Mission 23, January 1945
Irv Pliskin
The New Year’s eve party was one hell of a bacchanal.
We had successfully bombed Hamburg and despite the incident with the FW 190 arrived back at our base at Horham safely, just a little bit worse for wear.
It was New Year’s Eve and it was a time for celebration. The drinks at the debriefing were more than the usual one shot of booze, and I am reasonably sure that by the time evening came many of the crew members, ours and the rest of the group were feeling no pain.
It was a raucous party that we had going in the Officer’s Club, one that we would all remember for a long time.
Amy was there, of course, and we walked out of the noisy music filled, smoke filled room, and into the cold crisp December air. We had found a few place where we could be alone, a bomb shelter and a phone booth, and I think we elected to go to the phone booth. The bomb shelter was far less pleasant. It was cold and damp and very, very dark because it was below ground and constructed of heavy concrete.
The phone booth was dark too, but there was always some ambient light from the stars and the moon, and that was more acceptable to us. Also, those big red phone booths were large enough for two people to be comfortable, especially if they were snuggling. Nothing noteworthy happened. We kissed and necked and talked a lot, as I recall.
The only thing that was important was that Amy agreed that we needed to get a few days away together. A trip to Norfolk was planned. We planned to spend several days together in one of the good hotels in the city. I assured her that I would very happily make the arrangements,
By midnight the party was a real blast. Although we were pretty far away from the O club, we could hear the level of the sound increase as the clock struck twelve and we moved into 1945. At about 12:30 a fight broke out in the O club.
There was a real ruckus, and the MP’s came and broke up the party. Amy and I knew it was time to go when the trucks came to take the girls back to their homes. I don’t know specifically what the fight was about, but I heard later that a couple of very drunk guys were fighting over one of the local ladies. No one was hurt, but the party and celebration came to a screeching halt.
I remember taking Amy to the truck, and helping her climb into the back of it, and then patting her svelte rear end as she climbed up the lowered tail gat to get to the rows of seats set up for the ladies’ comfort.
January 1, 1945 there were no missions from our base. I doubt sincerely if there were any missions at all flying that day anywhere in the 8th Air Corps.
It would have been hard to find a pilot who was not badly hung over, so I doubt if any flights were scheduled. The group did fly on January 2, although Roger’s crew was not scheduled. We did fly on January 3, and again on the 5th and the 6th. The fifth was a tough one: our target was the industrial city of Frankfurt, and it was heavily protected with anti-aircraft guns.
But, we came back as we had before: incredibly lucky and reasonable unscathed.
Flying a B-17 is not easy. The sophisticated hydraulic systems that make flying a huge airplane reasonably easy in today’s world had not yet been perfected, so a pilot had to work hard to fly the aircraft. And, flying it in formation was even tougher, since keeping position required a series of small adjustments all of the time. The auto-pilot which worked fine for long flights, or single aircraft flights was of no value. Formation flying required adjustments all of the time. As a result of the strain on pilots, it was quite customary for a crew that had as many missions as we had to have had a week or so off for R&R: rest and recreation.
At about l8 missions, half the required 35, the crew got to take some time off at a resort hotel in Bournmouth, on the southern coast of England. But, we were busy, the demands of pushing the Krauts back from the bulge, changed that for us. We were due, but we had not yet had our R&R. We just kept flying missions. The mission of January 6th was our twenty second. Randy was tired. He needed a little time off, so he asked for a three day, since it did not seem that our week long R&R was going to happen for yet a while since the squadron was short of crews and had to keep us all flying.
He met some resistance, but he insisted we were all tired, and finally he prevailed. We got a three-day starting on Sunday, January 7.
The other guys went to London. I stayed at the base, and got in touch with Amy. We had a pleasant visit for a few days, and solidified our plans for the next weekend. Everyone came back refreshed, and relaxed. Having forced the pass issue, it is likely that the squadron leader was somewhat less than pleased with our crew. Normally aviators who had been on pass were not scheduled for missions for a couple of days: they often needed time to recover from the rigors of the time off. But, we came back to the squadron on January 9th, and were scheduled to fly the next day, January l0.
