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Bernie Lay and Piccadilly Lily

detail of Piotr Forkasiewicz's artwork for Eduard kit No.11183 B-17F "The Bloody Hundredth 1943". On the co-pilot's seat of Piccadilly Lily sits Lt.Col. Bernie Lay.


Text: Jan Zdiarský


The ‘Double Strike’ mission of the 8th AF on Schweinfurt and Regensburg on August 17th, 1943 is among the most famous air operations of World War II in Europe. Not perhaps in so much as its scope, where it was surpassed many times during the months that followed, but in its significance in the development of strategic bombing attack planning and, above all, in terms of losses. Of the 376 B-17s involved, sixty were lost and over ninety others were seriously damaged for the loss of thirty German fighters.

Many stories are born from such monumental events. Some of them will be forgotten forever, because after a few minutes after their creation, there is sadly no one left to tell them. Other stories, though seemingly insignificant at first, later reveal their full impact as to become unforgettable. One such example, from a chain of events that began to form several thousand feet above Germany on August 17th, 1943, was the story of American pilot and writer Col. Bernie Lay. His name has been mentioned by us several times recently in connection with the Limited Edition kit of the B-17F, ‘The Bloody Hundredth 1943’ and specifically in the historical notebook we issued on Piccadilly Lily, on which Col. Lay completed the mission on August 17th, 1943. In addition to Piccadilly Lily, a total of twenty-one B-17Fs from the 100th BG took part in this mission, four of which are represented in the aforementioned kit.

 

Col. Bernie Lay was just shy of 34 years of age when the 100th BG took off for Regensburg, older than most 8th AF combat airmen. He had an interesting military and writing career, and although he had not been trained on USAAF four-engine bombers, he was certainly not new to flying.

He was born on September 1st, 1909 in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. After graduating from Yale University in 1931, he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps and completed flight training between July 1932 and June 1933, from which he emerged with the rank of Second Lieutenant (2nd Lt). He was assigned to the 20th BS (which, a few years later, as part of the 2nd Bomb Group, 15th AF, also participated in the battles over central Europe). Here he flew twin-engined biplanes in the form of the Keystone B-6 and Curtiss B-2 Condor bombers. At the beginning of 1934, he became involved in the affair known as the ‘Air Mail scandal’, when the AAF was used, thanks to a specially passed law to transport mail, which was understood, among other things, to be a corrupt interference of the business environment and piled on itself several related problems. The scandal, fueled by the deaths of several army airmen in crashes in bad weather, was more of a political affair. But it also had an impact on the army pilots themselves. Fed up with the fuss and press coverage of the event after the failed project, Bernie Lay retired from active duty in the AAF. Although he remained in the rank of Lieutenant (1st Lt.) in the army reserves, he devoted himself to civilian life. He contributed articles to several magazines and newspapers, which he began to devote himself to during his service in the Air Force.

Flying Cadet Bernie Lay during basic training (1932-1933). The aircraft in the background is a Douglas BT-2 from the Army Air Corps Primary Flying School, Randolph Field, TX. Lay completed his training on February 28, 1933. (Photo: OMPF)

2nd Lt. Bernie Lay, after completing his flight training, served in the 20th BS at Langley Field. (Photo: Dennis Duffy) 

Curtiss B-2 Condor


He became editor-in-chief of The Sportsman Pilot magazine in 1936, and a year later published his autobiographical book, ‘I Wanted Wings’. He was immediately approached by Hollywood producers to prepare a film adaptation of the book. He worked on it for three years, and although the result was rather disappointing for Lay, as his work was taken up by a group of screenwriters who changed it to a large extent in typical Hollywood fashion, the new experience brought him the acquaintance of new people, among them his first wife, Philippe Ludwell Lee.

Tensions, spreading in Europe in the late 1930s, erupted into World War II on Lay's thirtieth birthday. Shortly thereafter, he returned to military service at his own request and served as a flight instructor at Chino, California.

