MAJOR "CHILI" CHILDRESS' WILD RIDE

Excerpted from “Clean Sweep: VIII Fighter Command Against the Luftwaffe 1942-45”

During the last two weeks of May, 1944, the Allied air campaign to set the stage for the Normandy invasion reached its crescendo. The battlefield was nearly cut off; there was one piece of information needed to completely cut off the German Seventh Army:

An F-5 “Photo Lightning”

With the fighters of IX Tactical Air Command striking every target they could find in Northern France and Belgium, and fighter groups from VIII Fighter Command strafing targets during their returns from every escort mission, while the A-20 Havocs and B-26 Marauders of the IX Air Force and the Eighth’s B-17s and B-24s hit every rail target in the region, the German Army in northwestern France was cut off from its supply bases. The strikes on airfields forced the defending fighters to pull back deeper into France and Germany. The week before the invasion, the commander of the German Seventh Army, tasked with defending Normandy, called the roads in the army’s area of operations “Jabo Rennstrecki” (fighter-bomber racecourses).

After the F-5 photo Lightnings from the 13th and 27th photo squadrons of the Eighth’s 7th Photo Group were replaced in the Bomb Damage Assessment role by reverse-Lend-Lease Spitfires with superior high altitude performance after Big Week, the Lightnings began photographing northwest Europe to create invasion maps. To mask the actual invasion location, they flew missions from Blankenberge to Dunkirk, and from Le Touquet to St. Vaast de la Hague - almost the entire Channel Coast - and flew three missions elsewhere for every one flown over Normandy and the Cherbourg Peninsula.

On May 26, Major Hubert "Chili" Childress, commander of the 27th Photo Squadron flew one of the most important, yet hair-raising missions any photo pilot flew in the ETO. "SHAEF wanted pictures of all the Loire River bridges, so they knew how they were made, because they wanted to blow them up to keep the German forces south of the Loire from crossing into northern France after the invasion. That meant going in at low level. We decided that we should fly the mission at a maximum altitude of 50 feet to stay below the treeline in our approaches to the bridges. In fact, I flew most of the mission at an altitude of 30 to 40 feet." There were a total of 64 bridges to photograph. Knowing the importance and danger of the mission, Childress assigned himself the flight.

The F 5 did not have a forward facing camera, which meant Childress would be forced to make his photo runs parallel to the bridges. “I had to fly straight and level, at a maximum speed of 320 mph, a minimum of 200 yards from the bridge to get the pictures.” The mission parameters put him at the optimum distance to be taken down by defending flak. A second P 38 from the 13th Squadron was detailed to follow Childress. "He was there to take over after I got shot down. I figured I might make it for four bridges before that happened.” Since the Germans would be surprised at the first bridge but fully warned and prepared as the F-5 flew on, it was deemed so dangerous that - like Childress - the 13th Photo Squadron's C.O. assigned himself, unwilling to risk the life of any other pilot.

The mission was the first flown by the 7th Photo Group to receive fighter escort. "We had 16 P 38s from the 55th Fighter Group that met us over Cherbourg. Four flew with me to provide flak suppression, four were with the other F-5, and the other eight were there to keep any German fighters that showed up off our backs."

Staying low and flying fast, Childress was only exposed to flak during the few seconds he was directly over the bridges. By varying the direction of approach, he was able to maintain the element of surprise over the first 50 bridges. "I took hits, nothing serious, though every time I went past a bridge and saw all that flak coming up I figured I was taking a year off my life.”

Things came to an end at Tours. The four bridges inside the town forced Childress to head back and forth between them while staying directly over the city. “This meant they could shoot at us continuously. The second and third bridges were so close together that when I was photographing one, I was directly above another. I got hit over the third bridge. I felt a thump, but everything seemed to continue working, so I got pictures of the last bridge and then we were out of there.”

Flying to the next bridge, the escort leader spotted a trail of smoke from Childress’ left engine and warned him over the radio. “I looked over and sure enough, the cowling had a few holes in it and smoke was pouring out of the turbo. I feathered the prop and called to Major Smith that he'd have to get the rest of the bridges. I started climbing for altitude to get above the light flak, and managed to get up to 10,000 feet by the time we got to the Channel."

Back at Mount Farm, Childress performed an overhead 360 to the left, into the dead engine. "I'd always been told never to turn a Lightning into the dead engine, but the airplane was running so well no one on the ground even realized I was only on one engine. I landed, but then I couldn't turn left off the runway, so they had to come out and tow me back in. The airplane had enough holes in it that it didn't fly again for about ten days."

Eighth Air Force had no difficulty awarding Major Childress a Disinguished Flying Cross for the daring mission. During the week following Childress’ mission, Allied fighter-bombers destroyed all the Loire bridges, cutting off Normandy and Brittany from the rest of France. To keep the enemy confused, all the bridges in the Pas de Calais region were also destroyed, as well as the Seine bridges north of Paris.

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