Issue 33.12
Although each mission that we flew into Germany was different, each mission started the same way. Those darned ground pounders woke us up for a mission it seemed just as we were getting into deep sleep. On this mission instead of nine men on the crew we had an extra man to make our number ten. Richard Dustin, who was on our original ten man crew, which trained together in the states but when we were assigned to a combat squadron, was removed for more training. Dick then trained as a spot jammer.
On a mission, he had a place in the Flying Fortress radio room. It was Dick’s job to work the dials on his electronic equipment to constantly jam the German’s radar that controlled their ground fire FLAK guns. I don’t know how effective this was but at our briefings they told us that it helped some. One spot jammer flew with each squadron of twelve bombers and he was rotated around different crews. On this mission our plane got shot up pretty good. We lost two engines so we couldn’t keep up with the group after we left the target area so we dropped down to 10,000 feet where we didn’t need oxygen masks. We were worried that “bandits” would see that we were alone and were crippled. We were almost out of danger with only about 50 miles to get to the channel when we were jumped by two FW190’s. They made one pass at us and were going around for another pass when two American P51’s that were reducing altitude and were on their way home mixed it up with the two German fighters. American fighter pilots at that time were so anxious to make confirmed kills that they would do almost anything to make it happen. The
P51 was the better plane and American pilots were better trained than were the Germans. The two American fighter pilots broke it off and headed for home. I presume they were nearly out of gasoline.
We still had the channel to cross and as we started across, another engine quit.
With only one engine working, a B-17 can’t maintain level flight but can merely do a seventy to one gliding ratio. By this time I was out of the ball turret and I was sitting in the radio room, because the ball was such a cramped uncomfortable place that we could leave our post before the rest of the gunners could leave theirs. I wasn’t connected to the interphone and I saw the other two snap on their chest pack parachutes. Yes, our pilot gave the bailout because the last engine momentarily quit. The fourth engine and then the third engine came to life so the bail out signal was cancelled. We got as far as the first emergency landing strip in England and our great pilot ser her down safely. That was one of several times that it took us an extra day to get back to our home base.
Wow, such interesting reading…Thanks