INTRO

A 

B-24 

NAMED 

"HITLER’S HEARSE"

A Narrative by

Robert B. Leach

Lt. Col., U.S. Army

August 1, 2000

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EPILOGUE: HITLER'S HEARSE

As an amateur historian, I have written this account to document my findings as I explored the countryside in the Republic of Turkey to find vestiges of a B-24 Liberator that landed in that country following the bombing of Ploesti, Romania, on August1, 1943. I did not use scientific research methods nor are all the enclosed passages my original thought. Some portions are copied directly from copyrighted material, but because I have no intent of publishing this manuscript, I did not footnote specific passages. However, I have listed all source documents on the final page. The person who translated Turkish accounts for me, Seraser Demircibasioglu, is not a trained interpreter, but rather a close friend. She speaks Turkish as her primary language and has a good command of English due to her work in a travel agency that serves American and British military personnel assigned to NATO Headquarters in Izmir, Turkey.

Perhaps the most praiseworthy quality I took into the search for the crash site of the B-24 that I later learned was named Hitler’s Hearse was a total lack of preconceptions. I began the search with only the information the British Air Attaché in Ankara had signaled to the Americans on the evening of August 2, 1943: "A B-24 had landed near Torbali, south of Izmir, in a state of considerable disrepair with the pilot dead and two crew members wounded." Therefore, by chance rather than design, I approached the subject with a "clean slate" and did not ask leading questions beyond establishing that the aircraft was a B-24 and that some of the crew had been killed and others wounded.

This article focuses on an aircraft from the 567th Bomb Squadron of the 389th Bomb Group, B-24D serial number 42-40544, named Hitler’s Hearse and piloted by Captain Robert Mooney, serial number 0742635. During the mission, Captain Mooney was killed and the aircraft later force-landed in Turkey. The article includes a description of what occurred with the 389th Bomb Group during the mission, excerpts from narratives by airmen who participated, and results of interviews conducted over 50 years later with elderly villagers near the site of the force-landing. Seraser Demircibacioglu facilitated these interviews on March 6, 1999. As the text in Part II explains, this account also reflects how the story has altered over time and legends began concerning the event.

In the year 2000, I gave this story and pieces from the wreckage of Captain Mooney's B-24 to the surviving members of his crew I was able to locale: Gerrits (via his son); Triantafellu; Spencer; and Henderson.

I would be delighted to receive any corrections or additional information on this event from anyone who can shed additional light on the circumstances.

Robert Blake Leach 

Lieutenant Colonel, United States Army

August 1, 2000

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THE MISSION

On August 1, 1943, almost two hundred American warplanes flying from bases in Libya conducted a low-level bombing raid against German-controlled oil refineries in Ploesti, Romania. The mission was code-named "TIDAL WAVE". While inflicting damage on the oil production capability of the site, the American losses in men and planes were heavy. Some aircraft crashed in enemy territory, others ditched in the Mediterranean Sea, some force-landed in neutral Turkey, some made it to the British-held islands of Cypress and Malta, and some were declared beyond repair after returning to their bases.

Following an initial raid on Ploesti in 1942, the American Air Forces turned again to the Ploesti oil complex in August of 1943. This time, two Ninth Air Force groups the 98th and the 376th (initially named the HALPRO detachment, which had conducted the first Ploesti raid), were joined by three Eighth Air Force groups from England. Two of these, the 44th and 93rd had already tasted combat over Europe, but the third one, the 389th the Sky Scorpions — had only arrived in Great Britain some two months previously.

The three Eighth Air Force groups conducted low-level training flights over East Anglia, England, much to the chagrin of the crews, trained in the art of high-altitude precision bombing. Hedgehopping was alien to them and, not surprisingly, accidents happened. On June 25, 1943, two Liberators of the inexperienced 389th were involved in a mid-air collision. One man was killed, and another seriously injured. During the last week of June 1943, a total of 124 aircraft in these three groups left England and flew to Libya.

For three weeks the groups flew support missions for the Italian campaign, bombing Italian and Mediterranean targets. On July 20, they began 12 days' training for Ploesti, with practice flights against a mock-up target in the Libyan Desert. This was no ordinary mission and many of the crewmembers were apprehensive about it. Brigadier General Uzal Ent, the commander of the 9th Bomber Command, even had pre-mission beliefs that the mission would produce more casualties than were acceptable. Based on weather considerations, the mission was scheduled for August 1, 1943. 

Crews were briefed the night before the raid as it was barely daylight the following morning when the Liberators took off. The Ninth Air Force's 376th Bomb Group led the raid. Behind them came the 93rd then the 98th, followed by the 44th and 389th bringing up the rear. Twenty-nine Liberators from the 389th took off from Benghazi around six o'clock in the morning. Altogether 358 men from the group went on the mission, some flying with the 98th on detached service. Each 389th Liberator carried four 500-pound bombs and full fuel tanks, including an additional 400-gallon tank in the bomb bay.

The 178 airplanes of the five Liberator groups formed and headed out over the Mediterranean. One crashed on take-off and a second was lost over land. Another B-24 from the 376th Bomb Group that carried the lead navigator went down in the Mediterranean. Following groups crossed over the spot and saw black smoke rising in the air.

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It was a beautiful blue summer day, and the Liberators were headed toward the island of Corfu, then veered right, to the east, heading over land to Ploesti. As crews crossed the Danube they looked down at the peaceful scene where some barges were floating near the shore. The Liberators approached their target around 1400 hours. A few clouds dotted the area, but it was still a bright, sunny day. The leading 376th made a navigational error and turned south too soon and the 93rd followed. This error would have a disastrous effect on the entire raid but did not directly affect the 389th which had a target slightly to the north of Ploesti.

The 389th reached their checkpoint near Ploesti and veered northeast. The target the 389th sought was the Steaua Romana refinery at Campina. When this particular target refinery was assigned to the newer 389th Bomb Group, it was thought to be an easier target compared with those of the other groups because it had no barrage balloons. Up to this moment the formation had not encountered any flak or fighters. The Sky Scorpions had been given a slightly longer route because their Liberators were the only ones fitted with fuselage tanks. However, this additional weight made them more vulnerable.

Sergeant Earl L. Zimmerman was the radio operator in the 389th Bomb Group B-24 which was numbered 744, piloted by Lieutenant Harold L. James. Zimmerman recalls: "We were made to drain the gas gauges on the flight deck prior to taking off because they figured that if we got hit by ground fire it would be less likely to catch fire. Just before we hit the target our pilot got a little worried about the gas consumption because we were flying in the last element. Flying in the tail end of the formation you always used more fuel because you were constantly jockeying the controls. It takes a bit more maneuvering to stay in formation and we were constantly being buffeted by prop wash. We were really burning up the gas. The engineer told me that if we had turned round then we could not have made Benghazi! We knew we were not going back no matter what happened over the target."

The 389th’s Commanding Officer, Colonel Jack Wood, led the Sky Scorpions in Major Kenneth Caldwell's Liberator. There were some anxious moments when the formation turned down the wrong valley. The group pulled up and flew on for perhaps three to four minutes before correcting the error. They started down towards the refinery, which was marked by a great pall of smoke. The 389th carried bombs with short delay fuses while the other groups carried 20-minute acid core fused bombs which would not explode until the bombs dropped by the 389th created a concussion wave in the target area. Any that did not explode in the concussion wave would eventually explode by means of the acid core fuse.

After the 389th had recovered from the navigational error, the group split into three sections and hit the target from three different directions. These sections were split into elements of three planes each. The section on the left, flying almost due south, consisted of three of these elements. The center sections flying roughly southeast, was made up of five of the three-plane elements. The section on the right. approaching in a more easterly direction, consisted of two elements.

Captain Robert C. Mooney, flying the aircraft named Hitler’s Hearse, led the trail element in the center section. On his left wing was “Adeline”, piloted by Lieutenant Stanislaus J. Podalok, and on his right wing was "Blonds Away", piloted by Lieutenant William D. Nading. 

