The Bomber Boys Read Online Free PDF Page A

ahead), “radio” and “celestial navigation.” The pilot and the navigator worked closely during the flight, because any change in altitude, airspeed or direction could affect the navigator’s calculations. The success of the mission and—more important to the pilot—his crew’s survival depended on the navigator doing his job well.
    The B-17 pilot training manual pinpointed the navigator’s heavy responsibility: “The navigator’s job is to direct your flight from departure to destination and return. He must know the exact position of the aircraft at all times.”
    Chart liked his spirited young navigator from the first time they met. Teta was bright and energetic, but he was also as young
and green as the rest of the crew. The pilot and navigator soon made it a regular part of their routine to get together after every training flight to discuss anything that might have gone better in the way the route was plotted or the way it was flown. This post-mission meeting was something Chart and Teta would continue even after they began flying real combat raids over Germany.
    As the crew began their final week of flight training, Chart hoped and prayed they were ready for the challenges of combat. That the ten young men were bonding and that each one felt the crew was ready for “the show,” there was no doubt. They would not have long to wait.
    Travel orders came through in September of 1944. Missing from the crew list was Glenn B. Kelly’s name. He would not be going to England as a part of Jerry Chart’s crew. Trained as a bombardier, Kelly was reassigned. John Stiles would move from his waist gunner’s position to take over the bombsight operation as the crew’s toggler. Christenson would pull double duty as both left and right waist gunner.
    A couple of days at Fort Dix in New Jersey provided Tony the opportunity to slip into New York City for a reunion with his mother and sister. On the ferry ride across the Hudson River, he spotted the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner docked on the New York side. Tony would get to know the ship well during the next two weeks, as he and more than twelve thousand airmen, sailors and soldiers made their crowded voyage to Scotland.
    The young navigator and the crew’s other three officers occupied a cabin that would have been very comfortable had not eight additional officers from other crews been assigned the same lodging. There were some moments of levity, such as when a group of Marines clandestinely changed the yellow tape on the floor and successfully misdirected a large contingent of Army nurses right into the Marines’ quarters. However, most of the
voyage was a frustrating and hopeless search for some little place of privacy.
    A welcoming committee of small, rosy-faced children met the Americans when they arrived in Scotland. Little open palms were soon filled with whatever candy and gum the troops had in their pockets.
    A few days later came the long-anticipated final leg of the bomber crew’s journey. They were assigned to a base named Chelveston near Bedfordshire, England. Jerry Chart’s crew would be part of the 305th Bomb Group, composed of the 364th, 365th, 366th and 422nd Bomber Squadrons. Chart and his men would fly one of the twelve Fortresses of the 366th Squadron.
    By the fall of 1944, the 305th had already established itself as one of the most combative and innovative bomb groups in the American Eighth Air Force. In mid-November the unit had flown its 250th combat mission over France, Holland and Germany. A grim-faced officer named Curtis LeMay had been the 305th’s original commander in England, and while he held that position he had rewritten the book on combat flying. His tactics of tight formation flying for a concentration of firepower had spread quickly from the bomb group level to be accepted as standard procedure for the entire Eighth Air Force. LeMay, who was a no-nonsense group commander, was dubbed “Iron Ass” by his men, but they respected the