Mission Date: September 3, 1944
BREST, GROUND DEFENSE, CROZON
100th BG Mission #: 190
Mission Summary
ON THIS DAY…SEPTEMBER 3,1944
After a scrubbed mission on September 2, the 100BG received a mission alert that evening for another tactical mission to be flown the next day. Although the Allied line in France had successfully advanced eastward, Brest and its port were still being defended by a reported 40,000 German soldiers who had been ordered by Hitler to defend the fortifications until the last bullet was spent. With the Germans refusing to surrender, General Eisenhower ordered Brest be bombed without respite until they did so. On September 3, the 8th Air Force planned to send its 3rd Division’s B-17 Groups, four hundred B-17s, to attack Brest while the VIII Fighter Command would send sixteen of its P-51s as escort fighters and fifty P-38s in support of the mission.
At Thorpe Abbotts, thirty-seven air crews across the Squadron areas were awakened for their next mission. The 349th’s Willis Lee Miller crew had a dark sloggy start to their day, heading out in the rain with some trepidation about their #1 combat mission. Confident his crew was ready, 22 year-old “Moose” Miller, his nickname because of his 6’2” frame, had been commander to his crew since Rapid City and now this was it, their #1 mission. In the 418th Squadron area, William A. Ryan’s crew didn’t even think about the rain as they headed toward their final and #35 mission briefing. Living the combat life in England since April, Ryan the 22 year-old first pilot from Ada, Oklahoma was praying that his crew would pull an easy target for their final mission.
After checking in with the attendance man stationed at the briefing room door, the arriving airmen joined the other seated crews and were soon briefed by the Intelligence Officer for the Primary target. As each airman sat silently with their own thoughts, the 350th’s John E. David’s veteran crew were also praying for an uneventful mission. Already having beaten the survival odds of combat crews, they were preparing to fly their #31-#32 mission and Lt David, the 28 year-old, 6’ tall, pilot from Genoa, Ohio was looking forward to returning to the States and home to his wife Helen, who was pregnant with their first child. Lt. David’s Bombardier, John “Jack” Goethel, nicknamed ‘Johnnie Boston’ since his Aviation Cadet days, was also looking forward to the end of his tour before his luck ran out. Now flying as David’s BOM, Goethel had been pulled from the July 28 mission on which his original crew under Lt. Wesley Stansbury had been killed in a mid air collision over the North Sea.
The 13CBW was scheduled to fly four wings that morning: The 13A would be flown by the 95BG, the 13B lead by the 390BG, would fly also as its Low, the 13C lead by the 390BG would have the 100C group flying as its Low and finally, the 13D would be led by the 100A as its Lead group and the 100B as its Low group, flying 8th in the Division line.
Lt Colonel Frederick Price would fly the command position in one Pathfinder, while Major Maurice Youngs would fly command in the other. Major William Utley, the 31 year-old forester from North Carolina before the war who was now the 100BG’s Adjutant Ground Executive, would fly as an observer on Charles Streed’s Fortress while William Harney would fly as Streed’s CP, sitting in for his injured CP, Edward Lindsay.
All thirty-nine of the 100th’s B-17s took off successfully from Thorpe Abbotts between 0543-0615 hours in the darkness and then forming into their respective groups and wings. As the English Coast was departed at Portland Bill, the 13D’s formation jockeyed for position into the Division line.
Over the Channel, at 0843 hours, tragedy struck John E. David’s B-17. Flying in the 13D’s Lead formation, David aborted with his engine on fire and three minutes later, he was observed turning back toward England. After chutes were seen, at 0852 hours, the aircraft hit the water and exploded. CP Keith Lamb, flying in James Ransom’s B-17 that day wrote in his memoir, “When we crossed the Channel, we got the order from the Group Commander to ‘clear the guns,’ which meant that the gunners, bombardier and navigator were to shoot their guns to be sure they were in good working order…Because we were leading the Low Squadron that day, I had a good view of what happened. As the boys were blasting away with their guns, I suddenly saw the number 4 engine of a plane ahead of us catch on fire. Someone had filled it with 50-caliber slugs…I counted three chutes bail out - but that was all. About the time the plane should have blown up, the engine fell off, carrying with it most of the wing that was on fire. The plane went into a sharp spin, and at our low altitude, hit the water, carrying the seven other men with it. That was a terrible experience.” Glenn Smiley, ROG on Thomas Anderson’s B-17 had recorded into his mission log, “We were ditching ship so resent in their position to MF/DF section… Pilot (John David) and Co-Pilot (John Simmons) went down and the engineer bailed out (Frank Barili) and hit the left landing gear, which came down because of the fire, his chute never opened.”
