Bremen, December 20, 1943
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
—from “High Flight”
John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
With the wounds suffered by Woddrop’s men, and the loss of Alex and Leve’s Crews—Lt. A. Alex’s crew was flying Santa Anna, B-17G 42-39764, on their first mission and Lt. F. Leve’s men were on their sixth raid in B-17G 42-31233—the 303rd had taken some hard blows during the December 20th attack on Bremen. But the courage and the casualties that day were not confined to the 427th Squadron.
The combination of cold, contrails, and clouds, together with the intense flak that engulfed the formation, allowed the German fighters to sneak in among the bombers even before their escort had left. They made the raid, according to the 303rd’s PRO report, “one of the roughest our crews have been on.” The 303rd’s report to the First Division further stated that up to “125 E/A were seen by this Group. Then were many T/E fighters but all types were included: Me-109, Me-110, Me-210, Ju-88, and FW-190…The attacks started at 1118 hours and continued up to 1216 for a total of 58 minutes.”
Like Elmer Brown, Lt. Bill McSween had waited a long time to go on this operation; his last mission had been the one to Bremen on November 26th. He and the rest of Captain Don Gamble’s crew were flying as Group lead for the first time with Major Glynn Shumake in Sky Wolf. Gamble stated afterwards:
“We were doing fine until we started our bomb run. The formation was perfect. As soon as we got over the target they smashed hell out of us. That flak was plenty accurate and there was lots of it. Our escort tried to keep the fighters out, but they sneaked through the contrails where we couldn’t see them. It was plenty rough all right…”
For Bill McSween, the raid was a navigator’s nightmare:
“I never saw ice freeze on the inside windows so bad—almost impossible to see anything outside. That’s the hardest job I ever had, trying to scrape ice with one hand and navigate with the other. Luckily, the ground was visible on the Continent, but we drove in straight over the IP, me pulling my hair out every inch of the way.
“In order to make a bomb run, Don had to maneuver into position behind the high and low groups, causing the bomb run to be off the briefed heading. By laying on my belly and looking around the front around the bomb sight, I could see the ground. Sweet [the bombardier] took over after Don straightened out on the run. We flew over the edge of Delmenhorst and I held Sweet back to prevent him bombing it.
“Finally I spotted the aiming point and I talked him into seeing it. He put that load of incendiaries right on the button. Flak was the most accurate I ever saw. Sweet did evasive action with the bombsight. We picked up some holes. Followed course home OK. Don did a good job.”
Another who commented on the raid was Lt. John Barker, the pilot who had had such a terrifying ride in the tail of Mr. Five by Five during the bomb run on Black Thursday. This mission was his last, and from the No. 6 slot of the high squadron he was well positioned to see the loss of Leve and Alex’s ships.
Afterwards, Barker commented: “I have been on lots of rough ones, but that was as rough as any of them. They couldn’t stop us, though. I didn’t see the bombing results, but the boys say we let them have it.”
One of the bombers the Germans couldn’t stop was Jersey Bounce Jr. flown by Lt. John Henderson’s crew in the No. 4 position of the lead squadron. Captain Merle Hungerford was aboard as their Instructor Pilot, together with the regulars on the crew including Sgt. Ed Ruppel, Sgt. Bill Simpkins, and Sgt. Forrest Vosler. That evening Lt. McSween heard a bit of what happened, and wrote in his notebook that “Hungerford and Henderson had to ditch No. 664. They got two men shot up and came to the English coast on two engines. Some luck!”
The full story of what occurred aboard Jersey Bounce Jr. that day has never been told, nor can be, this long after the events. But enough remains in the 303rd’s records—and in the memories of Ruppel, Simpkins, and Vosler—to present an accurate picture of what took place. The story is one of the most inspiring to emerge from the Eighth’s air war.
Lt. John F. Henderson’s crew posing before Sky Wolf. Bottom row, L-R, Sgt. William H. Simpkins, engineer; Sgt. George W. Buske, tail gunner; Sgt. Stanley N. Moody, right waist; Sgt. Forrest L. Vosler, radioman; Sgt. Ralph F. Burkart, left waist; Sgt. Edward Ruppel, ball turret gunner. L-R, top row, Capt. Merle R. Hungerford, Instructor Pilot; Lt. W.J. Ames, copilot (not on 12/20/43 mission); Lt. Henderson, pilot; Lt. Woodrow W. Monkres, bombardier; and Lt. Warren S. Wiggins, navigator. (Photo courtesy William H. Simpkins.)
