Vacqueriette, December 24, 1943
THE EIGHTH’S AIRMEN took a breather after the December 20th attack on Bremen, as no raids were scheduled for next day. On December 22nd the heavy bombers were off to Germany again on mission against communications centers in Münster and Osnabrück.
Eight PFF ships of the 482nd Group flew with 346 heavies to Osnabrück, while 220 more went to Münster. The raids were disrupted by heavy cloud formations. Twenty-two bombers went missing, and only 434 were able to bomb. The 303rd’s target was a railway intersection in Osnabrück, but the Group’s bomb run was ruined when another formation of aircraft passed below it. Enemy opposition was light and no Group aircraft were lost.
Hullar’s crew did not take part in this operation, but they did fly an air as rescue sortie on December 23rd. As Miller recalls, “We flew for hours and hours low over the water looking for life rafts, but it was all for naught.”
Hullar’s crew was next slated to lead the Group on Christmas Eve in an attack intended to beat the Germans to a holiday punch.
The surprise had been brewing for some weeks, and George Hoyt recalls the events leading up to it.
“Around the first week of December we were summoned down to Intelligence Headquarters one night to take a close look at some curious objects which showed up on some of the aerial mosaic photos which came from pictures we had taken while leaving France. Vicious Virgin had a vertical K-24 ‘Keystone Camera’ under the radio room floor. I turned it on about 10 miles from the French coast each time we returned from a mission. I can particularly recall Dale and me being questioned after we looked over these terrain shots. You could see strange looking shadows shaped like snow skis turned on their sides.
“The most prominent imprints came from shots made in the middle of the afternoon, when the winter sun stood low in the sky. The structures were apparently under camouflage nets, because you couldn’t really see them on pictures taken in morning or midday, but the late sun cast shadows under those nets. There were literally scores of these shapes, and we were told that our photos coincided with some that had been taken by RAF reconnaissance.
“The photo interpreters had been doing their homework, because when you lined up the open lengths of these ‘skis’ on a large map with a ruler, they all converged, amazingly, on the city of London! The French Underground was alerted, and after a few days they came up with the startling intelligence that Jerry was planning a rocket ‘buzz bomb’ attack on London for Christmas day. So VIII Bomber Command mustered a maximum effort to thwart this insidious strike.”
303rd Bomb Group mission Route(s): Vacqueriette, December 24, 1943. (Map courtesy Waters Design Associates, Inc.)
December 24, 1943. “We were the lead ship leading the wing and the whole division.” wrote Elmer Brown of the crew’s 18th raid against a hard-to-see rocket launching site near the small French town of Vacqueriette. By this time Hullar’s crew was one of the most experienced in the 303rd. Bottom row, L-R, George Hoyt; Merlin Miller; Norman Sampson; “Pete” Fullem; and Dale Rice. Top row, L-R, Lt. E.G. Greenwood, tail observer; Elmer Brown, Asst. Lead Navigator; Maj. Ed Snyder, 427th Squadron CO; Bob Hullar, pilot; Lt. Paul Scoggins, Lead Navigator. Paul Scoggins had a good reason to smile; this was the end of his last mission! (Photo courtesy Elmer L. Brown, Jr.)
The raid certainly was a maximum effort. The Eighth dispatched no less than 722 heavy bombers supported by 541 fighters to attack V-l sites dispersed in the Pas de Calais area of the French coast. Hullar’s crew was leading the entire First Division, 277 bombers strong, to their targets.
George Hoyt recalls, “We flew in old No. 341, Vicious Virgin, as 1st Air Division lead plane with Major Ed Snyder in the copilot seat next to Hullar. Good old Brownie was back with us after flying several missions with Woddrop, and I really felt good about this. Marson was not with us, and Merlin took over his waist gun position. We had a third pilot fly in the tail gun position to help coordinate the very large formations that we led behind us.”
The tail observer was Lt. E.G. Greenwood. In the nose with Elmer Brown were Mac McCormick and Paul Scoggins, who was on his last mission. Due to the large number of aircraft aloft, the field order stated: “Navigators must realize that this mission is essentially a ‘time problem.’ Every possible effort will be made to make the briefed time schedule good.
Elmer Brown wrote: “Scoggins and I were navigating. He was doing pilotage and I was doing all of the DR, calculating, and getting Gee fixes.”
Scoggins noted, “Another navigator (Brown) and I got the boys there (leading the combat wing).”
The formations used for the raid were not the usual 60-ship combat wings. As Brown described them, “Our group had three nine-plane squadrons flying in trail and bombing by squadron.” The 427th Squadron led the first “two-squadron group” with the 427th “high” and the 359th Squadron “low,” and a second two-squadron “Composite group” made up of the 360th Squadron and a low squadron from the 384th Group was led by Captains John Casello and “Mel” Schulstad. This composite group flew above and behind Hullar’s formation and was to play an important part in the mission.
