November 26, 1943
THE MORNING OF November 26th saw the Eighth mounting its largest mission ever—633 heavy bombers were aloft, escorted by 353 P-47s and 28 P-38s. The majority of the bombers—505 from the First, Second, and Third Divisions—were heading for a PFF attack on Bremen; 128 more from the Third Division were en route to strike an industrial target in Paris.
The 303rd launched no fewer than 37 B-17s from 0835 to 0859, filling both the lead and high group positions in the first of nine wings bound for Bremen. General Travis was leading the Eighth in a PFF ship flown by Captain Jake James, and Captain Gamble’s crew was flying as deputy lead in the No. 1 position of the lead group’s high squadron aboard “old reliable,” Sky Wolf.
To Gamble’s left in the No. 3 slot of the high squadron was Lt. Bill Fort in Star Dust, and below Fort in the No. 5 slot of the lead group’s lead squadron flew Lt. Carl Fyler and crew in Dark Horse, B-17F 42-9498. Hullar’s crew led the high squadron of the high group in No. 823, the B-17F they had flown on the November 3rd Wilhelmshaven raid. With them again as copilot was Lt. Colonel Culbertson, who had bumped Bud Klint a second time, and since Mac McCormick no longer flew with the crew regularly, Elmer Brown was in the nose with a new bombardier on his second raid, Lt. E.L. Matthews. Below them in the No. 3 slot of the high group’s low squadron flew Lt. John Henderson’s crew in Hell’s Angels, with Captain Merle Hungerford as Instructor Pilot.
Lt. Bill McSween’s notebook contains a good description of the journey into the target area:
“We took off early and climbed to 10,000 feet. We took the usual route out just north of No. 4 splasher. The target course wasn’t followed exactly as briefed over the North Sea. Due to high clouds our climb was up to 27,500 feet…Our DR turning point was passed by about 15 to 20 degrees before turning to the enemy coast, where again we were left of course, hitting an island to left of course.
303rd Bomb Group Mission Route(s): Bremen, November 26, 1943. (Map courtesy Waters Design Associates, Inc.)
“After flying back west for a few minutes we made a left turn on to the bomb run at 100 degrees, magnetic heading. There was a 10/10 undercast, and vapor trails were the worst I ever saw…The temperature was at least –50 degrees C. and possibly lower…Ice on windows made visibility practically nil.”
Captain Gamble commented on this too: “Wag, Ralph, and Bill’s windows frosted up bad. Was about 50 to 55 degrees below Centigrade.”
It was in these terrible conditions that the Luftwaffe pounced. The P-47s were “too high and too late” according to many disgruntled bomber crews, and they were unable to stop the enemy from hitting the 303rd hard. Its two group formations were assaulted by about 50 FW-190s, Me-109s, and rocket-firing Me-110s.
The Germans began with head-on attacks against the lead group in an effort to knock out the mission leaders, namely Captain James’s PFF ship and Gamble’s. Don Gamble wrote that “Ten to 15 fighters hit us just as we crossed the coast. Made definite passes at lead squadron and us. Had to do violent evasive action. One fighter—109—passed close overhead,” and it must have been this incident that Ralph Coburn was referring to when he commented that evening about “one nose-on fighter attack that was a lulu.”
Lt. McSween noted that “several close passes were made at the General,” with one fighter actually trying to ram Captain James’s ship.
McSween took the attempt to get Sky Wolf personally, writing: “Jerry attacked in formation, coming in four abreast. The sweep made to get us (me) got Fort.” Star Dust, badly damaged, fell out of the formation while McSween noted: “The only trouble we had was No. 4 engine shaking lead in the nacelle.”
Star Dust’s fall had an even greater impact on Lt. Carl Fyler in Dark Horse, who was flying just below Lt. Fort. Fyler was on his 24th mission, and the incident was, perhaps, just too much like the close call he had had with Lt. Crockett’s stricken ship on the August 27, 1943 mission to Watten:
“The lead ship in front of me took a direct hit in the nose section. The front of his aircraft came clear off…His plane mushed down on top of me. I had to leave formation to avoid a collision. Pieces of metal and such littered the sky. I was shook! Too many trips and then this. I was having such a hard time coping that even flying the plane had become a challenge. My nerves were so shot I dared not rejoin the formation. One by one, our guns froze up and we were all alone. We had become a straggler and so vulnerable, as if we were just begging to be shot down. At last I managed to move up parallel with the group, and we flew back to England that way.”
This first sweep occurred at 1130 and the fight lasted over an hour, running from the enemy coast on into the target and back out, the Germans hitting the bombers around the clock but concentrating on nose and tail attacks.
