How Did They Do It in WWII?

One of my favorite aviation books is Song of The Sky, published in 1954. The author, Guy Murchie, was a USAAF navigator in WW2. He describes the challenges of navigation - celestial, DR, pilotage, radio - with a poet's touch. Great book.
 
when picking up downed pilots, or if a sailor went overboard, that ships would make only one pass at picking them up. If they missed, they kept going....to minimize the risk from enemy submarines. That just doesn't make sense to me.
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It's simple. Lose a man or two. Or lose an entire ship and crew. Both sucks. One sucks more.

This modern mantra of "no man left behind" is relatively new.

Keep in mind even if one ship made a pass and missed, they rarely traveled alone. The next in the convoy would make a pass. Or a submarine would.

Acceptable casualty rates in ww2 are vastly different than they are now.
 
Out of site of land in the south Pacific ? Ocean ships "N" "O" ships at a fixed site, with a NDB and a Letter Code, using a omni directional antenna to gain the loudest signal. just like Amelia Earhart tried to do.

BTDT and a navigator :) we had an astro blister, but I never saw a sextant used in it.
 
Anthony said:
I've read that they didn't stop at all, even for one pass. I don't think a convey can stop. Is sounds harsh, and is sad to think of men left to die, but the risk of losing several ships, and hundreds of men was probably too great.
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The convoy itself can't stop, but sometimes a ship near the rear is detailed to rescue survivors. This may be a warship, or a dedicated civilian-type ship.

Remember, we're not talking about light aircraft. It takes time to slow a ship, and even more time to speed back up again. A ship that stops to pick up survivors is a very easy target, and if it was one of the escort ships, it's an extremely good tactic for a sub to take it out.

Ron Wanttaja
 
zaitcev said:
Pacific was tough. Carriers had SW transmitters and airplanes could home in on those, like we do with NDBs.
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It could get even simpler. During the Battle of the Philippine Sea, after a late-in-the day air strike was getting lost in the dark on the way back, Admiral Mitscher had the fleet turn on the lights for over two hours...in sub-infested waters.

Ron Wanttaja
 
I have been flying out of KHYX (was 3SG) off since shortly after WWII... Until recent decades the runways were covered with crushed shale, a light colored grey-greenish stuff - and really hard on props, no run ups at this airport once you left the grass between the hangars... And the areas between the runways were farmed... There was a period of several weeks in the spring right after the crops were planted and starting to come up that the runways and the ground between them were exactly the same shade shade of light grey-green... You would be coming back to the airport and able to clearly see the roads and buildings defining the airport boundary, but I would defy you to visually make out the runway - just a square mile of crops... More than once I rolled onto final on a hazy day and had to depend on using the angle to windsock from the road intersection right at the start of the runway to assure myself that I was actually going to land on the runway because it looked just like the crops...

An interesting bit of trivia (to me at least) from an era that is mostly gone now... In spite of good memories of going cross country with a Shell gas station road map and a whiskey compass in a BC-12D, I do like my moving map GPS...

denny-o
 
Dave Siciliano said:
Life and death seemed to be viewed differently then. Death was accepted as a consequence of war; on large missions by folks like the Eighth Army Air Force, high casualty figures were predicted and accepted by leadership to achieve the intended goal. Ike was given casualty estimates before D Day; there was a time, that was tenuous.
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I wasn't there, of course, but this sounds correct. These days, everyone's focused on "Me me me!" Whereas at that time, the attitude was one of focusing on the greater good.

The people I know who've fought in the recent unpleasantries have, so far, all come back alive. They know people who've been killed, but the only first degree friend I have who's been shot and killed was sitting in her German class in Virginia, not exactly a war zone (typically).

In talking to many veterans, they commonly didn't think they would survive the war. Interviewed after some battles like the Battle of the Bulge, many survivors of units that were over run didn't think they would survive. Read some of the battle notes of the 101st Airborne Division leaders. There were times they weren't sure they still commanded a fighting force; yet, resisted to the end. They were fighting for more than their lives; it was for the very existence of they're country and whether their families would live in a free society.
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And to those who gave their lives, we owe more than we can ever repay.
 
