| from the plane and went floating down in a lazy glide which caused it to drift from side to side. Only two parachutes were
observed to open, one landing in the water while the other managed to strike land along the coast of Germany. It had been a beautiful sight but so
tragic to witness. Four Me-410's were reported to have hit the formation behind us., but we didn't see any sign of them ourselves. The temperature
was -40 at 26000 which made all of us slightly cool during the flight. The tail windows frosted up and two guns froze so stiff that they could not
be fired. We were deputy lead and almost became lead when the leader had engine trouble, but it cleared up so he continued to lead. One plane had
its hydraulic system shot away so it ran off the far end off the runway when we landed back at base. No one on that plane was hurt since the B17
merely tore through a hedge and stopped in the middle of a field. We found a flak hole on the to of the plane just in front of the upper turret. A
piece must have come from a shell that exploded above and in front of our plane, gone through the skin of the ship, and been stopped by the green
cloth lining inside. We were never able to find the piece even after a thorough search. 10. Nurnberg, Germany - 10/03/44 - We got out of bed at 2:45 for 3:30 briefing where we learned the target was to be Giebelstadt, but when the formation did fly over it the bomb racks on the lead plane wouldn't work so we all had to fly on to the secondary target. It was completely covered by clouds so the bombs had to be dropped by PFF which gave us no idea how our results were. Our target was a ME 262 jet propulsion airplane field. A piece of flak hit our number one propeller, but the only damage was a slight nick in the blade. I helped Boyce throw chaff out of the chute on the bomb run so didn't get the chance to see where the bombs fell or the amount of damage they produced. We were on oxygen about eight hours since we went to 19000 feet to form and did not let down until we crossed the English Channel on the way back. It was -36 degrees at 26,0000 yet none of us were cold. There was light flak, but no enemy fighters were seen thanks to our P51 and 47 protection. 11. Mainz, Germany - 10/09/44 - Had a late briefing at 8:00, then went out to the plane to get everything all ready for the takeoff. Took off at 11:00 and circled the field until the formation was complete, then we took an eastern heading for the coast. During the entire mission there was 10/10 cloud coverage over the ground which forced us to go up through several layers of clouds on our ascent while everyone sat with the heart in their mouth. We reached our target, a marshalling yard at Mainz, and release our load of five 1000 pound bombs using PFF instruments. At that time we discovered our instruments were acting up and could not be rusted to take us back to the field. It wasn't due to the flak since that had been very poor, being either far below or way behind the formation. Our number one and four engines began to give us some trouble so we were forced to drop behind the formation at Brussels and come back alone. The air protection from 51s and 47s was so good that we didn't feel at all afraid to continue back by ourselves and we were out of enemy territory anyway. The ceiling was 500 feet at the base upon our return and we had a heck of a time coming in without instruments, but we made it somehow. Our plane had been deputy lead with me in the tail position. |
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