Düren, October 20, 1943
OF ALL THE 303rd’s crews roused out of bed at 0730 for the mission on October 20, 1943, few relished the day more than the “short timers” of Lt. Jack Hendry’s crew. For three men in the crew—Lt. Bernard McNamara, the navigator; Lt. Richard Webster, the bombardier; and Sgt. James Brown, the radioman—this was the end of the line, mission number 25. For three more—Jack Hendry himself; Sgt. Loran Biddle, his engineer; and Sgt. John Doherty—it was mission number 24.
The Army Air Force was always alert for favorable publicity—no more so than in the idle days after Second Schweinfurt, when public opinion about daylight bombing hung in the balance. Thus, when an Associated Press newspaperman arrived at Molesworth a few days after Hendry’s heroic return from that mission, his crew’s situation seemed a perfect success story in the making. This was one of the crews that was going to make it, and they would do so in a way that made great newspaper copy.
After meeting Lt. Hendry and the test of the crew, the reporter learned of Hendry’s fondness for the dangerous “diamond” position in the squadron formation and put together a story entitled: “‘Tail-End Charlie’ Has System for ‘Bringing ‘Em Back Alive.’”
Sgt. Jim Brown was especially looking forward to his last raid. Twenty-seven years old, he had enlisted in the war and had declined a Stateside posting as a gunnery school instructor because he felt his proper place was in a combat billet overseas. He now had very strong reasons for getting back home to the small town of St. Mary’s, Georgia. He had a fiancée whom he planned to marry as soon as his combat days were done. He had a good business, which he and his older brother Charles had built up. And he had his widowed mother, for whom he felt a great responsibility as the sole unmarried son. Brown had even written to her on October 18th, saying he would “have good news soon.”
Lt. Jack Hendry’s crew in front of their favorite ship, the War Bride, B-17F 42-5360, VK
Q. Bottom row, L-R, Sgt. John Arasin, waist gunner; Sgt. John J. Doherty, waist/tail gunner; Sgt. James J. Brown, radioman; Sgt. Olwin C. Humphries, ball turret gunner (KIA 7/30/43); Sgt. Howard L. Abney, tail gunner (WIA 8/19/43); Sgt. Loran C Biddle, engineer L-R back row, Lt. Calder L. Wise, copilot; Lt. Hendry, pilot; Lt. Kruse, Instructor Pilot; Lt. Bernard T. McNamara; navigator; and Lt. Richard E. Webster, bombardier. (Photo courtesy John W. Hendry, Jr.)
Brown had worked out very well as Jack Hendry’s radio operator. Hendry saw him as “one of my crew’s two mainstays. Loran Biddle was the other one, but Brown was the oldest and the most mature. I considered him a good friend, and I had the very highest regard for him.”
John Doherty held Brown in equally high esteem: “He was very intelligent, and he seemed to have a very sound and basic understanding of life. He was a person who would always go out of his way to help you, and he had a very positive, dynamic, magnetic-type personality. He was the one we all seemed to gather around. He was the leader.”
Everyone on Hendry’s crew was happy for Jim Brown when they arrived at their aircraft. The War Bride was still under repair, so the crew was assigned to B-17F 41-24629, but no one seemed to mind. The bombers were to have continuous Spitfire and P-47 escort to and from the target, and “it was supposed to be a milk run,” Jack Hendry recalls.
“We weren’t expecting any trouble,” John Doherty adds, “and when we got into the plane I shook hands with Brown. This was his last trip.”
The First Division was leading the Eighth on a PFF strike against Düren, a “factory-railroad centre” to the east of Aachen, Germany. The 41st Wing was Division lead, with the 379th lead group, the 384th high and the 303rd low. The 360th was the Group’s lead Squadron and the Group Leader was Major Walter K. Shayler, the Squadron CO.
While Luscious Lady was under repair, Hullar’s crew drew a 360th ship named Dark Horse, B-17F 42-29498, in the tail-end Charlie slot of the high 359th Squadron. Don Gamble, newly promoted to Captain and fresh from a week’s R&R (“Am anxious to get going after rest home and laying around”), led the low 358th Squadron in Sky Wolf along with Lt. Bill McSween.
To their left in the No. 3 slot was Lt. William Hartigan’s crew on their seventh raid in Charley Horse. The Squadron’s second element was led by Lt. Calder Wise and Lt. Bill Fort in Yankee Doodle Dandy, with Lt. Hendry’s crew to their left in the No. 6 squadron slot.
