The thousands of small steel fragments sounded like hail as they rained on the thin metal of the B-17 Flying Fortresses that droned ever closer to their target four miles below.  Inside them the aircrews was busy at their guns--it seemed that enemy fighters were everywhere.  The pilots struggled to keep their bombers on course despite the thick anti-aircraft fire.  It was the heaviest any of them had ever seen, later described by one veteran of the raid as being "so thick a man could walk on it."

The level of enemy resistance was not surprising.  The inbound flight of B-24 and B-17 bombers from the Mighty Eighth (Air Force) numbered 660 strong.  They were escorted by scores of P-51 fighters, making the formation a hard target to miss.  

The American airmen were confronted in the sky by hundreds of German FW-190s and ME-109s.  The heavens were literally filled with airplanes, flaming tracers, exploding flak, and occasionally, the distinctive white canopy of a parachute.  The date was March 6, 1944, and for the first time American bombers were making a daylight attack at the heart of Hitler's Fortress Europe.

This was the mission everyone had faced with a mixture of fear and anticipation.  Before the war began German Reichmarshal Hermann Goering had proudly boasted, "No bomb shall fall on German soil."  On January 27, 1943, pilots of General Ira Eaker's Mighty Eighth accepted Goering's challenge and dropped their bombs on enemy submarine pens at the Wilhelmshaven Naval Base in northern Germany.  Undeterred, Reichmarshal Goering reassured his nation that it was immune to attack from afar.  “No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Goering. You may call me Meyer.” he boasted.

On this date, after two days of attempts that had been thwarted by poor weather, American pilots filled the skies to drop more than 1,600 pounds of bombs on The Big "B"--Berlin.  Going in, every man knew it would be rough, certainly one of the most dangerous air missions flown yet in the war.  Enemy fighters would duel to the death and to the extreme to defend their capitol.  Certainly Hitler's ground defenses would be heavy,  and the batteries would be manned by the very best gunners the Reich could muster.

The mission was akin in both danger and in design to a mission flown by twenty-six B-25 bombers just two years earlier when Colonel Jimmy Doolittle struck the heart of Japan, proving to Emperor Hirohito that Tokyo was not immune to attack.  Ironically, it was Lieutenant General Jimmy Doolittle who now commanded the Mighty Eighth and who directed this mission.  

Doolittle had requested permission to fly with his men.  "I wanted to be be in on this first effort and have the honor of being the first air commander to lead a raid over all three Axis capitals," he wrote in his autobiography.  (Following the Tokyo raid, on July 19, 1943, Doolittle had lead a bombing raid over Rome.)   

Doolittle initially convinced General Harold Tooey Spaatz to allow him to fly a P-51 on the Berlin raid, but on the day before it was to commence, "Tooey changed his mind and said he couldn't afford to risk the capture of a senior officer who had knowledge of invasion plans.  I have always suspected that when Ike (General Dwight Eisenhower) heard about it, it was he who canceled the idea...although Tooey never said he did."

If indeed it was General Eisenhower who refused to let his top commander in the 8th Air Force fly the first daylight bombing raid over Berlin, it was a wise choice.  Everyone realized the mission would be costly--and it was.  Before the day ended at least eighty American aircraft went down, including sixty-nine bombers.  

In the lead B-17 Lieutenant John C. Red Morgan felt his own bomber bounce with an endless series of explosions that seemed to fill the sky.  In twenty-five previous missions he had never seen so much anti-aircraft fire.  To make matters worse, the German gunners on the ground were indeed some of Hitler's best.  Their accuracy was taking its toll. Morgan was nearing the target and through his cockpit window he could look down to see the city of Berlin 20,000 feet below.  Men scurried about inside the Flying Fortress to both defend it and to prepare for the bomb run.  Explosions continued to buffet the bomber and the rain of shrapnel pattered against its skin, but this was nothing new for a combat veteran like Lieutenant Morgan.

Twice before the lanky Texan had been highly decorated for bringing home a shot-up Fortress.  Morgan knew these big bombers could handle a lot of damage and still return safely home.  For this reason he didn't bother to divert his attention from the tasks at hand, even to secure his chest-pack parachute in place over his uniform.

And then....it was too late!

The huge Flying Fortress shuddered under a deadly blast from the ground that ripped through metal and shredded control lines.  Freezing wind rushed into the fuselage through gaping holes and smoke billowed around the crippled bomber.  A fuel tank was hit and quickly caught fire.  Morgan fought to bring the bomber under control but the damage was too severe.  The intrepid airmen refused to give up his ship, even when it began tumbling out of control and falling towards earth.