Forrest Vosler begins: “We encountered flak as we entered the perimeter of Bremen. It was the usual, terrible heavy flak, and just before we dropped the bombs, we were struck by some antiaircraft. We managed to keep up with the formation long enough to drop the bombs on the target. Then, in our 180-degree turn, we were hit again, and lost a considerable amount of altitude.
“I couldn’t see any parts of the aircraft that were damaged. From where I was in the radio room, the only thing I could see, basically, was the vertical and horizontal stabilizer. All I knew was that we had lost an engine—you could tell from the lack of noise in the aircraft—and that we were losing altitude.”
From the ball turret, Ed Ruppel was in a position to see more:
“Right after we came up on the bomb run, we got a heavy hit on the left side of the ship by flak. I knew we were hit hard. I could see holes in the wing, but nothing hanging down. I did see that No. 1 engine was on fire, and called on the intercom, ‘Pilot, No. 1 is on fire!’
“Henderson said, ‘I know it, Sergeant!’
“I moved the turret and checked the bottom of the ship to see the other engines. I called back to Henderson again and said, ‘Everything else appears to be okay but No. 1 is still on fire.’
“He said, ‘I’ll put it out!,’ and he rolled over on the left wing and started down. I saw the cowling flaps open on No. 1 as we were going down and the fire blew out, but then we had problems with No. 3 engine. Smoke was coming out, the fan was turning, but she wasn’t putting out any power. I knew it was going to be hell from here on in. When you fell out of formation, that’s when the German fighters really went after you.”
In the top turret, Bill Simpkins also knew it was going to be rough.
“The minute you fell out of formation you were going to have fighters after you, ‘cause they liked to prey on the single aircraft, naturally. It was just a matter of time before they jumped us.”
It was just a matter of time, and as Henderson’s crew waited, Vosler and Ruppel got some glimpses of what lay in store. Vosler next observed “two other aircraft that were damaged off the back of our aircraft. They were at a higher elevation than we were, and were being attacked by fighters. One of them clearly just blew up, disintegrated, and went down. Of course I tried to strain to see if I could spot anybody exit from the aircraft, because you wanted to report this in when you got back on the ground. I didn’t see any such thing, but I was limited to a very short period of time before the plane fell below my line of sight.”
Ruppel remembers that “As I glanced off to my right, I could see four or five B-17s being attacked by fighters. There was one B-17 that was pretty close to us. They cut one of his wings off and he went into a tight roll. Then they went after the others. They just kept pecking away until they got them all. They chopped up one ship, and another, they hit a third one, and then they went to work on a plane over to our left, and cut him all up.
“I knew people were in there. I hoped like anybody else that chutes would show, but I had no feelings towards them. I knew that when the fighters were finished with them we were next, and I was concerned about myself. When we pulled out of our dive we were down somewhere around 15,000 feet, and it seemed like the entire German Luftwaffe was down there with us. They were single-engine fighters, 109s and 190s.”
Things happened with enormous speed after this. The crew later reported that the Germans got Sgt. George Buske, the tail gunner, on their very first pass. Bill Simpkins remembers him saying on the intercom, “I’m hit,” and it appears that this first attack was the one that also wounded Forrest Vosler:
“Almost immediately, there was a sound like somebody throwing rice on the aircraft. There was a lot of shrapnel coming through the aircraft. I don’t know where it came from, but to the best of my belief it was pieces of our aircraft. A 20mm shell from a fighter apparently exploded near our B-17 and the shrapnel sprayed up from the rear. I was hit in both legs. At this point I hadn’t shot at any fighters. I hadn’t seen any.”
“I stood there for a few moments terribly scared. When I got hit it felt just like ‘hot lead,’ right out of ‘Dick Tracy’ and the comics. I could also feel the blood flowing down my legs.
“Several things went through my mind. One of them was that there was no question about my getting the Purple Heart. My next thought was that ‘This is a very serious business I’m in, and I’ve got to do something to protect myself or I’m not going to make it.’ Survival is paramount to anybody in combat, so I immediately sat down in my chair to try to avoid being hit again. I figured I’d got an armor-plated chair and it curled up around my back.
“And as I sat there contemplating my next move, I thought how silly my actions were, because I didn’t know where the next bullets were going to come from. I had to have the chair facing the right direction, or this wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t going to stop any bullets. So I figured, ‘If this is the way it’s going to be, at least I’m going to die standing up. I’ll do the job. I might just as well get up because I’m not going to protect myself with this chair. This is stupid.’
