Napalm Delivered by The Jug
By Thomas W. McCort
My first memories of my Uncle Bill began when he came home from the war in late 1945 after flying 89 missions in a Republic P-47 Fighter-Bomber. Uncle Bill was my mother's kid brother; he was 21 and I was 4. Next to my dad, he was from that time forward my only hero. Later, I became the envy of other boys in tiny Bridgman, Michigan when Uncle Bill joined the Air Force Reserves in the early 1950's. Flying out of Selfridge AFB near Detroit every weekend for several years, he and his pals would routinely treat the citizenry of Bridgman to a buzzing of their town; first in T-6's and P-51's, and later in F-80 jets. My friends refused to believe it was my uncle doing the flying until I gave them a personal introduction one day.
Several of us 11 & 12 year-olds happened to be trudging by his house one Friday afternoon just as he was leaving for a 'Weekend Warrior' stint at Selfridge. Apparently sensing my need to prove a point, Uncle Bill, nattily decked out in his captains' uniform, called us over and began a man-to-man discussion about flying. My buddies were thoroughly charmed by this and my credibility with them was instantly reinforced. He told us to watch for him the next day, giving the precise time, direction of approach, and the number of passes he would make. Well, following that Saturday's performance, which included some dandy aerobatics, there was never again a question among the gang as to who was flying the airplane.
As I grew to adulthood my association with Uncle Bill became more like that of best friends than that of typical uncle-nephew relationships. As time passed, the 17-year age difference seemed to narrow and we actually began viewing one another as contemporaries. But as close as we were, and try as I would, I could never get him to say much about his World War II combat experiences. Then, one winter afternoon a few years ago while helping him clean his attic, a sheaf of typewritten papers caught my eye. "Aw, that's nothing," he growled, when I asked what they were. Well, the papers turned out to be the debriefing summaries for each of the 89 missions he had participated in. Later, as we sipped whiskey in his family room, I began paging through these documents, kind of reading aloud under my breath when I'd come upon an interesting passage.
Feigning a lack of interest in my reading material, Uncle Bill got up, poked the fire and pretended to busy himself with other things in the room. But as I continued muttering through the narratives, he'd throw in an occasional tidbit like, "Oh yeah, that's when Homolka got his prop shot off by German ground fire, then crashed & burned; or, "That's when Mecklenburg got hit, bailed out, and spent the rest of the war as a POW; or, "Lemee see that.... yeah, that's when my gun cameras showed a confirmed hit on a ME-262, but the sumbitch outran me and got lost in the clouds before I could do him any serious damage."
Before the day ended, several whiskeys later, Uncle Bill flew all of those missions for me again, animating them with hand flying as if they had occurred last week. He had waited 50 years to blurt it all out.
While all of Uncle Bill's missions were fraught with danger and excitement, I have selected for the following story the one in which he and seven other volunteers attacked German anti-aircraft batteries at LaSpezia Harbor, on the northwest coast of Italy, deploying a then-new weapon, napalm.
Its massive power and heavy lifting capability made the Army Air Corps' Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, or Jug as it was called, a good choice for deploying the newly developed weapon, napalm, in the final stages of World War II, and Bridgman, Michigan native Bill Ackerman was in on the action. Ackerman was a 20 year-old 2nd Lieutenant when he arrived in Italy in October 1944 with the 27th Fighter-Bomber Group.
Constantly on the move, by January 1945 his 523rd Squadron was flying its P-47's out of a hastily-constructed airfield near Pontedore, Italy and Ackerman, now promoted to 1st Lieutenant with 30 missions under his belt, was among eight pilots who volunteered to make one of the first drops of napalm on enemy positions. Here is his story as he told it to me:
It was a real experience; the ground crew had worked all night fitting two large tanks to the racks on each plane which normally held 500-pound bombs. When we went out to the line I couldn't believe my eyes; the tanks were huge. As I recall they were P-38 drop tanks retrofitted for this purpose, each holding about 300 gallons of napalm and weighing around 2,000 pounds for a total load of about 4,000 pounds, far exceeding the airplane's design maximum bomb load of 2,500 pounds. The tanks were rigged-up Rube Goldberg style with ordinary hand grenades attached to them. The grenade pins were tethered to the bomb racks and would pull out automatically when we released the tanks at a pre-calculated altitude; this would cause the napalm to detonate at just the right moment over the target.
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The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, or JUG, as it was affectionately called by those who flew it, was a workhorse -- the largest, heaviest armored, most powerful single-engine fighter plane of the war. This aircraft and its pilots were called upon to perform a wide variety of tasks. From bomber escort duty with many air-to-air combat encounters, to low level strafing & bombing missions, the JUG turned in an exemplary performance. It was truly a juggernaut, thus the nickname. In a dive, with the throttle to the firewall and the 2,300 horsepower air-cooled Pratt & Whitney engine turning a huge four-blade propeller, it could reach speeds exceeding 500 miles per hour. Unlike Luftwaffe fighters, the JUG was designed to withstand the extreme G-forces of a last second pullout at those speeds. Many German pilots were lured to their demise in pursuit of diving JUGS, learning only too late of their inability to pull out of a high-speed dive. While German airmen eventually learned the folly of following JUGS into a dive, it wasn't always the case. Early on, many a P-47 pilot would sucker an opponent into a chase, nose his plane into a power dive, wait until the last moment before hauling back on the stick, then go screaming across the tree tops and back into the sky, as the hapless German augured in to his death.
