Irmgard's Flute
Excerpts
CHAPTER
1
Ingolstadt, March 1945
I
never slept after learning I would fly the next day. Those
of us who were chosen usually turned in early. Wake-up call
might be at two in the morning or even earlier, depending
on the target, and on those nights I’d turn my face
to the wall and close my eyes, trying to block out any ill
thoughts or omens. In the best of times I would doze off,
but usually I just lay there stiffly, waiting for the orderly
to come in and tap me awake. “Time, Lieutenant,” he
would whisper, so as not to wake the others. None of us slept
well when we knew we had to fly the next day. At least when
we did get called up we had the great relief of fighting
from the air, of not being foot soldiers on the front lines,
the way my brother was. I knew that was one place I did not
want to be: on the ground.
For
me, the level playing field was the sky, and my weapon was
the radar. Crossing the North Sea, I could see a hundred
miles as the beams swept the terrain and marked out the cities.
We had flown these skies frequently, so we were already familiar
with the cities as they came onto the scope. As navigator,
using the radar I could correct the pilot as we followed
the routes mapped out before each mission. When flying lead
or flying wing to the lead my attention was constantly riveted
on that scope, for every other plane in the formation depended
on the lead plane; the moment it dropped its bombs, all other
planes would trip their bombs as well. I never got to use
my sextant to take readings of the stars, though I had trained
with it endlessly in navigation school.
Nighttime flying
as a cadet had been thrilling, encompassing the
great romance of being at one with the stars—the beauty
of looking down on the clusters of light, the patterns of
the cities surrounded by darkness, and the Big Dipper, which
led us by the tail to the North Star. From the cockpit there
were only countless numbers of stars on every side of you.
Back then, I had felt an enormous pride gazing out
at that sky, feeling I was part of a great adventure, one
that would hurl me out of my small Jewish world in South
Philadelphia where I was born and raised, and into the heavens.
It was the different life I had imagined, back when we wore
sweaters at night, back when my brother and I scoured around
the stores on Seventh Street—the delicatessen, egg
store, or hardware store—for wood or cardboard boxes.
It was a richer, more colorful life of heroism and adventure,
or so I
had thought.
But diaries of flyers are seldom exciting, and fighting a
war is often monotonous: a lot of waiting, a lot of small
talk, sometimes a lot of drinking and womanizing, bridge
or poker at the officer’s club,
or hanging out in town with a girlfriend, waiting for a buddy
to call and say, “We’re flying tomorrow, come
on.” Other than that, we had far too many hours with
nothing to do but count the missions we had flown and torment
ourselves with thoughts about the ones we still had to fly.
The worst time was when you got into the twenties— when
you had flown that many missions—for then everyone
began to sweat it out, hoping for milk runs, the easy missions
with light flak not too far inside Europe. For, according
to our calculations, a flyer was not supposed to make it
past the twenties. But no one could tell; any day we might
be sent to the Ruhr or to Berlin, with its six hundred guns—.88s,
those enormous guns that could find us at thirty-five thousand
feet, and wound or kill us. You just tried not to think about
it.
On March 19, 1945, I was awakened early, and silently put
on my flight jacket, green officer’s pants and high
government-issue boots. It seemed a normal day. As usual,
I packed a toothbrush in my pocket.
I
piled some wood chips in the little space heater—we
took turns doing this—and left the cold Quonset hut.
Then, down to the mess hall, by now crowded with fellow officers.
There
were something like six hundred men packed into the hall,
and the atmosphere was noisy and boisterous.
We
had enough time to order anything we wanted. Those flying
had the best food available in the world, and I ordered my
favorite, a stack of pancakes with eggs over easy in between
each pancake, muffins, a glass of milk—powdered, of
course—and coffee,
then sat at one of the long, cafeteria-like tables with a
group of men I had flown with
in previous missions. A kind of nervous anticipation permeated
the room, and no matter what we talked about—the mission,
what we had done the night before—the talk was slightly
hollow, as if each man was already withdrawing into himself,
preparing for war.
After
breakfast we walked to the war room, where the mood shifted to one far more sober.
No one spoke now. We took
our seats and waited, staring at the covered board until
the colonel walked in with his staff. And then the mission
was unveiled—a line drawn across the Channel in red
string to the target: the point of departure, the flight
path, which included the turns we would make to the I.P.
