Chemnitz (which was renamed Karl Marx Stadt after WW II) is deep in Thuringia in southeast Germany, almost to the Czech border.  This was expected to be a long and dangerous mission since this industrial center was well protected.  For this mission the navigational duties were assumed by Dan who did double duty as navigator-bombardier.  He didn't mind the extra work but I think that being alone in the nose of the aircraft for some of those long missions was especially hard on him.

Germany was completely covered with clouds and we got to the target and dropped our bombs by PFF radar with no flak or fighter interference.  It looked to be a routine mission albeit rather tiring because of the length of the flight (I logged ten hours for this mission) and a little stressful because of the uncertainty of the weather at the home base.  After we were well on our way back I called Little Joe [radio operator] and told him to contact Station 131 (our 398th airbase) and get a weather report, I also spoke with Dan and asked for an ETA on crossing the battle lines and getting back into friendly territory  so that we could let down to a lower altitude.  Joe told me he was having trouble contacting the base but he would continue to try, Dan reported that we had hit a 130 mph headwind and would not be able to start letting down for a couple of hours.  This latter was a serious shock to me because we had flown deep into Germany in formation, a notorious gas-eating flying technique, and if we were to continue this way, we would run out of gas long before we got home.  Added to this was the uncertainty about the weather conditions--I didn't dare get back to England without some reserve fuel just in case our flight had to be extended due to the weather.

I was flying a wing position so I moved to the outer edge of the formation where I wouldn't have to work the throttles quite as hard and we leaned the gas mixture out, both in an effort to conserve fuel.  When we got within 50 miles of friendly territory I dropped out of the formation and set the engines and the airspeed for minimum fuel use.  Then small things started to go wrong.  Joe continued to have trouble contacting the base, Dan was doing his navigation using a radar grid, called the Gee system, that had been  designed for just this purpose, navigating in bad weather, and that stopped working too.  Once we got over the English Channel we were close enough to use the radio compass to get a heading to the Debden beacon, one of two radio beacons from which we could fly a known procedure to get to the 398th.  Before we got there however, the radio compass stopped working.  As feared, the ceiling was low so we couldn't see the ground to locate ourselves and we were flying in the mist with very limited visibility.  The gas supply was getting dangerously low so I had Ellis [flight engineer] pump gas from one tank to another to even up the availability of the fuel to the four engines, Joe continued to try but couldn't raise the base to get  a weather report and compass heading for home.  I contacted the Darkie network (a series of stations with a ten mile range) which located me well enough that we could fly an approximate heading back to the field.

I finally got close enough to contact the flying control (in bad weather the Wing would have an aircraft flying around the area of the three Wing bases giving weather advisories and information to the returning bombers) who told me the weather was marginal but I should be able to get down at Station 131.  I told him that I would do so if I could find the field otherwise I would simply have to land wherever I could. I found out later that I was talking with the Wing Commander, a Brigadier General who was doing the flying operations that day.  I was flying the compass heading given me by the Darkie station, all fuel gages registered empty and I was getting lower and lower in hopes of seeing some recognizable landmark when I got one of the biggest shocks of my life.

"Look at that tree", exclaimed Ellis.
"Where", I asked.
"UP there", he replied.

I could have died, I immediately pulled the aircraft up to about 300 feet where I hoped we would be able to clear any new, unexpected obstacles and called the crew on the intercom.

"We are in a bad situation", I told them. "We are about out of gas and I don't know where the airfield is.  I want all of you to put your chutes on, kick the rear door out and line up as if you were about to bail out.  It is my plan to take one more pass at the ground to see if we can find an airfield, I know we are in the right area but I don't know that I will be able to find a field before the gas runs out. You have my permission to bail out now or you can take your chances with me".

They responded that they were all with me.  I warned them that if I felt it necessary to bail out, I would signal this by ringing the alarm bell at which time they were to go immediately.  I had Dan, Ellis and Bud [co-pilot] put their chest packs on and get ready to leave the aircraft through the navigator's hatch.  I was afraid to put mine on, in the event of a bailout, I didn't want to panic and be the first man out so I left my chute under my seat where I could get it readily if needed.

Again I started to descend in hopes of seeing something familiar.  In just moments I spotted two large sodium vapor lamps, the type that were lit at the end of runways in use during bad weather.  I immediately started a procedure reversal (this is an instrument procedure that allows a pilot to bring an aircraft back to the identical point in space from where he started) meanwhile having Bud lower the landing gear and set the flaps to the halfway position.  At the exact time that I should have seen the lamps again, they appeared.  Bud gave me full flaps, we approached the ground as quickly as we safely could and lo and behold, I saw the runway!  I was lined up about 30 degrees too far to the right so I kicked the left rudder with all my strength, skidded the plane into an alignment with the runway and quite literally dropped the airplane on to the runway--perhaps the sloppiest landing I have ever made but on the blessed ground nevertheless.  As we lost speed, the no. 1 engine died from lack of fuel.  As I taxied to a dispersal area, the no.3 engine quit from lack of fuel. We parked the aircraft and I got out and quite literally kissed the ground.

We had landed at one of the 1st Combat Wing airbases, the 381st at Ridgewell, just a few miles from Nuthampstead.  As we unloaded I heard Guy talking with Little Joe,

"Joe, what would you have done if Wagner had hit the alarm"? "Well, I would have jumped out, counted to ten and pulled the ripcord", responded Joe."

Since we were only a couple of hundred feet high, if you had done that you would have been six feet under before you finished counting", Guy informed Joe. They tell me that Joe turned pale and said no more.

I got a bed assigned to me and slept around the clock.  When we got back to the 398th I found that I was not the only one who had problems with fuel, bombers from our group were scattered all over Belgium and northern France where they had landed because of fuel shortages.  Mine was one of the few aircraft that made it back to England. I will readily admit that if I had known how bad the weather was at home, I too would have put down on the continent.  The experience left an indelible mark on me.  Even today, almost fifty years later, the panic I felt when informed that the trees were "UP there" still comes back to haunt me in my dreams.


From "The Youngest Crew" by Paul Wagner
Lagumo Press, Cheyenne, WY, 1997, ISBN 1-878117-18-1