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Preparing for and Surviving WWII's Longest Day
Army, Jun 2004 by Curreri, Joe
D-Day-June 6, 1944-is a date that lives in the hearts of people all over the world. It changed our lives forever. On D-Day, the greatest armada of all times-3,400 ships, 2,500 landing craft, 14,000 aerial sorties, almost 200,000 men, tons of equipment, tanks and planes-was flung across the beaches of Normandy, France, in the ultimate attempt to crack Hitler's fortress. The might and fury of the free world was unleashed at last.
The airborne attack led the assault. Paratroopers and gliders full of troops were dropped behind Utah and Omaha Beaches carried by Douglas C-47s. War correspondent Cy Peterman wrote: "The troop carriers-those winged pack-mules of the air, derisively ignored when talk of glory is forthcoming-carried in such a formidable spearhead that the rest of the invasion landings became rather easy."
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I was the crew chief of one of those C-47s. But nothing came easy. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was more worried about the airborne operation than any other phase of the assault. Some of his commanders were convinced that the airborne attack might result in upwards of 75 percent casualties.
The Germans first used mass paratroopers in the invasion of Crete in May 1941, but 2,000 men were killed in the first day and so many transport planes lost that they never again mounted a major airborne operation.
The Royal Air Force Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford LeighMallory, with that precedent in mind, told Eisenhower, "It would be a perfectly futile sacrifice of life to put our three airborne divisions on the Cotentin peninsula." But Eisenhower decided on this theory: "The D-day attack, without the airborne operation, was not a good gamble."
For four years Hitler's Atlantic wall had been his obsession. He had 2,000 miles to defend. By May he had 14 German divisions at the wall, had filled the beaches with terrible obstacles and had mined them to make them even more difficult to remove. His best general, Gerd von Rundstedt, commanded two crack Panzer divisions in the Pas de Calais area, which they believed to be the invasion area, with the entire 15th Army. To frustrate airborne landings, obstacles were set up, areas flooded and a nightmare of antiaircraft batteries were ready.
Although I did not know it then, this is what I faced as I prepared to go into my first combat mission.
It all began after one and a half years of aircraft maintenance training to become a C-47 crew chief, or a more fanciful title, an aerial engineer.
I was introduced to my first C-47, spanking new, straight from the factory, in late 1943, and also met my pilot Lt. Guido Brassesco, co-pilot Lt. Joseph Andrews, and radio operator SSgt. Harry Tinkcom. Harry, a history teacher at Temple College, and I became fast friends because we both came from Philadelphia, Pa.
The military version of the C-47-variously known as the Skytrooper, Dakota and Gooney Bird-a twin-engine cargo aircraft designed originally in the 1930s as a passenger plane, unarmed and unarmored, and never intended for combat, was hailed by Gen. Eisenhower as one of the principal weapons that helped win the war.
I fell in love with my plane immediately and got to know her better than myself. To me, she was a mighty American eagle.
January 1, 1944: We took off for overseas-Englandbut how we got there was mind-boggling to me. We flew from West Palm Beach, Fla., to Trinidad to Guyana to Natal, Brazil; then the flight across the ocean to the volcanic cone of Ascension Island, a perch on the immensity of the South Atlantic. With only puddle-jumping ranges, there was no midair refueling, no radar (What was radar?) and no navigational aids except for radio direction-finding stations. You prayed you were in good with the Lord.
From Ascension we flew to Liberia, to Morocco, to England. One incident scared the living bejesus out of us when one engine began to quit. So I turned to God the Troubleshooter. "God, what's wrong with the plane and what could I do?" I received the answer to pump the gas wobble pump.
At times like that, you eventually come to one conclusion, "If it is not your time to go, you will not go. If it is your time to go, nothing can be done to avert it."
Such is the protective thinking of 20-year-olds.
January 18, 1944: I arrived in England four days after Eisenhower arrived as Supreme Allied Commander to undertake what he called "The organization of the mightiest fighting force that we could muster."
As a tech sergeant, very raw, very young, rather cocky and crew chief of a mighty C-47 that had just crossed an ocean, I announced to Harry, "This is it. We'll put an end to this bastard war!"
My first preparation was to give my bird its first 50-hour inspection and give her a name. After many suggestions from our four-man crew, Tinkcom came up with clay Pigeon. Doggedly, I painted her sarcastic and prophetic name on her nose and pictured a Nazi shooting at a clay pigeon and saying, "Missed again." By thus publishing our indifference to catastrophe and our willingness to surmount it, we were defying our enemies.
