[bobbysocks]

Charles E. Dills (1922 - )
27th Fighter Bomber Group
WWII

We're coming to the end of the line, as we are all above 80 now.
I can find nothing on the web about my group. I was a pilot in the 522nd Squadron of the 27th Fighter Bomber Group from 1 November of 1943 till the end of August 1944.

As I re-read this and other accounts of wbat was suppposed to be the same time in history and the same location, I begin to realize what an ingenuous little boy I was at the time. But I did a man's job when that job needed to be done. I have to say that I'm a bit proud of my actions at the time.

You will find no foul language in this account. I don't know what it would add. You know all the words, put them in if you need to. Our language was absolutely foul. Your imagination can probably duplicate it.

We had a Red Cross girl, Gretchen Allswede. that would serve coffee and donuts when we came in from a mission. I don't know how to explain our behavior when we returned from a mission. There was an adrenalin effect, I'm sure. We were subconciously relieved to find ourselves alive although we never admitted that there was a possibility we might not return from a mission. When we came in from our planes my memory is of a constant chatter, in a foul almost foreign language. When asked if it ever embarrassed her, Gretchen Allswede would reply, "The only thing that embarrasses me any more is the fact that I don't get embarrassed." I have a lot of respect for these girls that came over here and exposed themselves to the problems and the gossip, just to do their part. And it was always a touch of home that helped keep us sane. Thank you, every one!

Most of the stories of this time and place are overly concerned with the sexual escapades. I wouldn't know. We had all been exposed to the venereal disease movies and frankly, they scared the whey out of me and I would have walked to the other side of the street to avoid the potential. There were the proverbial little boys in North Africa that would tug on your arm on the street saying, "Hey, Joe, want a chicken dinner?" When we said no, he would say, "Hey Joe, want my sister? First time!" I never knew anyone that accepted the offer. I'm sure there were those that did but never me.

I had a wonderful crew chief that took care of me through all 94 of my missions. I was in very bad physical shape toward the end and I'm not sure I ever said thanks. That was incredibly bad and I have felt guilty for 60 years. I've tried to locate him but with no success. This picture on the right is from Rowan Person's album and is labeled, Tiny Hunter, but it doesn't look right to me. But this was over sixty years ago!
His name was "Tiny" Hunter from Albuquerque NM. I believe his first name was Leslie but I'm not sure. We never called him anything but "Tiny".
The A-36 had a tailwheel that could be locked or unlocked. Unlocked it was in full swivel which we needed when taxiing on the ground. But when you lined up for takeoff you were supposed to lock it. It had about 5 degrees of swivel in this position.
We heard various stories of things that happened before we arrived. I remember a story about Forbes. He was shot down going back to Gela Sicily from a bombing raid in Italy. He ditched in the water off Italy, just north of Sicily. He was said to be about 4 miles offshore and could actually see the montains at the coast. He got in his dinghy and paddled all day. It didn't look like he was getting closer so he jumped out of the dinghy and started swimming in his Mae West. After two days of this, his arms were getting chafed so he threw the Mae West away and continued swimming. After a half day of this he was picked up by an Italian fishing boat and eventually got back to the group.

There was another story about someone taking off without locking his tail wheel. Maybe it hit a rock or something but it sent him at an angle to the runway. He got off the ground, limped out over the hills and no trace of him was ever found!! I suspect he got the plane turned around, went off the coast to come back and land but went down in the Mediterranean instead.

We were given three ninety minutes flights to familiarize ourselves with this new airplane before we were scheduled for our first mission.
One of the guys that came up with me was a Lt. Wellons. On his third and last familiarization flight his engine quit when he was probably 1500 to 2000 feet over the field. He set up his approach as if he was still flying a P-40. He tried to make two 360 degree turns, which would have been "proper" in a P-40. But the A-36, with its laminar flow wing sank faster than he realized. He did not make it around the last turn into the field, did not have enough altitude and in trying to stretch it, stalled, crashed and was killed. This was the usual result in a "tombstone turn" that I mentioned back in Africa. He was scheduled for his first mission the next day!
We tended "not to notice" such occurrences.
We moved to another airfield called Gaudo as it had a metal mat runway and we could fly, even in the wet weather of the Mediterranean rainy season.

Gaudo 7 November - 19 January 1944

Today 9 November 1943, there is a practice formation. I was late getting off the ground. Some kind of engine problem as I remember. The ceiling was around 4500'.
I went out looking for them. There are a lot of mountains almost anywhere in Italy. They went right up into the clouds so one had to be careful. But I did it. I got into a canyon and the ground rose gently in front of me, up and up, into the clouds. And away we go. Up into the clouds I went, full throttle. I didn't know where the hell the rocks were. Up and up and I finally broke out on top at 11000 feet. Pretty. But I wasn't up to noticing pretty.
I headed out over a bit south of west to get over the Mediterranean. Finally, when I figured it was safe, I put the nose down and went back into the clouds. For those of you that have never done it, it is an eery feeling. Learning to fly instruments is really learning to trust your instruments. Anybody can fly on instruments, but it takes training to believe your instruments when your instincts and your guts tell you they're dead wrong. Believe them, though, or you will wind up wrong, dead.

