The 44^th Bomb Group flew a mission on September 18, 1944 that I will forever be sorry that I missed. The British had launched a paratrooper assault deep into the German held territory in Holland at Arnhem and Nijmegen Bridge (the same bridge made famous in the movie, "A Bridge Too Far"). On this date the 14^th and 20^th Combat Wing B-24's (248 in all) flew low level over Holland to drop supplies to the British troops trapped there. They flew between 200 and 400 feet over the drop zone achieving excellent results. When the crews came back, they were ecstatic. One or two gunners from our crew were assigned to this mission. All they could talk about was how low they were. The Dutch people would line up along the route and wave handkerchiefs at them. One of our guys said they were so close that he aimed his machine guns at the people waving and tracked them as if he were going to fire. When the people saw the gun following them, they became frightened and made wild dashes to get out of the way. Our gunner would tell this story and laugh out loud. He thought it was a really funny joke to play on the people.

The 44^th lost no planes but everyone of them had damage from small arms fire by the Krauts on the ground. The men who went on this mission had a ball. In some ways, it reminded the old timers of the famous Ploesti raid in Rumania. It would have been a fun navigational exercise for me even though the briefing documents and maps for the 14^th and 20^th CW's were reversed.

Our crew got a chance to get in our licks against the Heinies eight days later on September 26^th. Our target was the Marshaling yards at Hamm, Germany. This rail yard was one of the main networks east of Arnhem that the Germans used to send reinforcements to this sector of the front.

We were not assigned to our own B-24H "Lili Marlene" for this mission, instead we had been training in a B-24J PFF Pathfinder Ship for the last three training flights. I do not remember the name of this plane but it had "Mickey", the H2X radar, on board and a specially trained radar navigator was added to our crew to operate this device.

The 44^th Bomb Group was leading the 14^th Combat Wing and we were the lead for the 44^th. We had become a Pathfinder crew and I was the lead navigator for this mission. I did essentially the same type of navigation I did before and where I could not get visual check points from the ground, the radar navigator fed information to me from his scope. We worked very well as a pair but at no time was there any doubt who was directing our course. I fed all the navigational instructions to our pilot, Peritti. I liked being a Pathfinder, it was fun. But this was my 30^th mission and I would complete my tour on this day even though the rest of the crew would have only 29 missions. I flew two on D-Day as against their one so I was one up on them.

Take off was 12.30 hours with 25 aircraft including our PFF plane and one other PFF in the formation. We were loaded with 6 1000 pound bombs and two smoke bombs. We saw no enemy aircraft either going or returning but the flak was heavy as we approached the target area on the run from the IP. Our bomb bay doors were open and Warga was getting ready to release our bombs when from out of nowhere, a flight of B-17's passed under us about 500 feet below and at about 30 degrees to our line of flight. They had no business being there. No B-17's were scheduled to strike Hamm today but there they were directly under us.

It must have scared the holy heck out of those guys when they looked straight up into our open bomb bays with our loads ready to drop any second. Flak was thick and heavy, we wanted to get rid of our bombs and go home but the order came to close the bomb bay doors. Peritti put the formation into evasive action and asked me to plot a return course to the IP so we could try again.

Here I was on my last mission and we have to fly a second time through this anti-aircraft barrage. Oh! I was unhappy. I could have rung the necks of that dumb bunch of B-17 guys. They were on their way home and here we had to do it again, I dreaded the thought. I directed the formation back to the Initial Point (IP) and we made the bomb run all over again through the flak.

By the Grace of God, we all made it through with little damage to our planes. The flight home was without incident and we landed at 18.15 hours (6:15 P.M.) after a five hour and 45 minute flight.

The total loss for the day by the 8^th Air Force was 9 planes out of 1159 dispatched. All in all, it was a good day except for those darn Fortresses. However, the very next day, 90 FW190 and ME109 enemy fighters struck the 445^th Bomb Group shooting down 25 B-24's in three minutes. This was the greatest loss for a single group in any 8^th Air Force operation. Now I could quit but I had already made up my mind that I would volunteer for one more so we could all go home together.