The Airmen and the Headhunters Read online

  After Coberly's completed stateside training, they were flown in a C-54 transport plane from Hamilton Field via Hawaii and Guadalcanal to Nadzab, New Guinea, where they arrived in early October 1944. They stayed more than a week at Nadzab, the air force replacement center for the South Pacific, and spent three days in the jungle with seasoned Australian troops to learn survival skills. While based at Nadzab, they flew one combat mission, dropping bombs on the runways of a Japanese-held airstrip at Wewak, New Guinea.

  Their next move was to Neumfoor, a small island off New Guinea, where they joined the Twenty-third Squadron of the Bomber Barons on October 13. The men of the Bomber Barons, like army airmen elsewhere, loved the B-24. A Liberator, though it waddled on the ground, was a wonderfully adaptable flying machine for its time. It had been deployed in more operational theaters and for a considerably longer period than any other World War II bomber. The B-24 had been modified often to correct flaws and enhance its versatility; the Twenty-third Squadron had the J version. It could carry a bomb load of eighty-eight hundred pounds, but it was also effective as a spy plane or as a transport for paratroopers and their supplies. Its maximum speed was roughly three hundred miles per hour, with a cruising speed of two hundred miles per hour or better. Some models could fly higher than twenty-eight thousand feet.

  If stripped of its excess weight, such as armor plate and ball turrets, the Liberator gave the term "long-range bomber" new meaning. With a range of nearly three thousand miles, it was ideal for use in the vast Pacific theater. Its most distinctive features were its beautiful, long, slender wings, with a span of 110 feet and a wing area of more than a thousand square feet.

  As newcomers, the crew spent the first few days watching B-24s, loaded to the limit with fuel and bombs, try to get off the runway. They knew that the B-24 was huge in comparison with other planes then flying. It could take the biggest bomb load of any plane, but it was very hard to maneuver on land. It was slow to respond and hard to steer, making takeoff an especially tense moment. A fully loaded B-24 couldn't get into the air without full power or a long runway. John Nelson saw what happened when two of these planes did not make it and grimly concluded that "raw gasoline and sea water are a lethal combination."

  Their only accident occurred during the week on Neumfoor. Charlie Burnette, their perennially airsick tail gunner who liked to make things in his free time, had a trench knife slip from the sheet metal he was trying to cut and lodge itself deep in his thigh. S.Sgt. Francis Harrington, a married New Englander in his thirties, was looking for a combat crew to join, and replaced Charlie as tail gunner.

  Coberly's flew several missions out of Neumfoor. On one flight, en route to support the Allied invasion of the Philippines, the crew saw the entire U.S. Pacific fleet below them—probably heading toward the Battle of Leyte Gulf. It was a thrilling sight. Here was tangible proof that they were not merely attached to one of a few bomber squadrons out in the middle of the nearly empty Pacific, but were a cog in what was probably by now the single greatest military machine the world had ever seen.

  The men got their first real taste of air combat when the squadron was attacked by Japanese fighters. Young John Nelson was handling the tail gun that day and could see his opposite number in the enemy plane firing directly at him in the tail turret. "We were both firing away. I thought I felt his bullets slamming right into my guts. I know he missed me but I don't know how he fared."

  But these were still early days for Coberly's. They had only flown seven of the thirty-five combat missions they had to complete to get home. They were fresh, fit, confident and eager to show what they were made of.

  After breakfast on November 16, the eleven airmen were handed their flight lunch of cold turkey sandwiches and were driven to the airfield. The plane they were assigned, however, had a problem with one of its turbochargers. Jim Knoch had found that the number-two engine was capable of only 1,800 rpm; they needed 2,400 rpm for takeoff. Mechanics were called but they could not fix the problem. The airmen climbed out, convinced that there would be no combat mission for them that day. After boarding a truck to take them back to their tent, they opened up their flight lunches. The turkey sandwiches no longer seemed like such a treat.

