DESCENT INTO HELL
by Eric Hammel

Copyright © 1998 by Eric Hammel


Captain TOM MALONEY, USAAF
27th Fighter Squadron, 1st Fighter Group
Near Aix-en-Provence, France—August 19–September 1, 1944

Thomas Edward Maloney was born in Cushing, Oklahoma, on March 21, 1923. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps shortly after graduating from high school and was inducted on June 13, 1941. He qualified for flight instruction in early 1942 and began training in September of that year. Cadet Maloney completed Primary flight training at Thunderbird Field, Arizona, in March 1943; Basic at Pecos, Texas, in May 1943; and Advanced at Williams Field, Arizona. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and pinned on his wings as a member of Class 43-G at Williams Field on July 2, 1943.

Second Lieutenant Maloney was selected for fighters, and was trained in P-38s at Muroc Army Air Base and Lomita Air Force Station, California, then departed the United States in September 1943, bound for North Africa. He was assigned as a replacement pilot to the veteran 1st Fighter Group’s 27th Fighter Squadron, then a part of the Twelfth Air Force. Based at Mateur, Tunisia, the 1st Fighter Group had served chiefly as escort for medium bombers flying against tactical targets in Italy. However, on December 9, the 1st Fighter Group was transferred to the new Fifteenth Air Force and assigned to long-range escort duties for B-24s and B-17s attacking strategic targets throughout southern Europe.

Tom Maloney drew first blood on March 28, 1944, when he shot down a Bf-109 (and probably shot down a second) over Italy. On April 23, he shot down two Me-110s (and damaged a Bf-109) while escorting heavy bombers over Hungary and Austria. Next, on May 28, 1944, he shot down a Do-217 medium bomber over Buzim, Yugoslavia, and on May 31, 1944, he achieved ace status when he shot down a Bf-109 while escorting the heavy bombers over Ploesti, Romania. First Lieutenant Maloney’s sixth victory credit was for an FW-190 he downed over Oberstdorf, Germany, on July 18; and he rounded out his score with a pair of Bf-109s he shot down near St. Tropez, France, on August 15, 1944. By doing so, he became the 27th Fighter Squadron’s highest-scoring ace of the war, a distinction that one of his squadronmates would subsequently match but none would exceed.
During the Allied invasion of southern France, which commenced on August 15, 1944, two P-38 groups--the 1st and the 14th--were sent on detached service from Foggia, Italy, to Corsica in order to support the landings. The main reason for the P-38 being there was to fly cover over the beachhead. It was felt they were easily recognizabe to Allied troops as friendly planes, which meant that trigger-happy American, British, and French gunners on the ground wouldn’t be shooting at us, as they had done in earlier landing operations.

I would like to comment briefly on the plane we flew, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter. Many aviation writers tend to downplay the effectiveness of the P-38 because of the various troubles and lack of success endured by the three Eighth Air Force fighter groups flying the P-38 out of England. I was fortunate to be given some insight into their problem when I was sent to England along with five squadronmates to bring back three-month-old P-38s from a group that was getting the latest model. As it was, this group’s old P-38s were newer models than what we had! I was reunited there with many of my Class 43-G classmates who had been assigned to this group before it was shipped overseas. These pilots were scared to death. They had many engine failures, suffered from a lack of leadership, and suffered especially from a lack of combat experience. The entire group had started combat with no experience, and the pilots gained it only as they went. By contrast, I was fortunate to be sent to one of the very first units to fly the P-38 in combat, so when we went on missions, the 27th Fighter Squadron was composed of experienced pilots with fifty or more missions, as well as new pilots with few to no missions.

I have never encountered a pilot who flew the P-38 in combat who didn’t love the plane, and that included many who also flew the P-51. In fairness, I must say that the P-38’s engines were very touchy and needed to be handled with kid gloves. Most writers overlook the fact that the P-51 was originally the A-36 ground-support fighter, and that the A-36 used the same Allison engine the P-38 used. The A-36 was certainly no great shakes as a fighter. I’ve always wondered what the P-38 could have been with two Merlin engines, the same engines the P-51 finally received.

The flying characteristics of the P-38 were superb. It was gentle as a lamb, gave plenty of notice of a stall, and could turn with any fighter except the Spitfire and the Zero. Plus, its counter-rotating props eliminated the problem of torque so common to single-engine fighters. Very early in its operational history, the P-38 developed a reputation for being very difficult to fly. This wasn’t the case, but being the first really high-performance fighter to enter service in the Army Air Forces caused it to be feared by many people who felt it was too complicated for one man to fly.

