It was so close I could see the smoke from its guns as our metal skin began pealing off in sheets from the pounding we were taking from the 190s guns. There was a fighter right on our tail shooting at us. “That’s when we got jumped by more German fighters. Once our bomber dropped below the formation he attempted to use the engines to steer it as he headed home. Alfred Morton, our pilot, almost took another plane down with us when he tried to pull ‘Shack Happy’ out of the pack. We lost our rudder controls and couldn’t stay in formation,” Herres said. Flak from anti-aircraft guns on the ground filled the sky with deadly black puffs of smoke.Ī Focke-Wulf-190 fighter dove out of the sun at 12 o’clock high with its twin machine-guns and four 20mm cannons blazing away at them. Things started heating up as they made their final approach to the target. “Shack Happy” was lead bomber flying at 23,000 feet. Squadrons of P-51 Mustang fighters flew cover for the bomber armada. Things were pretty dull on their 40th mission during most of the four hour flight to the Ploesti oil refineries as 700 four-engine bombers droned along in formation under clear skies. They all survived when their B-24’s fuel line was severed and the pilot had to crash land the “Liberator” after the rest of the crew bailed out. They’d had one close call in the more than three dozen flights they made. Only 10 more trips over enemy territory and they could go home. He and the crew of “Shack Happy” were on their 40th combat mission. I felt almost sick,” Herres recalled almost 60 years later. It cost the Americans 223 heavy bombers, not including fighters lost in these raids. The Third Reich knew it was critical to protect its Romanian oil production facilities or its hope of victory would evaporate.Īt the conclusion of the 19th raid over the enemy oil fields by the 15th Air Force 13,469 tons of bombs had demolished most of the German’s oil production capacity. The area bristled with anti-aircraft cannons and swarmed with German fighter planes. The 717th had already made two godawful trips over Ploesti. A string on the chart stretched from their base to the Romanian oil fields. When the briefing officer pulled the cover off the flight map on the wall up front there it was again - Ploesti. He was a tail gunner on a “Liberator” bomber. was in the 717 Bomb Squadron, 429th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force stationed in Grotaglia, Italy, near the country’s toe. Then he and the rest of the 10-man crew of “Shack Happy,” a B-24 bomber, headed to the briefing room with scores of other B-24 crews to get the bad news. It was dark and eerie when he climbed out of the sack at 4 a.m, shaved and ate a breakfast of powdered eggs, Spam and coffee. He was in the 15th Air Force in Italy when his B-24 “Liberator” bomber was shot down over enemy territory.
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