Lt. Podalok brought "Sweet Adeline" into the target area at 250 feet. The bombardier, Lt. Melvin Brackendorf, put their six bombs into the conflagration. Waist gunner, Staff Sergeant Richard Crippen

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had momentarily left his gun to manage the strike camera. "Sweet Adeline's" photos clearly show the effects of the previous waves: Boiling fires, smoke, and incendiaries sparkling on the ground below,

On the right side of the element, Lt. Nading took "Blonds Away" toward the refinery at 275 feet. Co-pilot, Lt. Horace H. "Chris" Christensen recalled, "The Germans were ready with their defenses. The German gun crews were firing at point blank range. From the advantage of our tail-end position, we could see airplanes getting hit by ground fire. The third aircraft, pilot Hughes, ahead of us had been hit and was burning but continued through the bomb release under control. My pilot and I talked for about two seconds and decided to go through the smoke and flames. We headed directly for the cracking plant at an altitude about halfway up the Boiler House smokestack."

Nading's aircraft cleared the tallest stack by about 25 feet as Lt. Herbert Newman, bombardier, dropped the bombs into the spreading inferno and yelled, "Let's get the hell out of here!" He had good reason to exhort the pilots to make tracks. The fuses on their bombs would detonate in about 45 seconds.

Lieutenant Rockly Triantafellu, bombardier on Hitler’s Hearse, recalls the following: "'I have told you mothers and fathers before and I tell you again, your sons will not be sent to war.' These words from a pre-war radio address by F.D.R. were next to the last spoken by Captain Robert C. Mooney to his crew, his last ones were to his co-pilot, Lt. James F. Gerrits, "open up with those nose guns, Hank". A few moments later Bob Mooney was killed by a 40 mm round crashing through his windshield.

Second Lieutenant James F. "Hank" Gerrits, the co-pilot aboard Hitler’s Hearse, takes up the story: "As we turned and headed down on a long glide into the refinery, we could see lots of orange blips appearing all over from around the target area. We were looking down gun barrels that were shooting at us! Bob Mooney was all excited and he said to me, ‘They're shooting at us. Get those nose guns going, Hank!’ We had two .50 caliber guns specially mounted in the nose, with a toggle switch to fire them, for shooting up the target a little and mostly to demoralize the ground gunners. So, I toggled off a few rounds until the switch didn't seem to be firing anymore.”

Triantafellu: "The nose guns were two 50 calibers, one on each side of my N-6 bomb sight (a gun sight for low altitudes). I was watching the ring and pipper racing toward the target, the sudden staccato firing of the guns caused me to leap backwards knocking navigator J.D. Wilson under his table. Back on the sight, could see front end of the power plant was already full of holes, courtesy of preceding flights carrying long-delay fuse bombs. The pipper was nearing bomb release at the base of target – ‘clunk clunk, clunk’ the plane shook, started swerving right, the pipper with it, hit the salvo, pushed face against the nose glass. Had to see where those four 500 pounders hit, we had come so far; saw one hit debris in front and skip into right side of plants never saw the others.”

Gerrits: "Everything was fine, we kept gliding and suddenly, I heard a loud 'Bang!' in the cockpit and flinched to my right toward the side window. The cockpit quickly filled with smoke. As the smoke cleared there was a horrible roar from a hole in the windscreen and I turned toward Mooney. He was leaning back away from the control wheel. His hands were off the wheel and just held in front of him. Blood was running all down his face and head and he was stretching out in his seat. It was evident right away that he wasn't conscious anymore. We were still going down on the target in a shallow dive and maybe 200 ft or so off the ground. I quickly grabbed the wheel and continued the bomb run for a few seconds - - over the target, through the smoke, and then I banked up and to the right and we went over

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the refinery structures. I could feel something down the side of my face and my left arm hurt. I looked down and I had some blood on myself too. No deep wounds. 

The air was roaring in through the hole in the windshield where the shell had entered just to the left of Mooney's head. I was alone. Garrett, the engineer, had disappeared too. I thought it was all over for us so I felt we should give them hell before we crashed. I pushed my intercom button and shouted, ‘OK, now give it to them, pour it at 'em. Let's go now. Keep those guns going!’ I was talking to the tail gunner and the ball turret gunner, who had good shots at the refinery as we were pulling away. Then we were low over the trees, past the target and still in the air. I called my bombardier, Rock Triantafellu, and said, ‘Rock, dump the bombs anywhere. Get rid of them.’ But he said they had been dropped on the target.”

Plane #744, which had no nickname, was the last plane from the 389th Bomb Group to fly over the target. The pilot, Lt. James, and his crew knew that they would not return to Africa due to fuel consumption. James recalled, "As the target appeared ahead, my attention was diverted from maintaining a good tight wing position. It was never again a concern during that mission. Confronting us was a huge wall of dark billowing smoke and dirty orange flames from burning oil tanks. What happened to those delayed action fuses ahead? In spite of this impending holocaust, our bombardier Grover Edmiston released his bombs right on target." When Lieutenant James' Liberator came off the target, the only B-24 in front which the crew could see was Hitler’s Hearse.

The combined bomb tonnage dropped by the 389th Bomb Group would put Steaua Romano refinery totally out of the oil production business until mid-December. Later reconstruction recovered some production capacity, but the refinery never reached its preattack capacity for the duration of the war. The 389th had pulled off the big one. In spite of the initial error, they had struck the target as planned. While dishing out maximum damage, the actual losses were the lightest of any group actually hitting a refinery complex. Three aircraft, flown by Lieutenants Lloyd D. Hughes, Robert W, Horton, and Robert J. O’Reilly went down within 20 miles of the target. Hughes was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor after pressing home his attack despite being holed time and again. Blazing fuel finally engulfed his B-24, which hit the ground and exploded. Another, piloted by Lt. Melvin E. Neef, made a crash landing approximately 80 miles away. Two ships headed towards the relative safety of Turkey, while three others would reach the British airfield at Cypress. Altogether nine Liberators from the 389th initially failed to return to North Africa. The Sky Scorpions had been the last to area and had paid dearly for their lack of surprise. Still, post mission would show, " ...a near perfect strike at Campina."

Triantafellu: "The plane was pulling up and right, left wing down, cleared stack at rear of the plant. J.D. was pointing to no.2 engine streaming smoke and flames; no.1 was turning slowly like just starting or quitting. I headed for the flight deck, hydraulic lines squirting fluid; had a flash thought about the Dutch kid's finger in the dike. Deck was a bloody mess, radio man Lubin face down on radio table bleeding somewhere, Leibowitz in the top turret, bleeding, arms hanging down.”

Gerrits: "Rock came up from the nose just as I was passing over a cleared area of land. I was still all shook up and I said, ‘Rock, should I land on that flat ground right down there?’ I pointed at the field. But he said, 'No, no, keep it in the air, Hank. These people will be mad as hell down there.' So, I tried to climb a little.”

Triantafellu: "Hank was struggling to hold altitude, full throttle on the two good engines no wing nor rudder trim controls, bomb bay doors stuck open, scary leaking-fuel. Hank motioned me, and yelled,

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'Rock, this is going to blow, I'm putting it down in that clearing just ahead'. I said 'Hell, no, Hank! You've got us this far, people around here are really mad, let's get as far away as possible.”

Gerrits: "I tried to get just a little more altitude, but I was too shaken up to do much of anything but just fly. My engineer, Charles Garrett, had been standing back between Mooney and me and had been hit around the head and hands. He got up between us to show us his bleeding hands and I yelled, ‘Garrett, get him (Mooney) out of his seat, get him out anyway you can — pull his clothes off!”

Triantafellu: "Both Hank and Garrett, our engineer in jump seat with two bloody hands, were trying to shut down and feather no.2 and rev-up no.1 but could only get 1200 RPM, just enough to offset drag. Hank was trying with all his strength to bring up the left wing and hold altitude, he was bleeding from shrapnel on the left side of his head, arm, and shoulder and yelling, ‘Get Bob off the controls!’ Bob was head down on the wheel; there was a shell hole the size of a grapefruit injecting a 200-knot screeching wind thru Bob's windshield. Garrett was also hit in the knees and couldn’t help much but the two of us got Mooney out of the seat. I pulled him back to the hatchway on the flight deck. His face and neck covered with blood. Tried to find a heartbeat but too much noise. Went back, got his parachute, and buckled it on him. Never know why I did that; we were at roof top altitude.”

