Bomber Mission Mornings

This is rather a long post but it's something I've been working on and wanted to get it written down and see how it looks in print.

Because I know so little about my father's personal experience in the WWII -- no diary or photos have survived -- I have had to rely on my research and the writings and experiences of others to help tell this tale of what a typical bomber mission morning was like.

Anticipation of any bombing mission was nerve-wracking.  One airman 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.” [Studs Terkel, The Good War, p.200] 

Besides nervousness and anxiety, the incessant all-night noise on an East Anglian airfield made it difficult to sleep. Navigator Jon Schueler noted, “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.” [Gerald Astor, The Mighty Eighth, p.93]

By 1945 most bombing missions went deep into Germany; flights of eight to ten hours, so crews were usually awakened at 2:00 or 3:00 am and given one hour to shower, shave, and eat before the briefing for that day’s mission. Flyers cursed and stumbled their way to the common latrine hut for morning ablutions. Shaving was particularly important so the oxygen mask could seal on their faces. Then they returned to their huts to dress and walk across the field with flashlights to either the officer’s or enlisted men’s mess hall.

Out on the hardstands the ground crews had been working most of the night making sure that the planes were ready; testing engines, brakes, tires, flaps, and oxygen, hydraulic and electrical systems. Ordinance men were been busy hauling bombs to the planes, inserting fuses and attaching cotter pins to prevent detonation until the plane was in the air and the bombardier was ready to arm the bombs. Armorers were loading boxes of .50 caliber shells and placing them at each gunner’s position. The ground crew had to manually rotate propeller blades to be sure oil was circulated to each engine before starting.

Ground Crew Chiefs

After breakfast Don's crew and the other airmen headed for morning briefing where they gathered nervously as the Commander or the Group Briefing Officer uncovered a large map of Europe marked with lines showing the target and the route in and back out. Milk runs were greeted with whistles and shouts, tough missions with groans. They were told their target, time of takeoff, their place in formation, time and place of rendezvous with other groups, and the Initial Point (IP) for the start of the bomb run. 

Bombing Mission Map

They also learned of the expected fighter resistance, and anticipated location and number of flak guns, particularly from the IP to the target since that was when they were most vulnerable. The weather officer described the clouds and wind they were likely to encounter. The operations officer explained the nature and importance of the target, then everyone “hacked,” or synchronized their watches and separated into additional briefings for pilots and copilots, navigators, bombardiers, and radio operators. 

Morning Briefing

Pilots like Don received their individual plane assignment by number and location within the squadron, the group, and the wing. Navigators received their maps, charts, possibly some additional information on radio codes, etc. Many of these instructions were printed on rice paper so that crewmen could swallow them if they had to bail out and were in danger of capture. Gunners headed for the planes about an hour before takeoff to mount and secure their guns and to wipe down the heavy oil in which they were stored.

When Don and the other flying officers and the radio operator arrived from their briefings,  Copilot William Love handed out emergency and escape kits to the crew and Don did a final visual inspection of the plane with the ground crew chief. The escape kit included silk maps of Europe, local European money, and a personal picture of each airman in civilian clothing in case they had to bail out and try to elude the enemy

At the plane, both flying and ground crews were busy with last minute tasks. Bomb loading might still be going on, guns being loaded with ammunition belts, and engines checked one more time. Microphones, instruments, and oxygen equipment were verified. Navigator and radio operator confirmed radio code and details of the route to Group assembly with the pilot. Flak helmets and jackets were distributed to everyone and all parachutes accounted for. Every man on a B-17 was cramped and loaded down with flight gear.

Then came what Philip Ardery calls, “the usual sickening hour before takeoff. The hour of getting into heavy, smelly clothes; fitting oxygen masks; checking the ships; checking the bomb loading, fusing, gas loading, oxygen, guns, ammunition; and the million other things.” [Ardery, Bomber Pilot, p. 169]

As other ground preparations continued, Navigator Jon Schueler remembers, “As long as the momentum of activity was going, everything would be OK. We would start the engines revving and I would lay out my charts and have everything ready, oxygen mask, parachute…We could feel the plane being readied, we could feel the vibrations of the readiness of men moving back and forth at their dials, controls and guns. Everything was OK. We were a team and we knew each other and loved each other. The men were truly noble. The planes themselves were noble.” [Astor, p. 93-94] Once in position they could not move around much, yet had to remain on full alert for up to ten hours and at temperatures that could be 40 or 50 below zero.