In my estimation, just the act of getting off the ground was the most dangerous part of this mission. The P-47 was a very forgiving airplane, but in this case there was absolutely no margin for error. Any number of minor mechanical malfunctions, like a tire blowing out, or a slight miscalculation by the pilot, would have meant certain disaster. Eight of us were assigned to the mission in four flights of two planes. Because the strip was very narrow we had to take off one at a time, circle until all planes were at altitude, then join up in formation. I was the element leader of the second flight, which meant I would be third to take off.
Sergeant Foster looked me straight in the eye and said in his Texas drawl, "Sir, I doubt if you'll get this sumbitch off the ground."
As I hopped out of the jeep and strode quickly toward my plane I could see and hear some of the other Jugs warming up. Sergeant Burl W. Foster, my crew chief, was standing on the wing waiting for me. I detected an expression of total panic on his face as he buckled me into the cockpit. Finally, with dead seriousness, he looked me straight in the eye and said in his Texas drawl, "Sir, I doubt if you'll get this sumbitch off the ground." This unnerved me a little as the sergeant was a very knowledgeable technician and knew the mechanical limitations of the Jug as well as anyone. Not responding directly, I gave him a weak smile and said let's wind 'er up. Foster and another man stood ready with fire extinguishers as I let the inertia starter howl up to speed. Getting a 'thumbs-up' from Foster, I switched on the ignition and engaged the starter. Blue smoke and flames belched from the exhaust ports as the huge engine slowly turned over, coughing and backfiring before finally thundering to life.
When my turn came, I slowly taxied my Jug to the end of the strip and nosed her into the wind. I intended to use every inch of runway to build speed before attempting liftoff. There would be no second chance. With flaps set at 15 degrees and the prop at full pitch, I stood on the brakes and ran the engine up to maximum power. The Jug began doing a little dance -- all 2,300 horsepower straining to be released. I thought it's now or never, Ackerman; get off the brakes.
The Jug began rolling, slowly at first, but with steadily increasing speed. My eyes darted back and forth from the runway to the air speed indicator... 35.... 40.....45 c'mon baby, 55.... 60.... faster... faster, 70.... 75 not much runway left, 85.... 100, end of runway coming up, 110.... 115. At 120 mph I pulled the stick into my lap just as the last few feet of runway disappeared under my wing and the Jug seemed to stagger as it barely clawed its way into the air.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I coaxed her along. . . . . .
I immediately raised the landing gear to cut drag as much as possible, but the control stick felt like it was in a bucket of mush as I wallowed out over the treetops, just above stall speed. Slowly, ever so slowly, I coaxed her along, gradually gaining speed and altitude. I finally reached 5,000 feet, leveledoff and began circling with the others, waiting for the five remaining planes to join us. Still at maximum power and full prop pitch, engine temperature was nearing the red line, so I eased back a little on both and let her cool down as we circled and waited.
Finally all of us managed to haul our overloaded jugs with their ungainly payloads into the sky. Forming up in pairs, we set a course for LaSpezia Harbor, the target's location about 60 miles distant. This harbor was on the Mediterranean in the northwest corner of Italy, just below the Appennine Mountains. A sizable German garrison was tenaciously holding the area, preventing Allied ships from off-loading fuel, ammunition and other sorely needed war materiel. They also had several anti-aircraft gun emplacements, the infamous 88's, to fend off Allied bombers. Our job was to destroy those gun positions; it was also calculated that the effects of a napalm attack would demoralize the German troops to an extent that they would totally abandon the area and retreat northward to their homeland.
Because the 88's were pointed almost vertically skyward to defend against the high-flying Allied heavy bombers, our strategy was to come in fast and low, from the side so to speak, dump our loads and beat it out of there before the Germans had a chance to crank their huge guns down to a trajectory that would be effective against us. It worked very well. About ten miles out we broke off in pairs and went into a fast shallow dive. Flattening out at less than 1,000 feet above our targets, we released the tanks and sped off toward the horizon without looking back.
The Germans never knew what hit them.
As we regrouped and headed back to base we could see the destructive results of our raid. Off in the distance bright orange flames were still covering the targeted area as columns of greasy black smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air. The Germans never knew what hit them.
Our single-file landings were uneventful, but I remember that my flying suit was wringing wet as Sergeant Foster, grinning like a chessie cat, helped me out of the cockpit. Normally after a mission we were required to head straight to a debriefing session; but this time we were driven tothe tent which served as our makeshift officers club, where we found eight double shots of whiskey lined up on the bar by order of our squadron commander, Major Robert Brown.
Ackerman went on to fly another58 missions, for a total of 89, all of them presenting highly dangerous situations. His fighter group relocated several times as they moved into France and it was the first to cross the Rhine into Germany where they flew their final missions of the war out of a captured German air base near Mannheim. He received several decorations and citations for his wartime service including the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with Six Oak Leaf Clusters.
Ackerman and some of his fellow pilots were on a short rest leave in Paris when they got word that hostilities had ceased. It was May 7, 1945 -- about a month short of his 21st birthday.
Mr. Ackerman passed away on May 26, 2006, just ten days short of his 82nd birthday.
