Over the Bounding Main
by Irv Pliskin
I think it was Robert Peter Tristram Coffin, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet and professor of English at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, who said during one of my classes there, "If you aren’t satisfied with New England weather, just wait an hour and it will change." If it wasn't Coffin, it was that other equally talented fellow, Sam Clemens.
At any rate, we landed at Westover Field in Massachusetts and the weather was clear and balmy. It was a beautiful midsummer day. But by the next morning, the weather had changed and it was blustery and windy with low scud clouds.
We were briefed early in the morning for Goose Bay Labrador (Newfoundland), which was, as the crow flies, about 900 air miles from Boston. Our route would take us up over Maine and New Brunswick, crossing the land mass at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River at Reviere Au Bernard.
From there we would go to Labrador, Newfoundland to the airport at Goose Bay. We would land, be briefed, and prepare for our trip to Europe. The plan was to get ready there, in Canada, and fly all night individually, across the north Atlantic to Iceland. There we would land in Reykjavik, spend a day or two and then fly to England and be assigned to a combat unit.
It was raining like hell after the briefing, and although we could fly in the rain, and within a little bit of time climb up and above the weather, the powers that be gave us a break. It didn’t t make much sense to risk a B-17 and its crew in bad weather. Not if one could wait a little while and have the weather change to something more manageable. We spent the day on the ground, loafing, playing ping pong, reading or just sleeping, which was always welcome.
We spent the night in the BOQ, Bachelor's Officers Quarters. Our men, all of whom were now staff sergeants, slept in the NCO (Non-Commissioned Officers ) barracks. All members of a B-l7 and B-24 flight crew in combat were either commissioned or non- commissioned officers. The reason for this was simple. If a man held the rank of staff sergeant or above, he could not, according to the Geneva Convention, be worked by the enemy if he were captured. Captured men who were less than staff sergeants, were put to work at all sorts of jobs by the Germans. Many had worked in mines, others had worked in factories. It was tough, difficult labor for such POW s, and the Air Corps spared their people by making sure they were ranked above the level of the men assigned to work.
The weather had changed by the morning, and we were wheels up almost as soon as it was light. The day was clear, bright and flying was a joy. We flew north, up to the St. Lawrence River at an altitude of about 4000 feet. We could see everything around us clearly, and the ground below was in full view and perfect focus.
There was, of course, nothing to see. It was the most rugged country I had ever seen. Jagged hills, tall trees, nothing but a wild forest below us. Once we had left Maine, the area was unmarked with anything but wilderness. There were no roads, no clearings. It was a formidable terrain. If we had had to crash land there, we would have been in big trouble.
We were not alone on this trip. There were at least half a dozen heavy bombers, B-17 Flying Fortresses like ours and B-24 Liberators, all going in the same direction...flying at about the same altitude and airspeed.
The bad weather had kept a lot of planes on the ground, and we were all now going to Goose Bay before flying overseas. I was working my charts, checking whatever pilotage points I could, shooting sun lines with my sextant to make sure we were close to course, and following the fleet of planes, figuring that there was safety in numbers. We wouldn’t all get lost.
This loose gaggle of airplanes was flying over the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. Behind our ship, perhaps a mile or so away was a B-24. I could see her when I looked out of the windows over my navigation table, and I was watching her, when suddenly, just like that, she blew up.
Poof. Gone. A residue of smoke.
I checked on the intercom, no one else on our plane had seen her blow. Some of the fellows had seen her behind us, but only I had seen her vaporize, literally vaporize in space behind me.
Roger got on the air-to-air, and one of the planes further back had seen it, too. That poor crew, that airplane had just exploded and was gone into the water.
We never did find out why, or how, or what happened. It was just another one of the oddities of the war. One could speculate. It is not had to imagine a leaky oxygen line, filling an enclosed space with highly volatile oxygen. A guy walks into the enclosed turret, for instance, sits and lights a cigarette. As soon as he flicks his Zippo, the oxygen blows. Or perhaps a leaky fuel line, and then again, the vapor fills an area, there is a spark, and ten men are gone instantly and forever. One of the sad facts of war, and well before their time or their training demanded.
It may be hard hearted, but I don't think that this experience affected me much. If anything, it strengthened my faith in the Fortress. We all thought the Liberator was a piece of junk. That irrational belief, strangely, is still with me. I still think of the Liberator as a somewhat lesser airplane than the Boeing. Actually, they built more Liberators than they did Fortresses, but somehow we thought the Fortress was virtually indestructible. And in some ways, it was. But it was hard for me to relate to the men in that airplane, or to their demise. Stupidly, I thought it was just one of those things. Too bad, fellows.
I can compare it to the time a sergeant, while I was in training, lined us all up and ordered us "Eyes right. You guys see the man on your right?” he bellowed. “Well he isn’t gonna make it. And you isn’t gonna get home, neither. Just realize you are likely to buy the farm. Half of you will.”
”Nuts to that,” we said. “You are blanken' nuts. Besides, it will be him, not me. Understand?”
And this was the same response to that horrible explosion. The plane was there and then it was gone. But you don’t dare let it get to you. If you do, you won t make it and that is certain. I can not speak for other soldiers, other flyers, but I maintained a constant attitude of this can’t happen to me, only the other guy is in danger.
Had I ever changed that conviction, I think I might have just quit, and faced the consequences--which, by the way, were not as bad as one would imagine. In explanation, a month or so later when we got to our Bomb Group, I was much confused by a young, callow co-pilot who was hanging around the squadron but not flying.
On investigation I discovered that he had just up and quit.
