HELL FROM HEAVEN

Chapter 20

Mission 8 - Berlin - February 3, 1945

By Leonard Streitfeld, Bombardier, 600th Squadron

On Saturday, February 3, 1945 we were awakened by the familiar sound of "You'se eat now and you'se brief in three-quarters of an hour." We hurriedly dressed, had our square eggs and coffee and were soon in the briefing room.

There was an sense of anxiety in the air and I gathered that some already knew where we would be going but didn't want to "spill the beans" before the briefing officer announced it.

Before he started to speak, the maps of Europe were put on the wall in front of us and we could see the flight path to the target for the day.

When he finally announced it, there were oh's and ah's and then he went on to tell us of the mission. We were going to bomb Berlin and I must say that everyone in the room was eagerly waiting to go there since the city was crammed with refugees from the Russian front. This was to be a demoralization mission to create confusion and break their moral.

We were told that it was a maximum effort, 1000 plane raid and every Bomb Group in the Eighth Air Force would be in it. We were also told to expect enemy fighters and heavy flak and we would probably lose many planes. I looked around the room and thought which ones might not be here for the next briefing. Would it be us?

The briefing lasted about half-an-hour and then we were off to get our gear. It wasn't long before we loaded everything on a truck and were driven to the pad where our plane was sitting.

When all the equipment was put on the plane, I checked the bombs, guns, ammunition and the oxygen. Everything was A-OK. As usual, I took my camera with me and expected to take many pictures of the maximum effort-bombing mission.

The planes roared down the runway and took off one by one into the bleak and foreboding sky. It wasn't long before our bomb group assembled and headed towards Germany and Berlin. It was an unbelievable and inspiring sight seeing our bombers and fighter planes in every direction, as far as the eye could see.

I took pictures of this and tried to get as much footage as possible before we reached the target but I was conservative since I wanted to take pictures over Berlin and didn't want to run out of film. I could only take five minutes of pictures with one roll of film and couldn't start changing film in the middle of a mission. My regret was that I was not using color film.

Our plane was flying in the high squadron and while still approaching the IP a dramatic and terrifying accident happened that involved two planes, one flown by Lt. John McCormick in the low element to the right and the other plane flown by Perry Powell in the lead element between the two squadrons. Our squadron was flying to the left of the lead element. There were many eye- witnesses and each told their story as to what happened. This was out of my view and, therefore, I was not aware of what was taking place.

All the accounts given were similar and here is a composite of what was described: The plane of Lt. Perry Powell encountered prop wash (turbulence), as did many other planes. Most of the planes spread out so as to avoid some of the turbulence but soon they began to close and resume their positions.

Powell's plane had fallen back perhaps 300 or 400 feet and dropped the nose of the ship to avoid the prop wash. It is surmised that when he became aware he was getting too close to the planes in the low squadron he apparently and instinctively pulled back on the control column with great force. As the plane quickly went up at an angle of forty-five degrees, the stress was too much for the fuselage and it broke in half about where the ball turret is located separating the tail from the rest of the plane. The front half of the ship then looped up and over McCormick's plane cutting off part of the nose at the approximate spot where the navigator was sitting. Powell's right wing then cut into McCormick's plane between the radio room and ball turret. The navigator on McCormick's crew, Ray Woltman, did not have his chute on and was seen falling from the plane.

There were three other chutes seen and these crewmembers escaped the falling planes while the rest were lost when the planes crashed. It is possible that others bailed out when the planes went below the dense clouds and could not be seen. McCormick was lucky enough to be able to bail out along with Logen, his togglier. McCormick's description of how he escaped is hair raising. When Powell's plane hit, at the point of the navigator's table, he jumped out of his seat at about 12,000 feet. The co-pilot, Bill Feinstein, was attempting to get the entrance hatch off. At the same time, the pilot chute of the engineer, Marvin Gooden, opened and was all over the floor.

The hatch finally blew off and the co-pilot's left leg went out but he caught himself by placing both hands on the aft edge of the doorframe. He pushed up enough to duck his head down to fall out dragging his lower right leg, which seemed to flip him. At the same time the plane rolled left so that the floor now was almost at the top. The number two propeller hit him, throwing his body towards the wing tip and severing his left arm.

The engineer was also flipped to his right and his entire chute opened in the plane. McCormick, bouncing around in the plane, found himself near the open hatch. Incredibly, he bounced out of it. As he fell from the plane and opened his chute, falling parts of the plane zoomed past him. Within ten seconds he heard machine gun fire, which was his own plane burning and the ammunition exploding.

