I’m writing you from the hospital now, I got a little scraped up on our last mission. I can’t go into much detail about the mission. I know I haven’t written you much the past year or so since deployment, but I am doing alright. I managed to become a bombardier on a B-17. I’ve flown twenty-nine of my thirty missions in my time here but that last one was one of my worst.
We took off from our base and started to fly the first leg of the mission to rally point alpha, where we met up with the rest of our squadron. We were about fifteen minutes to target when the first wave of air resistance came. Luckily we had our escorts, we lost a couple fortresses and a few B-25’s but we were alright. Our fighters had to turn back after that though, they were running low on fuel and recon scouts showed that the next area wasn’t as heavily occupied.
Five minutes to target and I could see the “Jerrys” approaching from ahead. I called out their position over the radio and I could hear the steady pulse of the .50 cal machine guns tearing through the air. One of the fighters came so close I could nearly make out the pilot’s expression. As I started to shoot from one of the guns in the nose I watched as the tracers worked their way towards an enemy plane and then made contact. One after the other, bullets went into the tail of the plane and I watched as it plummeted towards the earth some 40,000 feet below. The last of the enemy fighters was taken care of but they managed to take out three of our bombers.
We were now next in line to lead the squadron towards the target and as we trudged forward, only three engines running, I thought to myself “two and a half minutes to go”. I relayed my final course corrections to the pilot before taking control of the plane and then heard a sudden crack. I looked around and I saw a black cloud below us, and then another but it was a little above us, yet still close enough to feel it shake the plane. The Germans had set up flak cannons and were dialing in our altitude. It was at this point I could feel the fear from those inside the plane.
As the flak drew closer and closer to us we could hear the slight plink of pieces of metal bouncing off the skin of the plane. It was at this point I had to decide, evasive maneuvers to avoid as much flak as possible but risk missing the target, or fly straight through and hope for the best. I made my decision, we would fly straight through and hope to hit the target on the first attempt.
“Ten seconds to target”, down two engines and the ball turret operator isn’t responding. “Five…four…three…two…one”, I couldn’t feel myself flip the switch but I could hear the call echo over the radio, “Bombs away!” “Here’s one from Uncle Sam!” The next thing I heard was “Evasive maneuvers!” and then the sudden crack of a shell exploding right in front of our plane. I don’t remember much of what happened next, I was drifting in and out of consciousness.
I awoke just before landing to the screams of the captain yelling to the crew chief to crank down the landing gear, this was quickly followed up by a harsh landing. We hit the runway with a flat right front tire which caused us to dip and turn off the runway. Upon stopping I was dragged out of the plane and onto a stretcher. As I was being carted off to a medical tent I saw a plane come in with one engine and no gear. The pilot put the plane down as gently as he could but it was no use, the plane just exploded into a large fireball and you could feel the heat from five hundred or so feet away. I passed out again after that and didn’t awake for some time.
When I did wake up, it was to our pilot who was nursing his broken arm. He told me that a piece of flak came through the side of the plane and hit his arm. He also told me that of the one hundred planes that took off earlier that day eighty seven returned relatively safe. He also told me that we had lost one of the waist gunners and the ball turret operator. They were only nineteen years old. I had some time to reflect on that mission while I was in the hospital. I thought about what might have happened if we hadn’t flown straight in, maybe those two would still be alive today. But maybe we would have missed our target and would have had to go back the next day with more planes and a greater chance of failure. Later that day the commanding officer came by to let me know that we did “a hell of a job”, and that the target was destroyed. I thanked him and asked “At what cost?” He looked at me puzzled and said “Today you bombed one of the Germans most prominent munitions factories, you and your squadron just saved thousands of lives, now you think to yourself, was it worth it?” I did, I pondered that question for a while before coming to the realization that it wasn’t worth it. But nineteen year old kids were laying down their lives for it because it had to be done.
The doc says I shouldn’t be in here too much longer and that as soon as I’m all healed I can resume my duty as a bombardier. But please don’t worry about me I’m doing fine now and I promise I’ll get back to you one way or another.