(Intercept Point)—the point at which the formation
would turn to the target itself, usually a distance of some
twenty-five to thirty-five miles. We were also told at what
intervals, and in what angles and positions and altitudes
we would peel off, since we always flew in formation. Everything
had to be done in synchrony. Every man listened to the colonel
intently, knowing his life depended on it.
This
mission was deep in Germany—Ingolstadt.
The colonel briefed us on the target and its importance:
German jet fighters
were made in Ingolstadt, so the goal of this mission was
to destroy the factories and prevent these German fighter
planes from coming up against our slower fighter aircraft.
The colonel described the Nazi antiaircraft guns and the
fighter aircraft we would most likely encounter, and he talked
about our own support fighters who would not be able to accompany
us all the way there and back. Earlier in the war our support
fighters were not able to follow us very deep into Europe,
but by this point American ingenuity had found a way to mount
auxiliary gas tanks on them, allowing them to fly deeper
into the Continent—though not as far east as Ingolstadt.
We loved these “little friends”; when a target
was near they would stay out of range
of any flak coming from the ground, and circle around, waiting
to shepherd us home.
We left the war room, picked up our parachutes, and made
our way to the jeeps lined up outside. My parachute was usually
a chest pack that I clipped on, and this day I received it
with a good luck, Lieutenant, let’s hope you don’t
have to use it.
The jeep dropped me off at my plane, where the crew was gathering,
and I met the two pilots; this was my first mission with
them. Very young, I thought, and began to feel uneasy. I
understood that they were being groomed to fly lead, so in
this mission we flew in number two position, to the right
of the lead plane. As we entered the plane and prepared for takeoff, my misgivings
grew. The young men crackled with the enthusiasm of the uninitiated,
and their bonhomie with each other only annoyed me, but I
could not show this. I did my job, and spoke when it was
necessary to do so. I knew I could not let my feelings of
increasing dread affect the others. My other lead crew members
would have noticed immediately that something was wrong.
I remained calm as
I met the chief engineer, the navigator, the bombardier, and the radio operator.
I did not meet the
waist gunners
or the tail gunner.
In due time we strapped
ourselves into our seats, the engines warmed up, and the plane trundled into
position. I had never
experienced this feeling of alarm with any other lead crew,
even at the Ruhr with its six hundred guns. Germany protected
the industrial Ruhr very well, and no one felt good about
flying into that valley of death.
As we took off I readied my equipment and maps and checked
out my oxygen line. I made sure that I had at least two flak
suits— one on my seat and one around my shoulders to
deflect anything coming in from the left side, since my seat
was behind the pilots and the navigator was to my right,
across the aisle. There was nothing else I could do.
Mounting
an airborne attack was no easy task. Gathering into formation
took about two hours, and as the huge birds
circled I pored over maps, memorizing landmarks, trying to
keep my mind focused. We were going to enter Germany from
the north and fly south. I recognized many of the names on
the map from prior missions, having flown to Bielefeld,
Braunschweig, Schweinfurt, Kassel, Regensburg, and so on.
These names were familiar to all of us flyers, especially
Magdeburg, where we had gone three days in a row. There was
nothing left of the city, and today I do not even know why
we leveled it; nor do I know why we went to Dresden unless
it had been
a last-minute alternative target. We swept that city, and
it was a very, very long mission. I think we all tried to
keep the people out of our minds, those who were victims
of it all.
We were crossing the North Sea when the
pilot gave the gunners permission to fire their guns, and
we could hear the clatter coming from behind. It was something
they enjoyed doing, a necessary job because they had to make
sure the guns were working in case they had to use them.
It was something to do. I was lucky, for I had a great deal
to do, making sure the lead plane was on course in accordance
with the lines drawn on the map in the war room. I concentrated
on my job, and willed the mission to go smoothly.
I did not feel any
more at ease as time went on. I rarely spoke to any member of the crew, except
when the pilot would
ask, from time
to time, where we were. I would say something like, “Now
we are here, three hundred miles from the target and on course.”
There was nothing to do but wait. The gunners scanned the
skies, and our “little friends” swept on ahead,
to our flanks and above us,
to ensure there would be no sudden attacks, especially from
the dreaded new German jet fighters. American engineering
was behind here, as we were in rocketry, at which the Germans
excelled.
Return to Top |
