Mission 231  

Nov 4  1944

Flight Crew

Name Rank Duties
Miller, Elmonte R Lieutenant Pilot
Nowacki, Jack W Lieutenant Co-Pilot
Hodgkiss, Bernard V Lieutenant Navigator
Cascone, John Sergeant Nose Gunner/Togglier
Lohr, John F  Staff Sergeant Radio Op/Gunner
Weese, Jackson D  Staff Sergeant Engr./Top Turret
Cunningham, Charles L Staff Sergeant Ball Turret gunner
Whiting, Edward H Staff  Sergeant Waist Gunner
Johnson, Marvin J  Sergeant Tail Gunner

The Mission# 231

A/C name Tag-A-Long Country   Germany Target   Synthetic oil Plant
A/C number   43-38745   Squadron Position LeadSquadron
A/C Pos Low Element  Left Wing   City  Bottrop
 

Hitler was beginning to realize that drastic measures would be necessary to regain his former advantage and we started to encounter his so called secret weapons. Each morning as we climbed to our mission altitude we could see white contrails  stretching straight up into the morning sky. They were from the new V-2 rockets which were being directed at London. We also occasionally sighted an extremely fast fighter like no aircraft we had ever seen before. It had no vertical stabilizer and seemed to be capable of fantastic altitudes. We reported these things to our skeptical debriefing officers  who must have thought we were all slightly flack happy. There were also strange spoofer shells which would be mixed with the regular flack. They were red or purple and remained suspended in the sky for several minutes after the explosion. I never did understand the true reason for these strange weapons. As far as I could tell they never caused any significant damage.

We also were happy to get  Jack , our original copilot back. We had all noticed that when there were strange crew members on our crew our luck was not so good. So we conveyed our concerns to Miller, our original first pilot. He went to our commanding officer and agreed to give up his position as first pilot if we could get Jack back on our crew.  I don't know if it was superstition or not but one thing is for sure we all came through  the remainder of our missions without a scratch.

HO-229

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