Captains of Bomb Disposal 1942-1946

CAPTAINS OF

BOMB DISPOSAL

1942-1946

T. Dennis Reece

Copyright © 2005 by T. Dennis Reece.

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Contents

Author’s Preface

PART I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

PART II

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Appendix

Endnotes

To the memory of Capt. George W. Wally Collins

and all those who have given their lives defending the

freedoms we too often take for granted.

Author’s Preface

After my father, Thomas R. Reece, died in August 2002, I

wanted to know more about what he and other American bomb disposal personnel did in World War II. My search for printed material revealed a startling fact. Although a number of books were available about British bomb disposal, no book had been commercially published in the United States about American bomb disposal during the war. The most extensive published material were the reminiscences of two American enlisted men in an English book otherwise devoted to British bomb disposal. The other available items were limited mainly to some magazine articles, about five pages scattered in two volumes on the Ordnance Department in the official Army history of World War II series, and an unpublished history deposited at the Library of Congress on Navy explosive ordnance disposal.

To a certain extent this is not surprising. Fewer than five thousand Americans were assigned to bomb disposal work during World War II in the Army, Army Air Force (hereinafter usually referred to as the Air Force), Navy, and Marine Corps combined. All, or at least almost all, were citizen officers and soldiers. Their interest was not in advancing a military career, but rather in surviving the war, going back to civilian life, and largely forgetting what they had gone through. Moreover, in contrast to Great Britain, where bomb disposal operations were well known to the public because of massive German bombing, in the United States bomb disposal activity during the war was kept out of public sight, except for selected civil defense personnel. After the war, official and unofficial chroniclers of the great conflict generally overlooked the work of the relatively few and autonomous American bomb disposal units.

Early in my research I had the great good fortune while on vacation in Belgium to stumble across the name and address of a former bomb disposal officer who lived near me in Florida, Stephen M. Richards. Despite his serious ill health, which led to his death in June 2003, he freely talked to me about his military experience, including his participation in something that I had never heard of, Operation Hidden Documents. Subsequently, another participant in that mission, Wayne Leeman, very graciously made available to me unpublished material from his personal files, as Mr. Richards had so kindly done earlier. My debt to them is incalculable.

Whereas Part II discusses the work of one bomb disposal captain and a top-secret military mission which had profound political and legal consequences, the focus of Part I is wider. While organized around the work of another bomb disposal captain, it attempts to show the kinds of problems bomb disposal personnel in general faced, and how one group of bomb disposal squads, and their parent organization, the Ninth Air Force, helped win the war in northwest Europe.

Bomb disposal personnel had the most technically demanding and dangerous work outside of combat during World War II. Besides typically working long hours under difficult conditions, they were often asked to do things for which they were not adequately trained, or, to use a postwar expression, things which were not in their job description. Remarkably, in all of the bomb disposal unit histories I read there was never one word or even hint of anger, complaint, or resentment. In my opinion this was not just because the men had volunteered for the work. Their attitude toward the job seemed to be that they would do whatever was necessary and overcome any obstacle if humanly possible.

It is hoped that this book will stimulate more interest and writing on American explosive ordnance disposal in World War II and afterward, in all regions of the world and in all military services. To help those who are interested in doing more reading and research, the section of endnotes is disproportionately lengthy compared to the rest of the volume. Most of the primary sources cited are at either the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base, or the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. The personnel who helped me there are, to borrow a cliché, too numerous to be named. That does not diminish in any way my great appreciation for their patient, courteous assistance. Without them this book could not have been written.

The cover art consists of the official bomb disposal sleeve patch, and a photograph of the 80th Ordnance Bomb Disposal Squad (Separate), taken on April 24, 1944, at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Kneeling in the front row from left to right are T/Sgt. Lawrence J. Norris, Sgt. Russell F. McCarthy, T/5 George P. Ennen, T/5 Howard Croop, T/5 Walter V. Smith, and T/5 Harry Epstein. Standing is Capt. Thomas R. Reece.

PART I

Capt. Thomas R. Reece and the Ninth Air Force

Chapter 1

A Red-Letter Day

Dated December 18, 1941, eleven days after the Japanese attack

on Pearl Harbor, the letter was bordered in red and marked Very Important and Urgent. The War Department’s Indiana Military Area office in Indianapolis was ordering Thomas R. Reece to report for a physical examination in preparation for active military duty.(1) Since 1934, when he graduated from Purdue University and the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, he had been a reserve officer in the field artillery.

After passing a physical examination at Baer Field in Fort Wayne, Reece reported for duty at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in March 1942. In less than one week he returned home to South Bend, Indiana and reverted to inactive duty as a key industrial employee. As a research chemist at the O’Brien Varnish Company he visited industrial clients in the area, working to resolve problems they had with paint, varnish, and related coatings. Many of those clients, like the Studebaker Corporation, were converting from the production of civilian goods to military equipment. Two weeks after returning home, Reece received notice that the War Department’s pool of inactive officers with industrial or academic deferments would be abolished in June 1942. He therefore had to either resign his commission and keep his deferment, or keep his commission and be subject to active duty.

