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At 7:30 we broke out of the cloud tops into
the glare of the rising sun. Beneath our B-17 lay
English elds, 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 aoat 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 punc-
turing 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 are being red from the cabin roof of
a group leader’s airplane to identify the lead squad-
ron 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 stag-
ger formations—low squadron down to the left and
high squadron up to the right of the lead squad-
ron—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 nally 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 anking group in position 1000 feet above or
below its lead group, our fteen-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 ele-
ment 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 ies over Britain in 1940, but deployed to
uncover every gun and permit maneuverability.
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 ‘Regens-
burg Strike Force’ took off, while the ‘Schwein-
furt’ bomber groups waited for better conditions
to take off. This disruption of the careful timing
of the operation was later one of the main con-
ditions 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.
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 some-
what 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 descend-
ing 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 Regens-
burg portion of the mission were experienced
enough for their crews to handle it. The deci-
sion 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…
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 Ofcer, 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 or-
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:
HISTORY
INFO Eduard
19
August 2024