“So I got up, grabbed ahold of the machine gun, charged the gun, and got ready to fire.”
By this time Ed Ruppel and Bill Simpkins were already engaging the enemy. Ruppel clearly recalls one single-engine fighter that “made a bottom attack from tail to nose. He came closer in than he should have, and he turned over in a half-roll and started to go down. As I brought the ball around on him he was already in the roll, and the gunsights being what they were, I couldn’t frame him, and didn’t have a chance to fire. He was going too fast. He was the only one I saw coming in from below. All the rest of the attacks were from above.”
There were more than enough fighters for Bill Simpkins in the top turret. He remembers them “queueing up eight or nine at a time up at ten o’clock and coming in on us.
“They came in one right after the other. I was lining up and shooting at them. I don’t know how many I hit. You didn’t have time to count. They were sneaking up from behind, too, and I got a glimpse of Vosler firing. But I couldn’t see much more than his head and shoulders out the top of the radio hatch.
“Then I was called back to the waist to help get first aid to Buske. Ralph Burkart, the right waist gunner, called me back and Moody, the other waist gunner, took my place in the top turret. I headed back, and when I got to the tail I saw Buske was slumped over the guns. A 20mm had come right through the armor plate. His flight suit was torn open, and I could see where he got hit, right in the stomach, up front. He was bleeding pretty bad.
“I dragged him back past the wheel well, almost up to the waist where the gunners were. I gave him a double shot of morphine. Burkart was helping me, and he handed me the morphine. It was frozen, so I put it in my mouth—that’s how you warmed it up—and I gave it to Buske. Then I put a compress bandage on him. Ralph handed me that, too, and I did the doctoring. Buske was lying there unconscious. I worked on him automatically. It was something you did. If a man was wounded, you helped him. He’d do the same for you.”
While these events were occurring, Sgt. Stan Moody was hotly engaged in the top turret. At 1200 hours he spied an Me-110 flying “parallel at nine o’clock, about 800 yards out” and he opened fire with a long burst. He reported that “Black smoke came out and E/A went down end-over-end out of control.” Sgt. Ruppel confirmed, and Moody was given a “probable.”
Five minutes later Moody scored again. The crew told the interrogator that an “Me-109 came in about two o’clock level, dropped down under the wing, came up at three o’clock, and came in. T.T. [top turret] gunner opened fire first at 800 yards, again at 400 yards. E/A nosed over and went down.” Burkart reported a chute coming out, and Moody got credit for a kill.
In the same minute, Sgt. Burkart also got a kill. An Me-210 “came in at five o’clock level” and he “opened fire at 6-700 yards. At 400 yards right wing of E/A came off and [the plane] went down in flames.”
Ed Ruppel confirmed, and he recalls the details: “The other boys were calling fighter attacks out. When I heard where they were coming from, I immediately moved the turret over there to try to find them. You didn’t look through the scope to see them. You looked through the side shields of the turret in front, the two little windows on the sides, to pick them up.
“Burkart called out an Me-210, and said he was quite a ways off. He was going to let him come in a little bit more. I was waiting and waiting and didn’t see nothin’, and all of a sudden I saw the aircraft coming down kind of on a tumble, wing over wing. The right wing busted off, and he started to break up. The pilot could never have made it out. I called Burkart and said, ‘You got ’em!’”
The fight went on, and five minutes later Bill Simpkins scored from the left waist. He doesn’t recall the incident, but the crew reported that an “FW-190 came in to attack about ten-o’clock a little above and then it went in at the waist. E/A came in to 150 yards. L Waist gunner opened fire with long burst at 150 yards. E/A caught fire, smoke came out, and it went down in a tumbling spin, flames all around.” Both Moody and Ruppel confirmed, and Simpkins got a “probable.”
Bill Simpkins does recall returning to the tail and getting on the intercom to help Henderson evade attacks from the rear, and it was probably while he was here that the climax of the fight occurred. It took place during moments of give-and-take in battle that were the most significant of Vosler’s 20-year-old existence. He remembers them this way:
“A twin-engine fighter came up the back. Apparently at this point the tail guns had been shot out, and there was no one at the waist guns, either. So this left the entire rear of the ship vulnerable except for my one single .50 in the radio compartment.