Unwilling to resign his commission, but preferring to stay close to home and his wife of six years, Reece requested a transfer to ordnance, that is, the military branch responsible for the production, delivery, and battlefield maintenance of weapons. He was hoping to be assigned to the Ordnance Department’s Industrial Branch and stationed at Kingsbury Ordnance Plant, in nearby La Porte, Indiana. His transfer out of the field artillery was accepted, and he reported to the Ordnance Officers Replacement Pool at Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), in northeast Maryland. Things did not turn out there as he had hoped. Some ordnance specialties were in greater demand than others, and he was assigned to the 8th officers’ bomb disposal class, beginning August 5, 1942, rather than to the Industrial Branch.

Although the Ordnance School was founded in 1921, its Bomb Disposal School had been open only since February 11, 1942, Reece’s thirtieth birthday. The school’s creation resulted from a major change in warfare during the preceding two decades. During World War I few bombs were dropped from planes, and unexploded ordnance problems usually involved items near the front lines. Bomb disposal was then an adjunct responsibility of the military engineers, not a different specialty. The first years of World War II, on the other hand, witnessed massive bombing raids on cities far from the front lines. Groups of experts specialized in handling unexploded ordnance were created shortly thereafter in Great Britain, which had been at war since 1939. When handling unfamiliar types of German ordnance, British bomb disposal personnel informed colleagues stationed several hundred yards away of every step they took. If a bomb blew up, then the survivors knew to try something different the next time. Many American lives were saved because of the knowledge gained through these life-and-death experiments. Following a visit to British facilities by American ordnance officers, experienced British personnel came to APG and helped design the Bomb Disposal School curriculum. The British then taught the first classes to American officers and enlisted personnel, who in turn instructed succeeding classes.(2)

The heart of the one-month officers’ course in the summer of 1942 covered bomb identification, fuze identification, the disposal of unexploded bombs, and bomb reconnaissance. Students learned that an unexploded bomb (UXB) had not gone off for one of two reasons. One was by accident, usually because some part had failed. The other was by design, through the use of a time-delay fuze. Obviously, the safest way to dispose of a UXB was to use a small explosive charge, like a block of TNT, and blow it up in place. Official German guidance recommended that procedure for their bombs.(3) Sometimes, however, that was not practical because the bomb was in a sensitive civilian or military location. Then, first a German bomb had to be disarmed by withdrawing the fuze from the fuze pocket and unscrewing the priming charge from the fuze. Next the igniting charge, made of picric acid, was removed from the fuze pocket. If the bomb had been lying in damp conditions the igniting charge could have crystallized. In that case, hot water was to be poured into the fuze pocket until the highly dangerous crystals were dissolved, after which they were supposed to be gently withdrawn with nonmetallic tools. After disarmed the bomb could be moved to a location where it could be blown up or the main charge steamed out.

German fuzes were usually marked with numbers and letters identifying the model. Early in the war the British developed a variety of equipment to neutralize if necessary certain German fuzes during the disarming process. The Magnetic Clock Stopper could be placed on a bomb to stop the mechanical time-delay 17A fuze from running. Although effective, it was heavy and awkward to use. The more portable Stevens Stopper created a vacuum in the fuze pocket and then pumped in a liquid under high pressure to stop the fuze from working.

The Axis powers would take countermeasures if they learned what procedures the Allied experts were using. So Allied bomb disposal techniques were kept secret, divulged only to military personnel with a need to know. Bomb reconnaissance, on the other hand, was for civilians as well. In that area Americans once again benefited from British experience. Early in the war over 50 percent of the reports of UXBs after bombing raids in England turned out to be false, wasting the time of bomb disposal personnel, who were thinly stretched just handling real incidents. Civilians were then trained to make a preliminary determination of whether a bomb was present or had already exploded by looking at the characteristics of the crater and surrounding land and buildings. If reconnaissance personnel thought that a bomb was present they cordoned off the area and called bomb disposal experts. After a while the percentage of false reports in England declined dramatically. In 1942 Americans feared attacks on their soil, so a two-day course in bomb reconnaissance was given around the country to selected personnel from railroad companies, civil defense, the police, and other appropriate fields.

The first Army bomb disposal course for enlisted men was given in April 1942. It included units on bomb recognition and reconnaissance, but did not include instruction on the deactivation of bombs. Only officers were supposed to defuze bombs, although as the war went on the restriction was sometimes not observed. Enlisted personnel learned how to excavate buried bombs, including the use of wood to prevent cave-ins. Just locating a buried bomb could be more difficult than it might seem at first thought. Usually the bomb would not burrow straight down into the earth, but would curve off. A 250-kilogram unexploded bomb, for example, dropped by a bomber flying at normal high-level altitude would penetrate the ground to an average depth of 15 feet, but it could go as deep as 36 feet. And on average the bomb would offset to one side by 4.6 feet, but it could do so by as much as 20 feet. Another part of the enlisted men’s course was on using and maintaining equipment, like winches used to hoist bombs out of the earth.

