Aviation War Stories- On Two Wings & a Prayer

On Two Wings and a Prayer--By Al Zdon

It was a pretty standard mission on that December 2, 1944. The B-26s in the 391st Bomb Group were to hit an oil storage depot in Sarrlautern, Germany. Because of the weather, they were to use a "pathfinder" lead aircraft that would guide them to their target using radio beams. The plane was carrying 16-250 lb. fragmentation bombs, a full load of 4,000 lbs. for the Marauder.

Lt. Ed Dunn and his crew took off from their base in Roi Ami, in central France, at about 8 a.m. The clouds were thick up to about 7,000 feet, and it was difficult plowing through them until the B-26s broke free. On top of the clouds, the group of 18 planes, six in a flight, formed up on the pathfinder, which had come from a different base.
"By this time we were all hoping that the war would be over pretty soon," Dunn said. "It seemed like the flak was getting heavier and the weather was getting lousier on every mission. Of course, I never said anything to the crew about it. It didn't make much difference how you felt, you still were going to fly another mission."

It was Dunn's 31st mission. There was a crew of six on the B-26: Pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, turret gunner, waist gunner, and tail gunner. Dunn's regular turret gunner had been involved in a fracas and was in the stockade. Before the flight, a young turret gunner named Ellerbe approached Dunn and asked if he could fly with them. He was anxious to get in his 65th and final mission. Dunn told him, "Welcome aboard."
"It was the only time he flew with us. I'd never seen him before."

Dunn's B-26 was in the 4 slot, or the plane directly behind the lead aircraft and directly in the middle of the flight of six planes. It was a brand new plane, the first new plane that Dunn had ever flown in combat. It was on its fourth mission, and it hadn't even been named yet. The pathfinder was directly in front of this lead group, and a flight was on either side.
The planes flews as tightly as they could, trying to minimize the target for the German gunners. Often the wingtips of the planes would be only three feet apart. As the planes approached the target, maintaining the formation would get even tougher as the formation took evasive action.
It took about seven seconds from the time a German .88 left the ground and exploded into the formation at 10,000 feet, the normal bombing altitude. The Americans tried to avoid the flak by erratic turning every 45 seconds or so, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left. There was no pattern, and so the Germans couldn't adjust for it.

The problem was that even the planes in the formation didn't know which way the lead plane would go, they could only follow. For the planes on the wide edge of the turn, it meant full throttle and hope you could hold on. On the inner edge of the turn, it meant cutting the throttle and hoping you didn't get crunched. With only a few feet between the wings, it was a little nerve wracking.
"You're just so busy flying, though, that you have total concentration. If you don't have total concentration, you won't be able to do it. Still, nobody likes to be shot at. My hand would be shaking on the throttle."

In fact, that type of flying had brought on an incident in Dunn's crew not too many days before. The turret gunner (who later got in a fight with an officer and was jailed) had been known to have a drink now and then, and he showed up one night at Dunn's tent where the officers were playing cards. He said he wanted to see Dunn.

The gunner was obviously drunk, and he was in officer's country where he shouldn't have been. Dunn's co-pilot, Ed Armstrong, tried to handle the situation, but the man was adamant he wanted to see Dunn. When he got his chance to speak, he slurred, "I want to tell Lt. Dunn that he's chicken****. He flies too close and he scares me."
The man was guided back to his barracks, but the next morning Dunn gathered the crew and gave everybody a chance to change crews if they wanted. "They all said, 'No, no, no.' They wanted to stay. I told them we fly the airplane close to the others because that's the orders and it's the safest way to fly. Flying like that was skillful, but it wasn't chicken****."

The crew on the mission to Germany that morning had been told that the target was completely clouded over, and that the bombing would be done above the clouds using the pathfinder's electronic gear. When they got near the target, though, that was hardly the case.
"The clouds broke away, and there was the Saar River. We were perfect targets for the German gunners. You know the salvos are getting close when you can see the red fire in them. They'll bang you around a little bit. You can hear that rain of shell fragments against the airplane."
The Pathfinder needed a minute or more of straight and level flying at the end of the bomb run to find the target. Without the evasive action, the B-26s are in their most precarious position. The Germans opened up.
"The first salvo was really close. On the second salvo, a shell entered my rear bombay and exploded." The shock was incredible and the middle of the aircraft was blown to pieces. Bits of shrapnel flew throughout the plane.
The top turret gunner, Ellerbe, on his last mission, was blown away. Only parts of him were left in the aircraft. The waist gunner, Sims, next closest to the explosion, was riddled with shrapnel. The main supporting beam of the fuselage was gone, and only the skin of the airplane was holding the tail section on.

In the ****pit, Dunn was struck in both the right elbow and his right ankle by shrapnel. "My body felt like it was hit by a sledgehammer. I was strapped into my seat, but the explosion spun me around in the seat. It was a big jolt." The plane banked sharply to the left. Dunn tried to correct by pushing hard on the right rudder, but there was no response. He signaled to Armstrong to also lean on the rudder, but the plane continued its steep left bank.
Dunn was able to get the plane under control by using the power of the engines and the ailerons for the wings. After the slow, wide turn, Dunn's plane was now coming in over the target again, but they had no idea if the bombs were ready to drop or even if they were still there. "It's not healthy to land an airplane with 16 fully-armed 250 lb. bombs."

