AN EIGHTH AIR FORCE BOMBER STATION, England--As (Major Newman is the son of Mrs. Charles Newman of Virginia Apartments, Knoxville, Tenn. Before entering the Army Air Forces in September, 1941, he was a student and member of the football team at the University of Tennessee. A veteran of service in Trinidad, he has completed more than 25 Eighth Air Force attacks against the Nazi's most vital targets. He is squadron commander of a unit of the 486th Bomb. Group. He is a member of the famed Third Bombardment Division, cited by the President for its epic England-Africa shuttle bombing of the Messerschmitt plants at Regensburg, Germany. Major Newman holds the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters and the Distinguished Flying Cross.) I was command pilot of the group when we attacked the air- field at Wiesbaden, Germany. We led in the B-17 Flying Fortress, "Sonny Boy." Before the day was ended "sonny boy" had matured a good deal. Just as we were about to begin the bomb run, we caught a bad hit from German anti-aircraft guns below. The explosion knocked out two engines, damaged the radio set, severed control cables and ruined the navigational equipment. It surprised us all that the Fort still flew, but there we were still leading the group. The ruined radio eliminated all chance of transferring the lead, so we had to continue at the front of the formation. The bombardier took over the plane and pin-pointed his target. His bombs were right in there too. They covered the buildings and runways of the enemy fighter base. Once we were out of the field of enemy fire, we found that the radio operator, Staff Sergeant William D. Orms of Miami, Fla., had spliced the radio wires together in a good enough fashion so that we could talk to the rest of the planes but could not hear their answer. I turned the lead over to the deputy lead plane, and we flew on alone. The trip back to our base in Britain was impossible for the shot-up bomber, so I had the crew search for a field in allied Belgium on which to land the aircraft. Alert navigation located a suitable field, and we set the plane down. The mission had been a little more exciting than we had bargained for, but the entire crew was safe and one more of Hitler's Luftwaffe bases had felt the sting of American bombs. -30-