The final design for a bomb disposal insignia patch to be worn at forearm level on the right sleeve was approved by the Quartermaster Corps in August 1942. About three inches long and one and one-half an inch wide, it featured a red bomb outlined in yellow on a black background. The patch and a jeep with a front bumper edged in red and BOMB DISPOSAL or BDS stenciled below the windshield would become the two most distinguishing features of bomb disposal personnel in the field.(4)

While Reece was in the officers’ bomb disposal course American ground troops had just begun offensive operations in the Pacific, but had not yet done so in North Africa or Europe. At that early stage of the war Army bomb disposal officer positions were authorized for only sixteen bases outside the forty-eight states.(5) Reece was assigned to the Newfoundland Base Command (NBC) at St. John’s, on the eastern coast of the island. Newfoundland, a British colony until 1949, straddled the entrance to the St. Lawrence River and was therefore vital to the defense of Canada and the eastern seaboard of the United States. Pursuant to a formal agreement between the United States and Great Britain, American troops started arriving in Newfoundland in early 1941, even before the United States entered the war.(6) By October 1942 6,500 American Army land and air personnel were stationed there. They were concentrated in four places: Fort Pepperrell, in St. John’s; Fort McAndrew, in Argentia, on Placentia Bay in the southeast; the Army Air Force base at Gander, in the northeast; and Harmon Field, at Stephenville, on the western coast.(7) Complementing these facilities, which had not yet been completed, were an American naval base next to Fort McAndrew, and Canadian bases elsewhere on the island.

Detachments of the 3rd Infantry Regiment and numerous coastal artillery installations guarded the island against an invasion. The weather, often very windy with heavy snow, was worse than in Labrador, on the mainland. But when conditions allowed American air patrols, many of them conducted jointly with the Royal Canadian Air Force, looked for German U-boats preying on shipping in the surrounding waters. In March 1942 naval aircraft from Argentia carried out the first American sinking of a U-boat from the air. That did not stop the Germans, who that month fired two torpedoes in St. John’s harbor and by the end of the year sank over twenty vessels nearby.(8)

After seven days furlough in South Bend, Reece traveled in mid-September by train through Boston to North Sidney, Nova Scotia. There he boarded a ferry to Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland, from where he completed his trip to St. John’s by rail. The journey was without incident but not without danger; while plying the same route the ferry Caribou was torpedoed and sunk on October 14, with a loss of 136 lives.(9)

Because of the shortage of bomb disposal officers Reece filled a new position designated for a captain, even though he was still a first lieutenant. The War Department envisioned that his duties would be threefold: emergency bomb disposal, training selected military personnel in bomb reconnaissance and excavation, and transmitting information on enemy bombs. The last function was vitally important for bomb disposal and other ordnance personnel everywhere if the Allies were to stay abreast of new developments in Axis explosive ordnance.

Reece was assigned in October as commander of the 12th Ordnance Service Company, in addition to his other duties, because of a shortage of ordnance officers. In July 1942 the responsibilities of many Army ordnance units had increased when the job of maintaining all military vehicles was transferred from the Quartermaster Corps to the Ordnance Department. Reece’s multifaceted work at times took him away from Fort Pepperrell. He was authorized to visit ordnance facilities elsewhere on the island, and in late December he traveled to Ft. McAndrew for three weeks to train personnel in bomb disposal.

His training role took on added importance the next spring when the Eastern Defense Command at Governors Island, New York, the immediate authority over the NBC, ordered all military personnel in its jurisdiction to take a four-hour course entitled Recognizing the Effects of Air Raids. It was essentially bomb reconnaissance training, designed in part to familiarize personnel with the signs of unexploded bombs and the need to report such incidents promptly. In addition, an adequate number of personnel were to complete a more extensive twelve-hour course which would enable them to investigate reports of UXBs, and to give the four-course course on air raid effects. Only those who had bomb disposal or advanced bomb reconnaissance training at APG, however, could teach the twelve-hour course.(10) Reece was probably the only Army officer at NBC so qualified, and in May 1943 he was relieved of company command at his own request in order to devote more time to bomb reconnaissance and disposal training. He continued traveling around the island, conducting training later in the year at Gander and Harmon Field.

To show servicemen that they were not forgotten back home, the USO arranged for entertainment from the United States. One visit to Newfoundland was by Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, who after a show for the troops went to the officers’ club. During a stag film Charlie McCarthy did a running commentary, which Reece long after the war remembered as one of the funniest things he ever heard.

By the summer of 1943 fewer German U-boats were patrolling North Atlantic waters because of more effective Allied antisubmarine measures. While still playing an important role in antisubmarine patrols, Newfoundland had also become an active transit point for planes being ferried from North America to Europe.(11) Reece helped a naval bomb disposal officer deactivate a German mine which washed ashore, but otherwise his bomb disposal duties were essentially limited to teaching. An enemy attack on Newfoundland now