Blum Crew – Assigned 755th Squadron – July 6, 1944

Allen Blum’s crew was the only crew in the 458th – possibly the 8th Air Force that could boast a set of twin brothers, S/Sgt’s Don and John Echols, from El Monte, California. Don was wounded on his 14th mission, spent time in hospital in England, and was eventually sent back to the States in November 1944 where he became a gunnery instructor and later served on B-29’s. John Echols and most of Blum’s crew were assigned as a lead crew and completed a tour of combat missions in March 1945.

Don Echols
“I well recall Rough Riders – we flew this ship several times early before being assigned our ship.  Of course I mostly recall the trip on July 20, 1944 to Eisenach where we were shot up on the bomb run, dropped out of formation, and limped home with only two engines and losing gas.  Noteworthy was that I eyeballed a target to jettison the bombs and more or less accidentally straddled a railroad track.  I couldn’t claim a fighter but got my 20 feet of railroad track!

“Rough Riders’ was a beat [up] looking plane, but I recall our pilot, Allen Blum, saying it was a ‘sweet’ plane to fly.  Well, we did nearly get back to Horsham when the third engine quit – he put it in a dive directly at the field and he and the co-pilot, Ben Drenth, muscled it level enough to hit the runway – crossways – the last engine quit as we came to a stop.  There was a good write up in ‘Yank’, the Army newspaper about their feat (see below).  A B-24 isn’t supposed to glide.”

Alan Blum’s Dead stick landing of Rough Riders – July 20, 1944

Don and John Echols – Summer 1944

From John Echols memoir

I flew 10 missions during the first 30 days I was there, not counting the ones scrubbed or recalled after takeoff at the last minute.  We were flying deep into Germany as well as to enemy air fields, etc, in France.  When we were selected to lead a mission of 12 aircraft on the 25th of August, we were delighted because it was to be a short mission to Belgium.  What we and our intelligence didn’t know was that the Germans had moved some of their heavy anti-aircraft railway guns to our entry point on the coast of the continent.  This would be my 10th and Don’s 14th [mission].  As we crossed the coastline into Belgium, I was already in the ball turret and Don was in the act of reaching down to put on his flak suit, when a burst of flak hit us hard.

My turret was peppered with shrapnel.  Don was in the waist to man the left waist gun position and Ben Drenth, our co-pilot, was in the waist section as an observer.  Don and Ben were both seriously wounded.  The plane was badly damaged, but we could still continue on to the target at reduced altitude.  Our flight engineer, Mike Differ, came to the rear of the plane to check for damage and after reporting to the pilot, helped me give first aid to Don and Ben.  Don was the most seriously wounded so we gave him a shot of morphine.

We continued to the target with excellent bombing results which were probably achieved because we were forced to drop down below 10,000 feet due to our oxygen system being knocked out by the flak damage.  Going down to this low level made us like sitting ducks to the flak gunners on the ground.  We lost a couple of other planes in the formation and some turned back due to damage and shot out engines.  We actually ended up leading 6 planes over the target.  Ben and Don were immediately rushed to an Army hospital located near our base.  Ben recovered and returned to flying.  Ed Silver had already been wounded and grounded while flying with another crew (see below).  Don received excellent medical care and after 4 months of reconstructive surgery on his hand and wrist was returned to the States for further treatment.  He was awarded the Purple Heart Medal.  On return from this mission the entire crew was given a 48-hour pass to London.

Courtesy: Don and John Echols

August 25, 1944 – Target: Lubeck, Germany

Removing wounded crewmen from Liberty Lib
(Photo: Karl Lake)

The 458th flew two missions on August 25, 1944. Don Echols and Ben Drenth were wounded on the second to Tertre, Belgium. The first was flown to the Dornier aircraft factory at Lubeck, Germany. Ed Silver was on that raid. The story below is from the 2nd Air Division Association Journal, written by Rick Rokicki as told by Ed Silver.

“I flew that day as bombardier/navigator on a max-max mission with a make-up crew. The flight engineer was Joe Ball and the rest of the crew were strangers and I cannot remember their names. The pilot’s first name was Joe, and we were assigned to Liberty Lib, which was a standby ship that day.

“In formation on the way to the target, we caught some scattered flak, and being cooped up in the nose, I didn’t know if we took a hit in our inverters or whether they had failed at the same time. We naturally lost our intercom and instruments, and me being the navigator, nobody thought to inform me. I suspected something was wrong when the electro-compass failed to move when we changed direction. I tried to get to the flight deck, but the hatch was closed and [there was] no walk-around oxygen bottle anywhere to be seen. Joe Ball finally came down and handed me a note telling me we were aborting and to come up on deck to find a target of opportunity, while plotting a course for home. When I got up on deck, I found the pilot had wandered aimlessly for ten to fifteen minutes before notifying me that he was lost. I discovered that we were over the Ruhr Valley and suggested we get out of there in a hurry. Since we were coming up on Aachen, we should make a beeline for the marshalling yards and I would salvo the bomb load on the way out of town. Instead, he circled the town then decided to make a bomb run. We successfully alerted every double-barreled 88 in the Ruhr Valley, and none of them were shy about taking pot shots at us. To compound matters, the pilot wanted to see where the bombs landed, so he circled again. By this time Jerry was mad, and cut loose with everything he had, cutting our rudder cables. We were like sitting ducks by this time, and they pummeled the hell out of us.

“I can still experience the flak bursting all around us – it was most terrifying. We wanted to bail out, as we thought the ship was going to go down at any minute, but the flak got so thick that we felt we would get hit by it on the way down. We were unable to take evasive action with no rudder control. Thank God they were lousy shots, because a well-trained anti-aircraft crew could easily have knocked us down. We decided to stay with the aircraft until we broke the flak screen, and then bail out.

“By this time we had many wounded aboard, and bailing out was not an option. We then considered a crash landing in Holland, where conceivably the Dutch could help us. We dropped down to 2000 feet and started looking for a suitable spot to put down. We soon saw that Jerry had flooded all the low ground and had sharpened poles stuck in the ground to thwart any paratrooper assault. By then it was decided to stay with the airplane as we headed out to the North Sea. We could not contact Air Sea Rescue because we had no radio. I plotted a course for the emergency field at Cambridge. I gave Joe the heading and said we should spot landfall in about 35 minutes. Then I went back into the waist to give whatever assistance I could to the more seriously wounded. About 30 minutes passed and I started getting anxious, because there was no land in sight. Now I was beginning to sweat, so I went back up to the flight deck while another five minutes went by with no land in sight. Glancing at the ball compass, I noticed that Joe was flying a heading about 20 degrees north of the one I laid out for him. I asked him why we were flying that heading, and his reply was that as long as the ship was still airworthy, we might as well land at Horsham. He had no idea of where he was going or where we were. We were heading up the North Sea and flying to oblivion, utterly lost, in a crippled bomber, and no one knew we were out there. If we were to survive, it would have to be up to us, as there was no help available. I had to guess at many variables in order to plot a 3-position fix with a new heading for Horsham – as we were closer to home than to Cambridge. As luck would have it, as we approached landfall we encountered a flight of 458th planes going in the opposite direction.” [This was the second mission to Tertre, Belgium, detailed above.]

“Truckin’ Mission” September 20, 1944

Navigator Ed Silver with ship #441, “Last Card Louie“ at Clastres, France after delivering gas for Patton’s Army

“We flew in at tree top level, dodging bullets fired from ground troops.  We flew with four-man crews – pilot, co-pilot, navigator and engineer.  I flew as navigator, which was in short supply, so I got to fly a mission almost every day, generally with different pilots.”

(Photo: Ed Silver)