Mission to Berlin: The American Airmen Who Struck the Heart of Hitler's Reich by Robert F. Dorr

Author:Robert F. Dorr [Dorr, Robert F.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Motorbooks International
Published: 2011-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Castle struggled with his controls and traveled some distance away from the protection of the bomber force, where he was again attacked. A third attack set both engines on the right wing on fire. Castle ordered the bomber abandoned, but it spun into a dive. The pilots recovered from the dive and seven of the nine crewmen parachuted. The pilot was observed in the nose of the airplane hooking on his parachute, with Castle still at the controls, when the fuel tank in the burning right wing exploded, putting the B-17 into a spin from which it did not recover, crashing near Hods, Belgium. Of the nine crewmen, five survived the crash. Castle did not.

Castle’s leadership and heroism are firmly established. His final moments, however, are controversial. Did he or his pilot have a choice about putting their Fortress in a place where it was more vulnerable to swarming German fighters?

“I turned my Fortress over to my co-pilot so I could watch for fighters around us,” Halper said in an interview for this book that differed from his written memoir. “I watched German and American fighters. I was directly behind Castle’s group. When he was hit, I saw him make the turn out of formation to return to base. There was no radio call from him to alert the fighters to afford him an escort. He was going back all by himself. I remarked to my copilot: ‘This is a damn fool thing to do. The Germans have excellent intelligence.’ I followed him from nine o’clock around to seven o’clock and the German fighters jumped on him and shot the hell out of him. A green second lieutenant would never have made a turn out of formation like that. He may not have been handling the controls. The pilot may have been. But even if the pilot was doing the flying, Castle could have used the radio.”

Castle was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. “If he had been First Lieutenant Castle instead of Brigadier General Castle, we would have lamented his loss every bit as much, but he wouldn’t have received that award,” said Halper.

“That day’s mission reminded me once again of how different it was to watch a fighter plane go down compared to a bomber. Fighters were flitting about the sky all the time anyway, so that when it was in an unusual attitude one was not inclined to pay much attention, and the pilot was usually able to bail out of his crippled plane as well. However, the bomber, flying along so majestically straight and level, was an awesome sight when it lost a tail or a wing and slipped into its deadly spin. This was made more so, no doubt, by the realization that there were men inside her fighting to get out.”

Halper added: “As we returned to base and circled the field awaiting our turn to land, I saw a great purple cloud in the gathering darkness, which had formed a backdrop for an incoming bomb group.

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