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 Second Mission

From the time of their arrival at Nuthampstead on February 1, 1945, Don Christensen and his crew took their final training seriously, practicing takeoffs and landings, formation flying, bombing runs, etc., all the while wondering about and anticipating their first actual combat mission. Their morale was high and they were eager to get going but each man was often alone with his own thoughts, wondering what the real thing would be like and how he would perform when the time came.

Their first chance had come on February 15, and they had performed well in spite of near zero visibility on both take off and landing. It was a long 8 1/2 hour mission far into eastern Germany to bomb synthetic oil facilities at Bohlen. They had encountered heavy flak but only suffered some holes in the wings. Read about that first mission here. http://carryingfire.blogspot.com/2015/02/don-christensens-first-mission.html

They flew their second mission the very next day February 16, 75 years ago. Their mission that day, was a relatively short 6-1/2 hour flight to attack the benzoil plant and marshalling yards at Langendreer, in western Germany. Once again the weather and visibility were poor at both take off and landing. A normal 398th mission consisted of three squadrons of 12 planes each, but with many planes still away from base after the Prague mission, the Group was only able to put up one full and two short-handed squadrons. Don Christensen flew in the lead 603rd squadron of nine planes. The “high” 600th also had only nine aircraft while the “low” 602nd managed to launch a full twelve planes.

There was a 10/10 undercast again that day, and as the group approached the primary target of Langendreer, the GEE-H (British radar) system burned out, so 603rd command pilot called the high squadron to take over but their GEE-H burned out too. The commander then decided to bomb the secondary target, the railroad marshalling yards at Munster, Germany. The results again went unobserved due to the undercast. 





Anticipation of any bombing mission-- was nerve-wracking. One crewman remembers, “On a night before a mission you reviewed the facts. You tried to get some sleep. The army is very good at keeping you awake forever before you have a long mission. Sleep wouldn’t come to you. You get to thinking by this time tomorrow you may have burned to death.” [Terkel p.200] Besides nervousness and anxiety, the incessant all night noise on an East Anglian airbase made it difficult to sleep. Navigator Jon Schueler explains, “All night long the bombs were being loaded and the ground crew was working on the planes. We could hear the engines being revved up.” [Astor p.93]

By 1945 most bombing missions were deep into Germany; flights of eight to ten hours. Crews were usually awakened at 2:00 or 3:00 am and given one hour to shower, shave, and eat – if they could – before the briefing for that day’s mission. Captain John Regan of the 306th Bomb Group talks about those mornings. “I wish it were possible to accurately describe the tension, the emotion that was evident in our thirty-five man crew huts on those mornings when we were awakened for combat missions. One would have to be present to feel the electricity that filled the air. Some men shouted to relieve the tension, other laughed out loud when nothing was really funny and others were silent with their thoughts, probably fixed on coming events or on loved ones.” [Astor p.98]

Occasionally a mission was a “Milk Run,” like this one, a straight out and back delivery of bombs with little enemy opposition. But on most missions crews had to deal with enemy fighters or flak or both.

Co-pilot Robert Weidig wrote in his diary, “Twenty-first mission, Munster, 6-1/2 hours. Very little flak, no fighters, very bad weather at base. Flew with new pilot today. Not bad at all.” On their return the field at Nuthampstead was socked in again and eleven aircraft had to land at nearby Bassingborn. Weather cancelled any missions for the next two days. On February 17, a small force was dispatched but quickly recalled due to deteriorating weather conditions. The February 18th mission was scrubbed at briefing for the same reason.

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 .

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.

Getting There

After completing their B-17 training in Sioux City and spending ten day’s leave with friends and family, Don Christensen and the other newly-trained pilots and crews assembled back at Lincoln on December 27. Some were assigned to fly new B-17G’s to England, while most were to sail by troop ship. The Christensen, Coffee, and Colville crews were all sorely disappointed to be in the latter group.

In early January they rode by rail to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, an assembly point of embarkation for Europe for all branches of service. They waited there several weeks for their shipping-out orders, wondering what their destination would be. It snowed heavily the day they arrived and while standing at-ease waiting on orders of the day they began a snowball fight between officers and enlisted men, much to the displeasure of a regular Army Colonel who did not appreciate such association between ranks. To the young bomber crews this was normal fun and they often considered regular army officers a bunch of stuffed suits.

