By comparison this was one of our less eventful months. Not that we didn’t work; there was work and plenty, but we had long ago reached the stage where missions were planned and executed with the regularity of an assembly line. We had come to the part of our career when it was news if we didn’t work.
General Gross led a successful mission against the synthetic oil plant at Lutzkendorf, near Leipzig, on the 13th. This was what had come to be known as a policing job; the target and others in the same category had been effectively attacked before on more than one occasion. The original job of paring Jerry’s oil supply far below his operational requirements had long since been done. Now it was a case of keeping it there, of waiting until the plants were repaired to the point of recommencing work and then slapping them down once more. This was such a job.
The only other mission of more than purely routine interest came on the 17th, when we attacked the flak batteries around the airfield at Eindhoven, Holland, in preparation for the dropping of units of the 1st Allied Airborne Army. This was the operation that resulted in extending the British salient through Holland with the intension of outflanking the Siegfried Line and obtaining their bridgeheads over major water barriers in one leap and resulted ten days later in the tragedy of Arnheim. Our part in the job was well done. We derived great benefit from our habit of posting all targets on our Intelligence map. This being a mission against tactical positions and not against a target in the strategic list, we were given our targets merely in the form of map coordinates. No air photographs, so badly needed by our bombardiers, could be furnished. Our Intelligence map shows us, however, that the Eindhoven airfield, which was a target in our strategic lists, was nearby. A glance at the target folder was rewarded with photographs of the very area we were to attack. It was a matter of a few hours work only to plot our assigned aiming points on the photographs and furnish the information to the Groups. We did some of the best bombing in the Division. This may have been partly attributable to the photos and plotting work; at least it was certain that the pictures showed up certain inaccuracies in the maps referred to by higher headquarters, which might have confused our boys and spoiled their aim if the pictures had not been made available.
A major tactical change requires belated recognition. The massive 60-ship formation assembled from several stations has become a thing of the past. The change did not occur overnight. We previously reported that we had begun experimenting with a formation of 36 aircraft consisting of three twelve-ship elements in vertical staggers. The fact was that the reduced fighting value of the GAF plus the added protection longer necessary for us to accept the disadvantage of the larger formation, which we had always recognized but had flown the added protection against fighter attacks. The smaller formations had the advantage of presenting a more compact, hence less vulnerable target for flak, greater maneuverability and a more compact, hence more effective bombing pattern.
There was no specific date on which it was decided to abandon the larger formations in favor of the smaller. The smaller formation was tried out at first on short missions, especially tactical missions in support of ground operations during the Battle of France, when fighter opposition was consistently nil. Then, as we went back to what we considered our proper task, flying deep into Germany, we just never went back to the old formation, although we thought all the time that we might be forced back if our losses showed a tendency to increase. As we look over our records, it now appears that the last massive formation we flew was to Peenemunde on the 18th of July. Obviously a Chapter has been closed.
With the closing of the chapter, it must be recognized that the reason that gave birth to the Combat Wing idea no longer exists. With our Groups at an initial strength more than twice the size of the normal 36-ship formation, it was an easy matter for us to put up three separate combat formations, instead of assembling a larger formation from each of three stations. Each Group would henceforth be called on for an entire formation and would readily comply. Yet so tardy was our recognition that a major change had occurred that we continued to use our old terminology, calling each 36-ship formation a “Combat Wing”. Not until recently was the confusion finally cleared up. Now a 36-ship formation is a “Group”, a 12-ship element is a “Squadron”, and so forth.
The disappearance of our original function did not mean, however, that we were to be released from our labors. More and more we were coming to be the directive force of our Groups: the unity that had been created did not disappear. Our function of bearing the responsibility for the tactical efficiency of the Groups, both as units and as a fighting whole, continued. We seemed to stay busy, we seemed to have as much to do in preparation for missions as ever.
But it was a good thing that the size of our formations had been reduced, because the enemy flak continued to grow in accuracy and effectiveness. As he lost control of vast areas of western, southern and Eastern Europe, Jerry’s defensive commitments were similarly diminished. Consequently, as the ring around the Reich shrank, he was able to withdraw his flak defenses from their previous wide development and correspondingly increase the defenses along the Rhine became linked by the addition of further flak areas until there was almost a continuous Siegfried Line of the Air standing behind the West Wall. For another, such points of major sensitivity as the synthetic oil plants were surrounded by unheard of concentrations. Politz, for example, which but a few months ago was undefended, now had an aggregation of 310 guns, more than such cities as Hamburg, Bremen, or Frankfurt. Where guns had formerly been grouped in batteries of four, six, and eight, sensitive targets now had “gross batteries” of up to 24 guns.