John Baker said:
Were there that many "good" pilots back then. We always hear of the heroic exploits of a limited few, but then we also hear about hundreds of them being rushed through training. We hear stories about more of them dying in training than in combat.

By todays standards, were they actually good pilots, or were they more balls out gutsy fliers hell bent on doing the job? Perhaps actual flying was secondary to taking their weapons to the enemy?

John
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I suppose thats a good question. My only answer is that all the WWII pilots I know/knew were very good. Maybe thats why they survived and they're not indicative of the norm. Sure they were rushed through training but that doesn't mean they were sending idiots out. I know some washouts too... guys who failed to meet the spec and ended up as ground pounders or had other jobs. I used to fly with a B17 waist gunner who washed out as a pilot because of map reading problems. He got tossed to the back of the plane but got his license after the war and figured out his issues. I learned a lot from him flying around the wide open New Mexico landscape in CAP planes.
More came back then got left over there so in my opinion I'd say they were mostly good pilots.

Frank
 
Pilawt said:
One of my favorite aviation books is Song of The Sky, published in 1954. The author, Guy Murchie, was a USAAF navigator in WW2. He describes the challenges of navigation - celestial, DR, pilotage, radio - with a poet's touch. Great book.
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yes, awesome book
 
BiffJ said:
I suppose thats a good question. My only answer is that all the WWII pilots I know/knew were very good. Maybe thats why they survived and they're not indicative of the norm. Sure they were rushed through training but that doesn't mean they were sending idiots out. I know some washouts too... guys who failed to meet the spec and ended up as ground pounders or had other jobs. I used to fly with a B17 waist gunner who washed out as a pilot because of map reading problems. He got tossed to the back of the plane but got his license after the war and figured out his issues. I learned a lot from him flying around the wide open New Mexico landscape in CAP planes.
More came back then got left over there so in my opinion I'd say they were mostly good pilots.

Frank
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According to the taphilo.com link below, there were 13,621 fatalities in the U.S. Army Air Forces during training for the period 1941 to 1945. The Wikipedia article says in its statistical summary that 88,119 USAAF airmen died in service. Assuming that number includes training fatalities, that means about 15% died during training. That is a lot.

(The note at the bottom of the taphilo.com web page indicates training fatalities likely exceeded 15,500.)

http://www.taphilo.com/history/WWII/Loss-Figures-Aircraft-USA-Training.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Air_Forces
 
My dad flew 65 missions in B-26's from Sept 42 through Dec 44, two missions on D-Day. They also flew any where from 18-48-96 plane flights with a lead with a lead navigator. All navigators in flights would compare notes to make sure they were still on the right course to and from the target. They also had huge wide,long runways on the southern coast of England for the ones who were damaged and just barely made it over the channel. The guy had kohonies. My dad was 22 at the time.
They also had the A/N tone in their headset that told them with a dual tone whether or not they were honing in their station.
 
I often wonder about this, too... assuming no navaids and sketchy or nonexistent visual waypoints, the best any pilot could do would be to be very sure of his position just prior to a dogfight, and either fly a reverse course to the takeoff point, or to the nearest friendly base (if low fuel, weather, or combat damage/wounds were factors). They were well-schooled on compass, clock and chart, and I'd imagine a whiz wheel was available to most of them. But woe betide them if they were already lost when the fighting began... getting home then would require some extra luck.

Yes, even bomber formations got lost, sometimes on the way to the target. A friend's father was a B-24 navigator based in Italy at that time... told me a story about the lead navigator (who'd been celebrating his birthday the night before) almost leading them straight into Swiss airspace on a mission into Germany, in pretty good weather. Nobody wanted to get the guy in trouble (or break radio silence), but when it was clear they'd have to turn or bust the very well-defended neutral airspace, somebody finally spoke up. :rolleyes:

