BEYOND ALLIED LINES, SOMEWHERE OVER EASTERN GERMANY
By Romney Wheeler (AP
"April 15 - I am flying with the Word of Doom for Nazi Germany!
Ten minutes ago we crossed the West Front battle line beyond the River Salle. We have dropped bombs on our first target and are boring deeper into Hitler’s last stronghold toward a second. To the north lay by-passed Leipzig. Beyond us lies the devastation that was Dreeden - and beyond that a Russian cyclone gathering force along the Oder and the Neisse.
Somewhere beneath us the spearheads of General Hodges are driving deeper into Germany’s vitals. We know it because four miles below us all Germany is burning.
This is total war, as Germany never imagined it! We literally are carrying the Word of Doom to Germany, for packed in the belly of this jet-black Liberator are a dozen bombs - loaded not with high explosives, but with leaflets telling Hitler’s Wehrmacht and Hitler’s civilians that this is the end….and leaflets calling for surrender.
Lieut. Bruce Edgerton, pilot, of Washington, D.C., lifts Midnight Mistress a bit higher as we swerve toward our next target. It is shortly after midnight, and moonless, but the stars are bright and there is only a light ground haze. We can see fires everywhere - most of them large ones, indicating destruction of entire towns.
“Three minutes to target” says the voice of our navigator, Lieut. John A. Alexander, of East Liverpool, Ohio.
Roger-dodger,” replies our pilot.
This big plane of the Eighth Air Force, 406th Squadron is quiet except for the roar of its four engines as we bear down on our target. The destruction going on below us seems unreal. Can this be Hitler’s inner fortress? Our maps and navigation tell us we are more that 300 miles inside Germany; scarcely 25 miles from the frontier of Czechoslovakia - and only 75 miles from the Russian lines.
Now we are bearing to the north, and off our left wing we can see flashes of heavy guns. Somewhere down there Hodges men are hitting Jerry where it hurts.
“One minute to target,” says the navigator, and our bombardier, Lieut. Carlo Zuniga of Mira Loma, Calif., prepares to hit another one on the nose.
“If you got any flak,” cautions our navigator, “turn left or you’ll be right over Dresden.”
“Rodger-dodger,” is the reply.
Our co-pilot explains bout flak. “In the daytime you can see bursts of brown smoke, but at night it is just a flash - and hard to judge distance,” says Lieut. A.H. Franke, of Spokane, Wash. “Sometimes it looks like stars.”
“Yep,” observes Staff Sgt. Emmerson Miller of Chrisney, Ind., tail-gunner, on the inter-com. “Stars that go out are flak.”
“Target” says the navigator, quietly.
“Bombs away,” answers Zuniga.
“One - two - three - four,” counts Tech. Sgt. James K. Echols of Sardusky, Ohio, our radioman, as he checks the bombs dropping into the darkness.
We set a new course farther west. Now there are fewer fires and the gun-flashes are diminishing. We are beyond even the deepest spearheads.
This target is important.
Our waist gunners attend to the cargo - Staff Sgt. Larue Shipley of Caldwell, Idaho; and Staff Sgt. Charles W. Strain of Crete, Neb. A moment after “target” they report: “Cargo over”.
We wheel sharply and take a compass heading for home. Some German field flak installations pick us up, but we are flying too high and too fast.
“Let’s get the Hell out of here,” says our pilot, stepping up the engine revolutions.
We are south of Leipzig again, and again the ground haze reddens with fires raging more than four miles below us. One massive conflagration obviously is an oil fire.
“Something down there is burning like Hell,” says Staff Sgt. George W. Knott, of Chester, Penn, our ball gunner. “Look at those flames roll!”
We hold our altitude and roar westward toward England. We swing wide to avoid the Ruhr pocket, but we can see continuous flashes which tell us of massive artillery pounding to this doomed island of resistance. Inside the pocket there is an angry flare of many fires - fires consuming Nazi towns and villages.
Further west we see heavy artillery bombardment in Holland - the battle line where Montgomery’s troops are pressing forward. Then we are over the North Sea.
Tech. Sgt. Ralph W. Wise of Nabb, Ind., our engineer, checks our fuel. We have been in the air nearly eight hours most of that time on oxygen, and the weather at our home field is closing in. By the time we reach the airdrome, an original 800-foot ceiling has disappeared. Even at 300 feet we cannot break out. Finally we head for an RAF field 80 miles away, where they think they can take us in.
It is almost dawn when Midnight Mistress drops down on the runway - nine hours in the air from take-off at dusk when we headed for Germany. "
Sure sounds like combat...
http://www.bomberlegends.com/pdf/BL_Mag_v1-3-SecretSquad.pdfTechnically.... they were leaflet canister "bombs" that blew open.
