February [15], 1945 – Mission #3. We started for Dresden on a raid. 7/10 cloud coverage, 25,000 feet, 6 hours. There are times when everything “Goes to hell in a hand basket”, and this mission was one of those times. We had one engine knocked out over Munster, Germany. Not being able to keep up with the group on three engines, we were told to abort and head for home. We opened the bomb bay doors and dropped our bombs, not caring where they landed, probably on some poor pig farmer. We were given one P-51 fighter as escort. Gave a man a friendly feeling to see that little plane sitting out there off the wing tip.

We had a great navigator, a red headed Captain from Provo or Ogden, Utah. He couldn’t find his rear end with both hands, but he was a likeable guy. During briefing that morning they told us that the Essen manufacturing complex on the Rhine River had about 400 anti aircraft guns guarding it. Our good navigator guided us right into it. Needless to say, the air turned black with flack bursts. Our little P-51 flipped over and dived away, the last we saw of him. The pilot turned the old B-17 up on one wing, poured the coal to it and we got to hell out of there. No damage done except to our nerves.

After circling to the north to clear the complex we continued on towards (we hoped) an emergency field at Merville, France. By this time the navigator didn’t seem to know where we were. The radio man got a radio fix to give us our position, but to find the field took more than that. A fighter showed up at about 8 o’clock level off the tail and came in on a pursuit curve. I trained my guns on him and was about to fire after seeing the sun reflect off the leading edge of his wing, thinking he was firing at us. About that time he raised his wing enough that I identified it as a British Spitfire. He radioed our pilot that he would lead us into Merville, France. This had been a German Air Field during their occupation of France.

We landed at Merville and the plane was grounded for repairs. After trying several planes that the pilot refused to fly, one broke through the taxi strip and got stuck, we got airborne for England on February 1945. The plane had one propeller that would not stay set at the proper pitch and had to be reset about every three minutes. The ball turret was missing as was the waist door, letting the wind whistle through in a gale almost freezing Woody and I, both of us being in the waist. All the time oil ran out of one engine cowling and off the trailing edge of the wing. We left it at a repair base and went back to our field by truck. The other crews thought we were gone for good but we fooled them that time.

Note: The orginal diary indicated a date of Febrary 14 for a mission to Dresden but after investigation, Mr. Holloway concluded that the date must have been February 15. Thus February 15 is used in the text. This data then matches the official 398th listing of a February 15, 1945 mission to Dresden.