398th Bomb Group Research

Anstey Castle Mound And Moat,  St. George's Church, 

Yesterday I mentioned the tragedy of the crash of Command PFF plane 42-97746 in the village of Anstey, just a few miles south of the main runway. Fortunately the large bomber missed all houses and crashed into the moat surrounding the old Anstey castle mound behind St. George’s church. All ten crewmen were killed including pilot William Meyran and Command pilot Charles Khourie.

This tragic event would later become the impetus for serious research into the 398th Bomb Group. In the fall of 1972, three local Englishmen, Vic Jenkins, Malcolm “Ozzie” Osborne, and John Knight explored the crash site. Ozzie explains it best: “One October day in 1972 we climbed Anstey Castle mound, together with a colleague of mine from work. All we knew was Vic’s information that a B17G Flying Fortress had crashed into the mound shortly after taking off from Nuthampstead, with the loss of all onboard. Up on the mound this grey October day, my colleague, John Knight, suddenly called out “look what I have found”. It was the case of a wrist watch, no glass, hands or strap. John wet his finger and rubbed the back of the case and we saw the name ‘William L Meyran’ engraved on the back. That made the hairs go up on the back of my neck, suddenly this all became extremely emotional, it truly brought home the fact that 10 young American Airmen had perished on this spot. Who were they? What were their names? Where were they headed for that day? Why did they crash? There were so many questions, but nowhere or nobody to turn to for answers.”

“I decided then and there that I would not rest until I found out all I could about Nuthampstead, the Bomb Group known as the 398th, its four Squadrons and those young men who gave their lives on that Medieval Castle Mound. So I came up with the name ‘Nuthampstead Airfield Research Society’ (NARS) – how original. A society with only two members, well why not? So in 1972 we began our research quest.”

My Son Jeff And Me, Joyce and Malcolm Osborn, And My Brother Steve At Cambridge American Cemetery

From this humble beginning has grown a great deal of serious research, and has led to the formation of the 398th Bomb Group Memorial Association, the quarterly publication Flak News, the erection of an impressive memorial at the Woodman Inn adjacent to the old Nuthampstead base, the creation of a beautiful stained-glass memorial window at St. George’s church in Anstey, and more.

Perhaps because the 398th was a late arrival to the air war and only saw one year of combat, they have received little attention from 8th Air Force historians. But their contribution to Allied victory was noble and significant. Malcolm Osborne’s forty years of research is invaluable in telling their story, as are the efforts of Allen Ostrom, Cliff and Stan Bishop, and others.

 

Several books on the history of the group are invaluable aids. The first is Allen Ostrom’s 398th Remembrances, now available in re-publication. Another is Cliff Bishop’s fine Fortresses Over Nuthampstead, filled with valuable information including mission and aircraft histories, lists of KIAs, MIAs POWs, and much more. 

And Malcom Osborn has just finished a new book, A Photographic Journey With The 398th Bombardment Group. The 398th's quarterly publication, Flak News, edited for decades by Allen Ostrom, is a font of information and stories. And the website, 398th.org, is also filled with valuable information and personal histories, as well as Flak News articles.

Being There

It was a sober arrival at Nuthampstead for Don and the other replacement crews on Februry 1, 1945. Everything was different. First there was the English climate to contend with during the worst winter and worst weather in memory.  Then they learned that the 398th's original Commander Frank P. Hunter Jr., had been killed while leading a bombing mission just one week earlier, and that he was replaced by new “hard ass” commander, Lt. Colonel Lewis P. Ensign.  More on Lewis Ensign here.





The sight of several badly damaged aircraft also got their attention. Coffee wrote, “We try not to engage in too much speculation about what’s to come, or to discuss reports of recent crashes. Severely damaged aircraft sitting around are stark reminders of the dangers of war.” But like most newly trained crews, their morale was high and they were eager to get started and prove their mettle. 

During the war, servicemen were encouraged to write uplifting, optimistic letters home and to leave out difficulties and the horrors of war. Don was no exception, and the few letters of his that have survived are mostly light and breezy. His only complaint was with the English weather. Shortly after arriving, he sent his first V mail to his wife Jocile: “If anyone you know thinks the war over here is nearly finished you can tell them they’re crazy. I fully expect to complete my full tour of 35 missions. However, we’ll have several days of Ground School and Orientation before we start flying. Coffee’s crew is still with us but he is assigned to another group. We still see a lot of each other tho. As nearly as possible our crews will be kept intact which is good news as I think a lot of my boys. We are near the channel coast and within leave distance of ‘Big Ben,’ but that’s all I can tell you on that. The weather is miserable which is usual for this time of year. They had a terrific blizzard a few days before we arrived but the snow is all gone now. It rains nearly every day which makes everything green but soggy. I wouldn’t mind the cold and rain so much if it weren’t for the constant mud. My crew is lucky in being assigned to live in a Nissen hut, as there are quite a number of officers living in tents. Our quarters are quite comfortable and the food is quite good. There are twelve of us to a hut and the older fellows in ours are very helpful and friendly.”

Ken Blakebrough, a copilot with the 457th Bomb Group, gives a more realistic view of life in a Nissen hut. “To me, a Nissen hut during the winter of 1944-45 was a man-made cave. The interior was always gloomy, damp and cold. The windows were covered by thick blackout curtains, the overhead light bulbs, two to a hut, gave scant lighting. The scarcity of coal for the potbelly stove was another reason for avoiding your hut. As a result, the time spent in the hut was mostly for sleeping. Off duty time was largely spent at the officers club where there was a huge fireplace which gave off some warmth, if you stood close enough.” [Flak News, vol. 6, no. 4 p.8, Oct 2001]

Nissen huts for officers held eight or twelve men, each with an individual cot. Enlisted men slept in bunk beds in larger huts holding up to thirty-six men. There were also many four-man tents used as temporary quarters until room became available in a Nissen hut, but some officers like Marvin Coffee preferred the tent quarters: “Except for the bathroom and shower location some 1,000 feet away I preferred being in the canvas tent as there is more privacy with just the four of us, unlike the huts.” 

