Forgotten Fifteenth Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Barrett Tillman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.

  First ebook edition © 2014

  eISBN 978-1-62157-235-0

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Tillman, Barrett.

  Forgotten Fifteenth : the daring airmen who crippled Hitler’s war machine / Barrett Tillman.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1.United States. Army Air Forces. Air Force, 15th. 2.World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations, American. 3.World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Mediterranean Region.I. Title.

  D790.2215th .T55 2014

  940.54’4973--dc23

  2014001772

  Published in the United States by

  Regnery History

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  Dedicated to the members of the

  U.S. Army Air Forces who served in the

  Mediterranean Theater of operations

  during the Second World War.

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE: Up from the Desert

  November 1943–January 1944

  CHAPTER TWO: The Winter War

  January–March 1944

  CHAPTER THREE: Italian Spring

  March–June 1944

  CHAPTER FOUR: East to Ploesti

  April–June 1944

  CHAPTER FIVE: Mediterranean Summer

  July–September 1944

  CHAPTER SIX: Other Players

  1944–1945

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Air Supremacy

  September–December 1944

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Mission Accomplished

  January–May 1945

  CHAPTER NINE: Legacy

  May 1945 and beyond

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  APPENDIX

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  PREFACE

  In early 2012 a World War II veteran of the Eighth Air Force, which had been based in Britain, asked if I were writing another book. When I told him the subject, he almost scoffed. “The Fifteenth? They were down there in Italy. Why write about them?”

  I bit my lip then replied, “Because they helped win the war.”

  Probably no one knows how many books have been published about the “Mighty Eighth,” but there have been dozens, even excluding unit histories. This, however, is the first full-length history of the “Forgotten Fifteenth,” which conducted the southern half of the Allied strategic bombing campaign in Europe. After nearly seventy years, the Fifteenth’s story is long, long overdue for a telling.

  And what a story it is.

  During a hard-fought, four-month campaign in the spring and summer of 1944, the Fifteenth shut down the Axis powers’ main source of oil. The cost was high—nearly 240 aircraft lost and their crews killed or captured—but the effort was ultimately worthwhile. The near-total destruction of the Ploesti complex in Romania had far-reaching consequences for the German war machine.

  Yet in its eighteen months of operations—from November 1943 to V-E Day in May 1945—the Fifteenth accomplished more than turning off Hitler’s Balkan oil tap. The five bombardment wings struck other petroleum targets throughout the southern and central Reich, ruined enemy communications, and constantly hammered sources of production. Not all were in Germany, as Fifteenth airmen operated in the airspace of a dozen other Axis or occupied nations.

  Even more than writing an operational history, I want to tell the story of “the Forgotten Fifteenth” as an institution. That would be impossible without a bottom-up perspective, from the flight lines on Foggia airfields to headquarters in Bari. I gained an education in researching this book, often drawing upon interviews conducted decades ago.

  I have ensured that every Fifteenth Air Force flying group—if not every unit—is mentioned in this book. The veteran contributors represent eight of the Fifteenth’s bomb groups and four fighter groups plus three Luftwaffe units. Coverage of the famed Red Tails of the 332nd Fighter Group is proportionate to their role among the other twenty-nine groups of the Mediterranean strategic air force.

  Aviation purists note that Germany’s famous Messerschmitt “Me 109” fighter actually was the Bf 109, for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke or Bavarian Aircraft Factory. The “Me” designation was adopted in 1938 and applied to new designs from that date. I have used both the “Bf” and “Me” designations where appropriate.

  Barrett Tillman

  March 2013

  PROLOGUE

  The bombers crossed the Alps at Brenner Pass, northbound for Munich. At 4,500 feet elevation, Brenner was among the lowest of the alpine passes, its late spring verdancy spanning the border between Italy and Austria.

  Some four hundred miles north of their Italian bases, the bombers were well along the route toward Innsbruck and into southern Germany. By the time they crossed the pass, they were established at cruise speed, making 180 to 210 mph four miles above the gap in the spine of Europe.

  A few airmen reflected that Brenner Pass was accustomed to conflict; they thought the Carthaginian genius Hannibal’s surviving war elephants may have used the same passage into Italy twenty-two centuries before.

  Some fliers had made the trip more than twenty times, but they seldom failed to take in the gorgeous scenery. The Alps often defied description: the crystalline clarity of the high whiteness was unlike anything most fliers had ever seen. Even those who had trained in the American West had little to compare to it: the Sierra Nevada had more peaks topping thirteen thousand feet but covered less than one-third the area of the Alps. Craggy mountains, snow-capped much of the year, towered on either side of the green valley. It was a view that few Europeans—let alone Americans—had ever seen. Not until the postwar boom in commercial aviation would large numbers of air travelers see Brenner’s beauty from above.

