Part 2 (1/2)
What happened in Red Morgan's plane wasn't a typical combat story and what happened to the crew of Francis Lauro's Fort in a raid on Bremen in January 1944, wasn't typical either, because toohappens to anyone on a bomber trip Mostly the men just sit and wait to be attacked or to be hit by flak There is always one raid-unner's tour of operations that stands out in his hest he ever made For Lauro's creas that January haul to Breht On the way out the trouble began when Murray Schrier began having trouble getting a breath Murray was the ball turret man and after he'd told the pilot over the intercoen mask was frozen he climbed up out of the ball turret and started for the radio roounner, Bill Heathed hien ed into in the radio rooen off and plugged Schrier's extension line in there The waist gunner and the radio operator started to work on Schrier, trying to bring hiloves with the hose attachunner's face The oxygen unner's helen system that crews first used and it was an old-typepulled off three layers of gloves he had on, exposing his hands to the fifty-below-zero temperature in the radio roounner's face
Feeling the lack of oxygen after he took his line off the ed into one of the s thetoppled over on top of Schrier The bottle he had plugged into was frozen and he had been getting no oxygen
Heathman, the third man, was alunner, Gerald Will, left his gun and ca Lauro on the interco trouble there Will hooked his oxygen tube into the walk-around bottle he had beside hien bottle under his arot as far as the ball turret just outside the radio roo's bottle, his outlet valve was frozen stiff He turned and started back for his waist position where he could plug back into the ht, but he never made it Halfway back to the waisthe collapsed on the floor of the boen
Heathman, the only one still conscious, called forward over the interphone for help Walt Green and Emanuel Greasamar, the bombardier and copilot, took walk-around bottles from the nose compartment and started back to the radio compartment
”With six ed,” Francis Lauro, the pilot, said ”It got worse Our nu up and then several F-W 190s showed up on the fringe of the forested that we go down a few thousand feet where it aren, but he hadn't seen the fighters They would have piled into us if we'd left the formation for a minute and there was an undercast with probably several squadrons of Ger for some sucker to drop below it All I could do was hold the shi+p in forhtersif they'd only known it In the nose the navigator, Euns, while Dewey Thompson up in the top turret sprayed them from there”
In the radio compartment the copilot and the boen bottles they had brought back King, the second to go out, was in the worst condition and he ca's hands, which were left bare when King took his gloves off to fix Schrier's 's hands under his ar'swhile though and he ca The , a big, strong Nebraska far out with his hands and feet Heath down as he thrashed around the radio roounner, Dewey Thompson, answered the final SOS froh the bo
When Tho thrashi+ng around, lashi+ng out with his fists When his great swollen white hands struck the floor of the shi+p or the sharp edge of some piece of radio equiped out of a hunk of ice The battered hands didn't bleed They were frozen through
It was too late for theloves would have fit those hands, swollen tosettled down, regaining full consciousness, and Green sat on the floor next to hiain put the horribly battered and frozen hands inside his bo's hands didn't start to bleed until the Fort ithin sight of England Down below five thousand feet the blood started h his chilled veins and out into the frozen hands
”I didn't see King's hands until we got down on the ground,” Lauro said ”Frostbite was no word for what had happened to his hands One of the flight surgeons looked at the wasn't pretty King had saved Schrier's life with those hands”
And that is about where the story of one crew's , Murray Schrier and [ie]Air Gunner, the first Rooney-Hutton collaboration the rest will yell again when they crack their shi+ns and stub their toes, and they'll complain the next time there is no hot water or heat in the rooreater reat one day
Forrest was the radio operatorgunner on a Fortress called Jersey Bounce Junior Jersey Bounce Junior He enty-two years old He enty-two years old
It was a long daylight haul into Ger of the nazis' aircraft production plants Jersey Bounce Jersey Bounce was plugging along in forines and sent the Fort reeling frohters had seen it and closed in for the inevitable kill Sounners beat theuns yammered steadily and froun was firing, too was plugging along in forines and sent the Fort reeling frohters had seen it and closed in for the inevitable kill Sounners beat theuns yammered steadily and froun was firing, too
Finally, a 20-un Fro fire swept back past the fin and rudder and at length the fighters went away
When the fighters had gone, the crew began to check up on each other You all right? Roger Waist? Roger Radio? RADIO? Vosler, are youOne of you guys go up there froht
Vosler wasn't all right The first attack, the one that had knocked out the tail guns, had left his and thighs The tail guns had gone out and he'd fired his gun despite the pain, and the fighters had pressed in once more A 20- ed hunks of steel ripped into his head and face Where his eyes should be there was a great gash of red and dead white bits of flesh The gunners tried to patch Vosler up, but they couldn't give him morphine because a man with a head wound suffers fro to fix his wounds when the intercoet rid of everything we can”
They threw out everything within reach, but the gas was running out and so was time So Vosler sat down to his radio He couldn't see it, but he knehere everything should be His cold fingers told him what the others could see with their eyes-the radio had been smashed by cannon fire Vosler was the kind of kid who a few un even after the cannon shell had hit hi the steady, even drip of blood that soaked through the bandages and fell on the folding counter of his radio desk, he fixed an eency set He switched on the power and told one of the others where to set the dials so they would be on the eency channel