The 100BG’s B-17s proceeded to the briefed IP, where the Groups began their fan out procedure. At 0955 hours and over the target at the briefed 11000 feet, no bombs were dropped due to the clouds prohibiting a visual bombing. With no flak and no fighters in the area, the Fortresses dropped down an additional 2000 feet, and made a second run at 9000 feet and 8000 feet respectively. Bombs were away at 1022 hours with Glen Smiley recording, “The concussion from those big bombs jostled the following planes about a bit, our bomb load was 12-500’s.” William Crozier on Ricker’s crew recorded, “We led the low squadron. Went in at 11,000 feet, but clouds over target, so next run was at 8,000 feet. Germans at Brest cut way off from rest of army but they refused to surrender. On last pass over target I strafed the ground with my guns, but we were too high to see what I was shooting at.”
With the 100BG’s B-17s crossing back over the English coast at Portland Bill at 1146, all of the 100th’s remaining aircraft were down before 1300 hours. The crews considered the mission a “milk run” with no fighters and no flak encountered.
Pilot John E. David, CP John Simmons, NAV Theron Stookesberry, TTE Frank Barili, WG Walter Potter, TG Francis Waldschmidt were all killed in action. Although not officially declared dead until September 1945, the war department’s letter to Stookesberry’s wife was reported to indicate that his plane “is believed to have been hit by anti-aircraft fire over the Channel Islands.” Keith Lamb continued in his memoir, “Back at the base that afternoon, the Colonel called a special meeting of all the people who had been on that mission. It would have been impossible to determine which gunner had been responsible, so he didn’t even bother. But he succeeded in making any one of them who could have possibly been guilty suffer a great deal before we got out of there that day…Death was so commonplace that it was only the very unusual incidents that were remembered.”
BOM John D. Goethel, and two of the Enlisted Men, 22 year-old BTG Carl L. Fong from Sacramento, California and 21 year-old ROG Henry Hendrickson from Portsmouth, New Hampshire would survive and be rescued from the water after enduring one and one-half hours in the twenty foot waves of the English Channel. The men would spend three days in an English hospital suffering from shock and exposure but eventually all would return to duty and all three would wear flying goldfish insignia given to those who have been forced down over the English Channel.
With all three airmen falling into the water at about the same place, without a dinghy they drifted farther and farther apart. The 22 year-old Goethel remembered that after bailing out after the Navigator, his rip cord broke, and he frantically ripped at it until getting it open, falling 5000 feet before it did so. “Then I dropped - and when I hit, the wind caught my ‘chute’ and towed me about a mile, mostly under water, it seemed before I could collapse the silk. I inflated my Mae West, but it leaked. The doctors told me later it was lucky it did - if I hadn’t been forced to keep swimming I’d have frozen to death. My temperature went down to 81 degrees as it was…Even when I was numb as all get out, drowning didn’t appeal to me…I thought of the fellows back at the base, They called me “lucky.” Twice I was yanked off missions that were fatal. I told them ‘if anything happens to me don’t turn in my clothes to the supply officer - I’ll get back.’
Goethel also thought of his mother who had received a telegram in August about his brother Karl, a P-38 fighter pilot missing in action. Gothel stated, “If I drowned after I’ve fought to the limit, then I won’t mind it so much, but I can’t quit without trying to stay up a little longer… I must have said fifteen hundred prayers, if you can call what I said a prayer. I just keep repeating, ‘God help me, help me.’”
With the heavy rains continuing through the night, the 100BG would be under a Stand Down order for the next day.
