Those engines had been extremely overstressed on previous missions and I knew it. So we thought the better part of valor was to jettison the load safely over the channel rather than maybe having to do it over England, safe or not. I instructed the bomb aimer (bombardier) to go back to the bomb bay, clip the fuse wires, and we salvoed the bombs safe in the channel. #4 held together under reduced power and we landed at home base without incident.

Sure enough, being the sqdn goat, I had to report to the CO. "Why didn't you bring those bombs back?" he said. At my debriefing I had reported my whole situation, but evidently he was not there or didn't read it. Anyway, so he could have the last word, he said, "you must remember, Lt. that those 500#ers cost the taxpayers 50cents a pound". My retort could only be "yes sir, no excuse sir". He said, "I'm keeping my eyes on you". I took that as a threat, but was dismissed nevertheless. Whew!

Another abort. While trying to join up on the leader one time at the assembly point, or splasher, #2 all of a sudden became over-stressed and crapped out by separating its nose case just forward of the cylinders and the whole nose case flew off with all the reduction gearing, prop shaft, propeller et al. All those planetary gears flew into the navigator's compartment and scared him heaps. I called the leader and told him I lost an engine. He asked, "What's the trouble, oil pressure or what?"

I said, no sir, "it just fell off". OK, abort, he said. We found out later that the prop assembly had come out of the overcast spinning down and had torn up an Englishman's brick barn, and they had traced the serial numbers, so the AAF had to pay him for a new barn.

We had an occasion one time to celebrate our group's 200^th mission

party. Our group was the first in the E.T.O. to achieve that mile stone. As a result, we were visited by a number of dignitaries, not the least of which were King George, Queen Mary, Princess Elizabeth (now Queen), princess Margaret, Eisenhower, Doolittle, et al. Since we had just received a new G model B-17 from the states, it was decided that Princess Elizabeth would christen it; which she did as the "Rose of York", by busting a champagne bottle on the nose turret. Sorrowfully, on the first mission of the Rose, she was shot up so badly she had to ditch in the cold north sea with the loss of all hands.

We had a big party on base that night, with the Glenn Miller band, who was stationed on our base. A lot of the guys over did it at that 200th celebration, because we were told we would be stood down the next day if a mission came down. That was not to be because one did come down and we had to go. There sure were a lot of guys sucking on 100% oxygen to clear out the cobwebs.

How the past can sometimes catch up with you. I went to a U.S.O. dance one night in Bedford. Met a cute little blond named Dorothy. We ran around together going to dances mostly until I was rotated back to the US. Had no further contact with her until around the first of this year (1998), when I got a letter from her. She had tracked me down through the Reserve Officers Association. She had spent her time working for the United Nations in Brussels until retirement. She never married and now lives in Paris France. We are now pen pals after 54 years of no contact. My wife is not the least bit jealous about this; in fact, she thinks it's funny.

Another funny, our bombardier and I got leave to go to London one time. We went to the PX there and he bought a brand new Eisenhower jacket. About an hour later, we were walking down the street and here comes this buzz bomb. When we heard the engine quit we ducked into an alleyway and he dove and spread eagled right in the middle of a big mud puddle ruining his new jacket. I thought I would bust a gut laughing. He didn't see any humor in the situation.

About bomb loads. We normally carried 12 500# demos or 12 500# incendiary clusters; depending on the target; except for the following. Once we were given a target in the lowlands. We were to bomb on a certain latitude-longitude, and our load consisted of 120 100# piano wire wrapped antipersonnel bombs from an altitude of only 5,000 feet. We were not told why. After we did our thing and headed back across the channel, we met hoards of C-47 transports dragging troop gliders going in. It developed that this was the Arnhem fiasco; where the ground troops were bottled up. This was one of the few missions we had in direct tactical support of our ground forces other than D-day Normandy and the St. Lo breakthrough.

A few years ago we flew our restored Confederate Air Force B-17G "Texas Raiders" to an air show in Fredricksburg, Texas in support of the Nimitz Museum.