Amiens, August 31, 1943
THE TWO DAYS following the raid on Watten were quiet ones for the 303rd. One day was spent on “normal routine duties,” which included lectures on aircraft recognition and security. A mission was scheduled on the other, but all aircraft were recalled due to bad weather. Then, on August 31st, another raid was laid on. It would be the first in which a mission leader would use VHF radio to improvise an attack on a target of opportunity, but it would not be one of the better efforts of the 41st Combat Wing, to which the 303rd belonged.
The plan called for the nine groups of the First Bomb Wing to attack the Luftwaffe air depot at Romilly-sur-Seine, east of Paris. Leading the effort was Colonel William H. Gross, who had commanded the first air task force attacking Schweinfurt on August 17th. It was an afternoon mission, with Colonel Gross and the lead wing flying to Romilly only to find it covered by clouds.
On the way, however, Colonel Gross observed the Luftwaffe airdrome at Amiens, and rather than waste the mission he radioed the combat wings behind to attack this target if visibility allowed. He then radioed detailed instructions to his own wing, setting up the attack.
Though Colonel Gross showed considerable initiative by taking this step, the attacks by the following wings did not go well. Nowhere was the confusion greater than in the 41st Combat Wing, where the 303rd was high group, the 379th was low, and the 384th was lead.
The 303rd put up 20 B-17s between 1520 and 1533 under Major Ed Snyder, who was in Winning Run with Captain Strickland and Lt. Paul Scoggins. The latter found himself “in a very responsible position—was lead navigator for our group,” and while Scoggins felt that he “got along OK,” five of the Group’s bombers aborted, and a 25 percent abort rate was poor in anyone’s book.
303rd Bomb Group Mission Route(s): Amiens, August 31, 1943. (Map courtesy waters Design Associates, Inc.)
Hullar’s crew flew to the right of Winning Run in Bad Check, B-17F 41-24587. Elmer Brown and Bud Klint describe what took place en route to the target and afterwards. Klint begins: “There was a low overcast over England which became broken by the time we reached the English Channel, but was solid again before we got to the target area. Unable to bomb, we turned around and started to return to our base. Fighter opposition had been light, and over the Channel our Group leader decided to try to reach the airdrome at Amiens, France, where the clouds appeared to be broken.”
From here, Elmer Brown wrote that “Our Group, which was originally high group, and the low group decided to bomb another target so we left the lead group and went back into France again. By this time things were really screwed up. We were directly below the other group, which had been the low group, when they opened their bomb bay doors to bomb Amiens. We got out of the way and they dropped their bombs but we were not in any position to drop ours.”
Soon after the raid the Group issued a report stating that “due to a hasty run-up on the target, it was impossible for the bombardier in the lead squadron to set his sights and drop his bombs. However, the second and third squadrons had an opportunity to make a perfect bomb run and dropped their bombs directly on the airdrome.” But a later 303rd report pointed out that “nine A/C bombed the target of opportunity and six A/C failed to bomb,” and this mediocre result was capped by the loss of one of the Group’s bombers.
The lost ship was Augerhead, B-17F 42-29635, from the 358th Squadron, flown by Lt. W.J. Monahan’s crew in the No. 6 low squadron position. She was in formation in no apparent distress when the Group’s low and high squadrons bombed, but the 303rd ran into moderate to heavy flak over the target, and on the way home Augerhead was having trouble staying with the formation. Then the B-17 was observed pulling out and heading towards the coast, “apparently attempting to gain cloud cover as protection from enemy fighters.”
Bad Check, B-17F 41-24587, GN
P, the 427th Squadron ship flown by Hullar’s crew on the August 31, 1943 mission to Amiens. This picture was taken in early September 1943, within a week of the crew’s mission. Note the dark blotches of Medium Green camouflage over the top of the aircraft’s Olive Drab upper surfaces, a common scheme on many early 303rd aircraft. Note also the contrast between the light grey star on the national insignia on the top left wing and the recently added white bars. The national insignia on the ship was surrounded by a red border at the same time, (Photo courtesy National Archives (USAF Photo).
Lt. Monahan’s crew didn’t make it. The B-17 was cut off by FW-190s and was last reported going down 12 miles east of Abbeville “under control, with two fighters attacking.” Two or three chutes were seen to emerge.*
The rest of the Group landed back at Molesworth between 1929 and 1940.
The loss of Monahan’s crew set Bud Klint to brooding, for even though he realized “you didn’t dare dwell on such things,” he knew also that “the crewmembers of the ship were all veterans in the ETO.”
It was losses like these, coming in ones and twos on the “easy” raids, that contributed to the long odds against a crew completing a 25-mission tour as much as the toll on deep penetrations like Schweinfurt. For at this time in the Eighth’s air war, B-17 crewmen had, on the average, a one in three chance of completing their missions.
Hullar’s crew now had 20 more trips to go.