Schweinfurt, August 17, 1943
THE REGENSBURG-SCHWEINFURT MISSION of August 17th had been long in coming. In mid-1943, General Eaker was still under enormous pressure to use or lose the heavy bomber force that now lay at his disposal. Schweinfurt was viewed as the ideal strategic objective, since it produced an estimated 50 percent of the ball bearings needed by the German war machine. The Regensburg Me-109 factory was equally high on the target list because of the obvious threat German fighters posed to the daylight bombing campaign. The Eighth’s bomber crews had been briefed for these targets a number of times before, only to have the missions scrubbed due to bad weather.
The plan that emerged for August 17th was an intricate double strike. Regensburg would be hit by 147 B-17s from the seven bomb groups of the Fourth Bomb Wing under the command of Colonel Curtis E. LeMay. His force had late-model long-range B-17Fs with outer wing “Tokyo tanks” that made them the natural choice for the deeper penetration to Regensburg, after which they would fly to North Africa in a surprise “shuttle mission.”
Schweinfurt would be struck by the Eighth’s other bombers, 231 B-17s from the 1st Bomb Wing under Brig. General Robert B. Williams. His command was split into two air task forces, each of which had two combat wing formations of three groups. Since Williams had only nine groups, assembling the larger number of group formations required a “maximum effort” in the truest sense of the word. It was standard operating procedure for three of a bomb group’s four squadrons to fly a raid, with the last standing down for a day’s rest. For this raid, all squadrons would fly. Each bomb group would dispatch three squadrons in a regular group formation, while its fourth squadron assembled with those of other groups in a “composite group.” Three composite groups would be formed in this way.
303rd Bomb Group Mission Route(s): Schweinfurt, August 17, 1943. (Map courtesy Waters Design Associates, Inc.)
In the plan, the 303rd was at the very end of the parade. The 358th, 359th, and 427th Squadrons would constitute the low group of 18 ships under Lt. Colonel Stevens and Major Kirk Mitchell flying in the last combat wing. The 303rd would also contribute 11 ships from the 360th and 358th Squadrons as the lead and low squadrons of a composite group under Major Lewis Lyle. The 379th Group would add a high squadron to the two 303rd squadrons and together they would fly high group in the same combat wing as the main 303rd formation. The last three squadrons of the 379th Group would complete this wing in the lead group position.
Success of the mission hinged on close coordination between the Regensburg and Schweinfurt strike forces. Both were to take off at dawn, and the lead wing of the Regensburg force was to cross the Dutch coast at 0830. The Schweinfurt force would follow 15 minutes later and the bombers were to drop on the two targets at virtually the same time: 1013 at Regensburg and 1012 at Schweinfurt. Numerous medium bomber and fighter bomber diversions were ordered, and 183 P-47s and 97 RAF Spitfires were to escort the B-17s. But they would be on their own at maximum escort range, and everyone knew the raid was going to be difficult even if everything went exactly according to plan.
The 303rd’s crews were awakened at 0300 and got the word at separate 0430 briefings for the officers and enlisted men. Bud Klint felt that “every heart in the briefing room hit rock bottom when they pulled the cover off the mission map and revealed that black tape running direct from England to Schweinfurt,” and he well remembers the sobering pep talk that Colonel Stevens delivered.
“We were further impressed with the importance of this mission when the ‘Old Man’ told us during briefing, ‘If today’s raid is successful, it will shorten the war by six months—If every pilot in this group were to dive his ship, fully manned and loaded with bombs, into the center of the target area, the mission would still be considered a success.’ This was our deepest penetration into Germany to date; we were to be over enemy territory for almost four hours; we were to cross the heart of Germany’s fighter defense zone; and, knowing the importance of the target, we knew that it would be zealously defended.”
Lt. Bill McSween also took notice, writing in his notebook that “This is the ‘shaky-do’ we sweated out so long.”
The enlisted men in Hullar’s crew learned about the target in an especially heart-stopping way. They were the only ones not present for the earlier Schweinfurt briefings, and the officers at the enlisted briefing simply announced the objective again, to what Gene Hernan remembers was “the usual ooohs and aaahs, swearing, etc.” Hullar’s men had no idea what the shouting was all about, so Dale Rice and the others had to find out on their own.
Years later, Rice recalled that “They gave the six of us our own briefing. It didn’t take long. The officer just opened the curtain and said, ‘This is it. This is the big one,’ and gave a few more details. By the time it was finished and we realized how far we were going, I think we were all in a state of shock.”
