On December 30, 1944, our B-25, from the 488th Bomb Squadron, was assigned a mission completely new to our crew — to fly the number two position of a “chaff” element, part of a 340th Bomb Group mission to bomb the railroad bridge at Calliano, Italy. None of our crew had ever handled chaff before.
Chaff was a long strip of tinfoil on paper backing, banded and bundled in sizable clutches, and packed in cartons. The idea was to dump the stuff into the slipstream where it would scatter and show up on the enemy's radar as a blip, deceiving the anti-aircraft guns. The sheet metal boys had rigged up ingenious chutes in the waist escape hatches of two of the chaff ships — the other two, not ours.
Our crew for this mission included Bob Gilliam, who I think was flying his first mission as first pilot. The copilot was possibly Clayt Chambless. Al Silverman was bombardier, whose task this mission would be to relay instructions from the cockpit to tail gunner Buck Norris and myself, the radio gunner, who would be actually handling the chaff, and engineer Wil Proulx.
As we came up on the IP, Al passed us the word to get ready. Buck and I positioned ourselves. I stood over the rear hatch, facing forward. Buck, standing in front of me, would hand me bundles of chaff from the cartons which we'd ripped the tops from so as to be able to throw at the four-second intervals they'd instructed us in the briefing. Later we were to regret removing those carton tops.
Al said, “Let her go,” and I threw the first bundle at the escape hatch. That's as far as the chaff got. The slipstream kept the stuff from ever leaving the plane and blasted it back into the tail section. I looked at it in amazement, but Buck was already shoving the next bundle at me. I threw that one a little harder, but it still wouldn't leave the plane and ended up in the tail, which was starting to look like a Christmas tree.
I'd just about figured how to jam my hands out the hatch, where the slipstream would pull the chaff away, when the flak started to show up. A big black .88 exploded right where I was going to deposit the next bundle. They had our range perfectly.
We managed to get a little more out when, all of a sudden, it seemed we were going straight down. Buck and I and the cartons of chaff were on the ceiling. Next thing, we came out of the dive and climbed straight up. Buck and I and the chaff were thrown to the floor and held there, by I don't know how many Gs. By the time we went into our next dive, the chaff all came floating out of the cartons and filled the ship.
My mike and earphone cords had become unplugged and I was out of contact with the cockpit. I thought sure we were hit and were going in. I looked for my chute, but couldn't find it. It must have been floating some-where in that sea of tinfoil.
The flak stopped, and we finally leveled off. For a while I lay in the pile of tinfoil, too exhausted to move. Every inch of the plane was covered with foil, which had even gone up over the bomb bay and into the cockpit.
Buck and I spent the next two hours trying to clean up the ship. We were afraid to face the crew chief with his plane looking like a Christmas tree.
Back on the coffee-and-doughnut line, the crews of the other chaff ships laughed and asked what the hell we'd been doing. Evasive action, we answered, matter-of-factly. Then they told us what had happened from their point of view.
When we'd taken our first dive, the guns on the ground must have picked us up, because we were followed by bursting .88s all through our up-and-down evasive action. The other crews hadn't drawn another shot and had calmly gotten rid of their chaff.
As it turned out, we hadn't been able to handle the chaff, but we did take the flak, which allowed the other crews to dispense their chaff and help the bomber crews after all.1