When all tasks were completed and each person was at his flying station--except for the gunners who usually waited in the radio room during take-off-- Don called out his window “All clear on the left” and started the engines beginning with number one on the outside left. When all engines were warmed up a ground crewman signaled him forward.

Then it was time to taxi into takeoff position in what some have dubbed the “elephant parade.” Pilot Earl Pate describes those moments. “It was always eerie quiet just before engine start with everyone in position and waiting. Then one or two engines started; then the whole roar of all 144 engines of thirty-six aircraft soon to depart. You watched the tower for the flare (green) signal to taxi. Red flare shut down and wait—white—mission scrubbed.”

Elephant Parade

Jon Schueler adds, “The B-17s would slowly move, brakes screeching…One after another, lumbering out on to the track, then all of them, single file on each side of the field, two files moving, lumbering slowly toward the takeoff point at the end of the runway. All of them, engines growling and propellers twirling. The nose of the B-17 in the air, the body sloping down to the rear tail wheel, already in an attitude of urgency, of wanting to rise into the gray morning sky.” [Astor, p. 398]

On a radio signal and green signal flare from the tower Don and the other pilots taxied into their position and lifted off, one right behind the other at thirty second or one minute intervals. As they gained speed down the runway, Flight Engineer Robert Dudley stood behind and between Don and Copilot William Love calling off ground speed until they reached ninety miles an hour or more so that Don would know when to make his final lift-off. At that point they frequently hit a blast of prop wash turbulence from the previous plane and had to deal with a little wing wiggling and dipping.

Once airborne they 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. Each Group had to reach their rendezvous point within plus or minus one minute to take their designated position in the long stream of bomber groups.

398th gunner Geronimo Terres Jr. remembers, “Every step was timed. Start engines at 6:05AM; taxi at 6:15AM; start takeoffs at 6:30AM. Get all the planes in the air; get the twelve planes of the squadron in formation; form the group (one squadron in the lead, one low and the other high); finally, insert the group in its proper place in the order of attack. How they did it I do not know. Imagine, anywhere from 500 to 1000 bombers flying around the skies of southern England, going through and around clouds looking for each other, and in the end finding the right squadron, the right group and finally the right place in line.” [398th.org]



After  joining the other groups near the English coast, the formations headed east across the English Channel or North Sea. Once past the coast, the Don, like all pilots, checked in with everyone over the intercom, the tail and ball turret gunners got into their positions, all guns were test fired, oxygen systems tested, and the bombardier armed the bombs.

Early in the war, when Germany had airfields in France, American bombers were usually contested soon after crossing the continental coast. But by 1945, Mustangs, Thunderbolts, and Spitfires had gained superiority over the Luftwaffe in the skies, and enemy defenses had been pushed back into Germany, so bomber crews endured long hours of boredom in cramped positions in the freezing cold before reaching the target, and at the same time staying alert and scanning the skies for enemy fighters and hoping they didn't encounter flak.

Flak was every airman’s nightmare; something you couldn't fight back against. German 88mm cannons sent up large charges that exploded into pieces of ugly, jagged shrapnel in front of or among bomber formations, and in most cases flak was heaviest over the target area where the planes were in tight formations and could not take evasive measures. Once reaching the IP, about twenty miles from the target, the formation had to fly straight and level with bomb bay doors open, taking no evasive action. This was cold sweat time, with high pucker factor. 

