Mission

ON THIS DAY...SEPTEMBER 13,1944

On the 13th, 3rd Division orders would send its first force of ten combat wings to attack two aero-engine plants and a ball-bearing plant in the Stuttgart area and a synthetic oil plant at Ludwigshafen in southwestern Germany. The Secondary target would be the Darmstadt marshalling yards.

At Thorpe Abbotts, twenty-five crews were seated in the early morning briefing, including the newly operational crews of Walter Charles, Harold Bucklew and Andrew Downing, all flying their #1 combat mission. For the Ivosevic crew, it would be their sixth day in a row flying and they were damn tired. Even ROG Glenn Smiley on Thomas Anderson’s crew felt it when he recorded, “Another rough day as far as sleep goes. We sucked on benzadrine sulfate to keep awake.”

The S-2 Officer briefed the men for the Primary target of the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft plant that manufactured aircraft components. Located in Sindelfingen, twelve miles southwest of Stuttgart, the plant was located adjacent to the Böblingen Luftwaffe airfield which housed German fighters that were sent up to protect Stuttgart.

The 13CBW would fly two wings: the 13A led by the 390BG, flying second in the Division line and the 13B flying seventh in line and led by the 100BG. The 100BG would fly two groups as the Lead and the High groups with the 95BG flying as its Low. Andrew Gorski would fly command with James Seaman’s lead crew while Major Joseph Zeller would fly with Leslie Roediger’s crew.

With each of the Fortresses either loaded with ten 500# GP bombs or twelve incendiaries, all aircraft departed the base as planned by 0641 hours and the 100A formation was joined by the 95A over buncher 28. With division assembly successful, the English coast was departed at Beachy Head and the 13B CBW headed across the Dover strait, making landfall on the French coast at 0859 hours.

Flying across France in the CAVU conditions, it would be the dense persistent contrails above 20000 feet that would challenge the pilots that day. By 1036 hours, with no sightings of enemy fighters, the briefed IP was reached and the fan-out procedure commenced with each of the three groups making its turn onto the bomb run with bomb bay doors opened.

Encountering no flak over the target, bombs were away on the target at Sindelfingen at 1044 hours with good results. “The target area blanketed by 500 GP and IB Bombs. In addition the dispersal area and one of the hangars on the nearby Stuttgart Boblingen A/F were blanketed and at least eight of the 23 planes on the field appeared to be in areas blanketed by bombs. Some bombs fell in the MY beside the plant and two patterns were partly in the town area.”

With the Rally Point made good, the 13B departed the continent at the Belgium coast and by 1233 hours had crossed back into England. After seven hours in the air, all of the 100th’s Fortresses landed safely by 1325 hours with no damages and no casualties. The crews called this one a “milk run.”

Back in his nissen hut, WG James Smith had survived his #1 mission with the Walter Charles crew. He recorded into his diary that day, “Well, today I made my first one and got my first taste of combat. We hit a plant at Sindelfingen, about 10 miles from Stuttgart. We smeared it with 2000,000 incendiaries and Mac says it was really burning when we cleared out. We were sweating out the fighters since they had hit the two missions before us. But they didn’t show up and since the flak batteries were centered around Stuttgart, it was inaccurate. The group by us, though, really caught some. Think the whole 3rd Division lost only a very few ships. Someone left an emergency O2 valve on in our radio room so we ran short and had to leave the formation over Belgium and rejoin them when they descended. A couple of P-47’s came down with us. The escort was swell. It was a milk run, all in all, I guess. They broke us in pretty decently. The Jerries tried some new rocket shells that burst around 20,000 and go up like sky rocket. They look pretty rugged but don’t think they’re much good.”

While the men were out on the mission, Marvin Bowman’s S-2 Intelligence group had been preparing for the 100th’s next mission scheduled to go off the next day. It would be another ‘Frantic’ shuttle mission and thirty-eight crews, including Ivosevic's were alerted that evening.

Crews flying that day: W Miller, Streed, Elbel, Urban, J Williams, Geller, T Anderson, Cumming, Frazier, Dyatt, Radke, Bennett, Charles, Spurgeon, Jenkins, Ellison, Darby, R Miller, C Harris, Ivosevic, Downing, Roediger, Bucklew, Armstrong, Seamans