Presentation Date: May 23, 2002
Kenneth T. Brown USAAF, WWII
Lead Navigator, B-26 "Marauder" Medium Bomber, Ninth Air Force, 391st Bombardment Group, 572nd Bombardment Squadron, ETO
- Lead Navigator, B-26 "Marauder" Medium Bomber, Ninth Air Force
- 391st Bombardment Group, 572nd Bombardment Squadron, ETO
- Operation "Clarion", Incredible Mission(s)
- Author of MARAUDER MAN, World War II in the Crucial But Little-Known B-26 Marauder Medium Bomber
- Used G.I. Bill to earn BS; PhD in Physiological Psychology; Professor of Neurophysiology (ret) & UCSF
If there’s anything Ken Brown truly appreciates, it is precision. The former B-26 navigator has set his sights on delivering what he believes is the accurate story of the B-26 medium bomber and its place in the archives of World War Two.
Ken Brown expected a milk run. It hasn’t been one.
With the research, writing and last year’s publishing of his book Marauder Man - World War II in the Crucial But Little Known B-26 Marauder Medium Bomber , Brown is hoping to set the record straight on the contributions of the airplane and its aircrews to victory in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Pacific. This is his final mission with the B-26.
Part of the problem lies in the enormous publicity the Eighth Air Force and its heavy bombers received during the war, and extensive writing on both which has continued since. “It seems also as if the accomplishments of the B-26 have been suppressed. And I think it’s possible that that’s actually true, as a matter of military politics...”
As for publications about the Marauder, Brown noted they have been comparatively few, poorly written, mostly privately funded, and printed in small quantity. Ken Brown was raised on a small farm in northern Virginia.
“There I learned some of the same values that nowadays are associated with states in the heartland of America, which is hard work and things like that... On both my mother’s and father’s side, I have Quaker ancestors extending back to the late 1600s. I’m the ninth generation of Quakers in this country on my father’s side. As you probably know, one of the strongest beliefs of Quakers is true abhorrence to war. So I thought until I had to actually make the final decision, that if war came and I was going to have to decide, I would register as a conscientious objector.”
Pearl Harbor changed all that. Brown says he volunteered for the Air Force Reserve and was called up for training about a year later after he made a decision - - “...I finally realized that I could kill in good conscience... Many innocent lives were already being taken by ruthless regimes in Germany and Japan, and this would obviously continue indefinitely if not stopped. So the issue was not whether people would be killed during the war, but who would be killed, the aggressors or their helpless victims... In short, I decided that I could not hold sacrosanct the lives of our enemies under the conditions of World War II.” *
After basic training in Mississippi and Tennessee, Brown was posted to Nashville for classification. He prioritized his preference for training and duty as - - #1 navigator, #2 bombardier, and #3 pilot. A captain tried in vain to talk Brown and two other cadets into becoming pilots, and they all were classified to become bombardiers.
Bombardier school in Texas included much navigation training, which served Ken well. After a delay in training, he volunteered to become a bombardier, mainly because the USAAF needed them for B-26 crews, and Ken felt that would be an exciting assignment. When arrived at Barksdale Field, Florida, he had no preconception about the B-26, nor did he know of its early history. “It had an early reputation for being a very dangerous plane. It was, but it wasn’t a fault of its design... The Army was in such a hurry for that plane when it was ordered, that it was actually in the specifications that this plane would be built without a prototype. The first B-26 that flew was the first one that came off the assembly line. It was not built as a prototype at all. So, unlike almost every other plane, both then and now, this plane did not have any prototypes which could be used to work out the bugs that are inevitable in any design. And especially in the B-26, because it had so many new innovations, and that’s going to raise the hazard level quite a bit in terms of having bugs in the mechanics.”
Brown also credits the early high training losses to “pilots who tried to fly it like a fighter plane, for which it was never intended.” The B-26, with its two 2,000 horsepower engines carried a four thousand pound bomb load, the same load as four-engined B-17s carried over Europe. With a top speed of 310 mph, it was very fast for a bomber, matching the top speed of a Zero fighter. When landing, the B-26’s approach speed was (with modifications)135 mph, with touchdown at 105 - - again, faster than fighter aircraft. “Widow maker” and “the flying prostitute” were nicknames attached to the Marauder after those early training accidents. Those monikers were only partially erased after Martin rid of the major bugs, and after General Jimmy Doolittle flew a series of demonstrations to show the B-26's air worthiness.
Armor plate and increased firepower from machine guns brought crews added security in later models of the bomber, and the Marauder began building its own resume for being able to withstand the rigors of combat.
Brown can personally testify to the B-26’s ability to suffer extreme damage and still bring home its crew. After one mission he watched a crippled Marauder come out of overcast at 200 feet to land. “It was dead on-course for the runway, which in itself is a minor miracle. And then I noticed the wheels were not down. So, I started paying close attention. As the plane got directly opposite me, I was looking through the plane. The plane had taken a direct hit from an 88mm flak shell right under the top turret. And it had literally blown the plane completely in half, except for the I-beam which formed the backbone of the plane. That was the only thing left holding the tail onto that plane.