Wally Blackwell, former president of the 398th Bomb Group Memorial Association, describes tent living: “A standard US Army tent is square, with 3 or 5 foot sidewalls, with a roof from the four sides up to a point at the top. I remember they had wooden floors and a standard stove with a stove pipe. They were put to good use as new crews arrived and crews left. I was in one for maybe 2 or 3 weeks in July and it was 'living in a hot tent.' In winter they were cold. The option was to be moved to a 12 man Quonset hut when space became available. The tent housed a single crew of four, and there were cases where some crews elected to stay in a tent, fix it up their way, rather that get involved with others in a hut with different life styles.” [398th.org]

Initially Don and his friend Marvin Coffee were both assigned to the 603rd Squadron, but on February 6, Coffee was reassigned to the 602nd. He writes, “We are still able to keep in close contact with the Christensen crew during our tour up to the point that Don and his crew were lost on a mission… I found out later that Paul Colville had requested to headquarters that our crews be assigned to the same squadron since he and I had also trained together and wanted to stay in the same unit…This reassignment may have saved my crew’s lives as we later found out that the 603rd had a high rate of loss…was a “marked squadron” and that German fighters would seek out that squadron. I don’t know how much truth there is in this, but they did have a very high loss record.” This was certainly a bogus rumor. Neither German nor American records substantiate the notion that certain units were singled out for fighter attacks, but it was a common rumor throughout the 8th Air Force about certain groups or squadrons with high loss rates.

The new crews spent the first few days in ground school and briefings on base orientation, air operation procedures such as pre-dawn formation assemblies, responsibilities for completing or aborting missions, returning with injured crew members, etc. After an indoctrination flight or two they practiced take-offs and landings, night and formation flying, over and over again. Most navigators had not received stateside training in British “Gee” radar until arriving in England, so they needed to learn that technology too. The crews also practiced bombing at a range near an area known as “the Wash,” which is a large bay and estuary on the northeast coast of East Anglia, near the North Sea. When deemed ready or needed, new pilots flew their first mission with an experienced copilot in the right seat, while their own copilot flew with another seasoned pilot. Two weeks after arriving at Nuthampstead, Don Christensen flew his first mission on February 15.  To read about that mission click here.

So Don finally found himself in the war zone. A year and a half earlier he had been a civilian, a regular guy, and now he was about to become a combatant in the largest military campaign in history and to fly a fully-loaded B-17 deep into enemy territory. One of outstanding characteristics of nearly all citizen-soldiers who served in WWII was that they were reluctant warriors. Most did not want to be in a war but they went anyway, and most rose to do their duty and bring honor to themselves, their family, and their unit. 

Despite the patriotic rhetoric and propaganda back home, most of these reluctant warriors did not talk much of flag or country or patriotism, though occasionally they spoke of fighting for decency and against evil. When they spoke of their duty they most often mentioned their pride in belonging to their unit, squad, platoon, or crew, and not wanting to let their comrades down.

Even more remarkable, Don and the other American bomber pilots and their crews were very young men and boys with no previous flying experience before the war. They were volunteers, not career soldiers or airmen. Most were unmarried; many were just out of high school. Don was something of an exception, but certainly not the only one, with a wife and young son and another child on the way.

These young airmen came from farms and towns and cities all across America, learned their combat roles in a matter of months or perhaps a year, and then were given control of huge aircraft in the most dangerous and perilous circumstances. The average age of pilots was twenty-two or twenty-three. Don was an “Old Man” at twenty-seven; his friend Marvin Coffee had just turned twenty-one. And my friend Herb Taylor, a B-24 pilot with the 389th Bomb Group at Hethel, was only 19.

They had had minimal training in the states for many tactical aspects of flying bombers.  Most new pilots went into combat with less than 500 hours training and flight time. B-17 transition training was limited to about 96 hours. Combat training was only 110 hours and limited to 110 pound practice bombs, whereas actual combat bombs were often 500 or 1000 lbs. They also had very little training in high altitude formations in the states since it put so much stress on aircraft, and training flights seldom exceeded 20,000 feet. Many missions over Germany, however, were at 25,000’ or 30,000’ where plane and human response was sluggish, making formation flying more dangerous.

 Flight Engineer Herb Shanker talks about the differences between training and the real thing. “We had not experienced any real high-altitude flying till we got to England. We had flown old wrecks in training, never higher than 16,000 feet or longer than six hours. We never carried fuel in our Tokyo tanks or more than 1,000 pounds of bombs. Now, on our first mission to Munich, it would be nine-plus hours at 25,000 feet, a temperature of thirty to forty degrees below zero, with a full fuel load of 2,700 gallons and 5,000 pounds of bombs from a 6,000-foot runway.” [Gerald Astor, The Mighty Eighth, pp. 330-331]

They also carried twelve or thirteen .50 caliber machine guns and ammunition and needed a fully charged oxygen system for missions lasting as long as ten hours at altitudes up to 30,000 feet, with temperatures of 40 to 50 below zero. Fully loaded, a B-17 could weigh over 70,000 lbs, far above anything they had trained for in the states, and with a center of gravity well aft of where it should be, making these planes even harder to fly. The first time they faced these conditions was in actual combat as part of a formation of hundreds or thousands of planes and with enemy flak and fighters trying their best to shoot them down.

