Part 6 (1/2)

When you were on missions you had no time to think. ”You're so busy handling that plane and staying in formation and watching the fuel supply - making sure the gauges are not giving any trouble - that it really kept you occupied. You had to keep all four of those engines working, synchronized, proper oil pressure, temperature, and keeping that big bomber in formation at all times - you had about all you could handle. In a sense the pilot was insulated from the war. You had a perfect view of the flak - you could see the puffs out in front of you, the flashes of red and black. You could feel the plane shudder better than anyone else. So you knew there was a war going on but you had only an indirect relations.h.i.+p to what was being done by the bomber-you couldn't see the target and you were 25,000 feet away from the action on the ground. There was the explosion of the flak sh.e.l.ls all around you, but you had no weapon to shoot back with and you didn't have the toggle switch. You didn't have the navigator's view of where you were going.”

Recalling his mission over Vienna on February 21, McGovern said that until then he had felt ”a sort of nagging and anxiety on takeoffs and turbulent air and hoping that all the mechanics were working right.

But on that day everything seemed to go smoothly - and it just dawned on me that I had largely overcome any fear that I had previously had about flying.”5 As Cooper had remarked, and as every crew member of theDakota Queen later testified, McGovern was a serious, mature officer. The responsibilities he carried on every mission - for that big, expensive plane, for getting it over the target tightly packed into the formation, for the lives of his crew - were much bigger and more serious than twenty-two-year-old men ever carry in civilian life. But there was a war on, and those were his responsibilities. Lt. Cmdr. Edgar D. Hoagland, USNR, a PT boat skipper and later commander of a squadron of PT boats at an age when he should have been going to college, spoke for all pilots, infantry company and platoon leaders, and naval skippers when he wrote in his war memoir, ”A destroyer of anxiety and fear is the fierce, overwhelming desire to take care of your men. The more responsibility you have in a combat situation, the easier it is to remain cool and resolute. . . . Fear is more than balanced out by the exhilaration of danger, which puts every sense on full alert and makes you feel supremely alive.

Then, after conquering a dangerous situation, you are left fulfilled and confident beyond description.”6 Eleanor was due to have her baby in mid-March. McGovern wrote her, and she him, every day. But it took more than a week for the letters to be delivered. On March 14, McGovern and his crew were awakened at 4:00 A.M. The stars were out. It promised to be a clear, bright day. After breakfast, they walked over to the briefing room and joined about 300 other airmen to sit on the planks laid across cinder blocks. The target that was marked this time was Vienna. The alternate target, also marked, was Wiener Neustadt. If Vienna was clear, the bombs should be dropped on an oil refinery. If it was not and Wiener Neustadt became the choice, the target was marshaling yards. The weather officer took over. He described the likely conditions between Cerignola and Vienna and what to expect over the target. He said there could be a storm over the city or on the way to it, and the clouds might build too high for the formation to fly over them. If that proved to be the case, the alternate would be bombed. He thought the weather conditions over Wiener Neustadt might be better. He described the weather conditions to 96 expect on the way home. Another officer mounted the platform to tell the airmen what they were going after and why. He explained the need to hit the refineries or, if necessary, the marshaling yards. If it was Vienna, he told them to stay well away from St. Steven's Cathedral, the Opera House, the Palace and other historic buildings, and schools.* At Wiener Neustadt, the marshaling yards carried north-south rail traffic moving to Munich, Vienna, or elsewhere. Group commander Col. William Snowden would lead the mission, which was about the first piece of news that morning that pleased everyone. The last briefing was on how to form up. At the hard stand, McGovern inspected his plane as his crew got in. Then he pulled himself up and climbed into the pilot's seat. TheDakota Queen taxied, took off, began to climb and circle over the Adriatic, and after an hour of flying, having reached 20,000 feet, got into formation.

There were forty-two B-24s, twenty-one from the 455th Bomb Group, twenty-one from the 454th.

