Memoirs of a Bombardier

Dad was telling me about one of his missions over Germany when their B-17 was damaged by flak.  He said they had lost an engine and couldn’t make it to their original target so they left the formation, headed home, and started looking for “targets of opportunity.”  They finally spotted a small ship tied up to a dock and dumped their entire load of bombs on that little ship.  “Sounds like a waste of good munitions” I said.  “Not really” he replied, “if we hadn’t found that ship we would have dumped everything in the English Channel and that would have been a waste.”

When I asked him why he didn’t take the munitions back so they could be used on the next mission, he told me the story that explained it all.  Apparently he was on the flight line one day when a plane did return with its entire bomb load in tact.  While they were unloading it, something set off an explosion the killed several men.  After a few seconds, when the smoke had cleared and everyone got back on their feet, dad saw the crew chief laying by the wreckage and calling for help.  He said he ran to help him but the man died in the few seconds it took for him to reach his side.  “It wouldn’t have made any difference” he said, “the man’s legs weren’t attached and he didn’t have much left below the hips.”  From that point on, even though it was not authorized and a punishable offense, there was an unwritten rule that no flight would ever return to base with their bomb load.

On a mission just before D-Day, Dad said he noticed multiple small lakes in the French countryside that he had never seen before.  He found out later that those lakes were French farm fields the Germans had flooded to thwart any attempt to drop paratroopers.  One of dad’s next missions was to bomb the dykes that would allow those fields to drain.

On one of his last missions, dad’s oxygen line was severed by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel, he didn’t remember which, and he passed out.  He was out for 20 minutes before “Captain Hardesty” revived him and reconnected his oxygen line.  He never forgot Captain Hardesty for saving his life and visited him after the war at Travis AFB near Sacramento.  The Captain was a General by then but took the time out of his busy schedule to meet with dad for a little reminiscing.

At the end of the war when the hostilities had ended, the occupation troops were desperate for Americans who could speak the language to act as interpreters.  Dad spoke fluent German, a talent he picked up from the German family who raised him in South Dakota, and he got the opportunity to visit some of the cities he had dropped bombs on only weeks before.  He made some friends while he was there that he stayed in touch with for the rest of his life.  When I was stationed there in 1966, dad came over for a visit and we met with those friends he had made 20 years earlier.