HARD LUCK

The English portion of Loren C. Van Steenis crew’s adventure didn’t begin at Thorpe Abbotts but in Bury St. Edmunds, with the 94th Bomb Group, where they arrived in the early fall of 1943 and spent short time in the group's training program before beginning combat missions. The crew was ready to begin their combat tour with their unit, proudly bearing the letter 'A' in a square on their aircraft, when a request from command reached the unit to transfer some of their crews to Thorpe Abbots, as the 100th Bombardment Group she was seriously depleted. It was almost the middle of October and the Hundred had lost twenty crews since the beginning of the month. Van Steenis' men were loaded onto a truck and taken to Thorpe Abbotts.

T/Sgt. Earl V. Benham recalled that day: ‘… an officer of the 100th welcomed us and we entered the operations office. We had been joking about arriving this date on October 13th. We called it a good luck omen. When mentioned this to the officer, he said ‘you fellas are listed as Crew #13 and the airplane assigned to you is #413, and also this is the 13th Combat Wing.’ As we were leaving he said as an after thought. ‘Oh yes, your airplane is named Hard Luck!’ ’

Perhaps no other B-17F in the 100th Bomb Group is as surrounded by so many legends and myths as this one. This was exasperated by the repeated appearance of the number 13, which has always played a certain role in aviation. Some of the connections were real, while others were exaggerated, but either way, there is no disputing that it was an exceptional aircraft. This B-17F had a serial number ending in 13, arrived in England on August 19, 1943, but legend has it that it was on Friday the 13th with Crew No. 13 commanded by Lt. Don Mitchell. That's not completely true either. However, Mitchell's crew flew this aircraft on their first mission and some missions after. Hard Luck's hardstand was supposed to be the one with the number 13, and she did actually occupy that spot for a time. But it wasn’t the only designated spot, as, for example, 29 comes into play as well. And the 100th Bomb Group really was part of the 13th Combat Wing.

It would appear that the first mission of this aircraft was a raid on factories in Paris on September 3rd, 1943. At that time, the aircraft did not have its name yet. That didn't come about until a few days later. Lt. Mitchell’s bombardier, Earl G. Hafen, loved to sing the popular ‘Ode to Bombers’. At the end of it he added his ‘... and when they mention bombardiers, they always add Hard Luck! ‘ The connotation extrapolates figuratively, of course, to ‘bad luck’,  but also a hard-earned happiness. The first bad luck came during one of the crew's first missions with aircraft 413. However, who knows if it was actually the fickle finger of fate... The crew had to return to base early from the mission due to a malfunction and someone declared ‘That's hard luck!’. In conjunction with the bombardier's song and the number 13, the last two digits of the serial number, the idea came quickly and the inscription soon appeared on the left side of the nose, where the bombs of the missions flown and later also the swastikas marking the enemy fighters destroyed by the crews of this aircraft were added. Mitchell's crew soon received one of the first B-17Gs assigned to the unit and left Hard Luck behind. They named their new B-17G s/n 42-31074 Cahepit and flew most of their missions with it.

Hard Luck was thus inherited by Van Steenis' crew mentioned at the beginning and it is the main one that is associated with this ship. By February 25th, 1944, they had flown eighteen missions, most of them in Hard Luck, which, despite all sorts of close calls, always returned them home safely. Van Stenis' crew parted ways with their aircraft, which had a reverent row of mission markings painted on her, in March 1944, when they were promoted to lead crew. They were then assigned a new B-17G s/n 42-31903 coded LN-T, named ‘Hard Luck II’. However, this name never appeared on the nose of the aircraft, so finally there were two ‘Hard Luck II's with 350th Squadron. One sort of for themselves, named by Van Steenis' crew, the other by the ground crew of the original Hard Luck after their worn but still great B-17F was lost. The last operational flight of Van Steenis's crew, on May 7th, 1944, was to Berlin. Most of the crew were scheduled to complete their combat tour that day. At that time, the quota had already been increased to thirty missions. For those who had already completed part of their original tour commitment at the time of the increase, the increase was by a proportional amount. For this crew, the figure was 28. Over Berlin, the formation ran into a wall of flak and one of the rounds exploded near the No. 3 engine. Its shrapnel severely damaged the engine and the B-17G began to lose altitude. When checking the crew over the intercom, the bombardier and the navigator did not report. Bombardier, Lt. Lester D. Torbett, was found bleeding profusely in the radio operator's station. Navigator Lt. Harold C. Becker was found killed in the nose of the plane. Hard Luck II ‘903’ was repaired and later lost on the 29th of July, 1944.

But, getting back to the original Hard Luck, at the end of 1943 and beginning of ‘44, other crews occasionally flew lucky 413: George H. Gough and Randall T. Chadwick in the early spring of 1944, and then John M. Shelly (three missions) and notably, John S. Giles (eight missions).