“So, of course, all the usual controls for the control surfaces the pilot had had been shot away. But the trim tab controls that went into the tail were fortunately inside the I-beam that had been spared. The pilot had that plane back from Germany with nothing but trim tabs on the tail surfaces.
“And then he made a perfect crash landing with the nose hitting first. The tail gunner was back there with his chute shredded from the flak, and he couldn’t parachute out. the whole was too big to jump over, so his only chance was for a perfect crash landing with the nose hitting first. If the tail had hit first it would have broken off and he would have been killed... That’s an example of the durability of that airplane, and is why people who flew it loved it. Although people elsewhere have hardly known anything about these great qualities of that plane.” By the time Ken flew on a B-26, the type had already notched major successes in the Pacific Theater of Operations. The 22nd Bombardment Group, operated from northern Australia and helped keep the Japanese from invading Port Moresby, New Guinea. This, despite being up against some of the Japanese Navy’s top fighter aces, based in Lae near the forward ship harbor at Rabaul. Brown says the B-26 pilots, when attacked by Zeros, could shove the throttles forward, dive for the water, and skim along at the speed of the Zeros, leaving the pursuing Japanese pilots with “no opportunity for an effective attack.”
The Marauder also played what Brown believes was a key role in determining the outcome of the Battle of Midway, and the loss of four Japanese aircraft carriers. He credits his wife,Virginia, for uncovering evidence that should give the Marauder at least “... a large footnote in the larger history of that great conflict.”
Four B-26's from the 22nd Bombardment Group flew out to Midway Island, after their crews briefly practiced in Hawaii taking off and landing with large torpedoes slung under the belly of each bomber. What they attempted to do at Midway is what influenced the course of the battle. As Japanese naval bombers were first striking Midway’s shore based facilities and air base, five unescorted American Navy torpedo bombers and the four Army B-26's with torpedoes were already en route to Admiral Nagumo’s invasion fleet. Those aircraft found the fleet, with three of the four Marauders launching torpedoes, but missing Nagumo’s flagship, the carrier Akagi . The fourth B-26 was shot down, either by defending Zero fighters or by antiaircraft fire, but before hitting the water, the bomber nearly struck the bridge of the Akagi. Another of the B-26's, piloted by Lt. James Muri, missed with his bomber’s torpedo, but strafed the Akagi’s flight deck with machine gun fire.
The impact of the B-26 attack is recorded in the book Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan: The Japanese Navy’s Story , authored by Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya. Fuchida was the navy pilot who led the Pearl Harbor raid, but who could only watch the Battle of Midway, having had an emergency appendectomy on his way to the island battle. Fuchida wrote that the attack of the bombers so impressed Admiral Nagumo that he ordered planes on both Akagi and Kaga be re-armed with fragmentation and incendiary bombs to again strike the air base at Midway.
Brown says in the book Climax at Midway , Thaddeus Tuleja calls Nagumo’s decision, “The most critical decision of the battle.” The Japanese aircrews were re-arming with torpedoes and armor piercing bombs. They were now ordered to re-arm with conventional bombs, and then, when the US carrier fleet was discovered northeast of Midway, had to remove them and mount armaments to strike at the ships. Re-arming with haste, recovering from what proved to be a fatal decision, the aircrews left bombs and torpedoes on the carrier flight and hangar decks. The unstowed armaments compounded the effect of exploding ordnance dropped by US Navy Dauntless dive bombers.
Brown says he was matched up with an excellent B-26 aircrew, led by pilot Ken Chapin. The six crew members developed what Ken calls “a very high esprit de corps.” In early September, 1944, that crew flew its B-26 on the Northern Route to Great Britain and soon joined the 572nd Squadron of the 391st Bombardment Group, based at Matching Green. Brown says at that time there were eight complete B-26's groups in England.
“Each B-26 group consisted of four squadrons. And each squadron was so independent that we had our own barracks, our own mess halls, our own maintenance crews... We were so independent that I never got to know a single person in any of the other three squadrons. That gives some idea of the size of operations of a squadron.”
Brown described the type of missions and the extent of damage they caused the German war effort. The B-26 was mostly used to blast tactical German targets - - bridges, factories, airfields, and especially railroad marshaling yards. By hitting transportation, troops, arms and supplies were kept from front-line German units. To illustrate what lower level bombing did to win specific battles, Brown cited a recent “Flight” magazine article which describes the role of the B-26 in D-Day’s success.
“The B-26's were sent to attack the fortifications at Utah Beach,” Brown says. “They did that with extreme effectiveness... they got under the weather instead of staying over the weather as the heavy bombers did at Omaha. And of course, being over the weather they couldn’t get any accuracy at all, and the heavy bombers were strewn somewhere between one and five miles inland. None of the bombs got onto the beach or the fortifications, and therefore they did no good at all to the landing troops.
