War Archives - Page 296 of 369 - You Will Shoot Your Eye Out

The one-year anniversary of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine was marked by a torrent of commentary and events remarking on what the war has meant and speculation about what is in store. For the most part, however, there has been little reflection on how much was incorrectly assessed since late 2021, particularly by persons or institutions who were wrong. That may be one of the biggest lessons of the war that should be taken to heart in 2023 and beyond: Assessments must be better.

It is hard to measure in hindsight what the consensus was, but it is worth reviewing some of the dominant projections and views and just how wrong they were. Here are a few, for example: “Russia would not invade Ukraine.” It did. “If Russia invaded Ukraine, it would only have minor aims in the Donbas.” Its goals were far larger. “Russia would crush the Ukrainian military in a couple of weeks.” It did not.

Western anti-tank weapons such as the Lockheed Martin Javelin and Saab’s NLAW were decisive. They helped Ukraine but did not defeat Russia. Tanks were again pronounced obsolete. Yet Ukraine wants at least 300 tanks, and Poland announced major orders from the U.S. and South Korea. The value of rotary-wing aircraft also was questioned after an initial Russian helicopter assault failed. But then Poland ordered Boeing AH-64 Apaches, and the U.S. proceeded to award a Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft contract to Bell Textron.

Another projection was that sanctions and export controls would crush Russia’s economy. They have imposed costs on Russia, but it is manufacturing weapons that include Western microelectronics, and its economy is not in the gutter.

Some observers said China would not dare help Russia. But it has in minor ways, and China could provide substantially more help in 2023. Some said that Putin would not risk a broader mobilization of Russia or that he would fall. Putin has mobilized more widely, but he has not fallen. Many expected that Ukraine would not be able to mount a major counteroffensive, and yet it has. And there were worries that countries in the Middle East and North Africa would starve and Europe would freeze. Fortunately, neither has happened.

I used to work for a research director who stated that “surprises” were a Wall Street myth. Someone knew if a quarter’s shipments were going to be missed or there was a major cost overrun. A turnaround could be delivering far better results than recognized by outsiders. Bob Lutz of Chrysler discusses this in his book Guts.

“Surprises” also may be a military-geopolitical myth. The U.S. and other European intelligence communities were prescient in warning that Russia would invade. People who had observed Russian military exercises or worked with its military units could attest to its performance. Some individuals know how Russian logistics and maintenance compare with NATO practices and standards. Some know the quality of Ukraine’s officers and soldiers.

Another “surprise” is economic and defense-industrial: In the spring of 2022, analyses noted how dependent Russia’s industry had become on European and Asian machine tools. Coupled with the brain drain of Russian engineers fleeing the country, I thought its defense sector would face insurmountable problems supplying the military.

Clearly, Russia’s defense sector has struggled, but the Royal Services Institute has done excellent work documenting how Western microelectronics are still finding their way into Russian weapons. Data compiled by Matt Klein and published on his blog “The Overshoot” shows that the value of total exports at the end of 2022 were 15% below their monthly preinvasion average.

Some current and emerging narratives on the Russia-Ukraine war are worth probing. One is the provision of Western combat aircraft to Ukraine, notably Lockheed Martin F-16s. The fighters will be provided eventually, I expect, but I doubt they will be decisive in tipping the balance of the war in Ukraine’s favor.

Another narrative is that no end to the war is in sight. I don’t know how this war will end, but wars typically end in a negotiated armistice or cease-fire—the Korean War in 1953, multiple Arab-Israeli wars, Iran and Iraq in 1988 and the Desert Storm conflict of 1991 are all examples. Or they end with the total defeat and collapse of one of the combatants, such as happened in South Vietnam in 1975 and Iraq in 2003.

Surprises are part of war, as 2022 has amply demonstrated, and we are certain to see more surprises in 2023 that confound dominant narratives. Ukraine’s offensive could be highly successful in routing Russian forces. Or Ukraine could lose the armor and other kit supplied to it in a poorly executed offensive against a Russian military that might have learned from events last year.

Contributing columnist Byron Callan is a director at Capital Alpha Partne

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SSG Alan Magee: The Luckiest Man in the World by WILL DABBS

In a bygone era, sneezing was understood to be the body’s involuntary effort at expelling evil spirits. Thus the admonition of “Bless you” with each iteration.

Luck. Now that’s a difficult concept to get your head around. Even this deep into the Information Age when most modern folks worship at the exalted altar of science, you can still find people who refuse to walk under a ladder, won’t open an umbrella indoors, or say “Bless you” when someone nearby sneezes. We humans are pretty darn strange.

However, what do you expect? Random chance is indeed a fickle mistress. In the superb book Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab, two SAS operators are sitting side by side in a stolen car stopped at a roadblock on a black rainy night in the Iraqi desert during the First Gulf War. The two men are oriented shoulder-to-shoulder, and the car is stopped in a long line of vehicles rendered immobile by an Iraqi checkpoint.