We didn’t complain. The mission was a milk run, we thought. The target was Cologne, where we had been several times. Actually, our first mission had been to the area, and we had done well there. We were briefed for really a great mission: according to the weather people, we would have solid cloud cover, and we would also have a tail wind over the target which would give us a ground speed in excess of 400 knots.
Unlike many other squadrons, we never had an aircraft assigned to us: we flew the planes that were available. When we showed up at the hardstand where the plane was parked, we discovered that the plane assigned to us was an old B-17 F, a plane that had seen better days and had flown a lot of missions. We were assigned to fly as number 2 lead, which meant that we had a Norden Bombsight in our aircraft. Should the lead plane be put out of action, we were to assume the lead position, and so we needed the bomb sight.
Although one of our crew was the bombardier, that did not mean that we always flew with a bombsight. Only those planes that were to assume or might have to assume a lead position were equipped with a bombsight. The rest of the planes dropped their bombs when the leader did.
We called that pattern bombing and the way it worked was that the planes in the formation watched the leader. When he opened his bomb bays, so did we. When he dropped his bombs, so did we. The bombardier without a bombsight, hit a toggle switch to let the bombs go. When the bombardier served as a toggeleer dropping the ‘eggs’ when someone else did, the rest of the time he functioned as a gunner operating the two ‘chin’ guns mounted under the nose of the airplane. The chin turret was operated by a wand type control, with a bicycle sort of grip.
The bombardeer/gunner could move the handles to move the direction of the guns. He activated the guns by pressing the gripping handles under the controls. But, when we carried a bomb sight, the control wand had to be moved to another position. It would be in the way of the bombardier, since the bombsight was mounted directly in front of his position. The locking device permitted the wand and the handles to be moved to the right side of the compartment where it was firmly locked into a static position. Although the handles may have protruded into the nose compartment a little way, it in no way affected our working area: the navigator’s desk and operating instruments were on the opposite side of the aircraft.
We climbed into our flying chariot at about six AM, and it was a very cold climb indeed. By this time, I must point out that I had put on some weight. So much, in fact that I was no longer conformable climbing into the airplane the prescribed way, through the nose compartment hatch.
Our usual way to get in the airplane was to grab the top of the hatch, above the open door, which was six or seven feet above the tarmac and pull ourselves up into the plane kicking our feet into the area in a sort of gymnastic movement. But, sadly, I must admit that I was probably so frightened all the time I flew combat, and never admitted it to myself or anyone else, that I compensated by eating.
And I ate a lot, obviously.
So much so that in order to get to my position I had to get into the plane through the rear door, which was just a step up off the hardstand, while the nose compartment was at least eight or nine feet above the ground. The B-17 sits in a three point position on the ground. The tail is down, the plane is raised on the front wheels so it is an uphill walk from the tail to the nose of a B-17 sitting on the ground.
The B-24, for instance has a tricycle landing gear: and the plane sits up high and level on the ground. But the back of the 17 is very clsoe to the ground, so I went in that way, walking through the plane, through the bomb bays and into my position. I think that I said that I liked to inspect everything and say “hi” to the crew, who were generally at the plane much before me since navigator’s briefings were long and time consuming. Generally we navigators got to the aircraft just a few minutes before scheduled engine start times.
We took off, and as we climbed we noticed a very rare and unusual phenomenon. It may have been thirty three or four degrees Fahrenheit on the ground, not quite freezing. But as we climbed it got very cold, very quickly. There was heavy moisture on the Plexiglas in the nose compartment, and as we climbed to mission altitude, that moisture began to freeze, and by the time we were up to eight or nine thousand feet the entire nose compartment was covered with rhime ice. Mullins and I were in a completely white room, with no view of the outside at all. The sighting panel below the bombsight was heated electrically, and even though we had that on, we had to keep scraping ice from the inside with out gloved hands to keep the panel clear so Mullins could see the ground.
I couldn’t see anything but the ice completely covering the compartment. I could navigate, of course, using my instruments and my “G” box, which helped me keep track of my position, but basically I had no outside view of anything.
I could get an idea of what was going on through my driftmeter, which was a tube that went through the airplane and looked at the ground, but that was all. I could also catch a view of the ground by looking over Mullin’s shoulder through the clear heated space the bombsight used, but that was all and provided a very limited view of the world below us.
