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THE UNIT
| # | Target Area | Date | Target | Lead Crew | Command Pilot | Ordinance | B-17s Lost | Claims |
| 1 | Bonn, Germany | 8-Aug-43 | Instrument Plant | Lt. Asmussen | Col. Wittan | 176 x 500lb General Purpose | 0 | 0-0-0 |
The many months of sweat and toil that went into training a bomb group reached a climax 12 August 1943, when the 390th warmed engines for its first operational mission.
The crews were assembled. "Your target is a synthetic oil plant at Wesseling in the Ruhr Valley," they were told.
The African based Ninth Air Force had just made its historic low level raid on the Ploesti oil fields and it was the signal for the Eighth Air Force to commence its long range attack on the German oil industry.
Nineteen planes took off that morning in a force of 243 planes. Clouds covered all the check points that led to the Ruhr, so the group leader singled out the secondary target, an optical instrument factory at Bonn.
By later standards, bombing results were poor. A direct hit was scored on a bridge across the Rhine, several bursts were plotted in the rail yard and adjacent warehouses, but most of the bombs carried over into the residential section of town and nearby fields.
Several enemy planes were seen but none attacked the Group. Bonn was a lightly defended flak center.
It was an insignificant mission in terms of results, but it was one of the Group's great ones. Every man on the base was on the field to welcome the returning planes. The ETO ice had been broken.