THE GREAT ‘GATOR COUP
aka that one time the navigators of the 100th BG “got rid” of Crosby’s intended replacement as Group Navigator because they thought he was actually insane, as told by Harry Crosby in his memoir, A Wing and a Prayer
“As I saw it after my study at Oxford, Bennett and Jeffrey had changed the 100th from its original hot fly-boy individuals to 20th-century work-together warfare. From Romanticism to neo-Classicist. History in the making.
I was tired of being part of history. I wanted to go home. Let the new guy take over.
The replacement on tap for me was a captain named Leafy Hill. That is really not his name because I have resolved never to reveal the true names of officers and enlisted men whom I did not admire. War does bad things even to good people. Many of the misfits, the incompetent, the exploitive, and the cowardly whom I met at Thorpe Abbotts have gone on to put together good lives, have had good jobs and good families. I choose not to reopen old wounds.
Leafy thought he was the Group Navigator from the day he walked onto the base. He immediately scheduled himself as the command navigator on the next mission. I hit the sky and stormed into Jeff's office.
"Even command pilots fly high squadron lead on their first missions. I want to know what Leafy Hill can do before I put him up in front."
This was my first encounter with Jeff. He smiled, and talked with me the same way Charlie Via did, Virginia talk.
"Okay, don't pull the hoose down. The 100th is flying low in the wing. In the nose with a good lead crew navigator, he can't foul up too much."
When the planes came back, the crew with whom Leafy had flown were wild.
"The guy is off his rocker. He yelled over intercom all during the mission. From takeoff to landing." The crew navigator was shaken.
"That screwball actually wanted us to abort when we were on the bomb run. I think he wanted to make the run alone so he could get some kind of medal. I won't fly with him again."
I checked Leafy's log. His ETA's and routes were a tangle of misinformation. He claimed to have seen fighters and flak not reported by any other navigators.
I read the lead crew pilot's official report: "A five-hour trip. Major Rosenthal was command pilot and Captain Hill went along as second navigator. The mission was good as far as the leading went, but Captain Hill screwed up our bomb run. Our navigator gave me a 68-degree heading from the Initial Point to the target which would have been swell, but Leafy said the target was at one o'clock and the bombardier swung over as he ordered. Then he saw the target back at ten o'clock. By the time he got his course correction killed his rate was over and we messed up the run. So that's what one man can do to mess up the works."
In no time every navigator at Thorpe Abbotts was sure that Captain Leafy Hill was nuts.
But I could go home if he became the Group Navigator.
I did not have to solve the problem myself.
I was long overdue for a pass, and I decided that a London trip to see Landra Wingate might clear my head.
When I returned to the base, I heard quite a story.
One of the really great command navigators, Stewart Gillison, decided after he finished his tour that he wanted to stay in England. I welcomed him into Group Headquarters as my chief assistant. I could trust him with briefings.
Stew was not your normal guy. Under the circumstances of war, none of us were exactly level on course, but Stew was really something. At night, when he went to bed, instead of turning out the light, he shot it out with his 45 revolver. The ceiling of his room looked like a sieve, and the batman had to put in a new bulb every day.
When I got back from London, Leafy Hill was gone.
Stew had assigned Leafy Hill to fly as fill-in navigator with a crew Stew himself had flown with before he became lead. The crew flew out on the mission and came back.
Except that Leafy Hill was not with them.
When I asked Stew Gillison what happened to Leafy Hill, he said with deference unusual for him, "Major Crosby, I suggest that you don't ask."
I did ask. The pilot wouldn't tell me. The bombardier wouldn't tell me. But the copilot did.
Stew, their former navigator, instructed the crew what to do.
After the target when the group was at the R.P, a gunner called out, "We've been hit!"
That part of it was true, but that was standard. To some degree, we were almost always hit by flak over the target. Sometimes it hit the crew, and we died or we got Purple Hearts, but usually the flak only jarred the plane.
"We really weren't hit at all. The pilot only waggled the wings." The copilot continued the story.
This is what he said happened.
"Okay, pilot to crew, prepare to bail out. See you in Stalag."
"Roger, pilot." This was a chorus from the entire crew.
The pilot rang the alarm bell.
Whoosh! Out went, not all ten of the crew, but just Leafy Hill. He wasn't in on the joke.
When I heard the story I thought it was funny.
Leafy spent the rest of the Air War in Europe in a prison camp, wondering what happened to the rest of the crew.
And I spent the rest of the Air War in Europe as Group Navigator of the Bloody 100th.”
33 notes
·
View notes