This was not a distinguished month, as months went. Of course, no month was routine or distinguished if viewed alone; to put it otherwise, this month was merely less outstanding than the others. But even such a month had highlights and September’s highlight was that it witnessed the first application of the sensational new Pathfinder technique, by which specially equipped ships of the 482nd Pathfinder Group led our formations over 10/10ths clouds to make successful attacks on unseen targets in invisible countries. The first such mission was the one to Emden on 30 September, in which Colonel Gross was Division Air Commander, riding in the Pathfinder Ship.
September produced nine missions: Romilly-sur-Seine, Stuttgart, Brussels/Evere Airdrome, Lille/Nord Airdromes, a second and final trip to Romilly, two raids on Nantes, an attack on Meulan-les-Mureaux near Paris, and the Emden mission.
Several of these may be dismissed with a few words. Brussels on the 7th, Lille on the 9th, Meulan on the 26th: these came under the heading of routine slogging at enemy airdromes and aircraft repair facilities in the West. The results in each case were adequate, opposition meager and losses slight. Any of these missions would have been considered a long, tough ride during the previous winter. Now the boys thought them easy. There were two reasons for the change in attitude. First, they actually were easy contrasted with the long, tough rides into central Germany. Second, Jerry had regrouped his fighters to defend the Waterland. The bulk and the cream of his Jagergeschweder were no longer Grouped to give battle in defense of French targets. Also, we had fighter escort on all short and medium penetrations, and Jerry found it most unprofitable to join battle within our fighter radius.
The two attacks on Romilly, 9 and 15 September, were an end to a longish chapter. It was always a juicy target: a great air depot for the whole of the occupied area, with replacement parts and aircraft in profusion. It had received a series of attacks commencing in December of 1942 and suffered damage, but was never a knock out. Now, in September, it was polished off. The first attack destroyed the installations on the east side of the field, but left the important hangers and ships on the west side practically untouched. The next time, these were the aiming point. Through broken clouds, our boys deposited a carpet of bombs whose exact center was on the aiming point. That was the end of Romilly. We felt good about it because the Boss was the Air Commander.
It must not be supposed that all missions were good ones. The mission to Stuttgart on the 6th was unfortunate from every angle. The idea was to carry on the good work started at Schweinfurt by bombing a ball-bearing works of major importance and also to knock out the vital Besch magneto works. Bomber Command dispatched a total of 407 heavy bombers. 45 of these were lost, with our Combat Wing contributing 5 to the latter matter. It was reasonably certain that most of our losses were not the result of enemy action. It seemed that there was a higher wind than the forecast had indicated and as a result many of our ships used up their gasoline before returning to friendly territory. This conclusion on the available evidence was rather strengthened by the fact that for once the German radio claimed fewer bombers than we knew we had lost. Jerry was never one to minimize any losses that we knew about, always excepting his own.
At any rate, even the ships that returned to England failed, in many instances, to reach their home bases and a number coughed out over the Channel. Air/Sea Rescue did a thriving business. The worst part of it was that we were unable to attack the assigned targets. Bad cloud formations starting in the Strasbourg area developing into long rolls over the target, which made pinpoint selection impossible. Only 45 airplanes succeeded in bombing Stuttgart, and even these were unable to drop on the specific targets, which had been assigned. Our Combat Wing, under the leadership of Uncle Willie Hatcher, made a fruitless trip to Karlarahe, which was assigned secondary, and wound up by dropping its bombs with excellent results on the large marshalling yard at Offenburg, just over the Rhine from Strasbourg. Just after middle of the month, Bomber Command had an urgent request from the Admiralty to put the bee on the port area at Nantes. Always a place of importance, Nantes had advanced steadily as a base for enemy naval operations since St. Nazaire and Lorient had been reduced to piles of rubble by our operations of the preceding winter. Now there was a large concentration of enemy shipping there, but especially there was an armed merchant vessel, the Kertosono, which was supposed to constitute a new threat in the submarine war. Time was of the essence: she was in dry dock and might reasonable be expected to stay put from one day’s reconnaissance to the next day’s attack.