Most of these airmen were youths, and pretty wet behind the ears as pilots... but as someone stated earlier, if they didn't show that they'd made the most of the hurried training (which emphasized the basics), they wouldn't be PICs or navigators on combat missions. And yes, the attrition in training was very real... ex-NAS Wildwood, for example, is surrounded by many, many sunken wrecks of Helldivers that crashed during training flights.
Green as they were, these guys who made it to combat posts were the best available.That's why most of the time, they made it to a suitable destination after missions, even if they were separated from their group, with a damaged aircraft, wounded... or all of the above (imagine that! Not my idea of a good time, even with a radio beacon leading the way). As for the times they didn't- well, no method or system is perfect. Even today, people still fly into mountains with a perfectly good GPS aboard. :dunno:
 
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Dave Siciliano said:
Life and death seemed to be viewed differently then. Death was accepted as a consequence of war; on large missions by folks like the Eighth Army Air Force, high casualty figures were predicted and accepted by leadership to achieve the intended goal. Ike was given casualty estimates before D Day; there was a time, that was tenuous.
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Even so, Americans were supposed to fight smart even in WWII. Overwhelming the enemy with a mountain of corpses was the Russian way of war. Of course, gung-hoers existed. Here's a precious account by Jack Ogilvie that Capt. Earl Miller passed along, about the canon-armed B-25s:

Yes I remember those flights very well, I think I was on all of them.
They were not bomb runs, those were B-25's that were fitted with 75 mm
cannons and they were trying to knock out some flak boats that were in
the harbor at Leghorn. They had a gun emplacement on a point going in to
the harbor that had two 105's and several 88's. They were the most crack
shot's I ever saw. They had a gung ho full colonel that was in charge of
the Squadron and he had us come to the briefing. His plan was to go in
with three flights of four planes and to go in four at a time stacked
one behind the other on the deck, we were to be circling above them. I
tried to talk them out of it and he got mad as hell. When we started in
and were maybe a mile out those 105s shot four rounds and knocked down
four planes-the rest scattered and aborted the mission. The colonel had
another meeting and ranted and raved and threatened court-martials for
cowardice. He said he was going to do the same thing the next day and
would lead the flight. He did and the first round was a direct hit on
his plane. As far as I know they were never used again.
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-- Pete
 
I have no adjectives for how dumb the brass were/are/will continue to be. BTDT. In my instance, I will call it "hurricane patrol".

There will be no air support anyway, so why are we out there?
The enemy's armor cannot move, so it's goign to be all infantry to infantry and not even medevac is possible.

"Are you flying with us, today, Commander, sir?"

Gallipoli (1915)
Operation Market Garden (1944)
and Anzio
.....come immediately to mind.
 
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zaitcev said:
Even so, Americans were supposed to fight smart even in WWII. Overwhelming the enemy with a mountain of corpses was the Russian way of war. Of course, gung-hoers existed. Here's a precious account by Jack Ogilvie that Capt. Earl Miller passed along, about the canon-armed B-25s:

-- Pete
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That describes the Allied invasion of France pretty accurately. The causality rate was around 10% with almost 53,000 KIA plus another 20k missing. The total casualties for the Allies was near a quarter of a million just for that battle. Not anywhere near some of the Soviet engagements in WW2. But most assuredly a large pile of flesh. Not that I think there was really a better way that the Allies could get into Europe.
 
ScottM said:
Not that I think there was really a better way that the Allies could get into Europe.
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The allies were already in Europe - they had been fighting hard in Italy for 8 months prior to the Normandy landings.

File:1944-07-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg
 
ScottM said:
Good point. But those Alps were really slowing them up from getting into Germany. I should have gotten into a good offensive position in Europe.
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Did they even make the alps? Thought the defensive lines held them up pretty well.
 
Our tolerance for loss of life to achieve an objective during WWII was much higher than today. Our troops (and all the other countries, Allied, and Axis) used men as cannon fodder. It was horrible. How a industrialized nation like the U.S. could field a Sherman Tank and allow the tremendous number of losses in them was amazing by today's standards. Same with infantry, the strategic bombing campaign, submarines, etc.
 
