A bunch of guys were holed up in the bachelor officer’s quarters, which was a Nissin hut enjoying a good sleep at a bomber base. Sleeping soundly with the only noise being that of the old potbellied stove making that easy snuffling sound, and with the pinup of Rita Hayworth on the wall keeping us company.

A Nissin hut is a corrugated sheet iron building with a cross section resembling the upper half of a circle. The interior was very similar to the old cattle ranch bunkhouses of West Texas, though they were built of adobe or logs.

These guys were members of bomber crews. Most were in their late teens or early 20s and not particularly mad at anybody, but had volunteered to come over here to do whatever had to be done.

Then the peace was interrupted by a harsh rapping on the door, and that mean old Sergeant came in and turned on the lights and started naming ranks and names. "Breakfast at 0300, briefing at 0330". Then came a lot of bitchin' and cussing' from those of us named, and sighs of relief from those who were not.

We staggered outside and slopped cold water on our faces and struggled down to the officer's mess, where we had a breakfast (if you could call it that) of powdered eggs, powered milk and rutabagas (ugh).

Next, we reported to Squadron Headquarters where we were loaded into half-tracks and sent to the personal equipment building in order to collect our oxygen masks, flack suits and sheepskins etc (combat gear). Then, were hauled to the briefing room.

First guy to get up and talk was the Group Chaplain who gave us a lot of sky pilot talk, (which on each briefing, I always thought was not really needed 'cause I have never met a combat soldier who was an atheist). Next, came the weather guy who showed us a map of the weather over the continent. Since we had to go anyway, what real use was that, though I guess it had some value. The next briefer was the intelligence officer, who mapped out the heavy flak and fighter concentrations. Then came the real nitty gritty. The Group Operations officer immediately exposed the mission map which showed an appropriately colored blood-red piece of yarn leading from the assembly point near our base, northeast over the North Sea to the Baltic Sea, then to a point due north of Berlin Germany and then south to Berlin. (Lottsa groans then).

Then he became more explicit and told us the bombing target was the intersection of two streets in downtown Berlin; that being the intersection of Unter den Linden and the Whilhelm strausse, which was the Headquarters of the German Air Ministry. Then he passed out "Flimsys" which were mission detailed codes, times, coordinates, frequencies, etc to the pilots and were written on flimsy paper which we were to eat if shot down.

Then we were dismissed and half-tracked to our respective aircraft. By the time we got there, the crew chief and his men had checked the engines and aircraft for airworthiness, the armament people had loaded the bomb load which consisted of 12-500lb HE explosives, as well as the top secret NORDEN bombsight. Our gunners installed their 50cal Brownings and boresighted them in. Now all we had to do was lie on the tarmac and wait for a flare from the tower to get aboard. Radio silence was mandatory, so all actions would be controlled by visual signals from the tower.

Soon the code of the day flared from the tower for us to get loaded and start engines, which we did. We checked magnetos, and preflighted the systems among other things.

Next flare to come was to begin taxi to the active runway. When that happened, we taxied and lined up staggered on the runway awaiting the takeoff flare. When that came, the group leader took off and we followed at 20 second intervals depending on our GI watches which had been synchronized by a time hack by our operations officer at the briefing. A time hack was a countdown by seconds to a predetermined hour-minute of local time. He may say,"The hack will be at 0405". Everyone pulled the stem on his GI wristwatch and set it to 0405. "5,4,3,2,1,hack". At the word "hack", all stems were pushed in and all watches were started on the same time.

When our wheels were in the well, we immediately took a turn to the left to try to cut off the leader so we could get into position on his right wing at the assembly point and take up our position as high squadron lead. We did a few orbits and when all aircraft were in position, started climbing out on a NE course. When we reached 10,000 feet, we donned our oxygen masks as per regulations.

When we started our turn to south toward Berlin, we found that though the bombing altitude had been briefed for 30,000 ft. our bombardier couldn't see downward because of the contrails left by the proceeding groups. Contrails are a phenomena that occurs because the emissions of internal combustion engines emit hydrogen and unburned oxygen that converts to water vapor which at the extremely low temperatures of our environment immediately condenses. Therefore, to give the bombardier downward visibility, we climbed to 32,000 ft. The outside air temperature gauge at that altitude read -50°F. At that temperature, if a person touches metal, such as removing a glove to clear a gun or whatever, his flesh immediately freezes to it and the only way to get loose is to leave your skin on it.

At about 60 miles from the target, we began getting enemy fighter attacks. However, our little friends (p-51s & p-47s) took care of them pretty well, along with our onboard gunners. We lost a couple of ships.

Soon we began getting very heavy flak. The biggest we had ever experienced on prior missions was 88cal. This was much bigger and had been reported by intelligence as 120-150caliber. I believed it.

The ship on our right wing got a direct hit just aft of the trailing edge of his wing and the rest of his aircraft just shredded; he hung there a second and went down. That must have made an impression on our ball turret gunner, because that's where the ship got hit. He told me later that he wasn't gonna' go no more, even if it meant a dishonorable discharge and Leavenworth. Last I saw of him he was driving a truck and had been busted back to Private, but was a happy kid.

