Bernburg, February 20, 1944
THE DAY AFTER Fowler fell, the Eighth took to the air once more, dispatching 777 heavy bombers and 635 fighters on a deep penetration against enemy aircraft factories located in the Brunswick area. Cloud cover prevented visual bombing, but 742 heavies dropped their loads on the city and targets of opportunity, with a B-24 combat wing hitting Hannover. The Eighth lost 20 bombers and four fighters; the bombers claimed 51 enemy aircraft and the fighters 45.
The 303rd put up 39 aircraft in two groups, A led by Captain “Mel” Schulstad and Lt. W.C. Heller of the 360th Squadron, and B led by Major Richard Cole and Lt. T.J. Quinn of the 359th Squadron. Both bombed the center of Brunswick through 10/10 clouds, and no 303rd ships were lost. The Group’s records noted: “Fighter support by P-47s and P-51s was excellent in the target area and on the route out.”
A mission for the following day was scrubbed after briefing because of bad weather, and then February arrived. The missions came fast and furious, with the Eighth regularly fielding from 500 to 700 bombers and 600 fighters. On February 3rd the 303rd sent 39 ships in two groups to bomb Wilhelmshaven with PFF equipment through dense haze and 10/10 clouds. It was the last mission of Lt. Bill McSween’s tour and the 22nd for Captain Don Gamble. Gamble’s diary provides a good description of what went on:
“Up at 0400. Eat at 0430. Briefing at 0530. Sleepy. Briefed twice before for Frankfort. Target today will be Wilhelmshaven. Will lead 41B Combat Wing with Col. Stevens as copilot. Briefed for all kinds of clouds, high, medium, and low. Over to Group Operations after briefing to read orders. Out to ship 574 G. Taxi out late due to plane in our way. Takeoff on time. Carry 12 500-pound HE bombs and 2300 gallons of gas in B-17G.
“Assemble group at 3000 feet and climb through five layer of clouds. Leave base at 8000 feet on time—start climb at 150 mph and 300 ft/min. Keep good airspeed and rate of ascent. We are supposed to fly abreast of 41A but, due to clouds that we have to fly through, are unable to catch 41 A.
“Lose all but 13 ships of group in climb through dense clouds. Get well on top at 28,900 feet. AFCE will not keep ship straight and level. Keep resetting it. Friendly fighter support good. See no enemy fighters at all. Very little flak and that is inaccurate.
“Just over target at IP, we flash PFF ship on our right wing a green signal with aldis lamp in tail and they take over lead. Drop PFF, then take lead back and start let-down. Parallel cloud layer then start down through them. Group stays intact till we reach 8000 feet and cloud thickens and splits up ships. Let down to 1000 feet—just below clouds and proceed to base in very rough air. Fair landing. Donuts, coffee, cake and candy at Interrogation taken to Group. Easy raid but for clouds.”
It was an “easy raid” but on the way back Lt. McSween recorded that: “Going was slow due to a strong headwind. When nearing English coast you could see planes coming from all directions. White was only crew lost—went out of control over North Sea.”
“White” was Captain G.A. White of the 358th Squadron, flying B-17G 42-37927. He and his crew were on their first raid and the cause of their loss was never determined. They were one of four B-17 crews that didn’t return that day, along with nine American fighters.
On February 4th the Eighth made another PFF attack on Frankfurt with the 303rd putting up 38 ships in two groups. No Hell’s Angels were lost, but this raid was rougher than the one of the preceding day. The Eighth lost 20 bombers and one fighter. The Americans claimed 12 enemy aircraft. On February 5th and 6th the heavies struck back, hitting numerous enemy airfields in France. The Eighth lost eight bombers and six fighters; enemy aircraft claimed were 26.
The 303rd sent 20 bombers against Bricy Airdrome at Orleans on the 5th and lost no aircraft. The Group sent 23 aircraft to Dijon/Lonvic Airdrome on the 6th, and lost the 358th Squadron’s Padded Cell. B-17G 42-97498, flown by Lt. J.S. Bass on his first raid. Bass was flying with a crew that had more than 10 raids in, among whose missing was Sgt. Cyril Dockendorf, the photographer who had flown with Lt. John Henderson’s crew on the Oschersleben raid.