Don Christensen's First Mission

Lt Donald R. Christensen

 Don Christensen and his crew flew their first combat mission 70 years ago today on February 15, 1945, and it was an unusual mission for several reasons. To begin with, the 398th was short-handed of both aircraft and crews and had to scramble to put together a small force of 24 planes rather than their usual mission strength of 36 planes. New replacements Don Christensen and Richard Ellis were both tagged to fly in order to have enough crews for those few planes. The reason they were short-handed was that the day before the 398th, led by their new commander Lewis P. Ensign, had mistakenly bombed Prague, Czechoslovakia – an open city -- rather than Dresden, Germany.  To read more about the Prague debacle click here.

Because of the extra distance and strong headwinds on their return, only a few planes made it back to Nuthampstead that day. The majority were short on fuel and were forced to land at Allied airfields in France or Belgium, and many did not get back to Nuthampstead for several days due to bad weather. Two ran completely out of fuel and crash-landed.

So on February 15, the 398th was short of available aircraft, and pilots were assigned whatever planes were ready-to-fly regardless of squadron assignment. Don was in the 603rd Squadron, but was given a 601st plane, 43-39224, 30M, which had just been assigned from Burtonwood Air Depot two days earlier. It is unclear whether this was a new or repaired aircraft, but it was Christensen’s plane for his first two missions. (On March 9, this same aircraft with a different crew would be battle-damaged and declared scrap, but it was eventually repaired and returned to service on April 6. In May it was used for POW pickup and then sent to Kingman, Arizona for salvage.)

Standard 398th procedure was for a new pilot to fly his first mission with an experienced copilot in the right-hand seat, so Don flew with Maurice Trokey, copilot of the Andrew Thomas crew in the right-hand seat, while his regular copilot, William Love, flew with another experienced pilot, probably Andrew Thomas. (One month later on March 15, the Thomas/Trokey crew went down when they were hit by flak in number three engine. Pilot Thomas held the plane steady enough for Trokey and the rest of the crew to bail out, but then he lost his life when the plane went out of control and crashed with him still aboard. Two other crewmen also died, but Maurice Trokey and four others survived to become POWs.)

The weather that morning was so bad, and visibility so limited, that the whole mission was nearly scrubbed. Take off was delayed 45 minutes and then only 16 planes out of 24 were able to lift off before the weather completely closed in. With so few planes and without regular squadrons, the 398th formed up into an “A” Group led by Captain Keith Anderson which attached itself to the 91st Bomb Group, and a “B’ Group, which included rookies Christensen and Ellis, which attached to the 381st Bomb Group.

Visibility on that rainy and foggy morning was only two hundred yards, which dictated an instrument takeoff followed by a long climb to get above the clouds; a tough job for Don’s first mission, but he made it without a hitch. Ralph Golubock of the 44th Bomb Group describes such a take off and the hazards involved. “The lead bomber raced down the runway and took off and was almost immediately enveloped in clouds and disappeared from sight. We followed in turn, the planes spaced about by thirty seconds. When my turn came I advanced the throttles and immediately went on instruments. The copilot tried to watch the runway to prevent accidentally drifting off and onto the rain-soaked grass. The engineer stood between the pilot and copilot to carefully monitor the engine instruments. He also called out our airspeeds so I could concentrate on taking a whole lot of airplane off the ground safely. Upon leaving the ground we were immediately immersed in rain and clouds…The climb was long and grinding, and to our horror, we saw a huge flash of light in the sky. We all knew that two planes had collided and exploded.” [Gerald Astor, The Mighty Eighth, 235-36].

Allen Ostrom, for many years the venerable editor of the 398th Bomb Group’s Flak News adds, “Nearly every one of our missions in the winter of 1944-45 was done in the darkness of predawn. The guys in the cockpit looked out their windshields and saw nothing save for the flicker of runway lights through their side windows. Every takeoff had to be an adventure, not knowing for sure if there were trees out there, a church steeple, a tower. And fully loaded with bombs and fuel. After taking off they had to begin a five-mile ‘racetrack’ pattern, gaining 300 feet per minute while reaching ‘bunching up’ altitude which might be 12,000 to 15,000 feet. All the time watching out for the others taking off each minute…in the dark. Also, they had to watch out for the other groups taking off at the same time only a few miles away. After all that adventure, these pilots had to join up with 41 groups numbering 1000 to 1500 bombers and try to be on time within a matter of a minute or two before crossing the channel. Had the Air Force generals…submitted these plans to the FAA, adding that most of the pilots would be 19-year-old kids, they would have been told—‘You are out of your minds; it can’t be done.’” {Flak News Vol. 21, No1, Jan 2005]

On a green signal flare from the tower they lifted off, one right behind the other at thirty second or one minute intervals, and headed for their “bunching up” points and rendezvous assignments with other groups. “Bunching up” involved gaining altitude while circling a radio beacon known as a buncher, until the whole bomb group was formed up and prepared to join into larger formations with other groups. Pilot Ralph Golubuck explains. “We had to find our proper spot in the formation. The procedure was to fly a racetrack course around a radio signal called a buncher. The lead plane was constantly firing flares so we could identify him. Each group had their own buncher. Out of all this confusion, we began to form up. First as elements, then as squadrons and groups, finally as wings and divisions. Then the divisions took their correct place in the Eighth Air Force bomber stream.” 

Earl Pate recalls, “A predawn join up, a low overcast that you had to climb until you were on top, sometimes 18,000 to 20,000 feet and then try to join up was terrible. Scary! Imagine a thousand planes trying to line up in groups of thirty-six, spaced two minutes apart in pitch-black darkness and over an exact spot on the English Channel, at a precise time, make the orderly, perfect formation envisioned by the men behind the armor-plated desks, you get a feeling for the high risk of collision.” [Astor p.398]

Jim Fletcher adds: “Everyone is supposed to be going the same way but you could be sure some guy would get lost, start searching for his formation and wind up going the wrong way. If it was pretty dark it was hard to spot those jokers, so you really had to keep looking around all the time.” [Roger Freeman, B-17 at War p. 107]

The primary target for February 15th was the oil facilities at Bohlen, a long flight into eastern Germany, just south of Leipzig and west of Dresden. Bohlen was one of several synthetic oil targets in the area. The entire flight was over 10/10 (100%) undercast. When Bohlen was not visible beneath the clouds the lead commander ordered the attack to move on to the secondary target which was Dresden, but it was also obscured, so bombs were released on the marshalling yards there on PFF radar from the lead group. Results were unobserved due to the cloud cover.

