dispersed
them with jungles of flak and lured them to bomb phony target flares ten
miles away on a barren beach. Next time the pathfinders dropped flares in
the flak sites to guide oncoming B-24 trains with Norden bombsights. The
glare was too intense for the U.S. bombardiers, who once again hit the
false Benghazi. During a subsequent night raid Appold decided to pull
a counter-ambush on the flak men. He went over at 20,000 feet. Shells
ranged toward him and the Germans lighted the mock target. But Appold
dropped no flares. He crossed Benghazi, turned and deliberately flew
back over it, bringing more ground guns into action. On the third
pass every muzzle on the grounds was belching brightly, revealing the
complete geography of the antiaircraft positions, nicely picked out in
the dark. Appold flipped into a steep dive to 12,000 feet, throwing off
the fuse settings of the German shells, and distributed three tons of
high explosive and antipersonnel bombs on the exposed flak guns. After
that the Germans could not break the bomber array. The Allies took the
upper hand and systematicaily reduced the defenses.
From Bucharest, General Gerstenberg watched the enemy bomber bases
marching west in Africa. At Benghazi the Liberators were nearly 200 miles
closer to Ploesti than they had been in Egypt. The Protector also noted
Italian reports of higher, faster B-24's, whose markings revealed a new
bomb group operating from Benghazi. This was the 98th, the Pyramiders,
led by a sulphurous Texan, John Riley Kane, whose name began appearing in
Luftwaffe intelligence summaries as "Killer" Kane. He had come to fight,
loud on the intercom and hard on the power settings. "Every bomb on the
Axis!" Kane preached to his troops. Once he took the Pyramiders over
an Afrika Korps objective with his tail and top turret guns jammed.
He missed the bomb heading during spirited Messerschmitt attacks, and
went back over the target, calling on the open radio for his planes
to follow. The German pilots got on his frequency and drowned Kane's
commands with taunts. Kane yelled, "Get the goddamn hell off the air,
you bastards!" The Messerschmitt boys shut up, Kane bombed, and dodged
through them to get home safely.
Then Gerstenberg noted still another new group of Liberators entering
Mediterranean combat. Unlike Mickey McGuire's and Killer Kane's tawny
desert-camouflaged ships, these planes wore green and loam colors,
and they flew tight formation with well-disciplined gunners. This was
the 93rd Bomb Group out of England on temporary loan to the desert
forces. It was called Ted's Traveling Circus, after its commander,
Colonel Edward J. Timberlake, a West Pointer with a nose bent playing
football on the Plain. Timberlake was a ruggedly built, easygoing blond,
a style setter and an elegant manager of men. He spoke his own argot;
if he called a man "a good Joe," that man was in. "A joker" was out.
At this augmentation of enemy air power, Gerstenberg sent to Goering
for more men, guns and planes to defend Ploesti. He got a first-class
reinforcement, including an outstanding airman, Colonel Bernhard
Woldenga of Hamburg, who became Romanian fighter controller. Trim,
blue-eyed Woldenga was a former master mariner of the Hamburg-Amerika
Steamship Line. In the 1920's Hamburg-Amerika planned its own airline and
trained a half dozen of its ship captains, including Woldenga, as air
pilots. He joined the Luftwaffe in the mid-thirties, and after Hitler
marched in 1939, flew both bombers and fighters in Poland, Britain,
Greece and Russia. Gerstenberg especially welcomed Colonel Woldenga,
who came straight from eight months in North Africa managing fighters
against the B-24's of McGuire, Kane and Timberlake.
The quality of the enlisted technicians in Gerstenberg's new draft was
evidenced by Willi Nowicki, Waffenwart , or armament warden, in the
614th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion, which