Captain Don Gamble went on the mission and wrote: “Bass goes down, evidently hit by flak. Seven to nine chutes are seen. Dick [Scharch] sees ship hit ground and explode…Hear a copilot was killed by a .50-caliber slug just inside French coast.”
Two days later the Eighth returned to Frankfurt for more PFF attacks. The First and Third Division bombed with 195 B-17s. The cost was 13 Fortresses and nine fighters out of 553 dispatched in exchange for 17 enemy aircraft destroyed. The 303rd contributed 22 aircraft, 17 of which bombed and all of which returned. In the meantime, 110 Second Division B-24s hit the V-l sites at Siracourt and Watten, escorted by 89 P-47s. They suffered no loss.
All during this time Hullar’s crew cooled their heels, and Brown kept his diary closed. When he finally picked it up again, he wrote: “It was a long time since my 24th raid. My outfit had sent 12 groups out on raids in that time. They said they were saving us for a DP (deep penetration of Germany). One time we started out for Leipzig but it was recalled just before we left England.”
Klint’s crew was slated to go on this one too, and he later wrote:
“THIS WAS IT! I had flown 24 ‘Practice’ missions just to get a crack at this one—number 25—the one which would end my operational tour and send me back to the U.S. We started to get this one in on February 9th. We were briefed to go to Leipzig that day—a round trip of seven hours and 51 minutes. In view of that, I was not too disappointed when we were recalled shortly after we left the home field, little thinking that I would have to finish on one just four minutes longer than that.
“While we were in the air on the 9th, two of our ships had a midair collision. That was the third we had had since I had joined the 303rd. The first two had both been during conditions of restricted visibility and in both cases the bomb load of both planes had exploded. We were flying in the second element of the lead squadron, and when the first element went into echelon, the No. 3 ship took the entire rudder and tail gunner’s compartment off of the No. 2 ship. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The tail gunner in No. 2 ship had gone forward to check the tailwheel seconds before the crash. Both ships managed to land safely.”
The enlisted men in Hullar’s plane also witnessed the collision. As Merlin Miller recalls:
“I was up in the waist, looking out the right window when it happened. As we came around in three-plane formations to land, the left wingman would drop down underneath the lead plane, swing off to the right and come up in formation with the right wingman, echeloned off to the right. The left wingman started his turn to the right, and came up with his No. 4 engine right into the tail of the right wingman.
“Metal flew everywhere. He knocked the rudder off the plane and tore into the tail gunner’s compartment about three or four feet in. I yelled instinctively, ‘Look out!’ I couldn’t help but hope very strongly that the tail gunner was not in there. I learned later that he had just left the tail compartment, and had the holy hell scared out of him when he looked back and saw a lot of jagged metal and open space where his compartment should have been.”
One of the 303rd B-17s involved in the aerial collision Hullar’s crew witnessed on February 9, 1944, Fortunately, the tail gunner had gone forward to check the tail wheel seconds before the crash. The aircraft is the 358th Squadron’s Thru Hel’en High Water, E-1 7G 42-39785, VK
H. It was lost to flak over Hamm, Germany on February 22, 1944. Photo courtesy National Archives (USAF Photo 51841 AC).
George Hoyt remembers that “As we flew over the field to break up our Group, and to form a long straight line of aircraft swinging wide around to the left to land in single file, Dale Rice rushed into the radio room. He was excitedly pointing out the radio room hatch toward two o’clock high. I got up with a bound to look in this direction, and I couldn’t believe my eyes! There, flying right next to us, was a B-17 with almost half the vertical stabilizer and rudder chewed off and with shreds flapping in the slipstream. The wingman had rammed him from behind with his No. 4 engine as he swung over in formation to enter the single file procession. They both made it down safely after firing red flares for an emergency landing, but what a hair-raising way for them to top off a flight!”
