The Experience I'll Never Forget

By BRIG; GEN. ROBERT M. STILLMAN, as told to William J. Barber

Not too long ago, I was in the officers� Club at Mac Dill A. F. Base Tampa, Fla., and seated beside me were three officers whom I didn't know. I couldn't help but overhear their conversation, which concerned sensational low-level flying stunts.

"At the Cleveland air races I saw a guy pick a handkerchief up off the ground with a hook on the end of one of his wings," one of them said. "When we were out In the Pacific," said another, "there was a character In our Croup who liked to skim the foam off the waves with his landing gear."

The third one said, "A pal of mine In the RAF used to fly along the Thames going over and under the bridges as if he were lacing them together. I'll never see that topped."

I just couldn't resist this opening. "Excuse me, gentlemen," I said, "but I did something with a B-26 once that might interest you. I flew her upside. down over a Dutch beach and drew a line In the sand with my radio antenna"

The three looked at me In silence for a minute, then carefully turned their backs and went on conversing among themselves, quietly this time, so the strange madman couldn't eavesdrop and interrupt again.

Of course it didn't happen that antenna-in-the. sand business exactly as I'd told them about it. It most certainly didn't happen on purpose. I sat there at the bar and did the rest of my reminiscing all by myself....

First I thought about the B-26, the Marauder. Back on Jan. 25, 1939, the army called for a plane which would travel at a fighter's speed, carry a maximum bomb load, and fly at 20- to 30,000 feet altitude for 3,000 miles without refueling. The following July, the Glenn L. Martin people won the assignment to build such a ship. Europe was on the eve of war. Wisdom dictated that we be prepared, and as quickly as possible. There wasn't time for Martin to make a test model B-26�as soon as they'd received the go sign they'd gone to work on a production line basis. The first of these aircraft was flown Nov., 1940. France had fallen and Britain's back was to the wall. The radical new bombers crept to completion with agonizing slowness, and deliveries began Feb., 1941.

All this haste didn't help the B.26's reputation. She handled differently took lots of runway to become airborne, plenty of revs to stay aloft, and landed frighteningly fast.

The B-26 was Involved In many a training crash. In all fairness, this happened because she was different kind of airplane - strange to green flight crews, strange to her mechanics. And then we were in the war with her.

Marauders were employed first In the Pacific for deck-level flying with fair success, but, when employed similarly In the Mediterranean, losses were heavy. This was a costly kind of bombing, this tree top stuff but it had to be tried..

That was the score when, as a lieutenant colonel. I took command of the 322nd Bomb Croup at Rougham, Bury St. Edmunds, England, in April '43. Col. Glenn C. Nye, who believed In the Marauders, trained our Group In ground-skimming tactics. Thanks to him, the boys had overcome most of their very reasonable fears. But we all were green. We had yet to try this grass-cutting business over enemy territory.

Friday, May 14, we made the first American medium-bomber strike ever attempted against German held Europe. The target was a Dutch power plant at Ijmuiden strategically Important because, among other things, it supplied the juice which operated the great locks of a large submarine pen.

Our 12 planes took oft at 0900 hours (9 a.m.). I was flying No. 4 position. Visibility was excellent We droned over a fishing fleet so low you felt you could lean out of the airplane and pat the sailors on their heads. We continued on almost to Amsterdam before we swung northeast. We were forbidden to shoot at any civilian structure, but the enemy, not so restrained, was trying to hit us from every dwelling we roared by. The Group was traveling extremely low, enough In many instances to be fired down upon from church steeples and the windows of buildings.

We followed a railroad track to the power plant then banked left. I triggered our 500.pounders to skip them right through the wall of the target Promptly at 1100 hours I saw the bombs go in and turned my '26 with the rest to make the last run for home plate. So far, so good, I thought. Now If we just can get the Group back to England without losing anybody. Flak dirtied the sky. Despite the 250 mph we were making. we seemed to loaf along. Though we'd stayed below the enemy's radar screen, every German and his brother on our return route apparently had been alerted, and was out to knock us down. The wide blue was alive with flying metal and not all of It missed us.

Finally we were safe over our own bailiwick. As I put my airplane down, I had a surging sensation of relief and satisfaction. The big Ijmuiden plant. I felt sure, must be one huge outsized hole in the ground now, the way we'd poured our delayed-action bombs into it.

But In no mission of this sort could we expect to get off unhurt. As the B-26's landed medics and ambulances helped the crews disembark We'd been bloodied. All but one of the planes had been damaged to a greater or lesser degree by flak. Captain Maynard limped his '26 In over England and ordered his boys to ball out. Five 'chutes puffed open to float them safely to earth. Maynard himself didn't make It.

