[bobbysocks]

more charles dill...very long story...i have editted most of the incidentals out

the whole entire colorful story is at http://www.charlies-web.com/WWII_med/index.html

One of the squadron pilots was a boy from Oklahoma, Robert Fromm. He was up north of Rome one day and spotted a truck. He went down to strafe it and it exploded right in front of him. It blew him off course and right through a tree. He was already heading upward so he jettisoned the canopy and prepared to bail out. The plane got to 900 feet and he noticed the engine seemed to being running all right so he decided to wait before bailing out. It was difficult to control and wouldn't go faster than 160 mph or get more than 900' altitude. He got it turned around and headed south. His course took him right over Gaeta Point, one of the hottest flak spots around. He put-putted over Gaeta at 900 feet and 160 mph. Apparently the gunners could not believe he was so low and slow and they shot way out in front and he escaped without further injury!
He decided he would bail out when he saw the first boat since we controlled the water. When he got to the first boat, he saw another. And another and another. He leapfrogged all the way back the the base and came in for a landing. His antenna had been knocked off so there could be no communicaton. His right wheel came down, but not the left so they shot him a red flare. He poured the coal to it and went out over the hills. He got it turned around somehow and came back the other way. This time they just let him land. The gear was rather wide so it was common to touch one wheel down first and then you would set the other one down. He said that when the right wheel touched, he went to put the left one down and he quickly realized that he didn't have a left wheel. So he held the left wing up as long as possible. It finally sank down, touched the ground and the plane slid in a slow arc till it stopped. pointing about 30 degrees to the left. There were twigs, etc stuffed up the gun barrels. If he had tried to use them they probably would have exploded. He had a piece of a 5 inch limb jamming the left gear.
He was shot down and killed later, after I left the group.

One of our pilots learned the hard lesson of why you bail out of a P-40 (or other single engine, piston powered airplane) on the right side. The prop corkscrews the air behind it in a way that if you bail out to the left, it supports you so the tail can hit you. If you bail out on the right it throws you down out of the way. I am not sure of the name, maybe it will come to me later but I think his first name was Jesse. (I finally remembered, Jesse Harris.) He was hit while strafing a truck and had to get out of his plane right NOW! Unfortunately he went out the left side and his back was broken by hitting the tail. The first thing he knew, he was lying on the ground surrounded by angry Germans. He was put in a hospital. When the Germans retreated he was left behind with a skeleton staff as he could not be moved. He made it and probably lived a good life afterward.

Another pilot, Ernie Weidenhammer, beat the odds. He was up by Rome when a 20 mm shell exploded in the cockpit, right in front of him. It hit a nerve in his right arm and he could not use it. He, of course, was bleeding all over but managed to fly the plane for forty five minutes with his left hand. I suspect he couldn't touch the throttle so he belly-landed under power on the grass and passed out. The meat wagon gathered him up and rushed him to the nearest military hospital. They cut him open all the way down the front and across the middle, picked out 58 pieces of steel and stitched him back together. Some time later he came back to the outfit because they had a faster way of rotating him back to the States. I rushed up and said, "Hello Dutch, good to see you". He hoisted his right arm a little and shook hands. He was rotated back to the States. He has attended a number of the reunions of the group and enjoys golf. He had to have both knees replaced a couple years ago. I've always wondered if it was an aftereffect of the shrapnel damage. (This event may have happened at Santa Maria.)

On my 76th mission, 24 May 1944, Squadron Commander Major Emil Tanassy was leading Red flight and I was leading White flight. We were to bomb the town of Cori. We taxied out and parked at an angle off the side of the runway like the feathers on an arrow. We shut off the engines and waited for our takeoff time.
Suddenly a jeep came roaring out to the Major's plane and a guy jumped out and up on the wing and said something to him. Our time came and we took off. I think our mission was to bomb a target and then look for targets of opportunity. But I'll never forget what happened. The Major got a 20 mm(?) shell in his engine. The engine didn't stop but there was oil all over the place. He couldn't see because there was oil on his goggles. I went up on his wing and talked to him to keep him straight and level while he cleaned off the oil so he could see. He jettisoned the canopy and we headed for the Anzio beachead and the emergency strip. He went in and belly landed. He landed long and if he had not touched down there he probably would have cleared the edge of a gully and hit the other side head on.! I don't remember him going on another mission. That was too close!