They flew as squadrons, seven planes in each, in a diamond formation. They set off for Vienna, still gaining alt.i.tude, to 25,000 feet. The day was clear until the formation started to approach Vienna, but over the city the weather had built up into a storm and Colonel Snowden decided it was too dangerous to risk losing his bombers when he couldn't see the target, which also added the additional hazard of possibly hitting the monuments in the city, or schools and hospitals. He began a slow, 180-degree turn toward the alternate. That made every pilot and his crew following Snowden happy - Vienna, as usual, meant heavy and accurate flak, while there would be none at Wiener Neustadt. There was some cloud cover at Wiener Neustadt but Snowden's radar could pick up the marshaling yards. Everyone dropped their bombs right after he did, and the formation turned for home. It would be a milk run. But in the middle of the turn, Sergeant Higgins called up to Lieutenant McGovern on the intercom. The last of the ten 500-pound bombs they were carrying had lodged in the bomb rack. McGovern thought about it for a minute. Landing theDakota Queen in that situation would be suicide. ”Well look, we can't land this way with a live bomb in the rack. Either you guys gotta get rid of the bomb or we're going to have to bail out when we get back within reasonable distance of Cerignola. I'm not going to take this bomber down with a bomb in the rack.” The crew left the bomb bay doors open and Sergeant McAfee and Lieutenant Cooper went to work, trying to trigger the little steel catches on each end of the bomb, hoping to pry them open so the bomb would drop. McGovern remembered: ”It was scary as h.e.l.l. If the plane suddenly made a lunge when the 500-pound bomb dropped . . .”

McAfee and Cooper were doing their work standing on the cat-walk, less than a foot wide, hanging in the center of the bomb bay. McGovern looked behind him to see how they were doing, ”but about all I could see was the top of their heads and their backs.”7 The danger was acute. McGovern had heard the story told by Sgt. Art Applin, a tail gunner on a B-24. Once after turning away from a mission over Munich, Applin had seen a Liberator on his wing. The bomb bay doors were open. As Applin related, ”One of the crew was standing right at the end of the catwalk relieving himself out of the bomb bay and an 88 sh.e.l.l exploded below him and it cracked the cat-walk and he fell out. When he did, the heel of his foot got caught in this crack and I saw him dangling there and I called the pilot on the intercom. I couldn't communicate with the plane on the wing but our pilot could. I told him about the situation and he called the pilot on the other plane and his crew pulled the fellow in. Naturally he didn't have his parachute on.

He was lucky he made it that day.”8 As McAfee and Cooper labored, McGovern throttled back to slow down theDakota Queen and they began to lose alt.i.tude. ”I didn't want to drop a bomb in front of other airplanes,” he explained. ”Also, I wanted to give McAfee and Cooper undivided time. I didn't know how long it would take to get rid of the bomb. Keep in mind that I had to know all this stuff to survive.

Whereas the other guys, their feeling was, 'George will take care of us.'” TheDakota Queen descended to 12,000 feet, several thousand feet below the formation, which was pulling ahead in any case. Then Cooper yelled something ”and all of a sudden the plane jumped and I knew the bomb had been cut loose.” They were approaching the Austrian-Italian border. McGovern watched the bomb descend, ”a luxury you didn't have at 25,000 feet. It went down and hit right on a farm in that beautiful, green part of Austria. It was almost like a mushroom, a big, gigantic mushroom. It just withered the house, the barn, the chicken house, the water tank.Everything was just leveled. It couldn't have come in more perfectly. If we had been trying to hit it we couldn't have hit it as square. You could see stuff flying through the air and 97 a cloud of black smoke.”9 Sergeant Higgins watched the bomb descend. He commented, ”It just blew that farm to smithereens. We didn't mean to do that, we certainly didn't try to do that.”10 McGovern glanced at his watch. It was high noon. He came from South Dakota. He knew what time farmers eat. ”I got a sickening feeling. Here was this peaceful area. They thought they were safely out of the war zone.