On the morning of August 19, 1944, I flew a beachhead cover mission, and that afternoon our new squadron commander, Major Frank Pope, wanted to lead a four-ship flight from the 27th on a dive-bombing mission that was led by a four-ship 94th Fighter Squadron flight commanded by Captain Ed LaClare. The target was a railroad bridge in the city of Avignon, just below the confluence of the Durance and Rhone rivers. There was the possibility we might be intercepted by German fighters that far north of the invasion area. Major Pope had flown a tour in Alaska prior to joining the 27th as its CO, and he didn’t have much combat experience with the Germans at this time. I was the 27th Squadron’s operations officer, and the most experienced pilot in the group, so I thought it was advisable for me to fly the mission as Major Pope’s element leader, in case we were jumped. This was my sixty-fourth combat mission.

The mission proceeded as planned, but with only fair results. Since we carried only one bomb apiece and had used belly tanks most of the way to the target, we still had practically full internal fuel tanks. One of the 94th Squadron P-38s developed a problem during the dive-bombing and returned to base, but the rest of us went looking for targets of opportunity by following the rail line leading to the west-southwest looking for a train or military trucks to shoot up.

We skirted Nimes and proceeded down the railroad line, and in short order we came upon a train in a small station later identified as Le Cres. The locomotive appeared to be taking on water. First the locomotive was disabled by our guns. The cars it was pulling appeared to be flatcars loaded with German Army trucks, a tank or two, and other military gear. This small station was in relatively open country and there were no soldiers visible in the area. There was no evidence that anyone was firing at us.

Because the train seemed to be carrying valuable military cargo, our mission leader, Ed LaClare, made a decision to violate our strafing code of one pass only. I agreed with him. We formed a circle and took out each rail car in order. Quite a number of the rail cars exploded, which caused us to fly through the resulting fire storm. The debris this created was like flak.

As I came off my third target, a 94th Squadron plane which was third in the circle flew straight ahead with its right engine on fire. Since he was the last 94th plane, no one in his own flight saw him go, so I flew up just behind him on the right and urged him to bail out. After about five miles, the pilot made a left 170-degree turn and belly-landed on a fairly level area. He went running off the wing before the airplane came to a complete stop. I didn’t know until many years later that the pilot was 1st Lieutenant Dick Arrowsmith, and that he successfully evaded capture, was later led back to our lines by French Resistance fighters, and returned to his squadron to finish his combat tour.

As I was returning to the train, my right engine began knocking. A check of the oil pressure and temperature revealed that I’d lost the oil from that engine, so I feathered the propeller and called Major Pope to inform him that I was heading out to the Mediterranean and returning to Corsica. The major and the other two 27th Squadron planes broke off their strafing passes to escort me.

After about ten minutes, I noticed that my left engine nacelle had oil dripping from it. A check of the oil pressure revealed I’d soon lose that engine, too. I was five or six miles off the French coast, and there was a solid overcast at about 800 feet. I decided to land in the water, even though there were waves crossing my line of flight. I had no trouble landing on the crest of a wave after I jettisoned my canopy, but I immediately discovered that the P-38 floats like a crowbar.

My dinghy was attached to my Mae West by means of a woven half-inch strand, and as I jerked on the strand it appeared the dinghy wouldn’t separate from the parachute pack and was going to take me under with it. After a frantic last pull, it came up, and I inflated it. What a surprise! The dinghy was just large enough so that one side fit under my knees and the other side was below my shoulders. Only my head and knees were out of the water.

The three P-38s from my flight stayed over me as long as their fuel permitted. Shortly after the last one left, two ships came up over the horizon, moving slowly toward me from the direction of our beachhead. Though it was near dusk when they arrived, it appeared at first that the nearer ship was going to run right over me, but as it came closer I could see that it was 150 to 200 yards seaward of me. I could see sailors on deck looking for me, but the swells kept me from their sight. They slowly sailed past me about a mile, turned around to seaward, and came back. But they never came as close as on the first pass. It was dark by then, but they stayed in the area at least another hour, shooting flares and lighting up the sea. Eventually they left, and I was alone on a pitch black night.

