A certain small little booklet... How can something so small, and so Restricted be so wrong?
After the Memphis Belle and crew returned to the USA, and part-way through the ‘grand tour’ the Training Aids Division published a small, 36 page booklet. It contained a Foreword by General ‘Hap’ Arnold and contained - in the General’s own words ‘...factual accounts of aerial warfare over Germany and the occupied countries’.
Despite the fact that on the front cover was printed the word ‘Restricted’, the booklet was intended to reach as wide an audience as possible; as ‘Hap’ Arnold said ‘... I consider it important that the messages of these men be given maximum circulation’.
In the light of what the booklet contains when analysed, one wonders if it was intended for purely military use, or much of it was meant as propaganda to reach the wider general public!
Luckily, we were in a position to be able to learn of the full background to the booklet from the person who authored it, for Ben J Grant of South Carolina, corresponded with Harry Friedman before he passed away. “In 1943 the Army Air Forces adopted a policy of bringing bomber crews home from Europe after they had flown 25 combat missions, I guess the idea was that 25 times over the hell of Hitler's Europe constituted enough deadly hazard for any man.
The first bomber and crew to be brought back under that policy were the B-17 Memphis Belle and its 10 crew members. They were received as heroes. At the request of the U.S. Treasury, General H.H. Arnold, Commanding General of the Army Air Forces, made the Memphis Belle and its crew available to help promote the selling drive for war bonds. The bond mission was sandwiched into the Memphis Belle’s tour of AAF training establishments, where they met with student pilots, bombardiers, navigators and gunners to offer the benefit of the crew’s knowledge and experience to others yet to go into combat. A great deal of importance was being attached just then to Savings Bonds, because they represented a non-inflationary way of financing part of the cost of the war. So in their travels about the country, they participated - effectively, I'm sure - in Savings Bond rallies.
General Arnold ordered the AAF Training Aids Division in New York to interview each member of the crew and get their stories and words of advice for young AAF personnel yet to go into combat. At the time I was a captain in the Training Aids Division, assigned to write training literature. I was tapped to do the interviewing and writing on the Memphis Belle assignment. I guess the principal reason for selecting me was that I had been a Washington correspondent for years, working for the Associated Press and experienced in doing fast interviewing and writing.
Whatever the reason, I first contacted the crew in Washington, where they met with a lot of army brass. I sat in on the meeting and listened to a kind of rap session, mainly the crew’s answers to questions put to them about their experiences, their triumphs, their mistakes, their words of advice to other crews, and so on. I hoped this session would provide the wherewithal for my booklet, but it did not. The conversation was too disorganized, too repetitive, too diffuse to give me what I needed. Three or four of the crew did most of the talking while the others sat silent. This did not bring out what I needed for the booklet, so I asked permission to follow the Memphis Belle - I had to have each man’s story and observations in detail and in his own words.
From Washington the Memphis Belle and crew flew to Nashville, where they would appear at a bond rally. (as we know, the actual route was Washington - Memphis - Nashville) I followed them there, got a
room in the same hotel, and in about a day and a half interviewed each of the 10 crew members. I had gotten to know them by that time, and we had very satisfactory conversations. We met one on one in my hotel room, with nobody present except each individual crew number and myself. I took notes as the fellows talked. Each cooperated fully.
I then flew to Washington, knowing that I would have to get the final manuscript reviewed at the Pentagon. I borrowed a desk and typewriter at the Pentagon, and in part of a day and evening I wrote the booklet, including not only the first-person accounts of each crew member but also the title pages, the foreword to be signed by General Arnold, and the factual history of the Memphis Belle which preceded the individual accounts. You have noticed no doubt that I also wrote brief personality pieces on each crew member to precede their own stories.
All hands understood this was a rush job, so everybody concerned at the Pentagon cooperated by reading the manuscript and approving it immediately. Having completed the "coordinating" process at the Pentagon, I took the manuscript in my brief case and flew to Dayton, Ohio, where the Training Aids Division's liaison office had been alerted that I was on the way with a rush printing job.
In the meantime, the art section of the Training Aids Division in New York had done a cover layout and drawing of a B-17, and the Pentagon supplied a photograph of the crew for the centerfold. In Dayton, I was placed in the hands of the McCall Printing Company, one of the largest in the country. The Materiel Command had a continuing arrangement with McCall's for the Command's printing needs. The McCall people got busy at once and started setting type. The next day I was able to fly back to New York with sample copies of the booklet in my briefcase to deliver to my commanding officer. The whole process - the conference in Washington, the flight back to New York, the flight to Nashville, the flight to Washington to write the interviews and other elements of the booklet, the coordinating, the flight to Dayton, the printing and the flight back to New Yor - all took just one week. That was because all hands cooperated so well, including those young fellows in the crew of the Memphis Belle, I guess the booklet received pretty wide distribution. I don't recall now how many copies we ordered. But General Arnold wanted it available wherever young men were being readied for combat duty, especially in the European theater.”