Nothing there, no city, no railyard, nothing. Just a peaceful farmyard. Had nothing to do with the war, just a family eating a noon meal. It made me sick to my stomach.”11 Navigator Lt. Roland Pepin had a similar experience. On a bombing run over Munich, the last bomb in his plane got stuck. ”We were on our return, flying over the Alps. The crew chief and the bombardier were successful in releasing the bomb. I viewed it descending and watched in horror as it landed in the center of a small village and destroyed it. It was a Sunday, midmorning, and I could not help but feel the deepest remorse and shameful guilt for the people of the village. Following this mishap, I couldn't sleep. I was in a stupor and couldn't get these innocent people out of my mind. I was cracking up and didn't know it. My pilot, Lieutenant Barnhill, ordered me to drink about half a bottle of whiskey. I pa.s.sed out and slept for eighteen hours. Other members of the crew felt as I did. We were all getting jumpy and tired. The surgeon ordered us to take ten days off on the Isle of Capri.”12 After the bomb fell, McGovern closed the bomb bay doors and headed home. On the intercom, he and Cooper talked. McGovern asked, ”What's the highest elevation between here and where we are going?”

Cooper looked at his map, did his calculations, and replied, ”Eight thousand feet, George. Eight thousand feet.” In an interview, he admitted, ”Actually it was only 7,000 feet, but I added another 1,000 feet because I was engaged to get married.” Cooper grinned, then added, ”As George was expecting his first child, he added another 1,000 feet on top of that.”13 Back at Cerignola, it was an easy landing.

There had been no flak on the milk run over Wiener Neustadt. There was not even a scratch on theDakota Queen. No one had been hurt. McGovern jumped into a truck and rode over to the debriefing area, where the Red Cross women gave him coffee and a doughnut. An intelligence officer came running up to him - the same officer who had handed him a cable back in December that told him his father had died. This time, however, the officer was grinning from ear to ear. As he handed a cable to McGovern, he said, ”Congratulations, Daddy, you now have a baby daughter.” The cable was from Eleanor. Their first baby, whom she named Ann Marion, had been born four days before, on March 10, in the Mitch.e.l.l Methodist Hospital. Eleanor concluded the cable, ”Child doing well. Love, Eleanor.” ”I was just ecstatic,” McGovern said. ”Jubilant.” But then he thought, Eleanor and I have brought a new child into the world today - at least I learned about it today - and I probably killed somebody else's kids right at lunchtime. h.e.l.l, why did that bomb have to hit there?

He went over to the officers club and had a drink - cheap red wine. He was toasted and cheered. But, he later said, ”It really did make me feel different for the rest of the war. Now I was a father, I had not only a wife back home but a little girl, all the more reason why I wanted to get home and see that child.”

He returned to his tent and wrote Eleanor a long letter. He did not mention the farmhouse, but he couldn't get it out of his mind. ”That thing stayed with me for years and years. If I thought about the war almost invariably I would think about that farm.”14 Two days after the mission to Wiener Neustadt, theDakota Queen flew again with the 455th, accompanied by the 454th. The primary target was weathered in so the Liberators dropped their bombs on the marshaling yards at Amstetten, Austria. The lead bomber, using its radar and flying out in front and a bit above theDakota Queen, dropped its bombs.

Cooper, acting as bombardier as well as navigator, tried to toggle his bombs so that they would strike in the same place. But the bombs were stuck. Cooper went to work and managed to free them, but by the time he toggled the eggs on theDakota Queen it had flown over the river. The bombs landed on the other side. At the debriefing, Cooper told what had happened and why. He was informed that the bombs had dropped on a prisoner of war camp. Cooper and McGovern were devastated. There were American soldiers in the camp. For some months thereafter just thinking about it brought tears to Cooper's eyes.

But in 1946, when Cooper was going to graduate school at Texas A&M, he met an Army Air Forces officer who had been a prisoner in the camp. They got to talking about the incident, and the former POW 98 said, ”I was there, and when you dropped those bombs one hit the fence, it opened it up and in all the confusion some of us got away and managed to join the Russians.”15 Three days later McGovern and his crew flew again. The target was the marshaling yards at Muhldorf, Germany. The group dropped over 116 tons of bombs, with good results - over 55 percent fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming point.

There was no flak. On March 21 it was back up into the sky - the third day in a row for the group, McGovern's second mission in three days. Some ninety-four tons of bombs were dropped, with outstanding accuracy-over 87 percent fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming point.

