Cambridgeshire – Cambridge Military History

Thru Helen Hiwater: The Story of a 303rd B-17 from RAF Molesworth

There were many bombers lost from the 303^rd Bomb Group (Heavy) stationed at RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire during the Second World War. Today, I’d like to focus on a particular Flying Fortress, a B-17G, tail number 42-39758 built by Lockheed/Vega on license from Boeing and delivered to the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943. Named Thru Helen Hiwater, she was lost on 22 April 1944 when the aircraft was hit by flak over Germany. Four of the crew were killed and six captured when she crashed. She was flying a mission to bomb the railyards at Hamm, in the Ruhr Valley, Germany.

Before arriving in England, Thru Helen Hiwater became famous, or maybe infamous, for buzzing Yankee Stadium in New York during the opening game of the 1943 Baseball World Series. That evening in October, the New York Yankees were playing the St. Louis Cardinals at the end of the season as four B-17s were flying over New York enroute from a training exercise in Florida to Maine. The bombers would land in Maine to refuel before crossing the Atlantic to England. The first game of the World Series was in the 8^th inning with the Yankees leading the Cardinals 4 to 2 as the lead plane Thru Helen Hiwater, flown by 2LT Jack W. Watson, approached. Watson radioed the other aircraft, “Let’s go down and take a look” as the four bombers flew over up the Hudson River, navigating past Manhattan.

With Lieutenant Watson leading the way, the four bombers buzzed the field and stopped the game play while the excited crowd leapt to their feet thinking it was a scheduled demonstration. The other three bombers climbed back to altitude, but Lieutenant Watson in Thru Helen Hiwater came back for a second pass, just clearing the upper deck’s pennants by 25 feet, a moment immortalized in a photograph. While the crowd loved it, city officials, including Mayor Fiorello La Guardia were furious and let the Army Air Corps know. By the time the four aircraft landed in Maine, the pilots were confined to their quarters pending a court marital. Despite the anger, the bombers and crews were desperately needed in England, so each pilot was fined $75 and given a letter of reprimand and sent on their way. The Thru Helen Hiwater with Jack Watson at the controls, was assigned to the 303^rd Bomb Group’s 358^th Bomb Squadron at RAF Molesworth. He was one of the fortunate pilots to complete 35 missions in June 1944 and returned to the U.S and finished the war as a Captain. Of note, after Watson’s mission on 11 January 1944, when he landed a heavily damaged B-17 after his crew had all bailed out, Mayor La Guardia sent a telegram from New York. He had read an interview with Watson in the newspapers concerning the flyover of the World Series, and during the interview Watson lamented from England, “I wonder if Mayor La Guardia will ever forgive me…” La Guardia’s telegram let Watson know all was well: “Delighted to get your message. All is forgiven. Congratulations. I hope you never run out of altitude. Happy landings. Will be seeing you soon.”

Through the end of 1943 and into Spring of 1944, Thru Helen Hiwater flew multiple missions over France, the low countries, and Germany, delivering her bombs and returning safely to RAF Molesworth after each mission.

On 22 April 1944, Thru Helen Hiwater with 2LT Roy Larson at the controls, took off on the 303^rd Bomb Group’s 139^th combat mission to Hamm, Germany, joining two flights of heavy bombers escorted by P-51 Mustangs and P-47 Thunderbolts of the 9^th Air Force. Roy Larson was born in Minnesota but grew up in Hesengshals, Pennsylvania. He was 26 years old in April 1944.

Hamm is a city in the northeast of the industrial Ruhr valley, which was a key rail logistics point during the war. It was bombed 55 times during the war, leaving over half of the city destroyed and the railways devastated. On the evening of 22 April, once again, 8^th Air Force heavies were targeting the marshalling yards and rail infrastructure at Hamm, trying to slow the German war machine. This was a very risky mission as the 303^rd was flying its first afternoon mission – leaving England in the afternoon and returning after dark to buy some protection for the bombers.

Thru Helen Hiwater was in the number five position of the lead group, passing over Werl Germany at 1915 hours flying at 23,500 feet. The formation was receiving ground anti-aircraft fire when Thru Helen Hiwater took an unlucky hit from a German anti-aircraft round. She was five minutes from the target, beginning the bomb run. The flak struck the #1 engine on the left wing, the outmost of the two, and engine and fuel tanks erupted in flames. Immediately a massive fire raced across the wing. Lieutenant Larson sounded the alarm bell throughout the aircraft and told the crew over the internal radio, his last words to his men, “Pilot to crew, bail out!”. According to debriefs after the war, Larson stayed at the controls of Thru Helen Hiwater as long as possible, letting the men get.

