Documentary Resources

There are basically six kinds of sources that have enabled this account to be presented with a certain confidence in its accuracy. The first is the subject’s military records. This is of course the highest guarantee of accuracy. Secondly there are the contemporary accounts of missions flown in the US Army and British press that are still in the possession of the author. These are typically lacking in specific military and technical details that had to be omitted from for reasons of military security as all commissioned officers were charged with self-censorship. For many of these details, three published books have been referred to in varying degrees. The Story of the Century by John Nilsson, Contrails by Callahan, Farbstein, Dailey and McElliott and A Wing and a Prayer by Harry H. Crosby. The first two supplied a wealth of facts regarding the specific missions flown by the author – bombing results, losses of planes and crewmen, enemy planes shot down and detailed narratives of two of the author’s missions (Hamburg and Berlin). The Crosby book enabled this author to recall long forgotten navigational and other operational terms and procedures. Fifthly there is the least trustworthy though not negligible source, memory, which even after some fifty years continues to sound its echoes, for what airman could ever forget his first enemy fighter attack, even if he could not recall its duration or the exact number of enemy aircraft coming within his view. Since two memories are better than one a copy of this manuscript was sent to H. Frank Streich, the pilot of the renowned Flying Fortress " Fever Beaver" on about one fourth of her 125 missions and with whom I flew on all by two of my sorties. Frank has been kind enough to contribute several forgotten details to the account. The sixth source was post war historical accounts such as encyclopedias and other published historical source material.

Leon Schwartz

The following account of the 35 missions of 2nd Lt. Leon Schwartz (ASN O-723444), navigator of the USAAF combat crew 5525, assigned to the 100th Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force from September 1944 to March 1945. Some passages contain personal allusions having no historical interest, referring to private matters and other events have been omitted. The members of the crew when this account began were: H. Frank Streich, Pilot; Richard King, Co-pilot; Frank Dunst, Bombardier; George A. Holland, Engineer-Gunner; Thomas L. Whitacre, Assistant Engineer-Gunner; Thomas E. Pepper, Radio Operator; Herman A. Buhse, Armorer-Gunner; Elwood "Tex" Mattiza, Tail Gunner and "Shorty" Burke, Ball Turret Gunner.

We completed our brief training period at Bovington on September 7th and on the 8th boarded a troop train again and traveled to our definitive base of operations. The 100th Bombardment Group (H) in Thorpe Abbotts, Norfolk County, East Anglia. We were assigned to the 351st Squadron.

On the 9th we moved into Squadron Barracks 9 and met our new barracks mates. Pilots, Co-pilots, Navigators and Bombardiers from three crews (twelve in all) were all in different points in their combat tour. One foursome had just completed their tour of thirty-five missions and were proudly showing off their Distinguished Flying Crosses. This policy was discontinued shortly after our arrival. One of the navigators, Roland Tornquist, originally from Texas but who planned to settle in San Bernardino, California after the war had flown about half his missions and was anxious to impress us with stories of how rough some of them had been. Naturally we were very awed to be barracks mates of veterans who had been on raids to places like Ludwigshaven, Kiel, and Berlin. The barracks ceiling was covered with the names written in charcoal of German cities bombed by crews who had previously occupied our barracks. Tornquist and one or two others were unsuccessful in ‘Flakking us up". They did not know our impatience – I speak of Streich and myself to a greater degree than King and Dunst to participate in the destruction of the hated Third Reich. In a letter I wrote to my parents on that very day, I noted that the war was racing to a conclusion and expressed the hope I would get our there on a couple of raids before it was over. Of course there was an element of wanting to boost my parents’ morale with my own expressions of confidence. But I was really sincere about wanting to do my bit in the war against a regime one of whose major objectives was the extermination of the Jewish people. It was a point of honor.

By the 9th of September, the Germans seemed to be conceding the loss of France as their forces reeled before the Allied onslaughts both in the north and in the south. The Allies had entered Belgium on September 1st and that country was quickly retaken. Near the German border the Allies encountered fierce resistance. In the East the Red Army rolled through Rumania, which fell by the end of August. Finland sued for peace on September 6, and Bulgaria set up a pro-Soviet council on September ninth. The dogs of war were now howling near the German frontier.

Although we were now members of the 100th Bombardment Group, known as the "Bloody Hundredth" in Eighth Air force lore – its Flying Fortresses were identified by a large letter "D" in a square painted on the vertical stabilizers - we were not yet allowed to fly combat missions. To do so a crew had to complete a demanding series of ground and flying training and thus become "Operational." The first week was totally taken up with ground training. In the evenings we went to the base cinema or to the officer’s club, usually playing checkers or card games, mostly bridge and hearts or wrote letters. As far as food was concerned we were well provided for with the exception of fresh milk. At the club we ate sausage and drank English beer. As the base was spread over a large area many owned bicycles, so I bought one for eight pound or roughly thirty-two dollars. It was stolen in matter of days and I never replaced it.