The following day, March 22, it was up again, target the oil refinery at Kralupy, Czechoslovakia - the group being escorted by P-51s. The formation got to within 125 miles of Berlin. The next day Cooper described what had happened in a note home. It had been a long mission, he said, altogether taking eight hours and twenty minutes after spending an hour forming up. ”When we got back to the place we could come down from alt.i.tude,” he wrote, ”we had been on oxygen for four and a half hours and our supply was almost exhausted. There wasn't any real danger because any time Mac wants to come down from alt.i.tude, I know the area well enough I can bring him around all the flak. Funny - he doesn't worry when I'm navigating and I never worry when he's the pilot. Several times he's proved what a cool-headed and superior pilot he is.”16 On March 25 the group took off for its seventh straight day of flying missions - theDakota Queen was there, McGovern's fifth flight since March 16. It was his twenty-sixth mission, five ahead of the crew. The target was a tank factory in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Thirty-six Liberators dropped ninety-six tons of bombs, with good results. Flak was moderate but accurate - three aircraft were hit but managed to get back to Cerignola. Cooper wrote, ”After yesterday's mission, Mac said he was lucky he got me and trusts me - doesn't worry when I'm with him. I feel the same way about him so we make a good team. I put him in for the DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross] for a couple of planes he's brought back safe.”

That didn't work, as McGovern already had a DFC.17 On March 31, Cooper was relaxing in the officers club, sitting in an easy chair, daydreaming. Another officer came in and told him, ”Congratulations.” He had just won a $500 war bond. He explained to his mother that it came as a result of an Easter drive drawing: ”Each member of the squadron selected a number between 1 and 375 and paid a dollar. I selected the number of the plane that has been damaged a couple of times and brought Mac and Crew home safely.” It was the last three numbers of the serial number of the bomber, 279. ”I hope the luck holds as well in the air as it did on the ground.”18 March was over. The group had flown twenty-six missions, putting 719 aircraft over the target areas, and dropped 1,376 tons of bombs. No enemy fighters had been seen, but two aircraft had been shot down by flak. In addition, six crew members had been severely wounded while three others had minor wounds.

The group's history commented, ”The concentration of flak around the major targets seemed to be increasing as the Germans appeared to be 'circling their wagons' for the final attacks.”19 *A few decades later, McGovern was in Vienna and visited St. Steven's. It had taken some damage from high explosives. But he was certain that no American bombs had hit it and was relieved when he discovered that it had been hit by Russian artillery.

CHAPTER ELEVEN - Linz: The Last Mission.

April 1945 ON APRIL 1, APRIL FOOL'S DAY, theDakota Queen flew a mission to Kreglach, Austria, to bomb the railroad bridge there. Some twenty-seven B-24s dropped seventy-eight tons of bombs, but could not see the results because of smoke in the target area. It was a milk run - no flak, no jets, no other enemy fighters. All planes returned safely. McGovern and his crew stood down for the next ten days. On April 11 they flew again. The target was the railroad bridge at Ponte Gardena, Italy, but the 741st Squadron, plus two others, turned away because of cloud cover and instead went after the alternate target, the fuel depot at Goito, Italy. Flak was moderate, although one Liberator got hit badly enough that the controls were damaged to such an extent that the pilot took the plane to Switzerland. McGovern and the others got back to Cerignola. The 455th flew eleven missions in the first twelve days of April, but none on April 13. McGovern was at the officers club that day. He recalled that the deputy squadron commander, Capt.

Andrew Gramm, came into the club to announce, ”d.a.m.n, you're not going to believe what just happened - the big guy died - Franklin Roosevelt, our commander in chief died. The war is over. The war is lost.”

The other officers, although they were shocked, thought Gramm was overreacting in saying the war was lost. They consoled him and finally convinced him that the war was not lost. Gramm, who was a heavy drinker anyway, took a few good belts to ease the pain of Roosevelt's death.

