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Angels Unknown - Part 2 (conclusion) by John Bybee -- 764th Bomb Squadron Seventeen minutes after entering enemy air space the 461st, now slightly North of Drvar, Yugoslavia, was overflown by a group of 14th Fighter Group P-38s. Bob had brought along a package of cheese and crackers which his wife Marion had sent him. Homer said to Bob, "Let's break into those cheese and crackers." Bob replied, "No, let's save them for a snack on the way back." At 10:35 a.m. the 461st, now almost three-fourths the way across Yugoslavia, spotted P-38s near Sisak. Near Prelog, Yugoslavia, at the Southwest corner of the Yugoslavia/Hungary border, the mile wide, five mile long bomber stream turned northeast. The formation droned across Hungary and set for another course change near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. The Germans had not been fooled by the fancy navigation. Long range Wiirzburg and Freya radars based in Rumania had picked up the bombers while they were assembling over Italy, and tracked them across Yugoslavia. Teleprinters clattered and telephones rang in the command centers of the 8th Jagddivision and the 4th Flakbrigade. Ranges, bearings and expected targets of the bombers were radioed to the waves of FW-190s, ME-109s, 110s, 210s, and JU-88s rising to intercept the intruders. Shorter ranged (24 miles) Wiirzburg radars located Southeast of Bratislavia relayed the altitude of the bombers to Grossbitterien where 37, 88, and 105mm guns were positioned in the corridor between Vienna and Budapest. Grim black puffs of flak exploded amid the 764th's formation. Bob Trumpy recalled the B-24 to the right of his ship taking a direct hit from flak. "There was just a big orange flash and black smoke, and that was the end of that airplane." Ken was assigned to the worst spot in the formation, Tail-end Charlie. Turbulence, wide wakes of prop-wash and narrow cones of wing tip vortexes corkscrewing back from the six B-24s ahead made Ten Men Bak bounce, flop and bob like a cork on a stormy sea. Ken persistently kicked his rudders left and right, sideslipping to remain behind his squadron. At the same time, he constantly adjusted his throttles to chase the formation. Ken was at 22,000 feet about twenty miles East of Bratislavia, Czechoslovakia when the number three turbo-charger failed. Ken peered over his oxygen mask at the tachometer and cylinder head temperature gauges for number three. Head temperature was raising, RPMs falling off. Ice in the air intake duct between the turbo-supercharger and the carburetor? Unlikely; the intercooler shutters were closed. Supercharger regulator failure? Possible. The altimeter needle began to unwind. Ken, a former aircraft engineer for Allison in Indianapolis, shoved the throttles of his three good engines to war emergency power and slammed the propeller controls to full flat pitch. Number three engine fell off to one-third power. Ken ordered Homer forward. "...Homer was always studying the plane and its equipment. He was serious about his job, and we always felt confident that Homer would bring us home," Ken recalled proudly. The 24-year-old Flight Engineer squeezed past the stubby 500 pound bombs and walked the narrow catwalk from the waist to the flight deck. Homer labored with the various settings of throttle, mixture, and propeller to coax more power from the ailing engine. Bob said in a choked voice, "Homer, the Flight Engineer, I thought was unusually talented. I felt if anything was wrong - Homer could fix it. Didn't turn out that way, but it wasn't anyone's fault, it just happened." The number two engine on the left wing began to grumble and run rough. At 11:17 a.m. Ken radioed Captain Mixson, and told him, "One turbo out and one rough engine, fuel low." Ken also asked for permission to abort. Permission to abort was denied and Ken was told to remain in formation if at all possible. Ken defiantly gripped the control wheel and fought the controls to hold his right wing tip about a foot away from the left vertical stabilizer of his wing man. Later he would tell Bob, "I wish I could have had you up there in the Co-pilot's seat adding some muscle and power on those rudder and stick." By 11:23 a.m., the Squadron had pulled away from a lagging Ten Men Bak. Without further radio contact with the lead ship, Ken dropped out of the formation. Fuel was too low to permit their return to Italy. Ken, asked Frank Hokr for an east heading towards the Russian lines. Flak batteries zeroed in on the descending B-24. Flak bursts tore out chunks of the right wing flap and put holes in the left wing. Alone and cut off "Ten Men Bak" limped out of the range of the guns. In scant minutes the dreaded cry of "enemy fighters!" resounded in Ken's earphones. Frank Hokr looked out his bubble window and mixed gaggle of FW-190s and ME-109s closing head-on in line abreast. At 11:40 a.m., 1st Lt. Clark C. Banitt, his own B-24 under attack by fighters, noted the predicament of Ken's hapless number 12. "I noticed a plane from the 461st Group at 5-o'clock low from our plane. The plane was being attacked by two or three German fighters which I believe were FW-190s." A group of FW-190s angled down and attacked Ten Men Bak from the rear. The lead FW-190 opened fire at about 600 yards. Solid cannon hits smashed into the middle of the Liberator's fuselage. Bud Granger returned the fire. The FW-190 bored in, concentrating his fire on the tail turret. Cannon salvos blew Bud's turret from its tracks. Additional shells knocked Roland's ball turret out of commission. Unharmed, Bud escaped into the open fuselage behind him. Roland Warren, a plucky former shoe salesman from West Warwick, Rhode Island, told Bombardier Harry Edmiston he would fire a waist gun instead. Back to back with Charlie Foss at the right waist gun, Roland called out the positions of the