  The young Americans looking down on the scene, however, took only passing note. Most were under twenty-five years old; probably none were over forty. The purpose of their flight was far removed from sightseeing. Each of the five hundred bombers bore four or five tons of high explosives, destined for the armories that supplied the Wehrmacht.

  The visitors flew in miserable conditions. Five miles above sea level, they sucked bottled oxygen through rubber hoses and masks, leaving their mouths and throats dry and raspy. The cold penetrated their electrically heated suits, gloves, and boots. The temperature at that altitude hovered around thirty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Frostbite was a frequent cause of casualties. Waist gunners flexed their legs and bent their knees; most stood at their windows for the entire six-hour mission. The tubes in which the men relieved themselves froze, and many bombers had no chemical toilets. Some crews res
orted to cardboard boxes.

  The Liberators and Flying Fortresses cruised at twenty-three to twenty-seven thousand feet, where contrails formed—hot engine exhausts condensed in the super-chilled air to produce the telltale “cons.” Above them, escorting fighters also produced the long white tendrils that made visual identification so easy for the defenders.

  Innsbruck lay just ahead; Munich seventy miles beyond.

  Ahead, above, and on the flanks roamed formations of escorting fighters: single-engine Mustangs and twin-engine Lightnings in their weaving patterns to avoid outrunning the bombers.

  All too soon, intercoms and radios sparked into life.

  “Heads up! Here they come!”

  “Bandits, twelve o’clock!”

  On the periphery of the bomber stream, fighters bearing black crosses and white stars tangled in frantic, churning combat. Four-plane flights broke into two-plane sections, then often into singles. Loners were vulnerable; intelligent pilots sought friends. The most eager sought victims.

  Some of the defenders inevitably broke through.

  By twelve-plane Staffeln and thirty-six-plane Gruppen, the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs slammed into the ordered ranks. Bombers’ noses and top turrets opened fire, twin .50 calibers chattering away, sending tracers curling outbound, crisscrossing streams of German 20mm cannon shells. Inevitably both sides scored hits. A Messerschmitt, caught in the crossfire of a bomber formation, cartwheeled out of control, spiraling crazily through space as it tumbled to destruction.

  The other fighters came straight in, with a combined closing speed of more than 400 miles per hour. Ambitious young Teutons pressed their attacks to minimum range, gauging the distance in their Revi gun sights. The aim point was the cockpit of the nearest bomber, seeking to kill the two pilots on the flight deck. Gouges of aluminum and sprinkles of shattered glass tinkled through the high, frigid air, and a four-engine giant dropped out of formation. Other fighters jumped on it, eager to complete the kill.

  Inside the bombers, waist gunners took fleeting shots at gray-green silhouettes flashing through the formation. The single handheld Brownings thumped out their authoritative basso at thirteen rounds per second. In extended combat, empty brass cartridges fell in piles around the gunners’ booted feet. Teenaged airmen reverted to their basic gunnery classes in Utah or Texas: “A fighter’s not a duck or pheasant. You’re flying at 200 mph so aim behind him to hit him!”

  Almost unnoticed at first, black-brown explosions erupted in the air ahead. Nearing the target, radar-controlled flak batteries had tracked the Indianers and gained a firing solution. When the first shells burst, Luftwaffe gun crews made immediate corrections, refining the geometry using the target height and speed. With both figures verified, the antiaircraft crews did not need to track the moving targets. They put round after round into a cube of airspace, knowing that the Viermots had to fly through the area. From there on it was three-dimensional mathematics. How many planes could penetrate a given piece of sky without colliding with a projectile bearing enough explosive to destroy one or more aircraft?

  Avoiding the worst of the flak zone, the defending fighters disengaged, awaiting events. As long as they could avoid the American escorts, the FWs and Me’s could reposition for a shot at the bombers turning southward for home.

  Home was Foggia, near the Adriatic coast of Italy, the base of the Fifteenth U.S. Army Air Force. At that moment it was a long, long way off.

  CHAPTER ONE

  UP FROM THE DESERT

  NOVEMBER 1943–JANUARY 1944

  The general’s name was James Harold Doolittle, and he might have been the finest airman who ever lived. Short, stocky, and balding, the former boxer and gymnast exuded confident competence. He combined an unexcelled cockpit reputation with a searching intellect that had won him flying trophies and academic honors—and a powerful will to succeed.

  A noted air racer, Doolittle had won every event worth entering in the 1920s and 1930s and earned one of the first doctorates in aeronautics. As a lieutenant colonel he achieved even greater fame and lasting glory as leader of the Tokyo raid in April 1942, leading sixteen army B-25s in an unprecedented operation. The Mitchell bombers took off from the aircraft carrier Hornet far from the Japanese coast, struck six cities, and got away clean. One plane diverted to Russia and though the others ran out of fuel, the Doolittle raid sent American morale soaring when the nation needed a boost as never before.