A book he had written a few years earlier, which had since become a bestseller, introduced him to a fellow writer, Col. Ira Eaker, then the commander of the Air Corps Information Division. Eaker arranged for Lay's transfer to the staff of the U.S. Army Air Corps in Washington, where he was promoted to the rank of captain and worked in the PR section of General Henry H. Arnold, commander of the US Army Air Force.

Keystone B-6

The Sportsman pilot, 1936 magazine cover.


When Ira Eaker became a general in 1942 and was entrusted with building the 8th AF, he took Bernie Lay with him to work as historian and unit documentation commander. The status between Lay and Hollywood, with whom he had entered into a partnership a few years earlier, also changed. He now commanded Hollywood directors who worked on film reports from the battlefield. He thus saw with his own eyes the first steps of the 8th AF, the ups and downs, the difficulties in building a position and promoting the idea of ​​the importance of heavy bombers and their daily missions. One of the films created in his section was the 40-minute documentary ‘The Memphis Belle - A Story of a Flying Fortress’ which was shot in the spring of 1943 by Maj. William Wyler. However, even before this film was completed, Bernie Lay was tired of sitting behind a desk. Although he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and a career at the top of the army air force certainly awaited him, he asked to be transferred from the air force staff to combat duty. Also thanks to having rubbed shoulders with important commanders, his request was granted in the summer of 1943. Due to his age and previous experience, he was offered command of one of the nascent air units. First, however, real combat experience had to be gained. The choice fell on the 100th Bomb Group, which from June 1943 flew from East Anglia USAAF base No. 139 near the village of Thorpe Abbotts. This is where Bernie Lay went ‘for some experience’. With a rank among the highest in Thorpe Abbotts, but no experience on heavy four-engined aircraft, he was to fly several combat missions as an observer or co-pilot. Out of five missions flown, the first four were pretty standard, while the fifth would become impossible to forget....

Grafton Underwood Air Base, August 17, 1942: Men from the 8th Air Force HQ observe the return of B-17s from the Eighth’s first combat mission to the marshalling yard at Rouen, France. Standing to the left of the ladder is General Carl A. Spaatz. Directly above the open window on the left is Bernie Lay, head of the command's history and film section. (Photo: Freeman Collection)


The best way to tell this story is to let Bernie tell it himself in his own words. The following is from his article ‘I saw Regensburg destroyed’ published in The Saturday Evening Post on October 6, 1943:

 In the briefing room, the intelligence officer of the bombardment group pulled a cloth screen away from a huge wall map. Each of the 240 sleepy-eyed combat-crew members in the crowded room leaned forward. There were low whistles. I felt a sting of anticipation as I stared at the red string on the map that stretched from our base in England to a pin point deep in Southern Germany, then south across the Alps, through the Brenner Pass to the coast of Italy, then past Corsica and Sardinia and south over the Mediterranean to a desert airdrome in North Africa. You could have heard an oxygen mask drop.

“Your primary,” said the intelligence officer, “is Regensburg. Your aiming point is the center of the Messerschmitt 109 G aircraft-and-engine-assembly shops. This is the most vital target we’ve ever gone after. If you destroy it, you destroy thirty per cent of the Luftwaffe’s single-engine-fighter production. You fellows know what that means to you personally.”

There were a few hollow laughs. After the briefing, I climbed aboard a jeep bound for the operations office to check up on my Fortress assignment. The stars were dimly visible through the chilly mist that covered our blacked-out bomber station, but the weather forecast for a deep penetration over the Continent was good. In the office, I looked at the crew sheet, where the line-up of the lead, low and high squadrons of the group is plotted for each mission. I was listed for a copilot’s seat.

While I stood there, and on the chance suggestion of one of the squadron commanders who was looking over the list, the operations officer erased my name and shifted me to the high squadron as copilot in the crew of a steady Irishman named Lieutenant Murphy, with whom I had flown before. Neither of us knew it, but that operations officer saved my life right there with a piece of rubber on the end of a pencil.

