Planes I Flew In

B 17: #149 "Winged Virgin"

October 5, 1944

Today's target was the airfield at Munster, Germany. It was all "flubbed up". We did a "360" on the bomb run and they were just waiting for us. The flak was all accurate and plenty of it. There were a lot of wounded men on this mission. It seemed that every ship around us was badly hit and had to feather at least one engine.

Of the twelve planes in our formation, only six remained -- and we took over the lead as we left the target area. Most of the damaged planes landed in Belgium or dropped back to follow us. We got "Buncher 22" again, and just "flew it in".

Bernie did a great job today, and he has only two more to go -- I'm still sweating it out. The Group had only one official loss today -- which surprised me.

"Winged Virgin" flew a total of 67 combat missions -- from August 3 to November

2. The records state, "returned ZOI"

A foot note: Lyle Grant, a ball turret gunner on Coy's crew (833rd.) wrote a self-published book," From Heaven Into Hell", describing this mission as well as his experiences as a German POW. Easy reading. They were flying in # 972, "Ula Lume". (We flew in that plane on the Merseburg mission on September 28th.) "War Stories of the 0 and W" includes a few excerpts from Lyle's book.

B 17: #998 "Miss Irish"

October 6, 1944

I finally went to Berlin (we called it "Big 'B"'). Our target was a tank plant. It was a clear day and the flak was extra thick as we commenced our run. We were alerted that enemy fighters were in the area. And sure enough, the Group behind us was jumped by FW 190's -- but thankfully, they skipped our Group.

I got a good look at the city (from 25,000 ft.) because our doors stuck and I had to crawl up to the nose to close them. We received hits in everyone of our engines as well as around our waist position. But thankfully, no one was hit. Bernie didn't want to feather one of the engines for fear of inviting enemy fighters oil just poured out of it.

We stayed in there, thanks to Bernie's flying.

England sure looked good to us today. It was a long haul out of Germany but we made it ... again, with no losses. We later learned that Belanger's radioman was killed on the bomb run. He lost his bombardier on the last mission. Rough!!

Our crew had our picture taken after we landed. Not sure why, but we enjoyed the moment. Bernie has one more to go -- maybe that's why they took it. I have a copy of it on the wall -- it is the only picture I have of us in our flying clothes. It brings back a lot of memories. (and we looked so young).

As for "Miss Irish": It flew a total of 66 combat missions -- from August 2 to April 20, 1945 -- the records show, FL, "forced landing".

Back | Top | Next