Bombs Away! by Jim Ganley The story was given to me second hand via my sister. According to what Alice had to say, our older brother Bob had been riding his bicycle through New Boston during the Second World War when he heard a series of explosions coming from somewhere near Joe English Mountain. The noise was so intense that it appeared the bombs were heading his way, so he left the area as quickly as he could, never to return. Two decades later, a little research on my part led me to discover that the Army Air Corps had operated a bombing range on the site of what is now New Boston Satellite Tracking Station. The range had been used by bombers and fighters training out of Manchester’s Grenier Field and, at least officially, had been in active use until some time shortly after the Korean War. Pilots stationed at Grenier on their way to the European Theater needed to train for the inevitable air combat with the German Luftwaffe. It was here in the skies over New Boston, NH that Eighth Air Force pilots honed their skills with the new Norden bomb site, making precision bombing doable. Prior to this, a mission carried out by B-17s might have their bombs scattered over an area of several square miles. Precision bombing would make it more likely that the raids would destroy the munitions factory and fuel depot while minimizing collateral damage to churches, hospitals and schools. When I told my friend Mike Frederick about this, he came up with what seemed like a crazy idea. “We oughtta go out there and poke around to see what’s left over from all those training missions of long ago.” he said, rifling through the top drawer of his desk and pulling out a topographical map. Viewing the map we noticed a series of concentric rings, the purpose of which was to give elevations as well as directions. The other aspect drawing our attention was that the area we sought to explore was cordoned off on the map, warning that the land enclosed within the borders was restricted government property, and trespassing was not allowed. We didn’t care about that at all, instead trying to figure out a way to get into the place. For starters, the site of the old bombing range was about 15 miles from where we lived. Complicating matters, Mike and I would need to approach the place via a cross country trek so as not to be confronted by military guards. That’s why Mike had pulled out the topographical map. That’s why I would need to finagle us a ride part way there from my mother. “Why do you need a ride to New Boston?” she wanted to know, drying two dinner plates and propping them up in the dish rack. I did my best to make our reason a believable one. “Oh, uh......It’s just a hike we’re taking, Ma. That’s all.” This worked. Next Saturday morning she was dropping us off by the side of Route 13 in New Boston. This necessitated a hike of several miles through the woods, coming in from the northwest to the rear of Joe English Mountain. We thought it would be a simple matter to scale down the face of Joe English and into the midst of WW2 History. Not quite. First a bit about Joe English Mountain. On clear days it was visible from Derryfield Park to the southwest beyond the Uncanoonucs. Resembling the profile of a sperm whale, it stood apart from the surrounding hilly, mountainous terrain. The local history may be more legend than fact. A native Pennacook nicknamed Joe English had befriended the nearby colonists and led a group of Red Coat British troops on a chase through the woodlands as they pursued him over the lip of Joe English where they fell to their deaths down the 1,100 ft sheer face, the very same sheer face which Mike and I planned to descend, though hopefully we could avoid the fate befallen those Red Coats. Mike and I emerged from the woods onto a granite ledge overlooking the Bombing Range. We were aware of the wind whispering through the surrounding evergreens. Looking over the precipice took our breath away, and off to the southeast the white domes of the tracking station seemed to erupt from the forest, set before a backdrop of clear, blue sky and brilliant sunlight. But that’s not the first thing that drew our eye. There was a large pond down below, perhaps a mile away. Scattered across the surface were what appeared to have been a half dozen motor vehicles. I used my field glasses to obtain a better view and was amazed. I handed the binoculars to Mike but didn’t say anything. He held them up to his eyes, looked in the direction of the pond, and was stunned. “Armored personnel carriers......,” he uttered, his jaw dropping open, and his eyes scanning the rest of the surrounding area below. “They’ve been set up in the pond as targets! This must have been a major operation during the war.” He was right about that. World War 2 was a must win conflict and failure was not an option. Not wanting to waste time, we began climbing down the face of Joe English, making sure to be careful not to fall. Eleven hundred feet to the bottom would most likely not be survivable. There was a dirt road near the base which we made our way along, having no idea where we were heading. I noticed an aging wooden sign nailed to a tree. It read: DANGER US ARMY BOMBING RANGE We came around a bend in the road and found a house in a state of extreme disrepair. It appeared to have been a generic farm house, typical of New Boston, but this one was different. It had been hit by a bomb and blown up. Shards of metallic shrapnel littered the immediate vicinity, and not too far down the road was an army tank which had gotten its turret blown off. “THIS IS GREAT!” I said to no one in particular, and all around, wherever we looked, were the rusted out casings of exploded bombs and the spent bullets from machine guns. Also in the mix we could see the fins of bombs half buried in the