 The commander who initiated the transfer of Bernie Lay from the bottom squadron to the better protected upper one was Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven, who alone remained in the cockpit of the lead airplane of the exposed bottom squadron. Of the six aircraft in his group, only two would remain after the battle... Lt. Col. Bernie Lay was originally cast as a member of the crew under Lt. Roy F. Claytor, who flew the Fortress named ‘Alice from Dallas’ on her tenth mission. Lay was replaced in his intended seat by the co-pilot of Claytor's crew, Lt. Raymond J. Nutting, Jr. Alice was among the first aircraft of the 100th Bombardment Group to be shot down that day. Three men were killed out of the crew of ten.

A more detailed write up describing the fate of Alice from Dallas can be found in the special edition of our newsletter ‘The Bloody Hundredth, 1943’ from June, 2024.

  At 5:30 a.m., fifteen minutes before taxi time, a jeep drove around the five-mile perimeter track in the semi-darkness, pausing at each dispersal point long enough to notify the waiting crews that poor local visibility would postpone the take-off for an hour and a half. I was sitting with Murphy and the rest of our crew near the Piccadilly Lily. She looked sinister and complacent, squatting on her fat tires with scarcely a hole in her skin to show for the twelve raids behind her. The postponement tightened, rather than relaxed. Once more I checked over my life vest, oxygen mask and parachute, not perfunctorily, but the way you check something you're going to have to use. I made sure my escape kit was pinned securely in the knee pocket of my flying suit, where it couldn't fall out in a scramble to abandon ship. I slid a hunting knife between my shoe and my flying boot as I looked again through my extra equipment for this mission: water canteen, mess kit, blankets and English pounds for use in the Algerian desert, where we would sleep on the ground and might be on our own from a forced landing.

Murphy restlessly gave the Piccadilly Lily another once-over, inspecting ammunition belts, bomb bay, tires and oxygen pressure at each crew station. Especially the oxygen. It’s human fuel, as important as gasoline, up where we operate. Gunners field-stripped their .50-calibers again and oiled the bolts. Our top turret gunner lay in the grass with his head on his parachute, feigning sleep, sweating out his thirteenth start.

We shared a common knowledge which grimly enhanced the normal excitement before a mission. Of the approximately 150 Fortresses who were hitting Regensburg, our group was the last and lowest, at a base altitude of 17,000 feet. That’s well within the range of accuracy for heavy flak. Our course would take us over plenty of it. It was a cinch also that our group would be the softest touch for the enemy fighters, being last man through the gantlet. Furthermore, the Piccadilly Lily was leading the last three ships of the high squadron—the tip of the tail end of the whole shebang. "We didn’t relish it much. Who wants a Purple Heart?“

The minute hand of my wrist watch dragged. I caught myself thinking about the day, exactly one year ago, on August 17, 1942, when I watched a pitifully small force of twelve B-17’s take off on the first raid of the 8th Air Force to make a shallow penetration against Rouen, France. On that day it was our maximum effort. Today, on our first anniversary, we were putting thirty times that number of heavies into the air—half the force on Regensburg and half the force on Schweinfurt, both situated inside the interior of the German Reich. For a year and a half, as a staff officer, I had watched the 8th Air Force grow under Maj. Gen. Ira C. Eaker. That’s a long time to watch from behind a desk. Only ten days ago I had asked for and received orders to combat duty. Those ten days had been full of the swift action of participating in four combat missions and checking out for the first time as a four-engine pilot.

Now I knew that it can be easier to be shot at than telephoned at. That staff officers at an Air Force headquarters are the unstrung heroes of this war. And yet I found myself reminiscing just a little affectionately about that desk, wondering if there wasn’t a touch of suicide in store for our group. One thing was sure: Headquarters had dreamed up the biggest air operation to date to celebrate its birthday in the biggest league of aerial warfare.