The brass got together to evaluate the raid. Brig. Gen. Francis M. Brady, who'd gone along as observer, summarized the mission as "well planned well done. "The next evening, - Saturday, the 322nd Bomb Group threw a party. We didn't dare let ourselves grieve over the injured and the lost. We had to tell, ourselves we were a success. Congratulations came in from 8th Bomber Command and 8th Air Force.

The next morning, Sunday, General Brady called me. "Bad news, Stillman," he said. "We missed the target. "I couldn't believe my cars. "What do you mean, sir?" I said hotly. 'You were there. You saw the bombs go in." "The damn' power plant is still standing," he said doggedly. "We must have missed.'

A meeting was called. Brady, Col. Russell L. Maugham, chief of staff: Col. Millard Lewis,, A-4; and Col. Harold Huglin A-3, were there. We didn't, have reconnaissance photos, but Intelligence was firm on the incredible point that the infernal building at Ijmuiden was intact. "It must have been those slow fuses we used, � I told them. "Those 20 minute fuses gave the enemy time to haul the bombs out before they blew." It was our humanitarian agreement with the nations held captive by the Germans that we'd use delayed-action explosives to allow their people, our allies, time to escape.

"Anyway, you know what this means," Brady said. "We've got to hit It again."

I was outraged. "Not with 20.minute stuff," I said, banging the table. "Why should we go out there, and duplicate a costly error? That's stupid. You know it's stupid!"

Brady agreed that the sensible way to knock out the expensive objective was to include some "short - fuse" bombs in with the 20 minute delays. The others agreed I asked them pointedly, one by one. "But," the general said, looking at me steadily, "that would be In violation of our agreement with The Netherlands. I doubt very much if we'll be allowed to do that. And the order is to hit the target tomorrow."

I pleaded for a photo mission to be run first so we could see what had gone wrong. It seemed too fantastic that the Germans could have got rid of the bombs I knew had entered the power plant. Brady shook his head, then said. "Well, I'll talk to General Longfellow, but! . . .

He got the general on the phone and pitched against the proposed mission, against delay bombs and for a photo reconnaissance. Meanwhile I'd thrown military courtesy to the winds. I kept tossing in arguments from the sidelines. urging Brady to make this point or that. Brady was a very patient man, as I look back on it. And he was on my side. However. I could see that we'd lost in that appeal to General Longworth. When Brady rang off, he turned to me and said, grimly, "The raid goes as stated in the morning. It dovetails with a lot of other plans the Command refuses to upset." "Sir," I said, "I won't ask the 322nd to do it" It was a tough moment. I could sense that the rest of the officers sympathized with my point of view, as did Brady. But none of us was surprised when he said the only thing he could say:

"You'll send'em in or another commander will." I told him that I'd run the mission.

I decided to pilot the lead plane myself. Then I learned we were to have two targets instead of one we were to hit!: not only Ijmuiden but a similar installation at Haarlem. I proposed to divide the group into two flights of six planes each We'd set out together. At the right second half the outfit would peel off for the new objective. Each flight would hightail it for home when its job was dune.

As we were working out strategy on the sand table at the briefing early Monday morning word came that we would be short one aircraft. Finally In the fair morning light we jeep to our planes. Seconds later the twin engines of our 11 Marauders were whining over and coughing into rackety life. We took off low and fast in two plane patterns and headed nut over the sea.

We maintained radio silence The Idea was to make time below. the German radar screen; scramble under the circus tent before the cop saw you. There was some haze. I liked that.

As the Dutch coast raced towards us at around 210 mph I saw a lot of bright flashes of light Suddenly the water was leaping Up in great geysers.

Somehow the German artillery knew of our approach They were deliberately shelling the sea hoping to knock us down with the resultant columns of water which reached higher than we were.

I couldn't understand how they'd got onto us. I signaled "spread out" with my wings and moved the pace up to 235 mph. About 5 miles northeast of The Hague, we started inland over the rolling coastal dunes... right into a blazing spray of machine gun fire. The nests were well concealed along the higher ground beyond. Tracers from three locations stabbed at my plane. I used the elevators and rudder to bring our .50's in the wings to bear and one of the guns on the right side stopped firing. The radio gunner T/Sgt Clyde D. Willis turned back to reject the dead shell and he just slumped to the floor. I said to my co-pilot there goes our radio man. It was not too long that the co-pilot Lt. E. J. Resweber slumped over. I triggered off a hot answer. I think I stopped two enemy guns. but the third one over at 11 o�clock stopped us.