Much later, near midnight, I began hearing breakers, faintly at first and then louder. It dawned on me that the tide and waves coming from the south had washed me to shore. I knew that I went down roughly twenty-five miles west of Marseille, and since this was four days after the invasion, I thought the shoreline here would probably be heavily patrolled by German soldiers. Nevertheless, I made it ashore without incident. I was quite tired and sleepy because I had been up since 0600 hours and had flown two missions, but I needed to find someplace to hide my dinghy and Mae West. If these were found by a sentry at daybreak, the Germans would surely know that someone had made a mini-invasion during the night.

I crept cautiously inland, looking for some shrubs in which I could hide the dinghy and Mae West and conceal myself so that I wouldn’t waken to someone prodding me with a gun. The night was so dark, I could not see my hand in front of my face.

I had moved inland between fifty to seventy-five feet when I froze at the sound of a click, like someone working the bolt of a rifle.

On the ship that had carried me from the United States to North Africa, I had had plenty of time to think about going to war. I often thought how very lucky I was to be a pilot. I was glad I wasn’t going to be in a submarine, where I could be drowned or marooned forever; and I was glad I wasn’t an infantryman, who would have to contend with land mines he couldn’t see. Immediately after hearing the click, I realized one of my two worst fears was about to be realized.

The mine that went off under me shattered both of my feet, and inflicted compound fractures in both legs just above the ankles. In addition, several large pieces of metal had been driven into my left knee, gaping holes had been torn in both legs from the calves to the hips, a piece of metal had cut through my left bicep and numbed my arm, my face was torn by shrapnel and powder-burned, and my pantslegs had been blown off six inches below the waist.

I was aware of a king-size hotfoot on my left foot. My right shoe was blown off, but my left shoe had remained on. When I tried to remove the left shoe, I found the foot had been impaled by a shard of the mine that had penetrated the bottom of the shoe, gone through the foot, and on through the top of the shoe. The pain was unbearable, but I had to pull the shard back through the bottom of the left shoe in order to remove the shoe.

My escape kit was still attached to my belt, so I opened it and found a little tube of sulfathiazole ointment. I spread the pitifully small contents of the tube on the wounds I could feel on my feet; then I passed out.

When I awoke on the morning of August 20, I saw that I had come ashore on a quite level, somewhat sandy area covered with very low scrubby vegetation. There was no one around. Very close to me were several trip wires for more mines. Knowing I was seventy-five or more miles behind enemy lines, it seemed to me that there was no hope of my being rescued. Having been raised a good Catholic boy, I said as good an Act of Contrition as I could and resigned myself to dying there.

The truth is, few of those who made it through the war are luckier than I am to be alive. By all odds, I should be dead.

On the morning of the second day, I tried to get a drink from the canteen in my escape kit, but it was empty. For the rest of the day, I alternately passed out and woke up. I was conscious for short periods only.

During the third and fourth days—August 21 and 22—it became apparent that I was going to die of thirst, if not from my wounds, so I started moving toward a two- or three-foot rise that had a row of bushes on top. The bushes were about fifty feet away. I would pick up one leg, set it down, then move the other, all the while being careful not to hit another mine or tripwire as I dragged myself along. Because I was conscious for only short periods of time, it took me several periods of consciousness to move the fifty feet. On the other side of the rise was a six-inch-deep pool of standing water, and I gratefully drank from it even though it was dirty. I spent that night and the next day, August 23, by the edge of that pool. As before, I was unconscious most of the time.

During one of the periods when I as awake, I became conscious of a feeling of movement in some of my wounds. A check revealed that all my open wounds were full of maggots, which caused me to think I was being eaten alive. Each time I was conscious thereafter, I killed as many maggots as I could. (It wasn’t until much later that doctors told me the maggots were only eating the dead flesh, thereby delaying the onset of gangrene.)

On the fifth day, August 24, I raised my head as far as possible to see whether there was anything nearby that I could try to reach for help. To the east, about a half-mile away, I could see the top of a tall wooden observation tower. Surely, I thought it would be manned, and by this time I would have welcomed a German coming to take me prisoner. By the end of the day, however, I had made no progress toward the tower, and I slept where I had awakened.

On the sixth day, August 25, I moved toward the tower and had gotten to within a hundred yards of it by nightfall. There was a swamp between me and the tower, and by sunset I could see that there was a log cabin—it appeared to be a hunting cabin—at the base of the tower. Both the tower and the cabin were obviously abandoned.