 The fog covering most of the airfields of the 8th Air Force did not clear in time. Nevertheless, the planes making up the so-called ‘Regensburg Strike Force’ took off, while the ‘Schweinfurt’ bomber groups waited for better conditions to take off. This disruption of the careful timing of the operation was later one of the main conditions for the disastrous development of the entire mission. The officers of the VIII Bomber Command faced a big dilemma – to increase the time gap between the start of the mission of both its parts would have implications on the fragile assumptions made regarding the distribution of German defenses in time and over a larger area, and on the coordination between the movement of the bomber streams and their fighter escort. On the other hand, if both forces had waited for the weather to improve at launch, and their mutual timing had been maintained, this would have meant that the Regensburg component of the mission would not have reached the north coast of Africa before sunset. Command opted for the first option, and nearly 150 B-17s rose from their bases into an opaque blanket of fog and low cloud over the counties of eastern England.

Maj. Gale "Buck" Cleven, CO of the 350th BS, who on August 17, 1943, initiated the transfer of Bernie Lay from the low squadron to the top squadron, which was composed by the 349th and 351st BS ships.

B-17F s/n 42-5867 "Alice from Dallas" was lost at Regensburg on August 17, 1943, with Lt. Roy F. Claytor and his crew.


The Regensburg force consisted of the 94th, 95th, 96th, 100th, 385th, 388th and 390th Bomb Groups. These were formed into Provisional Combat Wings (PCBW) numbered 401st, 402nd and 403rd. In the following text by Bernie Lay, the term ‘4th Air Division’ appears, which is somewhat inaccurate.

The steady flow of bombers was led by the 96th Bomb Group, as the first unit of the 403rd PCBW, followed by the 388th and 390th Bomb Groups. The middle part of the bomber stream, the 401st PCBW, consisted of the 94th and 385th Bomb Groups, while the 402nd PCBW led by the 95th Bomb Group brought up the rear, with the 100th Bomb Group closing out the stream. In terms of height, the units were arranged in descending order, with the leader of the seven combat boxes, consisting of one bomb group, flew the highest and the others followed at intervals of 1000 feet (approx. 300m) above or below. The Bloody Hundred, which was not dubbed as such until after the mission, flew last and at the lowest altitude. That position was called ‘Tail End Charlie’ or ‘Purple Heart Corner’ - a place where you didn't want to fly such an operation.

Although the fog over the airfield had not completely cleared, headquarters judged that the units that were to form the Regensburg portion of the mission were experienced enough for their crews to handle it. The decision was made not to wait any longer and to go for it. The 8th Air Force's biggest mission was about to begin. Unfortunately, so far only for half of the bombers…

B-17F-30-VE, 42-5864, crew of Capt. Thomas E. Murphy, Lt. Col. Beirne Lay. Jr., 351st BS, 100th BG, Telergma, Algeria, Aug. 17, 1943


 At 7:30 we broke out of the cloud tops into the glare of the rising sun. Beneath our B-17 lay English fields, still blanketed in the thick mist from which we had just emerged. We continued to climb slowly, our broad wings shouldering a heavy load of incendiary bombs in the belly and a burden of fuel in the main and wing-tip Tokyo tanks that would keep the Fortress afloat in the thin upper altitudes eleven hours.

