It was my responsibility in the 398th to check loaded planes for the proper bomb racking, safety wire insertion in the fuses, and to see that the safety pins were in place in the fuse vanes.

The operation of the bomb racks was the responsibility of the group maintenance people.

On the use of the specific bombs used on April 13, 1945 mission I recall that ordnance had at one time issued two bad lots of these bombs but both had been removed from our storage and disposed of. The safer bombs issued to the 398th were filled with the putty type RDX that lacked sufficient bee’s wax which supposedly allowed the non-solid material to move on itself with a safe frictional resistance.

Earlier, there had been explosions in boat loadings on the U.S. west coast and again in England.

It was my understanding that RDX bombs would be used only on a restricted basis. The Neumunster mission apparently qualified under the divisional guidelines, one of which was that they be dropped only in train, never salvoed.

There appeared to be an urgent desire on the part of Ordnance to clean the RDX bombs out of storage as their special use restrictions disrupted material flow and storage.