In combat little things can become big things. Folks often live or die based upon the vagaries of fate.

When discovery was inevitable the two men bailed out of the car, one on the left and the other on the right. One man escaped to freedom, while the other was killed. They began in the same spot, yet each man’s ultimate fate was driven by the side of the car he exited. It’s hard not to get a little weirded out over stuff like that.

I’ve been through too much myself to put a great deal of credence in blind chance. In the dark places Jesus has always worked for me.

Personally, I attribute such stuff to Divine Providence. My faith that an all-powerful God loves and watches over me is a source of great comfort when life is going pear-shaped. God and I have gotten through some remarkable scrapes together. However, in the case of SSG Alan Magee, we find a tale that strains credulity. His story would be impossible to believe had it not been reliably verified.

The Man

The B17 Flying Fortress was one exceptionally pretty warplane. I’d likely feel differently were it dropping bombs on me.

While the B17 got most of the press, there were half again more Liberators in service. The B24 was the most-produced bomber aircraft in history.

Alan Eugene Magee was born on January 13, 1919, the youngest of six children. He grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey. When the war broke out Magee enlisted in the US Army Air Corps and trained to be a gunner on a heavy bomber. The heavies—the B17 Flying Fortress and the B24 Liberator—promised to revolutionize warfare. Through these expensive strategic assets, the Allies hoped to break the will of the German people to fight. Victory, however, would come at a terrible cost.

1LT Jacob Fredericks named this particular B17. 1LT Fredericks had been an engineer at Kellogg’s making Rice Krispies before the war. He originally picked the plane up at Kellogg Field in Battle Creek, MI, where both the cereal and the plane were made. Naming the machine after a breakfast cereal was a no-brainer.

SSG Magee’s mount, a B17F christened “Snap! Crackle Pop!,” carried a crew of ten. WW2-era fliers had a good deal more latitude to personalize their aircraft than we did when I flew for Uncle Sam. Part of that was because so many of these old planes were destroyed so quickly. Tactical aircraft fighting in WW2 frequently did not survive very long in combat. By contrast, our mounts operating without anybody actively shooting at us were expected to last essentially indefinitely.

I got to fly these things, but they were not my airplanes. The flight engineers and crew dogs owned the aircraft. We pilots just drove them from time to time.

For a time I flew an entirely different Boeing product. In my day the flight engineer and crew chief owned the airplane. It was their names that rightfully got stenciled on the sides. The pilots just borrowed them from time to time. We typically drew specific tail numbers for specific missions at the whim of the maintenance officers. When we deployed to some austere spaces we’d typically personalize our aircraft with chalk intending to wash it off when we got home.

You have to be careful what you scribble on the outside of a military aircraft. Sometimes sensitive eyes can see that stuff once you get back to the World.

One of my flight engineers returned from a desert deployment with something quite risqué scrawled on the belly of his aircraft. I never crawled underneath them, so I had no idea it was there. Apparently his pornographic expression was intended to entertain the infantry guys with whom we operated. That was all fine until we got back to home station and did a demo for the local press. The belly of his airplane replete with graphic anatomical references made the front page of the local newspaper. Steve, I bet you thought I had forgotten that. Those were some epically great times.

The Plane

The G-Model B17 Flying Fortress can be differentiated at a glance by the two-gun powered chin turret in the nose.

The B17G was the definitive late-war Fortress. The G-model included such upgrades as a motorized chin turret up front to help dissuade attacking enemy fighters from trying nose-on attacks. SSG Magee’s B17F lacked this particular system in favor of a brace of free fifties in ball mounts in the front Plexiglas.

A modified version of the Wright Cyclone radial engine that powered the B17 actually drove certain models of the M4 Sherman tank as well.

“Snap! Crackle! Pop!” was one of 12,726 of the heavy bombers that rolled out of two plants during World War 2. These planes were powered by four Wright R-1820-97 Cyclone supercharged radial engines each producing 1,200 horsepower. The Wright Cyclone was an iconic design also used in the P36 Hawk, the Douglas DC-3, the SBD Dauntless dive bomber, the Sikorsky H34 helicopter, and, in slightly modified form, certain variants of the M4 Sherman tank.

While obliterating strategic enemy targets was the stated mission of the B17 and B24 heavy bombers, attritting German fighter stocks was also an implicit goal.

The B17’s bomb load ranged from 4,500 to 8,000 pounds depending upon the required range and environmental conditions. The maximum takeoff weight was a whopping 65,500 pounds, and the plane cruised at 158 knots or 182 miles per hour. The B17’s service ceiling was 35,600 feet.

The B17 veritably bristled with AN/M2 .50-caliber machine-guns.

