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Our War Stories
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Flight to Combat End
by Chester Schmidt, Col. Ret. (779)
Page 2
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Combat - World War II
On my first combat mission, I flew as the co-pilot
with an experienced crew to familiarize myself with combat operations. Our
target was the railroad marshalling yards in Vienna, Austria and it scared the
hell out of me. We encountered heavy flak (anti-aircraft fire) over the target.
During the final bomb run, the flak was bursting all around us and we sustained
about two dozen holes in the B-24 but it took it in stride. Fortunately, none of
the aircraft in our formation were shot down.
On my second mission I flew with my own
crew. Being a new crew, we were assigned the "Tail End Charlie"
position in the rear of the formation. The more experienced crews took the
forward positions or the lead position. On some days the unit flew practice formation
when the weather in Northern Italy or Austria prevented a combat mission.
On those occasions, our wing commander came up in his P-47 fighter and flew
around us making comments about our formation. More than once he called
and said, "Schmidt, get your ass up tighter." I learned the hard way
how to fly formation.
On our 5th mission, we were out over the
Adriatic Sea on our way to the target when we lost our number 2 engine and
had to abort and turn back. We had a full load of bombs and most of our fuel
so we were very heavy. I called the tower at our base and asked what I should
do with the bombs, whether to salvo them in the ocean or bring them back.
After a few minutes, they told me to bring them back but to drop my gear and
some flaps to create enough drag which would require a higher engine power
setting to burn off more fuel. After about three hours, I was ready to land.
The runway was 5,000 feet long and the
surface consisted of interlocking steel mesh laid over packed dirt. This type
of steel mesh was used throughout the world for temporary runways during
World War II. It does not provide as good traction as concrete. At the end of
our runway, there was a gravel overrun which stretched out about 1,000 feet.
There was a drainage ditch around the runway with a culvert leading to an
underground pipe under the overrun. There was a roadway that crossed the
overrun that lead to the bomb dump.
On my landing, I had to increase my approach
speed because of the weight of the B-24 (with the bombs aboard). I touched
down on the end of the runway and pulled the throttles to idle and thought I
was doing OK until about halfway down the runway - when I realized that we
were not losing enough speed. I began to apply as much brake as I could without
skidding the tires and causing a blowout. As I approached the end of the runway,
I saw that I could not use the overrun because there was a flatbed truck parked
there. It was full of Italian workers who were observing my landing. I decided to
try for the taxiway in front of the ditch. I applied full right brakes, but the B-24
skidded sideways and I hit the concrete culvert with the nose gear. The nose
gear sheared off and the nose of the B-24 went down in the ditch with the main
gear on both banks of the ditch. We were almost at a stop when we hit the
culvert so the B-24 did not go far down the ditch. We shut down the engines
and immediately evacuated the airplane.
All of the emergency vehicles arrived immediately
and shortly thereafter, the wing commander arrived. After I told my story to
him, he said, "Schmidt, you didn’t hurt anyone and we can have the airplane
flying again tomorrow. When I find out who told you to bring those bombs back,
I’ll have his ass." I did not receive any disciplinary action, but every time
I encountered the wing commander after that, he would make a good-humored
remark about me plowing the drainage ditch.
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