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56th Fighter Group

The Bomber Plot Who Escaped To Fly Fighters

Ed Appel flew to England during February, 1944. Before returning to the States, he not only had flown both heavy bomber and fighter planes during WWIl, he had been shot down twice while over enemy territory - once in a B-24 bomber and again in a P-47 fighter. Both times, Ed eluded the Germans who were hunting for him, and made his way back to the Allied ground forces.

His B-24 was shot down during his 30th (and final?) mission. He describes the flight this way. On my 30th mission I flew as Command Pilot on Lt. Frazee's crew. It was on the 15th of September, 1944. The target was at Karlshrue, Germany. Just before we reached the IP, we broke into the clear. We had just started our bomb run when we were hit.

We took a monstrous hit on the right wing which knocked out the two right engines. The two left engines were still running, but we had no turbos and the fuel cells were ruptured. The rudder cables were cut so we had no use of our rudders. The windshield had caved in from the blast, and gasoline spewed all over. I thought we were going to burn. However, we managed to get the plane turned by using the ailerons but losing altitude fast. We headed westward towards France. With the loss of two engines' power, along with other damage, we couldn't hold altitude. In that case a B-24 is like a falling rock.

First we salvoed the bombs and then had the crew throw out anything loose in order to lighten the ship. In minutes we had gone from 24,000' to 10,000' and the front lines were still 100 miles away. It was time to bail out and we did. Our B-24 crew was scattered over miles of Eastern France.

When my chute opened, it was only seconds before I hit the ground - in a ploughed field. I shucked my chute and saw two men running towards each other about half a mile away, so I didn't go that way. I hid in a vineyard for awhile. Thinking it wasn't a very good place to hide, I started to get up. I heard "Halt." Coming across the field toward me was a line of German soldiers. They could have shot me easily, but they kept yelling "Halt."

I pretended I didn't hear them and kept walking away. I walked into a clump of trees and then ran like a scared rabbit out the other side and down into a slew where I jumped into the water and hid among the slew rushes. They knew I was in there somewhere because they kept walking around the edge of the water. They would get together on one side and fire their burp guns through the weeds, Scared the hell out of me. They all left except for one man. I could see him standing there watching the place. After awhile they all came back and went through the same procedure - shooting and all. Finally they left. I stayed there until dark.

Heading West

Ed began his westward walk toward the front lines. He traveled mostly at night, hiding in any cover he could find during the day. He had an escape kit with a compass, a map, a hack saw blade and some concentrated rations. He also had his .45. On coming to the Donau River, he used the hack saw to cut a chain that moored a small boat. The boat was on a cable that had a pulley hanging on another cable that ran across the river. Ed was able to pull himself across. He staged a repeat performance at a second river. A third river turned out to be a lake which he could have walked around but ended up sitting in the middle of the lake.

Ed Appell had several close calls. In one instance, he carefully entered a barn in which he found a horse. He took the blanket from the horse, stuffed some potatoes in his pockets and started back out just as some German soldiers came by. In another instance, he was sitting in the woods waiting for nightfall when he heard two civilians coming towards him. He drew his .45 and hollered "Halt." They would not stop though I kept hollering. One finally did stop and then the other stopped advancing. One stayed there and the other took off. Ed took off running from the one, and out ran him.

After that, he would go up to a house right after dark and knock on the door. Usually the man of the house would answer. Ed would immediately state that he was an American flyer and needed food. He was fortunate. Many times they invited him in to the table. They gave him bread meat and coffee. He would leave his gun on the table, and after eating, would leave and make as many miles as possible so they wouldn't catch him.

A few days later, he decided to cross a field in the daylight when he saw a French farmer and his wife at work. Shortening his dramatic story, Ed says, "they hid me in a hayloft along with their son who was also hiding from the Germans. Though he was French, he had been conscripted for duty with the Germans on the Russian front. After being wounded in one leg, he went AWOL and was spending the rest of the war in the hayloft. So the two of us spent about two and a half months right there when the Germans were pushed out and American tanks, trucks and troops came down the road. l was out!

Later I learned about the navigator who jumped before we did but did not make it. His chute never opened. Two others of the crew hid out in a farmhouse near Alsace Lorrain for about a month, then decided to get out, joined the French underground, put on civilian clothes and tried to make it through the lines. They were caught and shot as spies.

I had talked my friend, Capt Paul Anderson into flying this last mission with me. He ended up doing 9 months in Stalag Luft #1, Barth, Germany. In the summer of 1945 in our home town of Redfield, SD his first words to me were, "You son of a gun. You take me on a trip over Germany, and you dump me out."

Back In England

While waiting for orders to the US Zone of Interior, Ed decided he would try to hook on with a fighter group. By his own statement, he guessed that he was flak happy. He contacted Dave Shilling of the 56th Fighter Group. Colonel Shilling said, "Sure, come on down." And down he went.

That was quite a kick, getting out of bombers and into fighters. Like getting out of a truck and getting on a motorcycle. After checking out in the P-47, I flew 16 dive bombing, strafing and escort missions. My last mission came on 16 April, 1945. I was busily strafing Muhldorf Airdrome, 50 miles east of Munich. I came in on the deck and was shooting into ME-109s sitting on the field. I picked up a lot of ground fire. The engine started running rough and I was losing power. I started to pull up. I shouldn't have done that over the enemy airfield. They really started getting hits.