Flak  Bursts

Navigator Arthur Prager describes those moments. “From the I.P. to target, about thirty miles at 126-130 miles per hour, was the worst part of the mission, because there was no possibility of a change of route or evasive action. For important targets, the Germans had figured out long before the bomb run where we were going and brought in extra flak on trucks and railway flatcars. They laid a huge carpet of exploding shells at our altitude, over the target, hoping for random kills rather than aiming at the planes…The worst was when we didn’t complete the drop because of some bombsight or bomb-release malfunction. We then had to make a 360-degree turn and do the whole bomb run a second time…That gave the German gunners ample time to correct the sighting or altitude errors made during the first run." [Astor, p. 384] It also gave German fighter pilots additional time to scramble and intercept the slow moving bombers. 

Many fighter pilots tipped their hats to the bravery of the bomber crews. Punchy Powell was one of them. “I have great admiration for the bombers and their crews. It’s hard to imagine the balls those guys had sitting in those B-17s and B-24s, tooling along at 150 mph on a straight-in bomb run—no variations allowed—as the flak pounded the hell out of them, and if they survived that, taking the beating they did from German fighters on the way in and out, particularly those that were battle damaged.” 

Tommy Hayes mused, “I wonder how I would have stood up in 1944. From the I.P. to the bomb release, straight and level without wavering and flak going off all around, seeing your buddies hit.” Joe Bennett adds, “Fighter pilots got a lot of attention. But my hat is off to the bomber crews. It takes grit and guts to crawl in a bomber day after day after you saw the hits they took.” [Astor 494-501]

B-17s were famous for absorbing tremendous punishment and still flying. Thousands of them returned to bases in England or on the continent with two or three engines out, hydraulic, mechanical, or oxygen systems shot, with wounded and dead crewmen aboard. On Don's third mission he had landed his flak damaged plane safely in Belgium with only one functioning engine.

But for all of their resilience and the bravery of their crews, B-17s and B-24s went down in large numbers, each taking nine or ten airmen with them. Besides encounters with the enemy, there were any numbers of other ways to die in a bomber. There were crashes on takeoff and landing, midair collisions, friendly fire accidents, bombs dropped from a squadron above on one below, and mechanical or electrical failure. During the war the Eighth Air Force lost 6,357 B-17s and B-24s, and 3,337 fighters. But the more important losses were the 26,000 men killed and 21,000 captured who became prisoners of war.

By far, the most dangerous job among American servicemen in World War II was that of airman in the Eighth Air Force. From a total of 350,000 who served, 26,000, or 7.42% were killed. More Eighth airmen lost their lives than the entire Marine Corps, who had an additional 250,000 men, and whose loss amounted to 3.29 percent. By further comparison, U.S. Army losses were 2.25%, and the U.S. Navy lost 0.41%.

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.

The Christensen Crew

David Walker Painting

A bomber crew was as close as or closer than any other unit in the service. They trained and fought together and worked as a team. Rank was not very important aboard the plane, but the pilot was the acknowledged leader, the captain. How he acted and reacted under pressure set the tone for the whole crew. But every man had a job to perform and they all relied on each other for the success of their mission and for their lives. A good pilot recognized the role of each crew member and trusted them to do their part. He did not tell the navigator how to navigate, or the gunners how to shoot, or the radio man how to operate his equipment. And he relied on his copilot and flight engineer to help him fly this aircraft.

The Boeing B-17G was a large and impressive plane. She was 74’ 4” long, had a wingspan of nearly 104 feet, and stood 19 feet tall with an empty weight of 36135 lbs and with a maximum load rate could carry 65500 lbs. Her power came from four Wright Cyclone supercharged engines of 1200 horsepower each which could produce a top speed of 302 mph, and a cruising speed of 160. With thirteen .50 caliber machine guns and a full bomb load of 6000 lbs. she was indeed a formidable weapon.

Wright Cyclone Engine

But as large as the B-17 was on the outside, she was quite narrow on the inside with most available space occupied by 

flight equipment and armaments. Once the crew was aboard and in position with full flight gear including coats, gloves, boots, electrically heated flight suits, parachutes, and life and flak jackets, everyone was cramped, and could scarcely move. This was mainly a bomb delivery system in which human comfort was of little consideration.

