452nd felt early frost in Cold War

  • Published
  • By Senior Master Sgt Matt Proietti
  • 452nd AMW Public Affairs
MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, CALIF. --  Ninth in a series

Two weeks after the D-Day invasion, 47 B-17s from the 452nd Bombardment Group and other Army Air Forces units were destroyed by German aircraft at a largely undefended Russian airfield. 

The attack, which began about 12:30 a.m. June 22, 1944, destroyed nearly 2/3 of the 73 Flying Fortresses parked at a base in Poltava, Ukraine, where they flew from England after bombing an oil refinery in Germany. 

"The worst thing was, we parked like taxi cabs -- one behind the other," said Staff Sgt. Hank North, 84, of Columbus, Ohio, a tail gunner with the bomb group, predecessor to the 452nd Air Mobility Wing at March Field. "That's what made the bombing by the Germans so successful: they weren't scattered as they were (at our base) in England." 

The mission was the second in a series dubbed Operation Frantic, in which Allied aircraft bombed strategic targets in Germany and continued on to airfields in Russia instead of returning to bases in England and Italy. 

The missions, the result of months of high-level negotiations between American and Russian officials, were personally approved by Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin, according to author James Parton's Air Force Spoken Here, a 1986 biography of Lt. Gen. Ira Eaker, commander of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces and former head of 8th Air Force. 

The Americans hoped having bombing success from the bases on targets largely picked by the Soviets would eventually lead them to allow the U.S. to establish bases in eastern Russia within striking distance of Japan, wrote Mr. Parton, an aide to General Eaker during the war. 

"Stalin approved this plan 'in principle,' but it was top secret for more than the usual security reasons: Russia and Japan were not at war with each other and Stalin made it clear that he had no intention of fighting on a second front until Germany was beaten," Mr. Parton wrote. 

In early June 1944, General Eaker led 129 B-17s and 151 P-51 Mustangs from 15th Air Force in Operation Frantic I. The Flying Fortresses landed on a runway built of steel mats at a base in Poltava, a city which had been captured by the Germans then retaken by the Red Army. They reloaded with bombs and fuel there, making other runs on strategic targets before returning to Italy. 

The bombing portion of Frantic II was successful, and 137 B-17s and 63 P-51 Mustangs proceeded to three Russian bases. The 452nd planes landed in Poltava, where the aircrew members ate dinner before retiring to sleep in tents near the airstrip. They awoke to the sounds of exploding bombs. 

A lone German aircraft attacked the airfield before being joined by dozens of others who bombed largely undeterred for about 90 minutes, killing two GIs, destroying ammunition and burning 397,000 gallons of fuel, about half of what was stored there. 

Sergeant North and a crewmate ran to a ditch to escape the bombs, then sprinted away from the airfield during a break in the attack. 

"I didn't watch," he said. "I was saving my ass." 

Thirty Russian soldiers and civilians died and 95 were hurt in explosions and during clean-up operations, which included removing 9,500 antipersonnel bombs, according to Air Force Spoken Here. 

Mr. Parton said photographs showing B-17s parked in Poltava made it into German hands after an Allied aircraft containing them was shot down over Romania during redeployment from Frantic I. 

Brig. Gen. John R. Deane, head of the U.S. military mission in Moscow, said Russian antiaircraft batteries and fighter defenses failed miserably in Poltava, Mr. Parton wrote. 

"Their antiaircraft batteries fired 28,000 rounds of medium and heavy shells assisted by searchlights without bringing down a single German plane. There were supposed to be 40 (Russian fighters) on hand as night fighters, but only four or five of them got off the ground," General Deane wrote. "Both their antiaircraft and night fighters lacked the radar devices which made ours so effective." 

Another author suggested something more sinister than incompetence was afoot. 

In the 1973 book The Poltava Affair, former bomber pilot Glenn B. Infield said he believed the Soviets delivered information about Frantic II to the Germans and that the Red Air Force was ordered not to fly to the defense of the Americans or to allow Mustang pilots to take off from a nearby base to defend the one in Poltava. 

Mr. Infield, who died in 1981, said the Soviet ruler was looking toward his own long-range plans for world domination and saw Operation Frantic as a way of making U.S. forces look impotent, while still making possible a flow of American military equipment and assistance. 

"As a result, the hard work of many courageous and resourceful men was largely wasted," he wrote in The Poltava Affair. 

Prior to his death at 87 in December 2005, a former B-17 navigator from the 452nd said he, too, believed the Soviet ruler wanted the bombers destroyed to serve his own goals. 

"He didn't want the U.S. strong after the war," said 2nd Lt. Alfred Lea, whose aircraft was shot down on the way to Poltava and crashed in Poland. "There was a nice cover-up. We were told not to discuss what had happened with the press." 

The Poltava attack grounded 600 Americans while damaged aircraft were repaired. Eight were fixed in less than a week and 11 returned to service later. Many men made their way back to England aboard C-47 transport aircraft via Iran and North Africa. 

Obtaining Far Eastern bases "was the prime objective of the entire Frantic exercise," Mr. Parton wrote. On June 10, the Soviets offered to provide the American bombers access to six air bases they were building in far eastern Russia in exchange for the Red Air Force receiving 240 B-17s and 300 B-24 Liberators. 

According to Air Force Spoken Here, General Deane said the Russians were "smarting and sensitive because of their failure to provide the protection (at Poltava) they had promised, and the Americans forgiving but determined to send their own anti-aircraft defenses for the future." 

Operation Frantic sorties continued that summer, but ended because the original 16 targets identified for missions were taken by advancing Soviet forces. 

In December 1944, the Soviet Union informed General Deane it "would need all (of) its Pacific bases for its own purposes and that American naval and air forces would be unable to operate from them," the book says.

A B-17 gunner from the 452nd said not flying an Operation Frantic mission is the "one big disappointment" of his combat experience. Tech Sgt. Cleon Wood, 86, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, said his crew was picked to go on one that was delayed because of weather. The crew came up for a 3-day pass and the enlisted men didn't want to take it, he said, because they knew flying to the Soviet Union "would be the experience of a lifetime." 

"The pilot said he thought the weather would delay the mission until we (returned), so reluctantly we went on pass," Sergeant Wood said. "The day we got back, the mission took off with the other crew in our hut in our place. When they got back with their pictures and stories...I have been in envy ever since."