Gerrits: “Garrett got him out and laid him on the flight deck just behind the cockpit. We flew on and Garrett climbed into Mooney’s seat to help me, but he couldn’t do very much. His hands had been hit and were all bloody. He pushed the controls with just the palms of his hands. Leibowitz, the top turret gunner had been hit too and he came out of his turret to the flight deck. But Rock saw him and said, ‘Leibowitz, get back up there and keep that turret turning.’ Rock went back down to the nose again and then J.D. Wilson, the navigator came up. He had a really horrified look on his face when he saw me and all the mess on the flight deck. There was blood all over the wounded and the dead. Lubin, the radio operator, had also been hit pretty bad and was lying on the floor too. Broken glass was everywhere, and the air was roaring in through the front. It didn’t look like we could possible keep going.

J.D. went back down to the nose. Rock told me later that when he got back there, he had buckled on a knapsack to his parachute harness and had begun pulling open the nose wheel door which was an emergency exit. Rock said to him, ‘What are you doing, J.D.?’ J.D. said to him, ‘I’m getting out of here. You won’t believe the mess up there!’ But Rock told him, ‘J.D., we’re only a hundred or so feet up and besides, you have your travel bag buckled on, not your parachute!’ J.D. quieted down some and took off the knapsack.

Lubin asked, ‘What are you going to do?’ I said, ‘Go between Turnu-Severin and Orsova and bail out I guess.’ Intelligence had told us partisans controlled the stretch and we could be safe and returned later. Rock said, ‘We have wounded who can’t jump.’”

389th Bomb Group members noted approximately thirty minutes after striking the target, Hitler’s Hearse turned east in search of neutral Turkey with one engine smoking. As they withdrew from the target area, pilots of planes that had been damaged or were low on fuel had to decide the fates of their aircraft. The closest safe haven was the neutral country of Turkey. Alternatives included Chorlu in European Turkey, Turkish bases across the Bosphorus, or Cyprus. Each of these courses of action involved lengthy time over German-held Yugoslavia, Greece, and Bulgaria. Additionally, the flight to Cyprus included a 500-mile violation of Turkish airspace as well.

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Lt. Christensen recalls in his account written in 1995 that his aircraft piloted by Lt. Nading, escorted two crippled Liberators of the 389th Bomb Group to Izmir, Turkey.

These aircraft are as follows:

Serial Number: 42-40544 

Aircraft Name: Hitler’s Hearse

Squadron: 567th Bomb Squadron

Pilot: Captain Robert Mooney (Killed in Action) age 23, Dallas, Texas

Co-Pilot: 2nd Lt. James Gerrits, 21, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Navigator: 1st Lt. John D. Wilson, 23, Selma, Alabama

Bombardier: 1st Lt. Rockly Triantafellu, 25, Jacksonville, Florida

Radio Operator: Tech Sergeant Alex Lubin, 25, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Engineer: Sergeant Charles Garett, age 22, Columbus, Ohio

Top Turret Gunner/Assistant Armorer: Sergeant Aaron P. Leibowitz, 23

Waist Gunner/Assistant Engineer: Sergeant Eugene P. Spencer, 24

Tunnel Ball Turret Gunner/Armorer: Sergeant Eber G. Ayers, 22, Chicago, Illinois

Tail Gunner/Assistant Radio Operator: Sergeant Elvin H. Henderson, age 22, Kansas

Serial Number: 42-40744

Aircraft Name: none

Squadron: 565th Bomb Squadron

Pilot: Lt. Harold James

Co-Pilot: Lt. Harold W. Schellinger

Navigator: Lt. William R. Gilliat

Bombardier: Lt. Grover A. Edmiston

Engineer: Sergeant Harold M. Thompson

Radio Operator: Sergeant Earl L. Zimmermann

Top Turret Gunner: Max C. Cavey

Waist Gunner: Sergeant Hugh R. McLaren

Waist Gunner: Sergeant John P. Morris

Tail Gunner: Sergeant Robert L. Hamilton

Christensen: "The ground track followed by Mooney's aircraft took us south, about 15 miles west of Ploesti. We could see the fires and smoke from the attack on the targets by the other four groups. We could also see Bucharest in the distance. Soon after the target, two other airplanes Podolak and James, joined with this formation.”

Lt. James: "Climbing away from Campina and heading south, we came upon another B-24 flying in the same direction. For psychological security and mutual protection, I took a position off its right wing until we could sort things out

Gerrits: ''We decided to head for Turkey since we had a map showing an airport at Izmir. We thought we might cross Turkey and get down to Cyprus which was under British control. J.D. got back to work and gave me a compass heading for Izmir. Garrett ordinarily did the gas, transferring it with a pump from tank to tank but he was too badly wounded, so Rock had to do it. He transferred gas from the engine

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that wasn't running to the other tank. But he didn't work it just right with the pump and got a couple of facefuls of gas. It burned his face, and he couldn't see very well.”

Triantafellu: "Engineer Garrett grabbed me, 'You've got to transfer gas to the good engine tanks’ 'How do I do that?' He gave me a terrible look and I was thinking real hard how I wished I had paid more attention to what flight engineers do. He said, 'You know where the fuel transfer pump is, behind and over the bomb bay where the wings join, do what it says to do!' Bomb bay doors stuck open, off the tracks and flapping in the wind, gas leaking from overhead wing tank and from our extra 450-gallon rubber tank strapped to a bomb rack. Get to the pump. Rear gunners Spencer, Ayers, and Henderson shooting at storage tanks, AAA sites and wondering what was happening up front. Sent Spencer forward to do what he could for Bob and our other wounded.

Pump had 'U' shaped pipes with snap-on connectors, and labels on input - output for tanks and engines. O.K., but missed caution words to turn off pump before disconnects and got some high-pressure squirts in the face - - c’mon Rock, dummy.”

Sgt. Eugene Spencer, gunner on Hitler's Hearse recounts: "From the time we left the target the possibility that we might have to bail out was ever present. When someone from the front (Rockly, I think) asked on the intercom if anyone in the rear had any first aid training, I said that I had (Boy Scouts). This was the first time that we in the back of the plane knew that we had wounded aboard. We knew that we had been hit because we felt that happen. I went up to the flight deck with a couple of first aid kits from the back. The thing I saw of course was our pilot on the floor behind the pilot's seat. I went first to him and felt for a pulse, and I found that he was already dead. Garrett the engineer was sitting in the pilot's seat at that time trying to get the engine to stay feathered. I noted that his wounds were minor as were all the others except for Lt. Gerrits’ left arm but none seemed to be bleeding dangerously.”

Gerrits: “J.D. Wilson, the navigator, called very excitedly, 'The no.2 engine is smoking badly. If you don't feather it now, it's going to burn, and you'll never feather it.' I said to Garrett to go ahead and feather it. Garrett could work the controls but only with the heels of his hand. His fingers were bloody. Garrett was a good engineer, but Mooney wasn't much on crew training, so Garrett didn't know how. He had to fuss around and held the red button in on the engine. It over sped a few times until he learned to take his finger off the button. Finally, he had it stopped. We found no.1 was running but with no controls, manifold pressure, prop, or pitch. 3 and 4 seemed to be doing the job.”

Spencer: "I then had time to notice that the reason that Garrett was having trouble getting the propeller to stay feathered was that he was holding the feathering button (switch) down. The proper procedure was to push the feathering (red buttons at 12 0'clock overhead) switch in and leave it in, the prop would feather, and the engine would stop turning and the feathering button would pop back out, push it again and release, and the prop would unfeather, and the engine would begin turning again. He was actually cycling through feathering and unfeathering. I know that he knew how this was done because he was the one who had checked me out on the procedure. I've often wondered about this. I suppose being wounded and scared (as we all were) caused him to lose it momentarily.”