September 16th was our first day off since arriving at the base and the four of us decided to visit the nearby town of Diss, a half hour from the base by bicycle. Thorpe Abbots was no more than a village. It was a beautiful late summer day and we took a camera with us to take some pictures. The town was very quiet and there wasn’t much to do but stroll around and have lunch in a tearoom. We ordered sandwiches but they were a far cry from the sandwiches Americans are accustomed to. The bread slices were very thin and there wasn’t much between them. Fruit was also scarce. I didn’t see any for sale outside of London and the price of a single peach was about a dollar. This was an astronomical price in those days when an entire meal cost not more than a dollar. I suppose that like Watford, Diss had weekend dances, but after seeing London we were not tempted to return except to shop.

About a week after we arrived at Thorpe Abbotts, we were informed that the 100th would be one of a number of groups participating in an extraordinary supply mission to the Red Army. The destination of the mission was Poltava, a Ukrainian city east of Kiev. The flight passed directly over Belaya Tserkov, my father’s hometown! I went immediately to see Lt. Colonel Emberson, the Squadron Commander, and literally pleaded with him to let me go on this mission, but although he commended my desire, he denied my request on the grounds I was not yet operational.

On September 17th I flew my first practice mission from Thorpe Abbotts. I did not fly with my own crew, rather with a crew that had completed six combat missions. We were in a formation of nine B-17’s and I was designated the lead navigator. That evening there was a big party on the base with a lot of drinking. Dick King staggered into the barracks hardly able to remain upright. He fumbled toward his cot but it was missing, hidden outside the barracks as a practical joke. He collapsed on someone else’s bunk and passed out. The next day the four of us were flying as a crew on another practice mission. It was Rosh Hashonah, but Striech and I had to be reminded of it by our Catholic bombardier! As we flew over the North Sea near the coastal town of Southwold, we could see below a stream of C-47 cargo planes headed towards the coast of Holland. We later learned that this was part of the massive Allied airborne invasion of the Arnhem-Nijmegen sector of Holland designed to destroy the Rhine bridges. (A movie about this heroic and costly episode was made after the war – A Bridge too Far.

Despite a run of bad weather, we managed to fly two more practice missions the week of Rosh Hashonah. Then at 3:00 a.m. on September 25th I was roused from sleep and informed that I would be flying a real mission with the crew of J.D. Williams of Muleshoe, Texas, who had been on an earlier supply mission to the Ukraine. I dressed had breakfast, stowed my navigational gear in my flight bag and reported to the briefing hut where group and squadron officers described the mission of the day. This mission was to bomb the marshalling yards at Ludwigshaven on the Rhine River just east of Saarland, to impede the German's reinforcing their armies in northern France, eastern Belgium, and the Netherlands. After briefing the other officers of Skipper II and I were taken by jeep to a tent on the tarmac near our Fortress, which was loaded with eight 500 lb demolition bombs. The gunners were installing eleven 50mm machine guns, one of which would be for the navigator use. The ground crew was performing a final check of the plane’s engines and systems. The other officers and I were in the tent having a last puff on a cigarette. Then we pulled on our parachute harness, loaded our gear onto the airplane and clambered on board through a hatch beneath the pilot’s cabin. The navigator had an instrument panel with gyroscopic compass, altimeter, and radio above a small table on the left side of the nose section behind the bombardier, who sat in the nose manning an electrically operated turret with twin 50mm machine guns. The bombardier also operated a Norden bombsight and the bomb release system. Before takeoff each crewman responded to an intercom check giving his crew position and indicating he was OK. The signal to start engines was a flare from the control tower. The engines roared and the plane began to vibrate. It was a strangely comforting feeling, like the rocking motion I remembered from infancy. I looked towards the main runway and in the pale light of dawn I could see the lead plane moving forward. Soon we were moving and turning into a long file of planes, three squadrons of twelve planes. With each firing of a flare a plane shot forward and rose into the sky. As the planes turned the lead plane in each squadron fired identification flares to aid the squadron’s planes in establishing a formation. We continued to circle over the English countryside with flares lighting up the sky and plane-to-plane radio communications. Each plane had its code letter and identified itself by the alphabetical word system. When the entire 100th formation of thirty-six planes was complete we joined the 13th Combat Wing formation. By this time we had climbed to over 10,000 feet and were heading southeast over the narrow tongue of the North Sea. At 13,000 feet we went on oxygen. I was tracking our course on a map, computing the critical data on wind speed and drift and recording all the information with latitudes and longitudes in my navigator’s log. The gunners test fired the guns at 18,000 feet over the North Sea. We crossed the coast of Belgium around Ostende at 20,000 feet, flew over Belgium and reached our scheduled bombing altitude of 25,000 feet as we crossed into Germany near Trier. There was little talk on the intercom. The bombardier and the gunner’s job was to look for enemy aircraft or ground fire. Flying so high over enemy territory one had the feeling that it was somehow unreal. We could see no people. Had I read Voltaire’s Micromegas by then I would have been able to sympathize with the Saturnian’s dwarf’s first impression of the planet Earth…