Four officers occupied the cockpit and nose of the plane. Pilot and copilot sat side by side in the cockpit which was just large enough for their seats and a dizzying array of dials, switches, gauges and flight controls. The navigator and bombardier were situated below and forward in the clear plexiglass nose with just enough room for them and their equipment and four machine guns. These four officers were responsible for getting bombs to the target. Five or six sergeants occupied the fuselage, performing various duties, including manning .50 caliber machine guns against enemy attack. They were the flight engineer/ top turret gunner, waist gunner, radio operator/gunner, ball turret gunner, and tail gunner.

B-17 Cockpit

At age 27, Lt. Don Christensen was among the older B-17 pilots, and was five or six years older than most of his crew members. Both his age and experience commanded respect from his crew and they felt fortunate to be on his plane. As one who had already been to Europe, had encountered Nazis in Denmark, was married and a father and had been a big city policeman, he had more experience than his young crewmen could imagine. He was the Old Man, Boss, the Skipper of his crew, and their moral and emotional compass. His job was to start-up, take off, fly and land this large, complex airplane with a cockpit full of 146 switches, gauges, indicators and warning lights. There was a checklist card wherein the copilot called off checkpoints while the pilot had to reply that the item was in order. This included fifty-seven checks before takeoff, during flight, and after landing. There were thirty-eight checks for end of mission. In tight formations and hazardous conditions he had to know what to do and how to react when things went wrong. His calm, steady demeanor reverberated throughout the plane. Piloting a B-17 with a nine man crew seemed to be a glamorous thing from afar, but the conditions and rigors and dangers they would face over the skies of Europe were far from glamorous.

In flight a pilot had all he could handle keeping four engines synchronized with proper oil pressure, temperature, and RPMs, especially when trying to keep the big bomber in tight formations. And it got much more intense when flying through flak or under assault by enemy fighters. Still, Don, like most pilots, praised the B-17 as very predictable with no undesirable flight characteristics. And he was fond of his crew and relied on them.

His copilot was Lt. William H. Love from Sacramento, California. As “the guy in the right seat” he was Don’s essential partner. Some controls were on the right side and could only be operated by him; the oxygen regulator, hand pump if hydraulics failed, engine control start, and levers for temperature adjustment of supercharged air. Part of his job was to monitor and adjust power systems and, once in the air, to retract the landing gear while touching the brakes to stop the wheels from spinning. In addition, the rigors of flying close formations for nine or ten hours put great physical and mental strain on a single pilot and at times it took both pilots to keep the plane under control. Often, when flying close formation on the left wing of another plane, the copilot did much of the flying. Whoever had the controls, the other one monitored instruments, gauges, intercom, and oxygen system. In a landing pattern the copilot lowered and checked landing gear and lowered the flaps half way when under 145 mph, then fueled down on final approach. He would cut off the inboard engines for taxiing and check all switches and locks before leaving the plane.

Some of the Christensen Crew.
Top Left: Radio Operator Elmer Gurba.
Top Right Front: Selmer Haakenson and Albert Carlisle.
Back Row Robert Dudley, Kenneth Plantz, Elmer Gurba.
Bottom: Co-Pilot William Love and Bombardier John Gustafson 

Don’s navigator was nineteen-year-old Lt. Lawson Ridgeway from Dallas, Texas. He had a highly exacting job that required a quick mind and the ability to make complex math calculations. Navigators were often chosen from those who scored highest on preflight tests. Navigation was basically determining the position of the airplane in relation to the earth and plotting a course from there. In training, Lawson, like all navigators, spent many hours learning codes, maps and charts, mathematics, aircraft recognition and more. He also received gunnery training, and when under attack they manned the cheek guns on either side of the plane’s nose.. In the twenty weeks of navigator school he spent over 100 airborne hours learning dead reckoning (determining heading and speed from last know position), wind drift, airspeed calculations and nighttime navigation. He spent another 780 hours in ground school learning radio and other instruments, celestial navigation, meteorology, codes, and pilotage navigation (comparing ground features to maps). In the plane he had a gyro compass that operated off of earth’s magnetic field, a radio compass that received signals from beacons which gave a relative bearing, and a Gee box receiving signals from two fixed beams to give present position.

