Operation Overloard on The Invasion of Normandy
In 1994 I was asked by CBS TV News to go on a program called ‘Operation Overlord’, which was a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Allied landing in Normandy of 1944.
The plan of the invasion was to drop two divisions of paratroopers behind German lines to start to soften the fortifications and the resistance of the Germans who were primarily on the beaches facing an invasion of landing craft from the sea. In fact these landings were scheduled to follow the paratroop drops by several hours. The idea was to deliver a two-part set of attacks: one surprise attack from the air with paratroopers, followed by the expected attack from the sea.
The next day we flew gliders in. Our mission that night was to fly from England carrying the 101st Airborne and the 82nd Airborne divisions. This group was called the First Airborne Army. We flew from England across the English Channel between the Jersey and Guernsey Islands off the cost of Normandy, moving eastward between the islands and heading toward a famous landmark, called Omaha Beach, to drop our paratroops.
As the lead navigator of 800 aircraft, I had been trained for a particular job—to push a red button four minutes out, signaling my paratroopers to stand and hook onto a cable that ran the length of the cabin and to then stand up in the plane and get inside the astrodome and wave a red lantern signaling to the other 8 planes in our squadron that we were four minutes away from our destination.
At the very moment I started to execute this procedure, the Colonel began screaming at me. I noticed that he was flying co-pilot, not pilot so he was on the right side of the plane hiding under the dashboard. He was screaming at me “Get down from there you fool, can’t you see that they’re shooting at you”. I replied “Colonel, this is what I’ve been trained to do”. “Get down from there or I will court martial you” he yelled, and in fact he had the right to take out his gun and shoot me, because I then disobeyed his order. I knew I was right; I couldn’t understand his order; I knew I had to do what I was trained to do. Some have said there was a very important difference between the German and the American soldier during World War II: the American soldier had the ability to not blindly follow orders.
Four minutes after pushing the red button and waving the red lantern I pushed a green button and the first paratroopers dropped over France. We then flew north; it was still quite dark. As we flew over the coasts of the Channel we saw phospherescence as far as the eye could see and as we went north there were lines of boats and landing craft, and further north we saw large US and British battle ships with pink flames coming from the muzzles of their big guns as they shot over the landing craft on to the beaches. We turned west and went back to England for breakfast. Upon landing I learned that my best friend, flying off my left wing had been shot down. Obviously the German guns were aiming at my plane which was the lead plane, but not one bulletin had hit us.
The following day we flew gliders into Normandy very slowly, repeating our journey of the day before. Machine gun bullets went through our wing. I got into the open doorway of our transport plane, which didn’t have machine guns, tarots or positions. I sat in the open doorway with a machine gun and shot back. I said to myself “This is ridiculous, I am trying to kill someone I don’t know, and he is trying to kill me”. No further shots came to the plane and we got back home to England. This is the story I told on CBS-TV, just a part, because there is more to it. The Colonel later received the Distinguished Flying Cross for Leading the Invasion of Normandy and I received the Air Medal. The story didn’t end there. Fifteen years later I met Dr. Tony Siska who I’d learned was dying of leukemia at Portchester Hospital. I asked if there was anything I could do, or would he like to talk a little. He said no. I asked him about what happened to me on D-Day and began to explain, but he cut me off. “Don’t tell me – I’ve been living with that for fifteen years and almost had a nervous breakdown because of it”. I said to him, “Dr. Siska you don’t know what I am talking about. It was a direct order from the Colonel which I disobeyed and I would like to know what happened that night. He explained “The real story was the Colonel had a 104½ fever. I should have grounded him and instructed him “Mr. Colonel, pick yourself a substitute because in no way can I allow a flying officer with a 104½ fever to fly an aircraft let alone lead the invasion. Dr. Siska went on “He begged me to let him fly saying that these were his boys going into combat for the first time and would I please make an exception. I can never forgive myself for this”.
And so the Invasion of Normandy was lead by someone with a 104½ fever and a navigator who had had trouble at navigation school due to his glasses. As I sat in the tall chair at the CBS–TV studio in New York and we listened to five hours of speeches, including one by President Clinton and a marvelous speech by Walter Cronkite, I said to myself “How did I get to this position? Why was I explaining my D Day experiences in a TV studio talking coast to coast on national TV?”
A month or so before the invasion, we were practicing take off and landing and flying in formation. There are many airfields all over England and we (the US Air Force) had planes in each one of these fields. The idea of having 800 planes form in formation was often a very difficult maneuver because we were practicing for night time action. It took a lot of work and training and we were able to do it. At one time I noticed a strange new plane arriving in our midst and a young man from another Squadron was assigned to it. This was to be a path finding plane with Radar equipment, which was a new British invention used first in WW II. It was in the belly extending down from the plane. We were to form a formation to follow him toward the east coast. At this time the German Airforce had airplanes and pursuit planes and bombers and I noticed our pathfinder was leading us over the coast, further and further over the channel. Then it dawned on me that he didn’t know what he was doing as he was not looking out of the window but doing it all via instrument and radar. I asked my pilot to break radio silence, which he did. Our entire group then turned around and headed for home. This was not our assigned program. We just had to help the pathfinder and its pilot find the edge of the space in which we could practice.
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"LIFE IN THE MARGIN" by Morton Gladstone