The Kingston Daily Freeman
Kingston, New York
Thursday evening, February 4, 1943
Page 16

Bombardier Tells of Heroic Landing Feat of His Pilot
by Wes Gallagher

Allied Headquarters in Northern Africa, Feb. 3 (Delayed) (AP) -- With two machine-gun bullets in his chest, five other men in his crew wounded and Nazi fighters slashing at his crippled ship, a 22-year-old pilot crash-landed his flying fortress on a mountain side in a great flying feat, his bombardier said today.

The pilot was Capt. Fred W. Dallas, 22, Houston, Tex. The bombardier who told the story was First Lieut. Kermit K. Beahan, 24, also of Houston and a boyhood friend of Dallas'.

It was the fourth crash landing for Beahan, who twice made forced landings in England and twice now in North Africa as a result of enemy actions, both of the latter with Dallas as pilot.

The tale of how the wounded pilot, with blood pouring from his chest, stayed at the controls, and how Waist Gunner Elmer N. Berger, 21, of Temple, Okla., fought on after having a machine-gun bullet tear a hold in his thigh as big as a man's fist, is one of many being written by American airmen battling daily for supremacy in the skies over Tunisia.

"On Jan. 29 we were over Bizerte at well over 20,000 feet," Beahan said. "The clouds were bad but there was a hole over the target and it looked like a piece of cake.

"I released the bombs and tried to see where they burst, when there was a direct hit on the nose of the plane from flak.

"It stunned and scared me. I could hear flak hitting other parts of the plane.

"Our number three engine was knocked out and our electrical system was wrecked so we could not close the bomb doors."

With the bomb doors open, the plane lost speed and the rest of the formation passed overhead.

"It was a bad feeling being all alone," he grinned. "We knew the fighters would be jumping us - and they did."

Meanwhile, the ball turret gunner had been wounded by flak.

Five Me-109's swarmed on the crippled ship, which went into a steep dive to get close to the ground and make it more difficult for the fighters to attack. But they darted in from all sides and soon the two waist gunners were wounded. The radioman and tail gunners were hit but kept on fighting.

"I saw tracers coming by my nose and watched an Me-109 flash past from underneath but the next time he tried it I was ready and gave him 40 rounds," Beahan said. "There was a burst of white smoke followed by black smoke and he went down out of sight."

Later a British captain on the ground reported he saw two Me-109's which attacked the fortress crash in flames while a third disappeared behind a hill, trailing smoke.

By this time the fortress was down 1,500 feet and losing altitude so fast it was impossible for the crew to jump.

"We were over bad terrain and the pilot called us to come up out of the nose of the ship," Beahan said. "I still had a parachute on, and, trying to squeeze through the narrow walk over the bomb bay, almost fell out through the doors."

With no open ground in sight, Dallas, swaying with weakness in the pilot's seat, bounced the bomber off the top of two small hills to slow it up and then crash-landed it on the side of a mountain.

"I rushed out to help Dallas, but he had managed to squeeze out of the shattered ship," the bombardier said. "Despite his wounds he was helping the co-pilot out of the cockpit, which was on fire. The co-pilot's chute had become entangled on the seat."

Beahan with the rest of the unwounded crew members then dragged the other injured from the shipinto a gully where hostile planes could not strafe them.

They were found by a British patrol, which had seen the plane crash, and were brought to a hospital.

Kermit Beahan (1918)