A Bleak December
by Irv Pliskin
We continued to fly our missions. Some of them were somewhat routine...in terms of what we expected. Of course, there is nothing routine about facing death at 25,000 feet. But we considered some of them routine.
One mission which I remember very well was to southern Germany. We were aloft when the weather turned terrible. A cold front had moved in, and was covering most of the area. We had a choice, scrub the mission or continue to the target. Our leader decided to continue, and we were just about the only group in the air that day. That was risky business. There was safety in numbers, and if we were up there, on group all alone we were subject to heavy attacks by enemy fighters.
Nevertheless, we went on, and managed to bomb the target through the cloud cover. As we turned to come home, there was no way we could descend. If you went down, the cloud cover, which was prodigious, was right there below us...and we could not fly formation in the clouds. Therefore, we began to climb up. In addition, as we went up, so did the clouds. At thirty thousand feet, there was still no break in the soaring cumulus, so we were told to break off break formation, while we were in the clear, and make our way home. Each airplane and crew was on their own, alone.
This is where the navigator shines, of course. It is also where the pilot has to be on his best game: in the clouds, he is very subject to terrible vertigo, a condition in which he thinks he is no longer flying straight and level...and ignores his instruments and makes rapid adjustments to the flight. That can prove disastrous because he IS flying straight and level, and the adjustments can throw the airplane into a dive or a spin and then into oblivion.
I remember waving goodbye to our wingman--one of the crews I knew well, and the navigator waved back at me. We flew only a hundred or so feet from each other, and it was quite possible to see my fellow navigator out the window of the plane. They peeled off into the clouds, and, that was the last anyone ever saw them, ever.
We surmised that they were vertigo victims and the plane dove into the English Channel...and like Glen Miller, the famous musician, was never seen again.
As we circled slowly down through the dense clouds, we hit an open space. We were between two levels of clouds, at about 10,000 feet, so we didn’t need our oxygen, and as far as we could see, we were in clear air, with solid, heavy clouds above us and below us. Using my instruments, the G box which was a sort of radar, my last position estimate and my records I gave Randy a course for home, and he followed it. What else was he to do? He had no idea where he was, and so he had to rely on me. I knew where I was: knowing that was my job. We followed the course I gave them, let down when I told him to, and low and behold, we aced the field, coming in over it and breaking out of the ‘soup’ at about 300 feet. By that time, of course, we were on the base radio, and that helped us make absolutely sure of where we were. But I had gotten us well within striking distance of home, and relative safety.
With the cloud cover only about 300 feet off the ground, we had to do some fancy flying to circle the field, and get down safely. Just consider this, the wingspan of the B-17 is slightly over 110 feet. As we made our turns to line up with the runway, one wing was in the clouds, the other just a few feet above the ground.
Roger was an exceptionally good pilot, and although the situation was ‘hairy’, he handled it like the pro he was. We made it okay, we landed safely and went on to our briefing.
The pilots of other crews were not as adroit, or as lucky.
Two or three of the aircraft could not stop at the end of the runway, as they should. This may have been because they had come in too far over the end of it, or they had not dirtied it up and slowed it down enough, and as a result, they ran into the ditch at the end of the macadam. Many of the airplanes were severely damaged: damage to props and engines, damage to landing gears, damage to wings. Men were hurt too. When a B-17 grinds to a screeching halt like that, there is nothing to keep the men from flying around. Only the pilots have seats with seat belts, the rest of us either stood or sat with our backs to bulkheads, but the wrench the airplane experienced was pretty severe, and men did get hurt in that circumstance.
At the time, we wondered why we had not been scratched, as had the rest of the air force. We were aloft, and our leader was ‘gung-ho’
Or out to make a reputation. We never did find out why. We obeyed orders and we were lucky, we came home safely.
A couple of days after this experience, the Charge of Quarters came to Roger’s Nissen hut looking for me.
“Hey, Lieutenant. Do you know where Lieutenant Pliskin is?”
“He isn’t here. Who wants him?”
“The CO wants to see him.”
“Why? What in the hell has he done?”
“Nothing, sir. But he wants to ask him to fly with another crew as lead navigator on a mission. They think he’s been doing a very good job.”
That seemed to be a revelation to my crewmates, and Roger using his influence scotched the idea. I never did get to fly that mission, but my stock went up, which was fortunate I think. I did not find out about this possible assignment until some time later, but knowing about it made me feel pretty good.
On Saturday, December 16, we flew to Stuttgart and bombed there. After having experienced the tough earlier mission, with the gut wrenching landing and other problems, Stuttgart was a piece of cake. The weather was still lousy, but not threatening, and we did the mission in the usual eight or nine hours and came back after what was essentially an uneventful experience...if any bombing mission can be uneventful.
Sunday morning, December 17, 1944 was a surprise. We had not heard the night before that the Germans had marshaled everything they had and started a drive through Belgium to the sea. When we heard that, it was a surprise, of course. But the most extraordinary surprise that Sunday morning was the fog.