From my copilot’s seat on the right-hand side, I watched the white surface of the overcast, where B-17’s in clusters of six to the squadron were puncturing the cloud deck all about us, rising clear of the mist with their glass noses slanted upward for the long climb to base altitude. We tacked on to one of these clutches of six. Now the sky over England was heavy with the weight of thousands of tons of bombs, fuel and men being lifted four miles straight up on a giant aerial hoist to the western terminus of a 20,000-foot elevated highway that led east to Regensburg. At intervals I saw the arc of a sputtering red, green or yellow flare being fired from the cabin roof of a group leader’s airplane to identify the lead squadron to the high and low squadrons of each group. Assembly takes longer when you come up through an overcast. For nearly an hour, still over Southern England, we climbed, nursing the straining Cyclone engines in a 300-foot-per-minute ascent, forming three squadrons gradually into compact group stagger formations—low squadron down to the left and high squadron up to the right of the lead squadron—groups assembling into looser combat wings of two to three groups each along the combat-wing assembly line, homing over predetermined points with radio compass, and finally cruising along the air division assembly line to allow the combat wings to fall into place in trail behind Col. Curtis E. Le May in the lead group of the air division. Formed at last, each flanking group in position 1000 feet above or below its lead group, our fifteen-mile parade moved east toward Lowestoft, point of departure from the friendly coast, unwieldy, but dangerous to fool with. From my perch in the high squadron in the last element of the whole procession, the air division looked like huge anvil-shaped swarms of locusts—not on dress parade, like the bombers of the Luftwaffe that died like flies over Britain in 1940, but deployed to uncover every gun and permit maneuverability.

 

 

To describe the next story, it only makes sense to again let Bernie Lay describe it in his report to the commander of the 100th Bombardment Group, Col. To Neil B. ‘Chick’ Harding, the main part of which is reproduced in full:

 

 

HEADQUARTERS 100TH BOMBARDMENT GROUP (H) APO 634

 

U. S. Army Station 139

25 August 1943

 

SUBJECT: Personal report on the Regensburg mission, 17 Aug 1943.

 

TO: Commanding Officer, 100th Bombardment Group (H).

 

1. Introduction This report does not attempt to render a complete summary of the mission. It is merely an eyewitness account of what was seen, together with certain recommendations pertinent thereto, during an ordeal in which the 100th Group fought its way to the target through fierce and prolonged enemy fighter attacks and accurately bombed a vital target.

 

2. Mission Summary When the 100th Group crossed the coast of Holland south of the Hague at 1008 hours at our base altitude of 17, 000 feet, I was well situated to watch the proceedings, being co-pilot in the lead ship of the last element if the high squadron. The Group had all of its 21 B-17’s tucked in tightly and was within handy supporting distance of the 95th Group, ahead of us at 18, 000 feet. We were the last and lowest of the seven groups of the 4th Air Division that were visible ahead on a south-east course, forming a long, loose-linked chain in the bright sunlight – too long, it seemed. Wide gaps separated the three combat wings. As I sat there in the tail-end element of that many miles long procession, gauging the distance to the lead group, I had the lonesome foreboding that might come to the last man to run a gauntlet lined with spiked clubs. The premonition was well-founded.

At 1017 hours, near Woensdrecht, I saw the first flak blossom out in our vicinity, light and inaccurate. A few minutes later, approximately 1025 hours, two FW-190’s appeared at 1 o’clock level and whizzed through the formation ahead of us in frontal attack, nicking two B-17’s of the 95th Group in the wings and breaking away beneath us in half-rolls. Smoke immediately trailed from both B-17s, but they held their stations. As the fighters passed us at a high rate of closure, the guns of the group went into action. The pungent smell of burnt powder filled out cockpit, and the B-17 trembled to the recoil of nose and ball-turret guns. I saw pieces fly off the wing of one of the fighters before they passed from view.