We were now nearing the target area and a blanket of cloud had totally covered the target. We scanned the horizon for our fighter escort, P-47’s or P-51’s possibly from the base at Leiston, where Ike Soltes was now a mechanic. We saw nothing but there was no enemy fighter in sight either. When we saw the lead plane suddenly bank and turn, we knew we were starting the bomb run. We donned our helmets and heavy flak vest that covered our bodies from our chest to our thighs. The planes ahead of us were now flying directly to the target. We could see some black puffs of smoke well beneath them. Fortunately for us there were few flack bursts and they were off the mark. When our group reached the target the lead plane dropped a smoke bomb as a signal to all the bombardiers in our formation. "Bombs Away!" yelled our bombardier. At that moment thirty-six planes 100th planes released two hundred and eighty-eight quarter ton bombs, hopefully on Ludwigshaven’s rail center. We watched the bombs fall through the clouds and wondered what they hit. "Lets get the hell out of here!" yelled some one on the intercom, as the flak bursts were getting closer. We turned off the bomb run and headed toward England. I checked my wind computations and projected a course back towards the North Sea, comparing it with the course the Lead Navigator was taking. My course projections agreed with the lead navigator. I was elated both for this and that we were now out of range of the Nazi gunners. As we cruised over liberated Belgium we removed our flak vest and dropped down to 15,000 feet. Over Belgium at 12,000 feet we could see the streets, buildings, and motor vehicles. I was excited at this close view of a major European city. I removed my oxygen mask and ate a candy bar. It had been seven hours since we had eaten and I was hungry. Over the North Sea with the English coast in sight I took my machine gun out of it’s housing. Our base was easy to recognize from the air as there was an old dirigible hanger at one end of the field. When I caught sight of the olive drab hanger I knew we were home. At our turn we peeled off the formation and landed. The pilot taxied to our site and cut the engines. My first combat mission was over. All the 100th planes returned safely.

A jeep took us to operations for debriefing. No one could tell if we hit the target because of cloud cover. We never did find out if we hit the target as Ludwigshaven was still obscured by clouds when the photo-reconnaissance planes attempted to photograph the marshalling yards.

I got back to the barracks by mid-afternoon. The mission had lasted about six hours, but the briefing preparations and debriefing made the total time twelve hours. When my fellow crewmembers saw me they were naturally curious about my reactions to the experience. I felt a bit like Lindbergh after he had flown the Atlantic. The ice was broken, but the truth is Ludwigshaven was an easy mission. I would not be as blasé about some of the others.

That evening a musical comedy was put on by base personnel, which gave us a lift. After the show I wrote a short letter to my parents exulting that I was now finally doing what I’d been sent overseas to do.

I don’t know exactly when it started, but sometime during my tour of duty in England my mother had very bad skin eruptions diagnosed as being of a nervous origin. The condition was treated with penicillin and lasted quite a long time. I didn’t know anything about it while I was in England, but feel sure it was better to have kept them informed. The day after the raid on Ludwigshaven I sent a copy of the army newspaper, The Stars and Stripes, with an account of the 8th Air Force’s activities on the previous day. My father filed the paper away with a big number 1 crayoned on it. After each mission I flew I would do the same thing. That way at least he could approximate the duration of my tour of combat duty.

For three days in a row our crew had practice missions.  No doubt we were all going to be operational soon. These practice missions took almost as much time as the combat missions except we didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night for them. Our evenings were free and we spent them playing bridge or pool at the club, reading, and of course writing letters. Often there were no films we were interested in seeing at the base cinema.

On the weekend of October 1st and 2nd, 1944 the 100th was planning a group celebration for the completion of the Group’s 200 combat missions. The word was out that the unit would stand down for this weekend. Dick King, Frank Streich, Frank Dunst and I wanted to take advantage of the stand down to get a 48 hour pass to London. Besides the lure of London and the lure of meeting Dottie and Connie for Dick and me there was the desire to find a hotel with decent bathing facilities. There was absolutely no hot water in our squadron lavatory. Since we had no flight assignments for Friday, September 29 we wanted to take the 1300 train from Diss to London. This was the last train of the day. We tried to get the Squadron Operations officer, Captain Neal P. Scott to sign our passes but were unable to see him. Captain Scott was still in bed, apparently the result of considerable partying the previous night. We made several unsuccessful attempts to get the Captain's signature on our passes before the train for London departed. We had a decision to make, should we go without passes. Who would know of even care if there were going to be no flight operations Sunday? Hell, if we didn’t go now when would we be having another opportunity? We barely made the train that carried us into London via the Liverpool Street Station.

