Mission 619

On the evening of September 9th, the group was alerted once again. Crew 94-C was on the list, and with it came the weight of what that meant. Only a day or two earlier they had been alerted and arrived too late to enter the fight. Now they had their orders, and the reality of a first mission settled in. The feelings were tangled: a sense of purpose, a desire to do their part, and the quiet, persistent awareness that they might not come back. Standard practice was to assign a new pilot to fly with an experienced crew while a seasoned pilot took over his aircraft. But this crew had been with the squadron for three weeks and knew the routines well enough. They flew together on their first mission, with one exception: a different bombardier filled the position. Wake-up came four hours before takeoff. The squadron orderly moved through the barracks that night, rousing each man scheduled to fly, along with one or two alternates in case a listed crew couldn't go. The mechanics of flying a mission were by then well drilled, and the crew moved into their assigned position without difficulty. The mission itself was another matter. Crossing the Rhine somewhere between Frankfurt and Cologne, a four-gun antiaircraft battery of 88mm guns found them. The first burst detonated roughly a hundred feet off the left side. The next came off the right. The flak grew so dense that the lead group disappeared behind a curtain of black smoke ahead, and then they were in it themselves. Bursts came between the aircraft and the ship flying alongside. There was nothing to do but hold course. The crew landed and reported to Major Brutus "Pop" Hamilton for intelligence debriefing that afternoon. Hamilton, whom the pilot knew from his days as football coach and athletic director at the University of California, Berkeley, received a quiet group. Mission records noted 10 x 500-pound incendiaries dropped on a jet plant target, moderate flak, no enemy fighters, and all planes returned with one flak hole. The navigator's log told the route in full: in over the coast at Hautbano, across San Quentin and Allied lines at Nancy, over the Rhine south of Strasbourg. The primary target at Günsburg was not reached; bombs fell on a target just north of Stuttgart. The return leg passed over Speyer, Kaiserslautern, Reims, and Cambrai. In all, 1,300 nautical miles.