DICING THE BEACHES!

Drawing by 34th PRS Photo Lab member Sgt. Bill Walker as featured in Col. Donn Hayes 1980-81 "Reflections". Walker's illustration shows the squadron's dicing ship, "My-Little D-Icer", speeding up the French coast on the first dicing mission flown by the 34th PRS. (Donn Hayes)

Much has been written about the air war during World War II. The exploits of fighter pilots and characteristics of fighter planes have been well covered in books, films and documentaries. The bravery of the crews of Bomber Command over their targets is also well documented, and for good reason. All of these men are deserving of the attention given to them, because much was asked of them, and many paid the ultimate price in the performance of their duties. One of the most unfortunate oversights in the study of the air war is the contribution made by the men who flew reconnaissance. These men flew alone and unescorted in planes carrying cameras in lieu of guns. In the event of enemy contact they had to rely on their abilities as pilots, the speed and maneuverability of their aircraft, and their wits to get them out of trouble. Many of these men refused even to carry a side arm, because they felt that if they were forced down and captured, their lack of a weapon would pose less threat to their captors an,as such, would work to their advantage.

Hazardous duty was not the exclusive domain of the pilots and crews of the Fighter and Bomber Commands, nor was it restricted only to aerial combat. Recon pilots took the same risks and confronted the same danger faced by fighter pilots and bomber crews. A case in point would be the ultra low-level missions flown over the coast of France prior to D-Day by the 10th Photo Group and the 34th Photo Recon Squadron. Among the most dangerous missions of World War II, it as not unusual for pilots to return to their base at Chalgrove, England with damage as a result of contact with the ground rather than contact with the enemy.

One pilot returned from his mission after having hit a church steeple with the horizontal stabilizer of his plane. Several pilots returned with tree branches and other vegetation stuck in various places within their aircraft. One pilot returned his damaged plane after dipping a wing into the Channel. Hazards were abundant on these missions, but the result was the successful and comprehensive photography of the beaches that the allied forces would invade on 6 June 1944.

The Plan

On 15 April 1944, Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Air Forces formally issued the orders outlining the role all aircraft based in Britain would play during the forthcoming invasion of France. Sobering is the best word to describe the size and scope of the document. Maximum effort was called for on the part of VIII Bomber and Fighter Commands, IX Bomber Command, IX and XIX Fighter Commands, RAF Bomber and Fighter Commands, RAF Coastal Command and the Air Defense of Great Britain. On a list detailing over twenty individual responsibilities of the IX Tactical Air Command, item number four was to "Provide tactical reconnaissance supplemented by photo reconnaissance, as directed by the 9th Air Force."

Painting of Major General Elwood R. "Pete" Quesada of the IX Tactical Air Command. (Lou Cerino)

A complete picture of what the invasion forces would be facing was needed for the successful execution of Operation Overlord¹. High altitude vertical photography had been an ongoing mission for the Eighth and Ninth Air Force Photo Reconnaissance Groups for over a year, and photographs taken over the proposed invasion coast had shown indications of an intricate network of barricades and obstacles along the shore. Invasion planners could not, however, determine their strength, what they were made of, or how deeply they were anchored in the sand. Neither could they determine whether the obstacles could be overrun by landing craft or completely avoided by the advancing infantry on the day of the invasion.

Long hours of study of the French coastline, and the defenses which the Germans had erected thereon, were undertaken. The ideal place for an invasion would have been Calais, where the Channel was at its narrowest. The beaches lent themselves to the type of landing planned, and there were excellent ports nearby. Unfortunately, the beaches were known to be heavily defended and it was on the wrong side of the Seine River for the successful execution of the interdiction being planned.

With D-Day a month and a half away, the American sectors were identified as a strip of beach on the Normandy coast between Cherbourg and La Havre, the same area that William the Bastard used in the previous English invasion of France some 878 years earlier. This area was chosen in part because high altitude vertical photographs seemed to indicate beach defenses were at their weakest, as well as its location with relation to the Seine & Loire Rivers. The geography was important due to the fact that the area could be isolated by cutting the bridges across the two rivers. Early capture of the ports at La Havre & Cherbourg could also be guaranteed by the rapidly expanding beachhead.