We took a couple of rooms, if I am not mistaken, at the Reindeer or Rainbow Club, an officers club run by the Red Cross. It was located near Grosvenor Square along with several other facilities for U.S. servicemen. After showering with hot water, we dressed and Dick and I phoned Dottie and Connie and arranged to meet them for dinner. The two Franks made their own plans for the evening. I do not recall where we went for dinner that evening. (None of my letters home between September 29 and October 9 have survived, being among those destroyed by water penetrating their storage area.)

On the Saturday we met Connie and Dottie at Harringay dog racing track. Connie worked in an office during the week. On weekends she helped operate the Harringay Tote Board. She gave us tips on the best dogs to bet on. Bets could be as low as a shilling (about 20 cents) and I ended the afternoon winning about ten shillings. We all went out again that evening.

On Sunday morning the four of us were in the lobby of the Red Cross dormitory discussing the buzz bombs, which fortunately had not been a problem during our weekend. Reading the weekend edition of the Stars and Stripes introduced a bombshell of a completely different kind. We learned the 100th had flown a mission to Bielefeld on Saturday morning! Damn, what if we were scheduled for the mission. We hurriedly checked out of the club and with great foreboding caught the London – Norwich train; it was a two-hour train ride to Diss.

When we arrived at the barracks and were greeted by chanting of Chopin’s Funeral March our worst fears were realized. Our crew had been declared ‘operational’ on Saturday morning thus missing its first combat mission, AWOL! (Absent without leave) We rushed to the squadron commander’s office to plead our case to Lt. Colonel Emberson. The Colonel, with a penchant for gallows humor, asked us whether we preferred to be hanged or shot. Paradoxically, the Colonel’s hyperbole gave me a sense of relief. It was obvious he was having fun at our expense and did not regard our temporary disappearance as more than a minor breach of regulations, a breach to be punished but not severely. We received an oral reprimand and told we would be flying " tail end Charlie" for a while. We flew that position for eleven missions but were not attacked by enemy fighters on any of them. Another consequence of our absence was losing the chance to become a lead crew and the early promotions it would have granted us. We were delighted that our punishment amounted to no more serious consequences.

The morning of October 2 we were called for a mission to an aero factory in Kassel on the Fulda River in western Germany. Like my Ludwigshaven mission Kassel was a relative easy mission –a "milk run" as we called the relatively easy sorties. It was an almost painless introduction to combat for the rest of our crew. We flew "Fever Beaver", a veteran of some seventy missions with the 100th. She was destined to become one of, if not the most famous of the 100th’s B-17’s. We would fly this Fortress for all our missions except those when Fever Beaver was grounded for maintenance. The roughly five mission Fever Beaver was down for maintenance we flew The All American Girl, Mason and Dixon, Our Gal Sal
 and Skyway Chariot. All were famous 100th Fortresses.

After our first combat mission as a complete crew, Shorty Burke, our ball turret gunner was removed from flight status. I never knew why and a young man from New York named Harvey J. Lehman replaced him. He may have been Jewish (I never asked him), if so our crew now had three Jewish aviators out of the ten man crew. This would be a remarkable percentage given the fact that Jews accounted for about three percent of the United States population during WWII.

Our first mission that caused us great concern occurred Friday, October 6. We knew it would be a long one when we were awakened at 0200 hours. In the briefing room an hour or so later we saw the map with the route arrow pointing to Berlin! I must admit that I felt a rush of excitement with no small element of anxiety. This was the 100th’s tenth mission to Berlin. The previous nine had cost the group thirty aircraft and three hundred crewmen.

Our precise target was the Spandau aircraft parts factory. A target we knew would be heavily defended. Since Berlin is in eastern Germany we flew north of the German North Sea coast as far a practical in the hope of avoiding being over Germany long enough  to give their air defenses time to establish our track and altitude. The weather was clear and by the time we were rounding the corner of northern Holland the sun was up and we could see the Frisian Islands. Later we spotted the fortified island of Heligoland, a Nazi submarine base, and knew we would soon be over German territory. The crew was alerted for signs of the Luftwaffe and was soon able to see Messerschmitt 109’s on the horizon. They soon disappeared as our escort of P-51’s came into view.

We donned flak vests and helmets as we approached the nerve center of the Nazi empire. Tension mounted as we turned on the bomb run at 27,000 feet. The flak was much thicker than we liked and some Fortresses in the group ahead of us were being hit; bursting into flames and plummeting earthward. The time between our turning into the bomb run and bombs away seemed interminable. We could not deviate from our course or take any evasive action for flak. Our only recourse was to drop bales of shredded metallic paper called ‘chaff" which helped to confuse the radar controlled anti-aircraft batteries; otherwise we were sitting ducks. Close flak bursts caused the plane to shudder, usually you could not hear the explosions – it was quite frightening. About ten seconds from the target the plane just ahead of us was hit, losing its right wing and spinning earthward. We counted the parachutes, one two, three but we could not see if the others got out. Later I found out the plane was piloted by Lt. Frederick Reed of Westboro, Massachusetts. Lt. Reed became a POW and survived the war. I never knew how many others of the crew survived.