Gerrits: "We found out that we had lost all the controls to engine no.4 as well and we couldn't do anything about it except let it run the way it was set. I asked Garrett, ‘How’s Mooney?’ By then Spencer, one of the waist gunners, had come forward to help and he was working over Mooney, then Garrett

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turned to me and said, 'Spencer says Mooney is dead.’ That was a blow, but I had to act hard and matter-of-fact and say something like, ‘tough luck’ and ‘Well, OK, let’s keep going’.”

Spencer: “I was determined that if we did bail out that if any way possible, we would take Captain Mooney with us. I figured that if I could tie a rope to the ripcord and tie the other end out in the bomb bay, we could get him out and have his parachute open automatically. I couldn't find a piece of rope, so I took the fire ax and cut off three or four microphone extension cords and tied them together thereby rigging a way to take him with us. Actually, I was not 100% sure that he was dead, and I could not have lived with myself if I hadn’t made some effort to get him out. Lubin the radio operator watched me do this, nodding his approval occasionally, I suppose, to encourage me. Fortunately, (I guess) we never did really get enough altitude to bail out.”

Triantafellu: “Back to the leaking rubber tank, it had a wound in lower side and was trying to self-seal. self-seal. Stuffed a leather jacket in the hole, made it worse, got another drenching of high octane, and went back to transfer its remaining fuel to other tanks. Plane lurching, oil on catwalk, slipped and except for a lucky grab at bomb rack and adrenaline, would have made the casualty list with an asterisk.”

Gerrits: “Then Rock told me we were getting low on gas. We had been hit by a big shell in the bomb bay tank and in spite of a thick rubber lining that was supposed to seal those leaks, almost all 400 gallons had leaked out quickly. Rock had seen it and had jammed an A-2 leather flight jacket into the hole but it had just washed the jacket out and the gas kept going. There was a strong gasoline smell and Garrett put a cigarette in his mouth and reached for a lighter. I looked over and held my nose and shook my head ‘no!’ so he put it away.”

Christensen: "We could see Mooney's airplane wobbling along and we were trying to move into a tight formation with it.. .. We slowed into position alongside Mooney’s damaged airplane in our normal assigned right-wing position. The propeller on the no.2 engine was being feathered as we watched. The airplane stayed close to the ground and appeared to be under control. A large stream of gasoline was pouring from the bomb bay. A man fell part way out of the bay but managed to pull himself back into the airplane.”

Sgt. Zimmerman, flying in 744, piloted by Lt. James, recalled that he could see the legs of someone who he later found out was Lt. Triantafellu, hanging from the bomb bay door as he was trying to transfer the fuel.

Triantafellu: "J.D. and Garrett figured we had enough fuel to get to Turkey. It was all up to Hank, couldn't gain altitude, he was dodging power lines, hills, flying down ravines. Terrain elevation receded toward the Aegean and J.D. had us headed for an airfield at Izmir, fuel situation was estimated critical, but in reality, unknowable.”

Gerrits: "The rest of our flight didn't know what was going on, so Rock went back to the waist window to signal them. Our radio had been shot out but, in any event, we wanted to maintain radio silence so as not to attract attention. Rock signaled with an Aldis lamp to one wing ship, 'Pilot dead. Wounded aboard. Trying for Turkey.' Rock saved the piece of paper which he used to write out the message.”

Triantafellu: "Two other B-24s were flying in a loose formation with us. Our no.2 engine was still smoking, so ‘loose' was safest. The one on our right was keeping a safe distance. Our radio was out but they had gotten Hank's eye with their Aldis lamp. He told me to signal them that our pilot was dead and

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that we were going to Turkey. Where is our lamp? Morse code? About all I could remember since cadet days was S.O.S. Somehow their smart radio man Earl Zimmerman deciphered my garble message and responded with 'rollo' which was my readout of his 'we will follow.' In later years Earl confirmed my proficiency(?) in Morse.”

Lt. James' radio operator, Sgt. Zimmerman, watched the blinking signal lamp and wondered what they were saying. Zimmerman later recalled, "Rock's morse code was a little rusty but finally I could understand. He was flashing, ‘Mooney's dead, going to Turkey.’”

Lt. James realized that they would never make Cyprus, so he stayed with the wounded ship and headed for Turkey. James put his crew to work getting rid of anything that was sensitive or could be used by the enemy. They destroyed the Identification Friend or Foe equipment. He also had them destroy the film in the camera by ripping it out. "How I wish we had not done that!"

Christensen: “By this time we were many miles east of the route of the other airplanes and knew it would be impossible to find and join with the remaining airplanes of the 389th Bomb Group. We could not see leaving our element leader with one propeller feathered and with other damage and a dead pilot to find their way to Turkey. We decided to stay with the formation and then try to return to Africa from Turkey.

We observed a flight of four German ME 109s climbing from left to right about a thousand feet above us, apparently headed toward airplanes farther to the west. We were happy they ignored us and were glad that Mooney's airplane continued to fly a few feet off the ground but headed south of our planned escape route. Our radio operator, Stanley Brayovich, signaled their radio operator in Morse code using the Aldis lamp and soon was able to inform us that the pilot, Mooney, was dead and they didn't know exactly what to do. I knew that my fellow copilot, Hank Gerrits, was flying the airplane. Hank had his hands full, and we could imagine the problems he was having. We could only guess at the extent of the damage and the fuel which had been lost, but we concluded to tell them to go to Turkey since we could not imagine they could make it back to Africa.

We thought about moving into the lead position but decided we could advise them and then adjust our speed to that of their damaged airplane. We decided the best place to go in Turkey was to the Turkish airfield Cumaovasi, ten miles south of Izmir. Our briefing material contained information on this facility. We crossed the Danube River into Bulgaria. We advised a small course change and the need to climb to cross the Balkan Mountains which have peaks just above 5,000 feet. We felt reluctant to leave the protection of flying close to the ground but knew it would take the damaged airplane some distance to gain the necessary altitude. We received a few rounds of anti-aircraft fire as we approached themountains. The ugly, black bursts were not even close to the airplanes. We did not see any enemy airplanes as we continued our journey.”

Gerrits: "We kept on flying and I increased the power. We were climbing very slowly with our one dead engine but got up to 6,000 feet. We went too near one town, and we drew flak. I quickly veered away, and our wing ships followed. Later, someone said two twin-engine Ju-88s came at us from a distance but for some reason they broke off without attacking.” 

Christensen: "We crossed into the very eastern end of Greece and then into Turkey. Turkey had been neutral but biased toward the Germans and we did not know how we would be received when we

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entered their airspace, especially since our route would take us across the middle of the Dardanelles. As soon as we entered Turkey, we saw several Turkish fighter airplanes. They flew near to us, but never exhibited any hostility at all. The Turkish airplanes included Spitfires, Hurricanes, and ME-109s. These airplanes escorted us during the remainder of our flight to Izmir.”

Gerrits: “By now, J.D, Rock and I had figured that we would go down the coast of Turkey as far as we could until the gas ran out. We approached water - The Bosphorus - but it became so hazy that I had to go on instruments again for a few minutes. Then we were off the west coast of Turkey heading for the airfield at Izmir. I let down a little on this leg, I turned in over land when we got there close to 6:00 p.m. The no.2 engine ran the hydraulic pump so we had no hydraulics, bomb bay doors open - couldn't close them, no flaps, no brakes. I said to Rock, 'Better try to get the landing gear down by crank.’”

Triantafellu: "Hank had one more try of my talents as we neared the airfield. The hydraulics were gone, and Garrett couldn't get out of the jump seat to get to the emergency landing gear crank. So again, back to school reading emergency procedures for cranking down the landing gear. That move was as close to getting the rest of us killed as any thus far. The gear came down but that was too much drag on already critical airspeed and the bird began to stall.”