Nose Compartment For Navigator And Bombardier

Don’s bombardier was 2nd Lt. John “Swede” Gustafson from Aledo, Illinois, a small town near the Mississippi River, south of Rock Island and northwest of Galesburg, the home town of American poet Carl Sandburg. John was twenty-four years old and the only other crew member besides Don who was married. His wife’s name was Lela.

As bombardier he had the best view on the plane from a fixed seat just behind the bombsight in the front of the clear plexiglass nose. It was also a vulnerable position especially when flying through flak or facing head-on fighter attacks. Bombardier school was a twenty-week course with an additional six weeks of gunnery training. Much of his training was learning to use the Norden bomb sight which was an intricate system of gyroscopes and computers which factored altitude, air speed, ground speed, and trail and drift to locate a fixed spot on the run where bombs were to be released. The optical part was a small telescope with two crosses, one for drift left or right and another for rate of closure. When the crosses met it was “Bombs away!” He had a lever to open the bomb bay doors and a control panel with switches for a predetermined order and interval of bomb release. He could either drop one or two from the load, or a “stick” (a train), or a salvo where they were all released at once. The 8th AF eventually came to rely on the bombardier in the lead plane to find the targets while the others dropped, or “toggled” off of his signal. 

Bomb Bay Catwalk

Once in the air, and usually over the sea, the bombardier armed the bombs by standing on a narrow 8” catwalk through the center of the bomb bay and pulling cotter pins from propellers on the front of the bombs and inserting a wire attached to the plane. When bombs dropped they slid off the wire allowing the propellers to turn, thus arming the bombs to explode on contact or on a timed fuse. Occasionally the bombardier had to try to remove a hung-up bomb while standing on the narrow catwalk above the open bomb bay doors 25,000 feet above the earth and with a “walk-around” oxygen bottle for air. On B-17G’s, like the Christensen plane, he also manned the twin .50 caliber machine guns in the chin turret using controls resembling bicycle handlebars.

Young Sgt. Robert. W. Dudley from Toledo, Ohio was the Flight Engineer/Top Turret Gunner. His position was directly behind the pilots in the cockpit. He had to have a good working knowledge of all mechanisms, equipment, and functions of the plane. He was also trained in armaments, bomb racks, oxygen equipment, and radio transmitters and receivers. But often his main responsibility was to man the twin .50 caliber machine guns in the top turret. After basic, his training included six weeks of gunnery school and then a 20 week course in the operation and maintenance of aircraft armaments. Then there was a six week course in turret operation and maintenance, ballistics, gun repair, and air, land, and sea recognition. In flight he would try to deal with mechanical and electrical problems on the spot, but often it was left to ground crews back at base to complete the process.

Sperry Top Turret

His Sperry top turret was a self-contained unit of hydraulics and electric motors that turned in azimuth and elevation by hand controls. It had two hand grips; the left operated the trigger, while the right operated the range finder and gun sight. He would pull the handles to elevate the guns and push the handles to drop them, then pressure left or right to rotate the unit. The guns had stops to prevent a turret gunner from shooting the plane’s tail. From his bubble on top of the plane he had a good view of any approaching enemy aircraft and could warn the ball-turret gunner when a plane was coming in. At take-off, or when not occupying the top turret, he stood behind the pilots monitoring gauges and calling off air speed. One of the most difficult jobs for a flight engineer was to manually crank the electrically-operated mechanisms such as bomb bay doors, flaps, or landing gear when electric motors failed or jammed. Before long Dudley would be forced to use those hand cranks in combat conditions.

The radio operator was Sgt. Elmer G. Gurba from Cleveland, Ohio. In the air he was relatively isolated from the rest of the crew in the radio room which was in the center of the plane between two bulkheads with the bomb bay to the front and the waist to the rear, and with only small windows to see fore and aft. During flight he wore a headset listening for messages and other communications that might change flight path, scrub a mission, and to relay radio fixes to aid the navigator.

