Mission 1 March 2nd, 1944

Today was quite a thrill for us as we flew our first real mission.  We’ve been anxious to see what we are in for.  So now we have a “little” idea what it is.  The target was a piston ring factory at Frankfort, Germany.  Frankfort is usually a pretty hot spot.  We flew Lady Luck with Capt. Bogush as command pilot.  We didn’t see any enemy planes, but we saw our first flak.  It was pretty heavy.  It looked so harmless, just like puffs of black smoke in the sky, but it was more than smoke as we could see by one of our planes that was shot up.  One plane had to ditch in the Channel and lost about half the crew.

Mission 2 March 5th, 1944

I do believe this combat has plenty of thrills, chills and spills cause yesterday, the 5th was quite a day for us.  Again we were flying  Lady Luck and luck must of been with us.  We had a little trouble on take off and were late.  We couldn’t find our own group so we joined the 392 group who was to hit the same target.  Lt. Hoobler was grounded so Lt. Thompson flew with us.  His first mission.  We went to Bordeaux, France but finally ended up bombing an air field at Cognac.  Again we hit some heavy flak and I heard our navigator swear for the first time when a piece came through the nose just missing him by an inch.  I saw my first enemy fighters when three ME 109’s made a pass thru the formation.  I was practically spell bound when I saw them which was just for a second as it was a nose attack.  The group was cruising pretty fast and as our ship was a little heavy on gas consumption we were pretty low.  We were over England when three engines conked out because of lack of fuel.  We were losing altitude pretty fast but quick thinking by our engineer came in handy.  He rushed to the bomb bays and put all engines on cross feed to the one tank that still had gas in it.  There was an air field near on which we made a hurried landing.  We didn’t have enough gas left to circle the field again. Those few minutes were about the worst I ever put in.  I think we all learned to pray in a hurry.  The field was a new one.  Lt. Thompson crawled out and said, “I don’t know where I’m at but I’m glad to be here”.  Some colored boy wanted to know if we’d been over chasing Jerry or was Jerry chasing us.  The field was just a few miles from here but as it was a new field we had trouble getting gas so we stayed there last night and came home today.  Today Lt. Thompson’s crew went to Berlin and failed to return.  Neither did Pete’s crew and three others.  Capt. “Smilin” Jack Bogush missing too.

Mission 3 March 8th, 1944

I must say it is sure a grand feeling to be back in England tonight and I don’t care much for England.  We had quite a day as we went to Berlin known as “Big B” to us.  We flew Satan’s Mate and everything went pretty well until we got into heavy flak at Hanover going in.  Capt. Booth was flying as Command pilot and at that point he was hit by  a piece of flak.  I was standing right behind him and when he jumped about a foot off the seat I thought his electric suit had shocked him.  The flak took the tips off the fingers of his right hand, the top off his right knee and then lodged in the back of his left leg.  We were at 25,000 feet where it was 40o below zero so the wounds didn’t bleed much.  I called  Lt. Moore up from the waist and we did what we could for the Capt.  then Moore took the co-pilot seat.  I kept working with him.  His electric trousers were in such a condition I was afraid they would short out so I disconnected them and turned the heat up on his coat & gloves.  I wrapped blankets & coats around his legs to try and keep them warm.  I don’t think he will be handicapped permanently but he will be laid up for some time.  He sure took it like a man and wouldn’t let me give him any morphine.  I should’ve anyway.  We went on in and the group did a swell job on the ball bearing factory.  I got a glance at it and it was in ruins.  I was pretty busy most of the time but it seemed like we would never get home.  We had some bombs hung up that we couldn’t get out so we landed with them to get the Capt. to a doctor.  We had about 10 flak holes.  One life raft was ruined.  Two of our ships are missing. The 8th air force lost about 35 heavies today.  (Toll’s guns were froze all the way)

Mission 4 March 26th, 1944

Today after a much needed rest we got another raid.  We got up at 3:00 and were briefed to hit an air craft factory in Germany but due to bad weather it was scrubbed.  At noon we finally got another target.  We flew as group lead in Lady Luck with Major O’Neil- our CO - as command pilot.  We were supposed to hit a rocket installation in Calais area but due to a navigational error we couldn’t find the target.  By being off course we got over Abbeyville and into the worst flak so far.  It was bursting all around us and Major O’Neil was practically screaming all the time to get the h--- away from there.  We were all ready to leave -but fast-  We brought our bombs back.  We were only up four hours but that was enough time to get about five flak holes.