| Mission
8 was a very interesting one. The target
was an aircraft assembly plant on Kobe in the Osaka area on
the Japanese mainland. The Wing headquarters complimented
the mission saying that it was the most operationally efficient
strikes to date. Captain Senger (P-21)
led the formation and I his first element. This was my first
work of this kind over the target.
Conditions
were such that we had to bomb by instruments in that we
had undercast and overcast conditions. We had ten to twelve
fighters make persistent attacks at our element, which was
low, and to the right. Our bombardier Rose sent one down
smoking and Tommy Latta in the tail damaged another. After
that they just flew along in formation out of range and
were probably radioing our speed and altitude to the ground
stations. Shortly the attacks stopped and very accurate
began to his our formation and we settled in on the bomb
run. Some of our planes were hit severely but managed to
return safely. Our damage amounted to small holes in the
tail, wing fuel cells punctured and a hole in No. 2 engine
cowling. After landing the other boys told us we would never
know how many other close calls we had. They could see from
their positions kin formation many large bursts of flak
exploding under our ship. All too low to do damage."
Submitted by Phil Van Schuyler
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