If not for the explosion, Lieutenant Morgan might well have remained at the controls all the way to the ground, struggling to save his airplane.  Instead, the blast opened up the big Fortress like a cavern and propelled Morgan into open air.  Somehow, as he felt his body being forcibly ejected, he managed to reach out and grab his loose parachute and clutch it tightly beneath his arm.  Later, newspaper accounts called the next few minutes: "one of the most spectacular free falls in history."

Plummeting earthward with flak still bursting and his parachute still unsecured, John Cary Red Morgan wasn't yet ready to die.  "I didn't think I was dead," he recalled of that moment.  "There was no question about it.  Strangely, when you are in that situation you are no longer afraid.  I have found that the unknown is usually the most frightening."  With the frigid wind whipping through his uniform and restraining his movement, and while the ground continued to rush ever closer, the intrepid airman set himself to the daunting task of strapping on his chute and securing it in his chest harness.  With only about 500 feet of air remaining between him and imminent death, the chute was in place and Morgan pulled the D-ring.  Silk billowed above him, his descent slowed, and the immediate danger was behind.

Floating almost peacefully towards earth, however, more danger remained below.  Lieutenant Morgan had bailed out over Berlin and the Germans were waiting for him to touch down.  It was an ironic fate for a man who had been deemed physically unqualified for military service by his own country, and had then gone on to fly missions for three different Allied nations.  Morgan had proved his courage repeatedly through twenty-five missions, only to fall into enemy hands on this, his twenty-sixth.  What made his situation even more unusual, on a mission less than a year earlier Lieutenant had performed with such heroism that his nation had awarded him its highest military honor.

Lieutenant John Cary Red Morgan was about to become the first recipient of the Medal of Honor to be captured by the enemy.

John C. Morgan Flight Officer, US Army Air Force Medal of Honor - 26 July 1943  Under the generally accepted practice for recognizing home town heroes, John Morgan's Medal of Honor would be accredited to the place where he entered military service--London, England.  The Lone Star State would be quick to take issue with that practice in this instance; John Cary Morgan was a "born and bred Texan." John was born August 24, 1914, in the small Texas Panhandle town of Vernon.  The rural area was known primarily for its agriculture, oil, and its history as a stop on the early cattle trail of the old West.  The town was as typically-Texan as the smiling boy that grew up there, a big kid with a shock of red hair that gave him his nickname.  "It was flaming red in my flaming youth," he often recalled in later years when that red hair turned white. By the time Red Morgan finished high school he stood six-feet, two-inches and weighed in at over two hundred pounds.  He had a zest for life, a thirst for adventure, and a captivating smile that seemed to fill his entire face.  He also had a definite interest in aviation that dated back to the age of four when he saw an early barnstormer fly over his home in an old biplane in 1919. Red's father, an attorney, encouraged his son to further his education which the young man attempted to do until his twentieth birthday in 1934.  Along the way he attended the New Mexico Military Institute, Amarillo College, West Texas State Teacher's College, and the University of Texas in Austin.  The experience taught young Red but one thing--education was simply not his primary interest in life.  About the only good thing he derived from the shiftless early years was the chance to solo in an airplane while he was a freshman at the University of Texas.  This was accomplished after only three and a half-hours of flight training. The young man's father became impatient with his son's restless efforts to find his niche, and quickly put a damper on his flying.  The elder Morgan flew regularly on airplanes of the new and growing airline system, and had great respect for airplanes and their pilots.  "He felt it took a super human and a genius to fly those contraptions," John recalled with a smile.  "There was some question in his mind whether or not I fit that description!" Late in 1934 in a bid for both independence and adventure, twenty-year-old Red Morgan headed west--far west!  For the next three years he enjoyed the exotic location of the South Seas, working in the Fiji Islands on a pineapple plantation and in the gold mines there.  After three years in the tropics he returned home in 1938. Back in Texas, Red Morgan tried to pursue his interest in aviation by joining the US Army Air Corps.  He was turned away because of his poor academic record, so he found work in the oil fields and began what would become a lifelong relationship with Texaco.  During the period he was working in the fields, a fifty-five gallon drum broke free and the big Texas kid moved quickly to try and stop it.  In the process he was severely injured.  Though war was now looming, because of the broken neck he suffered in that accident, the Draft Board classified John C. Morgan as 4-F, physically unqualified for ANY military service. In 1940 the American public was still divided on whether or not the United States should come to the aid of Britain, which now stood alone against Adolph Hitler and his growing Axis of aggression.  Twenty-six year old Red Morgan had no such questions and did what scores of other young would-be combat aviators who could not get into the US Army Air Corps did--he went to Canada.  He was quickly welcomed into the Royal Canadian Air Force to begin training. Getting into the RCAF wasn't all that difficult for the young man classified 4-F in the United States.  "They (Canadian recruiters) didn't ask me if I'd ever broken my neck and I didn't tell them."   Morgan was training with the RCAF in Canada on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor forced the United States into World War II.  The following summer he was transferred to England to fly with the RAF and wear the distinctive patch of the Eagle Squadrons.  There he served for nearly a year before the Eighth Air Force arrived in England to begin combat operations.  In the period he flew more than a dozen air missions as a pilot sergeant with the RCAF. Most of the American citizens who had joined the Eagle Squadrons were absorbed into the US Army Air Force upon its arrival in England, and John Morgan began service with the Mighty Eighth's 326th Bomb Squadron, 92nd Bomb Group on March 23, 1943, as a B-17 copilot with the rank of flight officer (though he held a rating as a pilot.)   In three years the big Texan with the broad smile and flaming red hair, the young man who had been classified unsuitable for military service by his Draft Board, had flown missions for three different Allied nations.