Editors note: Lt. Reed was killed that day along with eight of the nine crewmen. The only survivor was S/Sgt Roy F. Lomanno, the TTE, who was flying as a waist gunner that day.  This information courtesy of Jim Lomanno 11/10/2005.

You can imagine our relief when the lead plane finally dropped its smoke bomb allowing us to release our bombs and take evasive action. Our pilot turned to a course of approximately 300 degrees with the rest of our group. Frank Streich informed us we had an engine hit and we began to drop farther and farther behind the formation. Our immediate concern was not the ability to remain airborne. A B-17 can fly long distances on two engines, let alone three. What worried us was becoming a tempting target for enemy fighters. It was their custom to attack B-17’s out of the bomber formation with mechanical problems. For me there was the added burden of avoiding navigational error and guiding us home along a direct route. We were lucky on this mission as on eight others where we experienced mechanical problems that separated us from the formation.

Our relief over the North Sea was so great that all of us began firing our 50mm machine guns. For a few minutes it was like the Fourth of July as tracers erupted from all sides of the plane. I felt a sense of power as my machine gun discharged a staccato of shells into the air that could have blown several Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs out of the sky. Upon our landing the ground crew, who had been worried by our absence from the returning formation, cheered us lustily. T/Sgt John D. Pearson headed the ground crew. The other members were J. Loudenslager, a big guy called Tiny; Komo, whose full last name was Komosinski; Chase; Lawson; and Bergstrom.

Before we knew the results of the Berlin mission we were on a long and dangerous mission to the Bohlen oil refinery near Leipzig. We could expect another tough day, oil refineries were crucial to the Nazi war machine. Large anti-craft batteries equipped with radar aiming batteries always protected them. The Germans were in for an even tougher day. They were pounded by the most devastating daylight air assault of the war by bombers from the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fifteenth Air Forces according to a London newspaper’s October 8th issue. (I was unable to send home a Stars and Stripes for the Berlin and Bohlen missions, but I sent the English newspaper covering these missions.)

I don’t recall any damage to the plane we were flying that day – the Beaver was down for an engine change and we were flying The All American Girl or Skyway Chariot. For the second day in a row the 100th lost one of its Fortresses. Lt. Albert Grigg of North Braddock, Pa. went down with his crew of nine. The next day we stood down and found out that we had hit our target on the two weekend missions.

On October 9 our target was an ordnance depot at Wiesbaden just west of Frankfurt Main. As we approached German territory our plane (not Fever Beaver) developed an oil leak causing us to abort the mission. Again it was crucial that I make no navigational errors – the longer we were in the air the greater the risk of losing hydraulic components. We need to proceed directly to Thorpe Abbotts. Over the North Sea we jettisoned our bombs and soon after spotting the big dirigible hanger we were safely on terra firma. Later we were delighted at being informed that mission credit would be awarded for this mission. It was my fifth.

This was the last mission our bombardier, Frank Dunst, flew with us. A shortage of bombardiers resulted in the better ones being moved to lead crews, so in spite of our "London trip" pragmatism made Frank a lead bombardier. This policy had begun sometime earlier with many crews being reduced from ten to nine members. This usually meant that one of the waist gunners moved to the nose and operated the twin 50mm machine gun of the chin turret that was installed on the B-17 "G" model. He also released the bombs when the lead aircraft dropped its smoke marker. On our crew Herman Buhse was moved to the nose. Buhse was now called a "Toggalier."

I flew only two additional missions in October, to an aircraft factory at Bremen (October 12) and the marshalling yard at Cologne. October 15th. We lost no planes on either mission but achieved unequal bombing results. Results were good at Bremen but poor at Cologne. At least we did not hit the famous Cologne Cathedral! The mission to Bremen was my sixth and entitled me to an Air Medal award. Air Medals were given for meritorious achievements on a t least six combat missions. I received my medal October 20th by command of Major General E.E. Partridge, Commander of the Third Air Division. Damage to my left eardrum caused by flying with a head cold caused me to be grounded from October 18th until the 26th. During this time Streich and the rest of the crew flew two more missions, putting me one behind them.

None of my letters home from October 31st has survived, so I have only an incomplete record of the events for the later part of October. Our group flew six missions without us in that period. As a "rookie" crew we were given a breathing spell for combat and must have flown several practice missions over England for the rest of October. The USAAF was a firm believer in the old adage that "Practice makes perfect."

On October 30, King, Streich, and I were given a genuine forty-eight hour pass and we sallied forth to London – this time legally. We celebrated by taking a large room at the legendary Savoy Hotel, England’s most elegant. We could easily afford this luxury given wartime price controls. The room was luxurious, but particularly eye opening was the bathroom. The bathtub was the  largest I had ever seen and the walls and ceilings were covered with mirrors etched in art deco motif. What a contrast with our primitive bathing facilities at Thorpe Abbotts! Though it was Monday, Dick and I arranged dates with Dottie and Connie for the evening. Frank, ever faithful to his Beverly, went to the movies.