It soon became very clear that our briefing was wrong. The cloud cover was not there. Instead we enjoyed perfect visibility all the way down to the ground. We managed fine, until we turned on the IP, our initial point which is where we turned on our bomb run. By this time, I was aware that the promised tail wind was not going to be there. Instead we were confronted with a very heavy head wind. That meant that the expected quick run over the target, which was one of the bridges over the Rhine river, was going to be much much slower than we had expected it to be.
When we turned on our initial point I told the crew that we were doing so, and suggested that they snap on their chest pack parachutes in case they would need them. I made it a habit to snap on mine, at least on the left hook. That way I had only to bring it up and snap it down to be ready for any emergency.
We turned on the bomb run, headed for the target. I knew where we were, but I was still unable to see out at all.
According to my estimates, we had a head wind of well over a hundred and twenty knots, which gave us a ground speed of about fifty knots an hour. So instead of streaking over the area, we were moving leisurely over the ground in the direction of our target.
One of the men in the back broke radio silence:
“Hey Navigator, what the f--k is going on: Isn’t this one hell of a long bomb run?”
“Yeah, it is. We got an unexpected head wind. We’ll be a few minutes more. Hold on.”
A few seconds later, the top turret gunner called. “Flak, twelve o'clock level.” That meant that the flak was just in front of us, right at our altitude. A not very happy situation.
There was another call of “Flak, Ten o'clock, level”. There were explosions to our lower left, and also at our altitude.
Then we were hit, hard on the left side by a burst of flak.
We may have been hit by simultaneous bursts of fire, once on the left side, and once directly under plane. The plane began to burn fiercely, but since I was still in that white room, I never did see the fires.
Mullins got off his seat, and motioned for a walk around bottle... an oxygen bottle that would permit him to move around in the rarified oxygen-less atmosphere. I had by this time snapped my chute into position.
I gave him his walk around bottle, and snapped his chute on him, too. He crawled through the bulkhead to stand at the pilot’s area. I could see his feet there.
I checked the altimeter. We were at about 19,000 feet and losing altitude quickly. We were also on a heading west, according to my compass. I can remember thinking that it might not be too bad. We were on a proper heading, and just descending quickly. “If we don’t straighten up, I’ll jump at 16,000 feet” I said into my oxygen mask. I had already discovered that the intercom system was out. All of the electricals seemed to be affected. There were no alarm bells.
We were still stable, but descending when we got to 16,000, so I decided I’d bail out at l4,000 unless we leveled out. The escape hatch, the nose compartment door was just to my left, and accerding to our training, I was to be the first man through the door.
But Mullins had not jettisoned it, and he could assumedly see what was happening, so I stood there and waited. At l5,000 feet the airplane lost its stability and dove toward the ground in the start of a spin. I had waited too long.
I remember covering my face with my arms, the way one does reflexively when they start to fall. I was falling forward toward the plexiglas nose.
I had passed out. The plane blew up.
When I awakened I was swinging left and right in my parachute, at about l4,000 feet. When the plane blew up, I had been blown out.
I never pulled the ripcord. I do not know what opened the chute , but I suspect the rip cord handle, which was on the right hand side of the chute, got caught in that eccentric gear that was locked against the fuselage and when I fell forward, the chute handle caught on the gun controls. By the time the plane blew up, my rip cord had been pulled, and the chute opened once I was plummeting through the air.
It took me a few seconds to take stock. There were pieces of empinnage floating in the air around me, so I had recovered awareness very quickly. I had a searing pain in my crotch, the parachute straps were not quite tight enough. I was bleeding profusely from a cut under my chin and a gash on the back of my left hand.
The oxygen mask and helmet were gone, I was bareheaded. My black silk glove on my left hand was blood soaked. I slipped it off and let it drop to the ground. A dumb move. I should have kept it. Gloves might have been a comfort in the below freezing temperatures on the ground.
At that point I looked down, and saw four fires burning on a snow covered field. The engines.
I looked up and could see the rest of the group headed back to base, leaving bold contrails in the perfectly clear sky. And then I looked up directly. There was a huge hole in the side of my chute. After a moment of horror, I remembered a gravely voiced jump instructor sergeant saying: “These here things will support you even if they is half torn apart. Remember that.” I remembered.
Then I had one additional thought. “For me, my war is over.”
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.