One evening Don and his officers went into New York City on a pass to visit the famous Jack Dempsey’s night club. His friend Marvin Coffee cryptically recalls that evening: “Don Christensen’s officers joined with us. We went into a club which was reported to have a good show. Seated at another table was a young man who bought us a round of drinks. The waitress advised us that he was a wealthy heir to the Garwood Boat Company. We raised our glassed and this was when we discovered there was more that this young man had in store for us. At this period of our culture, and needing to be more macho, we were quite unfamiliar and threatened by men who were called ‘queens.’ We lost our desire to finish our drinks or to see the show; we got out of there.”

On January 20, Don wrote to his mother and sister about that evening, “I got a chance to get into N.Y. last night but was highly disappointed as the old city has lost much of its peacetime glamour. Times Square is practically dark and since I don’t drink I couldn’t find much to do and lost a full night’s sleep to boot as we didn’t get back to base ‘til 6 AM. As you can see by now another leave is out of the question. We are on our way. Just where is hard to imagine. The campaign in Europe has certainly taken on a bright aspect during the past couple of days. It doesn’t look as if the Russians will be stopped this time. Whatever happens I don’t believe it will affect our sailing however.”

Within a few days they boarded the S.S. Aquitania, now a converted troop ship and sister ship of the ill-fated Lusitania, along with 3000 other troops. They still did not know where they were going or what their assignment would be. Don and the other officers were quartered in staterooms for two that were so small both men could not move around at the same time. However, as Coffee remarks, “This was luxury compared to the quarters of our enlisted crew members. They were located in the hold of the ship below the waterline near the keel so they could hear water moving around in the hull beneath their location. It was dark and dingy with a terrible musty odor. They had to sleep in canvas bunks that I am sure were less than 20” apart from top to bottom.” With such cramped conditions most men spent much of their time on deck wearing the required life vests.

Distinctions between ranks also extended to their food service. Enlisted men got two meals a day and stood in line for hours for them. By contrast, officers had specific seating times for three meals, sat two to a table, and were waited on by British personnel. Coffee continues: “There were tablecloths, china, and sterling silver flatware on every table. There was a waiter who would wait on two tables or four persons. If I placed my soiled fork down on the plate or cloth, the waiter would immediately replace it with a clean one. The food was excellent.” However, this discrimination between their treatment and that of their enlisted men did not sit well with many AAF officers, and they often took fresh fruit and packaged items from the officer’s mess to share with their enlisted crew members.

In a letter to Jocile who was three months pregnant, Don wrote, “Somewhere in the Atlantic, Nearing Destination, No Date Allowed. I don’t suppose it would do any harm to mention that we are on one of the largest and formerly one of the most luxurious of the old peacetime liners. It is still large and fast but one could hardy say it is luxurious in its present condition. Nearly every foot of usable space has been converted to accommodations for troops and we are packed in like so many proverbial sardines.” Then, facing the reality of war, he continues, “Darling, every roll of the ship and every vibration of the engines makes me realize that I am getting farther and farther from my beloved little family. It’s almost more than I can bear to think of it. We’ve been separated before, but this time it seems so final and the future so uncertain that it’s more like a bad dream, and I keep thinking I’ll surely wake up soon…My love for you has grown more intense with every mile that separates us. At any rate nothing can mar the memory of our last 6 months together and the little bit of borrowed heaven we had. I love you more than life itself and when this is all over I’ll be glad I was able to be a part of it. All my love, Daddy Don”

During their eight-day voyage across the Atlantic they encountered a tremendous storm and an unidentified submarine. Marvin Coffee remembers, “The biggest waves seemed much higher than our ship as we would be in the bottom of the swell looking up to the top of the water. During the storm the ship would porpoise on the mountainous waves and the ship’s screw would come out of the water…the screw would rev up in the air and cause a severe vibration which was felt throughout the ship…The ship’s crew members said it was the worst storm they had ever encountered.” Another day, a submarine was sighted which was not identified and did not respond to communication so all troops were ordered topside in life vests. “Things were tense and I did not feel safe from that moment until I was back on land. You understand how helpless you are in the middle of the ocean…We were also sailing without an escort, giving one a deep sense of vulnerability. Perhaps this same feeling of uncertainty and vulnerability will be repeated over the skies of Europe.”

They disembarked at Glasgow, Scotland, where they were put up in temporary quarters while being sorted out by assignments. There they saw other servicemen, fresh from battle, being rotated back to the states on the same ship. Don noticed that these men were in good spirits at going home but looked older than their years. Soon the new crews were put aboard trains, still not knowing their destination. “The English trains were our first experience in coping with a lack of knowledge on how things worked in this country”, Coffee wrote. “The train had compartments which opened to the platforms with no way to walk a corridor . . . unlike those to which we were accustomed in the states. The train stopped in one city and we all got off to see whatever there was to see. There was no one to announce “all aboard” as we know it and the train just started moving. About half of our group was left behind: this did not meet with much favor when we reached our point to disembark which turned out to be Royston. Trucks had to be sent to pick up those left behind.”

