ONE MAN’S GANG
Air News with Air Tech
December 1945

America’s strangest flying team, headed by Col. Watson, delivered German planes to Freeman Field museum without mishap

By John Paul Andrews

To commercial pilots and airline passengers flying the radio range out of Indianapolis, the town of Seymour is little more than a pinpoint in the fertile vastness of southern Indiana. Only the outsize airport which sprawls over neighboring farmlands distin­guishes Seymour from thousands of small towns dotting the American airscape. Its 7,500 citizens are singularly undistinguished in dress, in manner, in agrarian philosophy and political precepts. Yet 10,000,000 flying and fighting allies teamed with the entire German aircraft industry to give this little’ community a unique monument symbolizing victorious warfare. The Luftwaffe’s deadliest buzz bombs, its fastest jet planes, and its biggest bombers have reached their last target—a peaceful Hoosier farm now known as Freeman Field.
 

To most civilians, the war museum at Seymour is nothing more than a collection of airplanes already familiar through the hear-say of last year’s communiques. Most military men look upon these prize samples from the Messerschmitt, Arado, Junkers, and Heinkel line as the end result of our victory in Europe. But to the Air Technical Intelligence section of Air Technical Service Command in general, to Colonel H. E. Watson and his gang of flying scavengers in particular, the Freeman Field collection spells “mission accomplished” for a strange military operation which began modestly during the Battle of Britain, reached full official status a year ago, and roared to a climax less than six months ago. The story of this operation has never been told. Some interludes cannot be told until all danger of reprisal has passed. But the experiences of Colonel Watson typify activities of non­combat teams which trumped every German ace in the air battle over Europe.
 

In appearance and mannerism, Colonel Watson is a dead ringer for Terry Lee, although he never posed for Milton Canifi, creator of the far-famed comic strip. His speech and energy belie the chickens on his shoulders. With minimum makeup, he could double for Van Johnson or handle the hero role in a Somerset Maugham play or a Kipling ballad. Using or abusing military procedure according to circumstances, Watson is neither the oldest nor the youngest full colonel in the Army Air Forces. A soldier of the old school and a pilot of the new war world, he flies every type of plane with complete candor and almost legendary finesse. His first eight years after graduation from Kelly Field in February, 1937 were neither humdrum nor spectacular. But when General Carl A. Spaatz gave him command of Air Intelligence Teams in Occupied Countries last April, Colonel Watson embarked upon a hectic tour of. duty which lasted five days, covered five countries of the German Reich, and brought at least one sample of most every German plane, engine, and accessory to a strange al fresco museum in Indiana.
 

In common with other British and America specialists assigned to similar work during the past several years, Colonel Watson never tried to get his man but made reasonable and unreasonable effort to get his machine. Returned to other experts at Wright Field and Eglin Field, these products of enemy ingenuity were analyzed, tested, dismantled, and reassembled to determine their potentialities, their performance, their weaknesses, and their possible contributions to improvement of our own equipment. Hard, dangerous, round-the-clock work, this ferreting out of enemy equipment called for versatile specialists who could spot a new gadget on a smashed Messerschmitt instrument panel, figure out the wiring on a Jumo engine, drive or repair a jeep in any weather, delouse a booby-trapped aircraft plant, and win the cooperation of Germans, French, Norwegians, and Danes through their linguistic talents. Always close to the front, Air Technical Intelligence crews knew how to use or avoid all types of weapons.  Some were killed, several were captured. The others gathered information which saved hundreds of USAAF and RAF lives.
 

Although the British undertook formal technical liaison with the United States during the first days of lend-lease in 1941, American activity remained largely documentary until November, 1944, when General Henry H. Arnold ordered full-scale collection of enemy equipment. During the Allied push through France, technical experts at Wright Field maintained a “blacklist” of specific enemy equipment needed for evaluation, asking for jet engines and complete airplanes but settling for a beat-up jet combustion chamber or bullet-riddled fuel injector when whole assemblies. could not be spotted. Despite the fact that little German research had been entrusted to French factories or personnel, Colonel E. T. Bradley shipped tons of materiel from intelligence headquarters in France. Then, on April 27th, General Spaatz issued priority orders which gave new prestige to the intelligence operation and Colonel Watson went into action.
 

A month later, planes and engines had been spotted all over the Reich but removal to the United States presented several real problems. Most of the airplanes were flyable, but none had sufficient range for flight to this country. All technical manuals had gone straight to Allied document vaults in London so no planes could be dismantled and shipped to America for reassembly. The whole program had bogged down when the British advised Watson that H.M.S. Reaper, an auxiliary carrier, would be leaving Liverpool for New York on July 1st. With prize airplanes scattered all over Germany, Denmark, Austria, Norway, and France, the air intelligence team had less than three weeks in which to assemble their collection at Cherbourg. And none of the available pilots had ever flown jet planes which held top priority in the shipping manifest.
 

Flown to their “targets” in a beat-up Douglas C-47 transport, Watson and six other pilots would gas up, take a cockpit check from Heinz Braun, a Luftwaffe pilot rescued from the brig, test hop the strange ship to determine best operating altitude and speed, then head for Cherbourg regardless of weather. Flying from sunrise till sunset—summer days are eighteen hours long in Europe—pilots would drop down on a cornfield, crawl under the wing for a short nap, then take off a few hours later. The lumbering C-47 always followed along, with mechanics refueling and servicing the German planes by flashlight while pilots slept. In this manner, forty unorthodox German planes moved into Cherbourg within twenty days.
 