“When this plane came up in back of the B-17, he was so close I could actually see the pilot’s face. I would have recognized him again on the ground. He was just off the tail, and had throttled back, and could have knocked us down any moment. He could have easily killed me. I was looking right down the barrel of a 20mm cannon. I could see the lands and grooves of the gun; that’s how close he was. If he had had any cannon ammunition, it would have been all over.
“My first burst knocked pieces on the left side of his wing off. I was actually after the engine or the pilot. I moved the gun rapidly over to try to get him. I was firing as I turned, and I went right across the stabilizer and put a hole in it, because this gun had no stops. Our plane seemed to be flying all right, so I didn’t bother Henderson with a little thing like my hitting the stabilizer.
“I never saw anybody in my life so scared as that German pilot. He turned white when I was firing, and he dove. Had he stayed there a second longer he’d have been a dead pilot, because I was a pretty good shot. I was after the pilot at this point, not the engines. He was a very lucky young man.
“I radioed the ball turret gunner to confirm if I got the aircraft or not. There was a big plume of smoke as he dove the aircraft; that was normal when the Germans poured the fuel to their engines, so I assumed the pieces I knocked off his wing would not be critical.
“Within seconds after that I got hit again. This time it was much more serious. I got hit in the eyes, the chest, and the hand. The strange part about it is that I had had goggles up on my head. I had pulled them down, and they immediately steamed up. I couldn’t see clearly and I pushed them back on my head. I had no sooner put them back, when ‘Snap!’ I got hit in both eyes. I didn’t know what hit me.”
Forrest Vosler couldn’t know, but Ed Ruppel later saw exactly what had happened to the crew’s radioman. One glance told him the whole story:
“Vosler had a flex-held .50-caliber machine gun. A 20mm shell came down the side of his gun till it hit the breech, and that’s where she exploded. The cover to the breech was completely blown open, and the gun was black with soft powder from the headspace to the tail of the breech. So I know that’s where the 20mm exploded. Vosler must have been bent down over the gun to fire when the shell exploded.
“He was shrapnel from his forehead to his knees, everywhere. There was blood all over him, coming from all those little shrapnel cuts. There was no one place where you could put your hand and stop the blood. I knew he was hit bad in the eyes, too, because I could see the white stuff running down below one eye and onto his cheek.”
Vosler recalls his initial reaction to this second, terrible blow:
“It was, ‘This is a heck of a place to hit somebody, this is not really playing fair. They’re not playing the game right, hitting a guy in the eyes.’ I couldn’t see well, but when I moved my hand down to my chest where I’d been hit—I was trying to open my jacket to find out how badly—I noticed that my hand was shaking. I couldn’t control it. Then I reached up and dragged my hand across my face to see if there was blood, and when I looked at it my whole hand was covered with blood.
“The shell fragments had damaged the retina of my right eye, and I was seeing blood streaming down the retina inside my eye, thinking it was on the outside. So my natural feeling was that I had lost the whole side of my face. Having had a lot of first aid experience, I realized you could have this happen, and the shock would be so great that you wouldn’t even feel the pain.
“Also, I didn’t realize that I had been hit in the hand. It was bleeding profusely, but I didn’t feel this injury. The shell fragments had gone through all four pair of gloves I was wearing. But I thought I only had half a face.
“I became extremely concerned. I was out of control, really. Obviously I wasn’t going to have a chance to get out of this thing now. I knew I was going to die. I knew my life was coming to an end. The fear was so intense; it’s indescribable, the terror you feel when you realize you’re going to die and there’s nothing you can do about it. So I started to lose control, and I knew then that I was either going to go completely berserk and be lost, or something else would happen.
“And a strange thing did happen. I lived every day of my life. I relived my whole life, day by day, for 20 years. It put everything in perspective. For the first time I realized what a wonderful, wonderful life I had had. There were only a few days in my whole life that were bad, and I asked God to forgive me for those bad days, and thanked Him for all the many, many wonderful days He had given me. I said, ‘I’m not going to ask you for any more days. It’s been too nice.’
“I have never again had that feeling of complete peace that I had at that moment. I only hope that before I die, I might experience that feeling of peace once again. I said to God, ‘You’ve given me 20 years of life. I appreciate it, I thank You for it, and if this is the way it’s going to be, I’m happy, let’s go.’ I even reached out my hand and said, ‘Take me, God, I’m ready.’”
The moments passed, and Forrest Vosler began to realize that the Almighty wasn’t ready for him.
