The Pittsburgh Press (January 20, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
If you ever heard a dive bombing by our A-36 Invader planes, you’d never forget it.
Even in normal flight, this plane makes a sort of screaming noise, and when that is multiplied manyfold by the velocity of the dive, you can hear the wail for miles.
On the ground, it sounds as though they are coming directly down upon you. It is a horrifying thing. The German Stuka could never touch them for sheer frightfulness of sound.
Also, the Stuka has always dived at an angle. But these planes literally come straight down. If you look up and see one a mile above you, you can’t tell where it’s headed. It could strike anywhere within a mile on any side of you. That’s the reason it spreads its terror so wide.
But our pilots have to hand it to the Germans on the ground. They have steeled themselves to stand by their guns and keep shooting. Pilots say the Italians would shoot until the bombs were almost come out and start shooting again after the bombs had exploded. But not the Germans – they stick to their guns.
German truck in gunsights
Maj. Ed Bland, a squadron leader, was telling me about coming suddenly over a hilltop one day and finding a German truck right in his gunsights.
Now it’s the natural human impulse, when you see a plane come upon you, to dive for the ditch. But the German gunner in this truck swung a gun around and started shooting at Bland. German and American tracer bullets were streaming back and forth in the same groove in opposite directions, almost hitting each other. The German never stopped firing until Bland’s six machine guns suddenly chewed the truck into complete disintegration.
Our dive bombers don’t have much trouble with German fighters. The reasons are several. For one thing, the Luftwaffe is weak over here now. For another, the dive bombers’ job is to work on the infantry frontlines so they seldom get back where the German fighters are. And for another, the Invader is such a good fighter itself that the Jerries aren’t too anxious to tangle with it.
Some never caught in a fight
There have been pilots in this squadron who have finished their allotted missions and gone back to America without ever firing a shot at an enemy plane in the air. And that’s the way it should be, for their job is to dive-bomb, not to get caught in a fight.
For several months the posting period back to America was set at a certain number of missions. Then it was suddenly upped by more than a score. There were pilots here who were within one mission of going home when the order came. So, they had to stay and fly a few more months. Some of them never lived to finish the new allotment.
There is an odd psychological factor in the system of being sent home after a certain number of missions. When pilots get within three or four missions of the finish, they get so nervous they almost jump out of their skins. A good many have been killed on their very last mission.
The squadron leaders wish there were some way they could surprise a man and send him home with still six or eight missions to go, thus soaring him the agony of those last few trips.
Nowhere in our fighting forces is cooperation closer or friendship greater than between Americans and British in the air. I have yet to hear an American pilot make a disparaging remark about a British flier. Our pilots say the British are cooler under fire than we are. The British attitude and manner of speech amuse our pilots, but they’re never contemptuous.
Spitfires mother crippled Invader
They like to listen in on their radios as the RAF pilots talk to each other. For example, one day they heard one pilot call to another:
I say, old chap, there is a Jerry on your tail.
To which the imperiled pilot replied:
Quite so, quite so, thanks very much, old man.
And another time, one of our Invaders got shot up over the target. His engine was smoking and his pressure was down and he was losing attitude. He made for the coast all alone, easy meat for any German fighter that might come along. He was just barely staying in the air, and he was a sad and lonely boy indeed.
Then suddenly, he heard over his earphones a distinctly British voice saying:
Cheer up, chicken, we have you.
He looked around and two Spitfires, one on either side, were mothering him back to his home field.