At Royston they learned that their new assignment was with the 398th Bomb Group at Station 131, in nearby Nuthampstead. Arriving there on February 1, the four replacement crews were led by Lieutenants Don Christensen, Marvin Coffee, Richard Ellis, and Paul Coville. Marvin Coffee would be the only one of the four to survive the war unscathed.

The Search

My father lost his life in combat on March 2, 1945, when his B-17 was shot down by enemy fighters over Czechoslovakia. He was 27 years old; a member of the 398^th Bomb Group, 603^rd Squadron. It was only his fifth mission. It was also his wife Jocile's 24^th birthday and she was pregnant with their second child, my brother Steve, who would be born three months after my father's death. I was 2 ½ -years-old and my father was the biggest thing in my life. Growing up in his physical absence, and among other members of “the greatest generation,” I understand what Tom Mathews calls “the tidal pull of WWII,” especially for those of us who were born were born in its turbulence and grew up in the shadow of its heroes, living or dead.

I wrote something about my dad's childhood, which can be read here. My dad joined the Army Air Corps in June 1943, and graduated in Class 44-F at Pecos, Texas a year later. For the next seven months my mother and I joined him, living on bases at Roswell, New Mexico, Sioux City, Iowa, and Lincoln, Nebraska. I last saw him as he shipped out in January 1945, two months before his final mission. Since then I have only seen him in dreams and memories, but his effect on me has been inexorable.

I inherited a box of photos, letters, photos, documents, mementos, and a couple of medals.  I learned a good bit about his early life and his Air Force training in the states but only a sketchy story of his service and death. I knew he flew out of England, his plane had crashed in Czechoslovakia, and the tail gunner was the only survivor. His papers and documents revealed few clues about his service. War Department correspondence from 1945-46, indicated that he had flown from a base at Nuthampstead, England, and that the target that March 2 was Bohlen, Germany. There was a 1945 letter to my mother from tail gunner “Sam” Haakenson, written soon after his release from a POW camp, and another from someone named “Ridge.” (I now know that was Lawson Ridgeway, my father’s navigator who was on another plane that day.) Both expressed hope that my father and his crew would be found alive. For sixty years that was as much detail as I had.

I wrote to the Air Force, the Pentagon, and the National Archives seeking his military records and other information—to no avail. They told that a 1972 fire in St. Louis had destroyed many WWII records including his. I insisted that there must be a MACR (Missing Aircrew Report) somewhere, or at least a record of which unit he served with, but no one seemed interested in looking any further. I had hit a dead end.

Then in March, 2005, with the family gathered following our mother’s funeral, Steve and my son Jeff suggested we try a Google search on his computer. Starting simply with “B17 Bomb Groups,” we found a list of English air bases indicating that Nuthampstead was home to the 398^th Bomb Group. This linked us to the 398^th website and to their Flak News, with articles about the surviving tail gunner, Selmer Haakensen. We were stunned to learn there was a memorial to our father and his crew at Slany, Czech Republic; a website for the Slany Aeroklub had photos of the memorial! After 60 years, with a few keystrokes, the stone was rolling away!

Tribute to My Father

Lt. Donald R. Christensen

This is a tribute to my father's life and his war.  His name was Lt. Donald R. Christensen and he was a B-17 pilot with the 8th Air Force in England during World War II.  He was stationed with the 398th Bomb Group at Nuthampstead. England, and was a member of the 603rd Squadron.  He and all but one of his crew men were killed on March 2, 1945, when the tail was shot off of his aircraft by enemy fighters the plane crashed near Slany, Czechoslovkia  (today's Czech Republic.)  Tail gunner Selmer Haakenson was the sole survivor. I was two and a half years old.

I have been haunted by the loss of my father all my life, and after 70 years I still grieve.  For the last 25 years or more  I have been sporadically combing through old papers and photographs, military records, books relating to the 8th Air Force, and talking with many veterans of the 398th BG. I have been wanting to tell his story for a long time, and the 70th anniversary of his death seems like an appropriate time to get off my duff and  honor his memory in words and pictures.

The title "Carrying Fire" is taken from Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, in which Sheriff  Ed Tom Bell talks about his own father. “I had two dreams about him after he died. I don’t remember the first one all that well. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothing. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen that he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.”