  Upon return home, Doolittle received the Medal of Honor and promotion to brigadier general. That summer he assumed command of the U.S. Twelfth Air Force, preparing for the Allied invasion of North Africa. There he gained a second star before year’s end. Consequently, in March 1943 Doolittle rose to lead the North African Strategic Air Force (NASAF), including British units. Despite his seniority, he continued flying combat, including the first U.S. air raid on Rome in June. He also flew a few sorties in a Spitfire, learning the fabled British fighter’s capabilities, and confided that if he had encountered some German aircraft, he would not have been disappointed.1

  In twelve months of operating in North Africa, Doolittle had acquired vital knowledge and experience. He matured quickly as an air commander, combining bomber, fighter, reconnaissance, and troop carrier units into an efficient, increasingly capable entity. The NASAF included ten British bomber squadrons, providing a joint command that boded well for Doolittle’s future.

  Now, on the first day of November 1943, Major General Doolittle assumed his third command in the Mediterranean Theater. From his sun-bleached headquarters in Tunis, he prepared to take the air war to the European mainland.

  Anglo-American forces had landed in Italy during early September—the British across the Messina Strait from Sicily and the Americans at Salerno, farther up the west coast. A slogging ground campaign ensued, grinding to a halt against prepared positions that Germany called the Gustav Line. Italy has some of the finest defensive terrain in Europe, and Field Marshal Albert Kesselring made full use of it. That winter the campaign bogged down in mountain fighting barely eighty miles north of Foggia. Meanwhile, Allied forces had occupied Taranto in the heel of the Italian boot and Bari across the peninsula on the east coast, further securing southern Italy.

  Against the background of the Italian campaign, the Fifteenth Air Force was created on short notice. With an eye on the muddy Foggia plain, on October 9 Army Air Forces commander Henry H. Arnold had proposed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff authorize the Fifteenth immediately. As Arnold noted, “It was to be equipped with groups already in Italy, supplemented by fifteen more from the States.”2

  Approval came fast. On October 22 General George C. Marshall, the army chief of staff, notified theater commander Dwight Eisenhower that the Fifteenth would stand up in ten days. The Allied command structure placed Doolittle under a British Theater commander, Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson. Meanwhile, the Fifteenth’s operations would be conducted under a longtime colleague of Doolittle’s, Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz, overall commander of U.S. Strategic Air Forces. Spaatz lacked Doolittle’s achievements and intellect, but it was a relationship based on long experience and mutual regard.

  All was not sweetness and light among the Americans, however. Recalling his first meeting with Eisenhower in late 1942, Doolittle conceded that the supreme commander “took an immediate dislike to me; he had little or no use for me.”3

  There were two reasons for Eisenhower’s disdain: Doolittle’s characteristic bluntness was seldom popular at court, and despite his rank and the Medal of Honor, he remained a reserve officer. Eisenhower seemed to dismiss Doolittle as a glorified throttle jockey, though the aviator would have been justified in casting the West Pointer as a glorified desk jockey. Apparently Eisenhower, the consummate service politician, never grasped that Jimmy Doolittle knew more about aviation than most other people knew about anything.

  When Doolittle established the Fifteenth Air Force, he escaped Eisenhower’s hostility, as Ike had moved to England to prepa
re for the invasion of northern Europe. By then some of his frost had begun melting, as Doolittle had written his wife, “Think I am gradually selling myself to General Eisenhower but have a long way to go yet before he will be willing to admit his original estimate was wrong.”4

  The Germans had bloodied the American army in Tunisia in 1943. But with the conquest of Sicily that summer, the Allies were poised to take the European mainland. In support of that goal, Spaatz gave the Fifteenth Air Force four missions:

  (1) Achieve air superiority by destroying the Luftwaffe in the air and on the ground.

  (2) Participate in Operation Pointblank, the Anglo-American Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) against Axis industry, including aircraft factories and airfields, ball-bearing plants, oil refineries, armament production, and submarine bases.

  (3) Support ground forces in the Mediterranean Theater by attacking enemy transport in Italy and over the Brenner Pass into Austria. (The tactical Twelfth Air Force would provide direct air support to Allied armies.)

  (4) Attack Axis forces and facilities in the Balkans.5

  A longer-term goal was the buildup of air strength to support the Allied invasion of southern France, scheduled for the summer of 1944 after the Normandy landings.

  The original CBO directive of January 1943 was amended by the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff in May, who ordered “a joint United States–British air offensive to accomplish the progressive destruction of the German military, industrial and economic system, and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened. This is construed as meaning so weakened as to permit initiation of final combined operations on the Continent.” Some airmen believed that the last sentence was added to ensure that strategic airpower supported the overall Allied war effort—especially on the ground. Consequently, the Americans would target German war production by day, while the Royal Air Force continued attacking cities and, therefore, German morale, by night.6