The Pittsburgh Press (May 18, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
A B-26 base, somewhere in England – (by wireless)
The B-26 is a bomber which is very fast and carries a two-ton bombload. In its early stages it had a bad name – it was a “hot” plane which took great skill to fly and which killed more people in training than it did in combat.
But the B-26 has lived down the bad name. the boys of this squadron wouldn’t fly in anything else. They like it because it can take quick and violent evasive action when the flak is bothersome, and because it can run pretty well from fighters.
Its record over here is excellent. Bombing accuracy has been high and losses have been extremely low. And as fir accidents – the thing that cursed the plane in its early days – they have been next to nonexistent here.
The boys so convinced me of the B-26s invulnerability that I took my courage in my hand and went on a trip with them.
They got us up at 2:00 in the morning. Boy, it was cold getting out of our cots and into our clothes. We had gone to bed about 11, but I couldn’t get to sleep. All night long the sky above us was full of the drone of planes – the RAF passing over on its nightly raids.
“Chief” Collins (the pilot), “Red Dog” Arnold (the bombardier), and I were the only ones in our hut who had to get up. We jumped into our clothes, grabbed towels and ran out to the washhouse for a quick dash of cold water on our faces. The moon was brilliant and we needed no flashlights.
Red Dog gave me an extra pair of long drawers to put on. Chief gave me his combat pants, as I had given mine away in Italy. Also I put on extra sweaters and a mackinaw.
Then we walked through the moonlight under the trees to the mess hall. It was only 2:30 a.m., but we ate breakfast before the takeoff. And we had two real fried eggs too. It was almost worth getting up for.
Sat on benches for briefing
We drove out to the field in a jeep. Some of the boys rode their bicycles. There were a couple of hundred crewmen altogether. At the field we went into a big room, brightly lighted, and sat on benches for the briefing.
The briefing lasted almost an hour. Everything was explained in detail – how we would take off, how we would rendezvous in the dark, where we would make the turn toward our target.
Then we went to the locker room and got our gear. Red Dog got me a pair of flying boots, a Mae West life preserver, a parachute and a set of earphones. We got in the jeep again and rode out to the plane. It was still half an hour before takeoff time. The moon had gone out and it was very dark.
We stood around talking with the ground crew. Finally, 10 minutes before takeoff time we got into the plane. One of the boys boosted me up through a hatch in the bottom of the plane, for it was high, and with so many clothes I could hardly move.
I sat back in the radio compartment on some parachutes for the takeoff. Red Dog was the only one of the crew who put on his chute. He said I didn’t need to put mine on.
We were running light, and it didn’t take long to get off the ground. I never had been in a B-26 before, the engines seemed to make a terrific clatter. There were runway markers, and I could see them whiz past the window as we roared down the runway. A flame about a foot long shot out of the exhausts and it worried me at first, but finally I decided that was the way it was supposed to be.
It’s a ticklish business assembling scores of planes into formation at night. Here is how they do it:
We took off one at a time, about 30 seconds apart. Each plane flew straight ahead for four and a half minutes, climbing at a certain rate all the time. Then it turned right around and flew straight back for five minutes. Then it turned once again, heading in the original direction.
Almost jumps out of seat
By this time, we were up around 4,000 feet. We had not seen any of the other planes.
The flight leader had said he would shoot flares out his plane frequently so the others could spot him if they got lost. Red Dog was half turned around, talking to me, when the first two flares split the sky ahead of us. He just caught them out of the corner of his eye, and he almost jumped out of his seat. He had forgotten about the flares and thought they were the running lights of the plane ahead of us and that we were about to collide.
“I haven’t been so scared in months,” he said.
The leader kept shooting flares, which flash for a few moments and then go out. But we really didn’t need them. For we were right on his trail, just where we should have been, and everybody else was too. It was a beautiful piece of precision groping in the dark.
As we caught up to within half a mile or so, we could finally see the running lights of other planes, and then the dark shapes of grouped planes ahead silhouetted against a faintly lightening sky. Finally, we too were in position, flying almost wing to wing up there in the English night.