His Best Shot : Tom Hernandez Took a Lot of Flak as Man Behind ‘Liberator’s’ Gun

It was a long, hard day’s work, sitting there, watching and waiting. It was a tense and apprehensive time, sometimes even frightening.

The plexiglass cover of the turret provided almost no protection, the metal of the fuselage not much more, and the flak jacket was too bulky and heavy to wear and still get the job done. So Tom Hernandez sat on it.

No, just about the only safeguards a man had if he was a tail gunner on a bomber in World War II were his marksmanship and the many manifestations of Providence, usually referred to as luck--or Luck.

Hernandez, of Clairemont, spent his combat time in The War in the tail gunner’s perilous slot on a B-24 Liberator, and so he knows firsthand the difficulties and the terrors and the occasional exhilarations of that chancy assignment.

And, although machine-gunners did not enjoy the glory of pilots, especially not that of fighter pilots, they too had their moments of exaltation.

Staff Sgt. Tom Hernandez, for instance, performed his tasks so well that he twice won the Distinguished Flying Cross, and he won the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters.

He shot down at least two Messerschmitt 109’s, Germany’s top fighter plane, and he helped land a crippled bomber. He participated in the first American raid on Berlin, and he was among the first to report that Germany was using jet fighters. But mainly, as far as he is concerned, he survived. He completed 35 missions and returned home unscathed physically and unscarred mentally.

To Hernandez, 64, a retired San Diego city employee, those singular airborne moments of more than four decades past are almost as vivid and endless today as when he lived them. Hear him tell of his first mission:

“There I was, 18 years old, flying over there for the first time. They brief you on what to expect, and I was waiting to give it a try. I wasn’t really scared--at that time. I was apprehensive, wanting to see what it’s all about. As it turned out, it was one of our toughest missions. . . .”

The date was Feb. 24, 1944. Hernandez belonged to the 409th Squadron of the 93rd Bombardment Group, a unit of Gen. James H. Doolittle’s 8th Air Force. Hernandez’s B-24 took off from its English air base at Hardwick, part of a group of 235 Liberators assigned to bomb the aircraft factory at Gotha, in the southwestern sector of eastern Germany. The odds then against completing 15 missions were 30-1, Hernandez said.

“The two worst formations you could fly were lead or tail because they got hit first (by enemy aircraft). You wanted to stay in formation. It was safer and gave you more firepower. We were in the lead group. We caught hell. I really don’t know why we didn’t get shot down.

“At that time, it was estimated that the Luftwaffe had 7,000 front-line fighter planes. On D-Day, they had around 50. We took a lot of hits, but no one got hurt. We got three kills, and I got one of them.

“It flabbergasted you. All of a sudden it’s wartime. Real war. The flak is bad enough. You had to fly through some heavy stuff. You could hear the shrapnel coming through the plane. But when you see a fighter flying toward you, when you see little red spots (tracer bullets), you’d better start firing back. . . .”

According to Martin Bowman in his book “B-24 Liberator 1939-45,” Hernandez and the other airmen were under persistent attack from 150 German fighters “all the way to the target.” At first, the American bombers were aided by U.S. pilots in P-47 fighters, later by P-38s and P-51s. But losses were heavy.

“In one six-minute period,” Bowman wrote, “five Liberators went down.”

Dropping their bombs from 12,200 feet, the Liberators destroyed the Gotha plant. The 8th Air Force estimated that production would be lost for six weeks to seven weeks.

Along the way, Hernandez shot down his first Messerschmitt.

“We were attacked just before the target,” he said. “I was so excited, you just have to react to do what you’re trained to do. Keep your eyes open. You fire and fire and hope you get one. A lot of it is a matter of luck.

“You’re firing like hell, hoping you get him and he doesn’t get you. Sometimes, if they see you firing they’ll stay off. Most came in at 12 o’clock high, just like the movie. . . . This one bunch came in . . . trying to break up the formation.

“I started shooting at 75-100 yards, and he started smoking. He rolled over on his back, and I figured I’d hit him. Our waist gunner saw him go down in smoke, and this was also confirmed by a crewman in our wing plane.”

And did he feel like he had killed a man or merely shot down a mechanical contrivance that was attempting to destroy him?

“I just shot down a plane. You really don’t think about it.”

Was he happy?

“In a way I was, afterward. It’s what you’re up there for. You don’t bask in your glory. You don’t know if you’re going to get back.”

Hernandez had “a few more shots” on the way back to Hardwick, and the nose gunner destroyed one fighter. Upon landing, congratulations were in order.

“The trip was unbelievable. After a mission, it’s a pretty somber group. Such a long day, from dawn to dusk, in the aircraft 7-10 hours. Tension. Every movement is tiring. Probably the pilots suffered most. A lot of them cracked up mentally.