Anthony said:
Our tolerance for loss of life to achieve an objective during WWII was much higher than today. Our troops (and all the other countries, Allied, and Axis) used men as cannon fodder. It was horrible. How a industrialized nation like the U.S. could field a Sherman Tank and allow the tremendous number of losses in them was amazing by today's standards. Same with infantry, the strategic bombing campaign, submarines, etc.
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The conflicts we have today are also not on the same level as WWII. There was a very real chance of us speaking German today had ****** continued. It's really incredible what Germany accomplished as a relatively small country compared to the US, Russia, and the other powers that it was fighting against.

Were we faced with another legitimate threat of world domination, I suspect our tolerance for losses would increase. What we see today is going after the people who killed our brother, conflicts with motives that can be more easily questioned by the masses. I know that I'd be more willing to give my life for WWII than for today's conflicts (although I do wonder how I didn't end up in the military after watching my two favorite buildings collapse).
 
Jim Logajan said:
Not really - at least not till Germany had all but collapsed. The Wikipedia article has a series of maps showing progress during the Italian Campaign, and this sobering quote:

"No campaign in Western Europe cost more than the Italian campaign in terms of lives lost and wounds suffered by infantry forces."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Campaign_(World_War_II)
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We used to show this vid at the Army Infantry School during a tactics class. The Battle of San Pietro was very costly. Who was the general that appeared at the beginning?
At the end of the war, the Texas legislature banned General Mark Clark from entering the state without an armed guard. The largest losses were incurred by Texas divisions.
Many point to the complete lack of tactical necessity for attacking up the length of Italy. It was Chruchill's way to tie down the Germans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcAY67v94PE

Best,

Dave
 
According to Stephen Ambrose's book on Eisenhower in the war years, (The Supreme Commander), Churchill had to be talked into invading Normandy. He apparently wanted the Allies' efforts to remain focused on "the soft underbelly of Europe," i.e., Southern Europe.
 
Dave Siciliano said:
We used to show this vid at the Army Infantry School during a tactics class. The Battle of San Pietro was very costly. Who was the general that appeared at the beginning?
At the end of the war, the Texas legislature banned General Mark Clark from entering the state without an armed guard. The largest losses were incurred by Texas divisions.
Many point to the complete lack of tactical necessity for attacking up the length of Italy. It was Chruchill's way to tie down the Germans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcAY67v94PE

Best,

Dave
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Wow, pretty interesting Dave. Thanks.

BTW, my Dad, an Army Dentist, Capt. at the time was called on the carpet by Mark Clark personally while in Germany. The reason was my Dad sat with enlisted men at a movie, and fraternized with them. :rolleyes:
 
Heavens Anthony! How could your Dad every give in to such a slip in discipline :yikes:

It was a challenge at times. Being an infantry company commander, we took thinks like that pretty strictly. We really needed immediate response to directions in combat situations and a more relaxed interaction wasn't conducive to that. Much different in the rear area or even in support areas but still disciplined in the front line infantry units.

I know a lot of professionals that entered service as officers didn't understand that. We had Docs and Dentists that didn't know how or who to salute or when to return them. Seemed funny to them, but big stuff in front line combat units. One didn't need fights between commissioned and non-commissioned folks either, which generally lead to them not going to the same facilities, especially if liquor was being served. Competition for the attention of the opposite sex was also a place where things could get out of control :rofl:

BTW, I was on both sides of that: entered enlisted and was for over a year before getting a commission through OCS.

Best,

Dave
 
Dave, I understand the chain of command, and the seperation of the ranks. I just thought it was a little much for him to have to go before a four star general for the little talk, but as you say they take this stuff seriously as did my Dad. He did know protocol in general I think. It was a good story when he used to tell it. :D
 
One simple method to find your way home with the English compasses was to simply turn it 180 degrees. The old "P" series compasses have a rotating bezel. To fly your course you turn the bezel so the desired course it at the top and then turn the airplane until the north arrow is under the "N" on the bezel. I've read that for returning to base the pilots would simply rotate the bezel 180 degrees and turn the airplane until the the north arrow was under the "N" on the bezel. I also read that some pilots forgot to rotate the bezel after their mission. This link:
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/History/1940s/TacHurriNotes.html
describes how the pilots would rotate the bezel for the return flight - or not rotate the bezel with very bad results.



