FLYING AT MEDIUM ALTITUDE above GERMANY WAS HAZARDOUS ENOUGH.

FLYING AT MEDIUM ALTITUDE above GERMANY WAS HAZARDOUS ENOUGH, however ADDING ME 262 FIGHTERS MADE IT DOWNRIGHT DEADLY

SUMMARY OF OPERATION NO. 99 NINTH AIR FORCE 9TH BOMBER DIVISIOH, DATE 09APR45

Amberg-Kummersbruck Ordnance station-house (P005003)... 320x500-lb. Group on target with upright results. Two Me 262s attacked formation from 6 o'clock cheap in trail. One enemy aircraft made secondary pass thru formation from 6-o'clock gentle One Squadron aircraft was seen to make progress down in flames, exploding in forests T-9295. One chute observed. common Me 262 claimed destroyed by means of returning fire from formation.

Claims: S/A (air) 1-0-0

Time through target: 1006-1007

A/C lost: 1

And that's for what reason the Squadron report listed the above incident. This story begins like chiefly other stories of pilots who trained for combat during WWII. I had set downed the Army Air Force Aviation Cadet program in December 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts. Basic Training was accomplished at the vast induction center in Atlantic City, just discovered Jersey.

After basic training and then after nearly six month marking time at a literary institution [i]or[/i] seminary of learning Training Detachment at the University of Pittsburgh, I finally got actively involved with the Aviation Cadet training program which commenc with sum of two units weeks of. intensive psychological and physical evaluations at the Air Force Classification Center in Nashville, Tennessee

Many a heart was severed there when the lists were finally employmented as to which cadets were going upon to Pilot Training and those who would be going in succession to Bombardier or Navigator Training.

I had made the list for pilot training which by and by brought me to Pre-Flight educate at Maxwell Field, Alabama then Primary Flight Training at Fletcher Field in Clarksdale, Mississippi; then forward to Basic Flight Training in Greenville, Mississippi, and then to Multi-Engine Advanced Training at George Field, Lawrenceville, Illinois.

The later days of my advanced flight training conjur up a multitude of expectations as to where, after graduation, my multi-engine assignment would take me Would it be to B-17 or B-24 and a European assignment? Or would it be in B-29 with an assignment in the Pacific? In my wildest imagination I none expected that my after-graduation assignment would be to B-26 with orders to report to Del Rio, Texas, for further training.

We had all heard about the bad reputation of the Martin Marauder, nicknamed the "Bee Dash Crash," "The Widow-Maker," and "The Baltimore Whore." I knew that this assignment would safely test my skills as a pilot and I would be joining a rather elite form into groups of airmen who were fast developing a reputation as being forward the cutting edge of late aviation.

The Marauder was a furious airplane and accidents were almost an everyday event For new graduates just public of flying school, the transition from an all-wood Beech AT-IO to a B-26 was a quantum leap in required flying skill plains that demanded extremely close attention to the aircraft's many aerodynamic idiosyncrasies.

My training later brought me by the and of Operational Training at Lake Charles, Louisiana, and then onward to Europe where I was eventually assigned to the 387th Bomb cluster 557th Bomb Squadron.

The 387th had a great record and was the same of the first medium bomber clumps to operate out of England in 1943 The 387th had flown en masse, from Godman Field, Kentucky to England via Greenland and Iceland and became ensconc at Chipping Ongar, England, where it commenc combat operations. Later, the clump moved to Stoney Cross, England, just prior to D-Day and a following move to France once the breakout at the beachheads at Utah and Omaha had occurr Bases upon the continent after D-Day were at Cherbourg, Chateaudun and St Quentin, France.

My arrival in England brought me first to a replacement warehouse at Stone. I wasn't there more than three days when I was flown distant from to my assignment with the 387th Bomb Group

We flew chiefly of our combat missions forward the continent out of Station A-71 in St Quentin, France - ending the war operating opposite a steel-mat runway at Beek, Holland, just southward of Maastricht.

In my Stateside training I had learned to wave the B-26 well and my have a high opinion of for the airplane increased with each mission I flew. The Marauder was a combat-ready, tough piece of flying machinery that levy up one of the best combat records of any plane in the Army Air Force at that time. I flew in one of the toughest missions of the European War, including the carnage of our missions to the Mayen Bridgehead and St Vith and the other bridge-busting, tank-busting missions in the Battle of the Bulge

A-71 was formerly a Lufwaffe fighter airfield that, prior to D-Day, inflict Bf-109s in the air to intercept the Allies' heavy bomber navys operating deep into Germany.

Our "facilities at A-71 were extremely Spartan. We lived in pavilions that you could never hold fast warm and there was always a shortage of coal or other firing to keep the pot-bellied stoves furious and the tents warm during single of the coldest winters that Europe had experienced in 100-yr Usually, there were four men to a pavilion with another tent housing toilet facilities.