The Bomber Boys Read Online Free PDF

fact that he was always ready, apparently eager, to personally lead a bombing raid.
    Respecting their leader did not necessarily mean the airmen of the 305th always agreed with his thinking. None of his decisions created more second-guessing and open grumbling than his “straight-in” bomb run. The veteran bomber pilots were convinced that flying in a straight line across a heavily fortified German city was only slightly short of suicide. LeMay believed
the evasive actions of the American pilots were causing bombs to be dropped sloppily, with many missing the primary targets.
    Not one to worry much about diplomacy, LeMay bluntly announced the change in bomb-run procedure at a mission briefing early one morning. Although LeMay would later deny the exchange ever happened, 305th legend supports the following account as factual.
    LeMay told the assembled aircrews that for this mission they were going to give the straight-in bomb run a try. A wall of stunned silence was all he received in response. Undaunted, the stone-faced commander asked, “Any questions?” It was then that a brash young airman verbalized what most of the flyers in the room must have been thinking:
    “Sir, shall we go to the stockade now or wait for the MPs to take us?”
    Of course, the men of the 305th flew straight-in bomb runs from that day forward, without the threat of Military Police, and there was never any scientific way to prove who was right. Perhaps both points of view had been correct. Bombing results most likely improved with the technique, and there is little doubt more American airmen died with the introduction of the straight-in bomb run.
    The worst day in the history of the 305th Bomb Group came about five months after LeMay was kicked up to a higher command position in the Eighth Air Force. During a raid on Schweinfurt, Germany, on October 14, 1943, the 305th participated with eighteen aircraft. Three of the group’s bombers had to abort the mission. Of the remaining fifteen 305th B-17s that attacked the target, only two returned to England.
    In all, more than sixty American bombers were lost on the day of the Schweinfurt raid as the Luftwaffe sent up hundreds
of fighters to challenge the unescorted B-17s and B-24s. The raid is believed to have accounted for the heaviest single-day losses for the Eighth Air Force during the entire war. The 305th had suffered more than any other unit; 86.5 percent of its bombers had been shot down from the sky.
    The Schweinfurt disaster, more than any other raid, convinced the high command of the American Army Air Force that their bomber crews needed fighter escort planes that could take the Fortresses and Liberators all the way to the target and back. By the time Tony Teta and his crewmates arrived at Chelveston Air Base early in December 1944, the new long-range North American P-51 Mustang fighters, equipped with drop tanks for extra fuel, had arrived.
    The official position of the Eighth Air Force high command was that the improved fighter-escort protection would drastically reduce the number of bombers being lost to enemy fighters defending German targets. This certainly would prove to be true. It followed that with fewer aircraft losses, the airmen of the “Mighty Eighth” would stand a much better chance of surviving the required twenty-five missions that earned them a ticket back to the States. However, like many military decisions, this one was a two-edged sword. The number of required missions was promptly raised to thirty and then to thirty-five. Bomber crews with only one or two missions left to complete were suddenly told to unpack their bags.
    While the American Fortresses and Liberators would no longer be sitting ducks for the German fighter pilots to just pick off, even the fast P-51 Mustangs could not completely protect the bombers. Also, one other major danger had not been reduced at all—the deadly antiaircraft fire, or flak, that awaited every mission over German cities.
    The veteran