A FINE EXAMPLE

Each Troop Carrier squadron has its own D Day story This one was written by Martin Wolfe a radio operator in the 81 st Troop Carrier Squadron of the 436 th Troop Carrier Group based at Membury in southern England It is a chapter in Marty's book GREEN LIGHT and it is reproduced here with permission The paratroopers were members of the 101 st Airborne Division

From Green Light -- Special Troop Carrier D Day Flights

Historians of D Day agree that up to the point we crossed the Cotentin peninsula and headed toward the drop zones that the pilots flew a flawless formation under difficult circumstances It was a tribute to training that the outward flight west of the Cherbourg peninsula was executed according to plan and without incident This is the judgment of the Official Air Forces history and other historians and journalists agree

As we turned southwest from our corridor over the channel and toward Normandy the feeling grew that this monstrously complicated operation was clicking along perfectly This feeling was strengthened when we saw that the anti aircraft fire from the German held Channel Islands Guernsey and Jersey was short as we had been told it would be

A QUIRK OF FATE The clouds and the fog

A few minutes later as we reached the western coastline disaster loomed up at us we slammed headlong into a dense cloudbank Nothing had prepared us for this The weather briefing had notforeseen it our flight over the English Channel had encountered only scattered clouds The cloudbank was thicker in some spots than others For some of us it was so thick that it was as if we had stopped flying through the air and were now flying through a grayish soup James Gavin then commanding a regiment of the 82 nd and flying in another serial reported that he couldn't even see the wing tip from the open door of his C 47 The pathfinders had also flown through these clouds but because of the orders for strict radio silence they had not warned anyone of this terrible danger

Flying in almost zero visibility wing tip to wing tip at the assigned altitude of 700 feet and level at 110 mph the pilots suddenly had to decide how to save their crews the paratroopers and the planes Immediately pilots flying in the number two and three positions in each V pulled away back right or left to minimize the imminent danger of colliding with their leader Some pilots climbed getting out of the cloudbank at about 2000 feet and some pushed their planes noses down and broke out of the clouds at around 500 feet A few bulled their way through at 700 feet the altitude they had been flying before hitting the clouds All miraculously escaped smashing into other planes In a few tragic moments without the discipline and control of the formation the prospects for a concentrated paratrooper drop had been demolished Meanwhile our Drop Zones were coming up in ten or twelve minutes

A TERRIBLE RESPONSIBILITY

A terrible responsibility now fell upon the shoulders of every pilot and every navigator in planes that had them The murderous cloudbank thinned out as we flew east over the Cotentin peninsula and soon we could begin to see some features on the ground Each pilot knew that in the preceding formation breakup he could have strayed many miles off course The Cotentin peninsula is only 23 miles wide and we had about six or seven minutes left before our Drop Zone was to come up Decisions had to be made quickly Each pilot now essentially on his own had to climb or descend to 700 feet the best height for the paratroopers to jump from and he had to slow down to 100 110 mph to avoid too much stress on the parachutes

Looking down you could begin to spot a few landmarks a town a railroad and a river that might or might not correspond to the checkpoints we were briefed to look for around our Drop Zone And as if things were not bad enough we now saw that the Eureka Rebecca radar beacon system was not fully in place to guide our flight leader to the correct Drop Zone And crews of the few planes that had the more sophisticated Gee radar location device didn't find them useful under these conditions The pathfinders had also been hampered by the fog and had been unable to find the right locations to set up their holophane T lights and radar beacons All that remained for most of the pilots and navigators was to try to recognize some landmarks in the darkness and give troopers the green light when there was a reasonable chance of their jumping close to our Drop Zone A

THE RED LIGHT

And now in my plane the red light at the door is on four minutes to go The paratrooper jumpmaster yells out Stand up Hook up Sound off for equipment check The troopers yell back in sequence from the rear Sixteen OK Fifteen OK Fourteen OK Then the jumpmaster screams out STAND IN THE DOOR And the troopers squeeze forward against each other their right hands on the shoulders of the man in front One last jump master yell ARE WE READY ARE WE FRIGGING A READY There is no answering yell everybody is waiting for the door light to change to green

Mercifully up to this point the paratroopers had no way of knowing we were in big trouble But now pilots in some planes already badly rattled by the loss of formation control began to see flak and small arms fire coming up at them They dove and twisted under the upcoming arcs of tracer bullets while the heavily laden troopers struggled to stay on their feet Some planes whipped around badly forcing troopers down on their knees Barf buckets were knocked over and vomit spilled out causing a dangerously slippery floor Crew chiefs and radio operators in the rear screamed at the pilots to keep the planes steady Watching the tracers come up at us made the hairs on the back of my neck feel as though they were standing up and it's still hard to laugh about things like that

These things are stamped indelibly in my mind the rattle of flak fragments against our plane the sight of flak and tracers above us some seeming right on the mark for planes in front of us the stark terror in some paratroopers eyes their vomiting into their helmets and forgetting to empty these helmets when it came time to Stand Up Hook Up as they prepared to make possibly their final jump Ben Obermark crew chief

When the pilots finally snapped on the green light it must have been a kind of momentary relief to the paratroopers as they went out the jump door heading for uncertain but presumably solid ground beneath After we were in those clouds a few minutes some bright searchlights came on the way they lighted up the clouds almost blinded me Flak and tracers were everywhere One of our squadron's planes was taking such wild evasive action that he almost drove me into the ground It took every bit of my strength and know how plus that of our co pilot Doug Mauldin to prevent a collision Don Skrdla pilot

