pathfinders, The

In the summer of 1943, the 8th Air Force took a lead pilot and his crew from each bomb group in England and formed the new 482nd Bombardment Group. These original Pathfinders helped develop the technique of daylight radar bombing, operating directly under 8th Air Force Headquarters.

The group consisted of two squadrons of B-17s and one of B-24s-about the same mix as the 8th Air Force. Several of the B-24 crews were survivors of the low-level raid on the Romanian oil refineries at Ploesti.

The problem with visual bombing with the Norden bombsight was that on 40 percent of the missions, there was cloud cover over the target If you couldn't see it, you couldn't bomb it, so you had to go to an alternate target, or drop your bombs in the English Channel, or land with them still in the bomb bays, which was dangerous to say the least

With radar bombing, the target was a blip on a radar screen and was not affected by clouds, so we could bomb 100 percent of the time-a vast improvement. It changed the entire complexion of the air war over Europe.

First, we had to develop a new method of radar bombing. The 8th Air Force was impatiently waiting for us to provide crews to lead them on missions as soon as possible to beat winter. Another important operation we were charged with was a program to train new navigators on radar equipment, so that eventually, every bomb group in the 8th Air Force would have its own Pathfinder crew with radar bombing capability

Later, when these things had been accomplished, we would add another operation-flying single-plane night missions over Germany on all kinds of secret, experimental and sometimes covert projects.

When we joined the new group, we flew a B-24 in and landed at the 482nd, located on an old RAF airfield next to a little village called Alconbury, about 60 miles north of London on the Great North Road to Scotland. The runways were in good shape, so we could easily operate out of there, but the rest of the field was a sea of mud when it rained, which was often. The U.S. Army Engineers were working to solve the problem, laying down cement sidewalks and roadways.

The officers in our B-24 squadron were billeted briefly at a country estate a couple of miles from the base, and the first evening, somebody in our quarters turned on a radio to Lord Haw Haw, the British traitor who broadcast daily from Nazi Germany. After a certain amount of propaganda, he said, "I would like to welcome the new crews who have just arrived at the 482nd Bombardment Group at Alconbury. So you want to be Pathfinder pilots, do you? Well, in about five minutes, you will find out to your sorrow what a foolish idea that is when our Luftwaffe bombers arrive over your airfield and bomb you out of existence."

Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, we heard them coming. Fortunately, they couldn't locate the blacked-out airfield and started dropping their bombs all over the countryside. They blew up a lot of pasture. It was an interesting welcome. We looked at one another, wondering which one of us was the spy.

Shortly after, we moved into Nissen huts at the base and spent the next couple of weeks practicing the technique we had developed for radar bombing. The navigator became the key man of the crew, coordinating with the pilot and bombardier. Developing the new method consisted mainly of a great deal of practice by the navigator. He needed to be able to read the radarscope, give the pilot course corrections and give this information to the bombardier on the bomb run. The bombardier then cranked the information into his bombsight, which still dropped the bombs even though the target could only be seen on the radarscope. The navigator also navigated with it, so on a mission, he had little time to sit around and look out the window wondering whether he had enough points to go home.

The radar set we used in the beginning was British-made because only the British had such equipment. We called it "Stinky" because it was inaccurate and unreliable. But it filled the needs of the RAF. On RAF night missions, the Pathfinder Mosquitoes would go in ahead of the Lancasters and Wellingtons and, using "Stinky" radar, drop firebombs on the target, followed by wave after wave of heavy bombers that dropped their bombs on the fires the Pathfinders had started. The RAF, however, was not pinpointing specific buildings like we did, so the radar didn't have to be accurate. They would level an entire city in one or two nights, killing thousands of civilians. We were crippling the German war machine by taking out factories that manufactured war materiel, like aircraft and ball bearings, with as little loss of civilian life as possible. In a short time, the U.S. developed a new, more accurate radar set we called "Mickey," and suddenly, our Pathfinder missions became much more effective.

All of our B-24 pilots checked out in B-17s, so we could fly either plane on missions. A few B-17 pilots checked out in B-24s, but not many. That's when the B-17 pilots learned that it took a man to fly a B-24. The B-17, with its wider, shorter wing, floated along like a Piper Cub-great at very high altitude-whereas the B-24 was designed as a lower-altitude bomber that could carry twice the bomb load farther and faster than the B-17. With its long, narrow, high-speed Davis wing, it had to be flown every minute, and B-17 pilots didn't like that. The arguments over which plane was the best were endless. Actually, they were each designed for different purposes, and comparing them was like comparing apples to oranges.