398th Group Commander’s report for that day indicates an eight-hour mission accompanied by the usual snafus. The lead plane on the “A” group had an inoperative bombsight and the “B” group’s PFF equipment failed, so they both bombed off of the smoke marker of the 381st BG’s lead squadron.. S/Sgt. Kenneth Green, a 603rd gunner, wrote in his diary, “We bombed at 24,000 feet transportation facilities. The temperature was -56 degrees. We encountered intense and accurate flak, but received no battle damage, except for a few holes in the wings. We were airborne 8-1/2 hours and on oxygen 4-1/2 hours.”

On their return they flew south of their incoming course to avoid the flak they had encountered on the approach. Visibility at Nuthampstead which had only been 200 yards on takeoff that morning was worse on landing since the field was almost completely socked in. Fortunately, on return flights pilots and radio operators had a radio beacon to home in on to guide them to the field even when they couldn't see it. Still, landing with little visibility was a harrowing experience. Every pilot and crew must have been nervous about such a landing, especially those on on their first mission. This was a good one for the Christensen crew to have under their belt and to further bolster their confidence. They landed at approximately 4:00 PM, and by the time they had unloaded and stored their gear and attended be-briefing they were notified that they were flying again the following day, February 16. Many other planes and crews had still not returned from the Prague debacle of the 14th .

Dresden / Prague February 14, 1945

398th Bomb Group 

On February 14, 1945, the 398th Bomb Group was chosen to lead some 450 planes of the 1st Air Division on a bombing run to Dresden as a follow-up to the RAF raid of previous night. This was part of the advanced planning for the combined British/American effort, but it was also common practice by the Eighth to send a bomber force back to the same target the following day if they were not satisfied with previous results. The RAF may have incinerated the city that night before but did little damage to the railroad marshalling yards and surrounding industries which the AAF considered vital strategic targets. To read more about the Dresden bombing click here.

The 398th was led that day by their new commander, Lt. Col. Lewis P. Ensign.. He had recently been promoted by 1st Combat Wing commander General William Gross to replace 398th’s original commander, the well-loved and respected Lt. Col. Frank Hunter who had been killed leading a mission to Neuss, Germany on January 23.

But due to a combination of bad weather, faulty radar, and stubbornness, Lt. Colonel Ensign managed to get lost and bombed Prague instead of Dresden.

The weather on the morning of the 14th was terrible, much worse than reported in the morning briefing, and take-off was delayed. The 398th's force of 38 planes finally took off in poor visibility, rendezvoused with the rest of the bomber stream and led them east across the North Sea. At that point the weather deteriorated further and problems with on-board radar began.

Near Munster the formation was forced to swing further south of the planned course and to climb higher to avoid more dense clouds. Ensign also led them through several “S” maneuvers to avoid known or suspected flak batteries, thereby consuming more fuel and time. Icing and high tail winds added to navigational problems.






Navigator Ralph McIntyre recalls, “I received at least two calls from the lead plane (Col. Ensign’s) navigator asking my position data. I advised that my record showed we were about 50 miles south of course."

Actually, McIntyre’s dead reckoning was very close. They were about 60 miles south of the planned course, but his messages were ignored by Col. Ensign in the lead plane. Navigator Nunzio Addabbo’s misgivings about their course also went unheeded by Ensign. "I called our position to Sam and he radioed it to the lead. No action was taken.”

Lt. Col. Ensign was relying on his own “pilotage” or "navigating from the right-hand seat." When the Deputy Group navigator radioed Col. Ensign to suggest that they had missed the correct turning point he was overruled by Ensign and reminded about the rules for radio silence over Germany.

Several other pilots, navigators, and bombardiers began to recognize that they were off course. David Mill’s bombardier told him, “We are heading for the wrong target.” Newt Moy’s tail gunner informed him that the main bomber stream behind them was turning off to the north. Pilot Bill Costanzo adds: “I remember it being a SNAFU’d mission, climbing, climbing, trying to stay in formation at 30,000 feet, going thru “needless” flak, etc, etc.” Then Costanzo and others began to pick radio chatter and confusion from the lead plane and Ensign's voice saying, "I know how to read a map …I say our target is Dresden ahead and THAT is where we are going"

As they approached the target, the radar in the lead squadron came back on momentarily the Lead Radar Navigator identified what he believed to be Chemnitz and Dresden, but which were actually Pilsen and Prague, 80 miles to the south, but in the same general orientation as the target cities. Then about three minutes before “bombs away” the radar failed again, but through a break in the clouds the lead bombardier saw a city with a river running north that looked like photos of Dresden. 

Ralph McIntyre recalls, “Bombs were dropped visually as the clouds parted just before bomb drop, and we returned home as a group, everyone thinking that Dresden had been hit.” Unfortunately they had bombed Prague instead, an open city that was never supposed to be bombed! “It turned out that we really were about 50 miles south of course and that the radar had picked up Pilsen and Prague rather then Chemnitz and Dresden, both pairs of cities being in the same relative position to each other."

Both Prague and Dresden have rivers running north in the same general orientation to the city center. The Vltava River in Prague is actually a tributary to the Elbe which flows north through Dresden on its way to the North Sea, northwest of Hamburg.



As they were coming away from the bomb run, Deputy Lead navigator Doyle again broke radio silence and insisted that they had in fact not bombed Dresden. Lead Navigator Harold Brown checked with the rest of the navigators and they confirmed Doyle’s opinion. Ensign again ordered them to maintain radio silence.