Norman Sampson also remembers how he felt when the curtain was raised: “That was a real shock. I didn’t say too much about it, but I done a lot of thinking.” George Hoyt was “apprehensive about such a long part of the mission over Germany without any fighter escort,” and Merlin Miller felt for sure that “there was going to be some empty beds in the old bunkhouse that night.”
Activity is frequently the best tonic for fear, but this day there were hours for Hullar’s crew to consider what lay ahead. Elmer Brown noted that “fog delayed takeoff from 0700 to 1200,” and this weather ruined the mission’s timetable and immeasurably increased the risks the Schweinfurt force faced.
LeMay’s Fourth Wing had received intensive blind takeoff practice, and he was able to obtain General Fred Anderson’s approval to take off after a 90-minute delay. His B-17 force crossed the Dutch coast around 1000 and got a hot reception from the Luftwaffe—14 of the 24 B-17s he lost went down en route to Regensburg.
But the truly critical decision for the Schweinfurt-bound B-17s came when General Anderson chose to delay rather than scrub their takeoffs, for now the Fourth Wing would no longer divert attention from them. Many German fighters that had attacked the Regensburg bombers would have the chance to land, refuel, and attack the Schweinfurt force coming and going, and in the intervening hours more units would be able to stage south from north Germany and Holland.
The Schweinfurt force would face the largest number of enemy interceptors ever assembled: between 260 and 300 single-engine fighters and about 60 twin-engine night fighters.
For the veteran crews, the wait seemed fraught with peril. On one of the 360th Squadron’s hardstands Lt. Carl Fyler’s men were scheduled to fly “an old beat-up B-17F named Red Ass,” B-17F 42-5483, in the composite group’s low squadron, and “Everyone had a case of the nerves. Frequent ‘piss calls’ were needed behind the planes. Others put on their oxygen masks and tried to clear their brains. Some could not get their cigarettes to their mouths because of nerves. We just waited and waited for the signal to start engines.”
The full implications of the delay were not apparent to Hullar’s crew at the time, and as the morning dragged on it appeared increasingly doubtful they would fly at all. Orders delaying the takeoff to 1200 hit Molesworth around 0900, but as late as 0930 it seemed to Hoyt to be “as dark as predawn.” There was another briefing at 1000, and as the hours whiled away the crew concentrated on rechecking their bomber, but the only benefit they received was a lengthy introduction to their first B-17, a Queen who would take them home from seven missions against the Reich.
She was Luscious Lady, B-17F 42-5081, an early Boeing-built Fortress modified with a single .50-caliber machine gun pointing directly out of her Plexiglas nose. She got her name from a petite but curvaceous blonde painted on both sides of the nose who balanced herself adroitly on an enormous black bomb. For today’s mission, the Lady carried 16 250-pound English incendiary bombs intended for the giant Kugelfischer factory in the heart of Schweinfurt. The bombing plan called for the lead wings to drop delayed-fuse high explosives to open up the factory roofs so that the incendiaries could ignite their wooden floors.
Luscious Lady, B-17F 42-5081, GN
V. The Lady was the Hullar crew’s first regularly assigned B-17. She took the crew safely to Schweinfurt and back on both of the famous 1943 ball-bearing missions and on five other raids against the Reich. She was still flying when Hullar’s crew finished their tour, and returned to the USA after completing 50 missions in April 1944. Pictured are members of the ground crew who kept the Lady in the air. Top Row, L-R, Sgt. Charles Twesten and Sgt. Winkleman. Bottom Row, L-R, Sgts. Isaccson, Klein, and Hewitt. After the Lady returned home, Tweston served on the ground crew of the 427th Squadron’s Sweet Rose O’Grady, B-17G 42-39885, a veteran of 143 missions. (Photo courtesy Hell’s Angels Newsletter.)
At 1200, the 303rd finally put its part of the plan into action. At 30-second intervals, 29 Fortresses roared down the main runway, throttles advanced to full power and propellers whirling in flat pitch as their blades took thin bites out of the humid air and pulled the cargoes of men and munitions into the sky. At 1216 it was time for the No. 2 aircraft of the Group’s low squadron to go, and Bob Hullar began Luscious Lady’s run by laying the palm of his hand on her central throttle bar to “walk” the throttles up to their takeoff setting.