The Group got 19 B-17s off beginning at 1100 and had a reasonably good flight over the Channel, though Major Shayler had to radio the 379th Wing Leader to slow down so the 303rd could tuck tightly in formation before crossing the enemy coast.
Things continued to go well as the formation entered France; Captain Gamble noted: “Spits take us in part of the way and P-47s pick us up. Form good close top cover.”
But John Doherty “did not feel comfortable as we got into formation. To me it seemed that we were boxed in tight. Most of the missions we flew were tail-end Charlie. It gave us more flexibility. We were looser. In our position on this day it seemed that we were boxed in tight when it came to maneuverability.”
The trouble began when the formation ran into clouds. Bill Fort recalls that “We were having a time keeping our formation together in the clouds,” and Elmer Brown recorded that they “got so bad we could not even fly formation, so we turned and started for home.”
It was in these conditions that the Germans struck. Major Shayler reported that “We encountered a cloud bank which stretched upward to 28,000 feet or higher at Cambrai and we climbed to 27,500 feet without reaching the top. While climbing, we turned north and it was at this point that we were hit by enemy fighters.”
There were many witnesses to what followed, but the accounts vary, as is inevitable when a group falls victim to a well-executed surprise attack. Elmer Brown reported that “about 15 to 20 Jerry planes dropped out of the clouds at about the twelve-thirty high position, and took us by surprise. They made just one sweep, and knocked down two planes from our low squadron.”
303rd Bomb Group Mission Route(s): Düren, October 20, 1943. (Map courtesy Waters Design Associates, Inc.)
Major Shayler wrote: “These E/A came down through the thin layer of high cloud, and were not seen until within 500 yards of our Group. It is estimated that there were six to 12 Me-109s and they were painted gray to resemble Spitfires.”
Bud Klint saw “a group of about 20 of Goering’s yellow-nosed FW-190s pour off the top of that cloud bank, make one pass at our Group, and dive for home. In that one sweep, they took two Forts out of our Group.”
Those with the most immediate experience of the ambush were the crews of the low squadron. Lt. McSween recorded that “Low clouds forced us to climb up. We couldn’t see ahead. A low fighter sweep hopped the clouds and hit our Squadron. They knocked down Hartigan and Hendry.”
Captain Gamble wrote: “Have to climb to 28,000 over a cirrostratus cloud bank. Just after we get over it about 10 enemy fighters hit us. We slide over under lead squadron and do a quick pull-up on the way to miss several 20mm shells. Hartigan, on my left wing, slides under and gets it. Ralph [Coburn] sees plane on fire—spinning down. Hendry goes down too, but we don’t know what happens to him.”
In the confusion not even Bill Fort knew what happened to Hendry, though he was flying just off Hendry’s wing. Fort remembers:
“I was in the No. 4 position. We went through one cloud bank, and then went through the next one. And then I saw four or five Me-109s. They were right level, right on us. One of them was right on our nose. We were eyeball-to-eyeball. I never saw an enemy fighter come as close in a frontal attack. How he missed us I don’t know. They all came in so fast, all we could do was yell ‘Fighters!’ and we didn’t get but a few bursts off.
“They went around, snuck back, and got in front of us to make another attack. We were ready for them this time. I know one of them got hit because he was flopping all over the sky, real erratically. I think the pilot must have been killed. When it was over and we got to looking around and getting our wits together, so to speak, we noticed that two planes were missing.”
Thus, only Jack Hendry and John Doherty can say exactly what happened to them that day. Most of the air war is a blur to Jack Hendry now, but the climax of his Eighth Air Force career is indelibly imprinted in memory.
“All of a sudden the German fighters popped out of a thin cloud bank, and they were sitting right in front of us. There were between five and ten of them. I couldn’t really identify them at first, but they got closer in split seconds and I saw they were Me-109s. I was mildly surprised because I was sort of expecting they would be our own fighters.
“Instead of coming head-on, like the Germans normally did, this group dove a little bit and then came up shooting. There wasn’t any action I could take. I couldn’t turn sideways because it would take too long to get a wing up. I couldn’t kick the rudder, because that wouldn’t do any good, either. The only thing I could do was pull up on the control column. That would work if you pulled up just at the time they commenced firing—you could judge it pretty well and take evasive action just when you figured they would open fire, about 1200 yards out. But with them coming up from below me, at close quarters, it didn’t change the deflection very much and it didn’t do any good.