Here was early action, the members of the crew sensed trouble. There was something desperate about the way those two fighters came in fast, right out of their climb without any preliminaries. For a second the interphone was busy with admonitions: “Lead ‘em more”... “short bursts”... “don’t throw rounds away”... There’ll be more along in a minute.“…

Three minutes later. the gunners reported fighters climbing up from all around the clock, singly and in pairs, both FW-190’s and ME_109’s. This was only my fourth raid, but from what I could see on my side, it looked like too many fighters for sound health. A coordinated attack followed, with the head-on fighters coming in from slightly above, the 9 and 3 o’clock attackers approaching from about level, and the rear attackers from slightly below. Every gun from every B-17 in out group and the 95th was firing, criss-crossing our patch of sky with tracers to match the time-fuse cannon shell puffs that squirted from the wings of the Jerry single-seaters. I would estimate that 75% of our fire was inaccurate, falling astern of the target–particularly the fire from hand held guns. Nevertheless, both sides got hurt in this clash, with two B-17s from our low squadron and one from the 95th Group falling out of formation on fire with crews bailing out, and several fighters heading for the deck in flames or with their pilots lingering behind under dirty yellow parachutes. Our group leader, Major John Kidd, pulled us up nearer the 95th Group for mutual support.

I knew that we were already in a lively fight. What I didn’t know was the real fight, the anschluss of 20 MM cannon shells, hadn’t really begun. A few minutes later we absorbed the first wave of a hailstorm of individual fighter attacks that were to engulf us clear to the target. The ensuing action was so rapid and varied that I cannot give a chronological account of it. Instead, I will attempt a fragmentary report of salient details that even now give me a dry mouth and an unpleasant sensation in the stomach to recall. The sight was fantastic and surpassed fiction.

It was at 1041 hours, over Eupen, that I looked out my copilot’s window after a short lull and saw two squadrons, 12 ME-109s and 11 FW-190s climbing parallel to us. The first squadron had reached our level and was pulling ahead to turn into us and second was not far behind. Several thousand feet below us were many more fighters, with their noses cocked at maximum climb. Over the interphone came reports of equal number of enemy aircraft deploying on the other side. For the first time I noticed a ME-110 sitting out of range on our right. He was to stay with us all the way to the target, apparently to report our position to fresh squadrons waiting for us down the road. At the sight of all these fighters, I had the distinct feeling of being trapped–that the Hun was tipped off, or at least had guessed our destination and was waiting for us. No P-47s were visible. The life expectancy of the 100th Group suddenly seemed very short, since it already appeared that the fighters were passing up the proceeding groups, with the exception of the 95th, in order to take a cut at us.

Swinging their yellow noses around in a wide U-turn, the 12 ship squadron of ME-109s came in from 12 o’clock in pairs and in fours and the main event was on.

A shining silver object sailed past over our right wing. I recognized it as a main exit door. Seconds later, a dark object came hurtling down through the formation, barely missing several props. It was a man, clasping his knees to his head, revolving like a diver in a triple somersault. I didn’t see his chute open.

A B-17 turned gradually out of the formation to the right, maintaining altitude. In a split second the B-17 disappeared in brilliant explosion, from which the only remains were four small balls of fire, the fuel tanks, which were quickly consumed as they fell earthward.

Our airplane was endangered by various debris, emergency hatches, exit doors, prematurely opened parachutes, bodies and assorted fragments of B-17s and Hun fighters breezed past us in the slip-stream.

I watched two fighters explode not far beneath, disappearing in sheets of orange flame, B-17s dropping out in every stage of distress, from engines on fire to control surfaces shot away, friendly and enemy parachutes floating down, and, on the green carpet far behind us, numerous funeral pyres of smoke from fallen fighters marking our trail.

On we flew through the strewn wake of a desperate air battle, where disintegrating aircraft were commonplace and 60 chutes in the air at one time were hardly worth a second look.

I watched a B-17 turn slowly to the right with its cockpit a mass of flames. The copilot crawled out of his window, held on with one hand, reached back for his chute, buckled it on, let go and was whisked back into the horizontal stabilizer. I believe the impact killed him. His chute didn’t open.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, and still no let up in the attacks. The fighters queued up like a breadline and let us have it. Each second of time had a cannon shell in it. The strain of being a clay duck in the wrong end of that aerial shooting gallery became almost intolerable as the minutes accumulated towards the first hour.