“I was a little bit surprised and a little bit disappointed, actually, that God didn’t take my hand, because I was ready to go at that point. It would have been selfish to ask for even five more minutes of life. But at the same time I became very content, very calm, very collected. I no longer feared death, which is a terrible thing to fear. And I slowly realized that if God didn’t want to take me at that particular point, then I had to go on and do the best things I could do.”
There was plenty for everyone aboard Jersey Bounce Jr. to do. As Ed Ruppel recalls, “In the course of the combat we got two direct hits in the instrument panel. We couldn’t tell whether we were flying sideways, upside down, backwards, or what. So we hit the deck, and started to come home that way. We figured we didn’t have anything to worry about with enemy aircraft at that low altitude. We were down real low, still over Germany, and we picked up some small arms fire, but by the time they fired we were already gone.
“Nobody was saying anything, and I got out of the turret to see what was going on. Then the pilot asked us to throw everything overboard, to lighten the aircraft up, so we could get as much as we could out of it. People were throwing things out the rear of the ship to lighten the load.”
With no fighters around, Bill Simpkins was also on the move, en route to an amazing encounter with his radioman:
“I went back from the tail up to the waist, and Ruppel was getting out of the ball turret about this time. We were unloading everything, trying to make the plane lighter and trying to make it home. We didn’t know if we would have to ditch yet. We had two engines out, we were pretty low in altitude, and we were low on fuel too.
“I was on my way up to the cockpit. I helped get Buske to the radio room—we laid him on some life jackets—and I saw that Vosler had been hit. His gun was all shattered. He had his back turned to me, and was standing up working at the radio. I looked him right in the face, and I saw there was stuff dribbling down his right cheek from his eye. He was in a daze, groggy, visibly shook up. He wasn’t normal.
“As we were throwing things out, he said, ‘You’re throwing everything else overboard. Well, why don’t you throw me overboard? I’m just so much extra pounds. Throw me out, too.’ And he really meant it, because he asked me more than once to throw him out. I didn’t say anything, really. I just sloughed it off. I didn’t take him real seriously, even though I knew he was getting serious about it.”
Vosler offers this explanation for the extraordinary offer that he made: “I was still worried about my face. I saw Simpkins, and I asked him if my face had been shot away. He told me, no, that all I had was a little trickle of blood coming down my cheek, plus what I had smeared on it from my hand. Well, I didn’t believe him. So I asked a couple of the others. They all assured me that my face hadn’t been shot away, but I didn’t really believe them.
“So when we were ordered to throw everything out of the aircraft, I figured if there wasn’t enough to lighten the aircraft, why don’t you throw me out? I figured I was pretty well shot up anyway, so it didn’t make any difference whether they threw me out or not.
“Looking back, I suppose I was still a bit disappointed that God hadn’t taken me, but I also think I wouldn’t have dared have them throw me out. I don’t know. It would have been kind of a traumatic feeling to get kicked out of the airplane without a parachute!”
Bill Simpkins proceeded up forward, and another member of the crew started to focus on his wounds:
“I continued up to the cockpit and met Monkres, the bombardier, heading back to the waist. We met in the bomb bay. As we crossed one another he saw that my flight jacket was all tore up from where shrapnel had hit me. I had picked up a piece of shrapnel in the back, and it tore up my heavy sheepskin jacket. He thought I was hit much worse than I was. My hand was stiff, too, and I had it curled up in a fist in my glove. He thought it was frozen.
“When I got to the cockpit, I saw the copilot reading our instruments. They showed we still had fuel, but they couldn’t tell how much. So I was doing the fuel transfer, jockeying the fuel in the tanks back and forth from one engine to another as they started to sputter. To do this, I went back towards the radio room. The fuel transfer valve was right behind the firewall of the bomb bay, right near the radio room.”
By this time Ed Ruppel had also made it to the radio room, and had seen Vosler first hand. He remembers that “When I came up out of the ball turret, Vosler was lying on the radio room floor. We helped him into his chair. We asked him if he could get a message out, and he said he could if we would put the freq meters in that he told us. These were metal boxes that you plugged into the radio to use different frequencies. There were three or four of us in there trying to help him get the radio so that he could make contact with base. He told us where to put the freq meters, and we were pulling ones out and putting in the ones that he wanted, and he immediately went to the key and went to work. He didn’t need to see to use it.”