These things were no laughing matter. Only one mission to Politz and the 94th Combat Wing lost 14 aircraft without being attacked by fighters. Losses included a Group Commander, Colonel Luper, and many of his key personnel. In the old days, when fighters were the thing, we hardly gave flak a thought. Now, the bulk of our losses were to flak.
Counter-measures were a lively subject. As we write this, we were experimenting. Some improvements had already been made. One was to bomb by 12-ship elements, “Squadrons”, even when we were attacked by PFF. This had a tendency to dilute the defenses. We had formerly flown our lead and deputy PFF ships in the lead Squadron, bombing by 36-ship elements if the blind procedure had to be used. Now we put a Mickey ship in each Squadron. We tried approaching the target at different levels, with units coming in simultaneously. This had the effect of making it impossible for the flak gunners to engage everybody. Generally we raised our altitude of attack. This helped on the flak problem, but created engine difficulties. Also, there was no denying that above our best altitude, bombing accuracy tended to fall off rapidly as you moved up. We considered dropping the ball turrets from our ships to get better performance at higher altitudes, but an unfortunate experience of the 2nd Division, whose B-24s had already dropped their ball turrets for operational reasons, caused us to think better of the idea, at least for the time being. We considered bombing by six-ship elements, but this was fought with the danger of higher elements dropping their bombs on the ones below. Much indoctrination would be necessary before this could be attempted.
Eindhoven, we knew, furnished the only complete answer. Air power could neutralize ground defenses, if you had it to spare. But unless the price of admission went up to a figure we could not afford, it was cheaper to pay the price than to attempt to eliminate the ticket man. Sometimes you had to use it, as when you were going to drop paratroops from low-flying, slow-flying aircraft that were ducks for flak. For our regular work we knew that we would continue to pay our admission, although we planned to keep it down by palliative measures as described above.
Otherwise, the principle fact about the month was that we were back in the season of overcast skies, when but for the blind bombing equipment that had come to us during the last year, we would have flown very few missions and some of those flown would have been abortive due to inability to see our targets. We had 23 missions laid on during the month. Of these, five were scrubbed because of weather before takeoff. One was abandoned in the air for the same reason. Seventeen were mission targets, while twelve resulted in Pathfinder bombing. This was the season when we would cash in on our Wing Pathfinder Officer, Capt. Alloway.
It was a good thing that we had Pathfinder equipment. A glance at last year’s record shows that during September of 1943 we managed to fly only nine missions, not all of which were successful. Even so small a figure dwindled as we got on toward winter, reaching low ebb for November, with only five missions flown the entire month. In fact, we had spent the whole winter waiting for the six days of good weather that didn’t come until February, when we launched the now historic attack on the German aircraft factories. This winter, we had the satisfaction of knowing, we would keep working steadily even though layers of soup would cover the Continent for weeks and months with scarcely a break.
It was the interest that the Hun came up to fight on only two days when we were over Germany – and now that the Occupied Countries of the west had been liberated, we had no occasion to go anywhere else except on the single occasion of the Eindhoven mission. Our ships were not opposed by intercepting fighters on any except the visual days and even at that Jerry was only able to oppose us on two of the five. A short penetration to the Stuttgart area on the 10th evoked no opposition from the GAF, but when there was a long mission to the Merseburg sector on the 11th, Jerry came up and fought. He repeated the performance in strength the following day, when we went still deeper into the Reich, but on the third successive day of visual attacks deep in Germany, Jerry was exhausted. Jerry had paid too big a price for the 97 bombers he had knocked down the previous day.
Our Wing was not among those attacked. We had the lowest losses of the Division for the month. Even so, we made the losses of the rest of the force the occasion for a fresh indoctrination of our crews. We reminded them that the war wasn’t over, that Jerry would still come up from time to time and that they couldn’t afford to relax or lean on their guns. And we reminded them of what was, we thought, inevitable, namely: that sooner or later the Hun would jump us in force with the jet aircraft he was developing. We pointed out that the jetties were being pushed in an effort to get something that could evade the fighter escort and get at the bombers. We didn’t want our crews to have any false sense of security just because they hadn’t been the ones attacked on the recent days when Jerry fought.
The month brought only two personnel events: the promotion of Robert W. (The Mole) Smith from Major to Lt. Colonel and the return of our new executive, Lt. Col. Ross Milton, from his thirty day furlough at home.
Operationally, we were in good shape as a Wing. We had an average of 188 airplanes on hand during the month. We scheduled 1,542 aircraft for missions and were credited with 1,498 sorties. The Wing delivered 4,025.5 tons of bombs and 24 tons of leaflets. Only one of our aircraft scheduled failed to take off. Our losses were the lowest in the Division: ten aircraft failed to return, 7 due to flak and 3 to unknown causes. This represented only 0.6% of sorties, against a Division average of 1.6%.