After a bit, the artificial horizon started to wobble and then stood straight up. This tells me that I'm on my side. I didn't believe it with my heart, but my head kicked it around until it was back where it was supposed to be.
A bit later, same thing, again. I kicked it back down.
A bit later it happened again. This time, while I was cussing out the instruments, I broke out of the clouds. And there I was, going down sideways. Unbelievable. Yet believable because I trusted my training.

I have been asked for more specifics about the location of these fields. I will try to indicate generally where they were, but they were usually dirt fields, scraped out by a bulldozer. Paestum (Capaccio) was a dirt field, unusable when the rains started in November. Gaudo was dirt covered by metal mat and was all-weather.

I cannot emphasize too much how flimsy my memory is of locations. Everything we dealt with was temporary and I'm sure all traces were obliterated within a few years.
The dirt field called Paestum was a generally E-W runway, probably a couple miles south of the site of the ancient Greek City of Paestum. I remember riding past it with very little interest at that time. I don't remember being able to see it from the airfield but as I remember, there were low trees to the north of the field.
It was the emergency field for the Salerno beachhead and as such should be on some military maps of the campaign. I doubt that it was even a mile from the water. I remember it was within reasonable walking distance of the Mediterranean. There was a sunken landing barge just off shore. We used it for target practice with our brand new shiny 45's when we first got there. I don't remember doing it twice.
It was on this beach that we collected trees , pinecones etc. for Christmas. The landing barge was a landmark on the mission where I got lost. I went south to the Mediterranean coast, followed the coast past Ischia and Capri till I found the sunken barge and then went in to land. As I remember, the approach to the runway was direct from this barge. I know this is precious little in the way of precision, but I hope it helps.

The next day, we bombed guns north of Rocca. And the next day was the infamous mission number three, at Pontecorvo. A river ran through Pontecorvo and in the middle of town it made almost a right angle turn to the south. There were several bridges across it that were military objectives. The Germans used them to transport supplies, etc. We made a beautiful divebombing run but missed completely. Apparently there was a strong wind. About three months later we went back to do it again. The bridges were there but the town was flattened. In talking with other people I got the impression that every group in Italy had been there at least once.

The first two missions were "milk runs", supposedly easy. The third wasn't supposed to be all that bad but we ran into rather intense flak. We approached the target as usual at 14-15000 feet. We rolled over on our back, flew to the target and pulled straight down. I plunged straight down, tried to get a good aim, dropped the bombs and pulled out in a gentle climbing arc to the right. There was quite a bit of flak but I just did what we had done in the training missions we had been doing.
They were gone! Nowhere to be seen!
Then I saw two of them, higher than me and traveling north. I said to myself, "Great, they've come back for me." So I turned toward them. Then one of them cocked up and I saw the four 20 mm cannons sticking out of the wing! They weren't A-36's, they were P-51-A's from the 111th recon squadron. But did they know who I was. I probably looked like an Me-109 to them. So I turned south and headed toward the deck at full throttle, all the way to the firewall! There was a notch between two hills and then it was a gentle slope down to a plain. In this full power glide to the deck the indicated air speed went up to 460 mph. When I got down to the deck the speed gradually sank to 405 mph. I was still in enemy territory and I was alone.
I went over a town and if there had been any TV antennas I would have cleaned them off. A little while later I remember what I thought was a canal. There was a tree on each side but I wasn't going to raise up and go over them. I kept down and went between them. Yes, of course, I was scared. When I thought I was behind our lines, I throttled back to the red line and the speed sank to 350 mph.
Italy lies at quite an angle and I was going due south knowing I was going to intercept the coast. Pretty soon I crossed the coast and turned left to follow the coast back to the base. I throttled back to a normal cruise and watched for landmarks I could recognize. First there was the Island of Ischia, and then Capri. Now I knew I was close. I was still flying very low. And then I saw the half sunken landing barge that was just offshore at our base. So I turned toward the base and my engine started to sputter. We were well trained and my hand immediately grabbed the fuel selector and switched tanks. The engine caught and I suddenly realized I had flown the whole mission on one tank and ran it dry! I went in and landed and as I was taxiing to my parking area, the rest of the mission arrived and landed! I don't remember anyone asking what happened but I was of course de-briefed by the Intelligence officer.
I think I remember being concerned about punishment for the mission I missed. I had no idea what it would be so I didn't worry about it.