On February 11th the Eighth launched a number of attacks against a variety of targets: Frankfurt again, Ludwigshafen, Saarbrücken, and the V-l site at Siracourt; 424 bombers were dispatched along with 732 fighters. The fighter action was heavy with the escorts claiming 32 German aircraft and the bombers three in exchange for 14 fighters and six missing bombers. The 303rd sent 21 B-17s to Frankfurt, only 14 of which were able to unload. On their return to Molesworth, the 358th Squadron’s B-17G 42-39810, flown by Lt. J.R. Worthley’s crew, crash-landed, killing the flight engineer and injuring 16 other men.
Meanwhile, Klint recorded: “Our crew went to the ‘Flak Home’ for a seven-day rest. While I looked forward to that and knew that I would have a wonderful time, I was a little disappointed that it came just then. Bob Hullar and seven other members of my original crew were also ‘sweating out’ that last raid and I wanted very much to finish at the same time they did. As it turned out, they were still waiting when I returned and we all did finish on the same one—in a full-scale smash on German aircraft production.”
The Eighth flew no maximum efforts from February 12th through 19th, but the climactic battles of the Eighth’s air war were in the making while Klint’s crew took time off and Hullar’s men waited for the deep penetration that would mark their final mission. Ever since General “Tooey” Spaatz had taken over as Commander of USSTAF, General Arnold had been emphasizing the need to knock out the Luftwaffe. Even before the formal change of command, Arnold had sent Spaatz a New’s Year’s message saying: “My personal message to you—this is a MUST—is to ‘Destroy the Enemy Air Force wherever you find them, in the air, on the ground and in the factories.’”
With the help of General Fred Anderson and Doolittle, Spaatz had been implementing this directive “in the air” and “on the ground” ever since: In January, VIII Fighter Command began strafing German airfields on the way home from long-range escort missions, and most of the Eighth’s targets were chosen in order to draw the Luftwaffe into a continuing war of attrition. But bad weather kept the Eighth from launching the sustained attacks Spaatz wanted “in the factories.” His offensive, code named “Argument,” remained in limbo as long as clouds shielded the Luftwaffe’s vital aircraft “factory complexes” in the central and eastern areas of the Reich.
The picture started to change on February 18th. That day Anderson’s chief weather officer at USSTAF Headquarters forecast a meteorological high over central and southern Germany beginning on February 20th, which was expected to provide clear skies over Germany for three days. It was the golden opportunity “Tooey” Spaatz was looking for. Spaatz ordered the decks cleared for Argument, and Anderson put the word out to the Eighth’s commanders. Next day the weather officer went even further by promising three clear days and possibly a fourth.
Argument actually got underway on the evening of February 19th when, in a rare instance of direct cooperation by RAF Bomber Command, the British night bombers attacked Leipzig, where one of the factory complexes lay. By the morning of February 20th, however, a command crisis arose. Both Doolittle and General Kepner, commander of VIII Fighter Command, were reluctant to order their aircraft off in the cloudy and icy conditions that blanketed the Eighth’s bases. They required a direct order from Spaatz, and Anderson took the matter up with him. His reply was, “Let ‘em go.”
The operation that was about to be presented to the bomber crews and fighter pilots was the most ambitious the Eighth’s planners had ever put together. For the first time, more than 1000 heavy bombers were to attack: 417 B-17s from the First Division, 314 from the Third, and 272 B-24s from the Second.
The mission featured another first on the fighter escort side. Among the 17 groups detailed to support the bombers were two groups of P-51s: the 354th of IX Fighter Command and VIII Fighter Command’s own first Mustang group, the 357th. All in all, 73 Mustangs would safeguard the bombers in the target area, together with 94 P-38s from the 20th and 55th Fighter Groups (one of which would fly two missions). In addition, 668 Thunderbolts would provide penetration and withdrawal support, with three P-47 groups returning to base and flying two missions, a feat made possible by the length of the operation and great improvements in their belly drop tanks.
