Homer
Bigart worked
for the New York Tribune during
the Second
World War. He was one of the eight war correspondents selected
to fly with the United States Air Force
on bombing missions over Germany. After
a week's high-altitude aircrew training in England he flew his first
mission in a B-17 Flying Fortress on 26th
February 1943. One of the journalists, Robert
Post, was killed when his aircraft was shot down during the mission.
Bigart
also reported on the Korean War
and
the Vietnam War. Bigart, who later joined
the New
York Times,
twice won the Pulitzer Prize
for journalism during his career. Homer Bigart
died
in 1991.
(1)
Homer Bigart was one of eight war correspondents selected to fly with
the United
States Air Force. He reported on
his first flying mission to Germany in the
New
York Tribune on
27th February 1943.
Our target was Wilhelmshaven. We struck at Fuehrer Adolf Hitler's
North Sea base from the southwest after stoogeing around over a particularly
hot comer of the Third Reich for what seemed like a small eternity.
I could not quite make
out our specific target for obliteration, the submarine pens, because
at our altitude the installations along the Jade Busen (Jade Bay)
seemed no larger than a pinhead. But the street pattern of the Prussian
town stood out in perfect visibility and so did the large suburb of
Rustringen, down the bay.
Our Fortress, "Old
Soljer", piloted by Captain Lewis Elton Lyie of Pine Bluff, Ark.,
led the squadron. I was up in the nose
with the bombardier. Second Lieutenant Reinaldo J. Saiz of Segundo,
Colo., and the navigator. First Lieutenant Otis Alien Hoyt of Dawn,
Mo. We were lucky. Just before our arrival a heavy cloud formation
cleared the northwest tip of Germany, drifting east and disclosing
Wilhelmshaven to our bombsight.
And there was no Focke-Wulf
on our tail when we started our bomb run. We had a good run and we
were squarely over the town. I watched Saiz crouch lower over his
sight. I heard him call "Bombs away."
Our salvo of 500-pounders
plunged through the open bomb bay. From where I stood I could not
see them land, but our ball turret gunner. Staff Sergeant Howard L.
Nardine of Los Angeles, took a quick look back and saw fires and smoke.
Frankly, I wasn't so much interested in the target. What intrigued
me was the action upstairs. Flak was bursting all around the squadron
just ahead and to our left. The shells were exploding in nasty black
puffs, leaving curious smoke trails of hour-glass shape.
Enemy fighters were darting
in all directions. "Hoss" Lyie said there must have been
35. They were out for stragglers and they let us alone. There was
a flak burst about 200 yards off our starboard wing, but that was
the nearest we came to the casualty list.
(2)
Homer
Bigart, New
York Tribune (16th
August, 1945)
The radio tells us that
the war is over but
from where I sit it looks suspiciously like a rumor. A few minutes
ago - at 1:32 a.m. - we fire-bombed Kumagaya, a small industrial city
behind Tokyo near the northern edge of Kanto Plain. Peace was not
official for the Japanese either, for they shot right back at us.
Other fires are raging
at Isesaki, another city on the plain, and as we skirt the eastern
base of Fujiyama Lieutenant General James Doolittle's B-29s, flying
their first mission from the 8th Air Force base on Okinawa, arrive
to put the finishing touches on Kumagaya.
I rode in the City of Saco
(Maine), piloted by First Lieutenant Theodore J. Lamb, twenty-eight,
of 103-21 Lefferts Blvd, Richmond Hill, Queens, New York. Like all
the rest. Lamb's crew showed the strain of the last five days of the
uneasy "truce" that kept Superforts grounded.
They had thought the war
was over. They had passed most of the time around radios, hoping the
President would make it official. They did not see that it made much
difference whether Emperor Hirohito stayed in power. Had our propaganda
not portrayed him as a puppet? Well, then, we could use him just as
the war lords had done.
The 314th Bombardment Wing
was alerted yesterday morning. At 2:20 p.m., pilots, bombardiers,
navigators, radio men, and gunners trooped into the briefing shack
to learn that the war was still on. Their target was to be apathetically
small city of little obvious importance, and their commanding officer.
Colonel Carl R. Storrie, of Denton, Texas, was at pains to convince
them why Kumagaya, with a population of 49,000, had to be burned to
the ground.
There were component parts
factories of the Nakajima aircraft industry in the town, he said.
Moreover, it was an important railway center.
No one wants to die in
the closing moments of a war. The wing chaplain. Captain Benjamin
Schmidke, of Springfield, Mo., asked the men to pray, and then the
group commander jumped on the platform and cried: "This is the
last mission. Make it the best we ever ran."
Colonel Storrie was to
ride in one of the lead planes, dropping four 1,000-pound high explosives
in the hope that the defenders of the town would take cover in buildings
or underground and then be trapped by a box pattern of fire bombs
to be dumped by eighty planes directly behind.
"We've got 'em on
the one yard line. Let's push the ball over," the colonel exhorted
his men. "This should be the final knockout blow of the war.
Put your bombs on the target so that tomorrow the world will have
peace."
|
The
Writing 69th tells the story of a group of journalists, including
Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney, who covered the 8th Air Force
in World War II. In February of 1943, the eight men of the Writing
69th took part in a training program sponsored by the United
States Eighth Air Force. The goal was to prepare the men to
accompany a high-altitude bombing mission against Germany.On
February 26, 1943, the members of the Writing 69th boarded B-17
and B-24 bombers and participated in an attack on Wilhelmshaven,
Germany. The B-24 containing Robert Post of the New York Times
was shot down and he died along with eight of the crewmembers.
(Jim Hamilton, The Writing 69th, Green Harbor Publications) |
Jim
Hamilton, The Writing 69th (Green Harbor Publications)