I re-formed the squadron of seven planes and took over the lead. We were finished anyway so I headed back home. We went down in the directon of Gaeta Point. The main coastal highway to Rome came west out onto the Pontine Marsh area then turned north toward Rome. Lo and Behold! there was a big truck convoy, out in the open, closepacked and about fifty miles beyond the bomb safe line. But I was suspicious because the Germans would not have allowed themselves to be caught out in the open and exposed like that so I took a chance. We buzzed them and saw that they were ours! So we went home. During the de-briefing we found out that that was what they told the Major before we took off, that there had been a breakout and to be careful. The only one that knew had been shot down!

Somewhere in mid-April I was on a mission and the flak was going pretty good. All of a sudden there was loud noise and large hole appeared in the left (?) wing. The torn edges were sticking up above the wing at least six inches. I was worried about a possible damaged spar which might cause the wing to fold up. I had heard that the wing could fold back over the cockpit and prevent one from getting out but it seemed OK so I kept heading back home. When I arrived at Castel Volturno, I flew down the runway waggling my wings indicating I was in trouble. I then set up for a landing and came in fast because I knew the left wing would stall out before the right one. I almost had a problem because the wing stalled out sooner than I had guessed it would but I was close enough to the ground to land safely.

One day we were out straffing after a bombing run and I saw a truck. I went down to strafe it, thinking my 500 pound bomb and six 20 pound fragmentation bombs had already been released. These frag bombs were very touchy and resembled large hand grenades, only much worse. They had a large (1/2'?) square piece of spring steel wound around as the outer casing. When the bomb exploded it broke this spring, which was under tension, into vicious chunks of ragged steel which had the spring tension release and the explosive to send them in all directions. It was a devastating anti-personnel weapon. We had three under each wing. I thought I had dropped them and my wingman said there weren't any on my left side. So one or more on the right side had hung up on the arming wire when I went in to strafe the truck. I was very low, let off a burst and went over the truck at probably no more than fifty feet. And a blast occurred just as I went over the truck. We think one or more of these bombs shook off as the guns fired. I must have destroyed the truck but I didn't even look. I was too busy trying to figure out if I was flying. I was hit by a number of bomb fragments, the closest came in under the seat and went out the window on the right side. There was a bundle of useless wire along the floor on the left side of the cockpit which was one of the sets of cables to the rudder and elevator. Fortunately they had two sets or I would have decorated the landscape right there!
The airplane was flying all right so I headed back to base. I didn't know what damage had taken place. So I touched down gingerly and then found out that my left tire was flat. I brought the mixture control back to idle cut-off to kill the engine. The plane rolled along but was bound and determined to go to the left, rolling on two odd sized wheels. I controlled it as best I could and the plane finally stopped off the left side of the runway pointing about 30 degrees from the direction of the runway. Apparently one can land on a flat tire if it is already flat. But if it blows after you touch ground or on a takeoff run it will cause a crash, usually a groundloop. I was told that they patched over 70 holes in it! And yet another helping of luck!
One day they decided to oil the taxiways to keep down the dust. The taxiway was a zigzag path that made it a little easier for us to see in front. The engine blocked the forward view. We used to zigzag as we taxied because the various parts of the taxiway were too long to just go straight forward, as I found out one day. When the strips were oiled, they became very slippery so we taxied one length, cleared the next length and then taxied straight down the middle, without zigzagging. I was taxiing and cleared the next length, then went right straight down the middle. When I approached the next bend and started to turn into the next leg, I saw that some Brit had pulled his truck out and parked it right in front of me at the curve. There was no way I could miss him. I tried my best but I wound up sliding sidewise, very slowly, but surely and stuck my left wingtip through his windshield. Nothing was said to anybody that I remember. I of course missed this mission.