attacking fighters. Roland swung his 65 pound .50 caliber machine gun on its pivot and snapped out short bursts at the enemy fighters arching in on their second pass. Tracers reached for the B-24; when they touched, the FW-190 pilot pulled the trigger of his cannons. Hits lacerated the waist of the B-24, several of the 20mm rounds hit Roland Morin in the chest. Bud rushed to Roland's side and administered first aid, but the wounds were mortal. Roland died in Bud's arms. Eighteen year old Charlie Foss, at the right waist gun went down; his right arm shattered by a storm of bullets. The FW-190s, ME-109s and ME-210s continued their attack from above and both sides. Bob Trumpy in the top turret followed one FW-190 around from the tail to the right wing tip. The FW-190 tipped up and exposed his belly to the twin streams of lead pouring from Trumpy's guns. Black Smoke and glycol erupted from the light blue FW-190. Ken saw the canopy come off and a second later the German pilot bailed out. Another FW-190 charged in from 5-o'clock low and unleashed a barrage of bullets that slashed through Chet Rudel's window. The deadly stream of lead sprayed across the instrument panel - flight devices and engine gauges disappeared in a flurry of broken glass. Ken Smith recalled, "The hail of bullets came slowly across and one severed my oxygen hose - the next one would have killed me, but it never came". A 20mm shell exploded in an orange flash behind the number two engine and ignited an inferno. The intercom was dead. Bob Trumpy jumped up from his turret and tapped Ken on the shoulder and exclaimed, "We are on fire behind number two" Ken shut down the engine and feathered the propeller while Bob returned to his turret. The malicious fire burned steadily towards the main port wing tank. The unmanageable number three engine conked out. Ken feathered a second propeller. Ken recalled, "I remember seeing a FW-190 off my left wing tip up in a high speed stall five feet in front of my left wing tip. He was looking at me and I was looking at him, and wishing to God I could reach inside my Mae West and get my .45 because I could have hit him". Bob Trumpy jumped from his waist turret and yelled at Ken, "We're really on fire - - we've to get out of here!" Ken related, "I could see our wing tip getting higher and higher on the left side. I jettisoned our bomb load of 500 pounders to give us more speed, but realized the fire was going to take us down." Ken motioned to Bob and Homer to bail out, and sounded the evacuation alarm. At 15,000 feet Bud plunged out the tail floor hatch. Charlie Foss, his right arm useless, opened his chute inside the plane and followed Bud. The hydraulic system was out by the time Bob and Homer made their way to the bomb bays; the doors would not open. Homer leaped onto the catwalk and midway across he seized the manual bomb bay door crank for the rear bomb bay doors. Homer tugged on the crank, no response - the doors were jammed. Bob, a former Illinois State football player, put his size to good use - he jumped up and down on the doors. Finally Bob's jumping cleared the jam and Homer was able to crank open the doors. Homer, Bob, and Chet bailed out of the flaming B-24. In the nose, Harry, Frank, and Ed discovered that the nose wheel doors were immobilized. The three men crawled underneath the flight deck, hurried across the catwalk and went out through the bomb bay. Ken was now alone on the dying Liberator. He locked on the autopilot and headed for the bomb bay. He was trapped. The catwalk between the front and rear bomb bay had collapsed. A mass of twisted debris blocked his escape. Ken returned to the flight deck without any hope of regaining aerodynamic control of #12. Moments later the left wing folded up like a dead butterfly's wing and ripped away. The B-24 left the sunlight and rolled into its death dive. "They said you could never bailout of a B-24 from the flight deck. The plane rolled to the left and I fell through the Pilot's escape hatch and was free of the aircraft. I hit the silk just five hundred feet off the ground". Nine men floated down through the clouds towards an uncertain landing near Trencin, Czechoslovakia. Chet Rudel's chute tangled in tree branches and left him suspended with his toes just touching a limb. Chet released his harness and fell 20 odd feet to the ground. His back was broken by the impact, and he was to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Bob Trumpy shattered his left ankle on landing. By 4:00 p.m. all of the crew had been captured except for Ed Burkhardt who escaped capture and spent the rest of the war with the local underground. After their liberation from POW camps and German hospitals the nine members of crew 6757 assembled at Camp Lucky Strike, Le Havre, France for transport back to the States. Their war was over, the nine men went their separate ways. It would be December 14, 1984 before 6757 came together as a family. "It is difficult for anyone to really know and understand how close we were - and still are," Ken remarked with deep emotion. "Roland Morin, Ed Chojnowski, Harry Edminston, and Homer Hymbaugh are gone. But we are still a family and plan to get together as often as practical. We trained together, lived together, and fought together. No one ever had a better crew than I did. Knowing them made the war worth fighting." Throughout his life, Ken Smith has redefined his goals, but not his values. Since that fateful December morning when he and the other nine members of his Air Corps family took off in a bomber named "Ten Men Bak" the crew has remained nameless Americans. I say they are timeless Americans. The steel of their morals and wills forged in the Great Depression - and tempered by the orange, aviation gas flames mirrored in the disintegrating silver wings of their hapless B-24. |
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