The Forgotten 500 by Gregory A. Freeman Read Free Book Online Page B

vomit on the way down.
     
     
     
    A navigator like Orsini , Robert Wilson knew it was practically inevitable that he would be shot down eventually. He was a navigator on B-17 bombers, similar to B-24s, and he was specially trained in a new type of radar that enabled the Allies to bomb the Ploesti oil fields even when there was heavy cloud cover or smoke. Normally the bombing runs had to be delayed or cancelled when the cloud cover or smoke was too heavy or else the bombardiers would just be taking a wild guess at where they were dumping all that firepower. The Allies did not indiscriminately drop bombs, so the planes would divert to another target that they could see. The Germans knew this and installed giant smoke pots all around Ploesti, creating black clouds that effectively obscured the target on some days.
    But with the system Wilson used, the planes could still find their targets no matter how obscured they were. Wilson had grown up in Peoria, Illinois, and had completed one semester of college when, at age nineteen, he signed up for the air corps, attracted by the glamour of flying like so many others. And like many others, he was cut from pilot training. He went to navigation school instead and completed his training in December 1943. B-17 crews trained as a unit, but when Wilson’s crew graduated they didn’t immediately go to active duty like their classmates. Instead they were sent for secret training on the new equipment that required Wilson to be looking for the target on his equipment at the same the time the bombardier was looking for the target visually with the Norden bombsight. If the bombardier couldn’t see the target, Wilson released the bombs based on his readings.
    The radar system improved the effectiveness of the Ploesti bombing runs. However, the air force didn’t have many of these new units. There was only one in the region around Italy where Wilson was based, so it was used as much as possible. The other problem was that the one B-17 with that radar unit—and Wilson operating it—had to be at the front of the pack of bombers every time it flew. Normally, the many flight crews took turns as the lead plane because that was considered the most dangerous spot in the formation, and the pilots had to work much harder to manage the formation and get the bombers to the target. With enough crews rotating, nobody had to put themselves at the head of the pack too often. But when the mission depended on the radar unit finding the target, Wilson’s plane had to be at the front so it could drop its bombs first. Seeing the bombs away on Wilson’s plane was the signal for all the other bombers to drop theirs.
    When they got to their base in Italy to begin active duty, the rest of the crew that Wilson had trained with was assigned to another B-17 and they rotated through the front position like everyone else. But not Wilson. He was permanently attached to the one plane that housed the radar unit, and a different crew was slotted to fly that plane at the lead on every mission. For the other nine crew members onboard, it was just their unlucky day to be in the most dangerous position. For Wilson, it was every mission.
    In July 1944, with twenty missions under his belt already, Wilson was one of the more experienced fliers in his unit. But he knew that every time he climbed into the B-17 again, he was pressing his luck. How many times could he fly into danger, at the head of the formation, and make it back to the base? He found out on his twenty-first mission.
    It was July 15, 1944, and Wilson was making his third trip to Ploesti. As he had twenty times before, Wilson braced himself for the long, uncomfortable ride to the target—bundling up as the plane climbed into the high-altitude chill, donning his oxygen mask at twelve thousand feet and then a steel helmet and bulky, chafing flak vest as the plane neared the target. It was standard on these flights for each crew member to be extremely uncomfortable