It had been four days since our "Milk Run" to St. Pol on Monday. Today was Friday and this would be our "thirteenth mission." We could not hope for another easy one and when the curtains were drawn, we knew this was going to be another rough day. For the second time in 11 days, we were headed for Brunswick. Need anyone be reminded of the stiff fighter opposition we could expect and the accurate flak barrage over the city itself. Brunswick was known as the second "Big B", Berlin being the more noted.

Lift off was 0900 hours with 28 of our planes, two of which were PFF (Pathfinders). Our load was 6  1000 pound bombs. We and 10 other Bomb Groups made up the 272 B-24's of the 2^nd Division to reach the objective. Among these groups was the 492^nd Bomb Group, the newest member of our 14^th Combat Wing. As fate would have it, they were to become the jinxed outfit of the 2^nd Division thereby relieving the Eightballs of the "honor" we had held so long, this would not be their day as would hardly any day until they were disbanded at the end of three months.

We hardly reached German airspace when the battle began. The Nazis sent up two groups of fighters, one to distract our escort and the other to attack the 14^th Combat Wing made up of the 44^th, the 392^nd, and the ill fated 492^nd Bomb Group. We three groups flew together perhaps a half a mile apart. All hell broke loose when between 150 and 200 of the enemy planes swarmed all over us. Most of the enemy action was aimed at the 492^nd Bomb Group. Our 44^th gunners were very busy, they shot down 13 of the attackers, four of which my 68^th squadron accounted for. No 44^th plane was lost but I'll never forget what I saw happening to the 492^nd Bomb Group. It was like watching a motion picture as they were ahead of us within easy view. Enemy fighters in mass saturation swung in for the attack, some head on, others from up and into the rear of the formation. I saw what looked like a massacre, one of their bombers after the other was shot out of the sky. I saw the whole thing and before it was over, the 492^nd had lost eight of their number. Little could any of us know this was to be their lot as long as the Group remained in combat. They had inherited the Eight Ball's jinx.

We were still on the way to Brunswick. Our objective was the marshaling yards in order to disrupt traffic through this most important rail center. Being 125 miles west of Berlin, it was a vital junction for goods flowing from the east and north. Our B-24's all together had 700 tons of bombs and when we finally got there we delivered them on target with excellent results due to the fact that the cloud cover had dissipated so that our bombardiers were able to make a visual bomb run.

But we were not there yet, we still had many miles to go when suddenly one of our motors began to smoke. Pilot Peritti feathered the prop and gave more power to the remaining three in order to keep in formation. We had apparently caught some enemy fire and were loosing oil. This was bad news, the Luftwaffe pilots just loved to see a plane fall out of formation. They were reluctant to come at us again as we had shot them up badly on their attack before but brother watch out for any bomber that left formation, Many times I personally saw one of our bombers leave formation and before long the enemy would be on the attack. They would swoop down on the crippled ship, it always seemed to me like a cat playing with a mouse. Most times I would watch our fellow airmen bail out before the plane made the final plunge to earth.

We did not want to be one of these unfortunates so Peritti and I devised a plan. As I said before, we never flew in a straight line for long before we would alter course in order to not alert the Germans as to our final destination. Peritti ordered Warga to release our bombs to lighten our ship so we could keep up with the others and I was to plot a new course about ten minutes before the whole formation turned in order to "cut the corner" and rejoin the group before the German pilots had a chance to get at us. In all my missions, I never saw another plane do what we did that day. At every turn, to the target and on the way home, we cut the corner. It must have appeared odd to the rest of the squadron but they obviously could tell what we were doing and could see we had lost an engine. I feel it saved us from being shot down.

Warga did release our bombs. If I live to be a hundred years old, I'll still be able to close my eyes and see it again. He picked out a German farm house in the middle of nowhere. The bombs started walking across the barn yard, through the barn and into the house coming out the other side of the yard. No one on the ground could have survived this completely unexpected disaster. When questioned at interrogation why he picked this target, his reply was, "What's the difference in destroying a farm house or a city house?" I never have had a bad conscious about it as the Nazis had no qualms about sending V-2 rockets into England that plummeted out of the sky at 3000 mph exploding with no warning whatsoever. It's easy to say today that what we did was wrong but remember this was war and we were just young boys playing the game.

Finally we did reach the target and one can only imagine how helpless we felt going through the terrific flak barrage with no bombs to drop. We did not want to be exposed to this terrible danger but neither could we leave formation and as usual, we picked up our share of flak holes.

With their bomb loads gone, the other planes in our formations now were able to fly faster than we were using only three motors. This put us in a tight spot. We continued to cut corners until we started to pass a nearby B-17 formation. Peritti left our Group and joined onto this Flying Fortress outfit. The B-24 could easily fly as fast with three motors as the B-17 with all four. We were told later that we really did look out of place with our square body, twin tailed Lib flying among the round bodied single tail Forts. We could have cared less, we needed the protection of a formation to keep the fighters off our backs.

In spite of all that the Germans threw at us, the 44^th lost not a plane or man this day but in turn we had punished them severely. We landed at 1600 hours (4:00p.m.) having been in the air exactly 7 hours.

To put the day in prospective for the whole 8^th Air Force, 888 heavies were dispatched of which 818 reached their targets. In the process 28 of our bombers and 19 of our fighters did not return. In the fierce aerial fighting, the Luftwaffe took a severe beating as did the German cities.