The noise of the key as it called for help was louder than the drip of the blood on his extended ar base they probably would have to crash land in the sea, he fainted The others revived hiain They revived hias was lower now in the tanks Still too ht The crew searched the shi+p for ht They had cleaned her out before In the radio roo base advised of as happening, Vosler unners to fix his 'chute and throw hias reach He was pretty badly off, anyway Would they? Please
They said no
The little lights on the instruas, no gas, no gas Jersey Bounce Junior Jersey Bounce Junior settled to the Channel, ine's power died away They hit The dinghies went out the hatches Soot him Take care Take care settled to the Channel, ine's power died away They hit The dinghies went out the hatches Soot hi plane, the tail gunner, who had been wounded, started to slip down into the sea Vosler was nearest He couldn't see, but he could hear the kid call for help, and finally his groping hand found the woundedti warm and dry
The doctors think that Forrest Vosler ht eye, to distinguish the Congressional Medal of Honor they've recommended should be his for the day's work in Jersey Bounce Jersey Bounce
The gunners don't like to think about what goes on in dick Blackburn's ets that filled his ring sights the day of the Regensburg haul Probably everything was all right Probably
It was on August 17, 1943, and the sun was hot and a big blob of flaensburg and then on to Africa In the tail of one B17 was Staff Sergeant Richard A Blackburn, frohters that day, hth Air Force ever had seen at one tih for the most part they weren't the creahters frohters and third-line fighters So the route, as the Forts droned deeper and deeper into the Reich, the district luftfuehrer ured this was an all-out affair So he called out everything that could fly There were Junkers 87 Stukas up there, and big four-engined Focke-Wulf 200s and half a dozen kinds of h, because there were such a lot of thehters, but the Fortress gunners were having a field day And dick Blackburn was having his share of the fun For a solid hour and a half dick tracked Geruns, opened up with short bursts as they cained Ju 88s and four-engined boency service He sat there and shot at thehter because always there was that bright sun to stare up into and worry if it held ot to Africa finally, and the crew had a hell of a ti with the Arabs, who their tired plane ready for the trip back But dick Blackburn didn't have much of a time He didn't say much, just spent most of the days they were there stretched out on his back in the shade of the B17's wing, closing his eyes against even the reflection of the hot African sun
When the shi+p took off for England, Blackburn was back in his tail position sa et, an easy one, Bordeaux, and there wasn't any enemy plane in the sky for hours
Finally Blackburn sahat he thought was a Ger in on them He started to press his microphone switch and then he wasn't sure It looked like one
”Tail gunner to ball turret Tail gunner to ball turret Is that a Ju 88 co, Blackburn?”
”No Is it? Is it?”
”Blackburn, that's another Fortress just a little out of forlish Channel, and the danger was gone, Blackburn went up to the radio roounners, who had coe lettering on the package
”Funny,” Blackburn began slowly, ”but I can't tell whether that's breakfastdinnersupperor- ”For Christ's sake! My eyes!”
When they got back to base, the other gunners led Blackburn to the flight surgeon, who peered into the angry red eyeballs that had searched for Gerust 17 sun and sent Blackburn to bed For a good unner couldn't even see the food they had to spoon into his h, the doctors looked at his eyes and said that if he was careful his eyes would be pretty good again, soh They said that the long hours of staring up into the fla for German planes, had injured the delicate tissues of his eyeballs, had injured the nerves They said it had begun to happen while he was still peering and firing that day on the way to Africa They said it had been a wonder he could see anything at all that day
Blackburn agreed with the to catch those single-engined fighters, and the twin-engined ones, and the four-engined ones The Gerined planes that day, an awful lot
It's on those rainy nights, when conversation in the hut dies away and a gunner flops onto his sack, too weary to talk, too weary to write letters, and sinks into a sort of mental void, that the inevitable quality of his job comes hoh his brain, and his face will be without expression as it happens to hiin to form and the hard part of the corners of his unners in a Liberator hut talked for a long ti tih the International Red Cross This man and that man in Castillo's creas reported a prisoner This field, Ohio, and was a staff sergeant, was tail gunner in the Liberator Rugged Buggy Rugged Buggy The other crehat happened to him, and told about it The other crehat happened to hiy was on her way in to a Geret in the summer of 1943, before the Libs went down to Africa for the Ploesti oilfields hters saw the feathered prop and ca as the Lib slipped from formation Other crews could see was on her way in to a Geret in the summer of 1943, before the Libs went down to Africa for the Ploesti oilfields hters saw the feathered prop and ca as the Lib slipped froy almost heave herself up as the pilot tried to nurse her back to the shelter of the other planes' guns, but little by little almost heave herself up as the pilot tried to nurse her back to the shelter of the other planes' guns, but little by little Rugged Buggy Rugged Buggy dropped away dropped away
Two of the attacking pack of twenty Focke-Wulfs went down as the crippled plane's guns poured out thousands of rounds, but the other nazis pressed the attack Cannon fire silenced the Lib's waist guns, and great rents and wounds began to show in her wings and tail and fuselage Rugged Buggy Rugged Buggy's defensive fire slowed Finally, only dick Castillo's tail guns were firing, traversing back and forth, fraing to another quarter The tail guns see everywhere at once Over their radio, the leader of the Gerhter element ordered his pilots to spread out and sunner
That was the beginning of the end While one trio of fighters attacked fro Castillo's fire, the others cut in from the sides Maybe they planned it the way it happened, maybe they didn't, but other crews in the formation of B24s up above saw enemy fire crisscross just forward of Castillo's tail position, saw the fabric tear loose in great sheets, saw the bare skeleton of Rugged Buggy Rugged Buggy's vertebrae exposed