As the Lady slowly accelerated, reached flying speed, and climbed into the air, George Hoyt “searched out my radio room window for the church steeple in one of the villages near the Base while I prayed to God to protect me and all of my buddies aboard. When I caught sight of that steeple as it whipped by in the mist, I felt great exultation and relief. I knew then that God was with us and would bring us through this perilous day.”
Two minutes later, Lt. David Shelhamer took off in Son, B-17F 42-5221, to fly as second element lead in the low squadron. Both he and Hullar were to occupy the dangerous airspace known as “Purple Heart Corner.”
Assembly of Schweinfurt’s two air task forces took considerable time. The first, led by Colonel William M. Gross, crossed the English coast at 1313. Slightly to the south the second, led by Colonel Howard M. Turner, met the English Channel at 1321. When the two forces rendezvoused at mid-Channel, they made a bomber stream of 220 ships that stretched over 50 miles, for there had been only 11 aborts. The B-17s began their climb to 25,000 feet, the normal combat altitude for the lead group of a 60-ship combat wing.
Colonel Gross’s wings never got that high. Shortly after the Dutch coast he observed a heavy cloud bank at altitude, and rather than risk scattering his force in the clouds, he ordered a descent that brought his low groups to 17,000 feet. His force missed their rendezvous with the P-47 escorts of the 4th Fighter Group, and his wings were soon under heavy attack from up to 240 Me-109s and FW-190s. A slaughter ensued as the Fortresses flew over Belgium, crossed into Germany near Eupen, and proceeded to Schweinfurt by way of Wiesbaden and Darmstadt. The first wing lost 17 bombers and the second four more before they reached the target area.
If losses are any gauge, the road to Schweinfurt was smoother for Colonel Turner’s wings. But while they made their rendezvous with the P-47s of the 78th Fighter Group, they too ran a terrible gantlet of enemy fighters en route to the target, encountering from 50 to 200 German aircraft as soon as their escort left.
Elmer Brown put it this way in his diary: “P-47s escorted us about 80 miles into France. We met an awful lot of fighter opposition. Head-on attacks by FW-190s and Me-109Es on the way to the target. Saw many a fighter burst in flames. Many Forts went down. When FW-190s and Me-109s shoot at you, the whole leading edge of their wings is aflame. The boys call them ‘headlights.’”
To Bud Klint, it seemed that “from the time our fighter escort left us, we were engaged in a running battle with hordes of German planes.”
In the ball turret, Norman Sampson felt the same: “The thing I remember was the many different types of planes the Germans used. Anywhere you looked, there was enemy planes coming at us. That was one day I unplugged my electric suit—too much action for that kind of heat! I saw many enemy planes go down and a lot of B-17s. It looked like an invasion, with so many airmen floating down.”
The same image occurred to George Hoyt in the radio room.* “We got many tail attacks from Me-110s and single-engine fighters coming in between five and seven o’clock.* All the while Me-109s and FW-190s were racing through our formation head-on with guns blazing. So many guys had bailed out from both sides that it looked like a parachute invasion, and at one point I looked out my side window at three o’clock low and saw an Me-109 strafe a parachutist from one of our Forts. The Germans came at us incessantly.”
To Merlin Miller the mission was “a kaleidoscope of many things. First there was the dark, clear blue sky, kind of a crazy quilt ground as it always looks from way up in the air, and lots of fighters—many fighters. It seemed like every place you looked, there was a fighter coming at either your group or you. There were a hell of a lot of nose attacks. I was seeing them come over and under and between and through the formation. At the same time, we had them coming in from the tail. Half a dozen fighters, maybe more, would get behind us and string out, and come in one right after the other at our group. It got so that we would just pick out the fighters to shoot at that looked like they were coming directly at us.
“There were parachutes too, many parachutes floating through the air, sometimes through the formation, white ones that the Americans had, dirty colored ones that the Germans had. You could see, oh, 40 to 60 parachutes in the air at once sometimes. And sometimes there’d be pieces of planes just floating through the formation from blown-up bombers, blown-up fighters, long columns of smoke from the ground, going down to the ground and coming up from the ground. You could see where we’d been, actually follow our track over the mission just by looking back and following the columns of smoke coming up from the ground. It was incredible!”
Lt. David Shelhamer felt that “this was the belle of the ball all right. Leading the second element in ‘Purple Heart Corner’ was no fun. If there’s one fighter in the sky and he’s going to attack a group, 99 times out of 100 he’s going to hit that low squadron in the low group. We were under attack for about a half an hour before reaching the target, and in that period of time they took out four B-17s.”
