Background of news –
Italian campaign lags
By Col. Frederick Palmer, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Background of news –
CIO vote fund wins approval from Biddle
Attorney due to return favorable report this week
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Homesickness gets the blame in work loss
OWI study of turnover spells disillusionment in many cases
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Pastor assails clergymen who hit raids in Germany
Philadelphian suggests they shut up, asks if they’d have the Axis win
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
Pilots fly planes, and mechanics fix planes, and bombardiers drop bombs out of planes, and they’ve all been written about. But I’ve never heard anybody mention the guys who out the bombs in the planes, so here goes.
They are called armorers. They not only “bomb up” the planes, but it is their job to keep all the planes’ guns in tiptop working order.
In the 47th Group – A-20 light bombers – there is theoretically one armorer to each plane. But they’re short now, and each armorer usually has two planes to care of.
An armorer is as proud of his plane as the pilot is. He calls it “my plane,” and when this plans fails to come back, he feels horrible. Among the armorers, everybody knows whose plane has the most missions.
Each morning a truck takes them to the area where their planes are dispersed. They start bombing up about an hour and a half before takeoff time.
For really heavy bombs, the planes are equipped with a hitting device. Smaller bombs, even up to 300-pound ones, are lifted by hand. To do this, the armorers of several planes form themselves into a team of four or five men, and go from one plane to another helping each other until their little family is all bombed up.
123 missions to date
I went around one day with a team composed of Sgt. Steve Major of Monessen, Pennsylvania; Cpl. Vincent Cline of Paragould, Arkansas; Cpl. John Peoples of Alameda, California; Cpl. Robert Gerrie of Chicago, and Cpl. James La Barr of Dallas, Pennsylvania. Cpl. La Barr’s plane, incidentally, has more missions than any other – 123 – and is going up by one and two a day.
The bombs have already been hauled out, and are lying on the ground alongside the planes, when the armorers arrive. This day they were loading 25-pound demolition bombs. These were about three feet long and 10 inches thick, and tapered at both ends.
The boys roll them to the planes by kicking them along with their feet. They roll six under each plane. The bomb-bay doors are already hanging down open. The armorers crawl under them and then can stand erect with their heads inside the bomb bay.
One of them takes an 18-inch clamp from the bay wall and hooks it into the two steel rings in the back. Then two of them grab the bomb and heave it up. As it rises, a third gets under it and lifts with his shoulders. The two others put it into position.
It is good heavy heaving. Only the rugged ones stay on as armorers. Now and then, somebody slips and a bomb falls on an armorer, but serious accidents are rare.
After the bombs are clamped inside the bomb bay, they put in the fuses. The bomb has a steel plug in each end. The boys unscrew these plugs, and screw the fuses into the hole. I never knew before that our bombs had fuses on both ends. I asked what it was for. The boys said so that if one fuse didn’t work, the other one would.
Little propeller whirls
Each fuse has a little metal propeller on it. When the bomb is dropped the propeller starts whirling and after dropping about 500 feet it unscrews itself to become a plunger and “arm” the bomb, as they call it. Then when the bomb hits the ground, this plunger is forced back and the bomb is discharged.
There must, of course, be some guarantee that propellers don’t get to whirling inside the planes. So, the boys take a piece of wire and fasten it into the clamp from which the bomb hangs. Then they run each end through two small holes in the propellers, thus locking them.
When the bomb is released, this wire remains fastened to the plane and the ends slip out of the little propellers, freeing them.
If the pilot has to salvo his bombs over free territory, where he doesn’t want them to go off, he can pull a different lever which releases the wire and lets it fall still attached to the bomb, thus keeping the little propellers locked.
The armorer’s job is really not a hard one, except for this heavy lifting which lasts only a few minutes a day. What disgusts armorers the most is when the command keeps changing its mind about what kind of bombload is to be carried on the next mission.
Sometimes, they’ll get an order to bomb up with 500-pounders, then it’ll be changed to frag bombs, then changed again to 250-pounders. On every change they have to take out the bombs and put in new ones.
The boys say the all-time record was one day when they changed bombs 12 times and it finally wound up that the planes never went out after all.
Bing Crosby’s camp trips ‘military secrets’
Defrays all costs of unit calling on soldiers
By Si Steinhauser
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Völkischer Beobachter (March 8, 1944)
Einer der heftigsten Luftkämpfe dieses Krieges –
Schwere Niederlage der Terrorbomber über Berlin
140 Feindflugzeuge – das ist über ein Viertel! – abgeschossen
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The Pittsburgh Press (March 8, 1944)
HAIL OF FIRE SEARS BERLIN IN SECOND MASS YANK RAID
350,000 incendiaries hurled
1,000 heavy bombers roar through fierce Nazi fighter defense; One U.S. Mustang group reports downing 28 German planes – new record
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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Only a few come back –
Two Ranger battalions battle to death in Nazi beachhead trap
Yanks march through German lines into Cisterna, try to stand off tanks
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Germans mass for Anzio attack
Savage night fighting in Cassino streets
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Marines land 170 miles from Rabaul base
Beachhead is taken without loss
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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Denver upset gives GOP Congress seat
War hero defeated in special election
Denver, Colorado (UP) –
The 1st Congressional district of Colorado, traditional Democratic stronghold, swung into the Republican ranks today with the election of Dean M. Gillespie, the 59-year-old businessman, to the national House of Representatives.
Mr. Gillespie won by less than 3,000 votes over Maj. Carl Wuertele, the disabled bomber pilot whose brilliant war record was emphasized by the Democrats. Unofficial returns from Denver’s 4,0002 precincts gave Mr. Gillespie a total of 41,447 votes compared with 38,524 for Maj. Wuertele.
Election significant
The Republican victory was the GOP’s first Congressional triumph in Denver since 1930. It was also considered particularly significant in view of the fact the district gave President Roosevelt a 10,000-vote margin over Wendell Willkie in 1940, although Colorado as a whole went Republican.
Maj. Wuertele had pledged support of administration war and home front policies and had endorsed a fourth term.
Attacked ‘bungling’
Mr. Gillespie had attacked “bureaucracy and bungling” of the New Deal and had called for private business to be given an opportunity to show what it could do in the reemployment of an estimated 20 million servicemen and women and war workers after the war.
He said he was going to Congress with no set determination to “hamstring the New Deal.”
There was pathos in the defeat of the handsome Maj. Wuertele, whose foot was almost severed by flak as he piloted his well-known bomber, Hel-En-Wings – named after his wife – on his 205th combat mission against the Japs.
Will keep on fighting
The 30-year-old flier was the only man to get a bomber off the ground during the Pearl Harbor attack and was decorated nine times by the War Department.
Maj, Wuertele said:
Although I lost, I’ll keep on fighting for our American ideals and Constitution, our way of life, our boys and girls in uniform. I will lend my aid in every way to win the war and to uniting the people behind our new Congressman.
Mr. Gillespie’s election gives the Republicans 210 delegates in the House against 217 Democrats with minor parties holding four places.