The Mighty Eighth by Gerald Astor

Author:Gerald Astor [Astor, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

14

D-DAY AND BEYOND

During the spring months before the scheduled invasion the first week of June, the Eighth Air Force labored to carry out its vital responsibilities for lower-altitude hits at the infrastructure of ground defenses while coping with a heavy turnover in personnel as men completed their tours and casualties continued to mount. Hal Turrell, who had done the requisite number of operations with the 445th Bomb Group on April 29, offered to hang about and contribute to the coming landings, but his group commander responded that only if he volunteered for a full tour could he continue. Turrell sailed for the U.S. on a nearly empty troop ship, June 3.

Ramsay Potts, who had bounced back and forth from the UK to North Africa several times and survived the ill-fated Ploesti raid, had ascended the staff ladder to the post of operations officer for the 93rd Bomb Group, then chief of staff for a combat wing and finally took over the 453rd Bomb Group. “Their commander had been shot down on one of their first missions. My chief job was to give them confidence and straighten out some of their operational procedures. They were not flying very well together as a group. They had a considerable number of individually skilled pilots and crews, pretty good maintenance but very poor organization.

“I got permission from the division commander to stand down from flying combat missions and immediately started training operations, which was very irksome to the crews but we ironed out some problems and troubles. We started to fly against German airfields, V-1, V-2 sites, some oil targets, marshaling and transportation objectives in preparation for the invasion. I flew an occasional mission myself, but I was trying to develop the organizational skills and get the group to function as a cohesive unit. I don’t believe I got more than five hours of sleep a night for the three and a half months leading up to D-Day.”

With D-Day imminent, the capacity to rotate experienced hands like Turrell home and still mount ever larger, sustained efforts bespeaks the wealth of manpower available as newcomers not only replaced those who completed their tours but also boosted the bomber and fighter group complements far beyond that which marked the early days. Among the additions was Wil Richardson, a ball-turret gunner who arrived in April. By June 1, he had flown fifteen missions, including the one where bombs from one B-17 struck another. He recalled that at the 94th Bomb Group in Bury St. Edmunds, on May 25, “Something occurred that made everybody really start talking about this invasion that should be coming up soon. All crew members had to carry their sidearms, .45s, at all times on the base. The ground crews were given various kinds of shoulder weapons to carry with them as they worked on the airplanes. We were told to do this because they expected German paratroopers to come in to louse up any invasion plans that were being put together.” Farfetched as

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