The next morning I left the two of them to travel eighty miles southwest of London to the town of Whitchurch where I expected to find the U.S. Army Hospital in which Corporal Harry Glassman was recovering from an ankle wound sustained in the invasion of France. When I arrived at this small Hampshire town, I was unable find a hospital or anyone who had ever heard on one in the town. I went back to the railroad station and mentioned my problem to the ticket agent. "Are you sure you wanted this Whitchurch?" he asked. My asking “are there more than one” resulted in his reply, "My dear sir, there are twelve Whitchurches in England!" I found out the Whitchurch I needed was in Shropshire, a good distance away, near northern Wales. So I didn’t get to see Harry after all, for before my next forty-eight hour pass he had been discharged from the hospital and sent back to the States. I consoled myself with Connie, Dottie, and Dick again on Tuesday evening. The next morning, November 1st, we three airmen, cleaner than we had been in weeks thanks to the posh facilities at the Savoy Hotel, returned to our concrete barracks on the chilly Norfolk plain. Incidentally it was around this time the Nazis started hitting London with a more devastating rocket than the V-1: the V-2

The Allies continued to press Hitler’s "Aryan Supermen" back to their national borders. Though most of France was now liberated, there was still strong resistance in the Alsace-Lorraine sector and Metz was still in their hands. Belgium was almost totally liberated, with Allied forces reaching Aachen and driving close to the Rhine, south of that former capital of  Charlemagne’s empire. In the Netherlands the Allies occupied a finger of land from Eindhoven to Arnhem but had not penetrated into the German Ruhr Valley.

On the eastern front the Red Army was in eastern Czechoslovakia and was nearing the outskirts of Budapest in Hungary. Farther north in the Baltic States the capitals of Estonia and Latvia had fallen to the Russians. In central Poland there was little progress since the capture of Warsaw.

There was good news from the Pacific in mid-October as United States forces commanded by General Douglas MacArthur began the re-conquest of the Philippines with the invasion of Leyte in the eastern Philippines. At the beginning of November a second island, Samar, had also been invaded.

On November 5th, the Sunday after our return from London we flew Fever Beaver to the marshalling yards at Ludwigshaven. It was the secondary target; the primary mission target was scrubbed. We hit Ludwigshaven dead on this time, but we lost another crew of nine men, that of Orin Hopkins of Jeanette, Pa. Two day later the U.S. held a Presidential election, the first one I was eligible to vote in. I voted by absentee ballot.

Our crew flew again on the October 9th, this time on a tactical mission to attack the marshalling yards at Saarbrucken. According to Stars and Stripes this was the largest tactical raid on Germany since the Normandy breakthrough at St. Lo and Caen. Unfortunately our results were poor and a flak shard killed a crewman on one of our Fortresses. (Later I learned Betty Targansky, nee Pearlman, of City Terrace lost her husband Marty, an Eighth Air Force bombardier on the mission.)

Jeanne Gurtat had passed her second summer in Brissago as pleasantly as her first. There were hikes and outings on weekends to picturesque sites in the Alpine lake country of southern Switzerland. She was able to visit a Girl Scout camp at La Croix sur Lutry. A new challenge was presented to her in November by the number of war orphans in Europe, many of them were in the charge of the Swiss government. There was a great need for persons trained to help them overcome severe psychological traumas and provide them with appropriate education. Some had survived the death camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald and seen their families sent to the gas chambers. To cope with these monumental problems the Swiss began recruiting trainees between the age of eighteen and thirty-five from among the Jewish internees. Being almost twenty years of age in November 1944, Jeanne was qualified for this training, as was her good friend Therese and they both volunteered. They were transferred to Geneva on November 12 and enrolled in the Cours Des Moiteurs pour Homes d’Enfants. The Cours, which lasted four and a half months, was given under the auspices of the Union O.S.E. (Oeuvres de Secours pour les Enfants) was which was affiliated with an international children’s rescue organization as well as the Section Genevoise d’Aide aux Enfants D’Emigres and the Unitarian Service Committee.

The classes were taught as an extension course from the University of Geneva. They included biology, anatomy, chemistry, psychology, pedagogy, art, music, rhetoric, and the management of orphan homes. There was also a class entitled Life Amongst Youth, taught by the well-known social historian I. Pougatz, who wrote under the name of Pougatch. One of his books, which he autographed for Jeanne, is titled Charry: Vie d’une communaute de jeunesse. The thirty-five trainees from Jeanne’s class also did a stage (student teaching) in three Swiss elementary schools.

Jeanne shared a room with two young women, Hedda and Myriam, who nicknamed her "Minouche," not quite as fierce sounding as her Girl Scout moniker "Serval" but just as feline! She also had a friend named Edith and continued to be very close to Therese, a relationship that has not been interrupted in more than half a century. (The gorgeous Jeanne Gurtat was to become the wife of Leon Schwartz- Paul West.)