 

Flight Officer Red Morgan flew four missions with the 326th Bomb Group in the late spring and early summer of 1943.   Meanwhile the Mighty Eighth grew in strength and numbers with an infusion of new aircraft and crews, allowing General Eaker to consistently mount raids involving more than 100 bombers.  On a June 29 mission inside France the formation included 275 bombers.  Less than three weeks later the first 300+ bomber mission was mounted on July 17.

On one of those early missions F/O Morgan managed to fly home in a badly battle-damaged Fortress, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross.  But things remained slow through the month of July until the weather broke in the third week.

"Blitz Week," as the intense series of bombing raids mounted in the last week of July came to be called, started with a 2,000-mile raid against enemy industrial plants inside Norway on Saturday, July 24.  Of more than 300 Eighth Air Force bombers dispatched, only one was lost.  At that, the crew of the flak-damaged Flying Fortress managed to land safely in Sweden where the crew was interned.  The remainder of the week that followed saw heavy damage inflicted on targets elsewhere, including inside Germany itself.  More than seventeen major enemy industrial plants were heavily damaged, and the week-long, around the clock combined effort of the USAAF and the RAF was costly to the morale of the German population.

For the Eighth Air Force the cost of Blitz Week would be high--eighty-eight bombers lost, more than 900 men of the Mighty Eighth dead or captured.  The first major casualties came on Sunday, July 25, when 323 bombers attacked targets inside Germany.  The following day, 303 more bombers were sent against targets in northern Germany.  It was the third straight day of heavy bombardment and the seventy-seventh mission flown by members of the Eighth Air Force since mission number one on August 17, 1942, nearly a year earlier.

For Flight Officer Red Morgan it would be his fifth mission with the air force of his own country...and his most challenging.

 

 

March 6, 1944

Morgan's unexpected ejection from his B-17 and subsequent spectacular free fall that was halted only by his amazing presence of mind and physical strength to secure his parachute, ended on the ground near the German capital city.  Landing only yards from an enemy anti-aircraft battery, he was quickly captured.  For the next fourteen months the Medal of Honor hero of less than a year earlier was interred in the North Compound of Stalag Luft 1.

Life was hard as a POW.  Kenneth Simmons related in his 1960 book Kriegie that:

 "Each prisoner was studied by several psychologists in order to learn his likes, dislikes, habits and powers of resistance.  The method of procedure was then determined, and the machinery was set into operation to destroy his mental resistance in the shortest possible time.  If the prisoner showed signs of fright or appeared nervous, he was threatened with all kinds of torture, some of which were carried out, and he was handled in a rough manner.  Others were bribed by luxuries.  They were traded clean clothes, good living quarters, food and cigarettes for answers to certain questions.  Those who could neither be swayed nor bribed were treated with respect and handled with care in the interrogator's office, but were made to suffer long miserable hours of solitary confinement in the prison cells."

Through those fourteen months of confinement, Lieutenant Morgan maintained his dignity and his smile.  A war-time photograph of the prisoners at Stalag Luft 1 shows the lanky Texan, though much leaner for the ordeal, dishing out hot water from the kitchen in his compound.  As always, the big guy's face reflected a broad smile.

In May 1945, with the war finally over, Red Morgan returned home and was discharged from military service.  He also returned to Texaco, where he was assigned to work as an aviation representative in the company's Sales Department in Chicago.  There he met a young secretary named Chris Ziegler.  The two married in 1947 and raised one son.

In 1950 during the Korean War, Red Morgan returned to duty with the new United States Air Force.  The hero of the previous war requested combat duty, but the Air Force refused to risk the living hero once again.  He remained in the United States flying transports before retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

In all, Red Morgan spent thirty-nine years as a loyal employee of Texaco, his tenure with the company broken only by two interim periods during which the patriotic Texan served his country during time of war.  A well-respected member of the Medal of Honor Society, he once humbly noted: 

"I have great respect for the others who have the Medal, but I really don't think about it for myself.  I'm very proud to have it.  Many good things have come to me because of it. "But I don't dwell on the past.   "Frankly, I think it would be boring for people to hear about it."

