· RUEL SK

The Way Back
107
Chapter 5
THE WAY BACK
Twelve of 35 ships were leaving the so-called vertical front, but they were still in the
danger zone - a gigantic tri-dimensional web where hungry spiders wearing black crosses
could pick them up for dinner. The surviving bombers had lost their tight formation. They
were the pitiful remains of one of the top bombing accuracy groups in the entire Second
Bombardment Division. There would be no more marksmanship award in "Target
Victory," which designated them as the three-month accuracy champs. Today they were
fighting simply to survive and make it back home.
The BRULAND crew
As the fire in No. 3 engine would not go out, copilot Peter Belitsos went back to the
fuel transfer control panel with engineer Stephen Gray. They went through the procedure
again and again but nothing worked. "We flew for quite a while losing altitude and were
now fully expecting that the ship would blow up when Palmer hit the bell. "
As the autopilot was not working, pilot Palmer Bruland tried to trim the plane so he
could get to the bomb bay and jump. But when he left the controls, the ship nosed up.
After going back and leveling off a few times, he fmally made it out.
The nine-man crew parachuted safely from 922-Q which went down 3 kilometers
southeast of Giessen.
The DEWEY crew
Because the intercom was out, pilot William Dewey sent his copilot, 2nd Lt.
William Boykin Jr., to the waist to report on the damage. Looking out the copilot's
window, the pilot could see a three-foot diameter hole in the upper surface of the wing
behind the No.3 engine, where lOO-octane gasoline was splashing out: "When he came
back, Boykin was shaken. The tail turret had caught fire, and both waist gunners were
wounded and bloody along with the tail gunner. There was a huge hole in the right waist
ahead of the window, and the left waist window was shattered. Control cables to the tail