Lt. Don Gamble’s crew was flying well above “Purple Heart Corner” in the low squadron of the composite group, and from this vantage point Lt. Bill McSween saw one of these B-17s go down. He wrote that “FW-190s and Me-109s struck as soon as our fighter support left. Those babies made us know it coming in high from the nose. They got B-17 No. 6 in the high squadron. I saw seven chutes.” The other B-17s lost on the way in also came from this unlucky squadron.*
Lt. Cogswell’s crew was flying Iza Vailable, B-17F 42-2973, in the second element lead of the composite group’s low squadron, just to the right of Don Gamble’s aircraft. From the radio room, 19 year old Eddie Deerfield saw other ships go down: “The ‘box’ formations to our far left and right seemed to be drawing the brunt of the attack. Fortresses were falling everywhere. As they dropped out of the protective formations, enemy fighters roared in for the kills. Parachutes began peppering the sky as American airmen jumped from burning B-17’s. At least they stood a chance of surviving in German POW camps. What sickened me to the point of tears were the Fortresses that were exploding in midair with no hope of their crews’ escape.”
The Fortresses fought back, however, and Lt. Don Gamble witnessed a clean kill by his top turret gunner, Sgt. Clyde Wagner. He wrote, “Wag knocks the devil out of an FW-190—it flies all to pieces from a head-on high attack.” This took place at 1456, and the Group’s combat form states that Wagner “fired at FW-190 at 600 yards. Guns ran away and gunner held on FW-190. Cowling and parts fell off. Prop fell off. Plane dived down under our ship and blew up about 700 feet below.”
It was like this all during the half-hour that the 303rd fought its way from Eupen to the IP—the “Initial Point” from which the bomb run began—west of Darmstadt. In Satan’s Workshop, B-17F 42-29931, Capt. Davey was riding as Major Lyle’s tail observer in the composite group lead, “for they insisted that a pilot sit in the tail gunner seat to report to the lead pilot all matters related to the formation which was following.” “So many guns were firing at once…that you could feel [our airplane] shake like it had a fever from all those 50 Cal. recoils. I could see guns in all the ships behind were blazing away as well. Our pilot, Lewis Lyle, was doing a good job of taking what little evasive action he could on those fighters coming in from 12 o’clock and that was a preferred attack pattern. It was max closing speed and the Huns fired head on & rolled over, passed by and dove straight down to gain separation. The fight went on with new flights of fighters gathering at 12 o’clock high, out of 50 Cal range, to peel off and make their head-on attacks.”
Bud Klint recorded that “the Lady was hit by a 20mm shell which tore a one-foot hole in the leading edge of the wing, just to the right of the cockpit.”
On the morning of First Schweinfurt, August 17, 1943, nineteen year old Sgt. Eddie Deerfield strikes a pose under the nose of a worn-looking Iza Valiable, B-17F 42-2973, PUK. (Note the equally worn-looking Quonset hut in the background.) Sgt. Deerfield flew this mission in Iza Valiable as radioman on Lt. Robert W. Cogswell’s Crew. (Photo courtesy Eddie Deerfield.)
George Hoyt remembers an Me-110 that “put a dozen 7.9mm slugs into our port side, ‘walking’ them along the side of our plane from the lower vertical tail and coming right up to the side of the radio room.”
Merlin Miller remembers that fighter, too: “He was a very stubborn one and he did stitch some holes in us. I was shooting at him and I think I set his right engine on fire. He was burning as he left.”
Just before the target, Lt. Carl Fyler recorded another close encounter with a German fighter: “On my right I could see a row of German FW-190 fighters lining up. Then they flew out ahead of us, and turned around to attack us head on… One of them came right at me. He rolled right side up and came over my right wing, still firing. S/Sgt. Bill Addison, my top turret gunner, swung his two guns to the right and fired practically ‘point blank.’ He got him! I could see the pilot’s face as he went past us and went down.”
All in all, 22 of the Group’s B-17s were hit and two had to abort, but no 303rd ships were lost as they arrived over the target and the German fighters left, leaving the bombers to Schweinfurt’s flak. It was here that the Group’s luck changed. Lt. McSween observed that the “wings ahead had blasted hell out of it [the target], and we couldn’t see for smoke.”
Worse still, Lt. Gamble wrote that the Group got “some accurate flak over the target,” and while it wasn’t enough to destroy any Group ships, it completely spoiled the bomb run of the main 303rd formation.