He had been married just before he went overseas. On his first mission a piece of flak came up through the seat he was sitting on, and through the roof of the plane. That piece of shrapnel actually tore his uniform, missing his vitals --what we call the family jewels--by a hair’s width. This officer, contemplating a life as a soprano and reflecting on what was, undoubtedly the joy of a recent marriage, went to the squadron commanding officer and quit flying. I expected him to be court martialed, or stood against a wall and shot for cowardice. But no, nothing happened. He became a temporary mess officer and was assigned to counting spoons, or something. Years later I learned in a book called One Last Look by Phillip Kaplan and Rex Allen Smith that we flyers were volunteers. And volunteers are permitted to quit. Had I known that then, I might not be writing these 'I fought the war' memoirs. That attitude of aloofness carried me through the war. When terrible things happened to friends of mine, I felt bad. I may even have wept, but my mantra never changed: This won’t, this can’t happen to me.
We arrived at Goose Bay, shut the airplane down, and were taken to an interrogation center for debriefing. We told our story, and the officer doing the interview made notes. It was the last I ever heard of that incident which I reported in detail.
We spent a few days in Canada, again waiting for the weather to clear up. Some of the airplanes that landed with us or near the same time took off the next evening for Iceland. We spent a few days on the ground. There were no barracks for us, no BOQ facilities. We left our possessions on the airplane, and slept on Army Cots in a large clear, wooden-floored room. It was not a hospitable environment.
We may have even slept in our uniforms, to stay warm and to keep from changing to underwear and having the clothing stolen while we slept. We had no pajamas. Generally we slept in our underwear: knit athletic shirts and boxer shorts. The army required us to wear athletic shirts, just as the navy required sailors to wear "skivvy" shirts. Athletic shirts were knitted khaki shirts that were sleeveless. The "skivvy" shirt was a white pocketless crew-neck T-shirt. Most of us had to get used to undershirts. We had given them up when Clark Gable, acting in the movie "It Happened One Night," took off his shirt and was bare to the waist. From that point on, until the war, American men walked around without undershirts, bare to the waist.
As the crew lounged and checked the airplane, I, as the navigator, had to attend a day-long briefing session. There are no landmarks over water, and the Army wanted to make sure we knew what to do, what to expect and how to handle possible navigation emergencies. We were to fly at night so we could do Celestial Navigation. We were expected to shoot stars and get several fixes so we knew where we were. We could maintain a basic heading, of course, but we had no way to measure the wind and a strong wind might blow us well off course. My job was to make sure that we followed the right path over the drink.
There were a few ships positioned along the route, in marked places on the charts. These ships were to send out radio beacons constantly to help us with our positioning. That would have been fine and could easily simplify the crossing except that the Germans had ships and subs in the North Atlantic, too, and their mission was to send conflicting signals. If you happened to latch on to one of them, and followed that instead of the signals from the friendly ships, you would find yourself in real trouble. Out of range of land, and out of fuel over the Atlantic. They told us that many planes had been lost by the siren calls of the German ships.
The full day of briefings over, as it got dark, we took off for the over-the-water hop to Iceland. It was about 850 air miles or about 6 to 7 hours, depending on where the winds came from. Catch a tail wind, and you were lucky. Get an unexplained head wind, and it could slow you up considerably. Fortunately, the moon was out that evening, a fairly full moon, according to my recollection. And although you could see the water and the waves below, all you could see was water. As the navigator under those circumstances I felt very much alone, and very much responsible for our future. Only three of us seemed to paying attention to our flight, as I recall -the pilot and the co-pilot and me. The bombardier was with the rest of the crew, sacked out on the barracks bags in the waist, and we flew the ship and watched the instruments and hoped and prayed we were right.
After about five hours of flying, when we approached our point of no return, which is the actual point beyond which you must go on to the end because you haven t enough fuel to turn around and make it, I crawled up to the pilot's area just to say hi . When Roger saw me, he had me come all the way up, and stand between the seats. He pointed to the oil pressure gauge of one of the engines. Holy Molly. It read zero. I had a moment of panic and then asked, "Do you want a course to Greenland?" There were three emergency landing areas in Greenland, probably about 250 nautical miles to the north. These bases called Bluie West one, Bluie west eight or Bluie East two were there for our use if we needed them. At this time of the year they could all three be socked in or open for landings. We would have to find out if we were going to divert there.
“No, I don’t think so,” Roger said. “Engine temp is okay, everything else is okay, and the engine is running smoothly. I think it is just a defective instrument. We'll watch it. But get a heading ready, should we need it.”
”Yes, sir. You bet.”
As the sun came up, and it came up early since we were flying east and moving through time zones, the weather began to change. We had been flying in the clear. Now there was a layer of clouds between us and the ocean, so we were really dependent on our instruments. About 45 minutes out, I picked up the homing beacon for the base at Reykjavik, and when we were about 20 minutes out, I called Roger and suggested we go below the clouds; we were getting close to our destination. Unfortunately, Satterfield who was flying decided to stay where we were, above the clouds. Obviously, he too was affected with Mullin's "you can't trust this guy' virus.
We stayed on the heading we were on, at the altitude we had been on, flying over the clouds until we experienced a phenomenon many pilots and navigators know about.
The needle on the radio beacon swung around 180 degree. We had flown over the beacon. It was now behind us. Consternation in the cockpit. “Jesus, what the hell happened to the beacon needle?”
”You've flown over the beacon, it is behind us. Take a 180, fly out at least fifteen minutes and let down, carefully. I don t have a map of hills or mountains, and I want to be over water when we come out of the soup.”
We made the turn, flew over the Atlantic and made our descent. At about l500 feet we broke out of the clouds and turned again towards Iceland. A few minutes later we saw land, and then we came over the airport and landed.
The bombardier and co-pilot seemed to hold me responsible for what they saw as a debacle. It didn’t do much to increase my reputation or their trust in me. I knew I had been right, right on with my navigation, and so I decided to hell with them. I didn’t much care, anymore, about what they thought.
