London, something we were not supposed to do, but it was certainly a pretty sight. Received the air medal after this mission. 7. Darmstadt, Germany - 09/13/44 - Bombed our secondary target because the primary (Stuttgart) was completely hidden by smoke pots plus our own vapor trails. We hit a railroad yard, blowing up tracks and causing what must have been considerable damage. I flew the tail and was sick most of the time due to some bad food I'd eaten the night before. As we took off I had to blink "W" in Morse code on the Aldis Lamp since we were deputy lead and the other planes had to form on us. We saw neither flak nor fighters during the mission which made us quite happy since it was rumored that the German air force was returning to life. Forty four bombers had been shot down the day before by fighters and we were not eager to share their fate. 8. Ghent area, Holland - 09/17/44 - We took off in the daytime for a change, climbed to 11,000 feet, and flew lead plane in a six-ship formation. Crossing the English coast at 9 AM we dropped thirty demolition bombs on the extreme tip of a peninsula at 9:30 and were back over the English coast at 10 o'clock. I flew the waist because the co-pilot was beginning to fly tail as Formation Control Officer of our lead plane. Just after we released our bombs we made a 180 degree turn to the left and I had a good opportunity to see where the bombs were falling and to see them strike the group [sic] in a close train. Both Sendek and Bohyer no longer flew with us so I had the entire waist to myself. Because our targets were flak guns along the coast we had a flak-less mission due to the fact that all the German gunners had gone in their foxholes to hide from the bombs. No enemy aircraft were sighted so our mission was really a milk-run. Since we were flying so low none of us bothered to wear an oxygen mask. LT Moller flew with some other crew and we had a captain as bombardier for that one day. Later, after we had landed at the base we saw several hundred British bombers towing huge gliders over the Channel s that British paratroopers could land in Holland. 9. Bremen, Germany - 09/26/44 - The CQ got us all up at 7:15 AM for 8:30 briefing. At the briefing we discovered our target was to be a tank factory in the southeastern section of Bremen. We took off at noon with me in the tail, Boyce in the waist, Tony in the radio room, and Red on the flight deck. We took a few hours to assemble and at last we started out over the North Sea for Germany. When we were above the inlet to Bremen we turned in over land to begin our bomb run. The flak started coming up as we drew near to the city and some of it was certainly too close for comfort! None of it hit us as we went over the target, dropped our load of incendiary bombs and then turned off the target. Soon after leaving the target area we happened to notice a B17 in another formation off our left wing that had a thin trail of gray smoke coming out of its right inboard engine. As we were discussing the smoke over interphone, and explosion broke the right wing in two and flipped the plane on its side, causing it to go into a spin. It exploded again, this time sending pieces in all directions across the sky. The right wing tip which was in fire went spinning down in slow circles, the entire tail section had been separated |
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