So there you have it - the booklet was written by a lifetime, non-aviation journalist in a hurry. Yes, without doubt Ben Grant did individually interview each crew member in turn, but clearly he did it without any ability to cross-check and corroborate what he was being told by individuals and, as he himself makes clear, he was working under a great deal of pressure. It is almost certain that the only ‘official’ document he was able to refer to was Bob Morgan’s own Flight-Log Book which explains why the ‘mission list’ in the booklet so closely follows the 25 missions Bob Morgan flew on. Ben Grant took what he was given and, on getting back to the Pentagon, wrote up the entire booklet - including the responsibility for completely writing General Arnold’s Foreword - in less than a day.
Bob Morgan claimed for many years that they were always the first to 25. ‘There never was any doubt in my mind, even for a minute, as to whether the Memphis Belle was the first to complete 25 missions. That is what General Arnold told us and what General Eaker told us. We had no reason to doubt it. It is in the official record’.
So, 25 Missions’ - is it a historical document? Many people still regard this little booklet as an historically accurate document. We have already seen what went in to it’s compilation and production - but just how accurate is it?
Let us compare what Ben Grant hurriedly wrote back in 1943 with what we now know of the history of men and machine - starting with the four-page introduction, which appears under the line ‘The Memphis Belle...’
In September, 1942, a new Flying Fortress was delivered at Bangor, Maine, to a crew of ten eager American lads headed by Robert K. Morgan, a lanky 24-year-old AAF pilot from Asheville, N. C.
Proudly, the boys climbed aboard, flew their ship to Memphis, Tenn., christened her ‘Memphis Belle’ in honor of Morgan's fiancee, Miss Margaret Polk of Memphis, and then headed across the Atlantic to join the U. S. Eighth Air Force in England.
Morgan had told them it was rough where they were going. There would be no room in the Memphis Belle for fellows who couldn't take it. The boys said they were ready. They took it. Between November 7 and May 17, they flew the Memphis Belle over Hitler's Europe twenty-five times. Bombardier Vincent B. Evans dropped more than 60 tons of bombs on targets in Germany, France and Belgium. They blasted the Focke-Wulf plant at Bremen, locks at St. Nazaire and Brest, docks and shipbuilding installations at Wilhelmshaven, railway yards at Rouen, submarine pens and power houses at Lorient, and airplane works at Antwerp. They shot down eight enemy fighters, probably got five others, and damaged at least a dozen.
The Memphis Belle flew through all the flak that Hitler could send up to them. She slugged it out with Goering's Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. She was riddled by machine gun and cannon fire. Once she returned to base with most of her tail shot away. German guns destroyed a wing and five engines. Her fuselage was shot to pieces. But the Memphis Belle kept going back.
The longest period she was out of commission at any one time was five days, when transportation difficulties delayed a wing change. When the tail was destroyed the Air Service Command had her ready to go again in two days.
Only one member of the crew received an injury. And that. says Staff Sergeant John P. Quinlan, the victim, ‘was just a pin scratch on the leg’.The Memphis Belle crew has been decorated 51 times. Each of the 10 has received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal and three Oak Leaf Clusters. The 51st award was Sergeant Quinlan's Purple Heart.
The ship's 25 missions follow:
November 7 Brest. France
November 9 St. Nazaire, France
November 17 St. Nazaire, France
December 6 Lille. France
December 20 Rommily-Sur-Seine. France
January 3 St. Nazaire, France
January 13 Lille, France
January 23 Lorient, France
February 4 Emden, Germany
February 14 Hamm, Germany
February 16 St. Nazaire, France
February 26 Wilhelmshaven, Germany
February 27 Brest, France
March 6 Lorient, France
March 12 Rouen, France
March 13 Abbeville, France
March 22 Wilhelmshaven, Germany
March 28 Rouen, France
April 5 Antwerp, Belgium
April 16 Lorient, France
April 17 Bremen, Germany
May 1 St. Nazaire, France
May 4 Antwerp, Belgium
May 15 Wilhelmshaven
May 17 Lorient, France
The flight time on these missions ranged from three hours and 50 minutes on December 6 to nine hours
and 30 minutes on May 1. The total sortie time for the 25 missions was 148 hours and 50 minutes. Approximately 20,000 combat miles were flown.