As Vosler recalls these moments, “We struggled along, and by this time I could see some damage on the wings. There were holes in both of them as far as I could tell. I remember Henderson, the pilot, being concerned about keeping the airplane in the air. He told me that he needed to send out a distress signal, because there was no way he was going to make England. Would I send out a distress signal?
“Although my vision was blurred, I could see that we were still over land. We did experience another set of flak over the coast, which I could hear. I’m not aware that it hit the aircraft, but it came awful close. It was pretty dense, but we managed to get through it.
“I told the pilot that I would send out the SOS as soon as we reached some water, out of range of enemy territory. He said, ‘I think you better send it now.’
“I said, ‘Sir, let me know when we’re going down, and I’ll send the SOS. When you can’t keep the aircraft airborne, let me know. In the meantime, if you keep it up, let’s not break radio silence.’
“So I didn’t break radio silence. I remember guarding very carefully the critical equipment for that SOS. I had one hand across the table guarding the receiver, and I had the other one guarding the transmitter, so the others wouldn’t touch either piece of equipment. Over in another part of the radio compartment there were stacks of frequency modules that would not be needed. I already had the right module in for the SOS. The rest were thrown out by the other crewmembers, and in fact they threw out a lot of stuff. I had to watch them. They threw my shoes out, which I resented. I figured if we landed on land, how was I going to walk? I’m barefoot!”
The men did throw plenty of things out, but luckily there was still one gun aboard that was in the right place at the right time.
As Ruppel recounts: “Coming up across the coast, there was a 109 out in front of us. All our guns in the back had been thrown out, even the tail guns, but Monkres still had his flex gun in the nose. I heard this rapid fire. He fired at the 109. It was making a nose attack, and then broke off. After that, Monkres disassembled his gun and threw it overboard.
“Later, when he came back to where we were, he said, ‘I got about three or four good strikes off of that guy, and he pulled off to the right.’ That fighter broke off, and never did come back. He didn’t want any more, but if he had come in any other way he could have chopped us up.”
Jersey Bounce Jr. was now over water, and the stage was set for Forrest Vosler to radio Air Sea Rescue. As Vosler tells it:
“Henderson was an excellent pilot, and managed to keep the aircraft up until we reached the North Sea. At that point I sent an SOS after some of the crewmembers helped me patch up the radio; one of the wires was off the transmission key. I sent the SOS out at different speeds, and I got an immediate response from England. They receipted my message, and asked me to give a holding signal for 20 or 30 seconds while they shot a true bearing on me. I responded and gave them the signal, and they came back, and gave a receipt on that one. They said they had my course, and asked me to transmit every 10 or 15 minutes so that later they could correct their bearing.
“I sent about two more messages after that, and the pilot informed the crew that we going into the North Sea. Apparently, before we had to ditch, we had an Air Sea Rescue plane flying over and around the top of us, because the pilot called me up and notified me that Air Sea Rescue was over the top of us. And he thanked me for the SOS. We must have been in the air some considerable time, at least 20 or 30 minutes for them to dispatch an aircraft out to us. We weren’t very far off the coast, probably 60 miles.”
British Air Sea Rescue had sent aircraft to intercept the crippled B-17. They sent not one, but four. Ed Ruppel remembers them well.
“We were heading for what they called ‘The Bulge of England.’ When we got fairly close, an Anson came out and a Walrus. The Anson was a land-based plane, a twin-engine job, and the Walrus was a flying boat. And we had two ‘Clip Nines’ come out. These were marine Spitfire IXs with clipped wings. As we got closer to shore, we finally saw land, and it was a tossup whether we should try to land or set her in the drink. With our instruments all out, we figured the best thing to do was set her in the drink.”
What happened next reminds one very much of the Hullar crew’s experience. As Simpkins put it, “I remember getting ready to ditch. Everybody got in the radio room except the pilot and copilot. We were bundled all up in there.”
Vosler recalls that “By this time everybody was in the radio room, lined up facing the front of the aircraft. It made a nice, compact group. We had eight people in there.”
Ruppel remembers: “Everybody got into position for ditching in the radio room. I was the last one to get down into position. Vosler was there at his desk, still banging away on the radio. We didn’t talk to him because you leave a man alone when he’s doing his job, and I don’t remember any conversation in the radio room at this time. All thoughts that the people in there had were kept to themselves, and I imagine a little prayer in there just at that time too.”