The 91st, 381st, and 305th Bomb Groups followed the 398th toward Prague, while the main bomber stream, realizing they were on the wrong course, turned north to bomb Dresden as planned. Both the 398th an 91st dropped bombs on Prague while the 381st and part of the 305th, also realizing they were far off course, turned northeast and bombed Brux, Czechoslovakia, a viable military target.





152 tons of bombs fell on Prague that day, mainly on the east bank of the Vltava River about two and a half miles southwest of the city center, near a residential area. Initial reports indicated that 116 people were killed, 319 injured, and 50 missing. But subsequent rescue work and post-war clarification raised those figures to 701 killed, 1184 injured, and 11,000 left homeless. Ninety-three houses and other buildings were destroyed, including the 1347 AD Emmaus Monastery, with another 1960 buildings damaged.

Prague, February 14, 1945

Prague Casualty 

As the squadrons and groups re-formed and started back west many of the Fortresses were low on fuel and faced with 100 mph headwinds. By this time many were grumbling about Col. Ensign’s pilotage. They were told to knock it off.” Bombardier Dalton wrote in his diary, “We had another A and B plan today. They were Chemnitz and Dresden, [Germany]. We got a new Colonel here after Colonel Hunter went down. He’s already making a name for himself as a maniac, etc. He led us today to Dresden, Germany. That is a long haul so we had a full gas load. The crazy guy, or someone, made a little mistake and instead of going to Dresden, we bombed Prague, Czechoslovakia. As a result, we ran out of gas on the way back so we landed at a P-47 tactical outfit at St. Trond, Belgium.”

Most of the other 398th planes were also low on fuel and at least twenty-one had to land at Allied airfields in France or Belgium to refuel, and many did not get back to Nuthampstead for several days due to bad weather. Two other aircraft were damaged when landing and were AOC (Abandoned on Continent).

Following this blundered mission Lead navigator Harold Brown was relieved of his duties and flew the rest of his missions as Deputy Lead, but many felt the responsibility rested on Col. Ensign. Pilot Newt Moy remarked, “We had a new Group Commander. He knew more than the navigator.” Captain Keith Anderson remembers, “That was the day he [Ensign] had led the group supposedly to Dresden and ended up bombing Prague, Czechoslovakia, 100 miles away, again telling the navigators, bombardiers, radio operators, that they didn’t know where they were, he did. And that’s what happened.”

Due to the large number of aircraft that could not make it back to Nuthamstead that day, the 398th was very shorthanded of both aircraft and experienced crews. This set the stage for my father, Lt. Donald R. Christensen's first mission the following day, February 15, 1945, two weeks after he arrived in England.



In 1979, 398th researcher Malcolm “Ozzie” Osborne encountered Lewis Ensign at the Woodman Inn at Nuthampstead and asked if he could interview him. “Ask me anything you want Ozzie”, he replied. When Osborne asked him about February 14, 1945, Ensign asked, “What was special about that mission?” Ozzie replied, “That was the day you led the group and you bombed Prague instead of Dresden. Ensign said he had no memory of that mission at all. So I gave him lots of details about it. Still he maintained that he had no memory of that particular mission at all. End of story, for that day at least.”

Malcom "Ozzie" Osborn at Madingly Cemetery 

398th Bombardment Group Continued.

After all of their intensive training the 398th was champing at the bit to fly their first combat mission on May 6, 1944. (To see part 1 click here) That first mission, however, was not without its jitters and fubars. Their neighboring veteran groups in the 1st Combat Wing, the 91st at Bassingborn and the 381st at Ridgewell, had been through many missions and now moved with practiced precision on mission days, but the 398th still had a few kinks to work out. Somehow on that first mission the duty officer forgot to alert the kitchen so that crews were not fed prior to morning briefing, and then there was a traffic jam at the equipment room leaving little time to coordinate signals and other information among squadrons and crews. Not all bombs got loaded and truck transportation to dispersal points broke down. Still, somehow they finally got off, partly loaded and without proper assembly, but they went to war and came back without any losses. Luckily it was a short mission into France with a P-38 escort all the way, rather than a long run into Germany when a little thing like not waking cooks might have cost planes and lives. Pilot Keith Anderson remembers it this way: “This inaugural mission was snafu early on when the duty officer failed to awaken the mess crew on time so breakfast was delayed and each subsequent step in the process became progressively bogged down. Our takeoff was about an hour late and many of our planes never did get in proper formation – just tagged along ad hoc. Fortunately it was a milk run to one of the ‘noball’ sites on the French coast and the target was obscured by clouds so we couldn’t drop bombs anyway. Thus no harm was done and it was chalked off as a learning experience.”

After the morning’s confusion, Colonel Frank Hunter demonstrated his cool leadership by assembling his air and ground staffs, tracking down the problems and setting them right. The following day was the 398th’s baptism by fire; a long mission to Berlin led by Colonel Hunter himself. This time the morning went well. Breakfast was on time and well prepared. Morning briefing was punctual and there were no snarls at the equipment room or on the field. Bombs were loaded, ships were all serviced, and take off and assemblies were smooth. They suffered no losses that day but six planes landed with flak damage, two of them requiring major repairs.. In only one day the 398th had found itself. It was not until the May 19 mission to Berlin that they lost their first aircraft in action.

398th's Control Tower

The addition of the 398th was a major boost for the 1st Combat Wing that spring. 1st Wing history for May records: “With the 398th Group fully operational, we were able to fly two full combat wing formations on a number of the more important targets. To be exact, ten of the nineteen were double missions, so that our Wing actually flew twenty-nine missions in a 31-day month. This was coming-of-age of the air war in a big way!” By the end of May, the 398th had flown 450 sorties on 18 missions, including four to Berlin, six others deep into Germany, and one all the way to Poland. In all of this they lost four aircraft; less than 1%. “It was an amazing record.” the 1st Wing report read, “There wasn’t another group in the theater that could begin to touch it.”  Unfortunately, their luck would seldom be as good again.