The main effort, led by the First Division, was against the factory complexes in the Brunswick-Leipzig area. The Eighth was to send 10 wings there, including those of which the 303rd would be a part. This bomber force would have fighter escort all along the route. Six more wings were to attack aircraft plants at Tutow in eastern Germany and at Posen in Poland. Their routes lay beyond the range of most Luftwaffe fighter units and they would fly unescorted.
303rd Bomb Group Mission Route(s): Bernburg, February 20, 1944. (Map courtesy Waters Design Associates, Inc.)
For reasons that will soon become evident, the story of the Hullar crew’s participation in this historic operation is largely drawn from Bud Klint’s experience. He now begins the account of the crew’s last mission, February 20, 1944:
“On that Sunday morning we were awakened at 0500 and told that breakfast would be at 0530. The usual GI trucks took us to the mess hall, where we ate the usual powdered eggs and canned bacon and drank several cups of syrupy, black coffee. Then the trucks hauled us back to the briefing room. The CO started his introductory remarks promptly at 0600. He told us how important it was that we destroy the targets which we were to hit that day—talked to us much like a football coach would talk to his players before a big game—and then turned the briefing over to the Intelligence Officers.”
“They uncovered the big map to which was pinned a black tape marking our course for the day. They told us that the 303rd was sending two groups of 19 planes each. Group A was to go to Leipzig. Group B, in which we were scheduled to fly, was to hit Bernberg [sic]. We looked at pictures of the target areas, we were assigned our positions in the formations, we were told where, along the course, we could expect to encounter flak and how many guns would be able to reach us at each point, we were told how many enemy fighters were based along our route, and we were given the numbers of the spare airplanes which were serviced and available in case the planes to which we were assigned developed trouble.
“Finally, we were given our time schedule, our bombing altitude, the temperature at that altitude, and were asked to synchronize our watches. The navigators and bombardiers then went into their own detailed briefings while the rest of the crews picked up their equipment and went out to their ships to prepare for takeoff.”
Hullar’s crew had drawn Vicious Virgin, and would be flying with Captain Richard P. Dubell, Operations Officer of the 427th Squadron, who was formation leader. McCormick was the bombardier, and Lt. E.G. Greenwood was the tail observer, with Merlin Miller filling in the right waist. Klint’s crew had drawn No. 795, the chin-turreted B-17F named The Flying Bitch. Klint now continues:
“In the equipment room, I picked up my parachute, my Mae West, my ‘tin hat,’ my flying boots and, since we were flying a B-17G [sic], which was like a wind tunnel on the inside, my electrically heated ‘Bugs Bunny’ flying suit, and also my oxygen mask. Under all this, I wore ‘long handled’ underwear, a pair of OD pants, an OD shirt (with no insignia), a leather flight jacket, one pair of woolen socks and one pair of silk socks, GI shoes, and my ‘escape belt.’ This was an innovation of my own—a belt I wore around my waist which, I estimated, contained enough D-ration, cigarettes, Benzadrine tablets, and other essentials to keep me going for at least a week should I happen to be shot down in enemy territory. Besides this we carried escape kits furnished by the Air Corps which contained maps imprinted on silk handkerchiefs, a compass, a hacksaw blade encased in rubber, and a packet of German, Dutch, and Belgian money.
“GI trucks again carried us out to the hardstands, or cement parking strips, where the ground crews were swarming over the ships, making final checks. While the copilot and I gave the ship a thorough going-over, the gunners checked their guns and loaded their ammunition and equipment. Early in my tour, we always carried and often used ten to twelve thousand rounds of ammunition on each raid. Now, with improved fighter support, we seldom carried more than five to seven thousand rounds.
“Once the ship was loaded and checked and the engine run-up completed, we all had a final cup of coffee, which the ground crew always prepared and kept on the stove in their tent. By then it was time to take our places and stand by until 0830—start-engine time.