The 303rd got its ships off between 1100 and 1117. Things went pretty much according to plan until mid-Channel. Here, the 303rd’s S-3 report states: “There were two Combat Wings out ahead of us. Crossing the Channel the Groups took interval, and the individual Squadrons got interval by various means, running short dog legs, S-ing, and slowing airspeeds. Our two-squadron Lead Group crossed the French Coast over Burck-sur-Mer, went north of course, and could not pick up the target.”
What went wrong was well described by both Brown and Scoggins. Brown recorded the objective as a “Rocket area in France near the very small town of Vacqueriette…We hit the IP on course heading for the target.
“McCormick thought he saw the target and turned off course. We corrected him back but never could make him see the very small, difficult-to-find target. There were almost 3000 [sic] aircraft in the area, therefore we were instructed not to attempt a second run.”
Scoggins noted: “It was only a short way in and we had no enemy fighters or flak and had lots of Allied fighter support. Because of a very difficult target to identify, however, we passed the target without dropping bombs, and there were too many planes in the area to make another run, so we brought our bombs back…I’m glad I’m not a bombardier.”
Others were far less philosophical about what went on. Lt. Jim Fowler’s crew was flying S for Sugar on its 48th mission in the No. 8 position of the lead squadron. Fowler attributed the failure to locate the target to “broken clouds beneath us,” but he was still “very highly ticked off” when the formation brought the bombs back.
Next to him, in the copilot seat, Lt. Rawlings was also disappointed by the way things turned out:
“We went in at 12,000 feet, which was extremely low, but they wanted accuracy. It seemed to me that we were milling around rather aimlessly and there was another B-17 group that passed over us, maybe 500 feet above us, on an angle with the bomb bay doors open, and the bombs visible. We could look straight up and see this other group, and I felt rather strongly, ‘This is not the way you fly a bombing mission.’ The target was extremely small, but I felt we were our own worst enemy that day. It was frustrating to get all the way out there, and to have it all come to pieces at the end.”
McCormick was not the only one unable to spot the target that day. The nine ships of the 359th’s low squadron were to bomb separately, but they were unsuccessful for reasons set out in Lt. J.P. Manning’s Low Squadron Leader’s Report:
“The IP was reached at 1306 hours, where we made a slight left turn to a magnetic heading of 103 degrees. From the IP we took our interval behind the lead squadron and got to the left of our course. We were unable to identify our target, and did not drop our bombs as a result.
“The bombardier was all set up ready to bomb, but even after picking out the checkpoints, the target itself could not be identified. Over what was evidently the target we were flying slightly right of the lead squadron and at that time a high group dropped bombs, which fell very close to our squadron. After our target was passed, we turned right and took up the briefed return course.”
The composite group was the formation whose bombs dropped near the 359th. The important thing, however, was that their ordnance scored a bulls-eye. The 360th’s lead bombardier was Lt. Jack B. Fawcett.
Elmer Brown wrote that “Only one of our squadrons found and hit the target. He (Fawcett) did a petty good job.”
Fawcett commented: “We had a perfect bomb run and I am sure we smashed the target. We had no interference from anything.” Photo-reconnaissance showed the bombs well distributed in the target’s center.
Thus the 303rd returned home with a measure of success, and no losses. It was a good mission all in all, and gave the men added reason to celebrate the Christmas holiday. As Lt. Vern Moncur, who had just finished his second raid in Wallaroo, put it: “There was no injury to crew, or battle damage to the plane. This was a rather novel way of celebrating Christmas Eve.”
No one, however, had greater cause for joy than Lt. Paul Scoggins, who jubilantly noted in his diary: “I had one of the nicest Christmas presents! I did my TWENTY-FIFTH MISSION and therefore have completed my tour of operations today. I’m one more happy boy, believe me! In one way this was a mission I had been wishing for—another milk run—but I would much rather have put the bombs on the target…I’m still happy for having finished, though, and I guess I have about three months to serve on the Squadron before I can plan on a trip home… Everyone here is so very nice to me and have always been. I think one could never find a better bunch of boys than are here at Molesworth. Of course, most of them are having a big time tonight, but there are several of us sober ones around. My wish is that everyone were as happy as I. I wish a Merry Christmas to all.”
The people of London had a Merry Christmas too. Due to the Eighth’s efforts, the Germans were in no position to put buzz bombs over the British capital on Christmas Day. Six hundred and seventy heavy bombers managed to lay 1744.6 tons of bombs on the launch sites, and with this mission and many others against these targets in the months ahead, it wasn’t until just before D-Day that the first V-l winged its way to London.