Spencer: "Garrett then told me that the gear would not come down and that I would have to crank them down by hand. He told me to be sure and count the rotations of the crank and make sure that I made 29 turns. The count was important, because it took exactly 29 turns to unlock the gear, lower, and then re- lock them in the down position. Any less and the gear would not be locked down and they would collapse on touchdown.”

Gerrits: "We figured by then we were so low on gas we couldn't go any further than Izmir. We had no flaps or brakes either, so it was going to be a difficult landing. Rock got the gear down and then we had another problem. With the drag of the gear, I couldn’t maintain altitude. We gradually dropped. J.D. brought me right to the airport. I went over it and then tried to turn. But I was afraid to bank too much with the engine out. We lost altitude and flying at low airspeed, I lost the airport in the slow turn.

Gerrits: "I was almost frantic. We were in a valley between two mountain ranges. By then we could only go on up the valley. I yelled, 'Where is the airport?' But everybody was numb by that time, and nobody answered. I said, 'Throw everything out to reduce our rate of descent.' And the crew did toss various stuff out. By then there were also two Turkish P-40 lighters buzzing around us and diving at us to force us down. But we were in too much trouble and too busy and exhausted to pay any attention at all to them. I didn't know what to do. I was desperate, had maybe 700-800 feet altitude. I looked past Garrett out the left window and saw a long green field. I went on past and then turned carefully into the bad side, not dipping the wing much by putting two feet on the left rudder pedal and pushing so we skidded around. I paralleled the long field and at, the end, skidded around left again, turned 180 degrees. There was the field in front of us and I chopped off the power and glided.

After I got around the turn, I saw the field directly in front of me and I pulled the throttles off watching the air speed as well as I could. No flaps, no brakes, so we came in real hot. At the last minute, right in front of me, loomed an irrigation ditch. I thought for a second in frustration of just plowing through it but that would have been disastrous. I grabbed all the throttles and jammed them forward. The engines roared, the left wing dropped, and I fought it up and we picked up enough altitude to clear the ditch. I pulled the throttles back as quickly as I had pushed them forward and grabbed the wheel with both

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hands, struggling furiously to bring the left wing up and to flatten out the glide. We cleared the ditch, and we were ready to touch down.

Lt. Triantafellu: "Hank jammed the nose down, pulled up just before nosing in, hit, bounced up, hit again, up-down, up-down, the gear held, fuel was pouring out of the ruptured tanks. “

Lt. Gerrits: "We touched down and the potholes were real rough. The gear rumbled on the rough ground. Everybody must have thanked God. But with no flaps, we were at airspeed, and it ballooned off again. It settled down this time and stuck. The second time it was really rough. Rolled and rolled! Garrett yelled, 'Shut off the ignition switches', and I did. We tore along with no brakes, and I was jamming the controls one way and then the other to ground loop, but no luck, we kept rolling straight ahead. Finally slowed a little and then I saw another irrigation gully at the far edge of the field, and I thought we were going to nose over into it for sure. But we slowed down and I shouted, "Hang on! Hang on! We're going in!" But we rolled on up to the edge, the nose turned a little, and stopped. The nose wheel was right on the brink of the gully when we finally stopped. It took three hours from Ploesti to landing.”

Lt. James: "A Turkish P-40 came alongside our left wing. Whether he was there to 'escort' us to an airfield or not I don't know. I didn't pay much attention to him. Gilliat guided us to the Gazi Emir Airfield at Izmir where we made a normal landing under full control.”

Lt. Christensen: "When we reached the airfield south of Izmir, we waved to Hank and the other crew members and signaled them to go down. We watched as Mooney's airplane and James' airplane made successful landings. Hank actually landed their airplane in an open field near the airport. When Hank returned to England several months later, he told me it was the first time he had actually landed a B-24 by himself.”

Bill and I talked about what we would do when the damaged airplanes left the formation. We decided we would fly through the mountains in Turkey and try to reach Cyprus. We did not have enough fuel left to make a detour around German occupied Crete and we considered flying across that island as being dangerous. All the Turkish airplanes followed the two damaged airplanes and did not interfere when we headed southwest. We stayed low as we flew through the tops of the mountains and soon considered we were beyond the range of the airplanes which had been tracking our little formation." Nading and Christensen flew the "Blondes Away" on to the island of Cyprus.

Gerrits: "We all climbed out quickly through the bomb bays and carried out the dead and wounded. It was a calm, sunny, beautiful afternoon. Clear, warm, sunny, and quiet. What a change. We were all so uptight we talked, shouted, and walked around the plane, exhausted and shaken. Then somebody mentioned the secret radio equipment. Garrett said we should push the buttons to destroy the secret electronic equipment — I.F.F. (Identification Friend or Foe). Gasoline was everywhere and I was unwilling to get back in the plane. The gas fumes in Hitler’s Hearse made me afraid to push the destruction buttons. Flipping a switch may have started a fire and caused an explosion. Instead, they showed me the box that housed the I.F.F. and I fired my .45 automatic into it. I was really shook up.”

Lt. Triantafellu: "Somehow we all grabbed someone and hauled our dead and wounded out and away from the sure-to blow "Hitler's Hearse." It didn't. It was sundown on a Sunday afternoon.”

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Lt. Gerrits: "It was a tremendous relief to be on the ground, but I couldn't quiet down. I could only walk around and around the plane. I looked up at that big, dirty engine dripping oil and the big prop with the strangely unnatural feathered attitude. One of the Turkish pilots landed his P-40 behind us but it had much smaller wheels than the Liberator and he tore the gear and one wing off in the rough field. He got out safely and walked across a couple of hundred yards to us. Nice, friendly fellow. He was very pleasant and gave us all a cigarette. I don't smoke but did that time — courtesy.”

Spencer: "Well we landed, maybe a better word would be 'grounded', in a big, plowed field near Izmir, Turkey. We all got out and got a safe distance from the plane and this fighter plane came buzzing low over us. I'm afraid this is where I lost it. It looked to me like we were going to be strafed on the ground, so I ran for the plane and my trusty .50. Someone (Lt. Wilson, I think) yelled, 'Wait, it's not the enemy.' I felt like a jerk! It was in fact a Turkish P-40. He landed in the same field that we did and totaled his airplane. Last I heard of that corporal he was on his way to the Turkish 'Leavenworth.'”

Gerrits: "The sun was just going down behind the mountains. It was about 18:30 and it was a beautiful clear quiet evening, with just some sheep grazing in the field nearby. A little later a Turkish army truck came up with a few soldiers in it and loaded all of us to and took us to a little hamlet a mile or so away. Some sort of first-aid man (doctor?) there cleaned and daubed something on our wounds. By then it was dark, and the truck took us into Izmir. Mooney lay on the floor of the truck, covered with some jackets and we all felt pretty bad for him.”

When darkness fell over the bases in Libya at 2010 on August 1, 1943, many aircraft remained unaccounted for, although some were yet to arrive safely. By midnight, about 70 aircraft were still missing. Some of these, unbeknownst to the headquarters in Benghazi, had reached remote friendly bases or neutral Turkey. But some, like those destroyed in an ambush by hostile fighter planes over the Ionian Sea, had foundered on the very brink of safety.

Ten planes, including Nading's "Blonds Away", had successfully overflown Turkey and landed in Cyprus. Some of these aircraft were beyond repair due to the damage they had sustained over enemy territory. Others needed less extensive repairs and were able to return to their bases in Libya during the following days.

The surviving crewmembers of eight aircraft were taken into custody by the Turkish government for official internment. In addition to the crew of Hitler's Hearse and Lt. James' crew, four crews (two each from the 44th and 93rd Bomb Groups) had landed at the airport in Chorlu. Seven survivors from a 98th Bomb Group B-24, "Hadley's Harem", had made it to shore after their plane crashed in the sea near Manavgat. The final crew belonged to the 376th Bomb Group and had landed in a remote valley near Chardak, in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey.