“I had seen a lot of films. On the first mission, everything happened just like in the movies, and it was like that from then on. . . . (When you return) you look around to see who got back and who didn’t. We took quite a few hits, flak and bullets.”

The tail gunner in a B-24 sat between twin rudders at the end of the fuselage. He manned twin .50-caliber machine guns, air-cooled in a hydraulically controlled turret. He operated the turret by pressing one button, fired the guns by pressing another. The machine guns were smokeless, “but you could smell them a little.” Plus: “There was a lot of noise.”

A gunner had only three to five seconds to decide whether to fire, once an enemy aircraft was lined up, Hernandez said, and only two or three seconds of firing time during a pass by a fighter.

“It’s all very, very quick,” he said. “As soon as you see those little blinkers (tracers fired at you), you know they’re getting in range.”

Not that any facet of a bombing raid was pleasant, but life in the tail was certainly difficult and dangerous.

“In a way, you felt trapped. You’re isolated. You only had your intercom. Once after some action I couldn’t get anyone. I panicked. It scared the hell out of me. I got out and saw a waist gunner. Somehow, it (the intercom) just wasn’t working.

“You’re all alone. It’s that you don’t know what’s happening. It’s frightening.”

On the other hand, he preferred being tail gunner to operating the nose gun, an assignment he found “scary.” On one mission or another, he manned the nose gun, the top turret and a waist gun on this craft that carried a crew of 10 men.

One of the most important raids he participated in was the first U.S. attack on Berlin. It occurred on March 6, 1944, and was Hernandez’s fifth mission. Weather was good. Spirits were high.

“All the boys figured Hitler was close by. Everyone felt great. It was what we’d been waiting for.”

Hernandez said he could see “everything” happening, “like the little red lights shooting at you.”

“There were many air battles. It was like a big movie house. All the way in and out you could see.”

He shot down his second ME-109 on that raid.

“We had dropped our bombs and were on the way when they hit us again. The German plane came right at me from the tail. I gave him a couple of bursts from a thousand yards or less. I must have hit him just right. His left wing came apart. He flipped over and headed down.”

Even with two prestigious enemy fighter planes destroyed on only five missions, Hernandez had seen enough not to feel like the baseball rookie who hits a home run his first time at bat in the majors and feels, “I always knew I could hit in this league.”

“There was not an opportunity to fire on every mission. Sometimes you see ‘em (enemy fighters) all over, but they don’t attack your part of the formation. You could pretty well tell from your position in the formation if you would be attacked. And we had our fighters, too.”

Was there a grand feeling of relief when his part of the formation was not attacked?

“Yes.”

Still, when his group was targeted, it was often difficult to know who shot down what.

“Sometimes, you have 30 guns shooting at one fighter. It’s hard to tell.” At least once he felt he had destroyed a third German fighter, but no one else could confirm it, and so he did not receive credit. Nevertheless, he was the only gunner in his crew to destroy two fighters. The nose gunner and a waist gunner knocked down one each.

Those numbers help illustrate the difficulty of aerial gunnery. So do these: According to San Diegan Ray Wagner in his book “American Combat Planes,” B-24s in the European Theater flew 226,775 sorties, losing 3,626 of their number while destroying 2,617 enemy aircraft. Hernandez’ 93rd Bombardment Group in 9,321 sorties lost 140 Liberators while destroying only 93 enemy planes, with 41 probable kills and 44 damaged, according to “The B-24 Liberator” by Allan G. Blue.

Some gunners shot down five or six enemy planes, Hernandez said, “But I don’t think there were too many of them. It was a matter of luck in most circumstances. You’re just trying to do your best and stay alive. Gunners and fighter pilots had to be good or lucky to do any damage.”

He said he did not think lack of recognition for aerial gunners was relevant. Such heroes as Air Force fighter aces Richard Bong, Hubert Zemke and Francis Gabreski, along with Audie Murphy of the infantry, were “extraordinary” and deserved all recognition they received, Hernandez said.

Besides, this B-24 crew, like other crews and units throughout the war theaters, was too busy fighting its own battles to consider jealousies of others. One such busy fight occurred on return from its 13th mission.

In relentless fighter attacks, pilot Howard Kliener had been killed, one engine and one landing gear shot out and another engine rendered almost useless. Co-pilot John Fitzpatrick was at the controls.

They approached the French coast at between 8,000 feet and 10,000 feet. Fitzpatrick told the crew to prepare to bail out.

“I asked the navigator where we were,” Hernandez said. “He didn’t know if we were over the English Channel or land. If we parachuted into the channel we’d freeze to death in 10 minutes. I talked to the pilot. He didn’t know if we had enough fuel (to reach England), but he agreed to try. We dropped down into the clouds. . . .”