Something knocked me out for a couple seconds. As I fought back to consciousness, the Marauder went out of control - I had no rudder the wheel no longer brought any responses from the elevators. My co-pilot Lt. E. J. Resweber, was slumped down next to me. Dimly I realized the plane, quite on its own was going into a snap roll.

I looked out my window straight down at the speeding earth beside me. Everything was happening so fast everything seemed so unreal that I felt no fear. The odd conceit glimmered in my mind that; the Air Corps was losing a damn' good crew and two damn' good pilots.

I don't remember our hitting the beach but it must have been something to see. Eyewitnesses filled me in later: Almost level with the earth upside down and doing 300 mph we crashed and cut a screaming, bounding furrow In Holland.

When I awakened It was only for a hazy instant. I was on a stretcher, being carried out of some sort of dugout. A grizzled, snaggle-toothed face, topped by a Kraut helmet, bent over me. "For you the vor iss over, yah?"" It said. I blacked out again. Late that afternoon I came to in a hospital. There were ten beds in the white. walled room all of them occupied.

Lt. Tony Alaimo, one of the 332nd's pilots, was there. I was still too groggy to be surprised. "How are you, Colonel'" he asked. "All right," I said.. "Where are we?"

"Wilhelmina Gasthius. It's a Luftwaffe hospital In Amsterdam." Eight of the men in the room, counting myself, were survivors of our Ill- starred raid. The other two were English airmen, prisoner-patients like us I was taped up stiff as a board. I learned from the doctor that three of my ribs were broken, as was my left hand. I had a pair of black eyes and my left cheekbone was cracked. Both my legs were cut up somewhat, and the right one had a hole in it. I didn't hurt except Inside. "What a mighty blow you struck for your country," I told myself. One of the boys in the room, I learned, was Clyde D. Willis my Radio Gunner. We hadn't had time to become acquainted before our disastrous mission, but, it seemed to me, if I were reading his reproachful actions correctly, that he'd never forgive me for getting us clobbered. All told, we were In the hospital five days.

We were sent to Dulag Luft, a German Interrogation center, for questioning after that, and eventually I wound up at Stalag Luft III first of a series of prison camps In which I spent the remainder of the war. At Stalag Luft III, I bumped Into Lt. Col. W.- R. Purinton, who'd led the Haarlem bound wing of our sorry raid. "My God " he said, thunderstruck. "I reported you and your crew as dead. I saw you crash." Nine of us officers on the mission were prisoners there together, and gradually we figured out what had happened. My plane had gone down first. As was proper, the next pilot tried to move up into the lead spot I'd left empty, but tragically the ship that had been on my wing changed- position just then. The pair collided. There was a terrific explosion and the flying fragments of the two Marauders struck down a third one.

After that only two ships out of my flight of six were still In business. They, in the horrible confusion of the moment, missed Ijmuiden, reached Amsterdam and were knocked out of the sky by heavy flak. Purinton led the four surviving bombers In a desperate run to blast the power plant. All of them were knocked out of the air, two by German fighters.

I finally learned the answer to the question that had bothered me so long How did the Germans know we were coming? What prepared them for our raid? We'd set out, as I said, with 11 planes flying fast and low, under the Kraut radar beams. Unbeknownst to me because I was up front and because we were maintaining radio silence, one of the B.26's had trouble and so headed for home. Its pilot presumed we'd seen him turn back. In training school we'd had It dinned into our heads that, when something's wrong with your aircraft you get yourself some altitude quick for emergency gliding purposes.

That's what our colleague did he climbed to a thousand feet. In so doing he blipped the German radar and the enemy was on to us at once. I was rescued from prison In April, 1945. (Oh, we all had tried to escape several times, I got away once but the Germans picked me up again.) After Patton's boys came along and released us, I got the score on our crazy raid: We'd started out with 30 officers and 30 enlisted men. Of that number, 10 officers and 12 airmen survived That's a 60 per cent loss but to this day I'm amazed that 40 per cent of us made It. And as for our target, the power plant at Ijmuiden well, the 322nd avenged us tidily on March 26, 1944. Eighteen of the "old boys" who'd been on the first frustrating effort were In the lead of an armada of 350 B-26 Marauders. They set out that' day to plaster the sub. marine pen Into a mud puddle. They bombed It with 1,000 pounders - 600 tons worth - from a sensible altitude of 12,000 feet. Just for old time's sake, Maj.. Louis J. Sebille saved one bomb and, after the pens were no more, he tooled on over to the power plant and he and his crew took care of it for us all by themselves.

So this is what I would have told those three gentlemen in the Officers Club at Mac Dill Air Force Base, If they'd just let me explain why I flew my B'26 upside down and drew a line with the antenna In the Dutch sand.. ~ ~ ~