“Promptly at that time, engines started to roar in the dispersal areas all over the field. I believe the whole crew felt a little extra tension that morning. The fact that I, as pilot, was starting on my 25th mission accounted for part of that, but probably more important were the things the Weather Officer had told us that morning. He had prophesied that the skies over Germany would be clear and that meant that the enemy fighters would be free to operate. We had been promised fighter escort all the way to the target and back, but this was to be an extremely deep penetration and we knew that with the new corridor type escort coverage, there would undoubtedly be times when we would be strictly on our own. To add to our discomfort, our course to the target was planned to feint at Berlin. Undoubtedly, Jerry would be eager to disrupt what would appear to be a major thrust at his capital.
“While such thoughts were running rapidly through my mind—and while similar thoughts were probably passing through the minds of some ten to eleven thousand other American airmen—the copilot and I were going through our preflight check, carefully watching the performance of those 1250-hp Wright engines. The loss of even one of those four powerplants could mean the difference between seeing England again and going down somewhere in enemy territory and I, for one, was determined that everything would be in perfect order before I would signal the crew chief to pull the chocks.
“The engines checked OK. The copilot made a check of each crewmember by interphone and each man replied that he was in position and ready to roll. The ground crew pulled the chocks and gave us their usual good-luck sign—a thumbs-up gesture which was the American counterpart of the English two-finger ‘V-for-Victory.’
“We started to move out of the dispersal area at 0840 and as we rolled down the taxi strip to our takeoff position at the end of runway 27, some ‘Limey’ field workers edged along the sides of the strip to wave their good wishes. We slid into place behind Lt. Melton, who was flying ship No. 081—Luscious Lady—and we ran up our engines for the final check.
“At 0850 Capt. Bob Hullar started the lead ship down the runway and, at 30-second intervals the other ships followed. A few minutes later we were airborne and coming about to take up our position in the lead squadron [the No. 6 slot]. As our group began to form, we started to climb and soon fell into place with the other two groups which made up our Combat Wing.
“By 0956, our scheduled time to leave the base, we had reached our bombing altitude of 16,000 feet and our Wing was completely formed. We took up our easterly route which was to take us to the target, and I believe I had more apprehensions then ever before. This was it! I had looked forward to this day for many months, but now I was scared—and plenty. I just couldn’t believe that I would come back from this one.
“At 1125 we crossed the enemy coast and the ground batteries let us know that they were aware of our presence. It seemed to me that every burst was aimed for our ship, and with each explosion I shuddered, half expecting the plan’e to disintegrate around me.
“The lead ship in which Hullar and the majority of our original crew was flying did get hit here. They lost an engine and dropped out of the formation to return to the base. I hated to see them leave the formation and I guess I even felt a little resentment because they were finishing their tour ‘the easy way.’ In another hour they would be safely back at Molesworth with number 25 under their belts. I still had nearly five hours of flying to go—if we got through OK.”
Klint had no way of knowing that things were not quite as easy or clear-cut for Hullar’s crew as he imagined. Brown recorded the events as follows:
“We had trouble rendezvousing with the wing and we didn’t actually get into wing formation until just before crossing the Dutch coast. Before we aborted, when we crossed the Dutch coast, we got some very accurate moderate flak and it hit Hoeg’s No. 3 engine. He was flying in No. 4 position of our high squadron. He dropped out of formation and headed for home about six minutes before we turned around. “The fuel pressure was very low on our No. 2 engine and Hullar was afraid we would lose it and it was too long a trip for three engines, for if we would lose another engine, we would have had it. So we aborted at 05 degrees 35 minutes E, which was just before we crossed the Zuider Zee.”
Hoyt also remembers these moments: “During this time I anxiously monitored the intercom conversation of Hullar and Capt. Dubell, our Squadron Adjutant. Bob was concerned about the excessive amount of drop on the fuel pressure on our No. 2 engine to an instrument indication below 12 pounds per square inch. Another engine began to indicate a falloff in critical pressure, so Bob radioed for the deputy lead plane to take over as he dove out of formation, swinging around in a 180 degree turn toward England.
“Below us there was a large layer of clouds ahead at approximately 6,000 feet. It stretched over the Zuider Zee as far as we could see to England. Bob asked Capt. Dubell if he thought it would be a good hiding place to go home in. We were expecting enemy fighters any moment, as we were not far from several fighter bases near the Dutch coast.”
