| brought them all back safely. Got up at 2:10, briefed at 3:30, took off at 6:30, left the English coast at 9 o'clock. We flew
over the North Sea until we were near the target, a marshalling yard, then we went on our bomb run over the city, dropped our bombs, and went out
right of Kiel which had several dozen smoke pots planted all around the city, all of them going full blast. We made a left turn and went back over
the North Sea back to England. Zirbel said he saw a Me 109, but no one else saw it so I doubt it. Could have bombed visually except for one little
cloud that settled over the target just as we began our bomb run. When we landed back at the base S-2 took a photograph of the entire crew with
Colonel Huglin standing next to Unger. Temperature was -38 at 23000. No one put on their flak suits since we didn't run into any flak. Hit English
coast at 1:55 and landed at 2:20 PM. 16. Metz, Germany - 11/09/44 - This really shouldn't have been considered a mission, but no on objected when it was counted as one and credit given. Got up at 2 AM, briefed at 3:00, took off at 6:00 as lead plane of the whole 486th wing. Were supposed to bomb some concrete forts near Metz which had been holding up the advance of General Patton's tanks. It was to be a visual run only, even though we had PFF equipment aboard. Clouds obscured the target so we did a 180 degree turn and went back for a second run only to find it still cloudy. We didn't have enough gas to go on the secondary so had to return to the base with our bombs still on the racks. 38 planes, each with six 1000 pound bombs, making a total of 228000 pounds for ordnance and armament to unload! The reason we got credit for the mission was because we crossed 6 degrees east and had seen a few bursts of flak, low and off to the right. Temperature was -48 degrees at 23,000 feet which was a bit chilly. 17. Bingen, Germany - 11/27/44 - Got out of bed at 5:30, briefed at :30, took off at 8:45, hit target at 12:31, back over base at 3:00. We led the 486th to bomb a railroad marshalling yard in an effort to check the shipping of supplies and men to the Western front. The bombing was done by PFF through 10/10 cloud coverage, but we never found out how we did. Both bombardier and mickey thought we hit it square in the middle. All bombs left the racks when they should have, something new for us. We didn't see any enemy fighters during the flight thanks to our wonderful friendly fighter support. Several smoke trails could be seen from the air as the Germans launched two V-2 bombs against England. The actual bombs themselves were going much too fast for us to see. Flak was light and low over the target, temperature was -44 degrees at 24,000 feet. All planes returned safely. 18. Merseberg, Germany - 12/06/44 - Woke up at 3 o'clock, briefed at 4:00, should have taken off at 7:00, but stood around until 8:00 due to weather conditions around the base. Bombed our target at 12:10 and were back over the base at 4:16. None of us felt very happy when we discovered the mission was to an oil plant at Merseberg because we had had a rough time there on November 2nd. The battle damage had been so bad then that |
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