Dave Bancroft, tail gunner on the Perry Powell plane, was alone in the tail section at the time of the collision and when the plane broke in half and was still fused to the front half, he saw a pair of hands, probably the waist gunner, reaching through the opening. Although Bancroft tried to pull him through, the opening was too small. Then the front part of the plane broke away and the hands disappeared. He found himself floating down, alone, in the tail section. He struggled to open the tail hatch door but it was jammed. He kicked, wrested, pushed and, after almost giving up, the door suddenly fell off and he bailed out.

The three of them became prisoners of war. It wasn't until after the war that we found out what happened to them. Ironically, while on a PW march with other prisoners, an American fighter plane mistook them for a column of German troops and strafed them, killing Logen.

The accident took place prior to going on the bomb run. Our group was to be ninth over the target and, as we approached the "IP", all we could see was smoke and flak over the target area. The smoke had completely covered the city and the sky was peppered with flak bursts that we were going to fly through. As the flak increased in intensity, we were hit in the Tokyo Tanks (Auxiliary tanks for long missions) on the right wing, then the vertical stabilizer, followed by holes in the right waist and in the floor of the nose of the plane where Coy and I were sitting. The flak was stopped by armor plating in the floor. We could hear the pinging sound as the flak hit the plane and it's a sound that you can never forget for all those who experienced it.

The fact that there were so many bomb groups on this mission one group blended in with the other and there seemed to be a continuous stream of planes close enough that we could see them dropping their bombs.

Due to the strong headwinds that day the true air speed on the bomb run was only 90 MPH. We were sitting ducks. We saw a few planes in the distance get direct hits and go down. One of them exploded leaving a large cloud of black smoke in it's place.

Whenever a plane was going down we started to count the chutes. It was hoped that everyone would escape but many times the plane would blow up by the time we counted to four or five. It wasn't pleasant to watch but there was nothing we could do about it except be thankful that it wasn't our plane that was shot down.

I used to wonder what would happen to me if we were shot down and they saw the "H" on my dog tags. The dog tags had to be worn by everyone and identified their name, rank, serial number and religion. (C meant Catholic, P meant Protestant and H meant Hebrew.) If anyone did not have their tags on and were shot down and captured, that could have been reason to be shot as a spy.

I couldn't wait until the lead ship dropped its bombs and it seemed like forever before they were released.  All of the planes followed suit and unloaded their deadly cargo. The bomb bay doors on every plane began to slowly close as we headed away from the dangerously saturated flak area. The flak eventually thinned out and we were soon in the clear. Although there were enemy fighters in the air, we did not encounter any.

The mission lasted nine hours and most of us would have been glad to go back if we could inflict as much damage again. We would do anything to help bring this war to an end sooner.

We arrived at the base and inspected our plane, as we always did, and once more it had many flak holes in it.

After our meeting with the Intelligence Officer to describe the mission to him and any event that we felt would be of importance, we went back to our hut to clean up for supper.

In the officer's club there was a huge map of Europe showing the front lines as they stood at that time. It was different each day and showed how far our troops had advanced as well as that of the Russians.

We could see the area between the lines getting narrower each day and were looking forward to the moment when the lines would touch. It was still going to take time and many crews would still be lost on bombing missions. I was hoping that we would not be a statistic.

After dinner most of us headed for the bar and that is when everyone told their story about the mission and the close calls they had. We discussed the planes that were shot down along with those in the collision and whom the crews were. I knew some of them and they could easily have been sitting next to me at briefing.

From day to day the crews never knew if they would see each other again when we said our good-byes before a mission. The less said about where we were scheduled to bomb the better since some were inclined to be on the nervous side and anticipate the worst.

Personally, I had a good feeling that I was going to survive whatever was in store for me... and there was a lot.

 

HELL FROM HEAVEN by Leonard Streitfeld, Hammonton, New Jersey. Library of Congress Catalogue card number: 94-092215. HELL FROM HEAVEN is available in the 398th PX.

 

Personal History Information
  1. Veteran: Leonard Streitfeld
  2. Bombardier, 600th Squadron
  3. Date of Personal History: December 2003 Web Page submission. Excerpted from HELL FROM HEAVEN by Leonard Streitfeld.
  4. Author: Leonard Streitfeld
  5. Submitted to 398th Web Pages by: Leonard Streitfeld