On the seventh day, August 26, I entered the swamp, which turned out to be about two to four feet deep. It so happened that I had come ashore in a vast swampy area known as the Camargue, at the mouth of the Rhone River.

I was able to move along quite well in the water because my legs were buoyant. I pulled myself to the cabin as cautiously as I could, because there were signs in German —Achtung! Minen—and I knew what that meant.

The swamp next to the cabin was about 100 feet wide and 150 yards long, and at the far end it turned a corner. There was a footbridge that crossed from the cabin to the shorter side of the swamp. It was made of rough timbers about ten feet long and three feet wide, and held together with a kind of baling wire.

During the next two days, August 27 and 28, I labored to take the bridge apart and construct a raft with four of the timbers held together with the wire. Late the second day, I completed the raft and, with two long sticks, poled my way down the swamp, hoping it would lead to the open ocean.

Upon rounding the corner, however, I found that the swamp dead-ended about twenty-five feet further on. It was quite late, so I poled ashore, secured the raft as best I could, and pulled myself about six feet out of the swamp. I spent the night there on the bank. I later learned that the Camargue was one of the top five mosquito-infested areas in the world. The mosquitoes were so big and so thick, they created a continual hum. I simply covered my face with my hands and let them have at me.

The next morning, August 29, I got back on the raft to return to the cabin. As I rounded the corner, I could see people at the cabin, and I called out to them as I got near. They were six Frenchmen who had come out to start cleaning up the mess made by the Germans.

They placed me in the bed of their old truck and started to drive up a trail. The jolting of the ride was more than I could physically bear, so they took the long front seat from the cab and placed me on it. Four of the men picked up the seat, one at each corner, and carried me up the trail. The truck driver drove ahead to arrange for an ambulance. The last man spelled one of the men who was carrying me, and they continued to spell one another until we reached the road, where an ambulance was waiting.

On the way to the hospital, the ambulance stopped at a house where a French lady fed me some soup, my first meal in ten days. Needless to say, I thought the soup was the best I had ever eaten. Next, the ambulance took me to a hospital in Aix-en-Provence, which was close to the by-then liberated city of Marseille.

My stay in the French hospital was almost as bad as my ten days on the beach and in the swamp. Until then, shock had spared me the excruciating pain that now came over me. No one at the hospital spoke any English, and I spoke no French, so there was little communication with the hospital staff. On my second day there, August 31, they put me on an operating table, and ten or twelve people stood around me. The doctor had antiseptics but no anesthetics, and the additional people were there to hold me down while the doctor dug shrapnel out of my legs and left knee. After this ordeal, I found an orderly who understood a little English and I convinced him to go find any Allied soldier and bring him back to the hospital. Shortly, the orderly returned with a British soldier whose Cockney accent made him almost as hard to understand as the French. I gave the soldier one of my dogtags and begged him to find an American officer and explain to him where I was. I asked the soldier to hurry, because I was not sure I would be able to endure the medical treatment I was receiving.

When no one showed up that day or the next, September 1, I became very discouraged. Late that night, however, I was awakened by a U.S. Army captain with medical insignia on his shirt collar. He gave me a shot for the pain, and I passed out.

I was taken by ambulance to a field hospital, which had been located near our base in Mateur, Tunisia, when I first joined the 27th Fighter Squadron. Back then, the nurses had been very popular with my squadron mates, and we had socialized with them. When I woke up, I was being tended by a nurse I recognized. My spirits improved rapidly. During my stay at the field hospital, necessary surgery was performed on my numerous wounds in order to prepare me for evacuation.

In short order, I was flown to the 118th Station Hospital in Naples, Italy, where I received a lot of medical attention. When word was sent to the 1st Fighter Group commander, Colonel Robert Richard, that I was alive and in a hospital in Italy, he issued an order that every day the weather permitted, a 27th Fighter Squadron P-38 pilot was to land at the nearby Capodichino Airdrome and visit with me.

In Naples the doctors decided it was best to amputate my legs. I implored Colonel Richard to get the doctors to reconsider. With his help, and the help of our wing commander, the doctors decided to try to save the legs.