Crews flying the mission: W Miller, Ricker, Daniels, Corley, J Williams, Kemp, Spurgeon with Captain Smith, Raine, Frazier, Everitt, Trommer, Anderson, Bailey, Streed with Major Utley, David, Radke, Baker, Geller, Schulte, Delaney, Urban, Kramp, Ryan, Harris, Dickert, Stevenson, Rowland, Fabian, D Ellison, W Kennedy, M Johnson, Hopkins, Ivosevic, Hempy, Ransom, Schaffhausen, Anderson
After a scrubbed mission on September 2, the 100BG received a mission alert that evening for another tactical mission to be flown the next day. Although the Allied line in France had successfully advanced eastward, Brest and its port were still being defended by a reported 40,000 German soldiers who had been ordered by Hitler to defend the fortifications until the last bullet was spent. With the Germans refusing to surrender, General Eisenhower ordered Brest be bombed without respite until they did so. On September 3, the 8th Air Force planned to send its 3rd Division’s B-17 Groups, four hundred B-17s, to attack Brest while the VIII Fighter Command would send sixteen of its P-51s as escort fighters and fifty P-38s in support of the mission.
At Thorpe Abbotts, thirty-seven air crews across the Squadron areas were awakened for their next mission. The 349th’s Willis Lee Miller crew had a dark sloggy start to their day, heading out in the rain with some trepidation about their #1 combat mission. Confident his crew was ready, 22 year-old “Moose” Miller, his nickname because of his 6’2” frame, had been commander to his crew since Rapid City and now this was it, their #1 mission. In the 418th Squadron area, William A. Ryan’s crew didn’t even think about the rain as they headed toward their final and #35 mission briefing. Living the combat life in England since April, Ryan the 22 year-old first pilot from Ada, Oklahoma was praying that his crew would pull an easy target for their final mission.
After checking in with the attendance man stationed at the briefing room door, the arriving airmen joined the other seated crews and were soon briefed by the Intelligence Officer for the Primary target. As each airman sat silently with their own thoughts, the 350th’s John E. David’s veteran crew were also praying for an uneventful mission. Already having beaten the survival odds of combat crews, they were preparing to fly their #31-#32 mission and Lt David, the 28 year-old, 6’ tall, pilot from Genoa, Ohio was looking forward to returning to the States and home to his wife Helen, who was pregnant with their first child. Lt. David’s Bombardier, John “Jack” Goethel, nicknamed ‘Johnnie Boston’ since his Aviation Cadet days, was also looking forward to the end of his tour before his luck ran out. Now flying as David’s BOM, Goethel had been pulled from the July 28 mission on which his original crew under Lt. Wesley Stansbury had been killed in a mid air collision over the North Sea.
The 13CBW was scheduled to fly four wings that morning: The 13A would be flown by the 95BG, the 13B lead by the 390BG, would fly also as its Low, the 13C lead by the 390BG would have the 100C group flying as its Low and finally, the 13D would be led by the 100A as its Lead group and the 100B as its Low group, flying 8th in the Division line.
Lt Colonel Frederick Price would fly the command position in one Pathfinder, while Major Maurice Youngs would fly command in the other. Major William Utley, the 31 year-old forester from North Carolina before the war who was now the 100BG’s Adjutant Ground Executive, would fly as an observer on Charles Streed’s Fortress while William Harney would fly as Streed’s CP, sitting in for his injured CP, Edward Lindsay.
All thirty-nine of the 100th’s B-17s took off successfully from Thorpe Abbotts between 0543-0615 hours in the darkness and then forming into their respective groups and wings. As the English Coast was departed at Portland Bill, the 13D’s formation jockeyed for position into the Division line.
Over the Channel, at 0843 hours, tragedy struck John E. David’s B-17. Flying in the 13D’s Lead formation, David aborted with his engine on fire and three minutes later, he was observed turning back toward England. After chutes were seen, at 0852 hours, the aircraft hit the water and exploded. CP Keith Lamb, flying in James Ransom’s B-17 that day wrote in his memoir, “When we crossed the Channel, we got the order from the Group Commander to ‘clear the guns,’ which meant that the gunners, bombardier and navigator were to shoot their guns to be sure they were in good working order…Because we were leading the Low Squadron that day, I had a good view of what happened. As the boys were blasting away with their guns, I suddenly saw the number 4 engine of a plane ahead of us catch on fire. Someone had filled it with 50-caliber slugs…I counted three chutes bail out - but that was all. About the time the plane should have blown up, the engine fell off, carrying with it most of the wing that was on fire. The plane went into a sharp spin, and at our low altitude, hit the water, carrying the seven other men with it. That was a terrible experience.” Glenn Smiley, ROG on Thomas Anderson’s B-17 had recorded into his mission log, “We were ditching ship so resent in their position to MF/DF section… Pilot (John David) and Co-Pilot (John Simmons) went down and the engineer bailed out (Frank Barili) and hit the left landing gear, which came down because of the fire, his chute never opened.”