ground, bombs that had apparently failed to detonate on impact. We unsuccessfully attempted to extricate several of them, digging around the point of impact and, in at least a couple of instances, kicking them in a futile effort to dislodge them from where that had been resting for the past quarter century. Later that morning Mike and I sat in a clearing eating the sandwiches we had brought from home. My ears detected a muffled roar heading our way. We both looked up, coming face to face with a Navy A4 Skyhawk fighter-bomber. The jet aircraft came right in along the deck as though it was preparing to drop a cannister of napalm, and a microsecond later, was gone. “Hey! That’s the same.....” I shouted, realizing what we had seen. “I know,” Mike said, interrupting me in mid sentence, “It’s the same A4 we’ve been seeing parked on the tarmac at Sanders Associates at Grenier Field.” What we did not know was that Sanders had a government contract to research electronic warfare. That A4 Skyhawk was part of the program, and was using the supposedly abandoned bombing range for research and development purposes. Apparently the bombing range was not as abandoned as the public had been led to believe. Meanwhile, back along that dirt road we had been following, we heard what sounded like motor vehicles racing toward our position. Without saying a word, Mike jerked himself to attention and sprinted off the road and into the woods as though he’d been spooked. When I eventually caught up to him, he told me that it was possible tracking station personnel were coming after us. “That A4 pilot had to have seen us, sitting as we were in that clearing. He’s probably radioed our position into headquarters!” I was skeptical. “Yeah, right! You’ve been seeing too many war movies, Mike!” But my skepticism turned to belief when we saw two U.S. Air Force jeeps hugging the dirt road and coming to a screeching halt at precisely the same location where we had been having lunch. So off we ran clambering over large boulders, our objective being to get back up to a safe elevation in the event that these military police were accompanied by K9 units, which we soon found out they were. As Mike and I sprinted past the tree where that bombing range sign had been nailed, I reached up, yanking it from its anchoring point, and slung it under one arm. Mike failed to grasp this, “What are ya, nuts?” “A souvenir,” I explained as we scampered over the lichens encrusted granite ledges and made our way around to the Eastern slope of Joe English. We sat there catching our breath. In the distance could be heard barking dogs and someone speaking through a public address system. “WE KNOW YOU’RE UP THERE, FELLAS! COME ON OUT AND NOBODY GETS HURT!” Off we ran once more, this time most likely pursued by attack dogs, but our elevation would be keeping us out of harm’s way, or so we hoped. Racing past a barbed wire fence intended to keep out trespassers, there was a sign posted. This one was different. It read: NO TRESPASSING MILITARY RESERVATION AREA LITTERED WITH UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE Mike gasped. “Hey, we were just.....” “I know! I know! Let’s get the hell outta here, Mike, while we still have arms and legs!” Still fearful of capture, we chose to stay off the roads and instead took a cross country route through a very inhospitable landscape, at least half of which was wetlands and swamps. Eventually we followed some power lines which crossed St. Anselm Dr. not far from the college. It was nearly 6 p.m. by the time Mike and I got home, tired, hungry, thirsty, and bedraggled, coated from head to toe with mud and pond scum. My mother took one look at me and made me undress on our porch so as not to soil her floors, walls, and carpets. I took off my soggy hiking boots and poured water from them onto the sidewalk below. Four showers later, I was passably clean. To this day, that old U.S. ARMY BOMBING RANGE sign hangs in the hallway of my Bow, New Hampshire residence. The site where we found it has been cleaned up, the munitions removed, and now serves as a recreation area, though the satellite tracking station continues to remain a restricted area. My brother Bob used to call it the missile tracking station. A woman whose husband was stationed there tried to correct him. “Satellite tracking,” she said, “NOT missile tracking. There’s a difference.” My brother laughed out loud. “Oh, I know the difference between a satellite and a missile. In the end.......it’ll be a missile they’ll be tracking. HAHAHAHAHAHAH!” Over forty years later my son Joe and I visited the New Hampshire Aeronautical Museum at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. The curator gave a presentation on the Norden Bomb Site and explained to us that its use had been perfected at the bombing range in New Boston. So far, so good.....until he attempted to tell us that real munitions were never used. Apparently he was not as well versed in local history as perhaps he should have been. I attempted to correct him, explaining about the warning signs and destruction we had seen, but he refused to so much consider it. “Oh, no!” he said, paternalistically, “They would never do thaaat. It’s too dangerous.” But nowhere near as dangerous as flying an upressurized four engine bomber over the North Sea from Coventry into the unforgiving depths of der Fatherland. I ran this past the original museum curator, and he went off like a tactical nuclear warhead. “Revisionist history,” was his take on it. “He should have known about the bombing range.” In the photo below is a 2,000 lb bomb unearthed from that site in 2010, a case of experts not knowing as much as perhaps they should.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 22:53:59 +0000
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