THREE PASSES AT THE DROP ZONE

The instant before the lead trooper jumped the heavy door bundles had to be pushed out In the plane piloted by Don Skrdla the awkward bundles jammed the door space with fiendish perversity thwarting every effort of the crew and the troopers to push them out There would have been no time for Skrdla to drop his troopers short of the English Channel He flew out over the water turned right came back over land again and made another pass at his drop zone but the door bundles were still malevolently stuck Skrdla had to make yet a third pass before the bundles could be freed and his troopers could get out For this exhibition of skill and cool judgment he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross the only one granted to our Squadron

Asked what was going through his mind at that time Skrdla said Nothing much; apart from how scared I was and he claimed much of the credit should go to the crew chief Dick Nice the one who managed to clear that door Pressed further Skrdla added It just wasn't in the book for me to go back with paratroopers in my plane After his plane was headed home over the Channel Skrdla got a shock when he looked back and saw one of his passengers still sitting there but it turned out he was not a paratrooper but a newspaper reporter who had no intention of jumping

Francis Farley Operations Officer of the 81 st TCS was the leader of the second flight of nine planes When we went through that famous cloudbank that hung over the Cherbourg peninsula we were in a V of Vs of nine planes Col Brack was the leader of the other flight As soon as Brack saw that cloudbank he went down to get through it he figured he would still have enough altitude for the paratroopers underneath it But Farley for some reason thought he saw Brack turn to the left So he also took his serial down under the cloud bank and turned our planes to the left But we went too far north and as a result we came out very near the top of the peninsula We found ourselves only about five miles from the port of Cherbourg and of course immediately we ran into heavy flak and other ground fire

When we started to receive anti aircraft fire we were at a railroad junction some ten miles south of Cherbourg Farley asked for a new heading to the Drop Zone When we turned to a 180 degree heading we were over land we did not fly over the coast but sighted some burning buildings at Ste Mere Eglise and dropped our paratroop stick By this time only 3 planes remained the others lost us in the descent through the clouds We had hits in our vertical stabilizer There was a hole big enough for a man to crawl through but fortunately none of the main controls were hit We also took hits in one of the main gas tanks and lost a large amount of our fuel

CLOSE CALL GETTING BACK

It was a close thing getting back to base We were coming in with the indicator showing no fuel in the tanks As we made our final approach Lt Greg Wolf just ahead of us landed and almost immediately went up on his nose because his tires had been shot out during the drop We managed to pull up into the air just enough to clear his plane and immediately landed at a nearby base When we got out the smell of gas was overpowering it had sprayed over the entire fuselage Bob MacInnes navigator

In addition to the big hole in the vertical stabilizer in Farley's plane we got our left wing tip shot off and there was a really big hole in the fuselage where the door load had been before it went out This must have been from one of those small explosive shells the Germans were using It sure made a mess of the floor and a part of the sidewall I also got a little piece in my wrist but I didn't know anything about this until two days later when it began to get sore and infected Doc Coleman dug it out with a large needle

If those shell fragments had hit there before the door bundle went out it would have been goodbye The door load all 1,100 pounds of it was mortars and mortar ammunition It had been resting on the floor directly above the shell hole The door load and the first paratrooper went out of the door as one Everyone else in the stick went out in seconds Major Farley acknowledged my yell of All out and made a sharp turn to get away as I began to pull in the static lines These were fifteen foot long tapes made of heavy webbing that were attached to the parachute rip panel and pulled open the chute when the paratrooper jumped So there were eleven sets of static lines plus the two from the door load Getting that sort of stuff inside the plane was not easy Before I got them half way in the navigator MacInnes and Chick Knight the radio operator had to come give me a hand Howard Pat Bowen crew chief

HELLO DARKY

After the drop we had some bad moments Of course by then we were all alone Out over the Channel I called Hello Darky a British direction finding system to get a steer home The fix they gave me didn't seem right but I figured they knew what they were doing I made about a 180 degree turn but pretty soon I saw all those lights and gun flashes and I saw that I was damned near over Cherbourg again So then I turned around and headed back home By the time I got in they'd given us up for lost

In my Marty Wolfe plane piloted by Jack Wallen we began to yell and thump each other on the back as soon as the wheels touched the runway at Membury The release from that frightful tension made us all a little giddy Crews walked in a glow across the field toward the Operations room One plane after another came in most with little damage When the last plane's wheels touched down about 0400 June 6

the crews all broke out in crazy yells and whistles For this our first combat mission and a very dangerous one we had sent out eighteen planes and returned eighteen planes The contrast between what we had been led to expect and what actually happened was stupefying We got boisterous almost hysterical congratulations from the men who had been waiting for our return While we were being debriefed we were given a medicinal double shot of rye by Jesse

Coleman our Flight Surgeon plus the usual post flight coffee and sandwiches Later we all trooped over to the Group Theater for a critique by our Colonel Williams He told us that none of the Group's ninety planes had been shot down though three planes had been hard hit by bullets or flak Colonel Williams told us he was proud of us Who could blame us for thinking the first D Day mission had been a great success

We were not alone in this delusion the diarist of the 82 nd TCS wrote The mission was successful all planes dropped on or near the T and there was very little opposition some small arms fire and almost no flak The diarist for the 79 th TCS stated On this mission all planes discharged their troopers over or at least very near the appointed drop zone and returned without loss of either personnel or aircraft It wasn't until much later when we heard rumors of complaints from paratroopers dropped far from their assigned drop zones that we began to wonder about the scheduling of the mission and the problems created by ordering us into questionable weather We also wondered how we might have done better under the circumstances