A Bad Day For Flying: The story of a WWII B-24 Commander shot down over Hankow
By Alan Foster

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Off to the right my dad saw a distant airplane paralleling their course. Next he spied a speck straight ahead, heading right at them. Then it grew into another plane, with little “lights” blinking on and off along its wings—a Japanese fighter, firing at them!

Ellsworth gripped the controls tightly, and all dad could do was close his eyes and sink down in his seat. Belle Starr shuddered as its gunners returned fire. The smell of gunpowder permeated the plane. Then came shouting over the interphone—“Get that one!” and so forth, like cheering at a football game.

Robinson’s plane started streaming a trail of gray smoke from its right wing, then dropped out of the formation in a flat spin. Crewmen from other planes said they saw three chutes emerge from 938 before it crashed.

The B-24s had been under attack for some time when my dad heard a popping sound somewhere behind him. Suddenly Ellsworth leaned over and shouted: “Call the lead plane and tell them to slow down. They’ve got a cripple back here!” At first dad thought he meant that Holder was in trouble behind them. Then he saw Ellsworth’s hand thumbing over his shoulder and turned—to face an inferno in the bomb bay.

Three days earlier the lead B-24 had experienced this same sort of fire over Hankow and exploded. Like that plane, all the Liberators on this mission were carrying extra fuel in bomb bay tanks. My dad needed no further instructions. He hit the red bailout button repeatedly.

In the nose, bombardier Jess Young turned from firing his .50-caliber to ask Rosenburg if the alarm was what he thought it was, just in time to see the heels of Rosenburg’s shoes going out the floor escape hatch. Young quickly followed him.

Across the formation, bullets ripped through Glamour Gal’s nose, skimming over the heads of the navigator and bombardier and into the back of the pilot’s instrument panel, setting it afire and sending glass and metal fragments into pilot Lieutenant Hart’s face, temporarily blinding him. Bombardier 2nd Lt. Gordon Ruhf and navigator Lieutenant Fred Scheurman scrambled up to the flight deck. Standing behind Hart and co-pilot 2nd Lt. Clarence B. Stanley, Ruhf put a comforting hand on the co-pilot’s shoulder. Just as he did so, more bullets crashed through the side windows and into Stanley’s chest, killing him. Despite his injuries, Hart managed to dive the bomber and then ordered the crew to bail out.

Major Foster was still leading the small formation in Sherazade, with Lieutenant Donald J. Koshiek in the co-pilot seat. When Sherazade was raked by cannon fire in its bomb bay, right wing and rear fuselage, the No. 3 engine oil tank was punctured, and fuel began pouring from a broken line in the bomb bay.

Then things got even worse, as Koshiek later explained: “A 20mm shell entered the cockpit in front of me and exploded at Major Foster’s head. My face was full of plexiglass and shell fragments, and the shock of the shell knocked me out. I came to in time to take the plane out of a stall.”

In Chug-a-Lug’s nose, bombardier Lieutenant Elmond J. Purkey watched a fighter coming right at him. A shell exploded at his feet, and shrapnel peppered his legs. Substitute tail gunner Staff Sgt. Louis Kne was hit and killed instantly, and four other crewmen were seriously wounded. Co-pilot John White headed to the back of the plane to administer first aid, saving two of the gunners. White subsequently manned first one and then the other waist .50s until the ammo ran out. Chug-a-Lug had more than 200 holes from cannon and machine gun fire by the time Captain Farnell flew into cloud cover and turned south, headed home.

As the attack continued, the Japanese turned their attention to the trailing plane, Cabin in the Sky, piloted by Lieutenant Holder and co-pilot 2nd Lt. George E. Mosall. The B-24 was soon riddled with holes, and both engines on the left were knocked out. Even with full power on Nos. 3 and 4, it couldn’t keep up with the formation. No guns were firing, and Holder and Mosall got no response from the nose or tail. When they were only a thousand feet up, they agreed it was time to get out. But to their horror, as the two teetered on the narrow catwalk near the bomb bay, they saw the engineer, Staff Sgt. William Spells, staring at them from the far hatchway—without a parachute. The plane then rolled to one side, and Holder and Mosall dropped out. They landed safely, but they never forgot the look on Spells’ face.

Tags: Aerial Combat, Aviation History, World War II

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