  The men felt let down. They were already awake, and would not get their leave in Australia until they had flown one more mission. Copilot 2nd Lt. Jerry Rosenthal was especially disappointed at the cancellation because he hoped that his growing cockpit experience would help him overcome his lack of formal pilot training so that he could captain his own Liberator, after this flight or the next one. Rather than abandon this mission, he and a friend, an operations officer from the Thirty-first, cruised around the airfield in a jeep until they found a B-24 from the friend's squadron that was ready to go but did not have a crew. Then they collected the rest of Coberly's.

  Tom Coberly, brought to plane-side, took a quick look and said, "OK, we'll go with this airplane." This B-24, unlike the one they had left for repairs, was hot off an assembly line back in the States and so new that it did not have a name painted on it yet. The crew decided they would call it Lucky Strike.

  Before boarding, bombardier Phil Corrin, the most junior officer, showed the other crew members his silk map of the island of Borneo, the biggest landmass between Morotai and Brunei Bay. Due south of the Philippines, Borneo was big but evidently not well mapped. Phil's 20-by-36-inch piece of silk showed the equator cutting through the island, but most of Borneo's interior was whited out, indicating that it was unexplored. Before a mission, airmen were usually given escape instructions in case they wound up on the ground. This time, they were told that they could expect a submarine or maybe a seaplane to pick them up near Kudat, on Borneo's northern tip, if they dropped over water or near the coast. There were no escape instructions to follow should they end up inside Borneo. The absence of such guidance did not strike Phil or the others as important; they did not expect to need it.

  Soon the B-24 was stocked for its new mission, and the men were at their usual takeoff stations. In the nose were gunner Cpl. Eddy Haviland, a quiet and studious eighteen-year-old Easterner, and twenty-one-year-old bombardier 2nd Lt. Phil Corrin. In the cockpit were pilot 2nd Lt. Tom Coberly and copilot 2nd Lt. Jerry Rosenthal. Standing between them was Cpl. Jim Knoch, the flight engineer. Behind a bulkhead and seated at a table on the left was navigator 2nd Lt. Fred Brennan. At a table to his right was radio operator Cpl. Dan Illerich. Above Dan's head was access to the top turret, where his other job was to fire the turret gun. Behind the flight deck was the bomb bay, with its access to a small upper deck where the flight engineer occasionally had to go to handle fueling or electrical problems. This plane had two .50-caliber ring guns mounted into the floor in the plane's waist in the spot where the usual B-24 would have had a ball turret. Gunners Tom Capin, on the left, and John Nelson, on the right, manned these guns. Aerial photographer Sgt. Elmer Philipps was crouched near the floor hatch that could be opened to use for cameras or for parachute drops. On board just for this flight, Philipps had asked Tom Coberly if he could have one more chance to see the world from the air before returning stateside; he was ready to take over a waist gun if necessary. S.Sgt. Francis "Franny" Harrington was in the tail turret, manning the tail gun.

  As they taxied out for takeoff, the crew discovered a new problem. The parachute packs they had brought with them from the Twenty-third Squadron were incompatible with the harnesses for this plane. By the time the crewmen had grabbed chutes with the right kind of fasteners from another grounded plane, theirs was the last Liberator in the Fifth Bomb Group to take off.

  The Twenty-third Squadron would be leading the attack, as usual. It was one of four Bomber Baron squadrons of B-24s, with six or seven planes per squadron. Farther back in the formation would be four B-24 squadrons of the 307th Bomb Group, known as the Long Rangers. Being in squadron formation was a scary experience—flying wingtip to wingtip with other planes while going faster than the men had ever experienced on land. But the
y got a thrill out of being one of fifty-four four-engine Liberators all in the air at once. The Bomber Barons liked to fly as close together as possible. Experience had taught them that not only did staying close increase the impact of their bombs, but it also made it difficult for Japanese fighter planes to get inside the formation. To help them deal with fighter attacks, the formation had some P-38s assigned to provide top cover. Some days the P-38s did not get there or could not keep up with the Liberator's greater range, but today they were where they should be.