After the liquor had begun to do its work, Gramm climbed up on the bar, which was about four feet high. He was a big man, weighed about 225 pounds. Standing on the bar, he said, ”Now you guys catch me.” He closed his eyes and fell forward. ”He didn't know if the others were going to catch him or not but he didn't seem to care,” McGovern said. ”But they did - three or four guys did - practically broke their backs trying to. He repeated that four or five times. Finally a guy says, 'Look we're not going to do that again. We've had enough of this. You may not have to fly tomorrow but we do.'” McGovern added that he remembered the incident vividly ”because it just struck me about how close we really were. Here we were 3,000 miles from home and yet the death of Roosevelt hit that group of men awfully hard. They weren't particularly political - it's just that they hadn't known any other president.”1 McGovern flew again on April 15, then again on April 16, 17, and 18 - four missions in four days. By this time the marshaling yards and oil refineries had been hit so often, and so effectively, that they were no longer the primary targets. Instead the Liberators partic.i.p.ated in the drive up the Italian peninsula by engaging in tactical bombing, that is, giving direct and indirect support to the ground troops. The technique was to drop the bombs just ahead of the American troop lines, or to hit bridges to stop enemy ground transportation. Rather than the usual 500- or 1,000-pound bombs, the planes carried 250-pound general purpose bombs.

At the briefings, McGovern said, the officer in command would tell them that the campaign was being coordinated with the American ground forces. ”We were told to fly until we were directly over the cutting edge of the American forces and were told that there would be smoke signals there, and there were. The Americans would set off the signals along the front of their line, and we were to drop right on that, so the forward motion of the bombs would carry them well ahead of the American forces.” Another technique was to use white markers set along the front lines, 100 yards in length and 1,000 yards apart, to mark the location of the American troops. The bomber stream flew perpendicular to the line of troops. Dropping the bombs when they saw the smoke and/or the white lines, the Liberators put them down right on top of the Germans dug in on the other side. At the briefing the following morning, the officer in charge would congratulate the crews. ”Well, men, we did okay yesterday. We put those eggs right where we wanted them, and we're going to go back today and do it some more. The guys on the ground are indebted to us, and we want to be careful not to hit any of them. But we're going to try to make their way easier.”

They did. McGovern later talked to some of the infantry officers, who told him that the B-24s provided great a.s.sistance.

100 The Liberators came in perpendicular to avoid flak. Ground commanders wanted them to fly parallel to the lines, but the AAF refused, on the grounds that if they did every German gunner along the line would be firing at the bombers. By coming in perpendicular, the B-24s were over the line for just a second or two, depriving the Germans of a chance to fix their radar, aim, and fire. Nevertheless, these were no milk runs. They were flying over the high Alps, near the Brenner Pa.s.s, and to ensure accuracy they were flying at 15,000 feet, low for the Liberators. The Germans had their 88s placed close to the mountaintops, at 12,000 or more feet. As this was so close to the front lines, the Germans had heavier artillery, 105 and 150 mms, firing at the planes. The German gunners, in McGovern's memory, ”were shooting crossfire at us instead of shooting at us from ground zero to our usual alt.i.tude of 25,000 feet.” When the planes were at 15,000 feet and the flak gunners were nearly that high, McGovern said, ”that's a pretty good shot.

They can really home in on you. And they did.” He saw at least two planes get hit.2 From April 19 to April 22, McGovern stood down. On the twenty-third he flew theDakota Queen again, against road bridges in the Alps. This time, there was no flak - a milk run. On the twenty-fourth, the 455th turned away from the primary target and went after the alternate, marshaling yards and an ammunition dump at Ossopo, Italy. Results were good, the flak was slight and inaccurate. All planes got home safely. It was McGovern's thirty-fourth mission. ”I hated Linz as a target,” McGovern declared. To begin with, it was heavily defended because it was an important rail hub for the Germans. Through Linz, German troops moved back and forth from the eastern to the western front - boxcars, pa.s.senger cars, everything. Linz was. .h.i.tler's hometown. The 455th Group had hit it often. ”I don't know how they could ever get a train in or out of that place,” McGovern said, ”but apparently they did, because we kept hitting it.” He had been on the December 15, 1944, mission to Linz. It was his seventh mission, his second as pilot. ”It was just deadly fear with me from that day on. I never talked about it much but I was scared to death with those sh.e.l.ls going off. There was nothing you could do. Couldn't take evasive action, couldn't dodge them.” It was on that mission that a piece of shrapnel had burst through the c.o.c.kpit window and come within inches of killing him. Now, on April 25, 1945, they were to go back. Before the men climbed into theDakota Queen, McGovern spoke to them. He said it was usual to allow a pilot to go on a milk run for his last mission because the commanders did not want a pilot shot down on that one. But the target was Linz. Although he wanted to fly the mission, he said he did not want to endanger the crew just because he chose to fly it. He put it up to a vote. If the vote was negative, McGovern said no one would ever fault them, including him, and the commanders would excuse them. Ashlock remembered, ”We voted to fly the mission.” So they were off.3 All four squadrons of the 455th Group flew to Linz. Cooper recalled, ”We had every plane that we could get airborne up there.” Picture them at takeoff: one B-24 breaking ground, one halfway down the runway, picking up speed, a third releasing brakes after applying power.

