INTRODUCTION

The most momentous man-made event of the twentieth century, or of any century in history, occurred during the period from 1939 to 1945, the Second World War. All the major powers were eventually drawn into a global conflict that encompassed Europe, Africa, Russia, China, and the vastness of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Millions of young Americans, like Frank Murphy, answered that call to arms. He joined what eventually became the largest of the American overseas air commands, “the Mighty Eighth.” Among the unforgettable and vivid images clearly recalled by a generation of East Anglians from late 1942 onward were the great formations of American bombers, flying to war over occupied Europe in the early morning mists.

During the perilous period in which Frank Murphy flew twenty-one daylight combat missions, the odds of returning safely were three to one against. That fact, in itself, speaks volumes.

In April 1983, distinguished Royal Air Force Bomber Command Pathfinder veteran, Group Captain Hamish Mahaddie, DSO, DFC, AFC, RAF (retired), concluded an outstanding speech at a veterans reunion in London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, by quoting a fitting tribute to the men of RAF Bomber Command (fifty-five thousand killed in action), written by Noël Coward, the famous actor and playwright, who lived in wartime London.

The night bombers were occasionally routed to fly over London by their commander, Air Marshall Arthur Harris, to assure Londoners, who had suffered and endured Hitler’s Blitz from 1940 to 1941, that retribution was at hand:

LIE IN THE DARK AND LISTEN

Noël Coward

Lie in the dark, let them go.

Theirs is a world you’ll never, ever know

There’s one debt you’ll for ever, ever owe.

Lie in the dark and listen.

That moving tribute is equally applicable to the Americans of the Eighth Air Force. Between August 17, 1942, and May 8, 1945, nearly 4,300 B-17s and B-24s failed to return. The cost in aircraft alone is staggering, but the cost in young lives is incalculable— approximately 26,000 bomber aircrew made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.

It is an honor and a privilege to be associated with the American, British, and Allied airmen who, during the Second World War, gave so much.

I urge you to read Frank Murphy’s truly memorable story.

IAN L. HAWKINS

The Münster Raid: Before and After

B-17s Over Berlin (95th Bomb Group anthology)

Twentieth-Century Crusaders (392nd Bomb Group anthology)

Bacton, Suffolk, England

The sun will not be seen today;

The sky doth frown and lower upon our army.

—William Shakespeare, Richard III, act 5, scene 3



1COMBAT AIRCREWS

COMING OF AGE

Land and sea battles between organized groups using weapons in the service of military goals have been memorialized since man first began recording his history by carving pictures and writings on stone. The Sumerians, who lived in present-day Iraq in 6500 BC and who are believed to be the first people to build towns with distinguishable street patterns, had soldiers who wore similar battle dress, carried spears and shields, and fought in close formation. The seafaring Carthaginians, who inhabited present-day Tunisia in North Africa, captured every foreign ship they could east of Sardinia in the Mediterranean. The great naval battle at Ecnomus in 256 BC involved seven hundred to eight hundred ships, and in that great battle, the Roman navy defeated the Carthaginians by sinking thirty of their warships and capturing another sixty-four. In contrast with ten thousand years of conventional ground warfare, air warfare is a recent development, having next to no history. Every air battle in history has been fought within the lifetime of persons still alive, at least as of this writing.

The idea of using aircraft to drop explosives on enemy targets is almost as old as the airplane itself. In 1909, six years after the Wright brothers made the first controlled flight of a powered aircraft, Major Giulio Douhet of Italy proposed putting the airplane to military use. Two years later, on November 1, 1911, his colleague Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti made the first air raid in recorded history when he dropped bombs on Turkish positions in Tripoli. Nevertheless, before the First World War, the airplane was believed to have only limited use as a military weapon. The first opposing pilots to meet over European battlefields in 1914 flew unarmed reconnaissance missions and simply waved to one another as they passed, going their separate ways. Later, when they realized that the other pilots really were the enemy, they began shooting at each other with pistols and rifles. Next, they fitted their airplanes with swiveling rear-firing machine guns for the back seat observer; and finally, they fixed forward-firing machine guns that could be operated by the pilot. These machine guns were equipped with an interrupter gear, a German invention, that permitted them to be fired when the propeller blades were in a horizontal position but not when they were vertical and thereby directly in front of the guns. This is how the first single-seat fighter aircraft were born, and their only purpose was to shoot down enemy aircraft. The interrupter gear mechanism had problems now and again. The Germans discovered, for example, that one of their most famous aces, Max Immelmann, actually died because his machine gun’s interrupter gear malfunctioned. He shot off his own propeller during a dogfight, causing his airplane to crash.

Being a pilot, observer, or air gunner during the First World War was hazardous. If an airplane was shot down or crashed for any reason, its occupants were usually killed—whether or not they had been hit by bullets in the air. They did not have parachutes, thus adding to the already considerable risks they took. Toward the end of the war, the Germans developed and provided their airmen with parachutes, which gave them an opportunity to escape from helpless, out-of-control, and often burning aircraft. I must add that the parachute is an invention for which I shall always be grateful!

The bombs dropped from airplanes at the beginning of the First World War were small. They only weighed fifteen to eighteen pounds and were crudely aimed and released. Surprisingly, it was czarist Russia, the least technically advanced of the warring nations, that developed the first effective four-engine bomber. It was designed in 1914 by Igor Sikorsky, whose later career brought him the stature of being a world-famous aviation pioneer. By 1917, the British, French, and Germans also designed and built an astonishing array of large bomber aircraft. The German four-engine Zeppelin-Staaken R.IV, a lumbering giant that became operational in 1917, was physically larger than the B-17. It had seven to eight hours of sustained endurance and carried 4,400 pounds of bombs. This aerial behemoth was armed with between four and seven machine guns, had a service ceiling in excess of twelve thousand feet, and was manned by a crew of seven. With an additional engine to drive the compressors for its superchargers, the operational ceiling of the R.IV was increased to over nineteen thousand feet, fully loaded. In the last year of the war, Zeppelin-Staaken R.IV aircraft flew more than fifty bombing raids on London. Not to be outdone, Britain’s Royal Flying Corps struck back, attacking strategic targets in Coblenz, Cologne, and other localities in the western part of Germany, using Handley Page O/400 aircraft.

Bombers in the First World War carried a crew of three to five gunners. Late in the war, however, one crew member also operated a bombsight, and in 1917, the Zeppelin-Staaken R.IV also carried a wireless operator. The only nonpilot to attain commissioned officer status as an aviator in the U.S. Army Air Service was the observer, who operated from tethered balloons or from reconnaissance aircraft. These observers were specially trained to spot hostile troops and batteries so they could adjust artillery fire, regulate barrages, identify objects on the ground, correct maps, and take photographs. Thousands of two-seater reconnaissance and light bomber aircraft were built during the war and were operated by scores of specialized reconnaissance units in all air forces.


Copyright © 2001 by Frank Murphy