Learning the Trade, Honing the Skills
by Irv Pliskin
The spring and summer of 1944 were devastating to the Air Corps in Europe. Bombers and crew losses were beyond comprehension. In terms of ground warfare, infantry, artillery, armor, even the Marines, losses that approached 10% were considered unacceptable. The number of men who were lost even at places like the Normandy landings did not go much more than that according to official records. Air Corps losses, however, exceed 50%.
In the recorded history of modern warfare, no other fighting force had ever suffered so badly, so consistently. Certainly there were some military engagements during World War 11, where the losses were astronomical, but on an overall day-to-day basis, the losses in the 8th and 15th air forces changed the statistics and boggled the brains of the professionals.
Fifty percent of the crews and aircraft were being lost to German Luftwaffe and antiaircraft guns. As a result, intensified training was needed to get replacements crews into combat as quickly as possible. Targets such as Mercersberg, Schwienfurt, Berlin Cologne, Regensberg, Ploesti were tabulated not as missions but as places where aircraft were lost. On a single afternoon as many as fifty or sixty bombers could be shot down, by the krauts and their crews of 10 brave young men either killed or, if they were lucky, captured.
We did not know this at Avon Park Florida, of course. All we knew was that we had to train and work and get ready for our combat assignments. We had no idea where we were going or would be assigned or why we were being pressed and rushed the way we were. We might go anywhere: England, Italy, The Far East or the Pacific. Our training was intensified: replacement crews were needed desperately. I don't know that we even speculated on an eventual operational area. We just concentrated on getting into fighting shape as quickly as possible. We flew and flew and were honed into a warrior team.
Our major hurdles there at Avon Park, Florida were the unrelenting summer heat and the gigantic, ferocious mosquitoes. The mosquitoes were so large, in fact, that it was reported that one of them landed on our runway and was met by a tanker truck loaded with avgas. The truck crew dispensed 473.5 gallons of 95-octane gasoline. This turned out to be a canard. It took only 272.1 gallons before the tanks were tapped out. Once airborne we could escape both the heat and the insects, so we didn't mind flying that much.
We flew every day, but the type of flying we did had many dangers. Danger one was pilot inexperience. I was lucky. Rand was a gifted pilot and he had complete control of his ship all the time. He avoided the dangers and the problems that many of the other crews ran into. There were many mid air collisions and near misses as we learned how to fly formation and work together. Danger two was maintenance of the aircraft. There were very few down days, and the planes were in constant demand. Because the maintenance crews did not have enough time to do their work, we rarely flew a training mission where we did not run into engine trouble and have to feather a prop shut down the engine and return to base. There were myriad problems with maintenance. We became skillful at limping home on three or even two engines. These mechanical emergencies took their toll, and they also created a problem, of a different sort for me. As I had indicated, I came to the crew after it had been functioning as a team for some time. In a way, I, as the new man on the block, was viewed as an interloper by Mullins, the bombardier. (He never said this of course, but I felt it viscerally. He resented me and my skills.)
He knew something about navigation. He could read a chart, but he wasn't adept at it. Most bombardiers were not. Just as I knew something of what a bombardier did, I would not presume, however to take over the bombsight unless the bombardier was out of commission. But, as we had these engine crises he would jump in and attempt to give navigation instructions to the pilot giving him the heading and the direction we were to follow. That was my job, and I was well equipped, I thought then and even now, to handle it. He and Roger were friends. They had forged the friendship while I was still at Selman field learning to navigate, and Roger tended to listen to him rather than me. I am not a person who deals well with confrontation, so although I might have handled the situation with a head to head argument, I rather shied away from a quarrel. The situation did, of course, provide a problem for me, and I struggled for a way to resolve it since it was a very real challenge for me, and it could have been reckless and dangerous. If I was going to be effective in my job, I realized, I had to find a way to neutralize the situation.
I waited, in suppressed fury as Rand continued to follow the instructions Mullins gave him. Headings that were wrong and in the wrong direction to the places we had to go were not uncommon. But since we were flying during the day, we could see that we were off and simply correct for it.
On a night bombing mission, we bombed and missed a crossroads of lights, according to the strike photos. As we turned away from the target area, we had engine problems. We had to feather two engines. Mullins shouted into the Intercom to turn to a heading of 90 degrees. That will get us home he asserted. That was due east. The right heading would have been about l50 degrees, or south east. The plane was flying slowly, limping in the direction Mullins had suggested. After about fifteen minutes this conversation took place, as I recall.
"Navigator to Pilot. Navigator to Pilot."
"Go ahead."
"Are you going to give us ditching instructions, Randy? Or are you expecting us to bail out now while we still can?"
Ditching is what we called it when we had to land an airplane on water. There were very well-developed procedures for that very hazardous activity. The pilot was responsible for alerting the crew and telling them what to do, ditch or bail out.
"Ditch? Ditch? What the ------are you talking about?"
"Well if you continue on this heading you will be over the Atlantic Ocean in just about l2 minutes, and I suspect we won't find any land beyond that. There's no landing fields on my map out there."
Mullins was about to say something, but I cut him off. "If you want to get to Avon Park, take a heading of 180 degrees, and we should be there in 22 minutes. Check it on the beacon."