SSG Magee’s B17F packed eleven AN/M2 .50-caliber machineguns in a variety of handheld and powered mountings. These weapons and mounts were meticulously designed to provide optimal coverage all around the plane, particularly when flown as part of an extensive and coordinated formation with multiple aircraft. SSG Magee was a relatively short man, so he got tagged for the ball turret.

The Sperry Ball Turret

Sperry and Emerson Electric both developed examples of powered ball turrets for use in ventral mounts on combat aircraft during World War 2. The Sperry design was deemed superior and placed into mass production. While the mounts were radically different, both the B17 and the B24 used the same gun turret.

Everything about the ball turret was cramped.

The tricycle landing gear design of the B24 necessitated a retractable mount for the ball turret. Were it not for the retractable mount the turret would strike the ground when the pilot rotated the aircraft for takeoff. By contrast, the conventional landing gear layout of the B17 allowed the ball turret to remain in place through all modes of flight.

You more wore the ball turret than crewed it. It would have been an awfully lonely place in combat.

The ball turret was unimaginably cramped. As a result, this position was typically relegated to the smallest member of the crew. To enter the turret the guns were swiveled straight down, and the gunner entered through a small metal hatch in the back. Once in place, the gunner sat in the fetal position flanked on each side by the ample breaches of his twin Browning fifty-caliber machineguns. There was an electronic reflex sight mounted between the gunner’s feet. Charging these weapons and clearing stoppages were incredible chores within the cramped confines of the ball turret. Ammunition fed from the belly of the plane through a pair of articulated feed chutes.

There wasn’t room in the ball turret for a parachute.

Because of the dearth of usable space, ball turret gunners flew without parachutes. Their chutes were stowed in the crew compartment nearby. However, to bail out, the ball turret gunner had to swivel the guns straight down, unlock and open the access panel, crawl backward out of the turret, attach the parachute, and exit the aircraft. As you might imagine, in a plane that might be gyrating wildly or on fire this could be quite the impressive feat.

The Event

Like many warplanes of its era, “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” didn’t last long in combat.

On January 3, 1943, SSG Magee strapped into “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” for his seventh combat mission while assigned to the 350^th Bomb Squadron of the 303d Bomb Group. Their objective this fateful day was a daylight run over Saint-Nazaire, France. The submarines that sortied out of Saint-Nazaire caused no end of frustration to trans-Atlantic convoys. As a result, Allied planners invested tremendous effort in trying to take out the sub pens that housed and serviced them.

Flak is an abbreviation of the German word Flugabwehrkanone which means “Air Defense Cannon.”

Once near the target, SSG Magee’s aircraft encountered murderously thick flak. A nearby shell burst from a high-velocity 88mm flak gun disabled his ball turret and liberally ventilated both the fuselage of the airplane as well as SSG Magee. SSG Magee clambered out of the turret with difficulty only to find that his parachute had been shredded by the flak hit. As he tried to get his head around that revelation a second shell tore off part of the right-wing. Now uncontrollable, “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” entered a vicious spin.

SSG Magee’s B17 disintegrated in mid-air.

SSG Magee’s plane was at cruising altitude, and his quick egress from the ball turret left him without access to the plane’s oxygen supply. He somehow made it to the radio compartment before losing consciousness due to hypoxia. Soon thereafter his B17 disintegrated.

That SSG Alan Magee survived being thrown clear of his disabled B17 at more than 20,000 feet without a parachute was a legitimate miracle.

SSG Magee was miraculously thrown free of the crippled airplane and fell some four miles toward the French ground below. He ultimately ended up crashing through the glass roof of the Saint-Nazaire train station. Passersby found him unconscious but alive on the floor of the terminal.

Both SSG Magee and his aircraft were well and truly mangled.

SSG Magee had 28 different shrapnel wounds from the original flak attack. In addition, he suffered multiple broken bones, severe facial trauma, and damage to both his lungs and kidneys. His right arm was also nearly severed from tearing through the glass of the train station. However, he was inexplicably still alive.

The Rest of the Story

I’ve done this before. Trust me, you come screaming out of the sky at an impressive clip. I can’t imagine surviving such an event without a parachute.

Terminal velocity for a limp human is about 120 miles per hour. Nothing about SSG Magee’s ordeal should have been survivable. However, he was taken prisoner by the Germans and eventually recovered after some decent medical care. He spent more than two years in a German POW camp before being liberated in May of 1945. Once he was repatriated he was awarded the Air Medal along with a well-deserved Purple Heart.

SSG Alan Magee went on to enjoy a long full life. Here he is seen at a memorial for his downed B17 in Europe.

After the war, Alan Magee earned his pilot’s license and worked in the airline industry. He retired in 1979 and moved to New Mexico. SSG Magee died in January of 2003 of a stroke and kidney failure at the ripe age of 84, arguably the luckiest man alive.

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