It happened as the low group was making a slight S-turn to the left past the IP to correct its course and establish proper bombing interval behind the other two groups in the wing. Lt. Lawrence McCord, Group Bombardier in the lead plane with Colonel Stevens and Major Mitchell, had just slightly more than a minute to set up a bombing solution on his Norden bombsight. Before he could do so, McCord was hit in the stomach with flak, and the formation flew past the aiming point before the lead navigator, Lt. Richard McElwain, could do anything about it. He dropped McCord’s bombs, but most fell on the city instead of the target. Many in the Group didn’t know it at the time (Elmer Brown thought “our bombing was excellent”), but the trip had been largely for naught. Afterwards, Lt. McElwain commented ruefully, “It was okay, I guess. Poor Mac was in pretty bad shape and after I threw the bombs out, I went back to take care of him.”
Above them, the composite group had already dropped “to light a fire so the RAF could see to wipe the town off the Earth tonight,” as Lt. McSween and the others had been told they would at the briefing, but the RAF had other business that evening, bombing the V Weapons Research Center at Peenemünde. Elmer Brown had also understood that the “RAF [was] following up tonight” but he later wrote “they didn’t.” It rankled many B-17 crewmen.
The 303rd now faced the problem of getting home. Ahead of them lay a long, 190-mile flight to their rendezvous with their P47 escort near Eupen. Lt. David Shelhamer described it this way: “After the target, all hell broke loose, and the fighters jumped us for about an hour and a half solid. They never let up for a minute. They had everything up there, FW-190s, Me-109s, Me-110s, and Ju-88s. I was sure our squadron was going to lose some airplanes. But with good hard work, expending a lot of ammunition, and smart evasive action we came through it in pretty fair shape. No ships were lost, but my engineer Barlow has a badly shot-up arm, and Barron the tail gunner, my replacement, has a bad flesh wound in his right thigh. It sure was rough.”
Elmer Brown recorded “mostly tail attacks by Me-110s and a few Ju-88s.”
To Merlin Miller, “it was all one long shootout. If there was a lull, it occurred when you could see 20 fighters in the air heading in your direction instead of 50. I recall Me-110s, Me-109s, FW-190s, Ju-88s, and a bomber-type aircraft, bigger than an Me-110 and painted coal black, which sat back and lobbed rockets at the formation.” The Group’s records confirmed that this last aircraft was a Do-217 night fighter; it apparently came from a multiaircraft type night fighter training unit based near Stuttgart.
Lt. McSween’s notebook shows attacks by a variety of German fighters: “Left target OK. Me-110s and Ju-88s and FW-190s and Me-109s begin attacking.”
Lt. Don Gamble wrote: “Me-110s come in. Wag gets one at five o’clock and Bill Gilbert gets one from tail.”
These passages are paralleled by a line in Elmer Brown’s diary: “Rice our top turret gunner, and Miller, tail gunner, each get Me-110s.” This combat took place near the town of Geissen, when six Me-110 night fighters made rear attacks on the wing and three of them went down.
Sgt. Gene Hernan also saw one of these 110s fall from Lt. Claude Campbell’s bomber in the second element lead of the high squadron in the main 303rd formation: “I was being very cautious, and was patrolling to the rear and the sides in my top turret. I noticed a speck, which turned out to be a 110. It flew around out there for a while, sizing things up, and finally decided to attack. Why it came in from this angle I’ll never know (most of these 110s were night fighters and probably never attacked a B-17 before) but it came in to about 100 or 150 yards, still four o’clock high, and then pulled up and to the right. Of course all the top turrets, right waist guns, and any other gun that could get on it was firing. It was the perfect target and there was no way it could get through all those .50s. My right waist gunner, Kurt Backert, saw it crash in the woods with field glasses.”
No one can say for sure to whom these victories should go; 31 claims were submitted for this loss and the other two Me-110s alone.
Meanwhile, the action went on and on. Lts. Gamble and McSween both noted Me-109 kills by their crew. Gamble wrote: “Dick Scharch [the ball turret gunner] hits an Me-109 coming straight up under our plane. He sees it crash into the ground and burst into flames.”
McSween recorded that “Scharch got a 109. Gilbert got one.”
George Hoyt remembers the tail attacks towards the end of the return trip very well: “We got really heavy attacks from Me-109s and FW-190s, usually in groups of four, six, and even eight abreast. You reacted automatically, firing your gun at one target after another like a robot. I saw my tracers ricochet off the cowlings of the FW-190s many times; when they broke off their attacks, they would roll over and dive, and the tracers fired by our waist gunners and ball turret just bounced off their armored underbellies. Some of them pulled right up into our formation and I was sure their pilots were dead at the controls. Bits and pieces of B-17s were flying past us from airplanes ahead that were damaged, and by this time our formation was loose and ragged. We had shot up just about all of the 12,000 .50-caliber rounds the Lady carried.”