The 389th Bomb Group history reflects pride in the fact that the group had sent 29 ships on the mission, and all reached and bombed the target. In Benghazi, those who did not participate in the mission really "sweated out" the boys and the day seemed unusually long before the ships returned around six o'clock in the evening, 14 hours after they had taken off. It didn't look so good when only 17 ships landed on Site 10. Shortly afterwards, however, word came through that three planes landed at other sites near Benghazi and that three were all right in Cyprus. Subsequently reports were received that Lt. James (565th Squadron) and his entire crew were safe in Turkey. Word also came through that Captain Robert C. Mooney, (567th Squadron) was killed by machine gun fire over the target and that Sgts. Leibowitz,

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Lubin, and Garrett on his crew were wounded. Captain Mooney's co-pilot, Lt. Gerrits, succeeded in flying a badly crippled ship from the target to Turkey and there making a safe crash landing in a field.

Early on August 2, 1943, a Ninth Air Force summary reported that 96 aircraft had returned to the Benghazi area, 10 were known to have reached Cyprus, four to Sicily, four to Malta, and one to Turkey. There were 20 losses in action that had been confirmed, one aircraft had been lost enroute, and 13 had aborted, which left 29 unaccounted for.

During the day, unofficial reports from Turkey stated that four B-24s had landed in the lzweim area, and four others in Thrace. That evening the British Air Attaché in Ankara signaled more reliable information. The Turkish government confirmed that four aircraft had landed at Chorlu and one at Gazbairmir with the crews safe, one at Cardak about which there were no details, and one near Torbali, south of Izmir, in a state of considerable disrepair with the pilot dead and two crew members wounded. Another ("Hadley's Harem") had crashed in the sea of Manavgat with the loss of three lives.

From 178 aircraft which took to the air, 41 were lost in action, split among the various bomb groups in the following manner: 376th (1), 93id (11), 98th (18), 44'h (7), and 389th (4). Eight others, including "Hadley's Harem", were in Turkey and therefore effectively lost. Six of these eight were from the three Eighth Air Force groups.

Zimmerman: "We met the remainder of the Mooney crew - the wounded members having been immediately taken to hospital and later returned to the States. We stayed overnight at a rooming house and next day, August 2, a funeral was held for Captain Mooney at a small cemetery outside Izmir. During the procession through the town, Mooney's coffin was taken by the front of the German Consulate despite German protests.”

At Izmir, Ellis Johnson, American Vice Consul had his hands full taking care of his new arrivals. He had verified that the crews of two Liberators were being taken care of at Izmir. He was also making funeral arrangements for Robert Mooney. Capt. Mooney's crew had requested permission to attend their skipper's funeral. Late in the afternoon, Vice Consul Johnson received a call from the local Chief of Staff for the Turkish military. Capt. Robert C. Mooney would receive full military honors at his funeral. The American crewmen could attend, in military uniform. This was a rarity, in view that they were officially interned.

At 5:30 p.m., local time, August 2, 1943, the procession began its final march for a fallen soldier. The casket was draped with the American flag transported atop a caisson. Mooney's crew marched behind their skipper, followed by Lt. James's crew. The procession followed the traditional route for state funerals. At the end of the route, the casket was transferred to a hearse for the trip to the Anglican Cemetery at Barnova.

The solemn gravesite ceremonies were conducted by Dr. A.J. Wescott. With full military honors, a Texan was laid to rest in a foreign country with all the compassion that could be afforded. At the close of the ceremonies, a Turkish honor guard fired three volleys. Lt. Gerrits recalled that the burial was at a very pretty site on a point of land near the sea.

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Gerrits: "Mooney was initially buried in Izmir the next day. A beautiful parade. A sad Turkish tune by a Turk band. News photos of us 'sad-sacks' (left-overs of crews), and we were given the pictures.

The funeral provided the basis for an interesting international protest. German ambassador, Franz von Papen, complained to the Turkish government about the fact that the American flag had been allowed to parade past the Embassy. Furthermore, he was appalled at the fact that the two national flags had almost touched each other. He considered the whole incident an insult to the German people. After all, the American had been involved in a bombing mission to deprive the German nation of oil. On top of that, he contended that the Turkish Government had violated neutrality by allowing a soldier from a foreign nation to be buried in a neutral country, with the neutral nation giving the military honor ceremony. The Government of Turkey filed the protest but did little to placate the Germans.

The three enlisted Hitler’s Hearse crewmembers that had been wounded were in care of Turkish medical authorities in a hospital in Istanbul later in August. These were flight engineer Garrett, top turret gunner Leibowitz, and radio operator Lubin.

On August 3, 1943, Radio Bucharest broadcast details of an attack by 125 American bombers `of the Flying Fortress type' against the oil region of Romania two days earlier. The broadcast claimed that heavy anti-aircraft fire had prevented all but a few from reaching their target. This report claimed that 36 aircraft were destroyed, and 66 airmen captured, and also noted eight bombers were forced down in Turkey, three near Chorlu and five in the Smyrna (Izmir) area.

Zimmerman: "The day after Captain Mooney's funeral we were taken to the railway station for a nice long trip to Ankara. It was a real hairy trip — their trains at that time something to behold. But we arrived in the Turkish capital to be put up in the Turkish Military Academy which was on summer vacation at the time on the outskirts of the city. We were put on the third floor where we met five more crews, but they were incomplete, some having been wounded and others missing. It got quite overcrowded, and we counted including ourselves, 64 people. We were met by General R.G. Tindall, Military Attaché at the American Embassy, and members of his staff, including his assistant, Major Brown. We were now under their jurisdiction, and we were to take orders from them. We were briefed and most of the internees were looking forward to some good food like ice cream and nice fresh melons. 

Our arrangements were that we would sign out on parole each day from 0900 to 2200 hours. We were given direct orders not to violate the parole period at any time - even when attempting to escape! Arrangements, however, were made with the Turkish Government. According to the Geneva convention if one was ill, one could sign off parole so some kind of deal was made so we were sick every day! No one ever violated the parole and on some occasions, we got special permission to stay out after parole if one of the embassies threw a party.”

When school resumed at the military academy, the interned airmen were moved to the Yeni hotel. By October 15, 1943, Lieutenants Gerrits and Triantafellu had successfully departed their internment in Turkey and were at Airdrome Maison Blanche, in Algiers. Finally, back with the 567'h Squadron of the 389'h Bomb Group at Army Air Forces Station 114 in England on November

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14, 1943, Lieutenant Gerrits submitted the following recommendation to commend Lieutenant Triantafellu for his gallantry during the mission:

"On the August 1, low level attack on the Ploesti oil refineries Lt. Triantafellu served as bombardier. He succeeded in dropping his bombs squarely on the target though his ship was hit by at least three 40mm shells on the bomb run. One engine was completely shot out, the supercharger was destroyed on another, and the radio, rudder trim tabs, hydraulic system and oxygen lines were also hit and rendered useless. The pilot was killed, the co-pilot wounded and the engineer, radio operator and top turret gunner so badly wounded that it was necessary for Lt. Triantafellu to take over their duties. He first signaled the condition of his ship to the wing ships with an Aldis lamp and then proceeded to transfer fuel though he had no experience with the system. The bomb bay doors were jammed open, and the catwalk covered with oil from a broken hydraulic reservoir but Lt. Triantafellu worked in the bomb bays without a parachute and with complete disregard for his own safety. Nearly blinded by spurting gasoline and working under the most intense difficulty he managed to improvise several parts of the fuel transfer system, to plug a shell hole in a leaking tank and to transfer enough fuel to enable his ship to reach friendly territory. Lt. Triantafellu stayed at his post throughout the entire three-hour flight until a safe landing had been made in a plowed field. For his great skill and outstanding gallantry, and superb devotion to duty I recommend Lt. Triantafellu be awarded the Silver Star.

Back in Turkey, Earl Zimmerman used his expertise as a qualified radio man and for a time operated a radio sending reports to Washington via Cairo. His rig barely reached Cairo where the signal Corps picked up his transmission, but they could and did fire off messages to Washington at 150 words per minute. Prior to Zimmerman's arrival in Turkey, messages took a long time reaching the Zone of the Interior in the United States.