Photographs were needed to determine the actual strength of the coastal defenses of the invasion beaches. General Elwood "Pete" Quesada, IX Tactical Air Command, along with General William "Wild Bill" Reed called for a meeting with squadron commanders and operations officers of the 10th Photo Recon Group to discuss how best to achieve this objective. Most of the discussion focused on flying at altitudes of 20,000 feet and below. It was agreed that missions flown at these altitudes would by extremely hazardous. When Gen. Quesada proposed practice missions and diversionary tactics, the unanimous response from all of the squadron leaders was "Hell, no, we're ready now. Just tell us what to do."

Gen. Quesada left that same night, leaving it up the squadron leaders to determine how best to accomplish the mission. It was agreed that the best solution was to the fly the sorties on the deck².

The advent of the "Dicing Mission"³ had just come to the European Theater of Operations.

The Machines, the Men and the Mission

One of only two color photos known to exist of F-5A-3-LO (s/n 42-12786) "My-Little D-Icer". Seen here in her "war-weary" colors at Hagenau, she was the last of 25 F-5A-3-LOs ever built by Lockheed. This is the plane with which Lt. Garland A. York used to take the pre-invasion photographs for the American landing zones at Omaha Beach, Normandy. Note the forward-facing "dicing" camera in the nose. (Richard Kill)

In the inventory of aircraft operated by the 34th Photo Recon Squadron was a single F-5A, s/n 42-12786 which was used for local flying and instrument training. As such, it was not fitted for high altitude combat missions but it perfectly met the requirement for a fast, light low altitude aircraft.

Both the engineering and camera repair sections worked around the clock to retrofit the plane to accommodate forward, left, and right oblique cameras. Even the pilots pitched in, waxing the bare-metal finish, in hope of picking up a couple of extra knots of speed. No detail was overlooked, including a piece of bullet proof glass placed in the forward section of the canopy by the assistant line chief Lee Wiegand. The early model P-38/F-5 did not have integral armorglass, and the addition of this piece would prove to be a vital modification on the first dicing mission flown by the 34th.

All of the pilots volunteered for the missions, so straws were drawn to determine who would go. Col. Donn Hayes and Maj. Bob Jarrell, as CO and Operations Officer, elected to remain grounded reserving the right to fly any subsequent dicing missions after returning to flying status. Lt. Allen Keith and Lt. Garland York were chosen to fly the first two missions assigned to the 34th.

The mission profile called for the pilot to leave Chalgrove and cross the English Channel at an altitude of zero feet, the first indication of the treachery of these missions. Most pilots made their Channel crossings at around fifteen feet. At extremely low altitude, the aircraft would be well below enemy radar surveillance, and the element of surprise over the target area would be greatly enhanced. Once over the target area, the pilot would fly at an altitude of between twenty-five and fifty feet at an average speed of 350 knots. Cloudless conditions more than made up for the amount of distortion in the oblique photos taken at that altitude and speed.

The target areas ranged from the Cotentin Peninsula in the south to the extreme southern Belgian beach frontage in the north. Group-wide, this amounted to relatively short missions for the pilots involved. They could get into their target areas, get the photos and get out before coastal defenses and small arms fire could zero in on them. This strategy also significantly lessened the possibility that the Germans would be able to pinpoint the exact location for the impending invasion.

All of these missions would be flown at low tide to maximize beach coverage, and to expose all obstacles that would otherwise be concealed by the high tide. Most missions were flown with the beaches centered, the land to the pilot�s left and the Channel to the pilot�s right. With the intervalometer⁴ set on runaway, the entire target area could be covered in one pass.

