Mission

ON THIS DAY...June 11, 1944

The 100th’s briefing Officers were notified just before midnight on the 10th that orders were coming in for the next day’s mission. At 0230 hours that Sunday morning, twenty crews were seated for the briefing, where they learned that they were to bomb coastal defensive gun emplacements at Berck-sur-Mer, some fifty miles down the coast from Calais, South of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Lt Colonel John Bennett would fly as command pilot with Stanley Clark, leading the 13A formation, sandwiched between the 4B and 45A CBW formations. With the 100th would fly with the 95BG while the 390th would fly as the 13B CBW after the 45B and before the 92nd.

Flying in the lead squadron with Bennett and Clark would be Jones, Howard in the second PFF, Tiahrt, Brewer and Kassebaum. The High Squadron would have Scott in the lead with Wold, Woldt, Rake, Williams and Kemp while the Low would be led by Evans with Roth, Ryan, Schwank, Rowland and Rice completing the Squadron. Herres would fly as the weather ship.

Scheduled for take-off at 0500 hours, zero hour was designated as 0700 hours with an estimated time of return to be 0815 hours. The crews, heartened to be on such a short mission, were further briefed that they had been loaded with twenty-two 250 lb GP bombs and that if there were any issues dropping, second bomb runs had been authorized for all wings.

Before crossing the channel, Fory, flying as one of the spares was unneeded and turned back at Dungeness, England. With a quick flight across the Channel, the 100th’s bombs were away using the PFF method at 0709 from 22000 feet under heavy contrails and cloud coverage. Frank Barili, twenty-one year-old TTE with John David’s crew, flying in the second spare ship remembered, “Sent up as air spares…We got in with another group with a square K on their tail. Made bomb run but bombs were not dropped. Turned back to make second run, but our engine began to smoke and catch fire. Had to feather dive and return.” Although they had made it over the target, David ultimately returned to base with his bombs and the crew received no mission credit.

After bombs were away, the formation made a right turn over the Authie estuary and headed back out over the channel to England. No flak and no fighters had been encountered and the crews thought it an easy mission, flying for only a total of three and three-quarters hours. Unable to observe the bombing results after bombs away, according to Intelligence Officer, ‘Red’ Bowman, the “bombing was short with bombs falling in the water and beach” Bowman however looked on the positive side of the day and ended his journal entry with “The sun shining today for the first time since the start of the invasion.”

That evening, a mission alert came through from Headquarters and the Squadrons were alerted for their next mission.