They flew me back home in October. The date of the flight was known at 1st Fighter Group headquarters, so after the C-54 I was aboard lifted away from Capodichino and leveled out at altitude, a dozen red-tailed P-38s from the 27th Fighter Squadron appeared and settled down on both sides of the transport. They looked like silver ghosts. They escorted me for a hundred miles out over the blue Mediterranean, then silently peeled off, one by one, and went back to the war.

Years later, I learned that Colonel Richard had issued an order that from then on, in the 27th Fighter Squadron, any plane with the number 23—my old plane number—would forever be known as Maloney’s Pony. This order was not followed for thirty years after World War II, but ever since 1975, when the 27th, 71st, and 94th squadrons were rejoined as the 1st Fighter Wing, plane Number 23 of the 27th Fighter Squadron is named Maloney’s Pony.

I arrived in the United States in November 1944, and was stationed as close to my home as possible, at McCloskey General Hospital in Temple, Texas. I was operated on many times and was bedridden until September 1945, at which time I was able to take a few steps with the aid of crutches. I went home on leave, married my childhood sweetheart, Miss Patricia Jean Driggs, and returned to the hospital for another operation.

In February 1946, with McCloskey Hospital scheduled to be closed, I was transferred to William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso. While there, I received only rehabilitative care. Next, I was transferred to the neurological center at O’Reilly General Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, in order to repair damage to the peronneal nerve in my left leg. When the doctors at O’Reilly decided the nerve injury was inoperable, I was transferred in September 1946 to Pratt General Hospital in Coral Gables, Florida, for further treatment. I received only rehabilitative treatment there, and the hospital closed in April 1947. I was finally sent to Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco, and there I received treatment to both legs and feet. I was sent before the retirement board in October 1947 and was retired for physical disability with the rank of major, to which I had been promoted in April 1946.

After leaving Letterman General Hospital, Tom Maloney enrolled at Oklahoma State University and began the spring semester there in January 1948. In January 1951, he received a degree in accounting and went to work for an oil-and-gas drilling company. In 1954, he helped form his own drilling company, but in December 1976, problems related to his injuries forced him to sell his share. He later returned to work at the firm, finally retiring in 1985.

In 1992, Tom Maloney was inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame.

In late 1995, Tom Maloney was contacted by Jean Robin, an amateur historian who lived in the vicinity of the Le Cres railroad station, which had been the target of the August 19, 1944, strafing attack. The letter revealed that, in a matter of minutes, the flight of seven 1st Fighter Group P-38s had done extensive harm to the German war effort in recently invaded southern France.

There were two trains in the station when the attack commenced at 1920 hours. One was on a siding without a locomotive. It consisted of thirteen closed rail cars containing "fire bombs"—possibly incendiary ammunition of some sort. Explosive and incendiary bullets fired by the P-38s’ .50-caliber machine guns and 20mm cannon started fires in these cars, and the rail cars and their contents were "entirely destroyed and blown to pieces."

Moments before the strafing attack commenced, the second train had been brought to a halt in the station by a red-light signal. This was no doubt the train Captain Tom Maloney saw when the attack got underway. It was composed of fifty-two flatbed cars and closed goods wagons. A number of Royal Tiger heavy tanks were on the flatcars, and ammunition was stored in many of the closed cars. Waffen SS tank crews and Panzergrenadiers were also in the closed rail cars.

As the strafing attack began, the locomotive was perforated by bullets and stopped for good. Of the fifty-two cars it was pulling, nineteen were blown off the rails and destroyed. Twenty-six others remained on the rails but were "entirely blown, torn to bits." When the P-38s left the scene, only seven flatcars and goods wagons were left intact.

Beyond the outright destruction of the engine and fifty-eight rail cars and their contents, the attack blocked the main rail line with all the neighboring rail sidings with debris that, in some cases, continued to cook off through the night and burn out of control for several days. Live ammunition was scattered all over the station area and several nearby vineyards. The switching station was demolished and phone lines running through the station were severed. Apparently, many Waffen SS troops were killed in the attack or trapped in the wreckage, where they perished in the subsequent explosions and fires.

Jean Robin, who passed through the area after the war, described it to Tom Maloney as "a tangled heap of ruins, an absolute hell!" He also reported that only one French railwayman was injured by an ammunition explosion. "Your action," the Frenchman wrote in 1995, "completely disrupted the German retreat by railway. All convoys [up the line] from Montpellier were then destroyed by Allied planes or by the Germans themselves."