Dicing the Beaches

Taken from an average altitude of 35 feet and at over 350 mph, this was the view from the forward "dicing" camera-eye of "My-Little D-Icer". Clearly visible are the steel hedgehogs, log ramps and wood poles on which the Germans wired teller mines. (Bill Luckey)

On the morning of 6 May, 1944 Lt. Albert Lanker of the 31st PRS crossed the Channel on the first of the dicing missions that would be flown by the 10th PRG. To his friends he was "Louie" from Petaluma, California, and the plane he flew was called "Outlaw," in reference to the movie of the same name. With a painting of the voluptuous Jane Russell adorning the nose of his aircraft, Louie set across the Channel at Dungeness at an altitude of fifteen feet. At Berq-sur-Mer he turned around a large sand dune and buzzed the beach at 375 knots. During his run across the beach, he encountered five different, and very surprised, groups of German soldiers working on the beach defenses. In each case, he headed straight for them just to watch them scatter. At the end of his run, he scaled a cliff missing the top by barely six feet, and returned safely to Chalgrove.

The photos taken on this first dicing mission revealed the sand dune to be a German gun emplacement. Gun emplacements in cliffs were also identified and the revealing detail of the beach obstacles was more than invasion planners had hoped for. So successful was this mission that two more were planned for the next day.

On 7 May Lt. Fred Hayes of the 31st PRS was dispatched on the second mission, never to be heard from again. Presumably he was lost in the Channel, a result of the dangerously low altitude required for the mission. Capt. William Mitchell of the 30th PRS left Chalgrove at the same time as Lt. Hayes, and successfully covered the beaches from Dunkirk to Ostend, Belgium.

From 8-15 May weather on both sides of the Channel proved to be marginal and attention was shifted from the dicing missions to coverage of tactial targets including marshaling yards, airfields, bridges. Missions providing general mapping of the areas around the invasion coast were also flown. Lt. Richard Knickerbocker⁵ of the 34th was lost on 12 May 1944 over the "Les Beziers" in the village of Bellou-En-Houlme, France, on a mission to cover the Aerschot Marshaling Yards. Flakabteilung 266 claimed credit for the destruction of the aircraft, s/n 43-28292. French witnesses confirmed that Lt. Knickerbocker bailed out, but that his parachute was damaged by the aircraft and did not successfully deploy. Lt. Knickerbocker free fell approximately 20,000 feet to his death.

Lt. Allen Keith with his crew chief after his first combat mission just days before his harrowing "dicing" flight and his encounter with the "enemy" seagull. (Ivan Miller)

On 16 May 1944 the next round of "dicing" missions was set to launch, but all flights were aborted due to fog which had rolled into the French coastline. It would not be until three days later on the 19th that the next wave of "dicing" pilots would be launched.

It was the youngest pilot in the 34th PRS, 2Lt. Garland A. York of B-Flight, who would provide the most vital information the Allies had prior to the invasion. Dispite marginal weather conditions, it was York who covered the sections of beach from St. Vaast De La Houge to Bancs Du Grande. Stretches of beach destined to become known throughout history as "Omaha" and "Utah", the American landing sectors of the Normandy beaches. Photos from his mission revealed steel "hedgehogs", constructed from three large beams, designed to rip the bottoms out of landing craft during high-tide conditions as well as log posts -- some fitted with teller mines. It was determined that these obstacles were placed in such a way as to effectively stop any landing craft within the killing zone of defensive German machine gun emplacements.

The 34th's second dicing mission was flown by 2Lt. Allen R. Keith of C-Flight on 20 May 1944. Lt. Keith, who had been best friends with Lt. Knickerbocker, was dispatched to cover the heavily defended coastline of Le Havre from Fe Camp to Heuqueville. Although he encountered little trouble from small arms fire, an "enemy" seagull scored a direct hit on his windsheild while flying "flat-out" on the deck on his camera-run. Thankfully due to the last minute suggestion of installing the armoured glass in the cockpit, by Assistant Line Chief Lee Wiegand, Lt. Keith's life was saved. Having never seen the gull coming, it scored a direct hit shattering his windscreen and deflected off the thick armoured glass in front of him. Thinking he had been "hit by flak" and in spite of being covered with "swirling feathers and bird parts," Lt. Keith was able to maintain control of his ship and return to Chalgrove safely, successfully completing his mission. Photos from this mission revealed posts fashioned from both wood and concrete topped by teller mines connected with trip wires. Gun positions were located in the sides of cliffs and, most importantly, weak spots were found within the defenses.

