we could still fly. Then we waited for another attack, but none came.Ernst Schroeder“A Storm Fighter’s View of 27 September 1944” is reprinted from the 8th Air Force News of September 1989. It was the result of a request by Dr. Helmut Schnatz, and was translated by Donald Mathie of Boardman, Ohio. On the 27th of September 1944, our group took off from Finsterwalde (our regular base was at Erfurt-Binderleben) in FW-190s at 10:00 a.m. for an enemy engagement against a bomber air raid consisting of perhaps thirty airplanes. We had, according to my memory, an overcast sky and had to climb through a relatively thin cloud layer at about 1,500 to 2,000 meters (4,920-6,560 feet) altitude in order to get to the Americans, flying at about 7,500 to 8,000 meters (24,600 to 26,240 feet). We were led to the bombers by the Y-Command of the fighter division.Because we were flying over the clouds, we could not see the ground. The orders often changed our course direction, so we never knew where we really were. Normally, a pilot would look on his maps for locations which were radioed to us. But a pilot of a single-seat fighter could not do that; he had to concentrate on the flight of the group and the steering of the plane.I remember that around 11:00 a.m. (German time, 1000 hours British time) we were flying farther and farther west. The ground commander became more and more agitated and said we now had to see the enemy planes in front of us. Indeed we did.After a short time, we saw a large group of B-24 Liberator bombers, at our altitude, like a swarm of mosquitoes, flying right in front of us, going in the same direction. The silhouettes very soon became bigger and bigger because of our great speed.Suddenly several of these big ships began to burn and to plunge down with fire and smoke – even before we had fired a single shot. A fighter unit flying ahead of us had begun the attack.Immediately the sky was full of parachutes and wreckage, and we were flying right into it.My squadron leader and I had installed (for trial in combat) a new aiming device. We had a gadget built into our airplanes that included very rapid running gyros that automatically calculated the necessary aiming allowances. Therefore, one could shoot rather precisely and effectively from a greater distance than otherwise. The result was impressive in my case.Even before I had covered the remaining distance to my bomber, it already stood in flame as a result of my six machine guns. Both left engines of the bomber were burning. The airplane turned on its side and plunged. Also the neighboring machine was already smoking from a previous attack. I only needed to change aim to shoot again. Then this one stood in bright flames. The new aiming device was functioning astonishingly. I was so surprised and fascinated that I flew alongside my victim and stared at the meter-high flames which were pouring out of this Liberator all the way back beyond the elevator. Then this great machine clumsily laid itself over on its back and went down. All of this happened much faster than you can read in here.In view of this surprising success, I naturally wanted to know precisely where my two opponents would fall. This was necessary because a double shootdown of two four-engine bombers (they were also my only ones) was for us in 1944 something exceptional.Therefore, I circled the crashing wreckage of my two adversaries in large downward running spirals. But my intention was hindered in a most horrible way, because the entire sky was filled with fliers in parachutes, who had jumped, and small and large chunks of airplane debris which suddenly appeared in front of my windshield at my high diving speed of 600 to 700 km/h. I truly had to close my eyes often because I believed with certainty I would run into something.Under me came the cloud layer through which here and there the surface of the Earth was quickly shimmering – closer and closer. Through this cloud cover rose ten to fifteen columns of smoke from the explosions of the crashing aircraft. I flew through the relatively thin cloud layer, which now spread itself out at an altitude of about 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) above the ground.Below me lay a valley with forest covered mountainsides. Through the valley ran a stretch of double railroad tracks and on it stood a long train. The smoke of the locomotive climbed vertically. This image has clearly imprinted itself on my mind until today. When I close my eyes, I see it clearly before me.Where had the two bombers fallen? Everywhere there was burning wreckage. The fields were covered with white parachutes, where American – and certainly also German – flyers had come down.I arrived at almost 100 meters above the ground and could clearly see the crewmen who had bailed out running through the fields. When I flew over them, they stood and clearly raised their hands high. Also I saw people already – perhaps also soldiers and policemen – running toward them to take them captive. My intention to recognize the locality through some distinguishing landmark failed completely.Something suddenly happened which quickly broke me away from my intention. I was, as stated, about 100 meters above the ground when diagonally from the front an airplane with a yellow nose shot towards me – an American fighter unmistakably of the P-51B type. In the wink of an eye we had raced closely by each other on an opposite course and hurried both of our machines again on an opposite course, so that we flew towards one another like jousting knights of the Middle Ages.Both of us opened fire simultaneously with our big caliber weapons. The American immediately made a hit on my tail section. My weapons, on the other hand, failed after a few shots. When we had flown by one another, the maneuver began anew. Since I could not fire a shot, I began to fly with evasive movements the moment the American opened fire, so that he could no longer aim correctly. It was a strange feeling each time looking into the flash of his four 12.7-cm guns. After we had played this little game for five or six times, there was only the possibility to fly low over the ground immediately after his flight over me and to rush off immediately. I was successful. After his turn, in which he always pulled up sharply, the camouflage paint on the top of my plane made it difficult for the American to find my plane against the dappled ground. I landed after minutes of fearful sweating at 11:30 a.m. at the Langensala Airport after a total of ninety minutes of flight time. On inspection my machine showed some hits in the tail section. A part of the covering of my rudder was torn off. The damage was so slight that I could take off again at noon. I landed at 12:15 p.m. at Erfurt-Bindersleben, where my bird had to be repaired in the hangar. _ _ _

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