Mission 227

Oct 26 1944

Flight Crew
Name	Rank	Duties
Miller, Elmonte R	Lieutenant	Pilot
Mattice, Lynn W	Lieutenant	Co-Pilot
Brown Ralph C	Lieutenant	Navigator
Cascone, John C	Sergeant	Nose Gunner/Toggleir
Lohr, John F	Staff Sergeant	Radio Op/Gunner
Weese, Jackson D	Staff Sergeant	Eng/Top Turret Gunner
Cunningham, Charles L	Sergeant	Ball Turret Gunner
Whiting Edward J	Staff Sergeant	Waist Gunner
Johnson, Marvin J	Sergeant	Tail Gunner

The Mission# 227
A/C name The Hellion	Country Germany	Target Railway Yards
A/C number 42-97370		Squadron Position High Squadron
A/C Pos Low Element Right Wing		City Munster

Target area after the strike

John Cascone had trained with us when we were back in the states but when we arrived at Kimbolten they reduced the size of the crew by one member. This is the first time John flew with the rest of us. The term togglier was something they just invented because we had a shortage of bombardiers. The job consisted of watching for the lead airplane drop a smoke bomb then hit the bombs away switch. Those white streaks at the bottom of the the picture above are from the smoke bombs.

Jack Nowacki, our original co-pilot had been pulled off of our crew to become a first pilot so he was flying with another crew. He was replaced by Mattice . We were very superstitious about flying with strangers on our crew because every time it happened we seem to get into some kind of trouble. We made our concerns known to Miller, our original first pilot and he took extraordinary measures later to keep us together.