Mission Date: April 15, 1945
ROYAN, GROUND DEFENSES
100th BG Mission #: 302
Mission Summary
ON THIS DAY...APRIL 15, 1945
At 0200 hours that Sunday morning, the target for the day’s early mission was divulged to the thirty-eight crews attending the briefing. The 100th would return to Royan, France to aid the French ground forces who were trying to take that area that day.
The 13th CBW’s formation would be led by the 95th BG, with the 390 flying as its ‘B’ group and the 100th as its ‘C.’ Colonel Sutterlin would lead the 100th, flying as Command Pilot with Champion. Kodas/Dawson would lead the High squadron, Raiford the Low and Hellerich the Low Low.
All of the heavy bombers would carry a new type of bomb load, six napalm bombs. BOM William Wellings in Champion’s ship recorded into his journal, “We had P-51 gas tanks loaded with 100 octane and a handful of Napalm tossed in to make it jell. We have six of those jobs and what a mess they were. They looked like they’d fall apart if you touched them. And a lot of them did.”
With one aircraft taking off every thirty seconds starting at 0530, the 100th’s Group assembly was over Buncher A-80 in France. With the Lead Command ship’s radio compass and gee inoperative, it assembled on the B squadron, resuming Lead for the Wing and Division assemblies.
The route into the target was over Paris and the formation reached bombing altitude of 15000 feet at the IP where the cloudy conditions had cleared to CAVU.
Bombs were away without any interference other than various bomb rack malfunctions. Wellings tells us, “They had no fins at all and they just tumbled and turned and hit where they damn well pleased. We got some pretty good hits out of a few of them but not many. Guys in every sqdn had a couple hung up and the B sqdn got all screwed up because the lead couldn’t get theirs out.” The High squadron’s lead B17, #908, had their entire bomb load hang up due to a malfunction while three ships in the Lead squadron also had bomb release malfunctions.
Pilot James Lantz remembered, “After bombs away we could see the French artillery open up on the ground below. The way back brought us over Rein (Reims) and we saw the famous cathedral…”
With the ships encountering no flak, the mission was considered another ‘milk run.’ All ships returned safely to Thorpe Abbotts at 1400 hours.
James Lantz noted into his journal that TTE Roens Shearwood from the Lawrence Bazin crew, shot down on the April 10 mission, had just returned that evening to Thorpe Abbotts. Lantz says, “He was the only one to get back and he bailed out through a hole in the ship made by a 20 mm. No one else got out of the ship and it went all to pieces. He landed in Germany and hide (sic) and ran for two nights until he ran into our advancing tanks. The Jerries shot at him on the way down and he saw several bodies of Allied airmen who had been riddled by the Germans”
Bombing Results
Bombing Results: VERY GOOD
Aircraft Lost: 0
Crew Lost: 0
Claims of Enemy Losses (CLS): 0
Aircraft Returned:
Photos
Royan
Royan (100th Photo Archives)