“The B-26's got under the overcast, so they could bomb visually, from something like 2000 feet, and they completely plastered Utah Beach and the fortifications there. And they deliberately bombed the beach to provide places the landing troops could use for shelter once they got ashore.”
The relatively light casualties suffered by American troops at Utah, compared with the 1000 plus soldiers lost at Omaha, helped make the Normandy invasion a success, instead of the disaster it might have been if the casualties on Utah Beach had mirrored those of Omaha. Brown flew as bombardier on his early missions, recalling how B-26's bombed by six-plane flights, two groups of three aircraft. When hitting bridges, for instance, they flew at between 10,000 and 14,000 feet, each plane carrying two 2000 pound bombs.
“Only the lead plane plane would have a lead bombardier and lead navigator. The bombardier did the aiming for the entire flight. When the bombs appeared out of the bomb bay of the lead plane, the bombardiers in all the other planes immediately toggled their bombs.” By using this technique, the Marauder squadrons were able to get very tight patterns with their payloads. And Brown says that was extremely important in trying to pinpoint targets. The altitude proved to be a tradeoff, though, as German flak gunners could more accurately track and hit aircraft at the lower elevation.
Christmas, 1944 and the Battle of the Bulge brought a change for Ken Brown. Shortly after a great clash between B-26's and Luftwaffe fighters on December 23rd, Brown became lead navigator for his squadron. That meant his responsibility jumped dramatically for the final 27 missions he flew on until the end of the war in Europe.
February 24, 1945 gave Brown what he calls “an incredible experience.” A mission to bomb a railroad bridge at Irlich, Germany was met by heavy and accurate antiaircraft fire, as well as the target approach being partly obscured by a line of low clouds. “The lead plane was shot down by a direct hit... The heat from the flames burned off all the right side control surfaces of the slot plane directly behind the lead plane... That plane went down out of control. The pilot managed to crash land it safely.
“This other flight, both planes on the right side of the flight were shot down by direct hits. Both planes on the left side of the flight were also shot down, but one of those managed to crash land just barely within friendly territory...” Ken’s flight managed to avoid being badly damaged, and picked up an extra B-26 from the first flight. Unable to bomb the primary target, the flight of Marauders turned south to a secondary target, a road bridge. The bombers immediately started evasive action to avoid the 88mm fire tracking them.
Ed Wegenek, the lead bombardier, took turns with Brown directing the turns to evade the flak. Brown says Wegenek improvised a way to avoid the increasing flak by making a turn “only when there were more gun flashes than usual.” Brown says near misses were as close as fifteen feet, when he could see the red center of the exploding shell, or further out where the crew could feel the plane shudder from a concussion they couldn’t see.
The flight had been following a road which led directly to the bridge. Thanks to Brown’s calming influence on the pilot, the bombardier lined up the bombsight cross hairs on the target and... “Just a few seconds before bomb release, he saw four gun flashes... two on either side of the road... just on the other side of the bridge. He took the cross hairs forward to the gun flashes. The bombs were released just a few seconds later, and we immediately made a violent right turn toward home...
“Wegenek watched backward as our pattern of 2000 pound bridge bombs from seven planes completely blanketed the area of the four gun flashes. So we must have totally destroyed those four gun positions. And we couldn’t have possibly had a more satisfying target on that day than that would prove to be.”
On the way home, the tracking flak hammered with the same intensity it had when the Marauders were flying to the bridge. The rattling effect made Brown have to force himself to concentrate on navigating the bomber back home, one simple step at a time. Flak damage had jammed the nose wheel in its retracted position, but pilot Preben Bonde eased down onto the bomber’s main gear, then braked left. off the runway into the grass to stop. The crew narrowly avoided being run over by another B-26, which slid off the runway when it touched down and its wheels were not locked into the down position.
Looking back on the mission of February 24, 1945, Ken Brown has frequently tried to see it in clear perspective. “The time from our primary target to the bomb line was forty-five minutes, which i noted and recorded, and the flak remained about equally intense and accurate that entire time. Shortly after the mission I estimated that during these forty-five minutes the longest interval between near misses was about twenty seconds, and others in our flight agreed with this estimate. Even taking a more conservative view that the average interval between near misses was twenty seconds, that would mean a total of about 135 near misses.” **
Brown says he believes the estimate is accurate, though it may seem unbelievable when it’s added that no plane was shot down from the flight of seven and no was one killed or even wounded among the crewmen aboard the B-26s. “In view of the conditions, I can only consider our escape unscathed as a miracle beyond all understanding.”
Ken Brown’s last mission aboard a B-26 was April 7th, 1945. That day was also his 23rd birthday.
* Quoted from Marauder Man , pgs. 13, 14
** Quote from Marauder Man , pgs. 177, 178