Radio Equipment

For equipment he had a Command Radio for short range communication with nearby aircraft or ground stations, a Liason Radio for long range voice and Morse code communication, and a VHF Command Radio for verbal communication with other bombers and fighters. In flight he often changed radio frequencies to confuse the enemy. He also used a Radio Compass for locating “Buncher” signals used in take-off assembly and in overcast conditions. At times when the navigator was lost or injured it was the radio operator who found the way back to base. He was trained as a gunner, but near the end of the war the radio room gun was phased out. He was also the main first-aid man on the crew. One of his other duties was to check the bomb bay after bombs were released to make sure none were hung up, and to notify the bombardier. At times he also dumped thin aluminum strips called “Window” or “Chaff” from the plane to confuse German radar.

Waist gunner Sgt. Kenneth J. Plantz was from Minneapolis, Minnesota. His was a dangerous job with less protection and more casualties than any other position on a B-17. He had armor plating below the waist window but no higher, so his only protection from his standing position was his helmet and flak suit. His equipment was a swivel-mounted .50 caliber machine gun with belt feeds of 600 rounds each. Earlier in the war each B-17 had two waist gunners, but by late 1944, as German fighters became less of a threat, it was left to a single gunner to man both left and right weapons. He also helped the ball turret gunner enter and exit his position under the fuselage.

Waist Gun

Most ball turret gunners were smaller men because of the cramped conditions there. But Sgt. Albert S. Carlisle was 5’ 10” and 145 lbs; young, thin, and agile. He was from White River Junction, Vermont, where the White River meets the Connecticut River, across from Lebanon, New Hampshire. Don Christensen’s original ball gunner, at least in Sioux City, was Hank Rome from Texas. It is not clear when Carlisle replaced him, but Albert was with the crew on all combat missions.

Ball Turret

Many considered the ball turret as the worst position; isolated, claustrophobic, and without room for a parachute. But statistically it was one of the safest positions and many gunners preferred it. Sgt. Cecil Scott from the Memphis Belle considered it “the best position on the airplane. You see a lot of action in that position, you know what’s going on and you are always busy. If the plane catches fire you know it first because you can see all four engines, and you can get out as quickly as anybody else. It isn’t too uncomfortable.” [Martin Bowman, B-17 Combat Missions, p. 114]

The ball turret was armed after takeoff with 250 rounds for each of the two guns. To enter the turret the gunner hand-cranked it until the guns pointed straight down and the door was up inside the plane. Then the he got in and hooked up his throat mike, earphones, and oxygen mask. He sat hunched against the armored door with his feet spread wide on each side of a 13” window. His face was about 30” from an optical gun sight suspended between his legs. The two-part handles above his head operated a self-contained electro-hydraulic system to rotate the turret. Firing buttons for the guns were in the end of each handle. There was a chute for shoving out spent cartridges and the guns were automatically stayed from firing through the engines and props. His hunched position -- basically lying on his back -- was not too uncomfortable, but once in position he couldn’t stretch.

Sgt. Selmer “Sam” Haakenson from Fargo, North Dakota was the “Norwegian tail gunner.” As tail gunner, he had the most important defensive position on the plane since that is where most fighter attacks came from. He also had a wide view through plexiglass windows and could keep the pilot informed on the formation behind or of any approaching danger from that direction. During take-off he and the waist gunner and ball turret gunner rode in the radio room which was the safest place and the plane’s center of gravity. To get to the tail guns he had to take his parachute and climb around the tail wheel and through a tunnel-like entrance to his “office” which was a low padded seat that he perched on with his legs doubled back under him and his knees on padded supports. There he manned two .50 caliber machine guns with 250 rounds each. His escape hatch was a small door under the stabilizer. The tail was the coldest part of the plane and it could buck and bounce, but many learned to clamp their legs and ride with it. Even though it could be uncomfortable on long flights, many tail gunners said they liked their position and would not trade it.

Sgt. Selmer Haakenson

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 .