About that time we reached the initial point to begin the bomb run. The good part about a bomb run is that since the enemy then knows where you are headed, all they gota do is fill the sky in that area with iron so fighters of both sides leave you alone since flak knows no allegiance. The bad part is that from the IP on you have to hold a constant course, altitude, airspeed etc and can take no evasive action whatsoever in order to enable the NORDEN bombsight and bombardier to do their thing. This may take from 5 to 8 minutes depending on the target and you are extremely vulnerable.

Anyway, back to the story. We got a flak hit in #2 engine and feathered it. Then got another into #4 and could not feather because the oil system was shot out. Anyway, we were about that time over the target and dropped the bomb load. Feathering is a condition where a dead engine's propeller blade leading edges can be rotated into the relative wind lessening drag by stopping windmilling.

Then it became obvious that we could not keep up with the remainder of the group for mutual protection, so we decided we would be dog meat unless we got outa there. So we did a wing over and started diving for the deck in our crippled condition headed northwest for the North Sea. Only problem was that since that old #4 had no oil, it began seizing up, windmilling as it was and causing such vibration it was impossible to read the instruments. We found ourselves over the Kiel Canal where we begin to get all kinds of unfriendly fire, tracers included. So we tried to take more evasive action, and tried to dive even more steeply. The air speed was way over the red line, but the increased speed caused the old #4 to break her prop shaft and to quit trying to pull the dry cylinders through. That was a relief. Then it appeared we should try to pull it out of its death dive and it took a lot of effort, but we did it.

We were tooling along a road headed SW at about 200 ft when we overtook a German Soldier on a motorcycle with a sidecar. Before I knew it, the bombardier cut loose on him with his twin 50s and spun him into a ditch. I called him and asked, "Was that really necessary"? His only reply was, "I hate Germans".

Not long after that, we got a call from the tail gunner, "Bogies (enemy fighters) at 6 o'clock". We had previously asked for friendly fighter support from Foxhole Able, (P-51 little friends) but they told us they had orders to not descend below 10,000 ft., so that was no help. So, luckily we were very near the North Sea and there was a very low cloud layer just off the coast, which we ducked into and evaded them.

At about that time I asked the navigator how far it was to Malmo, Sweden, a neutral country; where we could be interned and get out of this hellish war. He said that it was just as near to the English coast. Found out later he was wrong and it was much closer to Malmo from where we were. Too bad. I had known some repatriated guys who had been interned in Sweden, and they had some great stories about skiing up in the mountains in the morning, and later going down to the beach and playing with the pretty blonde, Swedish girls.

As we lost the steam we had generated in our hellish dive, it became apparent that we were getting dangerously low on airspeed as we went SW over the North Sea heading where we thought England would be. As things became more critical, we began throwing all kinds of unnecessary weight overboard; guns, ammo, personal equipment, and anything that had weight that was not required for flight. The airspeed stabilized at about 115mph with 1/3 wing flaps down, or about 10mph above stalling speed in that configuration as well as we could calculate. The remaining two engines running (#s 1 & 3) were at full power.

It was at about this time while we were sculling just above the wave tops, that the ball turret gunner gave a call and said "Lt. do you really need me down here anymore?" I said "sorry about that, I forgot. Get the heck outa there and jettison the ball turret when you do". The waves were about to lick his butt because we knew you could get a little lift from ground effect. Or should I say water effect in this case?

After forever, or so it seems, the welcome sight of the good old English coast was sighted. The bad news was that the red low fuel remaining lights began flashing for the good engines, which indicated that only 10 minutes or so of fuel remained. This would not have been a problem, except the flight engineer-gunner reported in his damage report early on that the fuel transfer system had got hit and was inoperative. This system allowed transfer of the fuel in the inoperative engine tanks to be pumped to the tanks serving the other operative engine fuel tanks.

However, I have learned to never give up, and the Lord was with us because just when we crossed the beach, there was a lovely RAF fighter field in view just to the right. Hot dog! We barreled on in and set her down. As we rolled out, that old troublesome #4 propeller just fell off when the airspeed (therefore the drag) decreased. The RAF guys were quite impressed with our old Battle-Wagon. The RAF only bombed at night in their fabric covered bombers and said we couldn't do it in the daytime. But we did. By bombing at night, they did not get the flak and fighter opposition that we did, nor the bombing accuracy. They just bombed cities in general, where we bombed specific strategic targets, factories, rail yards, for instance. One good result of this was while we bombed a target in a town somewhere, often they would come over the same area at night and just area-bomb to keep the German's constricted and slave labor awake so they were not very efficient at the factories. Anyway, our old ship had over 200 flak patches on it from prior missions, which seemed to impress them.

Finally, I got in touch with our home base and they sent a bomber to pick us up and take us back to base. They also sent a maintenance crew to repair our airplane. After it was repaired, I and the crew went back and flew it home with the mechanics.

Some of the guys on this mission had seen us go down and figured we'd had it. So some of our gear and uniforms were missing when we got back. We finally got some of it back, but not all.

Some medals were passed out for that gaggle, but so what?