“One of the 109s just raked us from stem to stem, dead center. I never saw him; he was hidden by the nose. There wasn’t much noise when we were hit—it was hard to hear with the four engines going and the earphones on—but I knew we were hit very severely because of all the vibration from the hits. The nose was broken where a 20mm came through, and it hit Webster, the bombardier, in the chest. His flak vest saved him, but he got a badly broken leg.”
Back in the tail, the fact that they were hit was about all that John Doherty knew. As he remembers now:
“Somebody called out fighters at eleven o’clock. In the tail I was unable to see this. A few seconds later, a 20mm exploded and hit me in the leg. It was just shrapnel, not the main force of the shell. I was on my knees and so I didn’t know how bad I was hurt.
“I saw the plane that shot us. I gave him a short burst, but he was too far away and at too much of an angle for it to do any good. I was trying to see how bad my leg was hit but I couldn’t see through my coveralls. I put my finger in the hole and could feel blood. But I didn’t feel as though I was hit too badly and I was able to move around because I was on my knees the whole time.
“But at the same time the shell took my intercom system out. I turned around and I had this hole in the side of the plane from where the 20mm exploded. It was right along behind me to my left, where the intercom box was supposed to be. I tried to call the crew and I could get no answer.”
Fire was the next thing the pilot and tail gunner both sensed. As Hendry recalls, “The shells started a fire in the gas tank of our left wing, inboard of No. 2 engine, right outside my cockpit window. I could look down and see holes in the top of the wing. There were a number of them about three to four inches in diameter, and I could see flames underneath in the tank.
“The plane was still flying all right, and looking out I could even see England. It really hurt when I realized I didn’t have a chance to fight the plane back. I felt like cutting the engine and gliding back. You could have cut off all four engines, and that wouldn’t have bothered me one iota. I felt I could take that B-17 and land it anywhere. I wasn’t afraid of ditching either.
“But with that fire I knew we had to bail out. I had seen too many other planes where fires would break out in the fuel tanks, with the flames going back to the tail, and the wing finally just broke off. I didn’t want to sit on top of a burning fuel tank. So I told everybody, ‘We got fire in the gas tank, so bail out.’”
There was no way that Doherty could hear this in the tail but he saw the flames soon enough. “I pressed my face real hard against the Plexiglas and looked back over my right, on the plane’s left over the stabilizer. I knew we had been hit on that side because it was my right leg that was hit. And these tongues of flame seemed to be coming out over the aileron or someplace.
“It wasn’t a great big flame but you could see tongues of flame coming back. I presume the wind was blowing it. It was coming from under the wing or out from the end of the wing. That’s when I decided it was time to get out of there. Something told me it was time to get out.”
Up in the front of the stricken B-17 the men were doing just that. As Hendry recalls, “I gave the crew about a minute and a half to bail out, and then I went myself. The main spar on the B-17’s wing was pretty heavy, so it would take a while for the fire to get to it and cause the wing to fold up. Since the gas tank hadn’t exploded, I figured an explosion wasn’t imminent, and that I had a little time.
“The bombardier and the navigator went out the nose and Harper, the copilot, did the same. He went out after the bombardier and navigator, but the engineer later told me that he saw Harper falling with his chute trailing behind. We wore parachute harnesses, and we had little chest packs which were tucked under our seats. I figure bullets must have hit his chute and damaged it. He died. I didn’t know him that well, but he came from Jacksonville, like I did.
“I grabbed my parachute and clipped it on. When I bailed out, I doubled up and dived headfirst through the forward escape hatch. I knew I was at around 25,000 feet, and I was falling with legs and head up and rear end down. I didn’t see the plane at all after jumping out. I looked over my shoulder at the ground, and went through several layers of cloud. I tried to judge when I was at five or six thousand feet, and pulled the ripcord. The chute opened nicely.
“I came down on the corner of a Spanish-type house with a flat roof that had a little parapet wall around the edge. I stuck out my foot to hit the corner of the roof and sprained my ankle slightly. This was in a little village near Lille on the border between France and Belgium called Vaenciens. The local people hid me in the church half a block away. I was in a little room in the church. But there was a German fighter base on the south side of town and there were quite a few Germans in town. They picked me up in about 15 minutes, and I was sent to a POW camp in Sagen, Germany.”
