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Navigator's Diary: 487th Bombardment Group, B17
by Norman K. Andrew |
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2/6/45 Mission #25 I wonder if there is any weather in which they don't fly in the ETO? Up at 2:00 again this morning. Target: Hold your hat! The Bohlen Synthetic Oil Refinery. Right in the center of the Merseburg-Lutz-Kendorf-Ziest areas. But - visual only. Dresden, secondary and Chemnitz, last resort. We led the high. Took off in the dark, as usual, at 0705. Supposed to assemble at 17,500. Clouds finally forced us down to 7,000. Went in over Holland. Toured over every flak area between here and the target. Bohlen was 10/10ths - Dresden had cover to about 30,000 - so we hit Chemnitz PFF - two divisions - 1st and 3rd. The 2nd hit Magdeburg. After leaving the target we received word not to try to come home the northern way but to go south. About that time the lead's Mickey went out and our VHF was out. So the low took over and we went right over Schweinfurt (no flak). After wandering around near Stuttgart we took off across the Rhine between Karlesruhe and Mannheim. Got some meager inaccurate front line flak. Let down all the way across Luxembourg, Belgium and France. Crossed the channel at 200 ft. The base had no ceiling and we sort of felt our way in. After landing we watched the boys come in. Like to scared us to death! Finally one went off the end of the runway. Three crews landed on the Continent and one crew bailed out by Beachy Head. 10-1/2 hours today. Flew over 7 countries - England, Holland, Germany, Czechoslavakia, France, Luxembourg, and Belgium. 2/9/45 Mission #26 Looks like they are trying to finish us up on the rough ones. Today's primary was Bohlen, visual only. That's what is saving us lately, that visual only. Secondary: Weimar, PFF or visual. So we bombed Weimar marshalling yard and small arms plant. We really plastered it! We went in the Coblenz-Frankfurt corridor. No flak - surprise! Just north of Frankfurt six Me 262s jumped us but they didn't get a shot. One came across in front of us from 2 o'clock high to 8 o'clock low with a P-51 right on his tail. Rector had him in his sights but couldn't fire because of the P-51. That fellow was rugged - he circled around and tried again for a pass. Went right through the formation - but by then he had 5 P-51s after him and they weren't losing any ground either. I was too interested to be scared. At Hamburg and Magdeburg I was so scared I couldn't swallow - but today I was wishing to hell I had my guns back in or at least my camera. |
We went on to the target. Feb. 6th we flew right over Weimar and didn't get any flak - it was 10/10ths. Today was about 5/10ths and they had a three gun battery. What sharpshooters! Went in at 26,000 feet and lost two ships. One went down at the target - lost a wing. The other one might have made France. Our pictures showed a perfect strike - one bomb went right in the building that was the MPI - and we were dropping RDK's too. 2/16/45 Mission #27 Really surprised this morning. We were not up to fly at 9:00 last night. But the CQ woke me at 5:30. He tried at 5:00 and I didn't wake up. 10:30 take off. Target: Hamm marshalling yard. We flew the low on Rougham. Bombing was supposed to be visual - cat and mouse - Micro-H. Flak was moderate and accurate. No. 3 ship in the lead blew up. We were bombing in 6-ship sections. Went in PFF and Al dropped visual at the last minute. Really hit the target, too - a beautiful hit. Just before bombs away we were spread all over Germany and bandits were reported in the area. To top it off I hadn't seen a P-51 all the way in. The section behind us told us later that the flak was tracking us all the way in and out - bursting right behind us. One went off right over the nose. It was between us and the sun and really blacked the nose out for a while. Came back to the field and couldn't see it until we were about 150 feet over the runway. 2/22/45 Mission #28 Up at 2:00 am. Target: Cheb, Czechoslovakia. Marshalling yards. Bombing to be from 12,000 feet. Led the Group. Assembled and flew about half way over Belgium at 6,000 feet. Crossed the Rhine south of Strasbourg. Good view of the Alps - about 40 miles away. Descended to 12,000 and hit clouds. The bomber stream was all over southern Germany. We went to the IP. The primary and secondary were covered. So we wandered around Nurnberg. Jack wanted to bomb it from 16,000 but - we bombed the last resort from 19,000 - PFF. Crossed into France. As soon as I got Jack on course for Osrend I went back to the waist and went to sleep. I really had a headache. Go to Page 8
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