Crew 67 – Assigned 755th Squadron – October 14, 1943

March 18th, 1944
The crew made mission #4 to Friedrichshafen, Germany. He writes It was the longest one we have made yet. We stopped some flak on the way back. A piece cut my ammo track in half (I have it hanging on the wall in my man cave, dad had saved it and mounted it on a plaque) just about three feet behind me. We Made a crash landing. A tire blown out by flak, right gear. We landed and didn’t know it was flat. As soon as we touched down, the air craft veered to the right and we went off the runway out into the grass. As soon as the aircraft started on its rampage, Sgt. Joe Tomich jumped out of the right waist window with his parachute.

As soon as the ship stopped, Willi and Red jumped on top and over me and made a head long dive out the right waist window. We all hi balled it for the open field. Thought it would blow up next. We counted heads as they came out of the ship, we were one short. Then we saw Joe walking down the runway with his chute I his hands. Webster got a hunk of flak in his heater suit rheostat, right under his seat.

(Apparently they suffered enough damage to have the plane laid up a number of days. On the 19th he said they had a tire on the bird but the left Tokyo tank got hit by flak. They had about 10 holes. On the 20th, 21st, 22nd they had some down time and went to London, got drunk and chased girls. On the 23rd he says) they went on mission #5 to Osnabruck. Slept all day on the 24th, painted some bombs on our score board. I took some pictures of flak and our formations. (didn’t quite understand that last line?) On the 25th It is a beautiful day today. Lt Melton test hopped Paddlefoot. I made my self a flak helmet (which I still have), its OK. They had a dance tonight. Got cleaned up and went to the dance, didn’t like it , came back.

(Courtesy: Gregory Matson)

English Weather Was Our Enemy
2ADA Journal June 1980 Vol 19 No 2

It was just an airfield at Bourges, France (target map at right) on our 28th mission, 4 June 1944. Everything went as planned, take off OK, assembly and flight good. No flak or fighters to speak of. We dropped our 200 frag bombs and headed back to England.

Our troubles began as soon as we hit the English coast. We ran smack into a fog bank that covered the entire island. We could no longer fly formation when we hit the overcast, so we split up. Each aircraft was at its own discretion to find their way back to the home base.

Our pilots couldn’t see a thing in the overcast, so they elected to go down to 300 feet, and possibly have better visibility. This was a little better, except we were flying in the land where they grew thousands of barrage balloons. Also, England had some pretty high hills. Our nose gunner, S/Sgt Joe Tomich was the pilot’s eyes. Joe would call out the hills and obstructions ahead of us. It went like this for over an hour as we listened in on the inter-phone. “Pull up just a little Pappy. Looks good, better pull up about ten feet. OK hold it. Come down slowly… That’s good. It is getting thicker Pappy, I can’t see too far ahead. Wow! That was close. Pappy, maybe you had better get up higher, I can’t see a thing anymore.” Lt. Melton agreed, so he proceeded to climb to 14,000 feet. On the way up it was almost solid. We held our breath and caged our eyeballs.

Red, T/Sgt Vernon E. Goring and I were standing by the right waist window, when out of the fog came this B-24 from our right side. We were on a collision course. I thought, Oh my God!, we are going to collide. In seconds it was all over with. The B-24 went right over the top of us, so close I could have spit on it. Red called our pilot and told him what had happened. No one up front had seen it.

The crew was ordered to get ready to bail out. Lt Vogel in another B-24 had cracked up on the runway, and they had to move it before anyone else could land. The ground controller told everyone to hold their pattern. What pattern, there was none. No one knew where anyone was. Lt. Melton told them we can’t stay up here for long. We are running low on fuel and may have to abandon ship, if we don’t collide with another aircraft first.

He called our radio operator, T/Sgt George Bahner and told him to start shooting flares. No one told George what color, so the first one was red. When that flare went off it reflected from the clouds and fog. It appeared as an explosion to me. I immediately assumed the aircraft was on fire. I just knew we had had it now for sure. Fear told me to get the hell out. I started to climb out the right waist window. Red was standing by my side and grabbed my chute harness and pulled me back. The he told me what had happened.

At last we received instructions to land. It was raining and the runway was wet. We came in a little hot and as Lt. Melton applied the brakes we started to skid sideways, then went the opposite direction. The plane was snaking and sliding down the runway. We flashed by Lt. Vogel’s disabled plane as our pilot got ours under control. We taxied off the runway and parked it. What an alleviation to be back on the ground.