Meanwhile, John Doherty was making his own exit from the burning B-17.
“I checked all my snaps on my parachute, and I hooked my regular shoes on my Mae West—tying the shoes on our Mae Wests was something we figured after we had been in combat a while. We used to discuss these things in the barracks. Before I went I took about three or four big gulps of oxygen. Then I went out the little escape door under the right stabilizer.
“I went out headfirst. In training they told us to be careful not to pull the ripcord of the chute too soon leaving the tail because the chute would come up and catch in the stabilizer. They told us to count to ten. In the tail we were using a back-type chute, which they had always told us not to pull out at a 90-degree angle, but to pull up, so we wouldn’t bind the cable and would be sure the chute would open. On the end of the ripcord was a steel ring that you could put your hand right through. When I pulled my ripcord, I pulled it so hard that I struck myself in the chin with this iron ring, and knocked myself out. That ring took all the skin off of my throat under the chin.
“The first thing I knew when I came to was that my chute was open and I was in my stocking feet. My chute had snapped me out of my flying boots and my electrically heated felt shoes. I was drifting down, and I looked around to see if I could see the planes, our plane, or other chutes. I could see absolutely nothing, no planes, no chutes, nothing. The thought struck me that apparently I had bailed out on the crew. I had no instructions to bail out, and this bothered me very much, believe me it did.
“But there was nothing I could do about it then, and here came two Me-109s, and the first thing I thought was that they were going to shoot me out of the parachute. At this time they had been shooting parachutes and setting them on fire, and then of course you would just drop. So I was just waving back and forth as much as I could, trying evasive action in the chute. They didn’t fire, but they did try to tip my chute. They buzzed me, trying to tip the chute so it would lose its air. They made two passes and left. So I drifted on down to the ground, and when I got to the ground I could see people following me.”
Sgt. Doherty was on his way to a rendezvous with the Belgian resistance, but while he floated down, the Group’s gunners were adding a couple of yellow German parachutes to the white American ones by getting two of the Me-109s, plus a “probable” and a “damaged.” Moments later, the P-47 escorts engaged the retreating Germans. But none of this compensated for the loss of two B-17s with 21 men aboard.
As the Wing headed for home, the raid continued to go badly.
Clouds and improper coordination among the Wing’s groups kept any bombs from getting on target. Major Shayler wrote:
“I called on VHF to the Combat Wing Leader for instructions and received no reply. I fell into position in Combat Wing formation and followed the lead Group. Without warning, the lead ship fired a red flare and announced over VHF ‘turning on IP.’
“I took interval and instructed my Bombardier to look for the target. We could not determine whether the target was going to be Woensdrecht or Gilze-Rijen. My bombardier picked up the airdrome at Gilze-Rijen and we started to make a bomb run on it. The lead Group fired a red flare and dropped a phosphorus bomb before the bomb release line but I was unable to see any other bombs drop from the lead Group.
“My bombardier asked if he should drop his bombs and I instructed him not to unless he was sure that it was the target. We did not drop our bombs. The formation made a left turn, we fell in behind the 379th, and began descent at 170 IAS and 500 FPM [feet per minute]. The lead Group pulled away from us during the let-down and we returned home practically abreast of the 384th Group without difficulty, with the 379th Group out ahead.”
Hullar’s crew described the outcome more prosaically. Elmer Brown wrote that “When we got almost to the English Channel, the wing commander decided to try to hit another target. So we turned into Holland to Gilze-Rijen airport. We could not see the target so we brought the bombs back.” However, he mentioned the loss of Hendry’s crew and wrote that “Webster, the bombardier, was in Squadron 81 with me at Santa Ana.”
Bud Klint noted the losses too, but tried to put a good face on the failed mission by observing: “We hauled our six 500-pounders and six bundles of incendiaries back to Molesworth rather than scatter them over the fields of the occupied Low Countries.”
The crews of the 358th Squadron were far less charitable in their assessments. Captain Don Gamble confined himself to writing about the “piss poor landing” he made, but his crew commented at interrogation: “Can’t imagine why bombs were not dropped—they should have been dropped.”
Lt. McSween was even more scathing in his notebook: “Aborted from original target, turned north and flew 90 degrees over Gilze-Rijen. Haze bad. Lead never dropped bombs. Turned around and brought bombs home. Somebody with head up and locked.”
