As the C-47 crossed the Channel, Lipton saw a sight no one had ever seen before, nor would anyone ever see again, a sight that every man who was in the air that night never forgot: the invasion fleet, 6,000 vessels strong, heading toward Normandy.
Gordon Carson was with Lieutenant Welsh. As the plane crossed the Channel, Welsh told the men near the front,
“Look down.” They did, “and all you could see was wakes. No one ever saw so many ships and boats before.” Carson commented, “You had to be a little bit awed that you were part of a thing that was so much greater than you.”
At 0100, June 6, the planes passed between the islands of Guernsey and Jersey. In his plane, the pilot called back to Winters, “Twenty minutes out.” The crew chief removed the door of the plane, giving Winters, standing No. 1, a rush of fresh air and a view of the coast. “Stand up and hook up,” he called out. The red light went on.
At 0110, the planes passed over the coast and into a cloud bank. This caused the formation to break up. The lead V plowed straight ahead, but the Vs to each side veered off, the one to the right breaking away in that direction, the one on the left over the opposite way. This was the natural, inevitable reaction of the pilots, who feared midair collisions. When they broke out of the cloud bank, which was only a mile or two across, every pilot was on his own. Only the lead pilots had the device that would lead them to the Pathfinders’ Eureka signals;(4)
4. Pathfinders were specially trained volunteers who dropped in an hour ahead of the main body of troops to set up a radio beacon on the DZ to guide the lead plane. Easy’s Pathfinders were Cpl. Richard Wright and Pvt. Carl Fenstermaker.
With the formation gone, none of the others knew when or where to turn on the green light. They could only guess.
Lost, bewildered, frightened, the pilots immediately had another worry. Antiaircraft fire began coming up at them, blue, green, and red tracers indicating its path. It was light stuff, 20 and 40 mm. When it hit the planes, it made a sound like rocks being shaken in a tin can. On Harry Welsh’s plane, some ack-ack came through exactly where he had been sitting a minute before.
The pilots were supposed to slow down before turning on the green light, but as Gordon put it, “here they were thrust into the very jaws of this violence and they had never had one minute of combat experience, so they were absolutely terrified. And rather than throttle down, they were kind of like a fellow thinking with his feet, they thought with that throttle. And they said, ‘My God, common sense will tell me the quicker I get out of here, the better chance I have of surviving, and that’s unfortunate for the boys back there, but be that as it may, I’m getting out of here.’ ”
So they increased speed, up to 150 miles per hour in many cases, and although they did not have the slightest idea where they were, except that it was somewhere over Normandy, they hit the green light.
Men began shouting, “Let’s go, let’s go.” They wanted out of those planes; never had they thought they would be so eager to jump. Lipton’s plane was “bouncing and weaving, and the men were yelling, ‘Let’s get out of here!’ ” They were only 600 feet up, the 40 mm antiaircraft tracers coming closer and closer. “About the time the tracers were popping right past the tail of the plane,” Lipton remembered, “the green light went on.” He leaped out. Pvt. James Alley was No. 2, Pvt. Paul Rogers No. 3. Alley had been told to throw his leg bag out the door and follow it into the night. He did as told and ended up flat on the floor with his head and half his body out of the plane, his bag dangling in the air, about to pull him in half. Rogers, who was “strong as a bull,” threw him out the door and jumped right behind.