Everything around us, everything everywhere was bathed in fog. The fog was a dense as night, and although it was daylight you could not see a foot in front of you. You could walk on the sidewalks, because you could feel them underfoot, and you could walk on the paths, but if you strayed in any direction, you took one hell of a risk. You could walk into something and injure yourself seriously. It is had to believe that the fog could be so dense, so thick, so formidable.
And, it covered all of East Anglia and most of England. Every airplane anywhere was grounded. You could not get off the ground, and if you did, there would be no way to land safely. Hitler’s hoards had free reign so far as the deterrents they might experience from air power. They could move along the ground without fear of attack from any England based aircraft. I do not know what the conditions were in France: we may have been able to fly fighters off the French fields, but the bombers were grounded. Totally grounded.
Individually we had no mobility: for the most part, we stayed close to our Nissen huts. We could manage to get to the mess hall, the latrines and the recreation hall, but that was a far as we could go. We couldn’t even--had we wanted to--get to the local pubs. The fog was that thick, that dense, that formidable. There is an old saw that says the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face; well it was the reality during that period in East Anglia.
And then the rumors began to fly.
We were not much on news, in those days. There was no TV with news bites every hour: instead, we relied on Stars and Stripes the daily Army newspaper and the radio, if we could get radio news. Generally, the only thing I remember on the radio was Axis Sally and her derisive comments about our bombers and our bomb groups. And the limericks.
The Germans were big on derogatory limericks. One I remember, and it is not at all politically correct is this:
“The air marshal looked over his figures,
and said amongst audible sniggers
'There were six German fighters
You got ten of the blighters
You must have been working like N---ers'”
There were many more, of course. But that one, for some reason, has stayed with me all these years.
During that week in December, I don’t remember seeing Stars and Stripes (The daily Army newspaper) at all. With the fog as thick as it was, it may have been that the trucks couldn’t move at all, and so we were completely cut off.
But there were rumors. Oh yes, there were rumors.
Very disturbing and distressing rumors. We heard that the Germans had driven our troops back, and that Americans were on the brink of being pushed into the English Channel. We heard that there was going to be another Dunkirk, an American Dunkirk and we were going to be driven right off the continent. Rumors had it that Hitler was about to succeed and drive the Americans all the way back to England, and force our surrender.
This was pretty hard for any of us to accept, and for the most part we thought it was all nonsense. But, day after day, we were grounded. We couldn’t fly, we couldn’t do anything.
Early in the morning on Christmas Eve, the wind began to blow, and the fog blew away. Everyone, every serviceable aircraft and every serviceable airman was scheduled to fly that day December 24, 1944. The CQ roused us out of bed at 4 AM, and then we had breakfast and gathered in the huge briefing room to get our target and be brought up to date on the damage the Germans had done during our weeklong grounding.
We had no idea what to expect. All we had heard were rumors of an effective and devastating German assault on our lines.
The Colonel got up on the platform, and told us that we were going to go to the help of the ground troops who had taken “one hell of a beating up to this point.” We didn’t know what to expect, and when he pulled the curtain covering the map of Europe back and we saw the incursion the Germans had made we all groaned in distress.
They had indeed penetrated deeply into Belgium and France, the salient they had developed was long and narrow and sort of the shape of a rocket: it had a sharp point and then spread out to either side.
It was big, it was impressive, it was dumbfounding.
We were amazed that the enemy had been able to make such headway. We were amazed and surprised that it could have happened in just seven days: when the fog had rolled in, the front lines had been sort of straight, now there was this terrible bulge into our hard won territory. Our mission was simple. We were to arrest the ravages of the Germans by bombing their supplies and their supply routes into rubble.
We were to fly down that salient, not around it, but right down the middle to bomb any location that may have supplies, munitions or troops.
We had to stop the onslaught, so the ground troops could drive the Germans back to the other side of their original lines, and then back to Germany and defeat.
That was our mission, and we did it that Christmas eve. We delivered a package of deadly gifts to the enemy, and we weren’t Santa Claus or Father Christmas. We were, in many instances the grim reaper.
It was not easy. The krauts got their licks in, and they surprised us, too. They surprised us by shooting at us not with 88-millimeter shells, their usual antiaircraft weapons but with 105 and l55 howitzers. American guns, captured American Tubes were being used against us. These weapons were as accurate as the 88’s and far more deadly. The shells were larger, their explosive power greater. Fortunately, the Germans had not yet mastered them, so they may not have been as accurate as they were in American hands. But it was fearful: the 88 explodes with black flak, the 1205’s and 155’s explodes with white flak. That’s how we knew they were our guns.
We got back in time for a Christmas Eve dinner, but we were not to have any time off. Christmas was a working day for us, and we were off early in the morning on our quest to drive the Germans into extinction.
We had a party on Christmas night, and I am sure I gave Amy some sort of expensive bauble. I had plenty of money, and spent it freely.
