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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)
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’.
(Photo: Ivo de Jong).
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.
HISTORY
INFO Eduard
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August 2024