Armstrong left his seat to survey the damage, and what he mainly found as he entered the mid-section of the plane was chaos. About 10 or 12 feet of the main beam of the plane was gone. The bombs, whose arming pins had been pulled earlier, were hanging lopsided from the racks or strewn on the floor. The catwalk was gone. There were gaping holes all over the plane. The top gun turret was gone. The tail gunner, Wagner, was trying to help Sims. There was no way to get to the bombs, or to even get past the first bombay.

Dunn kept the plane on a heading out of Germany, but as the tail section swayed back and forth, it seemed as though it would tear away from the plane at any moment. The cables to the rudder were severed as were the hydraulic lines for the landing gear and the propeller control. There was no radio. "Both engines seemed to be running fine, bless their hearts."
The bombardier crawled through his tunnel back to the ****pit. Dunn showed him his leg, and the bombardier stuffed bandages into the boot to staunch the bleeding. After that, apparently overcome with the peril they were in, the bombardier sat down between Dunn and Armstrong and did nothing but whimper for the rest of the trip. Sending him back to the nose of the plane, Dunn knew, with the chance they would have to bail out at any second, would be a death sentence. So he let him sit. "Besides, I was too busy to pay any attention to him."

There was some thought of abandoning the plane, and Dunn gave the crew that option. Armstrong carried a big sign back to the middle of the plane with "Bail Out?" written on it. The crew in the back of the B-26 declined. It seemed the only way to get Sims to immediate medical attention was to fly back to the base. Meanwhile, The flight leader, Lt. Boylan, flew his plane back to find the crippled B-26 and help guide them home. Boylan could see Dunn's plane was on the verge of flying into pieces. "All this time, the tail was swaying back and forth a foot or more. Boylan stayed at a respectful distance."

Dunn began a slow descent into the clouds, and the flight leader disappeared. They were on their own. Dunn had to fly on basic instruments, needle, ball, airspeed, compass, and altimeter. He was able to maintain about 200 miles an hour, and he slowly came down, hoping to break through the clouds and hoping to find a place to land. When the altimeter said zero, they were still in the clouds. The descent became even more slow and cautious.
In the back of the plane, Wagner had tied a parachute on Sims in case they were given the order to abandon ship.
When they finally caught a glimpse of land, they found they were flying through a valley, with 800 foot hills rising up on either side of them. In the valley was a canal they thought looked familiar. If they were where they thought they were, the plane was only about 100 miles from the base. Dunn thought they had enough fuel, but he couldn't be sure that the tanks hadn't been ruptured by a piece of flak.

Dunn brought the B-26 up to 1,000 feet and they flew in the general direction of the base, he hoped, and when they descended, they saw a landing strip. Dunn and Armstrong could see nothing out of the windshield because of the rain, and so they leaned out of the side windows to observe the airfield. As they made their final approach, however, they found it was full of bomb craters. Dunn gave the engines full power, and they pulled up just in time. Armstrong tried to plot their course on a map, and they followed a railroad track they guessed would take them to their base.
By now, though, the brakes on the props were slipping because there was no electrical power. The propellers were beginning to speed up and Dunn was again losing control of the plane. If the 13-foot props sped up too much, they would hurtle themselves from the engines. "The engines were revving about 5,500 rpm. We were very close to losing the props."

The situation was desperate, but suddenly in the gloom ahead, they could see the distinctive church tower at Roy Ami. Quickly, Dunn found the field. The landing had to be perfect because the plane has no landing wheels, and the 250-lb. bombs were armed and loose in the back of the plane. There would be no second chance.
At fifty feet, Dunn cut the power. Unfortunately, as soon as the power was gone, so was his control of the aircraft. It veered suddenly to the right, and began to zero in on one of the aircraft parked alongside the runway. Dunn saw with horror that it's the group colonel's plane.
"Oh, lord, I've come this far. If I demolish the colonel's plane, he'll kill me."

Dunn dropped the right wing, adjusted the heading, and the plane crunched down on the runway and began its 4,000 foot slide down the concrete. Dunn and Armstrong pounded each other on the back, shouting for joy. The rain helped to keep the airship from catching fire. "Of all the landings I ever made, that was the only good one."
Dunn and Armstrong exited through the top hatches. "I'm feeling no pain, just jubilation." It had been nearly two and one-half hours since their plane was hit.
Medics came and removed Sims, still alive but just barely. "It was hell for us up in the ****pit, but can you imagine what it was like for two and a half hours in the back with the tail swaying like that?"

Sims survived the attack, but was a paraplegic. He died two years later. Dunn has a letter from Sims mother thanking him for bringing her son home that day.
At the aid station, Dunn was told he's going to be taken to the hospital at Amiens, about 30 miles away. Still pumped with adrenaline, he turned down both morphine and a shot of whiskey. He even convinced the ambulance driver to drive out to the runway to see the plane, and the driver opened the back doors for Dunn to see what was left of his brand-new B-26.
"This flight was a miracle. Thank you, God, for our lives."

On the way, with rush of excitement wearing off, the pain began to take its place. Dunn told the driver he'd have the morphine now, but the driver didn't have any. The ambulance plowed over the rough roads for nearly two hours to get to the hospital.

The next weeks were a series of train trips and surgeries as he was moved across France to Cherbourg. "Those guys were doing surgery over there in the most difficult circumstances and they did a fabulous job. The way they could repair things was just amazing." On Christmas day, he was aboard a hospital ship en route to England. Christmas dinner was potato soup.
Dunn recuperated in England, and later rejoined the 391st for four more missions.
"I wasn't the best pilot in the 391st, but I was the luckiest."

Attached are pics of Dunn's B-26.-DS