Zimmerman: "It got to be a pretty routine thing every day in Ankara and every once in a while, the Embassy would sneak a few of us out the back door to Africa and back to England. In December 1943 my chance finally came. By this time, I was glad of the opportunity. Although we had a certain freedom, we were not allowed to leave Ankara. On 16 December I signed the payroll at the embassy, packed my belongings, and was one of those given orders to escape that day! The Germans at this time were kicking up a storm about all the escapes being made so the Turks had to tread pretty lightly. At night six of us, in ones and twos, left for the railway station. Just before the train pulled out for Syria we jumped on board. However, I noticed the senior Turkish officer in charge of internees simply salute as we left the station! We gratefully returned his salute. It was a pretty rough train ride. I slept on the baggage rack above the seats and the others slept on the floor and on the seats. The train pulled into Aleppo, Syria where we were met by the British. We stayed there for a couple of days before a C-47 flew in and took us to Camp Huckstep in Cairo. We were in civilian clothing and under strict orders not to tell anyone where we were going or where we had come from.”

Spencer: "I stayed in Turkey for six months, before being released. Rode a train out to Aleppo, Syria. What a ride! Garlic, goats, chickens, unwashed bodies, garlic, garlic, garlic! Stayed with the British Army for about a month at Aleppo. These were the remains of the troops from the North African desert campaign against Rommel's Afrika Korps and El Alamain. They really had some hairy tales to tell!”

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In all, 75 men were interned in Turkey, but they all escaped to Syria or to the coast, where the British Royal Air Force launches arrived surreptitiously at night to transport them to friendly Cyprus. Like the airmen from the HALPRO Detachment who had been interned under similar circumstances the year before, these men ultimately returned to service, leaving their aircraft in the possession of the Turkish military.

There were at least 11 B-24s that force landed in Turkey after bombing Ploesti, four on the HALPRO mission of 1942, and seven following TIDAL WAVE on August 1, 1943 (not counting Hadley's aircraft, under water south of Antalya). The following list shows the TIDAL WAVE aircraft which force landed in Turkey.

As a neutral country, Turkey had the right to impress these into service with the Turkish Air Force. They were given Turkish Military Numbers 4001 through 4005, however, there are no records to trace which USAAF serial number received which Turkish Air Force number. The aircraft numbered 4003 was specifically modified and served as a VIP transport for the Turkish Chief of Staff in 1944 and 1945.

The four planes which landed in Turkey following the HALPRO mission in 1942 all did so because of low fuel and made routine landings on airfields at Ada Bazaar and Ankara. Following diplomatic negotiations and official internment, the crews were required to train Turkish airmen on the operation of the B-24. At one point, American fliers managed to escape, but were required to return the aircraft to Turkey.

Following the TIDAL WAVE mission, conjecture points to the fact that only the aircraft piloted by Lieutenant James was deemed usable by the Turkish military. This was the B-24 that landed in Izmir with low fuel after escorting Hitler’s Hearse away from Ploesti. While damage to the four aircraft at the Chorlu airport varied from medium to total loss, the Turkish Air Force did not have the maintenance infrastructure necessary to make significant repairs to foreign aircraft.

Some of the remaining aircraft were used as spares to maintain the five B-24s pressed into service with the Turkish Air Force. It is likely that these parts were taken from the damaged aircraft that landed at the Chorlu Airport and therefore would have been readily available for parts. It seems certain that no parts came from Hitler’s Hearse due to the combat damage it suffered, its remote location, and plundering by the local population. There are no records of an active B-24 after 1946 in the Turkish Air Force archives. The final fates of the aircraft are not recorded, but they likely all went to the smelters.

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In spite of the successes achieved by the 389'h Bomb Group, many of the Ploesti refineries the raid had sought to destroy were repaired and operating at pre-mission capacity within a month. The Army Air Corps did not attempt another large-scale low-level raid with four-engine heavy bombers for the remainder of the war.

THE LEGEND

Scholars who study folklore and oral history learn that stories change over time. In some cases, stories are intentionally embellished and take on a fairy-tale like quality. In others, details are added, corroborated, and altered, and the participants begin to believe the event actually happened in the manner in which the legendary story is repeated. When the B-24 named Hitler’s Hearse completed its final flight on August 1, 1943, and made a rough landing in a rural area south of Izmir, Turkey, legends began.

Residents of the area were mostly farmers or shepherds. They were familiar with motorized vehicles, and a railroad track had been built in the area several decades earlier. The sight of airplanes was not a new phenomenon to the population in the area because of the relative proximity of the airport that serviced the large city of Izmir (known as Smyrna through the end of the Ottoman Empire). But while they had seen airplanes in the sky, this was likely the first opportunity for many of the villagers to look closely at an American aircraft so large that it required four engines and one which had been damaged in the war in which their country had claimed neutrality.

Even though the circumstances were harsher than usual, landing their plane following a mission was an expected event for the airmen. Therefore, the facts as reported by the crewmembers, some of which were recorded fairly soon after the events, are the more accurate portrayal of what actually occurred. To the local Turkish population, for a damaged warplane to suddenly appear and land near their homes was extraordinary. For this reason, the facts recalled over 50 years later by elderly residents of the area have taken on the characteristics of a legend.

In 1999, a 70-year-old resident of the small village of Pancar, Muharrem Koken, recalled witnessing the forced landing of an aircraft near his home. The aircraft was later identified to be Hitler's Hearse. Koken, who later fought with the Turkish Brigade in the United Nations action in Korea, was 14 years old in 1943. "I was working in the fields, and everyone saw the big airplane circling and coming down, down, down. The plane landed near a lake. The plane landed at approximately 10:00 in the morning. We went to it as quickly as we could, and looked inside, but didn't see anyone. There were holes in the wings and damage. (note: the time Koken recalled is approximately 8 hours off of the actual mission time.)

"Shortly after that, we saw seven men a distance from the plane. We told them, "Come, we are friends." They then went back into their plane, and gave us cigarettes and biscuits, and established that they were Americans by showing us patches of the American flag. They pointed out the body of the pilot. Two people had died in the plane, and their bodies were wrapped in blue nylon plastic. (note: Captain Mooney was the only crewman killed and the description of a body bag may possibly be a memory from Koken's Korean War service.)

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"All the villagers knew that the plane was a warplane, and that it had been to Germany. A crewmember had written something on the side of the plane with chalk, but we could not understand what it said. Someone told me that the letters spelled the name of this plane, which was "Flying Castle". (note: The villagers did not distinguish between Germany and German-held Romania.

Koken could not read what was written on the plane, and the "writing in chalk" was undoubtedly the nose art on the plane. Years after the war, Lt. Gerrits recalled that while there was not a picture on the side of the aircraft, someone had painted Hitler’s Hearse near the nose. Another villager likely told Koken in Turkish that the plane was called a "Flying Fortress", the designation of the other widely used American four-engine bomber, the Boeing B-17, and the translation resulted in the name "Flying Castle". Upon being shown pictures of several World War II aircraft, Koken selected a photograph of a B-24 as being the type of plane that landed near Pancar).

"One of the villagers was especially helpful to the crew, and they gave him a pistol as a token of appreciation. For years afterward, this gun was fired at every wedding and other special occasion in Pancar. The man has since died, and I do not know where the pistol is now. (note: This story is baffling — a sidearm is likely the last thing a downed airman would give up, even in a neutral country. If he fears for his safety, he will keep it, and if he believes he will return to his squadron, he must account for it).

"People came from miles around to see the plane and plundered it completely. Two brothers, who were well known in the region for building coaches, took a large chest from the plane. The Gendarmes got angry and fought with them for taking the box. This was one of the first items plundered and was taken even while the crew was still at the site. The plane stayed in the field for over two years. For some of that time, the aircraft was at least partially submerged in the water of the lake, which raised substantially during the rainy season. During that time, a local boy, who was approximately 13 years old and wanted to explore the aircraft, drowned while attempting to swim out to the plane.”

