Mission

ON THIS DAY...AUGUST 27,1944

“Briefing in one hour” was heard by thirty-six crews awakened across the Squadron areas that early Sunday morning. Unable to see anything in front of them as they walked through the thick ground fog on their way to the briefing room, the pilots hoped that the fog would lift by the time of take-off. At 0500 hours, when the S-2 Officer pulled the curtain back from the map in front of the room, the men started the whistles and moans as they followed the red string all the way to Berlin. This would not be a ‘milk run’ like the previous day’s mission.

The 13CBW would be leading the 3rd Division to Berlin but this time, its lead wing would be a composite formation made up of the 95BG in the Lead and Low, and the 452nd as its High group. The 100BG would fly as the 13B wing, second in the Division line, while the 390th would fly as its 13C.

With the primary target of a tank supply depot, the 100BG would be led by Major Channing Emberson in the lead Pathfinder aircraft. Andrew Gorski would fly Command in the 2nd Pathfinder, leading the Low Group.

After taxiing into position on the runway, the crews sat in their aircraft as the take-off time was delayed in hopes that the ground fog would improve. Waiting, most hoped for a scrubbed mission. With visibility of only two hundred yards, the 100BG’s pilots finally took off between 0939-1010 hours, six hours after being awakened that morning and even longer for the lead crews awakened first.

Loaded up with twelve 500# bombs, take-off would be precarious for the pilots. The thick fog required an instrument take-off and the pilots were unable to see the ships in front of them or the end of the runway. Starting their #5 combat mission, pilots Walter Bailey and William Merchen barely got their B-17 high enough. Calvin Dollar, their TTE recorded, “Instrument take off…After landing, we found leaves + sticks in No 1 engine which came from hitting trees at end of runway on takeoff.”

Completing the Division assembly line at Ipswich, the 100BG departed the English coast at Lowestoft. First encountering large patches of clouds over the North Sea, the wings ran into dense 10/10 clouds from 17000 up to 23000 feet, causing severe icing as the formations flew over the Danish peninsula.

The pilots had an impossible time of maintaining any semblance of a formation as they climbed higher through the clouds in an attempt to reassemble on top and where the 100th’s Low group was again lost in the clouds. Element lead, pilot Clifford Harris tells us, ”As we flew across the Channel we could see a cold front ahead northwest to southeast across northern Germany. The lead kept zig-zagging to gain altitude to get over the front but it was pretty high. We were up about 30,000ft when we ran out of room and the lead went right straight into the clouds with the rest of us behind. It was so thick I could barely see my inboard engine. I held airspeed , heading and altitude as close as I could as I had no place to go. At any time I expected to run into the guy ahead of me or have a wingman fly in my window but nothing else that I could do. The radio was quiet with only the constant humming of a thousand radar sets making any noise. It was terrifying and I'd take flak anytime to that. We were in it I guess for about three minutes and suddenly broke out into bright sunshine---there was Denmark and the Kiel Canal and the Baltic Sea, the North German Coast----------BUT-----Not a damned airplane in sight. I looked back to see some popping out of the clouds below and above so everyone had scattered …”

At that point, Major Emberson decided to circle to get the formation back together with the goal of attacking their “C” target. NAV James Wright on Albert Trommer’s crew remembered, “We went in over Germany close to Emden. The flack was scarce…” Although the formation was shot at, the flak was distant and considered meager. At 1332, an attempted run was made but was ultimately abandoned due to the thick clouds.

Now over Germany, the 100BG heard the recall notification and the course back to England was taken. Clifford Harris continued his memory, “The mission was a shambles so it was scrubbed and we reassembled and let down over the North Sea to about 500 feet to get under the front and went home. Scary!!!!”

The B-17s flown by Oren Hopkins and Raymond Heironimus flying in the Lead squadron had aborted before departing the English Coast, jettisoning their bombs in the Channel before trying to land back at base in the dense fog. The remainder of the 100th’s pilots landed safely still fully loaded with their bombs. S-2 Officer Red Bowman recorded into the Group’s diary, “On their return in the early afternoon and with the bombs, the crews were quite vocal about the wasted effort, having been pulled from their beds at 4 AM that morning…” James Wright, NAV on Albert Trommer’s crew and frustrated about the mission, recorded, “We came home and didn’t drop our bombs again. Well, we got shot at over enemy territory and that is supposed to constitute a mission. We had better get credit for it…”

Out of the four hundred twenty-six Fortresses despatched for Berlin that morning, only ten of them managed to attack any target after being recalled and the 8th Air Force was stood down for the next day, August 28, due to the bad weather over the Continent.

Crews flying that day: J Williams, Allen, Elbel, Urban, Frazier, Herres, Taylor, Cumming, Bailey, Heironimus, Kassebaum, Bennett, C Baker, Geller, Schulte, Gay, Woodall, Trommer, Holladay, Hopkins, Simmons, Ricci, Jones, Fabian, Kramp, Ivosevic, Armstrong, Ernst, McLaughlin, Anderson Stevenson, M Johnson, Harris, Darby, Hempy, Lundquist