Our B-17 shook steadily with the fire of the .50’s and the air inside was heavy with smoke. It was cold in the cockpit, but when I looked across at Lt. Thomas Murphy, the pilot, and a good one, sweat was pouring off his forehead and over his oxygen mask. He turned the controls over to me for awhile. It was a blessed relief to concentrate on holding station in formation instead of watching those everlasting fighters boring in. It was possible to forget the fighters. Then the top-turret gunner’s twin muzzles would pound away a foot above my head, giving a realistic imitation of cannon shells exploding in the cockpit, while I gave a better imitation of man jumping six inches our of his seat.

A B-17 of the 95th Group, with its right Tokyo tanks on fire, dropped back about 200 feet above our right wing and stayed there while 7 of the crew successively bailed out. Four went out the bomb-bay and executed delayed jumps, one bailed out from the nose, opened his chute prematurely and nearly fouled the tail. Another went out the left waist-gun opening, delaying his chute opening for a safe interval. The tail gunner dropped out of his hatch, apparently pulling the ripcord before he was clear of the ship. His chute opened instantaneously, barely missing the tail, and jerked him so hard that both his shoes came off. He hung limp in the harness, whereas the others had showed immediate signs of life after their chutes opened, shifting around in the harness. The B-17 then dropped back in a medium spiral and I did not see the pilots leave. I saw it just before it passed from view, several thousand feet below us, with it’s right wing a solid sheet of yellow flame.

After we had been under constant attack for a solid hour, it appeared certain that the 100th Group was faced with annihilation. Seven of our group had been shot down, the sky was still mottled with rising fighters and it was only 1120 hours, with the target time still 35 minutes away. I doubt if a man in the group visualized the possibility of our getting much further without 100% loss. I knew that I had long since mentally accepted the fact of death, and that it was simply a question of next second or the next minute. I learned first-hand that a man can resign himself to the certainty of death without becoming panicky. Our group fire power was reduced 33%, ammunition was running low. Our tail guns had to be replenished from other gun stations. Gunners were becoming exhausted and nerve-tortured from the prolonged strain, and there was an awareness on everybody’s part that something must have gone wrong. We had been the aiming point for the Luffwaffe and we fully expected to find the rest primed for us at the target.

Fighter tactics were running true to form. Frontal attackers hit the low squadron and the lead squadron, while rear attackers went for the high. The manner of their attacks showed that some pilots were old-timers, some amateurs, and that all knew pretty definitely where we were going and were inspired with a fanatical determination to stop us before we got there. The old-timers came in on frontal attacks with a noticeably slower rate of closure, apparently throttled back, obtaining greater accuracy than those that bolted through us wide out. They did some nice shooting at ranges of 500 or more yards, and in many cases seemed able to time their thrusts so as to catch the top and ball turret gunners engaged with rear and side attacks. Less experienced pilots were pressing home attacks to 250 yards and less to get hits, offering point-blank targets on the break away, firing long bursts of 20 seconds, and in some cases actually pulling up instead of going down and out. Several FW-190 pilots pulled off some first rate deflection shooting on side attacks against the high group, then raked the low group on the break away out of a sideslip, keeping the nose cocked up in the turn to prolong the period the formation was in their sights.

I observed what I believe was an attempt at air-to-air bombing, although I didn’t see the bombs dropped. A patch of 75 to 100 gray white bursts, smaller than flak bursts, appeared simultaneously at our level, off to one side.

One B-17 dropped out on fire and put its wheels down while the crew bailed out. Three ME-109s circled it closely, but held their fire, apparently ensuring that no one stayed in the ship to try for home. I saw Hun fighters hold their fire even when being shot at by a B-17 from which the crew were bailing out.