When I was looking for the link above, I found this interesting story about a Sunderland that was beaten up very badly but was able to make it back to England. They mention the fire in the cockpit being caused by the alcohol from the P8 compass being ignited when it was hit by an incendiary round.

http://www.n461.com/jim_amiss_account.html
 
Anthony said:
Dave, I understand the chain of command, and the seperation of the ranks. I just thought it was a little much for him to have to go before a four star general for the little talk, but as you say they take this stuff seriously as did my Dad. He did know protocol in general I think. It was a good story when he used to tell it. :D
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I hope you saw I was being glib. It was big stuff to the front line combat units; The World managed to keep moving forward somehow when dentists watched movies with EM--who were probably most of their patients <g>. How else would your Dad have gotten to meet Mark Clark?

Best,

Dave
 
After the attrition in WWI they probably thought the WWII losses were "minimal" - nothing but high tech amazing.

For aviators especially. Didn't they expect in WWI that a pilot might last like 2 missions if he lived through training?
 
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The Alps were an obstacle. Remember, the 6th Air Force attacked Ploesti in August 1943 from Libya. That's a LONG flight. 500 guys were killed or went to Stalag in Turkey in one night. Only 88 of 177 crews returned. It had little strategic impact.

Anzio was a fraking disaster. Thank you, General Clark. We moved the entire fifth Army into a mountain Kill Zone. It would have been simpler to land the fifth army in the Ukraine (well, probably not, we didn't hold the Bosporus) and open a southern front in Russia. I don't think the losses could have been any higher.

Operation Market Garden was another. 7,800 of 10,600 in the First Airborne were either died or captured before their extraction from Arnheim.

Only Dien Bien Phu was worse. Thank goodness that was mostly French.

When I had to study this stuff, I was nothing short of appalled. Yeah, losses are a fact of life, but 50% loss is a slaughter. An utter waste of good infantry.

Maybe that's why I never made command grade. I'm not politically correct, either. Harry Truman made the right call; in war the goal is to make the other sob die, not your guys.
 
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bbchien said:
Harry Truman made the right call; in war the goal is to make the other sob die, not your guys.
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That was George Patton, who said (in various ways at various occasions), "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Here's George C Scott's recreation of Patton's speeches: http://www.turtletrader.com/speech.mp3

Every Lieutenant attending the US Army Armor school received a handout with Patton's speeches -- he was more far more colorful than the movie portrayal.
 
Tom-D said:
As an old sailor I've been thru a few man over board drills the navy will and always has done its level best to recover sailors that went overboard.

That is why a convoy aways travels in trail, the ship behind the man over board will do the rescue.
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Fall off the Carrier and the trailing DD is right there to make a couple of passes. Long before the CV could even get turned around.
 
It is impossoble to compare today to WWII. 70 years is like comparing WWII to late Civil War technology.

At the start of the War we were designing and starting to build top notch equipment. What was in place, the result of the peace time depression era post WWI restricted 20 years was either old or inferior to the enemies.

18 months later our equipment was as good or better. But the war was won in no small part because of ability to produce ships, tanks, aircraft, men, etc in such large numbers that we overwhelmed the enemy.

Kaiser Industries was able to finish a Liberty ship, keel laying to Launch in 24 hours. By the end of the month it would have moved 8,000 tons from the west coast to the Pacific War zone and if sunk on the return have been a success.

Today we fight a low cost War based on Technology first to establish control of the Air, destroy enemy communications then a Blitzkreig attack to crush the military. Then just like in WWII winning the peace is virtually impossible and involves the most dangerous part of the war.
 
Dave Siciliano said:
I hope you saw I was being glib.
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Yes, absolutely! :)

How else would your Dad have gotten to meet Mark Clark?
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That's true! He certainly did touch history. He also knew several of the Nazi war criminals personally as he was assigned to that little trial in Nuremburg.
 
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