With tactics like that, life expectancy in the US Eighth Air Force was not high. The airmen knew this – it was one of the first things they learned when they got to Britain. For example, Samuel Fleming was told as soon as he arrived at Molesworth air base that there was no way he would get through his tour alive: ‘What it boiled down to, according to the guys keeping score, was this. In 1943 and 1944, the average life span of an Eighth Air Force bomber and crew was fifteen missions. The assigned tour of duty for crew members, however, was initially twenty-five missions, and later increased to thirty and finally to thirty-five missions… One did not have to be a brain surgeon to figure out one’s odds of finishing a combat tour.’ ¹²

Joseph Mutz was similarly demoralized when he arrived in Britain. He had been slightly delayed on his journey across the Atlantic, and got to his base a few days after most of the men with whom he had trained. One of the first things he did was to look up a friend, only to find that he had already been shot down. It was impossible not to come to the conclusion that the same fate awaited him. ‘I had a rock in my stomach, and I just knew that we were never going to make it. Just couldn’tmake it. I even went as far as writing my brother. I told him what to do with my insurance money.’ ¹³

This was not what these men had signed up for. Most had joined the air force because they thought it would be better than serving in the infantry – they had been warned about the dangers of the trenches by their parents, some of whom had experienced the horrors of the First World War. But it was now beginning to look as though they had made the wrong choice. While the bulk of the infantry were still safe at home, and would not see action for almost another year, ¹⁴American airmen were dying in droves. Nor were they safe from some of the more gruesome aspects of war, as anyone who experienced a direct hit on his plane soon discovered. Scott Buist, a USAAF gunner from New Brunswick, remembers having to pull the remains of his crewmate from the ball turret after it had received a direct hit. ‘We had to pull him out, an arm, a leg, pieces, his head; I put his head in the basket… This was a kid that I slept next to.’ ¹⁵

Perhaps the operative word there is ‘kid’. Almost all the men who flew B-17s during the Second World War were in their late teens and early twenties. Most had never been outside the United States before, yet now they were thousands of miles from home, fighting a foreign war for the sake of a noble principle. Many were lonely, and desperately missed their friends and family at home. They were all, to some degree, scared of the task that lay ahead. But they were determined to do their best, if only for the sake of their pride.

Those were the men who would bomb Hamburg during the afternoon of 25 July 1943. They faced the combined dangers of flak, fighters, mechanical malfunction, extreme cold and lack of oxygen. More than 1,200 would take off. A hundred and fifty would not return.

12. The Luftwaffe Strikes Back

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

Field-Marshal Helmuth von Moltke ¹

When the crews turned up for briefing on the morning of 25 July none knew what lay in store. For weeks now, unpredictable banks of cloud over northern Europe had prevented the USAAF planning any missions to Germany, and most of the men hoped it would stay that way – at least until they had finished their tours. Over the past month they had concentrated on targets in France and the Low Countries, mostly airfields and aircraft factories. Raids like this were the ‘milk runs’ that every airman hoped for when he attended a briefing: a relatively short trip across the English Channel, often with fighter escorts to keep him safe.

However, there were signs that things were about to change. A week ago some had been detailed to attack a synthetic-rubber factory in Hanover – a mission that had been called off at the last moment due to bad weather. Then, on the previous day, they had made their first trip to Norway – easily the furthest any of them had flown on a mission. There had been little or no opposition along the way, but that was not the point: the men were getting the message that nowhere in Europe was beyond them. So, as they gathered in the briefing rooms at their various bases that morning, there was tension in the air. They knew that it was only a matter of time before they were sent somewhere truly dangerous.

The ritual at briefing was pretty much the same as it was for the RAF. There was the same blackening of windows and locking of doors, and the same false bravado as the young men talked or joked away their nerves. And, just as in RAF briefings, all eyes were drawn to the large board at the end of the room, hidden behind a curtain. It showed the information they were all eager to receive: a map of Europe marked with a ribbon showing their route to the target and back.

When the men had taken their seats, and the windows had been covered, the briefing officer stepped on to the platform, and the room descended into an uneasy silence. Without ceremony, he pulled aside the curtains on the target map. Philip Dreiseszun, who attended the 381st BG briefing in Ridgewell, remembers this moment with particular clarity. ‘Then came the moment of revelation! The board cover was removed as we heard the words, “Gentlemen, the target for today is Hamburg!” A stunned silence gave way to utterances of dismay and alarm.’ ²

Nobody liked flying to targets in Germany, but today the crews had real cause for concern. They knew that Hamburg was one of the best-defended cities in Germany – they had been told so a month ago at their last briefing on that target. Those who had flown on that unfortunate mission knew what could go wrong – especially the men of the 379th BG, who had lost six crews that day. Even those who had not been around at the time had probably heard about it: it had been one of the USAAF’s most disastrous missions to date.

As the men shifted uncomfortably in their seats, the briefing officer outlined the strategy behind the day’s mission. The target for 379th, 303rd and 384th BGs was Blohm & Voss, the most important U-boat manufacturer in Germany. For the 91st, 351st and 381st BGs, the target was the Klöckner aero-engine factory. The Luftwaffe had been stepping up production of fighter planes in recent months, and it was imperative that the Allies should stop them – the lives of American airmen depended on it. ³

After his opening statement, the briefing officer outlined the specifics of the mission: the route they would be taking, the sort of weather they could expect and so on. But the information every man in the room was waiting to hear was what sort of opposition they should anticipate. Of course, when it came, the news was only what they expected. Fighter opposition would be fierce, so it was essential that all groups did their utmost to stay in tight formation. And the flak would be almost continuous from the moment they crossed the coast. The briefing officer was particularly clear on that, and told the men that Hamburg alone would have ninety-eight heavy AA guns trained on them. (As formidable as this sounded, there were actually at least three times more than that.) He advised the men to take evasive action wherever possible: ‘If you are able to observe the flashes of the AA guns,’ he said, ‘it will take the shell twenty to thirty seconds to reach you.’ That was the moment for the whole formation immediately to shift height and direction. ⁴

The men listened in silence, trying to take in the statistics and instructions. As one veteran from 384th BG remembers the dread in the room was almost palpable: ‘There was definitely an air of apprehension about this briefing. It’s always stuck in my mind that, after the target had been revealed, every navigator in the group prepared a course for the nearest friendly country. Sweden, I think it was, on this day.’ ⁵