Tales of the Twelfth Man

Our unit, the Control Center of the 84th Fighter Wing, would set up and operate the first fighter aircraft control center on the European continent. Our duty was to use our radar and radio telephone equipment to guide our aircraft to targets in support of the Army. This was close air support for the Army troops. Also, we would direct the fighters to enemy aircraft in order to retain air superiority. And finally, we would help the fighters return to base.

We watched the battle on the beach all day. Shells fell in the water. German 88 guns pounded the landing barges as they beached, and machine guns chattered and cut down our men on the beach. One of our Navy destroyers came in as close as possible to the shore and blasted the top of a cliff where a strong point of German defenses held out. Everywhere there was terrible fury.

Darkness came quickly. There seemed to be no dusk. It was as if a black curtain suddenly dropped, shutting out the daylight. The reality of war, for us, started immediately. Gunshots and bright lights streaking through the darkness announced the arrival of German JU-88 bombers. The gunshots were our anti-aircraft guns and machine guns firing, and the streaking lights were the tracer bullets. The first JU-88 came diving in directly overhead so suddenly that the aircraft did not draw any fire. Then all hell broke lose all around us. There were three or four JU-88s in our immediate area. The anti-aircraft barrage was thunderous and terrifying not only to German pilots, but to me because of the low trajectory of the streams of bullets from fifty caliber machine guns. The Germans were coming in so low that some of our defensive firing was just barely clearing our own ships. The sky all around was lit up like Times Square on New Years Eve. There, amidst all this, I knelt feeling very small, awed and scared. I huddled on the small and crowded deck near the starboard side with only my helmet and a blanket for protection. I didn’t dare look over the side of the landing craft. The lower a soldier remains, the better off he is.

Looking toward a point in the sky ahead, tracers seemed to converge. There, about two hundred feet in the air, coming in our direction and lit up dimly by the weird light of the tracers, was a JU-88. A few seconds after I saw it, the aircraft burst into flames from wing tip to wing tip. It seemed that it would crash right on us. Our guns were firing into the aircraft even as it burned. About one hundred yards from us the inferno slid gently and slowly over on one wing, and plunged into the water with a hissing sound.