Big Ben Here I Come
by Irv Pliskin
Perception is strange. It may lead you to develop an opinion that is quite far from the reality of things. That, I discovered was what was happening to me. My fellow officers in the crew had a perception, a preconceived perception, which had been fostered by the antipathy the bombardier, and I felt, and so their view of me and my work generally appeared to be negative. Never positive.
Yet, I discovered, when we got together with other crews who had flown from Goose Bay to Iceland, across the big drink as we did, that many of them had been as much as 25 to 40 minutes off on their ETA’S. Many had failed to make the regular course corrections during the crossing that needed to be made, so when they got close to Iceland they were well out of range and they had to make severe course changes, heading north to get to the landing field.
We missed the ETA by about 4 minutes, and needed no course corrections at all. The course we were on when we picked up the homing beacon, was the course that took us directly to the field, and since we hadn’t let down as I asked, over it.
By those standards, I decided, I had done darn well. My associates did not agree: and I never made a point of it. I probably should have, but my feelings of self worth were pretty low, and I certainly didn’t want any conflicts at that time.
Besides, when we landed, as I remember, I was sick. I had a bad headache, something I never had. And I was nauseated. I couldn’t eat, I suspect I had a temperature. I didn’t want to report to sick call. Like most young men I resisted being sick. I went to my bunk, again in a huge gym type barracks, with hundreds of cots lined up in rows. I climbed under the thin Army blankets without changing from my flight suit, and went to sleep. I think I slept as much as twelve hours. But, when I awakened in the morning, I was feeling much better.
We were not scheduled to fly to Prestwick, Scotland until the next day, so in any case unless I was really ill, we were okay. Our course from Reykjavik to Scotland took us over North Ireland. Although the most direct route would have been over Ireland itself, we were not permitted to fly over the Irish airspace. Ireland was a private, neutral country, and they would not permit over flights. As a result, we had to make the somewhat longer flight over the British owned northern Ireland. The flight took the better part of a day, and we finally landed in Great Britain.
We spent a day or so in a tent city, waiting orders. When our orders finally came, we boarded a British train. It was our first experience with a compartmented train. It was our first experience with beat up, pre war rolling stock, as well. We got our traveling orders in the late afternoon, and were to board the train the next morning. That night there was to be a movie shown on the base, and I decided, to go. I went alone, I don’t know where the others were.
I remember the stygian darkness. Even though we were very far from the Eastern Coast of England, the entire nation was under a very strict blackout. The movie was being held in a secure tent. We sat on plain backless benches, the sort football players sit on during their games. Frankly, I don’t remember the movie at all. What I do recall is that suddenly, during the showing, everyone around me dropped to the ground. I was the only one in my row who was still sitting on the bench.
‘Hey, guy, what the hell is going on?’
‘Get down, idiot, get on the ground.’ I was told, ’Get your ass under the bench.’
‘Why? What’s happening?’
Then the movie sound track was turned off, and overhead we heard what sounded to me like a Model T ford without a muffler, puttering along loudly.
‘What’s that? Hey what’s that noise?’
‘That's a German Buzz bomb, you jackass. Get down. Get down. If the motor stops you better hide quick.’
This I had to see. So I went out of the tent flap and stood alongside the canvas, looking up, What I saw was both scary and fascinating. I saw the buzz bomb, flying at about five hundred feet, belching fire from the tail as it streaked across the sky.
As I recall, it looked liked a stubby wing small aircraft, but without a propeller. It did not stop, it went past us, how much further I do not know. But I did know one thing: this was a war zone, we were at war.
Up until that time, all of this had been sort of a game: something young men did to make Uncle Sam happy and stay out of jail. It was benign. But not now. This was for real, deadly, and for real.
The camp was in Buzz Bomb alley. I don’t remember seeing or hearing any buzz bombs when we got to our operational field which was in the heart of East Anglia, miles away.
The next day we rode the train across England to East Anglia. If you look at a map of the United Kingdom, and find London, run your fingers up and to the right. You will see a bulge of land going into the channel. It looks very much like a lady’s tummy when she is very pregnant. That area, about 75 to l00 kilometers from London is East Anglia.
It was a rural area in 1944, it still is today. It was the area where the Americans and the British built the air bases for our heavy bombers, the B-l7’s and B-24’s.
The area was studded with flying fields. We were assigned to the 95th Bomb Group, the 412th Bomb Squadron. The field was located at a town called Horham, between two other communities: Diss and Eye. Norwich was about 30 minutes away by jeep or bus.