The B-17 began to spiral out of control. The waist gunners, Sergeants Schinker and Thayer helped Sergeant Brim out of the Ball turret and the three NCOs jumped. As the spinning increased, Staff Sergeant Everett Culp, the radioman, was thrown through the length of the aircraft and was pinned by the rear tail wheel, trapped in torn controlling cables as the aircraft’s spin increased. Then, Thru Helen Hiwater broke in two – the tail section torn from the forward part of the aircraft due to the enormous forces of the spin. Sergeant Culp was able to bail out of the falling tail section, joined by Sergeant Herman Hodge, the tail gunner. Both men landed on the edge of a rocky gulch, but Sergeant Hodge fractured his skull as he was dragged over the rocks by his partially inflated parachute. Captured by the Germans, Sergeant Hodge died the next day of his injuries.

In the front half of the plane, the copilot Lieutenant Duncan later recalled Lieutenant Larson telling him to get out quick as he and Lieutenant Levy rushed to bail out. They were able to get out of the B-17 before the plane broke in two, and both saw the front half of Thru Helen Hiwater explode after the two men jumped. Lieutenant Larson, still at the controls, along with 2LT Milton Feinman, the bombardier and Staff Sergeant Thomas Campbell, the flight engineer died when the front portion of Thru Helen Hiwater exploded.

The captured enlisted men spent the rest of the war in the Luftwaffe’s Stalag XVII-B in Austria. The officers went to Stalag VII-A in Bavaria, the largest POW camp of the war. It was only after the war, when the men could all compare their notes that the story of the last moments of Thru Helen Hiwater were pieced together.

On her last mission, the crew of Thru Helen Hiwater were:

2LT Roy A. Larson, pilot, killed in action, it was his 15^th mission, he had flow 14 missions with his copilot 2LT Ronald Duncan. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

2LT Ronald H. Duncan, copilot, bailed out and became a POW, survived the war.

2LT Milton Feinman, bombardier, killed in action as Thru Helen Hiwater exploded 22 April 1944. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

2LT Herbert E. Levy, Jr., navigator, bailed out and became a POW, survived the war.

S/Sgt Thomas J. Campbell, engineer, killed in action as Thru Helen Hiwater exploded 22 April 1944. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

S/Sgt Everett E. Culp, radioman, bailed out became a POW, survived the war.

Sgt Arthur W. Schinker, left-wing gunner, bailed out became a POW, flew all 15 missions with 2LT Larson, survived the war.

Sgt Lee Ray Brim, ball turret gunner, bailed out and became a POW on 22 April 1944, survived the war.

Sgt Duane P. Thayer, right wing gunner, bailed out and became a POW on 22 April 1944, survived the war.

Sgt Herman L. Hodge, tail gunner, bailed out and was captured. He died of his wounds on 23 April 1944 and is buried in the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, the Netherlands. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

I decided to write this post because of the picture at the beginning, the crew of Thru Helen Hiwater loading onto a truck at the conclusion of their penultimate mission on 20 April 1944. The men look so happy, glad to be back at Molesworth, and ready to go to the debriefing tent to meet with the S-2 officers. Sadly, their next mission would lead to four of their deaths and the remaining six spending the remainder of the war in German POW camps. I decided to find the “frying pan”, the hardstand area where the photo on 20 April 1944 was taken, and it was easy to pin down based on old maps of RAF Molesworth and a marker placed by the 501st Combat Support Wing’s historian. here is the same spot where Thru Helen Hiwater had taxied to, a photo taken 82 years later:

Halloween, a pagan holiday in Cambridgeshire

Halloween (or Hallowe’en, a shortening of Hallowed Evening, or the night before All Hallows’ Day) is now celebrated across Cambridgeshire to some extent – much depends on the village or the town’s desire to embrace a commercialized, but fun for the children, evening. In my local village, a anecdotal guess would be one out of four homes are open for trick-or-treaters – the wonderfully dressed children heading around in the dark looking for candy. In many ways Halloween is an English invention, born out of our pagan past in the Romanticism of the 19^th Century, adopted and commercialized by the United States in the 20^th Century, and now celebrated in England. This is an echo of an echo, for what we now see across the shires reflects more of America’s influence than our own English past. Where did Halloween come from?

