http://www.historyplace.com/specials/personal/gunner-diary1.htm

The diary entries are interesting reads. I won't spoil the ending for you guys.

Thanks shan a very interesting read.
Wouldn't have taken much for him to have become one of the statistics that didn't make it home.


Wheels

Amazing what they went through. Each mission seemed like a major battle...

Great read , thanks for posting.

Very interesting ...You caught only some glimpse of the psychological strain they had to endure (not speaking of the physical one )...I've read the memories of a radio operator, simply written but vivid: he ended with booze to get some sleep after the stress and amphetamins to fulfill the long missions.

We were told at interrogation that Bremen put up more flak today than any city up to now. Big Deal! Got back OK!

Awesome read, cheers Shan !

Excellent read thank you.

What surprised me the most is how low they flew.

Bombing runs at 12 000' is very low

Yeah...I shudder to think what the flak did to them at that altitude...

Fascinating, thanks for sharing

Very interesting read, thanks for posting.

Had they had to fly as low over Germany as they did over Japan to achieve their mission goals the losses would have been exponentially worse.


Wheels

Keep in mind that the one mission they flew at 12k ft was against a heavy water plant in Norway with apparently only light flak defenses. Against a heavily defended target in Germany such a low altitude would have caused significant losses.

I think there was a movie that starred Kirk Douglas made about that plant. The bombing raid was secondary to the rest of the story though.
The Heroes of Telemark: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059263/


Wheels

Yeah, good movie.



Kinda ironic though how the US believed to be in a race with Germany for the atomic bomb when in fact Germany never even came close to developing one.

I put 12k ft because it was very low, but in my mind I always thought that they were flying over FL300
The highest they went was FL290 I think

I believe Heisenberg determined there was no
way he was going to let the regime have access
to such a weapon, and subtly and gently derailed
the project at every turn.

A truly interesting read. Thanks for posting it, Shan!

We're fortunate that some people keep diaries during such trying times. I doubt that I would have taken the time to do it under the same circumstances.

I seem to recall reading another reference to Lucky 13 (with the tail number that did not have 13 in it...) I thought it would be in "The Men Who Killed the Luftwaffe", which I have in Kindle format, but a search through that came up empty. That's probably going to bug me for awhile...