Near the IP, at 1150 hours, one hour and a half after the first of at least 200 individual fighter attacks, the pressure eased off, although hostiles were in the vicinity. We turned at the IP at 1154 hours with 14 B-17’s left in the group, two of which were badly crippled. They dropped out soon after bombing the target and headed for Switzerland, one of them, “042”, carrying Col William Kennedy as tail gunner, #4 engine was on fire, but not our of control. Major William Veal, leader of the high squadron, received a cannon shell in his #3 engine just before the start of the bombing run and went in to the target with the prop feathered.

Weather over the target, as on the entire trip, was ideal. Flak was negligible. The group got its bombs away promptly on the leader. As we turned and headed for the Alps, I got a grim satisfaction out of seeing a rectangular column of smoke rising straight up from the ME-109 shops, with only one burst over in the town of Regensburg.

The rest of the trip was a marked anti-climax. A few more fighters pecked at us on the way to the Alps. A town in Brenner Pass tossed up a lone burst of futile flak. Col LeMay, who had taken excellent care of us all the way, circled the air division over Lake Garda long enough to give the cripples a chance to join the family, and we were on our way toward the Mediterranean Sea in a gradual decent. About 25 fighters on the ground at Verona stayed on the ground. The prospect of ditching as we approached Bone, short of fuel, and the sight of other B-17’s falling into the drink, seemed trivial matters after the vicious nightmare of the long trip across Northern Germany. We felt the reaction of men who had not expected to see another sunset.

At 1815 hours, with red lights showing on all fuel tanks in my ship, the seven B-17’s out of the group who were still in formation circled over Bertoux and landed in the dust. Our crew was unscratched. Sole damage to the airplane; a bit of ventilation around the tail from flak and 20 MM shells. We slept on the hard ground under the wings of our B-17, but the good earth felt softer than a silk pillow.

Piccadilly Lily after landing at Telergma Base in Algeria, following an attack on the Messerschmitt factories at Regensburg during a shuttle mission on August 17, 1943.

The crew of Capt. Thomas E. Murphy and Piccadilly Lily in North Africa after miraculously surviving the Regensburg mission. Lt. Col. Bernie Lay is standing second from the left, with Thomas Murphy in the middle.

Lt. Col. Bernie Lay at Lavenham Base, August 15, 1944, two days before the fateful Regensburg mission. The aircraft behind him is a British Airspeed AS.10 'Oxford'.


 Shortly after the Regensburg mission, Lt. Col. Lay left the 100th BG. Further assignments followed as part of his training, after which he was sent back to the US to take charge of the newly formed 487th BG in late February, 1944. However, that is another story, which we will save for the second part of the article.

Bernie Lay had not forgotten Piccadilly Lily. All the more so when he learned that she was shot down on October 8th, 1943, during a mission to Bremen. His pilot from the Regensburg mission less than two months earlier, Capt. Thomas E. Murphy was killed in the process. Both Lily and Capt. Murphy became central figures of Lay's next book, Twelve O'Clock High, subsequently becoming an iconic motion picture. But we'll talk about that next time.

 

(to be continued)

   

SOURCES:

- US Air Force Research Agency, Maxwell, Alabama - National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, MD

- 100th Bomb Group Foundation Archives

- Lt Col Beirne Lay Jr. and the 100th Bomb Group Connection, Michael Faley - 100th Bomb Group Historian - Findagrave, Wikipedia - Century Bombers, Richard LeStrange, 1997 - The Story of the Century, John R. Nilsson, 1946

 

Photographs without a specified source are from the 100th BGF archive or the author's collection.

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08/2024
Info EDUARD 08/2024

INFO Eduard is a monthly scale model-historical magazine published in Czech and English by Eduard Model Accessories since 2010. The magazine is available for free on the Triobo platform and can be downloaded in PDF format. Eduard is a manufacturer of plastic models and accessories with over 30 years of tradition. Throughout its history in the plastic modeling industry, Eduard has become one of the world's leaders. Further details about the company and its product range can be found at www.eduard.com. You can subscribe to the INFO magazine and receive product information for free at: https://www.eduard.com/cs/info-eduard/

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