February 23, 1945
Mission: Eger, Czech

We flew at 9,500 feet in direct support of the Russian army that was nearing Berlin. This was another mission like the one above. It was another “all out” bombing. We were airborne 7-1/2 hours with no oxygen. The temperature was +10 degrees. I chewed gum over the target, also ate an orange, and smoked a few cigarettes. We really destroyed the target. The railroad and yard was not missed at that low altitude. We even shot our guns at the ground targets. I saw 3 P-51 fighters stop a racing locomotive and train that was trying to reach the tunnel it was headed for. We were never low enough before to observe that kind of actions before. Enemy planes were also in the vicinity. A few German jet planes broke away from the P-51 planes that were fighting them. They then made passes at us. Flak was light, but accurate. I saw a few of our fighter escort go down that day. We caught flak after we left the target. The German jet planes were the first that we had seen. They looked like beer kegs with wings. They say that the jet planes were fuel guzzlers, and can stay in the air less than one half an hour. They whizzed by us so fast that we could not get a shot at them. This was an exciting mission as everything happened. All we talked about at the briefing was the jet planes that we saw that day. We had heard about them, but had never seen them before.