The beacon was the radio beacon, which should have been directly in front of us, and which, for some reason they had ignored. They turned the plane around to the heading, and fortunately, I was right. We came to the field and landed safely thanks to the runway landing lights.
I was never challenged on why I let the plane go as far East as I did, or why I didn't say anything immediately. It was obvious that I had played a card, and for that moment was ahead of the game.
One of the really tough parts of preparing for combat was getting used to high altitude flying. In our training, none of us had flown above l0,000 feet. We had not relied on oxygen for breathing or had to fight the killing cold of altitude. Although it might be over l00 degrees on the ground, at higher altitudes it could be well below freezing at heights of 20,000 feet. It was so cold that you could freeze a finger off if you put it in the wind stream of an airplane. So cold, that an unprotected hand would freeze and stick to the metal handle of a gun if you weren't wearing gloves. So cold that I saw an airplane knocked out of service when a stupid, unthinking airman threw a frozen sandwich out of an airplane. It unfortunately hit another aircraft, fractured the windscreen and forced the airplane out of the air to land.
We learned to deal with the cold of flying, as well as all the other hazards.
Personally, I was rather out of the loop with the other three officers of my crew. I kept to myself. I may have joined them at meals, and we sometimes exercised together, because we had to. I remember that at one time I played ping pong with Rand. He whipped my behind very well indeed. I was no more athletic at nineteen than I had been at twelve.
We did not socialize. We had some weekends off. The other officers went to Miami together, I was left to my own devices. I remember that I decided to go to Miami on my own, and managed to get there. I don't remember how. I do know that I rented a car, a convertible, even though car rentals were not done as easily as they are today. I used the driver's license I had gotten in Louisiana by applying for it, and had this nifty car to cruise the city in. My goal was to find a beach, perhaps a girl and live it up. I know I stayed alone, and I did not find a girl. I also know I stalled that damn car in the middle of Collings Avenue and created a monumental wartime traffic jam before I could figure out how to drive it down the street.
We were rushed through our training at Avon Park, and before the summer was over, just about the end of August we got orders to prepare to leave the base. We packed our gear and were assigned a brand new, right-off-the-assembly-line B-17. The plane had arrived from the west coast factory only a few days earlier.
Lashed inside the waist of this B-17 was a huge crate, which we were told contained replacement parts for it and other aircraft. We loaded aboard and on a hot August morning, following our orders, took off flying North. The plane was loaded with our luggage, fuel and equipment. Our destination was Westover Field, in Massachusetts. My job was to navigate the airplane north to our destination, about fifteen hundred or so air miles away.
At our normal ground speed of about 150 knots an hour, it was to be at least a ten hour flight. Nobody bothered to spell it out for us. Nobody had to. We were on our way overseas to fight the war. There was no interference with my navigating from anyone on board.
We flew north at about 5000 feet, no doubt startling many of the people on the ground. Low flying B-17's were fairly unique in those days. We flew doing pilotage, with reference to the ground, since it was a clear, beautiful day. My essential chore was to keep a record of the flight in my log book, making regular entries every ten minutes of location, air speed, and altitude. I had to be aware of nearby airfields, in case we were to have a problem. I kept the crew aware, using the intercom of the cities we were near, pointing out important landmarks as we flew north. Six or seven hours out, we flew over Washington D. C. There were no restrictions over the capitol in those days, and we flew at about 4000 feet. Many of the crew had never been there, so for them this was a unique experience.
I had only been there a couple of times, car travel in the 1940's was difficult and arduous. We did not have highways like I-95, the roads were all narrow and 45 miles an hour was considered fast. I know I had been to Washington during the New York World's Fair in 1939. My family lived in a very big house, and Mom and Dad decided to rent rooms to tourists during the Fair. The Fairgrounds were quite close to our house in Flushing, N. Y. As a matter of fact, I worked at the Fair during the summer of l940 as a candy butcher, selling popcorn, ice-cream, soda at an outdoor show and exhibit called The American Jubilee. Since my folks decided to rent rooms, Dad and I took a trip down the major highways from New York, heading South passing out leaflets and inviting people to stay at our place. I don't know how effective that was, but I do know that we spent some time in Washington, DC. while we were on our quest for business.
For the crew seeing the nation's capitol was a blast. We came over the city at about 2500 feet, and circled it a couple of times admiring all of the familiar sights before we turned north again for Philadelphia, and New York. When we came into the New York area, we descended to about 2000 feet, and literally buzzed the harbor. Even now, I can see that scene. The Hudson River glistened in the sunlight, the buildings sparkled. We flew over Manhattan Island, and then we made a l80 and flew over it again. Roger throttled down to almost stalling speed so everyone could get a good view of one of the most famous scenes: the Statue of Liberty in the Harbor. It was inspiring.
Roger asked me if I could find my house, and I assured him I could. Accordingly, we flew to my little town of Flushing, and I pointed out the house in which I lived, right behind the Gothic building that was Flushing High School. We dropped down to a thousand feet, and buzzed the house several times. Buzzing a ground location in a 4 engine bomber is not easy, you must make large circles. But we did it. As a matter of fact I even saw several people come out of the back door of the house and stand in the circular driveway looking up. I don't know who they were, from that distance one could not tell. But I do know, I had a long, long look from the air at the house I had grown up in. After a few passes, we climbed back to our cruising altitude, and continued on our way to Massachusetts.
