December 10, 2009 

Mighty by Sacrifice: The Destruction of an American Bomber Squadron, August 29, 1944
By James L. Noles and James L. Noles Jr.
University of Alabama Press, 277 pages; $34.95

“Fighters coming up. Probably are friendly,” tail gunner Robert Donahue reported to pilot Bill Tune from his rear perch on a B-17 bomber dubbed Tail End Charlie. The assumption that the approaching aircraft were Allied fighter planes assigned to escort U.S. “Flying Fortress” bombers to their targets in Czechoslovakia on August 29, 1944, quickly proved incorrect. Speculation that the bombing raid would be a relatively easy mission—often known as a “milk run”—immediately disappeared. There were no Allied fighter planes to help the bombers defend themselves as the “friendly”

fighters opened fire on the 28 airplanes that comprised the 2nd Bombardment Group of the 15th Air Force.

The ensuing mayhem is described by Birmingham attorney, author, and former army helicopter pilot Jim Noles, and his father, retired army Brigadier General (and Vietnam veteran) Jim Noles Sr. in their thoroughly researched Mighty by Sacrifice. The book is a history of the lives and deaths of the crews of the 20th Squadron, one of four units that comprised the 2nd Bombardment Group. The 15th Air Force sent more than 500 aircraft into combat the day the 20th Squadron was decimated, with the majority attacking the Czech city of Moravska Ostrava. The 20th Squadron lost all seven of its B-17s on a raid of oil refineries and railway yards that August day.

The authors were inspired to write a history of the doomed squadron after Noles, Sr., learned that fellow Florence, Alabama, resident Bill Tune—originally from Carbon Hill—had a fascinating war story to tell. Tune, pilot of Tail End Charlie, along with the plane’s navigator, had self-published a booklet about the final mission. The Noles wanted to share more than the crews’ combat experience, though, revealing the background of crewmen in the 20th Squadron and their individual journeys that led them aboard B-17s fighting the Nazis. The result is a surprisingly honest portrayal of World War II vets not necessarily driven by patriotism, as many might assume, especially considering that the authors are veterans themselves.

The Noles relate the ever-present desire of American soldiers to get “duty to country” over with as soon as possible. (An aviator’s tour of duty was complete only after flying 50 combat missions, a leap from earlier requirements that required 25, then later 35 missions.) The group medical history, penned in June of 1944, noted that some men required psychotherapy to complete their quota.

Refreshingly for a World War II book, the authors share less than glorious portrayals of how spoiled many airmen were. The medical history offers a jaded, somewhat startling observation: “Combat crews often have to be treated with ‘kid gloves’; they expect much and at times their requests and complaints are unreasonable and selfish in the eyes of the ground personnel. The majority of those who fly combat have but one thing in mind and that is to fly their required number of missions and get back to the U.S. They protest any major or minor discomforts. They are the first to complain. They have been the ‘fair haired’ boys ever since they got their wings.”

The burnishing of war facts and figures is noted by the authors when writing of the “Combined Bomber Offensive,” the joint effort of U.S. and British air forces. Reports of “daylight precision bombing” were rather misleading.

“It was certainly daylight and it was certainly bombing, but it was hardly precise.” The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey’s postwar review found less than impressive results. “For every hundred bombs dropped against such targets, one hit an oil pipeline, two hit production facilities, two failed to explode, three hit decoy plants, eight landed in open terrain inside the target area, and eighty-four missed the target altogether.”

By 1944, Allied escort fighters were no longer flying close to bomber squadrons because flying with the slow-moving bombers allowed the Germans to decide when and where to attack. The AAF’s new tactic sent fighters ahead of a bombing unit so that the Allies could either pick off or delay Luftwaffe fighter planes as they became airborne or before they could assemble as a group in the sky. The process was called “clearing the air.” The problem with that scheme, however, was that it left bombers vulnerable. The day the 20th Squadron lost all its bombers, the 306th Allied Fighter Wing was miles ahead, looking for Nazi fighters.

Riveting accounts of frightened yet determined young men make Mighty by Sacrifice a dramatic read that complements the book’s historical aspect. The authors interviewed Bill Tune (and other survivors of the 20th Squadron), who confessed the fear involved in learning to fly an airplane. Tune, for example, flew his initial solo mission in a P-17 biplane a mere eight hours after his first lesson in that World War I-era fighter.

Of the crewmen in the squadron, 40 were killed the day all the bombers were lost, and 46 survivors were captured and remained POWs for the final year of the war. Four escaped capture, including Tail End Charlie tail gunner Robert Donahue. Donahue was changing from his awkward leather flight boots into his army brogans when he received the order to bail out of the plane, parachuting to Earth in his sock feet. He ran from would-be captors and hid in dense brush, so terrified that he “thought for sure they could hear my heart pounding,” he later said. A Czech couple sympathetic to the Allies picked him up in their horse-drawn wagon and carried him to a nearby town. Donahue was outfitted in a Slovak soldier’s uniform, which allowed him to freely continue his escape with a simple salute whenever he encountered the enemy. He ended up in the home of an elderly couple working with the Czech resistance. The next day, he continued his trip to freedom, only later learning that the elderly couple who had given him refuge for the night had been shot by German soldiers after their sanctuary for anti-Nazi Slovak rebels had been discovered.

Tune, originally a B-24 pilot, had no choice but to learn to fly quickly. His first combat mission was also his first time piloting a B-17 bomber because there was no time for non-combat training flights. The bombing raid that destroyed the 20th Squadron was Tune’s 48th mission. His escape from his damaged plane is among the most dramatic anecdotes in the book. Rendered unconscious either by an enemy shell or lack of oxygen, Tune appeared doomed. Two crewmen shoved his unconscious body from the aircraft. “Caught in the slipstream, Tune’s limp body flew back and smacked into the ball turret, breaking his leg. He bounced off the bomber and tumbled earthward.”

The reader might find it odd that a crew would shove an unconscious comrade out of an airplane. In an interview, Jim Noles, Jr., admitted curiosity about such: “The same thought crossed my mind and I never could get to the bottom of that. I don’t think that you could physically jump with somebody and exit the plane and pull the rip cord for them. Throwing him out and hoping for the best might sound sort of harsh but in that situation, with the plane on fire and people just trying to get out, they knew he would stand no chance of surviving if he remained in the plane.”

The authors know how to tell an exciting story, leaving the reader with the image of an unconscious Bill Tune plunging to his death before eventually picking up the pilot’s freefall two chapters later, when Tune regained consciousness 6,000 feet above Czechoslovakia. Yes, he finally got his parachute open and lived to tell of his adventure. &