I tried to get over one last hill before bellying in. As I started to clear, the right wing stalled and went down. I cart wheeled across the country side and thought school was out. By some miracle, the plane came to rest right side up. I crawled out and ran until I reached some trees.

He traveled at night, as he had done before, stole boats and crossed rivers, got food from a few German homes and eventually reached the front lines where he "surrendered" to US Army troops. Traveling at night toward the west and the front lines, I finally got near the front lines where there was a lot of shooting. One night I heard the shooting move to the east. The next morning I crept out to the edge of the woods and watched the roads. Finally I spotted Weapons Carriers, Tanks and troops that were definitely ours. I came out of the woods with my hands held high. Believe it or not, it was the same outfit I came out with the first time. By the time I got back to Paris, the war was over. I rode on an LST across the ocean with a whole load of ex-POWs.

Ed Appel. Evasion Artist! Herewith, a condensation of several articles, written primarily by Edward W Appel, but edited by several others, including Bill Robertie, past editor of the 2ADA Journal. Segments of Appel’s story first appeared in Vol 8, # 4 of the Journal of the Eighth Air Force Historical Society, October 1982. Additional parts of this accounting appeared in Bill Roberties summer 1995 Journal.) 389th Bomb Group Newsletter. Vol., 18 #4 Fall, 2005.

Constituted by Headquarters USAAF as 56th Pursuit Group (Interceptor) on November 20, 1940, the group was activated on January 15, 1941, at Savannah Army Air Base, Georgia. The 56th PG was assigned three fighter squadrons: the 61st, 62nd and 63rd. Staffed by a cadre drawn from other units at nearby Hunter AAB the 56th PG organized as a combat unit with a high turnover in personnel. On May 26, 1941, the group relocated to Morris AAF, Charlotte, North Carolina, where it received 3 P-39's and 10 P-36's, and trained, participated in training maneuvers, served as an air defense organization, and functioned as an operational training unit (OTU). During maneuvers in October 1941 it received 10 new P-39s and performed well in an air defense role.

On December 10, 1941, in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the 56th FG moved to Wilmington AAB, North Carolina for air defense duties, with its 61st FS based at Charleston AAB, South Carolina. It received 24 newly-commissioned 2nd lieutenant pilots in December and set up a makeshift assessment school using fiv types of obsolete fighter aircraft, including P-35s and P-43s.

In mid-January 1942 the 56th FG shifted to air defense of New York City, with its headquarters based at Bendix AAF, New Jersey, and its squadrons assigned respectively to Bridgeport, Connecticut; Bendix; and Farmingdale, New York. In April 1942 it received a full complement of new P-40F Warhawks to replace its makeshift equipment.

In May 1942 it was redesignated the 56th Fighter Group and its component squadrons were redesignated as fighter squadrons. The 56th FG received its first operational P-47B's from nearby Republic Aviation in June, in which it began training for combat. One of its most notable pilots, Major Robert S. Johnson, noted that during this "break-in" phase, in addition to numerous non-fatal training accidents 18 pilots of the 56th FG were killed and 41 aircraft destroyed in crashes, many as a result of the wholly inadequate airfield at nearby Stratford, on Long Island Sound. Group headquarters shifted to Bridgeport in July, joined by the 63rd FS in September, and the 62nd FS received its P-47s in July at Bradley Field, Connecticut.

Four fighter groups sent to England in the summer of 1942 as part of the Bolero buildup had been transferred to the Twelfth Air Force to support the invasion of North Africa, leaving the U.S. VIII Fighter Command with a single fighter group. To rebuild the fighter forces, the 56th FG was assigned for overseas duty in England. Major Hubert A. Zemke, a pre-war Air Corps pilot with experience as a combat observer with the RAF and a P-40 instructor to the Soviet Air Force, became group commander on September 16, 1942. The 56th FG was alerted for overseas deployment on Thanksgiving Day, ceased all air operations, and moved to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, on December 28.

The 56th Fighter Group sailed from New York on the RMS Queen Elizabeth on January 6, 1943. Arriving at Gourock, Scotland, on January 11, the personnel of the 56th FG moved by train to their first station at RAF Kings Cliffe in Cambridgeshire to await arrival of new P-47C's in late January. Shortly after its arrival in the UK, the 61st Fighter Squadron received a new pilot, Captain Francis S. Gabreski who had been seconded to No. 315 Squadron RAF, a fighter squadron of Polish Air Force pilots, to acquire combat experience. Bad weather prevented the group from flying its new aircraft until February 10.

The 56th was one of three P-47 groups in England, and the only one to previously train on the Thunderbolt. The 4th Fighter Group at RAF Debden had been created the preceding September by incorporating the veteran RAF Eagle squadrons into the USAAF, and the newly-arrived 78th Fighter Group at RAF Goxhill had previously flown P-38 Lightnings. Consequently the 56th was the only group of the three to have confidence in their aircraft despite problems of compressibility in dives, and performance teething problems that included poor rate of climb, poor acceleration, numerous engine seizures to oil counterbalance seal failures, ignition system problems, radio interference, and lack of spare parts.

At the end of three months of breaking in new equipment, trouble-shooting performance problems with their new airplanes, and training in the British tactics and procedures adopted by the VIII Fighter Command, the group moved to a new base at RAF Horsham St. Faith on April 6, 1943, which had been a pre-war permanent RAF station. The 56th received ground support there from the attached 33d Service Group, commanded by Lt. Col. Douglas Pollard, and the 41st Service Squadron.

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