From the Virgin’s right waist, Miller actually spied enemy aircraft aloft: “I saw what looked to me like a twin-engine German fighter, maybe a Ju-88, milling around with a couple of other planes off in the distance, and I called them out to the cockpit.”
Then, Hoyt remembers, “Bob told Dubell, he was going to opt for a high-speed dive for the clouds, and we started down at a sickeningly fast rate of speed. We were all alone in a dangerous piece of airspace. The tail of the plane began to vibrate noticeably, and I watched its shaking with concern. I called Bob to report it, and he asked me to keep a close eye on it, as we were diving at a speed in excess of what was recommended by the manual with the possibility of tail structure failure at high diving speeds. I knew that the airspeed indicator up front was redlined at 305 mph, and Dale later said that we exceeded that point by quite a bit.”
To Miller, “the plane was vibrating quite a bit during that dive, and it was kind of exciting, but she held together okay.” Vicious Virgin plunged into the clouds and Hullar’s crew made it back without further incident. They landed at 1305 and an examination of the ship showed that the fuel pressure regulator balance line in No. 2 engine was indeed broken and that the ship’s radio compass was out.
This, George Hoyt recalls, raised an interesting question: “We did not know how Base Headquarters would interpret all this. Would they count it as our 25th mission or not?”
“We had to wait several hours to find out,” Norman Sampson recollects, and Merlin Miller remembers this as “the only time I’m aware of that some of the enlisted men in our crew ever showed that they were worried.”
After Vicious Virgin dropped out of formation, command fell to a less-experienced crew. Lt. Arnold Litman of the 358th Squadron dropped down from the high squadron to assume the lead of a badly depleted B group, for there had been two earlier aborts in the low squadron. The ranks were also thinned by Lt. Melton, in Luscious Lady, who never found the group (he tagged along with a B-24 formation and bombed with them), and by another high squadron ship flown by Lt. R.W. Snyder, who joined the A group instead. This left the B group with only 12 B-17s, which was not the kind of bomber force to take deep into enemy territory. But Klint and the others pressed on, and his account continues:
“Our escort arrived as we crossed into enemy territory and it gave us a great sense of security to see our little friends flying protectively above. This first wave of friendly fighters was with us for only about 10 minutes and for the next 30 minutes we saw only scattered groups of escort fighters far in the distance. During this interim, two FW-190s came up below our formation and S’ed along a course parallel to our own. Apparently their only interest was observation, for they made no attempt to attack.
“At about 1200 our escort picked us up again and we had intermittent cover from then until we reached the flak zone at the target. Only once more did we see any German fighters. Again it was two 190s and again they did nothing but fly along below us, probably reporting on our progress.”
The B group bombers flew on into the target area searching for the Junkers assembly plant at Bernburg. They got to the general area as “breaks in the clouds along the route gave the navigators a chance to check their route.” They passed through “moderate and accurate” flak without loss. The crews reported that “the target area was clear with snow on the ground,” so that “weather conditions did not interfere with execution of the mission,” and Klint’s crew “saw 300 planes on ground in target area.”
But for all that, the B group bombed a “target of opportunity,” which was described as “a factory in a town as yet unidentified somewhere between Bernberg [sic] and Eisleben to the southwest.” Later photo analysis showed that it was a copper smelting plant between the small towns of Molmeck and Groborner, and that the bombs all landed in open fields some 17¾ miles from the planned mean point of impact on the Junkers factory. It is not hard to imagine how much better the results might have been had Hullar’s crew still led the formation, with the navigator-bombardier team of Elmer Brown and Mac McCormick on the job in Vicious Virgin’s nose.
As it was, nothing remained for the bombers except to head back home. The flight over hostile territory passed with the crews having little to occupy their time and even less to report. At 1311 Klint’s crew spotted seven barrage balloons over what appeared to be a hanger, and a bit later they saw an observation tower on top of a hill in the Hartz mountains. Small groups of enemy fighters appeared south of Bonn and south of Malmedy, but they made no attempt to attack. The B group encountered some meager and inaccurate flak at Nordhausen and Kassel, and meager but accurate flak at Lille.