Vosler, who had already been through so much, believed “The men were all a bit upset, afraid they were going to die. They were really scared. I reassured them that they weren’t going to die, that we were going to make it. I’m not putting them down, or anything, but they hadn’t been through what I had. I had gone past them. I no longer feared death. All I could do was comfort them, saying, ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to be all right. Don’t worry about it. Relax.’”
All are agreed on the details of the ditching. As Bill Simpkins recalls, “We didn’t bounce any when we hit the water. We slid right in.”
Ed Ruppel remembers “There was a yawl and a trawler out there, and we made a pass in between them and came around and dropped a red flare up to tell our escort we were going in. Henderson did a marvelous job. It happened real quick. He brought the plane right over the water, put the tailwheel down, and fishtailed right in.
“I heard the tailwheel go in. I saw it go down, but I didn’t know we were really in the water until it splashed up from the ball turret in my face, and I tasted it and it was salty. I knew we were in the water then.
“It was about the smoothest thing you ever saw in your life. We had training on the ditching procedure, and it was amazing how it all came back. It all fell right into place like a million dollars.”
Vosler, too, remembers that “They directed us to ditch ahead of this Norwegian trawler rather than having the Air Sea Rescue drop one of their rowboats with a motor on it; they thought it would be safer for the trawler to pick us up. The pilot was told to ditch ahead of the boat, or as near to the boat as possible, and they would come over and get us.
“The actual ditching procedure we did beautifully. It went without a flaw, with much credit to Henderson, the pilot. He ditched it beautifully. He brought it in on the top of a wave; they had six foot waves there, and he rode the plane in on the top of one just like a surfer. He read it perfectly. The plane stopped quickly, and at about 90 miles an hour it was like hitting a brick wall. But no one was hurt.”
Lt. Henderson’s men now scrambled out the radio room hatch to their rafts, and like Hullar’s men before them, those on the left wing had a relatively easy time while those on the right ran into greater difficulties.
Ed Ruppel was one of those exiting to the left: “I jumped out the hatch and somebody else helped me pick the raft up. We knew enough not to drag it across the wing, because there might be jagged holes there that would put a hole in it. We put it in the water, and decided that we were going to shove off, and then we found out that we were still tied to the aircraft. And the next big joke was, ‘Where’s a knife?!’ We all carried knives strapped to our legs to cut parachute cords. I had mine on me but I couldn’t think of that. Finally somebody came up with a knife, and we cut the rope and drifted away. The Anson had marked the spot where we went in with a dye marker, and I saw this trawler coming right toward us. There was a big flare coming out of the bow. When it came alongside we motioned to take the other raft first, which had the wounded in it.”
Bill Simpkins was one of those exiting to starboard, and it was here that he witnessed another extraordinary act for a man as badly wounded as Vosler was.
“When we come to a stop we all jumped out the hatch and got on the wings. I got onto the right wing with Vosler. I helped lift Buske out. He was still unconscious. We put him on the wing and went to get the life raft. And while we were doing this Buske started to slide down the wing into the water. Vosler grabbed him and held him till we got hold of him. Then we pulled Buske back and got him into the life raft. By this time the ship was getting ready to go down. The tail was starting to stand up.”
Vosler recalls the incident well:
“I remember them all climbing out of the hatch. Some of them went on one side of the airplane, and some went on the other. We got the wounded tail gunner out. Somebody was going to help me out, but I said I thought I could boost myself out all right. I got up on top of the fuselage, looked down, and Buske was slipping into the water.
“I yelled to the pilot, but I could see he wasn’t going to respond fast enough. They had pulled the life raft out and it was floating on top of the wing, and Henderson was busy trying to cut the cord on the life raft so it wouldn’t go down with the airplane. I knew Buske would be in the water in a fraction of a second. I would have to take action. So I jumped and held out my hand at the same time. I grabbed the antenna wire that runs from the top of the tail to just forward of the starboard radio compartment window. I prayed that it would hold, and I was able to grab Buske around his waist just as he was going into the water, sliding off the trailing edge of the wing. I was bent way over.
“If the wire had broken, both of us would have gone in the drink. It was under an awful strain, and I was yelling all this time. The rest of them responded and got both of us.
“At that point we all got into the rafts. We were pretty close to the B-17 when it went down. I saw the whole front of it under water, and just a few minutes later the tail went. So it was not up very long. And then there was nothing but ocean.”
In the meantime, as Bill Simpkins relates, “We got the paddles out, and could see the cargo ship in the distance. We paddled alongside of it, and they grabbed us and got us aboard.”