It wasn’t long before other gaps were torn in the 303rd’s ranks. From the 359th Squadron Lt. H.S. Bolsover’s crew was flying B-17F 42-5117 in the No. 6 slot of the high group’s lead squadron. They were attacked by Me-109s that knocked out two engines and so badly riddled the bomber that she was later described as “almost completely shot to pieces.” Lt. Bolsover’s tail gunner was hit in the shoulder and seriously wounded. His left waist gunner was badly hit in the shoulder and head. His radioman, Sgt. R.K. Roberts, was fatally wounded. It was Roberts’s 24th mission.
Lt. John Henderson’s crew was also having a rough time. The two waist gunners, Moody and Burkart, passed out during the battle due to an oxygen system failure. From the radio room Sgt. Vosler saw that they were out and rushed back to revive them with portable oxygen bottles; he earned an Air Medal for his actions.
In the meantime, Sgt. Ed Ruppel was fielding attacks from the ball turret. He later commented that “They tried to hide in the vapor trails left by the Forts and sneak up without being seen. I saw three or four of them try this, but it didn’t seem to work too well. The gunners drove them off as soon as they came out in the open.”
Hullar’s crew was fighting the same kind of battle in No. 823; they were getting beam attacks and a large number at the tail. Merlin Miller remembers one in particular where Norman Sampson’s help was critical.
“We were leaving heavy contrails. Sammy called from the ball turret to say he saw a fighter sneak into the contrails way back behind us. So I pointed both tail guns straight back, just above the vapor trail, and waited. Sure enough, that fighter popped right up out of there. I fired, and I’ll bet that German pilot still had a surprised look on his face when St. Peter opened the Pearly Gates for him.”
Up forward, Elmer Brown and Lt. Matthews were getting nose attacks from one o’clock high, but he and Lt. Matthews weren’t able to fire with effect because their nose guns were in poor condition. Hullar later insisted that better firing pins be put in them.
The Group finally got on the bomb run where flak gave the bombers an equally rough time. The 303rd’s B-17s were unable to see the Bremen industrial area through the clouds, but this didn’t prevent the German radar flak from seeing them.
Lt. McSween wrote: “Flak through the overcast was damn accurate, but moderate. We got a few flak holes, and some awful close bursts of flak.”
Captain Gamble also commented on the “Fairly intense and very accurate flak [that] came up through 10/10s clouds. Best I’ve seen when they fired by screening us. Tracking fire several minutes into target…”
Elmer Brown likewise wrote that “The flak was quite heavy over the target,” and it was this deadly antiaircraft fire that almost finished the Hullar crew’s career.
Brown described what happened next this way:
“Right after the target we lost oil pressure on No. 2 engine, and the pilot couldn’t feather it. The engine started running away. He cut the engine, but the propeller continued to windmill at a terrific rate of speed, and turned the engine over. This caused a violent vibration of the aircraft, and danger of tearing the wing off.
“The pilot said, ‘Put on your chutes and prepare to bail out.’ There we were over Germany heading for Holland, which was 60 miles away.”
Bob Hullar recorded the incident with a coolness that matched his conduct: “Lost No. 2 over target.” He might have been “too busy to be scared,” but the others waited nervously to see what was in store.
Norman Sampson remembers that “The aircraft shook and shuddered so bad I thought it was going to fall apart. Hullar told us to prepare to bail out. The only thing I could think of was, ‘My parachute, how tight is it on me?!’ I made sure I had my escape kit. I was going to walk back home. At least that’s what I thought.”
Merlin Miller was reluctant to give up the ship: “We were still over Bremen when all of a sudden the plane started shaking to beat hell. The motion was magnified back in the tail and I was rattling around like a pea in a pod wondering what was going on. Hullar came on and very briefly explained the situation, and told us to get our chutes on, get ready to bail out, and he actually rang the alarm button. Then the intercom went dead.
“I couldn’t talk to anybody and I figured everybody jumped. I crawled to the little escape hatch in the tail ahead of the tail gunner’s compartment. It had a handle on it which you could pull and kick the whole door off. But I was a little cautious. I didn’t do that because I wasn’t sure if I was going to jump or not. I pushed the door open with my foot, and sat there with my feet hanging out for a minute looking down.
“I could see the fire and smoke down there in Bremen, and I decided, ‘To hell with this. I’ll be safer in the airplane.’ With what we were doing to the people down there, I figured they weren’t going to be too friendly to anybody who landed in their midst. So I crawled back to the tail guns and started looking for fighters, just waiting, under the impression that I might be by myself because the plane was still bobbing around quite a bit.”