On my eighth mission I was flying Major Kelly's wing. We were north of Rome and the country was hilly. If the truth be known we really had no business being there. We had about a 700' ceiling and we were flying below it, of course. The clouds were so low we had to break up into twos. The Major and I were going east and I was on his left. He took the middle of the valley so I was on the hill side of him. A hill, somewhat higher than the other hills appeared in front of me and I had to raise up slightly, into the clouds. I had to get back down so I turned a bit to the right and let down and broke out into the valley. The Major had already turned south and I was behind him so I added throttle to catch up. As I was catching up he turned east again and I went racing out in front of him due to my excess speed. So I throttled back so he could catch up. And then I noticed he was closing fast so I accelerated. But he went by me and I tried to catch him. Then I saw what he was after. There was a Heinkel 111 crossing from our right to the left. He did a pursuit curve to the left side of the plane and set it on fire between the cockpit and the left engine. I gave it a burst as I went by and then I just got off to one side and watched. The other six airplanes came out of their vallies and there was a feeding frenzy below the 700' ceiling. I don 't understand why there were no collisions. The plane was obviously on the way down so there really wasn't any point to it. The Heinkel started to drop its left wing more and more and finally hit the ground after probably about 110 degree turn to the left and hit the ground in a shallow 45 degree bank. The entire left wing broke off at the root and flew up into the air. I can still see the cross on it. It slid across the ground leaving a tall streak of flame behind it. It seemed to be about 50 feet high and several hundred feet long. We got back home with no further incident. Our intelligence officer visited the are later and was told by the people that there were fifteen pilots on board that they were obviously trying to ferry out of there.
In January we bombed the port of Civitavecchia twice. It was a port N of Rome. I vividly remember one of the two missions. We went straight down on a ship at a dock. I wanted to do a good job so I probably stayed in the dive a little longer than I should have. After I dropped my bombs, I looked out and got ready to pull out of the dive and there was a 500 lb bomb sitting there right in my way. I can still see the lettering on the bomb, 536 lbs GP (General Purpose). I had to continue straight down until it passed me before I dared pull out!
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Sometimes learning can be a dangerous game and if we're lucky we will survive to make use of the lesson. I was landing in my A-36 one day and when I touched down, the right wheel strut started stuttering. The wheel wasn't turning. Instinctively, I hit the left brake and simultaneously gave a blast to the engine and had the stick all the way back. Hitting the left brake would tend to raise the tail and I was trying to blow it back down with the engine and the elevator. I did it in several short bursts and finally the wheel broke loose and started rolling. When I told the others about it, someone asked me if I tapped the brakes on takeoff to stop the rotation of the wheel before it retracted into the well. I agreed that I had and they said, "Never do that! The brakes are a disk type with 23 disks, 12 steel and 11 bronze. If you tap them, the sudden heating can actually weld some of these discs together." The reason I tapped them was a habit left over from the P-40. The P-40 had canvas liners in the wheel well and no fairing doors. If you retracted the wheels without tapping the brake, the rotating wheel would eventually tear the canvas up and let dirt etc get into the wing.
It was nice to have a concrete runway. We took off in two ship formations. The leading pair would fly south for several minutes then make a slow 180 degree turn to the left and the rest of us would form up into the four ship flights. We usually sent eight airplanes, occasionally twelve.

One day, about 5 February, we were on a straffing mission, flying low, cruising around and looking for targets of opportunity. I was flying number 4 and the element leader was Truman Forbis, from Oregon. When flying this type of mission, we characteristically flew at about 200 feet in a regular formation but spread out so we could look around for targets.
We were flying down a wide valley and I was looking around for targets, occasionally looking back to make sure I was in position on Forbis's wing. Then one time I looked back and he was in a 60 degree dive. In about one second he covered the 200 feet at 300 mph and exploded! I couldn't believe it. I circled several times, calling him on the radio with no answer. I finally accepted that he wasn't going to be there and returned to base.

Later, when the area had been captured, Captain Washburn of 522nd Headquarters drove to the area and talked to the people. He said that they had buried the pilot. They also told him there was a bullet hole in the canopy. It would appear that some rifleman down below shot ahead of us somewhere and without realizing it his bullet must have hit Truman in the head, he slumped over the stick and pushed the plane into the ground. Two hundred feet can disappear very fast at almost 300 mph. He never knew what hit him.

On the 17th, as I was taking off, my engine just about quit on me. I had two 500 pound bombs and a full load of gas and ammunition. I could just maintain 150 feet, full throttle with the wheels up. I was so low I had trouble locating the runway. There were buildings below so I didn't want to jettison the bombs. I came around to the left until I saw the runway and then turned away and set up for a landing. I didn't dare put the wheels down until the last moment because I would immediately start losing altitude and I might not make the runway! I finally got lined up for the final and everybody on the ground thought I was going to belly in on the bombs.
At this point I should explain the landing gear. There were two fairing doors that came down first, then the landing gear would come down and then the fairing doors would come back up and lock.
When I was sure I was going to make it to the runway, I put the gear down. The fairing doors came down, the gear came down, I hit the ground and then the fairing doors came up. At least that's what they told me. It was that close! This was 17th February, a date that will live in feardom!