Bill Fort believed: “We were piddling around like we were on a Sunday afternoon drive. They put the bomb bay doors down, figuring they were going to bomb an airfield down below us. Then they pulled up the bomb bay doors and we went home.”
The bad feelings from this raid festered in the Wing for a few days, finally coming to a head in a meeting called by General Travis. Bill Fort was one of those who was there:
“There was a big hullabaloo about it in a couple of days. Travis got everybody together in the theater building, and really raised some hell. Everybody was talking. There were colonels blaming each other for it, and a lot of them were lying, especially one from the 379th. He was lying like a dog.
“Travis saw they weren’t getting anywhere, and got up to talk. He said, ‘Listen, let me tell you all something for the next time you’re over there. If you’re over France, you just bomb military targets. But the next time you’re over Germany, you leave those damn bombs over there. Don’t bring those bombs back even if you have to bomb [an outhouse]. That’s all.’
“And nothing else was ever said about it.”
The denouement of the day came in stages for John Doherty, as he gradually learned what happened to the airplanes and people he had searched for so earnestly after coming to in his parachute.
“At one of the houses I was taken to, I was told I was in the Underground and they were moving me out to Spain. I had a fake passport which said I was deaf and dumb; I had papers identifying me as a deaf and dumb shoemaker, and was to use these papers in my travels.
“I was taken to another house without anybody being able to see me. I was in the back of a truck and they backed it right up to the door. When I walked into this room in this house, there sitting on a chair was our Squadron photographer [a Sgt. Ralph Moffett].
“When I saw him, I asked him what he was doing here and he said, ‘The same thing you’re doing here.’ He told me he was flying with the crew that was flying wing on the lead ship, and that them and our crew had got taken out on the one pass with the fighters.
“And I asked him what happened to our plane, and he told me that the plane blew up. And I asked him if he saw any chutes go out of it and he could only account for four chutes. That’s all he saw.
“That gave me things to think about, but it did relieve my mind from the fact that I bailed out and left the crew. From that standpoint I felt a little better.
“Later we were to catch a train and start going to Spain. We met a girl that was about 25 years old. Our instructions were to stay about 30 feet behind her, and she would be our guide. Wherever she went, we would follow.
“So we went on the train and started going to Brussels. There we got off and followed this girl, she took us right through the Brussels railroad station—I walked within five feet of armed German guards on duty with fixed bayonets, helmets, the whole regalia—we walked right by them to what appeared to me to be the front door of the railroad station in Brussels. It was at night and it was pitch dark, no lights. And instantly this girl disappeared, she just disappeared, which wasn’t too hard in the dark. And at this point three men took over, and the deal was that we were going to stay in Brussels that night. And they took us out, me and the Squadron photographer, and they put us into a 1929 Ford. We drove for a considerable amount of time, and we came to this big house that was surrounded by steel fencing.
“It was a real fancy place. We stopped and got out and walked up to the door and knocked on the door and somebody opened it. And when the door was completely opened, right in front of me on the full length of the wall was a picture of Hitler. And as we walked in, the guy that opened the door said, ‘You are now in the hands of the German Gestapo.’
“About a month later I arrived at Stalag 17B prisoner of war camp. Upon my arrival there I found all the other members of the crew except Brown. I was the last one to get to the prison camp. I got there on Thanksgiving Day of 1943. Biddle and Hargrave were elated to see me, because they thought I was dead, so it was kind of a happy reunion even though it wasn’t a happy time.
“I was told by the crew that Brown had been killed. Hargrave told me that he and Brown was standing at the waist door of the plane, ready to jump. Brown always had this idea that maybe the door wouldn’t come off of the plane, but Hargrave said that the door was open—the hinges to the door were on this cable, and you pulled it and the two pins on the hinges would come out and the door would drop off the plane. The door was off, but Hargrave told me that as they were standing in the door the plane exploded. He was blown out and he also supposed that Brown was blown out with him, as they were both standing together at the door.
“He came to in the air and opened his chute. Whether Brown was killed in the explosion or whether when he was blown out of the plane, he didn’t come to in time to open his chute, I do not know. But a piece of me has always stayed with Brown in Germany.”*
There was a final, bitter irony to the events of October 20, 1943. Within days of John Doherty’s arrival at the POW camp, the article “‘Tail-End Charlie’ Has System For ‘Bringing ‘Em Back Alive’” appeared in newspapers all over America.
The truth was harder to take. In the ETO, there was no “system” or sure-fire way to survive.