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    B-24 Liberator Units of the Fifteenth Air Force
    B-24 Liberator Units of the Fifteenth Air Force
    B-24 Liberator Units of the Fifteenth Air Force
    Ebook201 pages1 hour

    B-24 Liberator Units of the Fifteenth Air Force

    By Robert F. Dorr and Mark Rolfe

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    The sterling work of the Fifteenth Air Force is often overshadowed by the glamorous 'Mighty Eighth', yet the men flying the B-24 fought ceaselessly right through to VE Day.

    The B-24 was heavily utilised in the North African and Mediterranean theatres by the USAAF's Fifteenth Air Force, with operations over the Ploesti oilfields in Rumania being some of the most famous missions undertaken by the big American 'heavy' in World War 2.

    This is the third of five titles charting the operational history of the Consolidated heavy bomber, and is the first single volume to exclusively cover the Fifteenth Air Force's B-24 units.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateDec 20, 2012
    ISBN9781782008347
    B-24 Liberator Units of the Fifteenth Air Force
    Author

    Robert F. Dorr

    Robert F Dorr is a well respected author of long-standing reputation - he has written over a dozen books for Osprey over the years. His histories on modern American combat aircraft like the F-101 Voodoo and A-6 Intruder have set the standard for works of this type. His ability to combine 'crew speak' with concise editorial comment gives his books a unique and revealing style of their own.

    Read more from Robert F. Dorr

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      Book preview

      B-24 Liberator Units of the Fifteenth Air Force - Robert F. Dorr

      COMMENTARY

      INTRODUCTION – THE LIBERATOR AND THE MTO

      To put the Liberator and its Mediterranean mission into context, the Liberator lore on the next few pages comes from men who were there. The words are not arranged by date and do not describe particular combat missions. Nor will the reader find here the statistics – wing span, gross weight and cruising speed – found in any directory of World War 2 bombers.

      With this introductory material, the goal is an elusive one, like a mirage in the desert always receding as we step closer. The goal is nothing less than to give the reader a sense for what it was like to fly the B-24 Liberator. That is a very different thing than describing the Liberator as we know it today, decades removed from the event.

      Those directories, with their engine horsepower and other fancy statistics, often overlook the reality of the Liberator. How did you climb into it? Where did the navigator work? What did crews worry about most and least? And, ultimately, what about the controversy that is never far from the minds of B-24 men – the ever-present competition between the B-24 and that other more famous American bomber?

      The earliest Liberators flown by the Fifteenth Air Force and its predecessors in North Africa and Italy were B-24D models, built without powered nose turrets. This in-flight portrait, taken a full two years before the formation of the Fifteenth Air Force (on 25 October 1941), shows what the B-24D version looked like when it first reached the AAF. In wartime, the clean olive-drab finish quickly became weathered, and the ‘plain-jane’ appearance of factory-fresh bombers soon gave way to distinctive squadron and group markings (Consolidated)

      Like Ancient Rome, the wartime saga of the B-24 Liberator in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations (MTO) is history today. Only about seven per cent of the people in the world today were alive when it happened. But there was a time when it was all new, and nobody knew what was going to happen next.

      A formation of 44th BG B-24D Liberators is seen forming up soon after leaving Shipdham, in Norfolk, bound for North Africa in late June 1943 (via Robert F Dorr)

      1Lt Lyle McCarty, a navigator with the 459th Bombardment Group (BG) remembered that all of it was fresh, including getting there by ferrying a new bomber across a great ocean. He wrote;

      ‘Imagine four-engined bombers flying off gravel runways in Italy, 20-year-old first pilots with 500 hours total flying experience, Atlantic crossings by navigators who’d never been out of sight of land, combat aircrewmen lacking seat belts or any other forms of safety gear, gunners firing their fifties from open waist windows, deadly encounters with flak and enemy fighters, smoke from bombed-out targets rising up to 20,000 ft (6096 m), returning crews bailing out of aircraft too beat up to attempt landing.’

      The main body of the text that follows will deal with fighting in this part of the world after the creation of the Fifteenth Air Force on 1 November 1943. But the story begins earlier, when US involvement in the war was new, and the outcome of the conflict uncertain.

      MEDITERRANEAN THEATRE

      In June 1942, a specially-trained Liberator outfit equipped with 23 early-build B-24Ds reached the Middle East, commanded by Col Harry A Halverson. The Halpro unit, or Halverson Provisional detachment, was made up of members of the 98th BG, and was heading east with the intention of bombing Japan. After these B-24Ds reached Fayid, in Egypt, it became apparent that they were needed to combat German forces in the immediate vicinity, so they were kept in theatre.

      ‘Flying was different in those days’, says Liberator veteran Lyle H McCarty of the 459th BG. This aircraft is a Fort Worth-built B-24H-15-CF Liberator (41-29578) of the 459th BG’s 758th BS, seen on a Fifteenth Air Force mission in support of the Combined Bomber Offensive in 1944. Note the waist gunner waving to the photographer, his arm extended into the slipstream. One of his crewmates can also be seen standing to the left of the gunner (459th BG Association)

      The war was ugly and unpleasant, but Americans sometimes celebrated the trappings that went with it, including what we know today as ‘nose-art’ (the term was not used during the war). Many Fifteenth crew members had been teenagers in the late 1930s when Orson Wells’ radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’, adapted from a story by H G Wells, terrified millions of Americans. Now, B-24 Liberator crew members could don their very own ‘Man from Mars’ attire, as illustrated here. When not being used to ape for the camera, the high-altitude clothing, flak jacket and oxygen mask could be extremely uncomfortable. This anonymous gunner hailed from the San Giovanni-based 455th BG (AAF via William N Hess)

      To Halpro fell the honor of performing the first AAF bombing mission against German forces in Europe. It happened on the night of 11-12 June 1942 when 13 Liberators struck the Romanian oil refineries at Ploesti. It was a symbolic achievement, but it is unclear whether the Liberators’ bombs did much damage. Four of the bombers became the first US B-24 casualties in the theatre when they landed near Ankara, in Turkey. Turkish technicians actually repaired and flew one of the bombers (B-24D-CF 41-11596 BROOKLYN RAMBLER) before it was eventually repatriated. As for Ploesti, home of German-run oil refineries in the Axis ally of Romania, this target was to become synonymous with the Liberator – but only later.