The youngest of the original pilots from Will Rogers, Lt. Garland York was "hot" pilot who had bent a couple of airplanes in his time. Needless to say the dicing missions would be right up his alley! (Ivan Miller)

Slopped ramps were seen placed in such a way as to flip landing craft over, spilling the soldiers on board into the water. In some cases, a third, shorter leg was added to the ramps to help support the weight of the landing craft as it flipped over. Teller anti-tank mines were also seen attached to the tops of tall posts that would be concealed under high-tide conditions. Other coastal defenses revealed in the photographs were identified as Belgian gates, also called element "C." These were large, heavy structures placed in such a way as to rip the bottoms out of larger landing craft. Their size also prevented their being pushed aside by these same larger vessels.

The 10th PRG would ultimately fly eleven dicing missions over the beaches of occupied Europe between 6-20 May 1944. The detail of the photos taken on these missions was such that in the two weeks prior to the invasion, a scale model of Omaha beach was built, complete with natural features of the beach, trees, houses and other buildings, obstacles built by the Germans, as well as other enemy installations known to exist at the time. Along with both low and high altitude photography, the area was studied and memorized by combat engineers charged with the task of clearing the obstacles for landing craft and invasion forces that would follow.

Summary

Later in his life Garland York said he never felt like a hero because, as a Photo Recon pilot, he was never able to confront the Luftwaffe in the arena of aerial combat that made aces out of so many American fighter pilots.

Though the cost in human lives was high on that dreary Tuesday morning of 6 June 1944, those who survived the German gauntlet would probably have another opinion regarding the bravery of the men who diced the beaches. The information provided by York and Lt. Keith of the 34th Photo Recon Squadron, as well as the other pilots of the 10th PRG, saved the lives of countless American personnel, and set in motion the ultimate downfall of Hitler�s "Festung Europa."

Maybe they did not become aces, but their selfless dedication and courage in flying these missions, among the most dangerous missions of WWII, certainly qualifies them as heroes.

For these missions Lt. York and Lt. Keith were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the 34th PRS was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation.

1. The code name given to the Allied invasion of Europe.
2. A term used to describe ultra low level flying; roughly equates to saying "on the ground."
3. A term coined by pilots because the the way the planes were to be flown was akin to throwing dice onto a gaming table.
4. The control panel for the cameras, located in the cockpit of the aircraft. This control quite literally controlled the interval at which photos were taken. The cameras cycled every six seconds with the control set on "runaway." This was the maximum number of exposures that could be taken. There was also an override switch on the yoke, where the trigger for the guns of the P-38 fighter was usually located. This switch could be fired over targets of opportunity, and for a few extra exposures over the target.
5. MACR #4666 lists the loss of F-5E (s/n 42-28292) on 12-June/44 over Belgium. This information is in error. This is the missing aircrew report for Lt. Richard Knickerbocker. First of all, Lt. Kickerbocker's flight was downed by Luftwaffe Flakabteilung 266 over Bellou-En-Houlme, France and is confirmed by local eyewitnesses and photographic records from the Luftwaffe of the crash site. These photographs show the tail (intact) with the tail number of 28292. Secondly, the serial number recorded by the air force is a typographical error as no such serial number existed for Lockheed Lightnings. Lockheed Lightnings produced with the 42-prefix did not include 28292. Although the early model P-38J-15-LOs (LAC contract number AC-35374-1) fall under this prefix, it was for serial numbers 42-103979 thru 42-104428. Contract number AC-35374-2 was for the 800 P-38J-15-LOs produced by LAC between Jan/44 and May/44 and included AAF serial numbers 43-28248 to 43-29047. The typo exists where the "2" in "42" was typed instead of "3" for "43". These types of errors have been common in our research. The loss location, "Belgium", is completely in error which is beared out by expert witnesses to the event and the recovery/internment of Lt. Knickerbocker's body in a French grave. Given the shear mass of losses by the AAF, it is no surprise that such errors would occur.

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