The men had been told at the briefing to expect heavy flak, as the Germans were bringing all their 88s back to protect their priority targets. The briefing officer said, ”Our estimates are that there are 380 antiaircraft guns in Linz, and they're heavily concentrated.” The weather was clear. After forming up, the group set off over the Alps to the target. To McGovern, ”It was exciting going across the mountains.

Those enormous snow-peaked mountains - and the endless meadows and fields, the trees and rivers and streams.” Thinking back, he commented, ”Europe is beautiful - except over the d.a.m.n targets. It was our worst mission of the war.” According to the 455th's history, the flak over the target was ”extremely intense.” The Germans were using their box system - firing the 88s' sh.e.l.ls into an area 2,000 feet on each of the four sides and 2,000 feet deep, just in front of the formation so that the planes would fly into it.

”The sky just became solid black. Then in that solid black you'd see these huge, angry flashes of red, which was another sh.e.l.l exploding. How we avoided it, I'll never know.” TheDakota Queen didn't avoid it all. McGovern said he could hear the shrapnel ”smacking the side of the plane.”

”It was terrible,” McGovern said. ”Linz was tougher on my last mission than it had been on my second as pilot. h.e.l.l can't be any worse than that. And remember, the people flying the plane or shooting the guns are children.” Rounds and Higgins were twenty years old, and except for Cooper and engineer Valko the others were nineteen. Valko got into the c.o.c.kpit and stood between McGovern and Rounds.

101 ”You could look at him and he seemed petrified,” McGovern recalled. ”Not just paralyzed, but petrified.

Just sheer terror.”4 ”The first thing that I remember,” said Cooper, ”is this whomping. They had zeroed in on us. We were in their box right in the middle.” A piece of shrapnel came through the nose. It pa.s.sed through Cooper's map. On it he had made a ”real tiny little pencil mark indicating our base at Cerignola, and I'm d.a.m.ned if those Germans didn't just put that piece of flak right through Cerignola.” Another piece of flak hit the hydraulic lines. The red fluid began spurting out. It looked like blood. Cooper took off his flak helmet to attempt to catch some of that fluid so they could use it after patching the line, but he was ”slipping and sliding around in that stuff.” The nose gunner saw him floundering around in what he thought was blood and cried, ”Oh, no!” He tried to help, but Cooper shook him off. But the hydraulic lines were so mangled they were beyond repair, so the fluid Cooper had caught was useless.5 One piece of flak hit Ashlock. It traveled up his leg from the knee to lodge in his b.u.t.t. Higgins went to apply first aid.

Ashlock was hollering, Cooper was hollering, so too everyone else. McGovern got on the intercom. His voice was calm as he told everyone to be quiet. That quieted them down. Then he ordered Valko to check the airplane to try to see how much damage had been done. He did, and except for the loss of the hydraulic lines, Valko said the plane was more or less okay. McGovern then asked each crew member to check in. Except Ashlock, they said one by one that they were okay. As he turned away from the target, McGovern saw that the number three engine had been damaged and he feathered the prop.

Higgins ripped open Ashlock's pants. He examined the wound and told Ashlock it wasn't too bad.