Today, the battle-scarred Memphis Belle is back home with her remarkable crew, the same crew to a
man that was organized 10 months ago in Maine. The Belle is the first bomber to be retired from active
service and flown back from the Eighth Air Force.
Still flying the Memphis Belle, the crew is touring the United States to tell their story to the boys in
training establishments. Student bomber pilots, navigators, bombardiers and gunners are learning from the members of this crew the things they picked up the hard way.
The succeeding pages of this booklet tell the stories, in their own words, of the boys of the Memphis
Belle. Here is what they saw, learned and did in the world's toughest theater of aerial combat. There are
important lessons in these stories. Let us learn and apply them.
Just how factual is it?
General Arnold’s Foreword itself contains one innacurracy. The first paragraph says ‘...a distinguished crew which remained intact since its formation 10 months ago’ - it didn’t, we have already seen the myriad of crew changes. However, General Arnold did make this exact-same statement when the crew arrived at Washington DC on June 16, so the blame for that lies with either the General or his speech-writers - it cannot be placed on the shoulders of Ben Grant! Morgan always emphatically insisted that neither he, or any member of the crew he brought back from England did anything to promote that claim. ‘To my knowledge we were never asked about it and if we were, we ignored it’.
As for the Memphis Belle introduction, let us look at it paragraph by paragraph.
As far as we can tell, paragraphs one and three are accurate - but paragraph two? 'Proudly, the boys climbed aboard, flew their ship to Memphis, Tenn., christened her ‘Memphis Belle’ in honor of Morgan's fiancee. Miss Margaret Polk of Memphis, and then headed across the Atlantic to join the U. S. Eighth Air Force in England. This is pure fantasy as we have already seen!
Paragraph four; ‘...Between November 7 and May 17, they flew the Memphis Belle over Hitler's Europe twenty-five times’. Not correct. Between those dates they may have gone into combat 25 times, but certainly not solely aboard the Memphis Belle. The Memphis Belle itself did not complete its 25th mission until May 19. ‘...They shot down eight enemy fighters, probably got five others, and damaged at least a dozen. Eight swastikas were painted on the side of the aircraft, indicating the total number of enemy aircraft shot down, claimed and credited to the gunners aboard the aircraft. However, two official records indicate that the total number is different. The list showing the number of aircraft shot down by the 324th Bomb Squadron show just four for the Memphis Belle with two probables and one damaged. However, a news dispatch sent from Bassingbourn in June 1943 speaks of six. So what was the total?
A clue to the discrepancy can be found in the diary of the 91st BG. It seems that the 8th Air Force Command became aware that the number of shoot-downs claimed and being recorded as confirmed, was too high. The figures were then revised downward, reducing the number of enemy aircraft claimed to be destroyed. This then left the question of what to do with the swastikas already painted on the Group's aircraft. Although no official papers have been discovered to prove this, it can well be imagined that, if only to protect AAF personnel morale, Commanders decided to allow the claim markings already painted on to remain. But as Colonel Morgan and other crew members always stated, whenever planes returned from a combat mission with claims for enemy aircraft shot down, each claim was carefully examined by Intelligence Officers. No crews were allowed to add a swastika until given official permission that a claim had been approved. As Morgan always said: ‘There is no way you can take that record away from the men’.
It seems that the booklet’s ‘claim’ of eight enemy aircraft shot down only came to fruition after the swastikas were painted under the bomb chart when the missions were complete and the Memphis Belle was going home, as has been seen in elsewhere. Remember, the moment that the Memphis Belle was prepared for the trip back to the USA, it was in the hands of the War Department’s publicity machine and, given the growing losses of the Eighth Air Force at the time, they needed as good a picture as possible to be painted to the public. So, is the claim for ‘destroyed eight enemy fighters’ spurious, or is it possible to make sense as to how that figure was derived?
Are there any other clues? Going back to what Morgan and the crew said about ‘No crews were allowed to add a swastika until given official permission that a claim had been approved’ Perhaps another study of the aircraft is in order. There were, after all, other swastikas on the aircraft. The tail gunner’s position had two, one for each of Quinlan’s claims. There was one under one of the nose windows, almost certainly for Vince Evans' claim, and two more under one of the waist windows The table below shows the results of a complete trawl through the 324th BS records for enemy aircraft claims. When one looks at all possible combinations - claims from gunners aboard the Memphis Belle, claims from gunners forming part of Bob Morgan’s crew when he was flying aircraft other than the Memphis Belle and claims from gunners forming part of the crew of the aircraft when it was on the war-bond tour, it is possible to come up with a much ‘better-looking’ set of figures for enemy aircraft destroyed; seven destroyed, three probably destroyed and one damaged. It is possible that one of the ‘probably destroyed’ was later revised upon further intelligence into a ‘destroyed’ - this would not show up in the daily 324th BS list.
