>>Miraculously, their Group was still unscarred, but others were paying the price for trespassing. Perhaps the tight formation they flew led the Germans to easier game. An excerpt from Lin's diary on that July 7 follows:
"Shortly after we waded through the most flak we've seen yet, we saw about two hundred Me109s and Fw190s hit a group just off to our right. They shot down twelve B-24s - a whole squadron - in about the time it takes to write this. The unfortunate Group was the 492nd. The sky was polluted with smoke trails from burning airplanes - both our and theirs. We saw one B-17 catch fire and slowly head for the ground. Two crewmembers bailed out, and one of these had the misfortune of having his chute catch fire. The 17 burned more fiercely and, in a flash, exploded, throwing her innards all over the sky. Several 109s came through our formation, but they were sorely pressed by some P-47s on their tail, so that they took no heed of us."
As they approached Halberstadt, the Group "uncovered", that is, went into squadron trail formation, so that bombing could be accomplished by each Squadron Lead bombardier. Flak became more intense, and the German fighters left so that anti-aircraft could throw more 88 and 128mm shells at them. For some reason, Lin called Pierce, his tail gunner, on the inter com and asked:
"Have you got your flak helmet on?" (He was reluctant to wear it.)
Almost as he asked there was an autopilot for the bomb run, lurched sideways to the right. There was a terrific crash of an exploding 88 shell, so close we could hear it. Lin again got on the intercom and asked:
"Anybody hurt?"
There was a meek voice he recognized as the tail gunner's:
"Lin, you aren't going to believe this, but part of the right tail is gone, and the upper part of my turret is too!"
As he was bending over to pick up his flak helmet, an 88 shell had torn through the area where his head had been seconds before and ripped off a portion of the right vertical tail, severing that control cable. Despite the C-1 autopilot's best efforts, the B-24 was drifting off the course prescribed by the Pilot Directional Indicator which was connected to the Norden bomb sight, so he disconnected the autopilot, cranked in rudder trim and returned to a centered PDI for the bomb run.
Contrary to all rumors, it didn't take both Lin's co-pilot and himself to fly the airplane with part of the tail shot away, and they continued leading the squadron to Aschersleben. At the bombardier's cry "bombs away", they went into a standard 8th Air Force evasive maneuver and descended one thousand feet in a sweeping left turn. The Germans were well aware that this was common practice, and their flak batteries became even more accurate. After they had reformed in Group formation, the crew took stock of the damage. Holes were all over the aft fuselage, and one of the gunner's parachutes (a chest pack) was riddled with shrapnel, several fuel cells in the wings were punctured, a large portion of the right tail was gone, the tail turret had no glass left, and after they returned to base they found that FIREBIRD had 63 holes in her, some of them large enough to put a man's head through, but the four Pratt & Whitney's were unscathed and continued to drone steadily on over the 500 mile return trip to base. Within a few days FIREBIRD was patched up as good as new and continued flying combat until she had piled up 72 missions without an abort. It was German fighters that finally got her long after they traded her in for a newer model J, complete with radar.
The battle damage to their aircraft was negligible compared to other instances of B-24 battle damage. Much has been written and many photos published of the B-17s ability to sustain battle damage and return home. The Liberator need not take a back seat in this department, for there were many B24s that flew home when it didn't seem they could even remain in the air. There was one example in their group where the entire nose of the B-24 was shot away forward of the pilot's instrument panel. The pilot, using all the power he could get from the engines and partial flaps, somehow managed to make the English Channel before his fuel ran out and he ditched just off the Coast. Another remarkable example of the Lib's ability to absorb punishment was demonstrated by Lt. Bernard L. Ball while flying a Consolidated B-24-65 (Fort Worth built) on a mission to Yugoslavia. His aircraft, serial 44-10570, sustained a direct flak hit in the waist gun area. The explosion literally blew that area apart, killing one of the gunners, severing the rudder cables, and removing half of the upper fuselage in that spot. Lt. Bell flew the Lib home using engines and cowl flaps for directional control. By the time Lin had finished his thirty missions in the 8th in the Lib, he had grown to have a deep respect for the bird. He won't say that it was his favorite aircraft, but he will say:
It got us there and it got us back.
Lin's last meeting with the B-24 was a rather eerie one. He was visiting Wheelus Air Force Base in Tripoli, where he was discussing F-105 matters with the Air Force personnel at that base, when he was asked if he would like to see THE LADY BE GOOD. He had hear the story of the B-24D which had been abandoned by its crew when they got lost on their first mission in April 4, 1943. Their story is well known, so it won't be repeated, but the feeling he got when the chopper sat them down next to the aging B-24 under the broiling sun sent shivers down his back. The old bird had landed itself after the crew had bailed out, and had broken its back in doing so, but there is no doubt in his mind that the crew could have survived had they stayed with the airplane. After seventeen years in the dry desert air the airplane was still in remarkable shape. The ammunition in the gun belts still gleamed. Preserved in the Libyan desert, the B-24 suffered no corrosion. The fact that the airplane was virtually intact surprised Lin, for he had seen other crashed aircraft in Libya that were stripped clean within thirty minutes of their going down. The Arabs apparently consider THE LADY BE GOOD to be taboo. And some interesting things happened to those who stripped the B-24 for souvenirs.
The first C-47 that landed alongside the wreck had its radio fail, and the crew removed the radio from THE LADY BE GOOD, and crashed in Germany, killing all thirteen aboard. A helicopter pilot from Wheelus removed one of the Lady's engine plates and mounted it in his aircraft. He crashed and was killed. A newspaper reporter took one of the .50 caliber bullets from the waist gun as a souvenir. He was killed in a car crash in Europe a few weeks later. The base operations office at Wheelus removed one of the propellers from the Lady and mounted it in front of the office. Not too long thereafter the Libyan government took over Wheelus. Perhaps the Arabs knew what they were doing when they avoided THE LADY BE GOOD. She still lies in the Libyan Desert, a silent reminder to the too often overlooked career of an unsung heavyweight with an even heavier punch, a champion that never received the Laurels she so richly merited.
THE END - WINGS, February 1978, Vol. 8. No.1