The 95th Bomb group field at Horham had actually been a series of farms, and the highway, a road through the area, actually crossed the runways. We never ran into any traffic that I know of, but the road was there. I suspect that when we were flying in or out they had MPS to keep whatever vehicles might have been around out of the way. If we had been diverted or sent around the field to let a car go by, I might not know about it. By the time we got to the field area, my job as navigator was over and I might very well be relaxing or daydreaming or finishing up my work.
The standard 8th Air Corps combat squadron had a compliment of l2 or l3 aircraft, and the personnel to fly them. That meant that there would be about 117 combat personnel in each squadron, including officers and men. Although the original crew of a B-17 was ten men, by mid summer of 1944 the Army had reduced the compliment by one. We flew nine man crews: four officers and five enlisted men.
The officers were billeted in Nissen huts or Quonset huts, which are basically the same thing. Usually twelve men lived in one hut, the officers of three crews. The enlisted men were housed differently, with twice that number of men in a facility.
We called these dwellings Quonset huts, the Brits called them Nissen huts. There may have been some small differences, but from the outside, they all seemed to look the same. There were a row of metal Quonset huts that we lived in while we flew combat. Admittedly, living in one was far superior to living in a tent, or in a trench as the foot soldiers did. And, we came home, when we came home, to a bed, and sheets and blankets and warm food. We probably did not appreciate this comfort during those years, but the Quonset huts were fairly comfortable.
The average Quonset hut was 20 feet wide and forty-eight feet long. They were made of corrugated metal, with no interior insulation. The hut was about 9 feet high, dome shaped, and if you were to imagine what an l6 foot pipe cut in half down the center looked like, that is what the Quonset hut looked like. It was half of the pipe, the open end sat on the ground, the rest of the pipe was housing or storage area. The outside walls were windowless. The end piece, which may have been wood or metal, usually wood, sometimes had a window in it. There was a front door, no back door. Some of the Quonset huts had five-foot roof overhang extensions to the back and the front, sort of like a porch roof. That was to help control the effect of weather, rain or snow.
The hut had a tongue and grooved wood floor, no other floor covering.
And, in the center of the hut was a pot belly stove that could use wood or coal. That stove provided whatever heat we needed during the cold fall and winter nights. The toilet sinks and showers were also in a Quonset hut. We trotted, carrying our toilet or Dopp kits, down the path a little way to the facility that served four or five officer’s Quonset huts.
At our camp, and in our squadron, we had a ’batman’ who took care of the huts. He cleaned them, made our bunks and kept things ship shape.
When our crew arrived at the 412th, there was not enough room in one Quonset hut for all four of us. On a temporary basis, they split us up, two in one barracks and two in another. Satterfield and I chose one of the huts, and were together with three other crews. Rand and Mullins elected to be together in another barracks. The idea was that eventually there would be space for all of us, and we would move and be berthed together. We flipped a coin and I took the top of a double decker, against the back wall of the hut. Satterfield was in the bottom berth, and we settled in.
In a situation like that, it doesn’t take long to get to know the people you are bunking with. You may not know them well, but you know them by crew assignments, name, and where they are from. In this barracks, there was a pilot who came from New York, the Bronx, I think. A nice pleasant Jewish boy, and an Italian navigator from Brooklyn who thought he was god’s gift to skill. I don’t remember names, I am sure they don’t remember mine, either. But I suppose if I had to I could find out who they were.
Before we were allowed to join the group and go on our first mission, we had to go through a series of training flights. These were mostly mid-altitude flights that required no high altitude gear. When the other men were off fighting the war, bomber missions started well before dawn and lasted until late afternoon, we had time for training there in East Anglia. I remember with a feeling of surprise and even awe my first view of the English countryside from the air. When you fly here in the United States, if you can see the ground at all, you see vast vistas of land...large farms usually demarcated by roads, if nothing more. The farms appear to be endless, often many acres of land with a house at one end, nothing but fields, or trees or waving grass.
In the UK fields were very small, and marked with hedges. It seemed that every farmer planted some sort of thick hedge around his property. As a result when one looked at the ground what one saw was a quilting of spaces, small fields enclosed with trenches or hedges.
In France, the hedges were so thick and prevalent that the foot soldiers fought the hedgerows as well as the enemy. The lay of the land was exceedingly different; seeing it from the air for the first time was a shocking revelation. From the air, we knew that this was another world to us. These people lived differently and had different standards than we did.
After several indoctrination missions over the English countryside, during which we got a view of the land and the area, we were ready for our first high altitude flight. We were going to bombing altitude where we would experience the cold and the discomfort we would endure on our bombing missions.