  Having started late, Tom Coberly needed to put on some speed to reach his usual place as wingman on the right-hand side of the squadron's lead plane, in the first three-plane element. Strikingly handsome, Coberly was admired by his crewmates for his skill as a pilot. He really knew how to fly the Liberator, and his crew felt safe with him at the controls. During training, Coberly had become ill and had been hospitalized for nearly a week. His crew had been offered the choice of dropping back one six-week period in their training to wait for him or getting another pilot from the replacement pool. They all chose to stick with Coberly.

  It was a clear day with flawless visibility as Lucky Strike sped past the rest of the squadron toward the front. The men on the flight deck could see that they were burning more fuel than usual in order to catch up with the lead plane, but attacking a cruiser or a lone carrier should not require a lot of fuel. But then, as Coberly headed toward his usual place in the formation, he found another B-24 already there and had to quickly maneuver from the right to the left side of the squadron leader without touching the planes just behind him. It would be a bit awkward, at first, going into combat from an unaccustomed place in the squadron, but they were now in formation and heading toward Brunei Bay.

  As they began to fly west toward Borneo, Phil Corrin shared the general belief that this mission would be a routine flight. A heavy cruiser or a flattop in Brunei Bay ought to be an easier target than a duck in a rain barrel.

  But instead, when they were more than twenty miles from the target area, they could see in the bay three enemy battleships, three heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, five destroyers and more auxiliary ships than they could count. It looked to Phil Corrin in the nose and John Nelson in the waist as if the entire Japanese imperial fleet was down there—and much of it was. What they saw was all that remained of the fleet that had retired discreetly after the October battle of Leyte Gulf to the relative safety of Brunei Bay, where it now floated dead in the water.

  Despite the target's being much bigger and more dangerous than expected, all the planes on this combat mission followed the lead plane and continued as if they were still attacking a lone cruiser or carrier. They prepared to go in over Brunei Bay low, at only ten thousand feet, straight and level, taking no evasive action. This was perhaps because of the lack of experience of the Twenty-third Squadron's new commander, Major Saalfield, who had been put in the lead plane when the squadron's previous leader, Major Musgrove, had been grounded. This was only Saalfield's third or fourth combat mission. He may have been too amazed to report what he saw back to base and get instructions on what to do now.

  Phil Corrin in the nose turret and Dan Illerich sitting in the flight deck each watched with growing alarm as Major Saalfield led the squadron straight into harm's way. Phil and Dan felt sure Major Musgrove would not have done that. They could not understand why Saalfield was continuing on this low, straight and level course. It made the squadron an easy target for enemy guns. Dan thought that if Musgrove had been in charge, he would probably have called for the navy to come to their aid and divided the squadron to control both sides of Labuan Island, sealing the Japanese fleet inside the bay.

  Phil, eyeing the crowded bay and remembering the briefing the night before, must have wondered why Saalfield did not radio back to tell the base he was taking the formation to its number-three target, the oil field at Tarakan Island, just off Borneo's east coast. (Alternative target two was Labuan Island, which would be too dangerous.)

  Antiaircraft shells started bursting near their Liberator when they were still fourteen miles away from the target. Now, as they neared Brunei Bay, the men of Coberly's could hear big Japanese navy guns firing salvos at the squadron. Between the antiaircraft guns on the ships and a few Japanese fighter planes that had flown close in toward the squadron at the same time, flak started coming at the squadron in a pattern so thick, it looked as if the crew could walk on it.

  Adm. Matome Ugaki, who had just been relieved of command of a disbanded battleship division, was traveling as a passenger on the Leyte-damaged, homeward-bound battleship Yamato. Still slightly hungover from the previous evening's farewell celebrations in his honor, he looked up at about 11 A.M. to see "forty B-24s and fifteen P-38s" coming in to attack the fleet. "Our main batteries gave them ten salvos at more than twenty thousand meters," he observed, while "our damage [was] almost nil."

  Within the next three minutes, shells hit Saalfield's lead plane, Coberly's and Lieutenant Norris's plane in the second element of the squadron.