One of the things Koken took from the plane was some aluminum tubing, and he kept it in the ceiling of his house. From this, he made two flutes and left the third piece intact. He accidentally dropped one of his homemade flutes into a well several years ago. Throughout his long life, during which he has been a widower four times and is now married again, he has always kept these pieces of aluminum from the plane because he felt they were significant.

Koken served in the Turkish Brigade during the Korean War. At some point, someone who knew him wanted the pieces of aluminum he had taken from the B-24, but he wouldn't give them away. Koken believes that perhaps that was why he dropped one of the flutes into a well a short time later.

Koken gave the aluminum tubing to me because he is now an old man and feels that it will otherwise likely be thrown away as trash when he dies. He also stated that because they came from an American plane, he was pleased to return them to an American soldier. Koken had absolutely no reason to fabricate such a story. He is a religious man, I did not ask for the items, I made no offer of money or other compensation, and aluminum tubing was used on B-24s for

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electronics and hydraulics. For these reasons, I profoundly believe that these items did in fact come from the B-24 named Hitler's Hearse.

Also in 1999, Mehmet Dal, who lived in Chapak, recalled the incident. He was born on November 18, 1926 and was therefore a 16-year-old boy at the time of the Ploesti Raid. He remembered that an American transport plane had to be force landed, as the people in his village knew that the plane was broken and that there were problems with the gas tanks. The plane landed near Kplancik Lake, which no longer exists. The people of Pancar now own the dry lakebed and use the land as fields for corn and cotton. (note: Dal used the word "transport" to describe any aircraft larger than a single-engine fighter.)

Dal said that he was fishing on the lake the day of the forced landing. When he got to the plane, he remembered that there was a lot of gasoline still in the tanks, and that he saw the tanks were no longer good as there was a gas leak. Dal selected a photograph of a B-24 from several photographs as the plane he remembered, and specifically remembered four engines and the twin tail. (note: It is likely he was on the scene fairly quickly if he remembers a gas leak).

At this time, they heard news on the radio that other planes were landing elsewhere in Turkey. One specific place he recalled being mentioned was Mugla. Dal knew that one person on the plane, who had a high rank, had been shot. (note: Mugla is approximately 200 kilometers south of Izmir, and is in the region where Lt. Hines of the 376th Bomb Group landed the plane "Chief Wahoo". Dal and the villagers in Chapak did not seem to realize that Captain Mooney had been killed on the mission but thought it had occurred after the plane had landed. One possible explanation for this belief may have been that some of the villagers were close enough to the aircraft early enough to hear Lieutenant Gerrits shooting the radio equipment with his .45 caliber pistol)

“People from all around the region came to the plane and plundered it. The plane was so large that the farm boys began calling it Half World.” Dal described that it took 100 steps to get from wingtip to wingtip, and 70 steps to get from the nose to the tail. One of the other villagers from Chapak, a 90-year-old man, remembered pulling a handle in the cockpit and being surprised to learn that it moved another part near the tail of the plane.

In keeping with Moslem customs, the mosque in the village of Chapak has a large gun that is fired to announce times to start and finish fasting during the Ramadan holiday according to religious tradition. The villagers stated that this gun was from the airplane and showed the gun to me. The weapon they had clearly was quite old and could possibly have been the base of a .50 caliber machine gun barrel, modified and welded over the years, but it seemed too large to be a .50 caliber barrel. Additionally, the villagers in Pancar rebuffed this story.

Interestingly, none of the villagers mentioned anything about the Turkish fighter which also landed in the field that day, and none of the accounts of the crewmembers mention any interaction with the local villagers other than the treatment by the first aid man in the nearby hamlet. 

Eugene Spencer, tail gunner on Hitler's Hearse, returned to the Air Force after the war and was a member of the European Occupation Forces, later flying in the Berlin Airlift. In 1947-48, he was

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stationed in Germany and was involved in ferrying a number of C-47 two-engine transport planes that the United States had given or sold to Turkey. In the performance of this duty, he flew into Turkey eight or nine times over a period of about two years. He recalls that Hitler’s Hearse was right where they had left it and in the same position (tail in the air), but that the Turks had built a fence around it.

When recalling the eventual removal of the aircraft from the perspective of the villagers who lived nearby, Muharrem Koken recalled: "After the plane had been in the field for many years, Turkish military people came, including some from the U.S., and dismantled the plane, putting the pieces into large trucks. The plane could not fly, so they took the pieces away by ground. Maybe they took it to the Turkish Air Base at Cigli, near Izmir. 

In the city of Izmir, I lived on one of the streets which was on the route of Captain Mooney's funeral procession, in the same block as the German consulate, which still occupies the same building it was in during the summer of 1943. Following the war, Captain Mooney's family had his body returned to the U.S. and re-interred in a cemetery in Dallas, Texas.

Members of the United States Army and Air Force stationed in Izmir at the NATO Headquarters commemorate those who paid the supreme sacrifice for the United States of America on each Memorial Day. It is significant that this story is so intertwined with the area where they are stationed to defend the freedom in Europe. It was during the fight for this freedom that Captain Mooney was killed, and his crew successfully landed the damaged B-24 in the region - valiantly and against all odds.

REFERENCES

PUBLICATIONS

Bowman, Martin W., B-24 LIBERATOR 1939-45, Rand McNally & Company and Patrick Stephens Limited, 1979.

Dugan, James and Carroll Steward, PLOESTI: THE GREAT GROUND-AIR BATTLE OF 1 AUGUST 1943. Random House, 1962.

Hill, Michael, BLACK SUNDAY: PLOESTI! Schiffer Publishing, Limited, 1993.

Sweetman, John, PLOESTI: OIL STRIKE (BALLANTINE'S ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE VIOLENT CENTURY, BATTLE BOOK, NO. 30) N.Y., Ballantine, 1974.

Walker, James W., THE LIBERANDOS: A WORLD WAR II HISTORY OF THE 376th BOMB GROUP (H) AND ITS FOUNDING UNITS. 376111 Heavy Bombardment Group Veterans Association, Inc., 1994.

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AMERICAN PARTICIPANTS

Christensen, Horace H. CHRIS - "YOUNGEST PILOT, YOUNGEST CAPTAIN" "THE MISSION WAS

ROUGH", Horace H. Christensen, 1995.

Gerrits, James F., M.D., Letter dated March 9, 1999.

Gerrits, James F., M.D., Recommendation for Award for Lt. Triantafellu, dated 14 November 1943.

Gerrits, James F., M.D., Account dated July, 1996.

Triantafellu, Rockly, Maj Gen, USAF (retired) Letter dated March 5, 2000.

Triantafellu, Rockly, A SUNDAY AFTERNOON RIDE IN HITLER'S HEARSE, April 27, 1996.

Spencer, Eugene, e-mails dated August 1, 1999 and September 8, 1999.

TURKISH CITIZENS

Dal, Mehmet, Personal interview in Chapak, Turkey, March 6, 1999.

Koken, Muharrem, Personal interview in Pancar, Turkey, March 6, 1999.

INFORMAL CONTACTS WITH OTHER RESEARCHERS

Gerrits, Tim (son of James F. Gerrits), e-mails, letters, and photographs, August 2000

Yilmazer, Bulent, Ankara, Turkey, E-mail concerning his current research on the history of B-24s that force landed in Turkey during World War II, 1998-99.

Included Pictures

Below is a 5th grade project by Doc's grandson, and Tim's oldest son, Jason Gerrits from 2004.

"20 years ago while traveling, I noticed a magazine with the word Ploesti on the cover at an airport bookstore.  I opened it to find this first-hand account by the pilot who flew on the wing of Hitler's Hearse." - Tim Gerrits, January 2023

Below are book excerpts that reference Hitler's Hearse-

Hill, M. (1993). Black sunday: Ploesti. Schiffer Publishing Ltd.

Dugan, J., & Stewart, C. (2002). Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 august 1943. Brassey’s.

Wilson, P., & Mackay, R. (2006). The sky scorpions: The story of the 389th Bombardment Group in World War II. Schiffer Pub.

Bowman, M. W. (1980). The B-24 Liberator, 1939-1945. Rand McNally.