Hernandez, 5 feet 6 inches tall, was instrumental in removing the dead pilot from his seat, then took the pilot’s place and helped steady the crippled aircraft as they crossed the channel and tried for a mile-square emergency landing site, Hanso Air Force Base, near Dover. Hernandez had been permitted to help fly in the past and was familiar with the task.

“We hit and skidded God-knows-how-long. We almost went into a ditch.”

Among his souvenirs is a photo of that Liberator, which was unnamed, its tail tilted high, about to slide into the ditch. Another is the Distinguished Flying Cross he was awarded for helping to remove the pilot’s body and bring the others to safety.

Before long, he had to parachute after all. It happened four missions later, their 17th, after a raid on May 19, 1944, over Brunswick, near Berlin. They were in a different B-24, of course, one named Jungle Princess, inherited from another unit. Again, the aircraft was extensively damaged. And a 20mm cannon shell from a German fighter had torn through the fuselage behind the nose turret, killing the bombardier and wounding the navigator.

“We had to return over the North Sea,” Hernandez said. “The weather was bad and we were shot up again. Our base was 40 miles from the North Sea and the eastern coast of England.”

Fitzpatrick was the pilot now. When he determined they were over England, he turned the Liberator back toward the North Sea, and everyone bailed out from 1,800 feet, a first for all.

“There was no real panic. I got out the back hatch. It was a dark, cold rainy day. You could barely see the ground. I landed on my feet in a plowed field and fell over a couple of times. There was a farm house nearby, and they were able to call the air base.” A Jeep was sent to retrieve the crewmen.

“It’s easier to bail out than to crash-land a plane. Once a B-24 is out of gas, it heads down. Those things don’t glide, because of the narrow wing. I saw one (running out of fuel) nose in from 50 feet when it was in the landing pattern, 2,000 feet from the runway. It wiped ‘em out. So you took your chances and hoped you made the right decision.”

Three days later, in the third and last Liberator these crewmen would need, they returned to action--a couple of young men named John, a James and a Jim, Dave and Delmar and Bill, and two guys named Joe, plus the youngest, usually called Tommy.

And about the time they had completed 20 missions, thought they had survived the war and would soon be going home, except for the first pilot and the original bombardier, the Army extended them indefinitely. So they participated in the D-Day hammerings of the German gun emplacements on the Normandy coast, making two bombing runs at 12,000 feet, low for a Liberator. (The Army counted those two runs as one--or miscounted--and that is why Hernandez flew 35 missions but was credited with 34.)

A little later, heading for Hamburg on June 18, Hernandez became one of the first to report the presence of German jets.

“They had briefed us on what they looked like,” he said. “I saw a plane going across the sky with smoke coming out behind, and it was going faster than anyone.”

When he was extended he was disappointed.

“But things were going our way. Our groups were getting bigger and theirs were smaller. But one of the most dangerous missions was our last, over St. Lo.”

This was on July 25, carpet-bombing from 14,000 to 15,000 feet in an attack that permitted U.S. ground units to break through across France.

“We were apprehensive at the end, because we wanted to get it over with. I took every precaution at the end.”

And that night they celebrated. Everyone received a Distinguished Flying Cross--the second for Hernandez. As with most crews, this one had enjoyed camaraderie: “Sometimes we would go to the officers’ compound and they’d let us drink some of their booze.”

Before the war, Hernandez lived for many years in that sector of Solana Beach known as Eden Gardens, where his aunt, Ramona Rincon, established the Blue Bird Cafe.

At San Dieguito High School, he won varsity letters in football, basketball, softball, track and golf, and is especially proud of playing on the undefeated football team of 1940 and unbeaten golf team of 1941. The golfers played the county’s major schools.

“We all caddied at Rancho Santa Fe,” Hernandez said. “That’s where we learned to play. We all shot in the 70s. We were good for our time.”

On Easter Sunday of 1946, he married his longtime sweetheart, the former Catalina Brionez. They had four sons and a daughter. For 20 years he was a plumber in the building industry. For the next 20 he worked in the city’s Buildings Division, retiring in November 1987 as plumbing supervisor.

He still plays golf. And he and Catalina take an occasional long vacation. Next summer they plan to visit England, including the air base he flew those 34 missions from. Or 35. Then they want to see France and Germany--from the ground.

Meanwhile, from Wednesday through Sunday, Hernandez will attend a meeting of the International Liberator Club at the Holiday Inn at the Wharf. The gathering marks the 50th anniversary of the flight of the first Liberator, built in San Diego by Consolidated Aircraft Corp. and flown at San Diego on Dec. 29, 1939. It was the first of 18,481.

“I don’t know if any of the crew will be there,” Hernandez said.

But he will be looking for them--a couple of men named John, a James and a Jim, Dave and Delmar and Bill, and two guys named Joe. They, too, were good for their time.