Given that Ben Grant interviewed each crewman ‘individually, one on one’ you can almost hear him asking the question ‘And how many enemy aircraft did you shoot down?’ The reply would follow ‘One’, ‘Two’... and they would be telling the truth, for it is highly unlikely that the original question was ‘And how many enemy aircraft did you shoot down while you was aboard the Memphis Belle! After all, it is highly unlikely that Ben Grant even knew they flew and fought on other aircraft - remember Cas Nastal and his order to keep quiet?
Thus it can be seen that whichever way it is viewed, the eight swastikas painted in the aircraft do not represent eight enemy aircraft destroyed BY the aircraft.
Paragraph seven says... ‘Only one member of the crew received an injury’. This refers to a slight upper leg wound to tail gunner John P Quinlan, on March 28 1943 during a raid on the railway centre at Rouen. There were three other wounds, all minor, that never got reported, so therefore this is ‘officially’ correct.
Paragraph eight.. ‘The ship's 25 missions follow...’ That statement and the following missions list is totally incorrect when viewed in the context of them referring to the Memphis Belle. What that list is, is Morgan’s 25 missions, during which he flew three other machines, 41-24515 Jersey Bounce, 41-24480 Bad Penny and 41-24527 Great Speckled Bird as well as the Memphis Belle. Again, this becomes quite understandable given that Ben Grant was talking to Bob Morgan in a hotel room in Nashville.
Paragraph ten, first sentence: ‘Today, the battle-scarred Memphis Belle is back home with her remarkable crew, the same crew to a man that was organized 10 months ago in Maine’. A continuation - or maybe the origination - of what also appears in ‘Hap’ Arnold’s ‘letter’. Completely ncorrect.
Paragraph ten, second sentence: ‘...The Belle is the first bomber to be retired from active service and flown back from the Eighth Air Force’. This is only at best partially correct. True the Memphis Belle was sent back from the 8th, but it was not ‘retired from active service’ for it went on to serve - after a complete overhaul - with aircrew training until 1945. The Memphis Belle was also certainly not THE first to be sent back, which then leads on to the fact that the Memphis Belle’s crew were also not the first to return! Those two honors go to a former 92nd BG B-17E 41-9112, which left for the USA via North Africa and the Southern Ferry Route on February 14 1943, supposedly crewed by Lt William J Crumm and his crew who had flown ten missions with the 91st BG. Their normal aircraft had been 324th BS 41-24490 Jack the Ripper. Almost certainly Morgan and some of the crew would have known about Crumm’s return - being from the same Squadron - but Ben Grant would not.
This aircraft - known as the ‘Reed Project B-17’ about when the engineering section of the Bovingdon Combat Crew Replacement Center was used to investigate technical and operational problems with the weaknesses in B-17 crew organisation and armament, that became apparent after the first few missions. These were of immediate concern and Major Robert J. Reed, the Engineering Officer, conducted a special study with a view to making recommendations on how best these could be overcome. 41-9112 was set aside for use in planning and effecting trial modifications.
By late January 1943 Reed was able to submit a detailed report. The problems were defined as: lack of sufficient firepower forward, insufficient organisation of the combat crew, tail heavy balance condition, difficulties with the ball turret and inadequate oxygen supply for turrets. Solutions were proposed and some modifications had been carried out. Eighth Bomber Command was impressed with Reed's work but as many of the changes proposed involved major specialist engineering that could not readily be undertaken by the Eighth Air Force in England at that time, so the aircraft was sent back to the United States to have this work completed. Major Reed was to oversee the project and while in the US make known the shortcomings of current production B-17s to Materiel Command and the manufacturers. 41-9112 was flown to Wright Field Ohio, where modifications were undertaken, including the fitment of hydraulic power turrets in the nose and tail. Amongst the myriad of changes was the creation of a separate bombardier’s compartment in a lower fuselage blister. The work was not completed until September and early in October the Reed project bomber, now nicknamed Dreamboat, was flown back across the Atlantic. The purpose was to elicit opinion from Eighth Air Force engineering staff and combat group commanders, for while the USAAF viewed Reed's aircraft favourably, they felt that incorporation of such extensive revisions to production line B-17s would cause unacceptable delays.
The remaining paragraphs of the Introduction are factually correct. Then Ben Grant proceeds on to the individual interviews themselves, complete with biographic details. Because they are all first-hand accounts, and personal opinions, it is impossible for us as historians to query any point made - we were simply not there, and there are no movies,videotape or documentation to prove or disprove what was said. All we can say, is that the events described did happen, on the dates stated.
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