Weather over England and the European Continent limited the 100th to only one mission between November 11th and 20th and we were not on it. We were getting restless, as we knew that to finish our missions in a timely manner we would have to fly more frequently. Some of our barracks-mates were already receiving Christmas packages. With the time we had lying around quarters and attending a few classes we found plenty of time to eat up all their goodies a month before Santa Claus traditionally made his rounds. I spent a lot of time on my growing correspondence – Connie and I had begun writing to each other and forming a bond that was stronger than a mere matter of occasional dates. Was I in love with her, or charmed by her? She had spirit and class besides being pretty and very English in a refined way. Her father was an enlisted man in the Royal Air Force and her mother worked at a job that paid mediocre wages. Although our backgrounds were very different politically and ethnically our tastes were really very similar, making us enjoy each other’s company. I became more and more impatient for my forty-eight hour passes to London and the buzz bombs be damned.

We finally flew Fever Beaver on November 21st to a target in northern Germany. The mission began badly for me; while installing my machine gun I lost my grip on the gun housing which was attached to an overhead spring to facilitate its maneuvering in combat and the housing flew up and hit me over the left eye leaving a bloody gash. I refused to be taken off the mission and having my head bandaged I returned to my station in the nose of Fever Beaver. Cpl Buhse had finished attaching the housing to the machine gun and we were able to take off with the group. We crossed the Dutch coast at Ijmuiden in North Holland and proceded over the Zuider Zee, a place I had always associated with Hans Brinker and his silver skates. Approaching the German border we entered a thick cloudbank that forced us to attack the target of last resort; the railroad junction at the Hanseatic city of Osnabruck. We were unable to bomb visually but dropped our bombs through the clouds with the hope of disrupting German supply routes in the area of the Arnhem bulge. We turned off the target and literally flew blind for almost two hours. This was a navigator’s most anxious time, for if wind calculations were in error we could cross the North Sea closer to Sweden than the British Isles. In this case the calculations were accurate and we made it back to England safely. What we did not know at this time was that the Luftwaffe had appeared in force for the first time in weeks. They never reached our group and took a pounding from our escort fighters, which accounted for some sixty enemy aircraft. Back at base operations the Red Cross women were there with the usual shots of whiskey and doughnuts. This time I was really pampered by them. With my head bandaged it looked to them as it I had been wounded in combat.

Five days later both the Luftwaffe and Eighth were up in force. Goering’s Luftwaffe missed our group again and was badly mauled by Eighth fighters, losing 110 ME 109’s and  FW 190’s to our fighters as well as twelve more to B-17 gunners. The target was the marshalling yards at Hamm in North Rhineland – our bombs missed the yards. Three day later we went back to Hamm and missed again. We were beginning to look somewhat like "the gang that couldn’t shoot straight."

As November drew to a close the weather was getting very cold in northern Europe and we began wearing electrically heated wool lined flying suits. Heaven help the crew whose electrical heating system failed. The temperature at our average bombing altitude of 25,000 feet was around forty below.

November 30th we were awakened around 0200 hours for my thirteenth mission. The target was the huge oil refinery at Merseberg, near Leipzig in eastern Germany, not a pleasant place if you were superstitious or not. Merseberg was one of the legend making targets and the stories could make your hair stand on end. On July 29th the 100th had lost eight of its thirty-six Fortresses over Merseberg to flak. As the Luftwaffe became less and less able to defend assets critical to the Nazi war machine they turned to heavy flak concentrations around crucial targets. The German Air Force had ample planes (Mostly built in underground factories like the one Jeanne and I visited years later at Hinterbruhl, near Vienna, Austria. What they lacked were sufficient numbers of skilled pilots and fuel. Generally they did not challenge bombers with fighter escorts.)

As the winter solstice approached, the nights were getting longer and it was still dark as we took off and joined the formation over East Anglia. The pre-dawn sky looked like a Christmas tree with colored flares marking the squadron, group, and wing rendezvous. What a spectacle for any early rising Englishman below! We were usually over the North Sea at dawn, but as we reached German airspace we lost visual contact with the ground and flew over seemingly endless cloud cover. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily,  as the bombers neared the fearsome target the sky began to clear. The enemy and we now had a clear view of the other. At 1000 hours we turned on the bomb run and I had never seen such a blood-curdling sight as the one now before us. We were heading toward a solid cloud of black smoke with flashes of fire erupting in irregular patterns. Aircraft in front of us were being hit and going down in flames. The next six or seven minutes were easily the most terrifying I had lived through as we rode directly into what looked like Dante’s Inferno. Fortunately our crew was bombing from 31,000 feet, the high group, and most of the flak was exploding below us. The group ahead of us must have lost three or four planes. It was strangely unreal to see planes blowing apart in apparent silence. We could only hear the roar of our engines and feel the thump of the flak bursts near us. Our group, which we affectionately referred to as "The Big Ass D" for our tail markings, lost only one plane - a lead crew piloted by Vermont 0. Anderson of Minnetonka Beach, Minn. In all the USAAF lost fifty-six B-17’s and B-24’s along with thirty fighters; all to German anti-aircraft batteries at four oil refineries in the Leipzig area. The greatest losses were over Merseberg, by far the most heavily defended of the four. Although we missed the heart of the target area the 100th never returned to Merseberg.