On January 17, 1991,  the seventy-sux year-old, white-haired gentleman who had once been known as Red, died peacefully in Papillton, Nebraska.  He was laid to rest with other warriors of The Greatest Generation, in Arlington National Cemetery.

*John Morgan's Medal of Honor citation lists his date of action as July 28, 1943.  Based upon this author's research of 8th Air Force mission chronologies and other documents, I believe the mission against Hanover occurred on July 26, as also detailed by Martin Caidin in Flying Forts.  During time of war missions and dates often become confused, and such errors in the official citations are not without precedent.

**Two years after posting this story I received the following email from a family friend of Red Morgan, which sheds light on the problem with Morgan's date of action, as well as other interesting information about this American hero.

I loved reading about "Uncle" Red -- he was the brother of one of my mother's best friends, and in Texas tradition was considered a calabash relative. While you got a lot of the details dead on, there were a few other interesting facts about Red that should get recorded.   One of the funnier things she (Morgan's sister) tells is about his academic career. She says that he is a "distinguished alumni" of so many schools because he kept getting kicked out. Red spent his tuition money at Texas on flying lessons, which is what prompted his father to send him to Fiji. (His father was the head lawyer for Texaco, and wrote a lot of the first oil and gas law in the US.) On Fiji, he managed to cause the first automobile wreck there, even though there were only two cars on the island at the time. My mother said that he was extremely reckless, but that is also the quality that made him so brave -- and quick-thinking. That's why his father did not want him to be a pilot -- the father couldn't see him having responsibility for 30 or so other lives with his temperament. That is also what makes his staying on board the injured airplane and getting back to England so remarkable -- he proved everyone wrong. The reason for the mix-up in dates is also an interesting story. Red was on report, and confined to barracks -- and was not supposed to fly on the mission at all. However, he snuck out and went anyway, telling the replacement co-pilot the orders were changed. When he got back, he did not tell anyone what had happened, and was confined again, and there was some sentiment at how he should be discharged. Then the brass started hearing through the rumor mill about what exactly had happened. If you'll note, the recommendation and citation took some time to be made. However, the story was so remarkable, they felt that they could not ignore it. They did adjust the date so on paper, it would not reveal his ignoring his confinement. He also did not know whether Sgt Weaver survived, until after the war, and was extremely relieved. We had other remarkable "greatest generation" stories from our town -- but its very hard to beat Red Morgan's for the drama, heroism, and personal growth. Best, Wendy

 

Raid on Ploesti  When Heroes Filled the Sky

Sources:
Caidin, Martin, Flying Forts, Meredith Press, New York, NY, 1968
Doolittle, General James and Carroll V. Glines, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Atglen, PA, 1991
Frisbee, John L., "Crisis in the Cockpit", Air Force Magazine, January 1984
McLaughlin, B.G. J. Kemp, The Mighty Eight in WWII, University Press of Kentucky, 2000
Murphy, Edward F., Heroes of World War II, Pesidio, 1990
"Texaco's Flying Pioneers", An American Hero-John C. Morgan, Texaco Topics Publication, 75th Anniversary Issue, 1977
Tillman, Barrett, Above and Beyond, The Aviation Medals of Honor, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 2002.

Recommended On The Web:
A Great Site with information on Stalag Luft 1 where Red Morgan spent fourteen months as a prisoner of war.

Part II - World War 2 Wings of Valor Home Page Introduction Day of Infamy When America needed Heroes Pay Back The Tokyo Raid Harl Pease Too Young to Fly MacArthur Kenneth Walker  Reprimand or Medal Hamilton and Craw The Banker & The Soldier Airmen on the Ground  Jack Mathis Bombardier Brothers Snuffy Smith You don't have to be a saint To Become a hero. Sarnoski & Zeamer 1 Plane - 9 Heroes TWO Medals of Honor John C. Red  Morgan Medically Unqualified Morally Determined  The Ploesti Raid  When Heroes Filled the Sky  Ralph Cheli  Leadership by Example Sacrifice by Design Neel Ernest Kearby The First Top Gun Raymond Wilkins The Last Survivor Forrest Vosler  Blind Determination  James H. Howard  "I seen my duty and I done it!"  Lawley, Truemper,  & Mathies  Coming Home the Hard Way Ed Michael Until the Last Man Comes Home Leon Vance Burden of Command David Kingsley  The Ultimate Sacrifice Donald Pucket  Darrell Lindsey  Richard Bong  Horace Carswell  Robert Femoyer  Gott & Metzger  Frederick Castle  Thomas McGuire  William Shomo  Henry Red Erwin The Courage to LIVE Raymond Knight

A Very Special Thanks to Author/Historian Barrett Tillman for his special assistance and creative support in the development of this series. Part I World War One Coming in November 2006 Part III US Air Force