Vosler remembers being rescued, too. “The next thing I can recall is that this ship we had ditched in front of steamed up to us. We promptly unloaded the tail gunner, and when it came my turn I managed to walk up the ladder. This was the first time I experienced any real pain in the legs. I got up on the railing, and jumped down on the deck. A couple of sailors tried to grab me, and although my legs hurt, I thought I was all right, and pushed them aside and told them I could walk all right. I promptly went down in a heap on the deck. They stretched me out there, and I was terribly concerned about my vision, my eyes, and my face. It was very disturbing, because I felt I was really disfigured.”
The trawler returned to Ed Ruppel’s raft, and “they threw us a rope. It landed across the top of our dinghy and we pulled ourselves over to them. They had a cargo net down over the side with half their crew there to help us up into the boat. I never got my feet wet.”
On board the trawler, Bill Simpkins recalls, “They had a doctor who worked on Buske. We were sitting in a cabin drinking some hot tea that they gave us, and the doctor came in and said Buske was in pretty bad shape. They kept us on the trawler for quite a while, and then we transferred to a PT boat. They put Buske on a stretcher, and it was pretty straightforward. The trip back was routine, except that they had a fire in one of their engines.”
The fire on the British launch made a greater impression on Ruppel, who recounts that “British Air Sea Rescue, a PT boat, picked us up from the trawler. We were running on it for only three or four minutes when someone yelled, ‘Fire!.’ I looked back, and one of the engines was fully ablaze. They put that out, worked on the engines a bit, and gave a revised ETA. All day they kept revising the ETA later and later. I thought we would never get in.”
For Vosler, the ride was an ordeal. “I was given some morphine against my wishes. The one thing I can recall about the ride was that it was terribly fast. I was up by the bow with my head facing astern and the boat was going at least 45 knots. It was an awful position. When the bow went up, the blood rushed to my head. It was miserable.”
But despite his discomfort, Vosler still made a strong impression on Ed Ruppel: “On the boat he was down on the deck. The deck hands laid down some kind of a canvas cover for him to lay on. And I went over and talked to him. Some more of that white stuff was running out of his eye, but when I asked him out how he felt, he said ‘All right.’
“The only thing he wanted was a drink. So I went down and found that the boat crew was breaking out tea and rum for us. I told Vosler, and he said, Til take the rum.’ That’s the kind of guy he was, cocky as hell.
“They took us to a hospital at Great Yarmouth, where we spent the night. The next day we flew back to our own base. I didn’t see Vosler until after the war, back in the States, and I never saw Buske again, though I was told he survived his wounds,* For the rest of us, it was more missions.”
Vosler’s stay at the British hospital was the beginning of a long period of medical treatment in England and America. Both his eyes had been hit by 20mm shrapnel, and for many months he was completely blind, as his left eye reacted “sympathetically” to his totally sightless right one. Only after his right eye was surgically removed did he slowly regain a measure of sight.
There were, however, other compensations for Forrest Vosler. As Ed Ruppel remembers:
“A month or so after this mission, Major Black, our flight surgeon, came to us on the crew and said they took Vosler back to the States, and he thinks they’re going to put him up for the Medal of Honor. Then one day Headquarters called us and asked us to come over. We did, and that’s when we were told they were putting Vosler in for the Medal.
“They asked us what went on, and we told them what had happened. We were afraid of saying anything except what had happened, because we didn’t want to ruin his chances. Nobody can take away from you what happened. That mission has gone through my head many, many times, thousands of times, and I do think the man deserved the Medal for what he did.”
The Army Air Forces’ leaders did too, and Sgt. Forrest L. Vosler became the second member of the Hell’s Angels to win the nation’s highest award for military valor.**
Thus ended what is referred to here as “The Battle of Bremen.” On the December 20th mission, the Eighth lost 27 bombers, plus three Category Es, and in the five raids flown against the port city from November 26th through December 20, 1943, the Eighth lost a grand total of 77 B-17s and B-24s, wrote off 15 as Category Es, and had 640 bombers damaged. Twenty-eight crewmen were killed in action, 100 wounded, and 720 were missing. From Charles Spencer and Joseph Sawicki to Forrest Vosler, the Eighth’s bomber crews paid a steep price for keeping the pressure up on the enemy.
The heavy bombers were to fly four more raids before the end of 1943, and then, with the help of the new P-5 Is, press their offensive against the Luftwaffe harder still. As Hullar’s crew entered the home stretch of their tour, the conflict was building to its climax.