Meanwhile, Watson borrowed six pilots from the 9th Air Force and joined with them in careful study of the jet-powered fighter, photo-reconnaissance, and interceptor produced by wily Willi Messerschmitt. Threatened with imprisonment, then promised a trip to America, the latter German genius even rigged up a single-place Me-262 with “piggy-back” seating to give Watson a two-seater for training his pilots in the flight foibles of jet aircraft. Lacking aerial maps, the jet team then marked out a ferry route to Cherbourg on a pre-war road map hanging in the Messerschmitt office.
 

Originally, the flight to Cherbourg called for one stop at Melun, approximately 450 miles south of Paris. Unfortunately, available fuel proved inadequate for the long hop and when fuel pumps began to act up over Nancy, a forced landing was made at St. Diezier. Facing a two-day layover while air force trucks rounded up J-1 jet fuel for resumption of the important flight, Watson’s gang drained the tanks on a half-dozen Caterpillar tractors to get American Diesel fuel which almost duplicated the specific gravity of Germany’s special jet fuel.  On subsequent flights, St. Diezief was a regular stop—and Diesel fuel was used exclusively through choice rather than necessity. Meanwhile, the Reaper’s departure had been delayed twelve days at Cherbourg, giving Watson an extra week in which to round up several newly-discovered German planes.

With the C-47 working overtime as a shuttle plane for pilots, a Heinkel 219, an Arado 234, and a Junkers 88-G6 were flown to Cherbourg from Grove, Denmark. Another Ar-234 came in from Stravenger in Norway and a night-fighter modification of the Messerschmitt 262 came blazing in from Schleswig. The ferry operations ended with delivery of a Ta-152 from Aalborg, Denmark and several long-nosed Focke-Wulf 190s uncovered at Flensburg, Germany.

How good are American pilots and mechanics? When deliveries stopped on July 8th, nine jet planes and thirty unorthodox propellered types had been flown to the waiting carrier at Cherbourg—without a single pilot injury. The Nazis still hail this operation as the longest, largest mass flight of German jet planes - on record and point to 30 per cent pilot fatalities at their Lechield training base as proof of our pilot skill.

How good are the German jet planes? Flying in all kinds of weather, with ceilings ranging from 300 feet to 1,000 feet, Watson’s pilots topped 525 miles per hour and. averaged 400 miles per hour on the ferry flights—and insist they were taking it easy.
 

It was this high-speed, low-altitude performance which prompted one American general to write “Damned wicked” in his report of a demonstration at Melun. Colonel Watson is more specific, rating the Lockheed P-80 as the best-performing and second-best designed of current jet planes, the Messerschmitt 262 as the second-best performer and best designed, and the Bell P-59 as third-rate on both counts. The Arado 234, a propeller less reconnaissance bomber, is first on both counts for its type.

Moreover, he points out that Messerschmitt's jet fighter has been in production for more than two years, in combat, prematurely for more than a year. Despite the handicaps of bombed-out research centers, unwilling Polish labor, a relatively inefficient wing design, and rough exterior finish, this German fighter is barely inferior in performance to American counterparts developed in elaborate plants by willing hands which have given our planes ultra-efficient wings and glass-like finishes. And the first jet-propelled bomber to appear in the United States was the Arado 234 which flew 650 miles from Newark to Seymour in 100 minutes.
 

Germany’s orthodox designs were equally efficient. On May 6th, Americans got their first view of the mythical Junkers 290, a gargantuan, four-engine transport which might have carried Hitler and his henchmen to safety but for the suddenness of Allied conquest. When the big ship landed at Munich, almost eighty men, women and children were disgorged along with baby carriages, housewares, bedding, and a variety of personal effects which they had clung to in their mad retreat from the Russians in southern Czechoslovakia. The following morning, Col. Watson and Captain Fred B.

McIntosh, his co-pilot, flew the Junkers to Nuremburg where ten American mechanics worked all night with the German crew. learning maintenance tricks which -would keep the big plane aloft on its projected Atlantic hop. Subsequently fitted with American over-ocean radio equipment at Le Culot in Belgium, it took off for Wright Field, stopping en route at the Azores and Bermuda. Between Bermuda and Wright Field, the Junkers beat the best Douglas C-54 record by more than an hour. When Watson and McIntosh landed at Wright Field, their mission had been accomplished. Only 10 per cent of Germany’s air equipment is missing, in sample form, from the embryonic museum at Seymour. Armchair strategists of tomorrow will see the weapons- of today because Colonel Watson, Captains McIntosh, Maxfield, Dahistrom, Hillis and Strobel, and Lieutenants Anspach, Brown, Haynes, and Holt were ready and willing to fly anything with wings. With Sergeants Moon, Parker, Thompson, Barr, Bloomer, Box, Gilson, Moore, Taylor, and Willcoxen— Watson calls them the ten best mechanics alive—they formed the strangest team of the war. They proved what General Arnold had long surmised. We were lucky to win the war in Europe.
 

AIR NEWS with AIR TECH, December, 1945