The 100BG’s B-17s proceeded to the briefed IP, where the Groups began their fan out procedure. At 0955 hours and over the target at the briefed 11000 feet, no bombs were dropped due to the clouds prohibiting a visual bombing. With no flak and no fighters in the area, the Fortresses dropped down an additional 2000 feet, and made a second run at 9000 feet and 8000 feet respectively. Bombs were away at 1022 hours with Glen Smiley recording, “The concussion from those big bombs jostled the following planes about a bit, our bomb load was 12-500’s.” William Crozier on Ricker’s crew recorded, “We led the low squadron. Went in at 11,000 feet, but clouds over target, so next run was at 8,000 feet. Germans at Brest cut way off from rest of army but they refused to surrender. On last pass over target I strafed the ground with my guns, but we were too high to see what I was shooting at.”
With the 100BG’s B-17s crossing back over the English coast at Portland Bill at 1146, all of the 100th’s remaining aircraft were down before 1300 hours. The crews considered the mission a “milk run” with no fighters and no flak encountered.
Pilot John E. David, CP John Simmons, NAV Theron Stookesberry, TTE Frank Barili, WG Walter Potter, TG Francis Waldschmidt were all killed in action. Although not officially declared dead until September 1945, the war department’s letter to Stookesberry’s wife was reported to indicate that his plane “is believed to have been hit by anti-aircraft fire over the Channel Islands.” Keith Lamb continued in his memoir, “Back at the base that afternoon, the Colonel called a special meeting of all the people who had been on that mission. It would have been impossible to determine which gunner had been responsible, so he didn’t even bother. But he succeeded in making any one of them who could have possibly been guilty suffer a great deal before we got out of there that day…Death was so commonplace that it was only the very unusual incidents that were remembered.”
BOM John D. Goethel, and two of the Enlisted Men, 22 year-old BTG Carl L. Fong from Sacramento, California and 21 year-old ROG Henry Hendrickson from Portsmouth, New Hampshire would survive and be rescued from the water after enduring one and one-half hours in the twenty foot waves of the English Channel. The men would spend three days in an English hospital suffering from shock and exposure but eventually all would return to duty and all three would wear flying goldfish insignia given to those who have been forced down over the English Channel.
With all three airmen falling into the water at about the same place, without a dinghy they drifted farther and farther apart. The 22 year-old Goethel remembered that after bailing out after the Navigator, his rip cord broke, and he frantically ripped at it until getting it open, falling 5000 feet before it did so. “Then I dropped - and when I hit, the wind caught my ‘chute’ and towed me about a mile, mostly under water, it seemed before I could collapse the silk. I inflated my Mae West, but it leaked. The doctors told me later it was lucky it did - if I hadn’t been forced to keep swimming I’d have frozen to death. My temperature went down to 81 degrees as it was…Even when I was numb as all get out, drowning didn’t appeal to me…I thought of the fellows back at the base, They called me “lucky.” Twice I was yanked off missions that were fatal. I told them ‘if anything happens to me don’t turn in my clothes to the supply officer - I’ll get back.’
Goethel also thought of his mother who had received a telegram in August about his brother Karl, a P-38 fighter pilot missing in action. Gothel stated, “If I drowned after I’ve fought to the limit, then I won’t mind it so much, but I can’t quit without trying to stay up a little longer… I must have said fifteen hundred prayers, if you can call what I said a prayer. I just keep repeating, ‘God help me, help me.’”
With the heavy rains continuing through the night, the 100BG would be under a Stand Down order for the next day.
Crews flying the mission: W Miller, Ricker, Daniels, Corley, J Williams, Kemp, Spurgeon with Captain Smith, Raine, Frazier, Everitt, Trommer, Anderson, Bailey, Streed with Major Utley, David, Radke, Baker, Geller, Schulte, Delaney, Urban, Kramp, Ryan, Harris, Dickert, Stevenson, Rowland, Fabian, D Ellison, W Kennedy, M Johnson, Hopkins, Ivosevic, Hempy, Ransom, Schaffhausen, Anderson
Bombing Results
Bombing Results: VERY GOOD
Aircraft Lost: 1
Crew Lost: 6
Claims of Enemy Losses (CLS): 0
Aircraft Returned:
