MISSION TO ISTRES

Air Classics, Feb 2005 by Lustig, David C Jr

EVEN THOUGH THE WAR IN EUROPE WAS OVER, THE FORTS KEPT FLYING AND THE MISSIONS WERE OFTEN EQUALLY HAZARDOUS

Immediately after 8 May 1945, with hostilities ended in Europe, the rumor mill at our base at Graf ton-Underwood, England, started operating at full tilt. The most persistent scuttlebutt was the disturbing possibility that the entire 384th Bomb Group was being shipped back to the States for retraining in Boeing B-29s before being reassigned to the Pacific Theater of Operations. In the meantime, I continued to bunk in our tent with the original five enlisted men of Lt. Drew's crew while remaining on call as a spare radio operator for 547th flights out of Grafton. Standard operating procedure mandated that, to takeoff, a B-17G required a crew of five: Pilot, copilot, navigator, engineer and radio operator. Typical of the rather short trips were flights to depots for spare parts, instrument check flights, practice landings, celestial navigation flights, low-altitude flights over Germany to give ground personnel a bird's eye view of the devastation we caused, a flight to St. Valerie, France, to pick up 384th POWs who were waiting at Camp Lucky Strike, and a flight to Warton on England's west coast to start some highpoint GIs on their deployment back to the States.

Eighty-five points was the magic number to win GIs a ticket home. Except for me with 22 combat missions, the enlisted men on my original crew, having completed 31 missions, were slated for Stateside. Lieutenant Drew, our pilot, also had 31 missions and was ticketed for home. Both Lt. Keyset who, like me, had been assigned to a deputy lead crew, and Lt. Rotherham, our copilot who had been promoted to first pilot, came up short and were destined to remain in the ETO. I can't remember exactly when the base, Y-17 at Istres la Tube, France, first spewed out of the rumor mill, but the plans for the Green Project must have been hatched by 8th Air Force high command as soon as victory in Europe seemed assured. The Green Project was a humanitarian plan to get combat veterans, mostly Army, back to the States as quickly as possible.

Finally, on 16 June 1945, I was assigned to Lt. Toivo Raivo's crew for a flight to Istres La Tube. First pilot Raivo's crew consisted of Lt. Ley, copilot; Lt. Holcomb, navigator; TSgt. Les Fussell, engineer; and SSgt. Jim Hancock, waist gunner, now steward. I was rather chagrined to find that after 22 missions, the last eight with either lead or deputy lead crews, I had been assigned to a green replacement crew fresh from training in the States. Adding insult to injury, our once fearsome squadron of raging Boeing bulls had been castrated and now was a herd of docile Boeing beasts of burden. Day after day, the 384th's industrious and skilled mechanics had, one by one, stripped each B-17 of the accouterments of war: .50-cal Brownings, most turrets, armor plate, and oxygen systems. Clear plexiglass was installed over most of the familiar gun openings and long plywood benches were attached internally on both sides of the fuselage from the waist door to the radio room bulkhead.

So it was that after five months of being treated with care and respect as expendable airmen, we were once again GIs on detail - this time loading lumber on our B-17s. The lumber was needed at Istres to build barracks, mess hall, orderly rooms, latrines, clinic, headquarters, and officer and enlisted clubs. It was dirty, back-breaking work and consisted of, along with the ground crews, maneuvering those long planks through that little waist door and stacking them as securely as possible. Grimy, sweaty, and with the weighty cargo far behind the bomb bay center of gravity, we used a lot of runway getting our Boeing cargo carrier into the air. This was the first of ten round-trip cargo flights averaging 6.5- to seven-hours each that we made to Y-17 at Istres. Another group from the First Division was to participate in the Green Project with the 384th, so it is possible that eight squadrons totaling approximately 96 B-17s were shuttling back and forth across the Channel and France. And, little by little, the ants built the ant hill.

Istres was sort of a desert and, if the lack of vegetation is a criteria, I suppose it was and still is. However, if you visualize a desert as a vast area of rolling sand dunes you will get the wrong impression of Istres. Our base, Y-17, was about 35 miles northwest of Marseilles. This seemingly endless arid table top gravel plain had been the site of a Luftwaffe base during the Nazi occupation of France. Prior to their withdrawal, anticipating an Allied airborne invasion, the Nazis heavily mined the area. As a matter of fact, much of the land outside of the squadron areas and flight line still had signs warning of land mines. Spain, which remained a neutral country because of the war still raging the Pacific, lay about 125 miles as the crow flies south-southwest of Istres. The Mediterranean Sea was about 15 miles to the south while a mountain range, 3000- to 4000-ft high running east to west, crossed our northerly flight plan about 30 miles into our return to England.