In the next eight months preceding the arrival of Don Christensen and his crew, the 398th distinguished itself as a strong work horse with its share of both nobility and tragedy. They flew an average of over sixteen missions per month with a high of twenty-three in June 1944. That number would be topped by their twenty-four missions the following March. In one year of combat operations the 398th flew 195 missions which included 6419 sorties, and dropped 15,781 tons of bombs. The group lost 70 aircraft in combat, with 50 more abandoned on the continent (AOC). In addition, 33 aircraft that made it back to England were so severely damaged they were reduced to salvage. As for the human cost, the 398 lost 296 airmen killed in action or missing and presumed dead, and 298 were captured and became POWs. 

Main Runway Today

One Of The Ammo Dumps today

And Happy Valentine's Day 

398th Bombardment Group

The Mighty 8th

398th Insignia "Hell From Heaven

The 398th Bombardment Group was originally activated at Ephrata Army Air Base, Washington, on March 1, 1943, but the group first assembled at Blythe AAB, California with its 600th, 601st, 602nd and 603rd Bombardment Squadrons. Group Commander was Lt. Col. Frank P Hunter, a West Point graduate from the class of ’33. Following a brief stay at Geiger Field, Washington, the group transferred to Rapid City AAB in South Dakota in June 1943, where intensive training of both air and ground personnel in simulated combat conditions took place.  The men of the 398th were looking forward to deployment with the Eighth Air Force soon.

601st Squadron

602nd Squadron

602nd Squadron

603rd Squadron

But in July 1943, the 398th was re-designated a Replacement Training Unit (RTU) and charged with training other, less experienced units for combat. This was a hard blow for the whole outfit, but they took their duties seriously and by December 1943, had trained 326 separate combat crews. In January 1944, their RTU duties were completed and they once again became an Operational Training Unit (OTU) and accelerated their own preparations for combat deployment. On March 24, orders were issued for the advanced echelons to set up operations at Station 131, Nuthampstead, England. Both air and ground units arrived there on April 22, 1944.

Nuthampstead Airfield

The 398th was the last B-17 unit to join the 8th Air Force, delayed mostly because of their RTU duties during much of 1943. Several groups that came later were all B-24 Liberator units. The 398th was also the only B-17 bomb group in the 8th Air Force not to retain the original new aircraft they had flown from the states. Instead, their stateside planes were replaced with a full compliment of planes already modified for combat. Tails on 398th B-17s were painted with a white “W” on a black triangle against a red field.

398th Tail Insignia, Triangle W

The 398th was then assigned to the 1st Combat Wing of the 1st Air Division, alongside two established bomb groups, the 91st at Bassingborn and the 381st at Ridgewell. These two groups were already battle-hardened veterans. The 91st was one of the early pioneers of the 8th Air Force’s campaign against Germany, and the 381st had been in combat for over ten months. The 398th was in good company and had high standards to live up to.

With long awaited D-Day only a month away, many of the 398th’s early operations were in support of the Allied invasion of France. Later would they would face many deep penetrations into Germany, to cities such as Meresburg, Ludwigshaven, Hamburg, Berlin, Schweinfurt, Kassel, and Munich; missions that would cost them dearly in lives and aircraft. (To see part 2 click here)

Nuthampstead, England

Station 131, Nuthampstead, Hertfordshire, England

Nuthampstead is a small village in the northeast corner of county Hertfordshire, about 40 miles north of London and 20 miles south of Cambridge, near the town of Royston. Station 131 was the nearest 8th Air Force base to London, and the highest above sea level at 460 feet. The 398th Bomb Group would soon discover that the weather at Nuthampstead was often wetter and colder than that at the 91st Bomb Group’s field at Bassingbourn just 12 miles away. They quickly christened their new cold and damp home ‘Mudhampstead’

During the war nearly 500 airfields were constructed in formerly-pastoral East Anglia for both the 8th Air Force and the Royal Air Force. By D-Day there was an average of one airfield every eight miles. Back in September 1942, ten new airfields were allocated for construction by US Army Engineer Battalions. Nuthampstead was one of those ten. The airfield there was begun in late 1942, and was ready for operations by May 1943. It was constructed on farm land known as Scales Park, in the standard pattern of East Anglia airfields with two 4200 foot runways and a main runway that was 6000 feet long, running from northeast to southwest. There were also 54,000 feet of taxiing space and fifty hardstands. Two typical T-2 hangars were situated on the west side of the field near the control tower, technical shops, briefing rooms and offices. Living quarters and communal areas, mainly Nissen huts, were dispersed around the village of Nuthampstead and the Woodman Inn, and also on the west side of the field. Bomb and ammunition dumps were built in an adjoining wooded area on the east side of Scales Park.

The Nissen hut, first designed by Major Peter Nissen of the Royal Engineers in 1916, was made of prefabricated sheets of corrugated metal bolted together into a half-cylinder mounted on a concrete slab and heated by a single small coal stove with a few low-watt light bulbs for illumination. An American innovation on the Nissen hut during the war was constructed with wooden ribs and purlins, and was called the Quonset hut since it was first made at Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

Station 131 required nearly 200,000 square yards of concrete and many tons of other road and runway building material, much of which came from the rubble of bombed English towns and cities. The Nuthampstead base was never 100% completed as the 830th Engineering Battalion was suddenly transferred to another airfield to construct a permanent taxiway there. But to all intents and purposes Station 131 was ready by May 1943. It was initially the home of the 55th Fighter Group whose P-38 Lightings began arriving in September 1943. But by April 1944, the 55th FG had moved on to Wormingford, near Colchester, in Essex, to make room for the incoming 398th Bomb Group.

