B-17 Boomerang Barbara, mission 19 part 1
Mike Fitch
From William J. Watson's diary:
February 10 Nineteenth raid - Target Brunswick - The toughest raid I
ever saw. Fighters hit us at the enemy coast and just
came in waves till we left the coast coming back. There
were as many as 200 at a time attacking the formations.
Every place you looked you could see fighters, 17's
blowing up, wings coming off, ships breaking in half.
Dogfights and parachutes. The sky was black with the Huns.
They had 190's painted like 47's and we thought they were
our escort. We had eight of our fourteen guns frozen up.
46 degrees below. Got no. 2 engine knocked out over target.
Then #3 broke an oil line. We were keeping up with formation
on two outboard engines till we started under overcast. Then
#4 lost all its power. We were then 40 mi. from English
coast at 500 ft. and losing alt. fast. Bob said send SOS.
While I was sending SOS the rest was throwing stuff out to
lighten the load. On one engine we crossed the coast at 150
to 200 ft. We landed at a B-24 base. Had a 20mm hole in
verticle fin and horizontal stabilizer. It was the third
raid on the ship. I never will forget that raid. We sure
thought we would go down in Germany or the North Sea. There
was a destroyer standing by to pick us up in answer to my
SOS.
From Albert Soriano's memoirs:
Mission No. 19 Date Feb. 10, 1944
Target Brunswick, Germany
Time 2:36 Trip 8:00
Altitude 27,500 to 31,000 Temp. (C) 64 below
Damage Three 20 MM explosive shells in the tail. One 20 MM armour
piercing shell thru the right inboard engine, one 20 MM
shell thru left out board engine. Flak holes, we stopped
counting at forty-seven.
Memo If we ever didn't expect to get back, this was it. The ball
turret, tail, left waist, chin turret and one of the top
turret guns, were not firing. We had only two guns left to
fight off the attacks by fighters. Our right and left wing
men were shot down. Four men from one ship and six from the
other bailed out. Ten were lost in those two ships. We had
only one good engine left and one pulling only 1700 RPM.
This is just enough power to pull it's self along. We had
fighter attacks, all the way from the coast and back. We had
to leave the formation and come back by ourself. By the time
we hit the coast on the way home, we were down to 500 feet.
Just to stay up we had to throw overboard anything that we
could. Twice the pilot told us to prepare to bail out, to
abandon ship, but of course this was not possible, by this
time we were only 275 feet up and losing altitude. As we
were about to lose hope, we saw England, we made the most
beautiful landing on one engine. We landed at a B-24 base
near the coast.....Amen.....
From James Baldock's log:
No. XXI - Feb. 10, 1944
Took off at 730 hrs. & climbed to bombing altitude of 22,000 ft. before
leaving England. Crossed Dutch coast west of Zuider Zee and went straight
to target of Brunswick, Germnay. Dropped our bombs at 1159 hrs. on clear
target. Left target and proceeded to England on same route as we went in.
Met about forty F.W. 190's as we crossed Holland, the 190's stayed with us
until we reached our I.P., where JU-88's picked us up & stayed with us
around the target, where we were again met by about eighty F.W.-190s, &
ME-109's. These stayed with until we left enemy territory. Flak was very
heavy & accurate over target. No escort due to perfect tactics of the whole
Luftwaffe. Landed at B-24 base at 1500 hrs. on about 1 1/2 engines; minus
armour, flak suits, ammunition, etc. No damage to crew but ship in bad way.
TOTAL TIME = 141:00
PILOT - LT. BAILEY, R.M. - B-17-G - 707
A newspaper article, possibly the Tampa Times:
Tampa Air Gunner Survives Lurid Raid Against Heavy Odds
Special to The Times
An Eighth AAF Bomber Station, England--Staff Sgt. Albert Soriano,
Tampa, was ball turret gunner on an Eighth Air Force Flying Fortress which
came back to England through swarms of German fighters from an attack on
targets at Brunswick, Germany, with two engines out and only two guns,
operating.
Actually, the Fortress came back with only one engine operating
efficiently as the other had a runaway supercharger but was still providing
power. The other two had windmilling props, left that way so the Germans
couldn't see that the ship was in trouble.
The Fortress managed to stay close to its formation during the Nazi
attack, but the tail section near Soriano was badly damaged by enemy 20-
millemeter shells. However, he and other members of the crew escaped injury.
"They really tore up that tail," Soriano remarked. "We were lucky
to come through that one."
Over the Zuider Zee the ship began to fall behind its Fortress
formation, because of its slower speed. While crosing the English Channel
the crew threw out flak suits, radio equipment and other articles to lighten
the load.
Losing altitude steadily, the Fortress reached a Liberator station
to make an emergency landing with the crew safe and sound. It had flown
nearly two hours on two engines, and it had flown in formation through the
best fighter opposition the Germans could offer with only two of its guns
operating.
The son of Mr. and Mrs. Armando Soriano, 1810 1/2 Nebraska Ave.,
Tampa, Soriano was a mechanic before entering the AAf on Aug. 5, 1942, at
Camp Blanding.
*****************************************************************************
This quote is about the A-8 version of the FW-190 which was powered by a BMW
801 engine and had a maximum speed of 408 mph at about 20,000 feet. This
version carried a built-in armament of four 20 mm cannon and two 13 mm heavy
machine guns with sufficent ammunition for 15 seconds' firing. 'It was a nice
stable aircraft and an excellent firing platform,' recalled Hauptmann Anton
Hackl who flew this type with Fighter Geschwader 1. 'The big air-cooled
radial engine was tremendously rugged and would keep going even with one or
two cylinders shot away. With the engine and the toughened glass windscreen
in front of him the pilot was well protected from enemy fire from ahead.'
page 20, _Target_Berlin_ by Jeffrey L. Ethell and Alfred Price
*****************************************************************************