The first three days of December we flew practice missions. It was the general rule that unless the weather interfered we flew over German or England, but the mot d’ordre was fly. These practice missions took up only half our waking hours and it was always a question of how to spend the rest of the time. (We had to attend classes but these were a joke and Streich and I contrived to miss half of them by signing each other in) occasionally we were asked to flight check one of the group’s B-17’s. On one such check we decided to try each other’s positions. I will never forget the feeling of claustrophobia I got when I crawled down into the ball turret and lay curled up on my back with nothing between me and nine thousand foot fall but a half-inch thick plexiglass nor have it forgotten the trick Streich thought he was playing on me when I sat in the co-pilot’s seat and took the controls. He pulled back on two engines to reduce thrust and make me work harder to maintain altitude. By accident, I think, he pulled back power on two engines on the same side of the aircraft. I struggled valiantly to keep the plane’s attitude level until Frank realized his mistake and corrected the power setting.

When we weren’t flying, we read, played cards, listened to music, and to use a rather crude Army term we "bull-shitted" each other. It is a pity we never had the time to explore the local area and get to know local people. For example I was astonished to read, forty-eight years later, that Norfolk was famous for its windmills and thatch roofed houses. To get an off base pass you needed a block of six hours with no duty assigned. Flying personnel rarely ever had such a block. When we got forty-eight hour passes about once per month we headed for London. The only local people I met on a regular basis were the man and woman who came to pick up and deliver our laundry. There were some flyers and ground personnel who met local women in the surrounding towns of Thorpe Abbotts, Dickleburg, Scole, and Diss. Some of these women were actually living in their boyfriend’s barracks. I knew of no such occurrences in barracks near ‘Stye 9."

We had so much time on our hands, particularly on stormy or foggy days of which there were many, most of us carried on extensive correspondences with friends and family. We eagerly looked forward to the daily "mail call" with great anticipation.

Now that Christmas was approaching, there seemed to be more gift packages than letters coming. Believe it or not most of us would have rather had letters; we were up to our ears in tollhouse cookies and fruitcakes. However, when Frank received a thick Brooklyn salami in the mail, the men in our barracks went wild.

In early December allied intelligence became aware of intensified German troop movements westward toward the Belgian front. On December 4th we flew Fever Beaver to bomb marshalling yards in western Germany. Because of weather our group leaders were allowed to choose any railroad junction that was visible to the eye. This was known as a "Target of Opportunity." Our group bombed the marshalling yards at Friedberg and again missed the main target area. The next day we were sent back to Berlin, this time to bomb a tank factory. The target was overcast and we never knew what we hit. The Luftwaffe came up to protect industrial sections of the city, but though our group was not attacked one Nazi fighter flew through our formation close enough for Streich to see his frightened eyes. A fierce aerial battle raged at other points in the bomber stream of 550 Flying Fortresses and Liberators. The Jerries (Germans) lost eighty planes to our fighter escort groups. The Eighth Air Force lost twelve bombers and three fighters. The 100th again suffered no losses. In a letter from Streich of January, 1994 he remarked that our aircraft was " tossed virtually" on it’s back when the group lead took us through the prop wash of the group immediately ahead.

Bad weather grounded the group on the 5th and 6th of December. Frank took advantage of the time to set up a small photo printing operations in the lavatory. We had been taking photographs of the various planes the crewmembers had flown. They included Fever Beaver, Skipper II, the All American Girl and others. Now Frank was printing our photos. Two of them show Dick and me with two of the barracks pets, an unnamed cat and a black Labrador named Tex by some prior occupant of the barracks. The picture of Dick and me would, sadly, be his last.  Sometime around the first of the month Dick was transferred from the crew. The new co-pilot was Paul Batterman.

The last mission to Berlin had been my fifteenth and since the twelfth exemplary mission entitled you to a second Air Medal, it was awarded on December 7th, the third anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Actually you were not give another Air Medal, rather a bronze oak leaf to wear on your original Air Medal. It was called an "Oak Leaf Cluster."

By December 10th the weather had turned very cold and nasty. We had two coke stoves in the barracks, but the supply of coke was low and getting lower. On some days there was none available. We managed for a while to keep warm by using only one stove and huddling around it. Since my cot was near the end of the barracks I was cold at night, so I gathered extra blankets. As a matter of fact by the second week in December I had eight of them! The weather became even colder as January approached and the barracks heating problem more severe. It was eventually solved by a couple of our more ingenious comrades by converting the stoves to burn oil using discarded airplane fuel tanks. Pictures of these tanks can be seen attached to the outside of our barracks in later photos.

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