My plane seemd a bit slower than the others and I had to use a bit more throttle to keep up so I used more gas. I had an idea that I took up with the engineering officer, Joe Glover. I suggested that we remove the big round wingtip and replace with a wood one shaped like the P-51/A-36 wingtip. He didn't think it would be a problem. I got permission from the squadron commander, Major Joe Kelly and went back with Joe Glover to the plane. We removed one wingtip and were discussing the next step when Major Kelly drove up and told us to stop and not do it. He said he would't know how to explain it if I had an accident!

There was a kind of invisible line down the middle of Italy. The 15th AF, the bombers, were on the east side and the 12th Tactical AF was on the west and almost never the twain did meet. However, one day we saw a B-17 at about 1500' passing our field, making a gentle turn to the left, obviously intending to land. Then we saw parachutes as he came around, gently, lower and lower. He finally made a very gentle, very smooth landing and brought it slowly to a stop at the end of the runway on the parking ramp. We ran over to meet the pilots and find out what was going on. The little hatch under the cockpit flopped open and the pilot and co-pilot dropped to the ground, running at top speed. As they passed us they pointed up at the left wing. We could see a bomb sticking out of their wing and nobody knew whether the little safety spinner had come off or not!

When I got back to the group I found they had changed planes to P-47D's. So I did the usual ground work and then it came time for me to take it up. I taxied to the end of the runway, ran up the engine to check it, and then straightened up with runway. I could look down the runway and see where I had crashed a week before. Pushing the throttle forward and taking off was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It would have been so easy to taxi back, park it and quit flying. I found out why a horseman gets back on the horse immediately after being thrown.
I always hated the P-47. I would rather have a P-40 for the work we were doing. When you pulled out of a dive it mushed terribly. That is, it kept going down before it would start coming up. The first week we had them, as I remember, at least eight planes came back with telephone wires, fence wires and grapevines due to the unexpected sinking when one pulled back the stick. It had a terribly variable fuel consumption rate. At cruise it used about 120 gallons per hour. But in a combat situaton the rate could go up to 370 gallons per hour (from the tech orders!). Your reserve could disappear in a few minutes. We had a mission where none of the eight planes made it back to our field. They had to land at other fields and gas up. And as I remember three of them bellied in, fortunately on our side of the lines. Our entire mode of attack had to be changed. We couldn't cruise at 200' and then strafe, We would probably hit the ground when we tried to pull up. We no longer did vertical dive bombing so our accuracy suffered. We were constantly easily visible so we had to fly over ten thousand feet and then dive on a target, very visible, all the way down! While it had an engine that was excellent in most respects, it had a Hamilton Standard oil operated propellor. If one got a rock through the spinner, you would lose the oil, the propellor would go flat and you would go down. One of our people had it happen and he finally bailed out at about 4500 feet rather than go into the clouds with mountains below.
I've heard P-47 pilots bragging about how much punishment it could take. So what! You had to fly it in a way that it took a lot of punishment. The last thing it was, was invisible. The A-36 and even the P-40 could sneak around at low level and strafe and they wouldn't even see you till you were gone. The P-47 always had altitude and was brazenly visible to anyone holding even a peashooter. Sure it absorbed punishment. It was always an obvious and flagrant target!
Ugh! It was designed to fly at high altitudes and we had to use it at low altitudes! And so on!!

We had trouble getting any ice and that was a real problem for the bar in the recreation tent! So the mechanics figured a way to take a 150 gal external fuel tank apart and the fit a gasket and bolt it back together so it would hold water. Then we sent one of the new boys that needed the altitude practice up to 25000 feet for an hour with the tank half full of water. It was mounted on the belly and when he came down the exhaust from the turbosupercharger had melted the ice. So they made a second one, mounted them on the bombracks and sent him up to 25000 feet again. This time he came back with about 200 pounds of ice.

I flew my last mission on 17 August 1944, D-Day +2 in Southern France. It was an eight plane area sweep in Southern France. I was leading the second flight of four. We flew from Corsica to Southern France over a good bit of water. We crossed the invasion fleet at altitude and then descended to a several thousand feet as we looked for "targets of opportunity". All of a sudden we started getting a lot of flak (antiaircraft fire) and it drove the two flights apart. They circled to the left and we went to the right in a large arc. When we had completed about 180 degrees I saw an airfield down below. I waggled my wings to get the flight in trail (in single file) and then dove a mile or two to the east of the target field as though after something else. When we got down to the deck I turned ninety degrees to the right toward the airfield. As I approached the field I saw planes were already smoking. That's when I tumbled to the location of the other flight. They had just straffed the field and the gunners were on their guns and waiting for us. I stayed under a hundred feet, hit the gun trigger and kicked the rudder back and forth to spray the field with bullets. I stayed low for over a mile past the field. My wingman followed me and escaped unharmed. The element leader made a serious mistake and climbed to several hundred feet and his plane got hit. His wingman totally blew it and pulled up in a steep curving climb to the right. This is the absolute worst thing he could have done. He lost speed and they just walked up his tail and shot him down. His plane stalled, flipped into a spin and did about one turn before hitting the ground. We saw his chute open and then collapse almost immediately. It must have opened almost at the time he hit the ground. We flew over there and saw the white chute gather itself into a ball and stuff itself in the hedge. We couldn't see him but figured he was all right. We circled the area to intercept anyone going in his direction. I strafed a motorcyle that was heading his way and then climbed to 4500 feet and headed for the beachhead that had an emergency field.
I didn't know how badly the element leader's plane was damaged. His radio had been hit so he could not transmit.
We went over the emergency field and I pointed down and he shook his head. So we headed out over the fleet with our fingers crossed, hoping their aircraft recognition courses would be effective. They let us go by without incident and when we got past the fleet we let out a relieved breath and I set a course of 120 degrees for Corsica. This wasn't exactly the course we had approached on so it was a bit of an educated guess. It couldn't be too far off of course but after all, Corsica was an island. It would be possible to miss it. I figured the damage on the element leader's plane would probably mean that he was using more than normal fuel so I didn't want to waste any time getting him back.
About halfway to Corsica I thought I should check with a controller to make sure we were on the right course. I switched to channel D and called for a fix. The answer told me to tranmit for a fix which I did, counting to ten. He came back telling me to steer 220 degrees! Being well trained to follow instructions, we did. This implied that we had already passed Corsica. This didn't seem possible so I switched to channel C and called "Grassy Hill" at the tip of Cape Corse, the peninsula that sticks out of the northeast corner of the island. I transmitted for a fix and he told me to steer 90 degrees to the tip of Cape Corse and that we were sixty miles out.. Since our field was 30 miles south and at sixty miles, each mile is one degree, I added 30 to the 90 degrees and came back to my original 120 degree course. We landed safely and went in to debriefing. Toward the end of the debriefing, the intelligence officer and I went to the map to figure out where we had been. Then we took the back azimuth (40 degrees) from that point and it led back to Genoa, then in German hands. We decided that I must have been talking to a German and that if I had followed his instructions we would have run out of gas in the middle of the Mediterranean!
On the way into the debriefing I passed Major Hugh Cameron, the Group Executive Officer. I said to him, "I don't know if you know it or not, but that's the last time I'm going up there." He said, "OK, tell it to the Colonel." I had 94 missions by then and realized I was putting my people in jeopardy because I was tired, shot, pooped out and a hazard to fly with.