  John Nelson saw "one shell burst right over me and knock the waist window loose, which then dropped on my head." Luckily, John had his flak helmet on and was not hurt, but the right waist window jammed down, and he could no longer see anything that was going on with the rest of the formation or with the Japanese fleet below. Tom Capin and Elmer Philipps may have seen the damage done to Major Saalfield's lead plane and Lieutenant Norris's, but they could not see what was going on in their own plane.

  What the men in the waist could not see, they could feel and hear. At about 11:30 A.M., when Coberly was still several miles from the bay, their plane gave a sudden sharp lurch and they heard pieces of shrapnel hitting their hull. It sounded like the aircraft was being ripped to shreds.

  The men on the flight deck, having just seen Saalfield's plane take a hit and peel off, sat helplessly while the front of their own plane was hit by a big naval shell.

  Dan came back down from manning the top turret gun to assess the damage. "Tom's hurt; they got Tom," he called out through the intercom. He could see that the pilot's leg had been shattered; blood was coming out of the wound in ropes. Then he saw that shrapnel from the same shell had hit the back of navigator Fred Brennan's head and blown off his face, killing him instantly. Copilot Jerry Rosenthal had a big wound on the left side of his head. His left ear was gone. Nonetheless, Dan saw that Jerry was managing to exert the strength needed to hold on to the yoke and keep some control over the plane's movements, even though the rudder control had been shot away. Under protective cover from four P-38s, Jerry quickly cut the B-24 out of what remained of the formation and veered east, trying to head back to Morotai.

  The same antiaircraft shell that had done such harm to the flight deck had also shattered the nose turret, and some of the Plexiglas had blown into nose gunner Eddy Haviland's eye. Phil Corrin, the only officer unhurt, felt cold air and oil spray coming at him as he helped the partially blinded young corporal to the flight deck. He gave Eddy what first aid he could and then returned with him to the nose.

  Back in the waist, aerial photographer Elmer Philipps was manning a ring gun while John Nelson sorted himself out. This mission was not turning out to be the busman's holiday Philipps had hoped for. Jim Knoch, who had been checking out damage to the plane in the waist, went forward to see what was happening there.

  When Jim reached the flight deck, he found what must have looked like a slaughterhouse. One glance at navigator Fred Brennan's head told him there was nothing to be done for him, but Tom Coberly, weak from loss of blood, was asking to get out of the pilot's seat. Jim, with Dan's help, moved the pilot onto the deck floor and gave him two shots of morphine. While Dan tried to get the radio to work, Jim moved with brisk deliberation to put on his own chute pack and sit in Coberly's seat, where he helped Jerry hold on to the yoke until the plane was more stable. In moments of crisis such as this, Jim was, in Dan's words, "all action, no noise."

  Sitting in the pilot's se
at, Jim saw that the number-one engine was smoking and, judging from the fuel gauge, there seemed to be a hole in the number-two fuel tank. Jerry gave him a thumbs-up to signal he could now control the plane by himself, so Jim climbed up the bomb bay to the fuel tanks above and carefully transferred some of the hoses to salvage as much fuel as possible. Unlike that day a few months earlier over downtown Los Angeles, this time the problem wasn't stalled engines.

  Jim then came back down to jettison the bombs to reduce the load so that the fuel would last longer and the bombs would not explode on board if the plane crashed or was hit again. He collected his chute harness, which had been hung up on the now-empty bomb rack. With the bombs gone, he could see through a hole the size of a barrelhead on the left side of the bomb bay: part of the electrical system and almost the entire hydraulic system were gone. Standing on the slippery catwalk, still without his harness on, he took the time to manually crank open the bomb-bay passage door and the bomb-bay doors.

  Dan was still trying to alert their base to the plane's critical damage. He could not get his radio to receive or send.

  Jim came back to the flight deck and Jerry again gave him the thumbs-up sign. It was only then that Jim noticed the copilot's ear was gone. Leaving Jerry at the controls, he sped back toward the waist again, suddenly remembering that Tom Capin had received some training in how to fly a B-24. Pausing on his way just long enough to secure his chute to the harness, Jim had nearly reached the waist (where he found a hole on the left the size of a door) when he sensed that the plane was about to go into a spin.