The mission was laid on several times, flown twice. One attempt was abortive because of weather. Two attacks were made. One of these was the graduating mission, of our own Chima. The bombing of the 91st was especially effective. On the second mission, a string of its bombs burst across the spot where the Kertosono was berthed, although no direct hits were observed. She had been moved out of dry dock between the two attacks. Reconnaissance following the attack brought commendatory messages from the Admiralty. The Kertosono was still upright and unsunk, but 68,000 tons of other shipping had been sunk or destroyed in addition to very heavy damage inflicted to port installations. Then, a few weeks later, came welcome news from ground sources. The Kertosono was still upright and displaying that would appear in a reconnaissance photograph. But she was sunk all right, sitting securely on the river bottom. She would service no U-boats for many months to come.
Emden on the 27th ended our month of operations while it opened a new chapter; that of Pathfinder work, bombing objectives through 10/10ths cloud. This was accomplished through fearful and wonderful new devices, secret from the uninitiated, and known to the trade as H2S or “Stinky”, H2X or “Mickey”, and “Oboe”. We were uninitiated and preferred to remain so. All we knew was that the night before a Pathfinder mission, one of these mysterious ships would arrive from the 482nd Group at Alconbury, which was our Pathfinder Group, operating directly under 1st Division and not in any Combat Wing. Generally, one of our own Navigators would ride in the Pathfinder ship to do any contact, D/R or orthodox radio navigation that might be required to cooperate with the trick navigator that belonged to the ship. The Air Commander would ride along, too, to make sure that the lead ship behaved correctly during assembly and performed no subsequent antics the Combat Wing would be unable to follow. Also, of course, it was the responsibility of the Air Commander to see to it that the mission was flown as briefed or, in case of need, to decide upon any departures from the briefed plan. These and similar responsibilities could be exercised only from the land position.
Naturally, Pathfinder operations were essential if we were to get full value out of our force during the difficult months, when Hitler’s Europe reposed under comfortable rolls of cloud for weeks on end. But in many ways they were unsatisfactory, at least to the boys in the Groups. Air attacks was a pretty impersonal thing at best, with the countryside from 25,000 feet looking far less like the real thing than did the General Motors Futurama at the World’s Fair. On Pathfinder missions, you didn’t even know it was there. The boys had to take it on faith that they were not risking their necks to drop bombs in open fields or in the sea. The British used the technique on their night missions, but they had the satisfaction of seeing the glow of fires reflected in the clouds, which told them that they had at least hit something that would burn. Even our strike attack photographs on these missions showed nothing but downy masses of clouds, with perhaps an occasional streak of black or show where the flares of the Pathfinder ship had gone down to show the others where to drop. Also, the deal was a further frustration to our practicing bombardiers. The ETO was bad enough for them at its best: after months of indoctrination back home on the importance of bombsight procedure, they became lead-ship artists, their whole duty in life was to slap a toggle-switch when they saw the bombs come out of the lead airplane. With Pathfinder work going on, even the leaders were demoted to togglers. And then not to see the bombs hit! Even that, however, was not the worst. Often it would be impossible for reconnaissance photos to be flown until weeks later, when the visible effects of bombing had been erased by the industrious Jerry or the RAF had come along meanwhile and smothered the area in a fresh attack. In such cases only the end of the war would tell whether we had hit the target or even flown over the target area.
Fortunately, the Emden raid could be assessed. Strike photos were negative but a PRU ship got cover a few days later and discovered new and substantial areas of damage in the target area. It was made clear that Pathfinder operations were here to stay.
Summing up for September, the 1st Combat Wing had 434 accredited sorties. 357 aircraft bombed targets, 262 on primary targets and 95 on targets of opportunity. Our aircraft destroyed 41 enemy aircraft probably destroyed 2 and damaged 19 for the loss of 10 of our Forts. Our proportion of aircraft attacking to sorties was abnormally low; this was because on one scheduled mission to Nantes our Wing assembled when the others flubbed the dub on account of weather. Trouble was that the same weather prevented us from attacking even though we did assemble and went off to fight the war.