Samhain was a Gaelic festival celebrating the end of the harvest and the beginning of the “darker” half of the year, traditionally celebrated across Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and Brittany. A Celtic day began at sundown and Samhain would begin at sunset on 31 October and continue into the first of November. This date is midway between the winter solstice and the autumnal equinox, and the importance of it to the Celts can be seen in many Neolithic monuments oriented so that the rising sun on Samhain would shine on an opening or portal to a burial mound during the festival.

Many of our Halloween customs have come down from this event – it was a Celtic leminal time, where spirits and faeries from other worlds could cross over into our own, when bonfires were lit , and food and drink where left outside to satiate the spirits so that people and livestock would be left alone and survive the oncoming winter. There are echoes of our own customs here, but the Samhain festival would be Christianized in the Middle Ages and developed across the British Isles.

Soulcakes, the traditional treat given to children in England on Halloween, these are a descendent of Samhain gifts left outdoors for spirits. Notice the traditional Christian iconography of the cross. From Samantha, Haarlem, the Netherlands, in Wikimedia commons.

The Catholic Church celebrated All Saints Day on 1 November, followed by All Souls Day on 2 November. These two festivals of the church were blended into All Hallows’ Tide, the three day feast celebrating the dead saints, martyrs, and faithful which began on 1 November. It wasn’t a wild leap for the church to build on the Celtic customs observed across northern France and the British Isles, incorporating Samhain into a more Christianized feast. Interestingly, it was the descendants of Celts, the Scottish and Irish immigrants to the United States in the 19^th Century that brought the celebration of Halloween to the New World – with many of its more pagan aspects expanded and grew. In England, “souling” or “guising”, dressing up and seeking out sweet cakes from the wealthy in exchange for praying for the dead, had existed from the Middle Ages.

Souling_on_Halloween — A postcard from 1882 showing dressed up or “souling” children seeking sweetcakes from wealthy townsmen in an English village. Titled “Souling on Halloween” by Mary Mapes Dodge, originally published in: “St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks”, Scribner & Company, December 1882. In the public domain.

During the Romanticism of the 19^th Century, Halloween was expanded and discussed across England, as fascination with Celtic mythology and druidism increased and a general rejection of Catholic feasts permeated British life. It was in the 20^th Century that jack-o’-lanterns appeared, an effort to scare off evil spirits roaming through the night, building on carved gourds and vegetables seen in Ireland and Scotland.

In recent decades, the commercialization of this ancient holiday has spread across Cambridgeshire, brought back to England from a more enveloping American culture. The history of Halloween; however, reaches back into a pagan, pre-Christian Britain, when fear of spirits, faeries, and the dark, hungry times of winter were ubiquitous in our daily lives.

Domesday Book and Cambridgeshire

One shouldn’t be surprised to find that most of the towns and villages of Cambridgeshire were written about in Domesday Book (middle English for “doomsday book”, the original title was the Liber de Wintonia, Latin for “Book from Winchester”), the great survey of England and Wales commissioned by William I in 1086. An effort to record the wealth and value of the Kingdom, Domesday Book was a colloquial term used later since doomsday would come before one could escape the taxes of the King. Amazingly, it was the most comprehensive and exhaustive survey of England until 1873. Although the original manuscript amazingly still survives in the National Archives at Kew, London, one can access the entire work via the Open Domesday project.

Open Domesday, http://domesdaymap.co.uk, allows you to search for your local town or village and see how it was mentioned in Domesday Book. We all owe a special thanks to Anna Powell-Smith who built the Open Domesday site using data created by J.J.N. Palmer and his team at the University of Hull. It is wonderful to discover, as I did, that in 1086 my village had 31 households (26 villagers, 4 small holders and one priest) was worth £10 to the Abbey of St. Benedict in Ramsey, who was the feudal lord, and that it consisted of 60 acres of meadow, the lord’s lands and a church.

Domesday Book is a fascinating snapshot of England and Wales as it was shortly after the Norman Conquest. Organized not geographically, as a modern survey would undoubtedly be, but by feudal fiefdoms, the book contains 13,418 entries and records a remarkable level of detail.

The entry from Domesday Book for the town of Cambridge is below: