Our Russian Adventure
By
Marshall B. Shore, Lt. Colonel, USAF (retired)
The First 390th Bomb Group "Shuttle" Run to Russia
Includes these missions:
Mission to Ruhland, Germany
21 June 1944
Mission to Drohobyez, Poland
25 June 1944
Mission to Arad, Romania
3 July 1944
Mission to Beziers, France
5 July 1944
Introduction
The mission to Ruhland was actually the first mission of Operation Frantic II. Operation Frantic I was run by the 15th Air Force from bases in Italy. Operation Frantic was dreamed up in the Pentagon by United States Army Air Corps planners to get the Russian Air Force more involved in cooperating with the United States Army Air Corps for use of Russian air bases by the Americans to provide two things: First, the Germans were responding to the new B-17s flying out of Britain. If we could get the use of some bases in the Ukraine we could cover all the major targets in Germany. Second, if the Americans could develop full cooperation with the Russian Air Force in this matter they might just go along with our use of Russian bases in Siberia later on when we completed our plans for the invasion of Japan.
The advantage to Russia in our using the Ukraine air bases to bomb Germany would be a shorter war for the Russians and the Americans. This approach was discussed by the lower level planners during the Teheran Conference, on 27 November - 2 December 1943, between our President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and Marshall Joseph Stalin of the USSR.
Until this time about the only cooperation that had been achieved between these two parties was the Lend-Lease program whereby the United States Army Air Corps delivered P-39 fighters, B-25 bombers and C-47 transport aircraft to the Russians via Montana and Alaskan air bases. When we arrived at Mirograd airfield on the evening of the 21st of June from our bombing raid on
Ruhland, the Russians had three of the P-39 fighters on alert, all flown by women pilots.
The Missions flown by the 15th Air Force on FRANTIC I were successful and it looked like everything would work out as the Americans had planned. Unfortunately when the 8th Air Force sent two wings of three bomb groups each and a fighter wing to Russia on FRANTIC II the planning and cooperation with the Russians fell apart. The very night that the 45th Combat Wing landed in
Poltava, the Germans came with 150 HE- 111s and JU-88s and dropped 110 tons of bombs, destroying 58 of our shiny new B-17Gs on the ground and damaging all of the others. The cooperation by the Soviet Air Force was on a downhill slide. The Russians were responsible for all air defenses of these bases. Their air defense was a miserable failure.
I did not fly the mission to Arad, Romania on 3 July 1944 as I was on the planning star of the Task Force Commander, Colonel Archie Olds, Jr. in the Fifteenth Air Force Headquarters located in
Bari, Italy. The lead Pathfinder crew of Captain Moylan Smith, flying their thirtieth mission, led this mission for the 390th Bomb Group with eighteen planes. Bombing results were excellent. Tracks and sidings were severely damaged. Car repair shops, the power plant and other large repair buildings were destroyed. The nearby Astra engineering works was also damaged. No aircraft were lost.
My story, "Our Russian Adventure" was written during the 1950s and added to during the 1960s after I had talked one evening with Lt. General Archie Olds, Jr. at SAC Headquarters. My memory was much fresher then than it is now. I have complete confidence on the accuracy of the story that follows. Many writers have set down details of these OPERATION FRANTIC missions and books have been written about these operations. The following monograph is my personal version.
Our Russian Adventure
Mission # 141 to Drohobitz, Poland
25 June 1944
We had been on security alert for several weeks awaiting some highly classified mission orders. Six weeks preceding this a Cadre of junior officers and skilled maintenance personnel had been 'volunteered' to go to Russia to prepare bases for a joint operation with the Russians. All of us in the 390th Bomb Group (H), a B-17 outfit on Royal Air Force Station #153, located at
Framlingham, Suffolk, England were full of curiosity.
Referred to as "Operation Frantic", 163 B-17 bombers and 70 P-51 Mustangs of the United States Eighth Air Force were committed to the second shuttle run to Russia from England. The first shuttle to Russia had been run previously from 15th Air Force bases in Italy. Operation Frantic was another one of the many special operations conducted with the Soviet Union in an attempt to become more closely associated with them in the winning of World War II against the Germans. Our government leaders went out of their way to be friendly with the Russians during this period.
The air was filled with high anticipation in Group Briefing rooms at 3:30 AM on the morning of the 21st of June. We had been instructed to bring along our Class A uniforms. Then we were briefed not to get out of our airplanes in Russia until we had changed from our flying clothes to Class A uniform. We were scheduled to fly only the newer models of our B17Gs that were bright aluminum and had not been painted a camouflage olive drab color. Who was trying to impress the Russians and for what reason?
Colonel Archie J. Olds, Jr., Commander of the 45th Combat Wing was the Task Force Commander. He lead the way on the first mission to
Ruhland, Germany, a major synthetic oil refinery and storage facility, just south of Berlin. After striking our target with very accurate bombing using 500 pound general purpose bombs, instead of returning to the United Kingdom, we continued east across Poland and into western Russia. Colonel Olds with some 90 B-17s landed at
Poltava, a Russian airfield located along the main rail line between Kahrkov and Kiev in the Ukraine.
The second half of the Task Force, the 13th Combat Wing, led by the Commander of the 390th Bomb Group (H), Colonel Frederick W.
Ott, followed Colonel Olds on the first leg of this shuttle trip. The 13th Combat Wing was composed of aircraft from the 95th, 100th and 390th Bomb Groups. I was flying as the Command Navigator for the 13th Combat Wing with Colonel Ott in the lead Pathfinder aircraft piloted by Captain Moylan Smith, Lead Crew Aircraft Commander. Capt Robert Billington was the Lead Bombardier. 1st Lieutenant Donald Dalyrmple was the Lead Navigator and Captain Milton Houser was the Radar Navigator. We called these men
"Micky Operators". Our group landed at Mirgorod, another Russian air field sixty miles west of
Poltava. The fighters landed at Pyaritan another fifty miles to the west. When we stepped down out of our B-17G, #PFF-696 parked way to the side of the steel planked runway, we were met by a Russian soldier carrying a rifle. He was to be the guard for our individual aircraft. Not more than 300 yards away, were three P-39 fighters. American lend lease aircraft, these had been given to Russia earlier, and they were being serviced by young women wearing coveralls who appeared to be mechanics.
Right away we were suddenly introduced to the Russian version of security at Mirgorod airfield. There was a new strong three-strand barbed wire fence around the perimeter of the airfield. The only good water well in the area was enclosed within this fence. When a peasant woman climbed through the perimeter fence with a bucket in her hand and headed for the well, she was immediately confronted by our Russian guard. He shouted,
"Stoi", "Stoi". When she didn't stop, the guard pointed his rifle in her general direction and fired a shot from the hip. The bullet ricocheted across the ground missing the woman by about 20 feet. She immediately turned around and climbed back through the fence. The guard went back to walking back and forth by our aircraft.
While standing around in front of our aircraft in Class A uniforms awaiting transportation to the debriefing we suddenly saw a German reconnaissance plane. Soon identified as a HE177 bomber it was being used for reconnaissance and approached the field from the east. It was flying at about 12,000 feet and at maximum combat speed straight for the field. The photographic pass continued to the west in the direction of the German front lines.
The only communication for warning against air attacks was a single line telephone from
Poltava. Seeing the HE177 fly overhead the Russian women, who we thought were mechanics, jumped into the cockpits of their P-39s. They quickly started engines and raced for take-off without warming up or checking the mag drop of their engines like our pilots always did. We had read in Life magazine about Russian women combat pilots and now were experiencing first hand the exciting view of them in real life action. They climbed on course heading west into the early evening sunset. They did not catch up with the German reconnaissance plane that had been sent out to spy on our shuttle mission bases at
Poltava, Mirgorod and Pyaritan. Just after sunset, but still daylight, the three pursuit interceptors returned, landed on the grass and taxied back to their parking area next to the north fence. By this time the German reconnaissance crew was reporting on our arrival at the Russian bases. What a juicy set of targets they had found. The Russian Air Force was responsible for our safety from aerial attacks while we were in Russia.
We will never know whether they couldn't or didn't do anything about the German Air Force (GAF) who could strike us so easily. Without night fighters and radar control the Russians didn't have much hope of intercepting enemy night bombers. We certainly were vulnerable. Were our American Army Air Corps Commanders caught unprepared?
Early in the dark morning hours, from our hastily prepared beds on the floor of a bombed out building that had been cleaned out for us, we were awakened to the heavy concentration of anti-aircraft fire from Russian gunners. Luckily for our aircraft and for us there was a raging thunderstorm going on over our airfield and the German bombers didn't have the opportunity to bomb us. The next morning when we went outside we found the dirt roads littered with bits and pieces of shrapnel from the Russian anti-aircraft guns.
We soon learned that the 45th Combat Wing bombers received a heavy attack overnight by the Germans. Their bombers had been lined up wing tip to wing tip in a straight line parallel with the single concrete runway at
Poltava. A plane of the GAF had scored a direct hit on one of the high octane refueling trucks, which exploded and burned fiercely. This fire lighted up the entire parking area and served as a beacon for the follow-on German bombers, which bombed and strafed with only token resistance from the light Russian anti-aircraft guns. The shiny new B-17Gs that were sent to impress the Russians stood out in bright array for the German bomb aimers. The 45th had lost 58 new B-17Gs in this bombing and many more were damaged. The Russian fire department could not cope with the burning and exploding B-17Gs.
American personnel had been sound asleep nearby when this hell broke out. People were running in all directions trying to find a trench to dive into. None were found. With all their ammunition spent and their bombs exhausted the GAF pilots turned west to fly back behind their lines and report a very successful bombing and strafing attack against the Americans at Poltava airfield.
The highly successful raid by the GAF left the 45th Combat Wing with only nine flyable B-17Gs. The airfield was littered with unexploded butterfly anti-personnel and phosphorous incendiary bombs that had to be cleared from the field before it could become operational again.
Maintenance personnel of the Operation Frantic task force in Russia later performed depot maintenance under field conditions to put what aircraft were left back together again. They took a tail off one plane to put on another. They cannibalized whole wings from one plane to another. The repaired B-17Gs eventually returned to England via Egypt and North Africa over the next 90 days.
We were alerted for another possible raid by the GAF on our second night at
Mirgorad. Around three in the afternoon on the 22nd we all entered our aircraft and waited until the German reconnaissance plane came by again. After it had disappeared over the horizon, being chased by the three P-39s flown by the same women pilots, we hurriedly started our engines and took off for Zaporozhe airfield on the outskirts of Dneproptrovsk on the Dnepr River some 150 miles to the south.
Flying over Dneproptrovsk on our circle of the airfield we could look down into buildings with only the walls standing. The rubble of war was everywhere. This city had been taken back from the German army by the Russians only six weeks earlier. When the Russians retreated from this area with the German advance on Stalingrad they had taken up the rails from the streetcar system and railroads and carried them east. Everything of strategic value had been carried with them. Then, when the Germans retreated, they used the scorched earth policy and burned everything in sight. Dneproptrovsk was devastated.
There was no control tower in operation. We came in low over the single runway and it looked bad. Demolition craters 200 feet apart along the paved runway had been hurriedly filled with brick rubble. With the group circling the field, Colonel Ott had our crew make a low pass about 100 feet over the runway while Captain
Billington, our bombardier, and I looked closely at the surface details. We came in and landed first and taxied back halfway and parked well to the side of the runway. This gave Col. Ott a good view of the runway and landing pattern and he acted as the control tower operator to get all of our planes down and parked around the field. Dispersed by squadrons we were left on our own to prepare for the night. There were no Russians to greet us or even come by after we were parked to see who we were.
Dark was fast on us and each crew settled in for the night, eating K rations and using sleeping bags that we had brought with us. Most slept inside their aircraft. Morning came early with the sun rising spectacularly over the flat Russian landscape. K rations, again, for breakfast. Some heated water over a fire for hot coffee.
Out of England two days without a shower I was ready for a bath. While circling Zaporozhe the evening before I had spotted a sandy beach along the Dnepr river not more than a mile from where our planes were parked. Heading across the fields for the river I was soon well soaped up and dove in to wash off and take a short swim. As I came around and looked back to where my cloths were I saw two peasant women going through the pockets in my pants. They found nothing of value, as we were not permitted to take our wallets with us on combat missions. I yelled out and started to swim back to shore and they hurriedly departed the scene.
After toweling off and dressing I returned to the vacant and unguarded aircraft. While I was away Russian support personnel had came and taken the rest of our crewmembers to town for a swim in the Dnepr river and a meal. As I started to climb up the ladder in the tail to stow my shaving kit and towel in the plane I heard the familiar buzzing sound of the main engine ignition switches. Was someone up in the cockpit? We were on a field with no auxiliary power equipment and our batteries were being drained. This was a Pathfinder model of the B-17G and as I scrambled through the radio room where the Micky equipment was installed I was confronted by a Russian general sitting on the H2S radar system chair with the radar system all fired up and operating. I reached over his arms and shut the system down and scrambled up to the cockpit and turned the ignition key off.
Coming back to the radio room I began a conversation with this general. He had been a Russian fighter pilot in the Spanish Revolution in 1939 and consequently spoke some Spanish. I had studied Spanish in high school and had two years of German in college. While he didn't speak any German we did pretty well in Spanish. After all, many of the technical aircraft and electronic terms that applied to the aircraft which he was basically familiar with were common words in both Russian and English.
He was a one star general now and had flown the P-39, the B-25 and the C-47. He had ferried some of these aircraft from Montana through Alaska and Siberia on to Moscow several years earlier. This was before America had come into the war on the side of England and Russia.
Some of the P-51 escort planes had come with us from England and were also on the airfield. There also was a modified Lightning (F-4) photo reconnaissance plane named "Rosebud". It was flown by an old friend of mine, Lt. Col. Karl "Pop"
Polifka, the 3rd Reconnaissance Group Commander, out of Foggia Main in southern Italy. He was one of the most flamboyant and inspiring recon pilots that ever turned on an aerial camera. (I had flown as an aerial photographer for Polifka when he was a captain at Gray Field, Fort Lewis in Flight F of First Photo Squadron back in the summer of 1941.)
The Russian general climbed into the cockpit of the F-4 and worked the controls, fingered all the instruments, and the throttle. After squirming into the parachute that was left in the seat he strapped himself in and started a dry run of engine start procedures. He motioned to me to get off the ladder and I was left with the duty of restraining him from taking off. I was chest deep into the cockpit with both elbows inside the canopy.
While we were struggling over this, a staff car came up and two Russian Majors got out and called up to him. He then climbed down and told me he was disappointed that he couldn't take the F-4 up for a spin.
The four of us climbed into the staff car and were driven to the officer’s mess, a building with no roof amid a block of rubble. It was lunchtime and the table was waiting. I was invited into the dining room where about seven officers were gathered. The table was set with a tablecloth. A picture of Stalin was hung on the wall behind the head of the table. Two waitresses in army uniform were scurrying back and forth with dishes of food and drink.
In 1944 we Americans were not acquainted with Russian social customs. We were seated in a room open to the sky. The floor had been freshly swept. Rubble was ten feet deep outside the open glassless windows. It was a sunny warm spring day and comfortable. I was seated to the right of the general. The rest were around the table, which was full.
The general got up and gave a speech, waving his hands at a map of Russia on the sidewall and talked about Mother Russia. The dishes were chipped in places, the water glasses were greasy. The waitresses filled our water glasses out of old looking bottles that weren't too clean on the outside. They then served hot steaming bowls of Borscht. Suddenly the general grabbed his glass, held it high, and said in a loud voice, "Viva Roosevelt". Then he downed the contents of his glass. So did the other officers.
Following suit, I put my glass to my lips and when I took a mouth fill and started to swallow I smelled grain alcohol. Vodka! The taste compared to a low-grade fuel oil. Taking one swallow, I looked around into the staring faces of the Russian officer corps waiting for me to empty my glass. Opening my throat I poured the contents down, swallowing last when it was all past my throat, a trick I had tried several times at beer parties in college. I knew I was in trouble when the fiery liquid started bouncing around in my stomach.
Taking my seat I started eating my soup and looked for the butter. That would coat my stomach if I could get some quickly. Sure enough, right in front of the general and me was a fresh American-sized pound of butter. The wrapper was folded out on the plate and this slightly salt-crusted butter had come from an Ames, Iowa creamery according to the label. I cut off a large hunk, spread it on a small chunk of bread and ate it quickly. I repeated this two more times. That salty Iowa butter on fresh Russian black bread tasted wonderful. It did the trick along with some slight of hand over my glass when the waitress came for a refill for the third and fourth times. I refused these.
The meal lasted an hour and we had four more toasts. I naturally give one to Stalin, and there were others by some of the other officers. After meat, potatoes, and dessert the general got up to leave. He went out the door swaying. Three of the other officers following who were in front of me didn't make the door on their first try. They ran straight into the wall beside the door. Using both hands I guided my way past the door into the hall and out the front door to the porch. My cheeks and lips were numb. Never in my life had I been in such a condition.
The general started down the entrance steps. There were four to the sidewalk. He missed the top one and fell forward to the sidewalk. He was quickly helped to his feet and dusted off by the two drivers who were waiting for us with two-beat up old 1935 Chevrolet sedans.
We were driven to an area where the rest of the American crewmembers were being entertained by three Russian girls about eighteen years of age dressed in army uniforms. They were short and stout and dancing up a storm to the music supplied by a male soldier playing an ancient zither. I introduced the general to my commander, Colonel
Ott, and several others.
During an aside I explained briefly to Col. Ott what had happened at lunch. Major Waldo
Hardell, our Group Intelligence Officer, who had accompanied us on this mission, was demonstrating his prowess as a dancing man. Waldo was big and tall and he picked up one of the little Russian girls and held her out at arm's length, whirling around and around until they both were dizzy. They were a great hit with all watching. The entertainment lasted well into the afternoon.
Feeling more poorly as time passed, I went out behind the nearest building and regurgitated my noon meal and hopefully much of the Vodka. Then I laid down and went to sleep for several hours on the straw in a nearby building being used as a barracks. When I awoke I was covered with lice bites and felt even more terrible. I didn't fully recover from this binge until 4 days after we arrived in
Foggia.
The next day we flew up north to Poltava airfield to be refueled and bombed up for the second leg of our shuttle. At Poltava we were parked on the opposite side of the runway from the B-17Gs that had been hit on the night of the 21st by the GAF. Unexploded anti-personnel butterfly and phosphorous incendiary bombs were scattered all over the open airfield area in the grass. These had been cleared from the runways, taxi strips and our immediate parking area. Rope barriers were strung along behind the tail sections of our parked aircraft and the opposite side of the taxiway out in front of us.
Prisoners of the Russians were being used to clear the unexploded bombs from the open areas of the airfield. About fifty men were lined up across the grass, shoulder to shoulder, in the open field between our planes and the runway. Each held a fifteen foot long willow wand in his hands which they switched back and forth in the grass out in front of the human line. Their guards followed behind giving the orders. They swept down the length of the runway, wheeled around as if a gate on a hinge, and came back in the opposite lane. When a bomb was discovered, a prisoner from behind ran up and planted a stick in the ground next to the bomb. The switching line then went around that spot and continued on its way. A blasting team followed and exploded the bombs using powder charges.
When a bomb accidentally went off during the switching and finding process, and a man fell wounded, a replacement was brought up to take the man's place. A truck followed to pick up the wounded and cart them off to the medical collection point. This system worked quite well and the area was cleared of explosives before our planes were ready to take off on our next mission. The lesson seemed to be: don't let yourself be taken prisoner by the Russian Army.
We had come to Russia with two combat wings, the 45th and the 13th. With most of the 45th in shambles due to the heavy German bombing, the 13th Combat Wing left Poltava on the 25th in a single wing formation. Each 13th Wing group was augmented with flyable planes from the 45th Combat Wing. The 390th Group had 26 planes in our formation and we led the Task Force down to Italy. The nine flyable B-17Gs left from the 45th Combat Wing filled in vacant positions in the three groups of the 13th Combat Wing.
The Russians sent along a navigator and a radio operator. The navigator held the rank of major and had flown over 300 combat missions against the Germans. The radio operator was along to keep in communication with Russian ground stations to make our flight south safe from Russian anti-aircraft and fighter interception. They flew in one of our aircraft where the co-pilot was fluent in Russian. We were the lead aircraft and Colonel Olds, the Task Force Commander, was flying with our crew in the right hand seat.
He had been flown to Moscow during his stay in Russia and had been thoroughly entertained by his opposites of the Russian Air Force. When they returned him to our aircraft just in time for take-off he was pretty well-lubricated. They had given him a case of vodka for a going away present and that was loaded in the back of the aircraft. However, as soon as he was in the aircraft he was in full command of himself and the mission went as planned. I flew as the Command Navigator in the lead aircraft with Colonel Olds. Our lead crew was again, Captain Moylan Smith.
The target was another large oil refinery and storage area at Drohobyez, Poland. We encountered moderate flak in the target vicinity, which comfortably was not at our altitude and of no real danger to us. The Russian navigator, however, became quite vocal and excited, calling for us to take evasive action. Our standard bomb run procedure was to fly straight and level during all bomb runs. Later in the officer’s club at
Bari, over a drink, he explained to me that we were “nuts” not to use the accepted Russian evasive tactics in the flak area.
Captain Bob Billington picked up the target in bright sunlight about 100 miles out using the extended vision feature of the Nordon bombsight. Bob said later that it must have been the longest bomb run in the history of aerial bombardment. All of our aircraft released their bombs on the signal from our lead aircraft and the 250-pound GP bombs from 26 bombers plastered this vulnerable target. As we left the target the smoke was billowing up to over 20,000 feet and could be seen for miles. Mo Smith's crew was one of the top Pathfinder lead crews in the 8th Air Force. Their performance on each of the four missions they flew on this shuttle was truly outstanding and for their good work each crewmember received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After a successful bomb drop we headed southwest toward Italy. Ten minutes on our new heading I looked at the compass and we were thirty degrees off course to the right and headed directly for the center of the city of Budapest, capitol of Hungary. Apparently Col. Olds wanted to have a look at this famous city. It was my job to see that the Task Force stayed on the briefed course, but I couldn't get him on interphone, as his interphone chord was not connected. I finally got the pilot, Captain Smith, to correct back to a good heading. But after another ten minutes we were off course, again, this time even farther. With my commander, Colonel
Ott, flying in the aircraft on our right wing my navigator's professional reputation was at stake and rapidly being compromised and I couldn't do anything about it.
We passed Budapest well over 70 miles off course to the right and headed south to intercept our briefed course. This time we kept getting off course to the east. I remonstrated with Mo Smith, again, but he only pointed to his right indicating that Colonel Olds was flying the plane. We passed within 20 miles of Beograd, Yugoslavia this time and well over 60 miles off course to the east. When Colonel Olds grand tour of the Balkans was over I was finally permitted to give the pilot a good heading over the beautiful deep blue Adriatic Sea for our destination of Foggia in Italy. We landed safely with no lost aircraft.
Selected by Colonel Olds as the navigator on his small Task Force planning staff at Headquarters, 15th Air Force, four of us flew down to Bari in a C-47 where we spent several days waiting out the weather and strong headwinds for our flight back to England. On the 2nd of July a side mission was planned and eighteen of our planes and crews went with the 15th Air Force to attack the marshaling yard at
Arad, Rumania. For six days we planned a mission to Munich, Germany and back to England. After the 6 P.M. weather briefing each mission was scrubbed due to the prevailing strong headwinds. We were free of work until the following day.
The Senior Officers Quarters where we were billeted was in a former luxury Bari tourist hotel. I had a room down the hall from Colonel Olds. He was a great poker player and after each mission we planned was scrubbed he spent the evening and well into the early morning hours plying with some of his old buddies. The fourth night there I had a bad case of Italian G.I.s that hit me well after midnight. All one had to do was to take a deep breath and look out the window at the sewage floating in the Adriatic beyond the highway past our hotel and your stomach did terrible things. While sitting on the "John" heaving into the bathtub and booming into the toilet I was suddenly ranked off the throne by Colonel Olds who was experiencing the same problems. "Move over, Major, you are just out-ranked on that crapper", he said. And there I was on the third floor of that old Bari hotel without a proper pot and no window to throw it through if I had one.
It turned out that this wasn't to be my last confrontation with Colonel Olds. Years later we had a chance meeting at the bar in the Officer's Club at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska. Over after dinner drinks we reminisced for an hour on the details of the Task Force events and the days we had shared on this never-to-be-forgotten shuttle raid to Russia. He was by this time a Lieutenant General and in command of the 15th Air Force stationed at March Air Force Base, California.
Finally we worked out a mission to a target at Beziers in southern France near the Spanish border. This was approved, the winds were gentle and the skies were blue. Colonel Olds and his staff of three climbed aboard a C-47 for a quick flight back to Foggia about three in the morning of the 5th of July. With Mo Smith's crew again, we were in the high group position out over the Mediterranean with the 95th Bomb Group leading. In a cloudless sky, a smooth unopposed bomb run was made on the marshaling yards at
Beziers. Our target was "creamed" and we headed north across France eventually arriving back at our home airfield at Framlingham late in the afternoon.
Man, we were a happy bunch of flyers back at home base with warm showers and clean sheets. England was getting to feel more like home after every mission. Captain Moyland Smith and his Pathfinder crew had completed their required thirty missions on the
Arad, Romania mission and now with thirty-one missions under their belt they would be heading stateside in a few days. I had to stay on until my thirty missions were completed in January of 1945.
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