      It was cold at altitude, so on a typical mission deep into Europe, B-24 crews would waddle around inside fleece-lined clothing. There were, in fact, two kinds of high-altitude attire regularly used by heavy bomber crews in the ETO and MTO, this individual being photographed donning non-electrically heated apparel. Heated or non-heated, neither was of much help. Some crew members think of the cold in their reminiscences before they mention the Luftwaffe or the flak (via David H Klaus)

      Halpro flew several more bombing missions before 28 June 1942, when Maj Gen Lewis H Brereton arrived from the Far East with B-17 Flying Fortress-equipped elements of the 7th BG (which had already fought on Java with B-17Es and LB-30s). Brereton formed the USMEAF (US Army Middle East Air Force), which absorbed Halpro. Now dubbed the Hal Bomb Squadron, Halpro bombed the harbour at Benghazi, in Libya, on 20 July 1942.

      Prior to the formation of the Fifteenth Air Force on 1 November 1943, many Liberators in the MTO looked like this aircraft – desert-coloured camouflage. The national insignia seen on this remarkably clean B-24D is the orange-bordered one that was temporarily in use until September 1943. Although the unit and location of this ‘plain jane’ bomber are not known, this ‘Lib’ serves as a model for all that came before the olive-drab bombers flown by the Fifteenth (Norman Taylor via Robert F Dorr)

      Later that same year the 343rd and the 344th Bombardment Squadrons (BS) started operating as flying components of the 98th BG. A second B-24D-equipped group – the 376th BG ‘Liberandos’ – was constituted at Lydda, in Palestine, on 19 October 1942. Soon, the 376th was flying from the Egyptian base at Abu Sueir, led by Col Keith K ‘K K’ Compton. His command eventually included the 512th, 513th, 514th and 515th BSs.

      Striking targets in Italy, Sicily and Tunisia between November 1942 and September 1943, the group became a part of the Ninth Air Force, which replaced USMEAF on 12 November 1942 under Brereton. For a few weeks thereafter, Twelfth Air Force was the reporting headquarters.

      The combat life of the Fifteenth officially began with the 2 November 1943 raid on the Messerschmitt assembly plant at Wiener Neustadt, and continued through to the final wartime attack on the Salzburg main marshalling yard on 1 May 1945. Organised for the purpose of completing the strategic encirclement of Germany and its satellites, the Fifteenth Air Force struck at Axis targets from the south, effectively filling a gap that left every German installation vulnerable to possible air attack.

      At the height of its strength, the Fifteenth Air Force controlled 21 heavy bomb groups – 15 with B-24 Liberators and six with B-17 Flying Fortresses. This force totalled 1427 four-engined bombers. The Fifteenth also had four medium bomber groups and, altogether, 1810 bomber crews, including those who flew medium B-25 Mitchells and B-26 Marauders. With seven fighter and two reconnaissance groups capping off its order of battle, the Fifteenth Air Force had 62,180 ground personnel.

      The most important prelude to the subsequent formation of the Fifteenth Air Force was the 1 August 1943 low-level mission against Ploesti. The most famous operation ever undertaken by the Liberator bomber is the subject of the brief prologue that follows this introduction. In common with the statistics about the bomber itself, Ploesti is a subject that will consume many books and occupy busy minds for generations. Our purpose, here, is to introduce the bomber first, cover Ploesti briefly, then move ahead to the Fifteenth Air Force.

      SUITABLE BOMBER

      The AAF considered the B-24 Liberator the only heavy bomber suitable for the Ploesti mission. That was mostly because it was championed by Brereton, who was viewed as the brain – or, in the view of some, the culprit – behind the raid. This, naturally, led to a revival of the debate that had raged in other combat theatres over the relative merits of the B-17 and the B-24.

      When the Fifteenth Air Force (and its 47th Bomb Wing) was formed, the veteran 98th and 376th BG moved up to Italy from Tunisia, equipped with battered, war-weary Liberators that looked much like this ship. CHUG-A-LUG was a B-24D (41-23766) of the 98th BG, and a veteran of the 1 August 1943 low-level Ploesti mission that preceded the formation of the Fifteenth. Although a balloon cable damaged her right wing and a crew member was killed at Ploesti, desert-garbed CHUG-A-LUG survived 105 missions and later made a war bond tour of the United States (via Norman Taylor)

      The reader who is interested solely in combat, and does not want to know how it felt to fly the Liberator in the Mediterranean, would be well advised to skip over the next few pages. To everyone else, the significance of the B-24 and its role in Italy cannot be understood without an introduction to the aircraft, and the men who flew it.

      Bound for targets in Germany, B-24Ds of the 376th BG ‘Liberandos’ head over the Alps during a Combined Bomber Offensive mission in late 1943. Note the mix of camouflage schemes, with most bombers still painted in Desert Pink (AAF via William N

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