By 1945 the 8th Air Force had 40 bomb groups with over 2000 planes, B-17’s and B-24’s, organized into three Combat Wings. It also had 20 fighter groups of P-47 Thunderbolts, P-51 Mustangs, and P-38 Lightnings. Some of the bases in East Anglia were RAF structures, but most, like Station 131 at Nuthampstead, were newly-carved into farmland with runways close to minimum length, and with temporary buildings and tents for quarters. The quiet towns and villages of East Anglia were transformed almost overnight into the home of the largest air armada ever assembled, and soon, as Roger Freeman wrote, “The sky was never still.”  To learn about my father's journey to Nuthamstead, read here.

A Visit to Czech Republic

Allan Ostrom, Chuck Sassa, and Jaromir Kohout at Christensen crew memorial

As I mentioned in the first post in this series, I knew quite a bit about my father's early life, his marriage to my mother, a little bit about his stateside Air Force training, but had almost no information about his war time experience. Then in April 2005 we had a breakthrough that led us to the 398^th Bomb Group Memorial Association and to the monument to the Christensen crew near Slany in the Czech Republic. Allen Ostrom put me in touch with some Czech friends who urged us to come to a memorial service scheduled in Slany in June.

On that first trip to the Czech Republic in June 2005 I met Jaromir Kohout who handed me a booklet he had written with Jaromir Kveton entitled 398th Bomb Group a Česká Republika, first published in 2000.

In the early 1985, Jaromir and his brother Martin, then both in their 20’s, formed a group called SLET Pilsen, dedicated to finding and commemorating USAAF crash sites in their country. Jaromir wrote, “We do this so that people know of young boys who flew and were shot down over our country.” They were soon joined by several others with similar interests including co-author Jaromir Kveton and another friend, Jan Zdiarsky. Jan is the founder and director of the Museum of the Air Battle Over the Ore Mountains On September 11, 1944, at Kovarska, near the German border. Jan’s museum is dedicated to that single air battle, known as “Black Monday,” in which over 50 aircraft were shot down including large numbers B-17s from the 100th and 95th Bomb Groups, as well as over 50% of the German fighters sent against them. Jan is also involved in other WWII research projects and contributed some of the photography to Jaromir’s book.

Members of Christensen crew:  Top left Elmer Gurba, Radioman.  Top right Robert Dudley Flight Engineer, Ken Plantz Gunner, Elmer Gurba Radioman, Selmer Haakenson Tail Gunner,Sgt. Carlisle Gunner.

In The 398th Bomb Group and the Czech Republic Jaromir Kohout wrote about the history of the 398th Bomb Group and the airfield at Nuthampstead, some of the group’s early missions into Germany, and most of their missions over Czech territory, including the accidental bombing of Prague on Feb 14, 1945, and their final mission of the war against the Skoda production facility at Pilsen on April 25. A good portion of their work concerns the fate of Christensen crew after their damaged plane disappeared into the clouds on March 2, 1945. It contained information and photos I had never seen, and included several eyewitness accounts of the plane crash, and accounts of the burial of crew members and their recovery by the American Graves Registration Service after the war. Sixty years after that event my Czech friends simply handed me this valuable key to some of the information I had been seeking for decades. They have my undying gratitude.

Allan Ostrom and Jan Zdiarsky

Surviving Tail Gunner Selmer Haakenson with Jaromir's book.

This booklet is written in Czech of course, When I got home I showed it to a couple people from the Czech Republic to get some translation, but with little success.  Then my daughter-in-law Vanessa, who has a translation business -- mainly English to Spanish -- secretly took the booklet and paid an excellent Czech translator to do the job.  She never told us what it cost her but I value my English copy as much as the original.  Thank you, Vanessa!

The Search Continues: Czech Republic

I mentioned in the last post that while searching for information about my father's WWII service, in 2005 we stumbled onto valuable information through a Google search with links to the 398th Bomb Group and a Czech website showing photos of a memorial to my father and his crew near Slany, Czech Republic

On Easter morningI called 398th's Flak News editor Allen Ostrom in Seattle . I believe he was as surprised to hear from me as I had been to uncover the 398^th website. Allen sent me copies of his photos of the Slany memorial along with more articles pertaining to my father and his crew. He also put me in touch with both surviving crew members, tail gunner Selmer Haakenson and navigator Lawson Ridgeway, and with Jan Zdiarsky in the Czech Republic. Jan speaks and writes fluent English and, among other things, runs a WWII air museum near the German border and is one of the people, along with his friend Jaromir Kohout, most responsible for the Slany memorial. Jan informed me that there was a ceremony scheduled at our father’s memorial in June. At that point it seemed we had no choice but to go. We would worry about the cost later.

Five of us made the journey: I was joined by my wife Miriam, son Jeff, eldest grandson Jake Christensen, and Miriam’s son, Joah. Miriam, Jake and I flew from Colorado Springs, Jeff from Los Angeles, and Joah from Boston, all rendezvousing in Prague. With the help of a Czech friend we secured lodging in the Ziskov district far from any tourist hotels, giving us a good feel for the real everyday Prague. We spent two days visiting this marvelous old city, learning how to get around on the trams and Metro and how to order food.  

On June 16, the day before the official ceremony,  Jeff, Jake and I planned to have a quiet, personal visit to the Slany memorial. But we had underestimated the importance the Czechs place on these events and the gratitude they feel toward American servicemen of WWII, even though both Allen and Jan had warned us we would be “star attractions” and “the main event.” We were met on the outskirts of Slany by an escort—a fellow in an American GI corporal’s uniform driving a 1943 Willys jeep, flying a large American flag, looking as if he had just arrived with the Third Army. He led us into the town square where we were met by an official delegation which included the mayor, vice mayor, reporters, photographers, and others. Milan Spineta, another person responsible for the memorial and for organizing all the events around the ceremony that week, was also there.

