“War Goddess”

War Goddess is pictured on D-Day, June 6, 1944, with most of Captain Howard Kleiner's crew having just finished their combat tour: waist-gunners Delmar Davis and Joseph Notta, tail-gunner Tommy Hernandez, navigator Lieutenant Jim Wright, radio operator Calvin Davidson, bombardier Lieutenant John Gannaway, nose-gunner Joseph James, engineer James Kennedy, and co-pilot Lieutenant John Fitzpatrick, who was not present for the photo.

Two weeks later, on June 21, 1944, War Goddess flew the 93rd's mission to the Daimler-Benz Aero Engine Works at Genshagen, near Berlin, with Lieutenant Martin Barkan's crew aboard, including co-pilot Dermot Finlay, navigator Lee C. Burkhalter, and tail-gunner James McMahon. Withdrawing from the target under moderate to intense and accurate flak, Barkan radioed that a flak hole in a wing tank had set the aircraft trailing flaming gas. Wounded, he elected to make for neutral Sweden. Tail-gunner McMahon later recounted that shrapnel had knocked out the nose turret and frosted the windows with marker-bomb acid, and that co-pilot Finlay brought the aircraft down at Malmo's Bulltofta airfield. Finlay recalled simply, 'We got her down and managed to walk away together. We were a nine-man crew.' The crew was interned in Sweden.