While Miller waited, up in the radio room George Hoyt and Dale Rice were playing out another drama over the decision to jump or stay. As Hoyt recalls:
“The alarm bell rang, which meant ‘Get ready to bail out.’ I got my chest pack off the floor and snapped it on my harness. I saw the two waist gunners at the waist door ready to go. Then Dale came back to the radio room. I knew there was a good chance of the whole outer wing panel shearing off from the vibration, but I refused to accept that this was how it was going to end. I said my prayers and believed very strongly, ‘We’re not going down. There’s no way.’ We had a tour of missions to finish, and we were going to get back to the base and were going to finish them. And the worse the vibrations got, the stronger my belief became.
“Dale was yelling in my ear, ‘We need to go out the bomb bay!’ He opened the radio room door, and I said ‘No, close the door, we’re not going to have to go!’ He kept shaking his head, saying ‘We’re going to have to bail out.’ So I gave him the thumbs-up sign, and I kept giving it, but he opened the radio room door a second time, and now he had his foot on the catwalk above the open bomb bay doors.
“I could see that he was ready to jump. So I gave him forceful thumbs-up gestures once again, trying to convince him that we would make this thing, we’d beat it, we weren’t going to go down over German territory.”
Something had to give, and after a number of minutes that seemed like a lifetime, it did. Elmer Brown wrote: “Fortunately, the propeller connection snapped loose from the engine. It continued to windmill, but as the engine was not being turned over, the vibration ceased.”
A semblance of order returned and Merlin Miller heard “the interphone click and Hullar ask, ‘Is there anybody back there? Crew check.’ So we checked through and we were all still there.”
Everyone shared the one, overriding emotion Norman Sampson expressed: “What a relief!”
But the crew was still in a bad way. As Elmer Brown described it:
“The mechanical danger was past, but we had fallen way behind our formation. Our two wing planes had stayed with us, and a plane from a strange group filled in our No. 4 position. There we were, a four-ship formation, an easy target for enemy fighters. Other troubles we had were that the temperature was down to –50 degrees C, and all our guns froze up except the nose guns. When we lost our No. 2 engine we lost our heating system also.”
It didn’t take long for the German fighters to arrive. Merlin Miller remembers that “Right about the time the prop shaft snapped, our little formation was jumped by a bunch of German fighters, and things started to look bad.” It is a point of pride to Miller that “I managed to keep at least one of my guns going at all times,” but even so it was a sticky situation.
As Hoyt recalls: “We got several very intensive attacks at the tail from FW-190s, but we received great help from our wingmen, who covered our rear with all the guns that were able to fire behind blazing away. Bob had ordered the wingmen to get back to the main formation earlier, but they stayed with us at very great risk to themselves. I saw some true heroism that day.”
Not surprisingly Brown wrote: “We were very happy that P-47s soon joined us and carried us to the Holland coast. We had to cross 134 miles of the cold North Sea. I didn’t have a Gee box, [a radio navigation system very similar to present-day Loran], the radio compass was erratic, and the flux gate compass was inaccurate. I brought them home by pilotage, and was very glad to get home.”
While Hullar’s small formation was crossing the North Sea, the main body of the 303rd began landing at Molesworth beginning at 1420. Lt. McSween wrote that “We flew 270 degrees out to the Zuider Zee, then to the coast south of Cromer to the base. Don did a good job of flying.” Gamble commented: “Had to go around on landing. Made a nice three-point landing.”
When the mission was finally over, 33 of the Group’s ships had returned to Molesworth, three landed away, and one didn’t come back at all.
The missing 303rd bomber was Mr. Five By Five, flown by Captain Adele A. Cote of the 427th Squadron at the head of the lead group’s low squadron. He was on his 24th raid and was last seen at 1245 over the Zuider Zee with his wheels down, under control and turning left at 10,000 feet. It was believed at the time that Cote went down over water while trying to return to the Continent, but the fate of Mr. Five By Five and Cote’s crew remains a mystery to this day.*
For the Eighth as a whole the November 26th mission was an expensive proposition. The Bremen bombers and fighters claimed a total of 70 German aircraft but the cost was high—22 B-17s plus three B-24s and four missing P-47s. The raid to Paris cost four more B-17s and proved fruitless due to cloud cover over the target.
For most of the bomber crews there was plenty more to come, since the “Battle of Bremen” was just beginning. But any account of this day would be incomplete without the stories of two men who returned from this raid, never to fly again. What Lt. Bill Fort and his bombardier endured is a tale that deserves a separate chapter. It is a hymn of perseverance, faith, and hope utterly without equal in the Eighth’s air war.