Mission

At 1430 hours, the crews of Eichen, Harris, Hunter, Lacy, Roth, Schomp, Williams, Noble, Rogers and Schwank were all sitting in the briefing for the 100th’s second mission of the day. Their primary target would ‘No Ball’ target, constructional works at La Glacerie, four and one-half miles SSW of Cherbourg.

The 1st Division would be sending their bombers to Sottevast while the 2nd Division’s bombers were to attack Brussels. The 3rd Division, attacking La Glacerie, would be led by one group from the 45CBW, with the 13CBW’s one group following at a two minute interval. Two groups from the 92CBW would follow behind the 13CBW.

They men would be flying as the Low Squadron of the 13CBW, which would be led by the 390BG and have the 95BG flying as the High Squadron.

The flak guns were a big concern and the men were warned about the eighty guns aiming for them in the Cherbourg area. As the course was outlined, the men were told that if they were to stay on the briefed course, they would be able to avoid at least one-half of those guns. An immediate right turn after dropping their bombs would take them out of flak. In addition, they were warned to not over run their IP or Rally Point for fear of running into heavy flak as well.

Although Noble as one of the spares did not take off, take-off was successful between 1635-1641 hours and the B17s assembled without incident. Rogers and Schwank flying as the other spares returned unneeded.

After the turn at the IP was made, a successful run was executed and each of the aircrafts’ twelve 500 lb bombs were away at 1916 hours under heavy flak. Fortunately for the 100th, “flak in the Cherbourg area was reported intense on the Squadron that preceeded the 100th but meagre to moderate on the 100th.” Hunter, Lacy and Roth’s B17s all picked up battle damage but returned to base safely.

That evening, with the alert light on, the Rogers crew was notified that they would fly again the next day. Having arrived to Thorpe Abbotts on April 12, TTE “Dickie” Kendall recorded into his diary, “May 8th 44 Today another one of our crews didn’t return… That makes only 6 crews left out of the 8 that came over from Avon Park. I guess we have been pretty lucky in my crew with no one being hurt yet.”