May 2014- I was having dinner with Bob Welter, a friend of mine who has been a General Aviation pilot for many years and has owned and operated a number of personal airplanes that he used for business and pleasure. We had drifted into the topic of handling emergencies when Bob asked me what I thought might be a good blend between strictly following published procedures and the urge to venture out on your own initiative to troubleshoot and solve airborne problems.
“If you know the airplane and its underlying systems really well,” I said, “you can often do far better than the book. All those manuals and checklists are, by their nature, a generic solution to a set of generic problems. But if the pilot doesn’t have a solid and complete understanding of how things work inside their particular machine, they’d be better off sticking strictly to the printed page.”
Bob nodded in agreement. “From what I’ve seen, a good portion of modern pilots, even the professionals—hell, especially the professionals, from those younger airline pilots that I’ve run across—are so dependent on modern whizbang technology and their onboard automated systems that I can’t imagine them handling any problem that isn’t directly covered in their manuals.”
Bob paused a moment, took a sip of his drink, then added, “You know, I wouldn’t even be sitting here right now if it wasn’t for a particular pilot who knew his particular airplane very well. That man knew how to think out of the box.”
“Really?” I asked. I leaned forward, quite interested. “Somebody you flew with?”
“Not at all,” Bob smiled. “I really couldn’t have, since this particular episode occurred long before I was born.”
He then began to tell me a story that had come from his own father—the original Robert Welter—who had been a B-17 pilot during World War II. Not long after the incident had occurred, Bob’s dad had written down this story in narrative form so he wouldn’t forget the details.
It was from this carefully written narration from the pen of the senior Robert Welter, excerpted below, that Bob told me the story about J.P. Toombs, Jr. It’s the reason why Bob Welter feels forever indebted to a particular pilot who he never met.
“I hadn’t known him very long. We were pilots in the same squadron, the 423rd Squadron of the 306th Bomb Group. But from the day of that incident, we became close friends.
“And not many days have gone by after that without me thinking of that day and how he saved my life, along with the lives of six other crewmen.
“What he did wasn’t highly dramatic, it was simply an act of crystal clear and quick thinking that saved all our lives.
“By the way, he never got any official recognition for what happened on Dec. 27, 1943.
“We had a formation practice scheduled. My skeleton crew and I were to be number two: second element of a six-plane formation.
“We gathered at the plane ready to start engines when 1st Lt. J.P. Toombs, Jr. appeared. He was assigned to lead the second element. He told me that Maj. Maurice Salada, operations officer of the 423rd, had told him to use our B-17F and its crew because his own B-17 had been pulled for repairs and his crew had already scattered.
“So off we went. Taylor Leedy flew as the ship’s copilot and with Toombs in the left seat, I climbed into the nose of the B-17 with Ed West, our navigator. Since I had nothing else to do, I figured I’d get a good view of the formation flight and the countryside. The others on board were Carl Metz, the tail gunner; A. Klepper, a waist gunner; V. Poston, the radio operator; and George Peterson, engineer.
“We took off and climbed up, the first element forming over the field. As we were climbing, I could see through the astrodome that the plane flying in the second position of our element was getting too close. Much too close!
“I knew that if he got caught in the propwash he could lose control and, probably, be sucked down and to the left. And that’s exactly where our airplane was!
“Suddenly, we all felt the jolt and vibration of a midair collision. I told West to get his chute. I grabbed mine, then pulled apart the cloth padding between the pilot’s compartment and the nose section.
“I could see Toombs struggling with the airplane, and I could hear the roar of the four engines as maximum power was being applied. For one moment our B-17F seemed to be rolling left and pitching down uncontrollably, and just a handful of seconds later, it righted itself abruptly and began to smoothly fly straight and level.
“After a few moments I asked Toombs what happened and he said that the collision must have cut through the manual cables because neither of the cockpit control wheels had any positive response. But since he knew that the AFCE (Automatic Flight Control Equipment) had its connections much nearer to the control surfaces, he decided to try that while he ran the engine power up. That’s when the B-17F recovered from its deadly spiral dive; with the AFCE engaged, the airplane leveled out and began to fly straight.
“Toombs asked me to go aft to check the damage. I went through the bomb bay and into the radio room. Back at that spot, there were two gaping holes in the fuselage at least two feet in diameter. I could see that the manual control cables were flopping loose. Luckily, none of the crew had been injured.
“I went back to Toombs and explained what I saw and gave my opinion that we were at risk of breaking in two in an attempted landing. He thought it over for a moment, then gave the order for the three men in the rear—Metz, Klepper and Poston—to bail out over the airfield.
“Once they were away, Toombs carefully steered the B-17F toward the coastline and the English Channel so the stricken bomber would eventually ditch itself in the water after we bailed out. Complicating things even further was the fact that all the radio antenna cables had also been cut so we were without any radio communications.
“I returned to the nose section to join Ed West. We released the handle on the front escape hatch and I helped West make his exit. Peterson had come up and he was next out. I followed him from the B-17F, with Leedy following me and Toombs coming last.
“The final sight of our B-17F was that it was headed for the Channel, but we were later told that the RAF had shot it down out of fear that it might turn back to England.
“Peterson and I landed near to each other on the ground. We were both okay and began to walk for help when we ran into an English farmer brandishing a shotgun just in case we might be Nazis! A British officer found us and took us to a Red Cross worker’s home nearby.
“Ed West had the best after-flight story because he landed near Lord Douglas’s Estate and was invited in for tea with Lady Douglas.
“Several hours later we all made it back to the base, where we were told that the B-17 that had collided with our flight had lost two engines but had landed safely.
“Two months later, on Feb. 22, 1944, our group of B-17s was hit by a flight of a dozen Me 109s soon after we dropped our bombs. That day, I was flying off Toombs’ right wing.
Our B-17 was hit by several 20 mm shells which caused the airplane to roll hard left. I managed to get us back under control by using full trim tab.
“On the same Me 109 pass that hit us, Toombs’ B-17 was also hit. Badly. It drifted down and left, out of my sight. I was told by my waist gunner that Toombs’ airplane broke into two sections a short time later. Only one chute was seen coming from his stricken B-17.
“Eventually, we made it back to our base. The group had lost six airplanes on that mission, including Toombs. He was never found.
“J.P. Toombs was a fine man, and everyone in the 423d felt his loss. Even to this day, telling the story of how J.P. Toombs saved our lives on Dec. 27, 1943 with his superior skills and great airmanship brings me relief and satisfaction.
“If I had been in that left seat on that day, would I have had the coolness and presence of mind to act that quickly? I don’t know. I never will. But I do know one thing—that I am here right now and had a future that stretched far beyond 1943 because of the piloting skills of J.P. Toombs.”
Bob sat quietly for a few moments, then looked at me and said, “So that’s why I’m indebted to a pilot that I never met. Without that man, my father would have died years before I was born.” He paused, then added, “So, what do you think of my dad’s story?”
Here’s my thought: damn the whizbang and all the automation; there’s never a good substitute for a really good pilot.
Editor-at-large Thomas Block has flown nearly 30,000 hours since his first hour of dual in 1959. In addition to his 36-year career as a U.S. Airways pilot, he has been an aviation magazine writer since 1969, and a best-selling novelist. Over the past 30 years he has owned more than a dozen personal airplanes of varying types. Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