We exchanged gifts, took photos, and received a tribute and heartfelt “thank you” to America from the mayor. Then we walked to the town museum where we were unexpectedly shown one of the scarred propeller blades from my father’s plane. Holding that scarred blade up for photographs was lump-in-the-throat experience.

We had lunch at a fine restaurant where the owner and the chef warmly greeted us on the sidewalk and posed for pictures with us. Then we rode to the airfield about a mile out of town to visit the memorial we’d only seen in photos. The three of us were silent for long moments as we took in the visual impact of the monument and studied the names engraved there of my father and his seven crew members. The monument is cast in the exact size and shape of a B-17 tail, painted with the triangle W of the 398th, and with the serial number 46573 of that downed plane. The names of the crew are engraved on bronze plaques. It is a most tasteful and impressive memorial, inspiring powerful emotions.

On the morning of June 17, we all boarded a chartered bus in Prague along with several Czech RAF vets and their friends and family bound for the memorial service at Slany, about 18 miles from Prague. We were met at the airfield by a crowd of 60 or 70 people along with dozens of photographers – Czech paparazzi. A military honor guard stood at attention beneath the twin flag poles flying the Czech and American flags. To see a short clip of the ceremony, see here.

As the ceremony began four of us placed bouquets of flowers on the monument beside the names of the fallen. Others involved were Lt. Colonel Bruce Goldstein of the American embassy, the vice-mayor of Slany, and a Czech air force general. We stood at attention while the national anthems of both countries were played. Simultaneously, eight pigeons representing the fallen airmen were released. I watched as they formed into a flock in the air and wheeled and banked together over the air field as a trumpeter played Taps. Nearly everyone was wiping tears from their eyes.

The four of us then addressed the gathering, me going last. Most of the remarks were in Czech, which I don’t speak or understand, but there was no mistaking their emotional impact on the assembly. Jan translated every few sentences of my remarks of honor and gratitude as more tears flowed. Jeff and Joah performed superbly in documenting the whole event in photos and video. When I introduced Miriam and the boys the crowd broke into hearty applause, especially for 15-year-old Jake.

Following the ceremony we moved to the airfield hangar where there was catered food, good Czech beer, and a fine 20 piece swing band.  I was asked to join an autograph session along with the Czech vets where dozens of people filed past asking us to sign books, photographs, pieces of paper. All the while a small army of photographers kept busy, recording every move. Miriam and the boys were also celebrities for a day as they signed autographs and posed for photos. None of us were used to this type of attention but tried to receive it in the same gracious manner as it was given.

For me, the most powerful moment of the day came from visiting and standing on the actual crash site of my father’s B-17. Jeff and I were talking with Jaromir Kohout, who heads a museum and memorial in Pilsen dedicated to two planes of the 398^th which went down there on the last day of bombing during WWII, April 25, 1945. We asked about the actual crash site and he pointed to spot a mile or more away near an electrical tower. Jeff proposed setting out on foot, saying we shouldn’t come this far and be this close without visiting that spot. Jaromir said we could get closer by car, so five of us piled in Jan’s little car and raced around through Slany to a dead-end country road. Jaromir led the way as we ran up a long wooded hill, across a clearing, up another hill to emerge into a barley field near the electrical tower we’d seen from the air field. (To read about the many years of searching that led up to this very moment, see here)

As we caught our breath and took photos of a the barley field, I was overtaken with strong sensations and feelings, and we all found ourselves whispering. On the way back to the airfield Jeff mentioned feeling the same sensations at that spot. It wasn’t until later, when I compared my photos to those taken by Germans soldiers at the crash scene in 1945, that I realized from the location of the electrical tower in all pictures we had been standing on or near the actual site! In 2010, Jeff, my brother Steve and I returned to Slany and the crash site and, with the help of Jaromir and his metal detector, discovered several pieces of the plane 65 years after the crash.

The thing that impressed me most on this visit was the depth of gratitude that many Czech people still feel toward veterans of WWII and how this carried over to me and my family. We were important to them, not because of who we are, but rather who and what we represented. For them the past is still the present. One young Czech lady said that she did not know anyone of her countrymen who had lost a family member during the war, “But you Americans came to fight for us and lost thousands, including your own father. How could we forget that?”

An American airman who recognized and appreciated the love and dedication of the Czech people was Melvin McGuire, a gunner with the Second Bomb Group of the 15th Air Force based in Italy. The 15th flew many bombing missions into Austria and central and eastern Czechoslovakia, mainly Moravia and Slovakia. On August 29, 1944, nearly the whole of McGuire’s 20th Bomb Squadron was wiped out over Moravia. Czech citizens retrieved and buried all but a few of the seventy men killed that day. In his book Bloody Skies, he writes:

“[Czechs] had nothing to fight with and no allies. France, with its huge army, was defeated in a very few weeks. The British had retreated to their island and were embattled there. Then word filtered to them that the Americans were bombing Germany in broad daylight. Perhaps there was hope. In late 1943 and early 1944, American bombers—B-17s and B-24s—appeared regularly over Czechoslovakia. With their own eyes they had seen German fighters burning and crashing to the ground. They observed those battles where the Americans lost and their B-17s and B-24s crashed to the ground.

“The Americans were the Czechs only hope and they cheered wildly, much to the displeasure of their Nazi captors, when American bombers formations passed overhead. Many times, at great personal risk, they retrieved the bodies of those American airmen that the Germans had buried in shallow, unmarked graves. They built coffins for these adopted sons, often draped with home-made American flags, and buried them in honored positions in their cemeteries, with appropriate religious ceremonies and erected monuments to them.”

At the time I thought that this first visit to the Czech Republic was a culmination of my search for my father.  But I know now that it was only another beginning.