The aircraft had several near misses during this period, when over Berlin on March 6th, 1944, flak damaged the right wing and the left stabilizer. Lt. Chadwick and his crew made it home. A few missions later, on April 13th, 1944, Lt. John M. Shelly made it back from Augsburg with severe damage to the left wing and fuel tank. Two days later, however, Hard Luck flew on another mission, this time with the crew of John S. Giles for the first time. Hard Luck was assigned more combat missions to this crew between April 19th and May 8th than she was finally credited. Twice before take-off, Hard Luck was replaced by a spare aircraft, and on May 1st, 1944, she was designated as a ‘flying spare’, a plane that took off together with the formation and, if necessary, replaced an aircraft that for one reason or another had to abort the mission. Hard Luck was not needed that day, so John S. Giles returned to base with her and the bomb load. Not long after that, due to bad weather, the rest of the group turned back. The mission was scrubbed. The last mission with Hard Luck was completed by Giles' crew on May 8th, 1944. After that, the aircraft had a long break, during which it underwent significant overhaul. From other aircraft serving as hangar queens – a source of spare parts, Hard Luck received a new glass nose, side window closures, and a new type top turret used on later production blocks of the B-17G. Above all, however, a general overhaul was to take place, possibly replacing all four engines.

Hard Luck became a record holder in the 8th Air Force, after flying a total of 630 hours over the course of fifty missions (various sources for this period mention 46-50 with the original engines and turbo compressors with which she was flown in the summer of 1943 across the ocean. One of her four Studebaker-built Wright R-1820 Cyclones was in good enough shape that technicians reassembled it. These modifications took the aircraft out of service for several weeks. In addition, the unit already had a number of more modern B-17Gs, and the old Fs were sent on missions much less frequently.

The excellent condition of the engines was due to the ground crew, led by twenty-four-year-old M/Sgt. Glenn M. ‘Zip’ Myers, who, among other things, was said to be very particular about his airplanes, and especially of Hard Luck. He resented - and tried to prevent - Hard Luck being given to inexperienced pilots. He said of Hard Luck: ‘she looked lean and hungry... she had no nose turret... her tail compartment was narrow, cramped, old fashioned, with fabric flapping around the twin fifty stringers – the kind they used a year ago... ... but she was still the fastest plane on the line – among her newer, shinier, unpainted sister ships... ‘

The beginning of July, 1944 marked Hard Luck's return to combat duty. The rejuvenated aircraft had previously bounced over Berlin on June 22nd with a crew under the command of Marquard J. Anderson and returned with extensive damage. So, more fixes followed.

So the next combat mission did not come until July 8th, 1944, when she carried the young crew of Lt. Albert E. Trommer, who was on his third combat sortie. Trommer's crew became the main crew of Hard Luck for the rest of her service. Plane and crew flew eight combat missions together. In addition to Albert Trommer, piloting duties in July and August 1944 were also undertaken by Lt. Lawrence W. Riegel. Both Riegel and Trommer and their crews, as well as Giles and Shelly, (who had flown with Hard Luck earlier), were later shot down on September 11th 1944 over the Ore Mountains (the mission to Ruhland).

A member of Trommer's crew, S/Sgt. John C. Kluttz firing from the lower ball turret of Hard Luck hit an attacking Fw 190 during a mission to Merseburg on July 29th, 1944. He was credited with a damaged fighter.

In mid-summer 1944, this aircraft was one of the last two B-17Fs in service with the 100th Bomb Group (the other being the famous Royal Flush), and its well worn coat stood out amongst the formation of mostly shiny B-17Gs.

On August 14th, 1944, Hard Luck took off on her 62nd mission. Lt. Donald E. Cielewich sat in the pilot’s seat. Near Ludwigshafen, the aircraft was fatally hit by flak. The crew dropped their bombs and left their position in the high squadron of the group which they occupied with a wide turn. Even then, Hard Luck was friendly to her crew. All nine men were able to leave the dying machine and to ‘hit the silk’. The limp B-17F, in a steady descent, made several circles near the village of Beerfelden near Erbach and landed on the farm of Jakob Seip and Adam Schmidt. One building was completely destroyed, another was seriously damaged. Ten people died in the rubble of the houses. The original German investigation assumed that some of the dead were members of the bomber's crew. However, they were all residents of the house or agricultural workers.

According to official figures, Hard Luck dropped 113 tons of bombs on targets during its operational career, and its gunners claimed four Luftwaffe fighters. A veteran of 798 hours in the air over 62 missions flown, she served in the European skies for almost one full year…

After Royal Flush was lost just three days earlier, the fabled Hard Luck became the last B-17F to fly in combat with the Bloody Hundred.