We were off on the 26th, but we flew again on the 27th and the 28th. When we landed on the 27th, I was feeling particularly grungy. I may have had a cold, and my oxygen mask, when I hung it up in my locker, had a musty, foul odor. I decided that, despite the tradition that said you change nothing after your first successful mission, to wash the darn thing. I took it into the latrine and washed the mask thoroughly, and I also washed the hose that connected the oxygen mask to the oxygen supply. The hose is not a straight hose, like a garden hose, it is more like a “slinky” toy. It has lots of ridges and it expands like an according bellows. I washed my oxygen mask and hose out, and hung them in my locker to dry.
After supper that night, we found again that we were scheduled to fly the next day. We were awakened early, suited up and took off while it was still dark. Our mission had not changed, bomb the hell out of the German supply and munition lines, destroy rail lines and marshaling yards.
We were to come into the combat area at fairly low levels, under l0,000 feet, and then climb to a bombing altitude of about 20,000 feet drop the eggs and get out of there. The Germans were gaining some accuracy with our big guns and this seemed to be the best way to get away from them and succeed with the mission.
As we climbed, we donned our oxygen masks, and proceeded with the mission. We dropped our bombs and turned on the way home. Roger asked me something, I don’t know what, and I told him to go to Hell.
“How would I know the answer to that?”
He asked me again, alarmed because that was not the way I usually responded to him. That kind of aggressive, antagonistic answer was not my style at all. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I had passed out from lack of oxygen, and was lying on my back on the floor of the airplane with not much more time to live.
Fortunately, Roger got Mullins, who spun around in his seat, and realized that I had trouble breathing and quickly replaced my oxygen mask and hose with another. I awakened, nauseated with a splitting headache, wondering why I was sitting on the floor of the aircraft.
Later we decided that washing the oxygen mask was a dumb thing to do. The water in it had not evaporated, and as we flew at altitude, the moisture began to freeze and eventually cut off my oxygen. Without quick attention, I could have died. I know I had a killer headache, I don’t usually have headaches so I rather remember that one.
We got back safely, and after the debriefing and the shot of booze, the flight surgeon checked me out. I was okay, and certified to keep flying.
We flew two more flights that year. Our flight on December 31, New Year’s Eve was a major thrust against Hamburg, the German port city on the Baltic Sea. This was a major effort by the 8th: it was a long, arduous and tough flight. We took off early and flew North instead of East as we usually did. Our flight path took us up over Scotland, and then in to the North Sea. When we were somewhat south of Heilogland---we turned East toward the mainland and the target. This route may have been chosen to confuse the enemy; perhaps our planners thought that the Germans would think we were going to bomb the island, rather than their important port city with its vital shipping and submarine pens. There was another problem, too. This was a long-range strike, and our fighter cover, the P-51’s, ‘little friends’ would have a hard job flying that far to protect us from enemy aircraft.
For some reason, and we lowly flyers never did get explanations of these things, our group lead did not follow the flight plan that we were briefed on. We were to fly toward the island, which is about 100 miles off the coast of Germany, at the mouth of the Baltic Sea, and then we were to turn and make a direct run into Hamburg. We were not to get close to the Island, it was just a simple feint in that direction. But our lead decided otherwise, and we flew well up the North Sea until we could see the Island there below us. We then made our turn and started to the target. We arrived at least a half hour after the main part of the bombers did. It was clear that day, and we could see all the way to the ground, and what I saw and remember clearly were many fires on the ground, and smoke blowing out to sea. We were well after the main bomb strikes, and we were pretty much alone up there, as a bomb group. We dropped our bombs, about thirty minutes after we should have, and then we turned on our way home. For some reason, and I don’t know why, our plane had slipped out of formation, and the main part of the group was perhaps five miles or so ahead of us.
My headset cackled: “ Waist gunner to navigator. Waist gunner to navigator.”
“Yeah, go ahead”
“What’s that wispy looking flak out there?”
“Where?”
“On the starboard side, ya see it?”
I looked and indeed there was very wispy flak, unlike any I had ever seen before. And behind it, was the biggest meanest looking airplane I had ever seen. We were under attack by a Focke Wolfe 190. It swooped past us in a rush, and I saw the huge swastikas painted on its side and then shouted on the intercom, I think.
”Holy C----st, that’s a German fighter. Jesus, lets get outta here.”
Mullins shouted at Randy to get back in formation, and I know he put on the pressure and we got closer to the protection of the other aircraft. Bombers out of formation are ‘strays’ and very vulnerable to fighter action. There is safety in numbers and when a squadron focuses on a fighter, there is a lot of firepower. One plane alone doesn’t offer much firepower. The German made another pass, but missed us, and by that time, we were in the relative protective custody of our formation. I don’t know if anyone on our ship fired at the German. I think we were so startled that not one of our gunners pulled the trigger.
Irv Pliskin is a retired advertising agency owner. He is a combat veteran of World War II and an Ex Prisoner of War of the Germans. Married, with three kids, and four grandchildren he devotes his time to writing flash fiction. He hopes, that someday, he may become the Grandma Moses of flash fiction. He lives with his wife of 57 years in Cherry Hill,NJ.