P-47s from the famous 56th Fighter Group finally came to the rescue 15 miles east of Eupen, farther east than they had ever flown before, thanks to recent improvements in their belly drop tanks. The 56th, called “Zemke’s Wolfpack” after its CO, Colonel Hubert “Hub” Zemke, surprised the German fighters as they were attacking Colonel Turner’s now badly-bedraggled force. One 56th squadron positioned itself above his first combat wing while the other two took their places above the second, and the fur soon began to fly. Lt. Gamble wrote: “See P-47 knock a Me-110 out—bursts into flames and pilot comes out in parachute on fire.” He remembers to this day that “his chute burned up and he fell nearly six miles with no chute on.”
Lt. McSween “saw one fighter crash and one explode that P-47s got.”
Merlin Miller remembers “a heck of a dogfight with a bunch of P-47s and several different types of German planes. When I saw them they were almost directly above us, and a couple even dove through our formation. The last I saw of them, they were moving back behind us.”
All in all, the 56th Group got 11 German fighters, fully justifying the comment by Major Lewis Lyle that “Those P-47s that came way in to meet us certainly made a lot of difference.”
Getting home was problematical even without the enemy. Elmer Brown noted that it was “about a 1200-mile round trip, and several planes landed at fields on the English coast out of gas. We just had enough to make our field.”
The Lady landed at 1808, after five hours and 52 minutes in the air.
With the end of their second raid, Hullar’s crew knew they had lived through something special. The Group had been in a terrific fight, ultimately being credited with 20 enemy fighters destroyed, seven probables, and nine damaged. The interior of Luscious Lady was so covered with shell casings that it was difficult to move about in her. George Hoyt found “the plywood floor of my radio room covered with over 1000 spent shells. My boots rolled on them when I walked.”
The Lady herself was, as Klint later wrote, “scarred from nose to tail, and destined to be in the hanger for repairs nearly a week.” In addition to other damage, he observed “three large flak holes in the nose and a splattering of .30-caliber bullet holes throughout the fuselage.”
The crew knew that 36 B-17s had been lost from the First Bomb Wing and that the Group itself had suffered some casualties. “A waist gunner in our squadron was killed and two other men injured” is how Elmer Brown accounted for them, and there were two other wounded in the rest of the Group.*
But despite this fact and “a fervent prayer of thanks to God that evening” as Hoyt “looked up at some stars that shown in the sky with the firm feeling of my feet on the ground,” the crew no longer felt shocked by their experience. It was rough, but both Miller and Sampson now looked on the mission as “a job we had to do,” and “the job” was one this new crew felt they were doing well.
Bob Hullar put it best in his notebook that very evening, when he summed the raid up in a sentence that said it all: “We’re veterans after that one!”
Hullar’s assessment was one his Squadron CO shared. As Ed Snyder recalls, “I had formed an opinion of this crew very shortly after they arrived. There wasn’t anybody in it, in my opinion, that wasn’t top-notch. After you saw a lot of crews you could almost put your finger on one that was going to survive and one that wasn’t. If a crew was really a crew and knew what it was doing, you had high hopes for them. Hullar’s crew had been trained well, had a good background, and a real cohesiveness. They worked together like a clock. They were one of the better crews that we ever had.”
Though the crew had good reason to be satisfied with their performance, the same cannot be said for the Eighth’s leaders. Lt. McSween was in the habit of annotating his notebook with “lessons learned,” and he put his finger right on the problem when he wrote: “The lead wings got hell shot out of them. We were lucky being last in a way.”
The first Schweinfurt mission demonstrated unequivocally that the Eighth could not prevent prohibitive losses to its lead wings without long-range fighter escort. The operation also underscored how critical it was that tactical advantages not be lost by gross deviations from mission plans. Total losses on the two raids were a staggering 60 B-17s, with 47 more so badly damaged it was unlikely they would fly again.
Nor were the bombing results sufficient to offset these figures. The Regensburg Me-109 factory suffered severe damage, but the Schweinfurt force as a whole fared little better than the 303rd. With or without fighter escort, the Eighth would have to rebuild and hit Schweinfurt again.