Through it all Bud Klint remained nervous and uneasy; there was one final obstacle for him to pass at the enemy coast, northeast of Dunkirk, where the Group hit the Channel. He remembers the moments vividly:
“The flak at the coast scared me more than any I’d experienced in the previous 24 missions. It wasn’t too accurate, but I just couldn’t believe that I was going to finish. I even closed my eyes once and just waited for the ship to be blown apart. But we came home without a scratch.”
The Hell’s Angels returned to Molesworth virtually unscathed after a good mission by the A group. Led by Major Richard Cole and Lt. T.J. Quinn’s crew of the 359th Squadron, they reached the Junkers Aircraft Motorworks at Leipzig (Mockau) and 18 bombers unloaded on it with excellent results. The mean point of impact was a scant 30 feet short and to the east of the assigned MPI, and many hits on plant buildings were obtained.
The A group got only two tail attacks by Me-109s, and one of these was shot down. The only casualties were two slightly wounded crewmen, and the most excitement of the mission occurred when Lt. J.R. Morrin of the 360th Squadron had to crash-land his bomber near Podington, home of the 92nd Bomb Group. He found the base with two engines out and a third failed while he was in the traffic pattern. He brought B-17F 42-5859 down in an open field. She was a total loss, but his whole crew walked away from the wreck.
Klint’s bomber touched down at 1645, and the last Hell’s Angel landed at 1723. With the rest of the men Bud Klint went through all the routine postmission procedures: He was interrogated, he handed in his flight gear for the last time, and he headed back to his quarters. But, “I still couldn’t believe I had finished. I knelt in the most earnest prayer of my life when I got back to my room. And that night I went to church to thank God again, for it was nothing but His goodness which saw me through 25 missions safely.”
There remained only the matter of Hullar’s men getting an answer to the big question whether it was all truly over for them. George Hoyt will always remember how they got the word.
“Several hours elapsed as we all waited with suspense in our barracks, and then Bob came by with a smile that said more than the words he spoke: ‘That’s it boys, we’ve made it, they’ve given us credit for our final mission.’ As with the others, I was glad. I wanted to go home. I had done my part, I had stuck it out, and I felt triumphant for us all. We had all done our duty, and a damn good job.”
Norman Sampson could only marvel, “I am alive, and I am going home. I’ve never had another feeling like it.”
Merlin Miller was surprised: “It was kind of an anticlimax, I guess you’d say. To go out and have an engine go out on us, turn around and come back after we got into enemy territory a little ways—I was really surprised that we got credit for a raid on it. When Hullar came in and told us, I thought at first he was kidding. I guess I was pleased just to get the thing over with, but it was a real anticlimax after all the raids we did go through, some of them easy, some of them very difficult.”
Elmer Brown duly noted: “We came back to the base and got an abortive sortie out of it,” which meant credit for the full mission was awarded. He explained, “They had to give it to us because of Hoeg’s battle damage,” and he tried to put it in perspective by concluding his diary on the following note: “Eight of our original crew finished their tours on this raid. Hullar, Rice, Hoyt, Sampson, Fullem and Miller and I were in the same plane and Klint finished with his own crew. McCormick got his 18th mission with us that day and Marson got his 22nd with Klint.”
But Elmer Brown admits to a sense of incompleteness about it today. “It actually was something of a disappointment. I was very caught up in the war and there was a lot happening. Major Snyder talked to me about a promotion and becoming Squadron Navigator if I would stay on, and part of me wanted to do it. But I was married, and I wanted very much to get back to Peggyann and to start a family, and that made all the difference in the end.”
Chuck Marson had to remain to complete his tour and, as things turned out, two of the other men of Bob Hullar’s crew decided to stay on to the very end: Hullar himself and Mac McCormick. They were witnesses to what history now calls the “Big Week” and to the final, overwhelming victory the Eighth achieved over the Luftwaffe.