Quincy High School - Goldenrod Yearbook (Quincy, MA)

Page 26 text:

The first word caused excitement, but little noise—BERLIN. Berlin was a rough mission, even with short Hying time, hard on the nerves, but this was to be the longest mission ever flown by this type of plane. They first told us the heading, altitude, and weather conditions, giving the gunners a warning to be extremely alert for enemy planes. The target was a panther tiger tank factory— heavily fortified—in the heart of the city. At this point the gunners all filed out to get their gear out of the personal equipment bin, to clean and check their guns for malfunctions. The pilot, navigator, bombardier, and radioman re- mained for extra instruction. Twenty minutes later we were all together at the plane, rushing to get our equipment and chaff aboard. The tenth plane left the ground with a terrific slipstream which rocked us from side to side. We were next on the turnibas. In a short space of time “Sno Snap” and the crew arrived at the rendezvous point. In a few moments all the planes had arrived, and soon we were flying along on our heading which was almost true north. We slowly gained altitude over the Adriatic Sea, Yugoslavia, and when we were in Austria, we started getting flak. It was the most accurate I have ever seen, or the whole group for that matter. During the running oi this gauntlet we lost thirty per cent of our ships. Next on the flak line parade was Prague, Czechoslovakia. The flak was fairly heavy but inaccurate. We came through this with only one loss. We were coming up to Berlin when all of a sudden the tail gunner muttered over the interphone, very distinctly. “ME262 5 o’clock high.” I swung my 50 around: for a moment I couldn’t see him. Then he became as clear as an ink spot on a piece of white paper: the jet looked just like the pictures I’d seen at aircraft identification. 1 gave him only one burst, but it was rather long. He- then seemed to go out of control and went swerving back and forth and down. A short moment later four P-5l’s swished by my window going down in the direction of the jet. 1 wasn't much moved by the attack because of an accident that happened to the radioman. As soon as the tail gunner had called out the enemy plane, the radio man gave a start to get up and became entangled in his lines. He forgot about the camera pit to his right on the floor where he had to stand to fire his gun. As he jumped up, he tripped and went into the hole. All the time I was firing, I was doubled with laughter at his helpless condition. Just after the attack we noticed an oval structure on the ground which was a Colosseum very near the target. Immediately I sat down and started throwing chaff out of the chute. This chaff was a counter radar measure, and as it went floating by the planes, it gave me a comforting sense of security. f age twenty-two

Page 25 text:

Sortie Ii was the 2‘lth of March in Foggia, Italy, at the air base of the 463(1 Bomber Croup. Hie day was only three and one-hall hours old and was damp and very muddy. The black, shifting smoke from the 100 octane gas fires burning in the makeshift stores of the te nts gave an appearance as in Pittsburgh. I'lie Colonel, on his rounds, was wakening the fellows scheduled for the day’s bombing mission. Presently, he earner to I’-.SO where he found silence but for the bustling around ol my two pups, Battle Orders and Stand Down”—from orders ol the clay: Battle Order being snow white, meaning we would fly because of suitable weather. “Stand Down” being jet black, meaning we would stand down on ac- count of bad weather. There were seven of us in this six-man tent, but we made out nicely by building extensions, making tables, lockers, and chairs, acquiring some candles, and tigging up a radio. Five of us belonged to one crew, and the other two on another, but they weren't scheduled to fly. We were quite easy to waken as we had anticipated a rough mission today. There was some kidding as usual, but it seemed to be hiding a tenseness due to the secrecy ol the sortie. Without chaos, the gunners took their turn at the wash basin a steel helmet mounted on a sawed-oll 100-pound practice bomb casing. We lilc-d out. grabbing our mess kits from our cots. Soon we were sitting down to our usual breakfsat of dehydrated eggs, after sweating out a brief wait in line. As we walked back to our tents, the sun was rising, turning the sky blood red. The fifteen minute s before briefing we used putting our tents in good shape. At the- briefing room, we quieted down right away. The Major, a heavy-set moustached man of around forty, was ascending the steps of the platform, fol- lowed by his two aides. The room was quiet except lor the footfalls of these three. page twenty-one

Page 27 text:

The flak was coming up fast and furious now, making the plane jump around. We started rolling to our right still in the midst of the flak. It stopped momentarily, and 1 got up to my window at the right waist ol the ship. Just as I got to it, I saw one of our planes drifting out of control over on our right. Suddenly one man parachuted out the rear escape hatch, followed in quick suc- cession by five others from different hatches. They had no sooner cleared the plane than it blew up in one black cloud, disappearing from sight. We could still see the target with smoke billowing up to a great height. The bombing results had been very good. All ol the fellows were glad of this because we wouldn't be coming up here again for some time. Coming back home we had to lose altitude fast because of the low supply of oxygen in every ship. We took off our oxygen masks at fourteen thousand feet over Yugoslavia where one ol the planes couldn’t make the last mountain before the Adriatic and crashed into it. A P-38 was sent back to locate it, but was unable to. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and soon we were coming in for our landing. The fellows and I were dead tired because of the almost ten-hour trip, most of it on oxygen. Nevertheless, we had to go to Interrogation where we were first given coffee and doughnuts. All of the ground crew and the flying personnel who weren't on the mission were asking questions of their buddies—where they were, how fast did it come to them, were any parachutes seen. Although the sortie was supposedly secret, all of the men had seemed to sense both the importance and the roughness. Somehow or other, we managed to get back to our tent in less time than usual. When we entered the door, Battle Order” and “Stand Down greeted us uproariously. The other fellows began discussing the mission, but that wasn’t for me. I got the two pups on my cot and lay down beside them. I don't know how long the fellows talked, for I was soon sound asleep. Jack McKim page twenty-three