Because of the alt.i.tude and the cold, the blood had coagulated. Higgins poured powdered sulfa on the wound, then put a bandage around it. Higgins recalled that his patient ”was making quite a racket on the intercom, so I finally just unplugged him.” He gave Ashlock a shot of morphine and he lay down on the floor, where he stayed.

TheDakota Queen had slowed and lost alt.i.tude. It was now behind and below the formation. McGovern and Rounds got Cooper on the intercom and they discussed their alternatives. There were two: try to get back to Cerignola or turn east and try to land behind the Russian lines. With the hydraulic system a wreck, they had no brakes. The flaps were inoperative. An engine was missing. Nevertheless, they decided to head home.

As they got close, McGovern got on the radio with the tower, to describe his situation. The last squadron from the formation was landing - one plane at the far end of the runway turning off, another rolling halfway down the runway, and a third touching down. The officer in charge at the tower was glad to hear from theDakota Queen, which had already been listed as missing in action. He told McGovern he had a number of choices: he could go out over the Adriatic sh.o.r.eline and attempt a crash landing, or ditch in the sea, or bail out, or try to land on the runway. McGovern decided to accept the last alternative. On the intercom, he told the crew that if any one of them, or all of them, wanted to bail out they should feel perfectly free to do so. There would be no reflection on them: ”If they felt safer bailing out it was fine with me.” What are you going to do, the men asked. ”I'm going to land this airplane,” he replied. So they all decided to stay. As they approached the field, Higgins fired a red flare to indicate an ambulance should be ready to receive a wounded man.

McGovern ordered Higgins and McAfee to attach a pair of parachutes by their harnesses to the yokes supporting the waist guns. They were to throw them out the windows when he told them to, then pull the rip cord. That would slow the plane, which had no brakes. It was a technique that McGovern had not previously used, but had heard about (and indeed another B-24 from the group used the parachute method of stopping that day).

The crew used the hand crank to lower the wheels - an exhausting process, but between them Valko, Higgins, and Cooper managed to get it done. A little yellow signal came on to tell McGovern that the wheels were locked. The tower waved other planes off and told McGovern to come right on in. He was 102 afraid to come in slow ”because if we were short of the field I didn't think we could go around again. We were low on gas and I had one engine out.” He came in too high ”because of my fear of falling short of the field. I thought the worse thing that could happen was if I had to accelerate at the last minute. So I came in on a kind of flat landing, but considerably above the stalling speed.” When theDakota Queen touched down, McGovern cut the throttles and ordered McAfee and Higgins to throw out the parachutes and pull the rip cords. When the chutes billowed open, McGovern could feel the plane slow down.

Instinctively, he and Rounds were pus.h.i.+ng as hard as they could on the brake pedals, even though they had no brakes. But the engines, without power, provided some drag. McGovern had ordered the crew to go to the tail of the plane when it touched down, in order to bring the tail down so it would provide drag. Led by Cooper, they did. Seven of them, all but Ashlock and Rounds. McGovern thought the weight would bring the tail to the ground and stop the plane, but it didn't work. He later commented, ”That B-24 was just too big and ma.s.sive for even seven guys sitting in the tail to dump it back.” The plane's nose at the end of the runway did a little plunge into a ditch. Then it started up on the other side of the ditch, and the tail went up, then crashed down. ”It was quite a jar,” Cooper recalled. But it stopped the plane.

”It wasn't one of my better landings,” McGovern said. ”It was too hot. I came in too fast. But I didn't want to take any chance on stalling out. I wanted to make sure that we got that plane on the ground without any screwup.” Shaking his head at the thought, he added, ”If I ever made that landing again, I would have made it slower.”

The ambulance was there. The crew lifted Ashlock off the plane and put him on a stretcher. Cooper limped off - he had sprained his ankle at the jolt when the tail dropped down. Otherwise, everyone was okay, although Valko was so badly shaken that he was confined to a hospital with battle fatigue for some months thereafter.

TheDakota Queen had 110 holes in its fuselage and wings. McGovern said, ”I couldn't believe it. If you had looked at that airplane, you would not have known how it stayed in the air.” But he had brought it in.