Dailies of the 323rd - the 91st Bomb Group!

As we were about midway across the Channel, our spare element was
attacked by four Me109s. We had no friendly fighter coverage.
On one of my earlier missions with Capt. Bramble, we had been in
a similar position--crossing the Channel in a spare element and
attacked by enemy fighters. Now as Pilot in command, I wasn't
about to remain in such a vulnerable position.
Radio silence was the order of the day. I couldn't call the
element leader to tell him to get up to the main body of the
formation. Short of that, I did the best I could. I pulled my
ship forward and had our Co-Pilot make hand signals to him to
move up. The element leader didn't respond. I repeated this
several times but there still was no response.
I actually pulled our ship out in front of the element leader and
continued to give hand signals but again there was no response.
We fired a flare but no response. I had the co-pilot flash some
signals with the Aldis lamp. No response.
On an earlier mission, my second mission, flying with Dave
Bramble, we were in an identical position: wingman in a threeship
spare element. We had been attacked by "109s" over the
Channel and lost one of the three ships. I would not permit this
to happen again! I pulled our ship out of the spare element and
took a position as the seventh ship in the high flight of the
Group. This happened to be the 401st Squadron.
Some years after the War, I visited the National Archives in
Washington DC and looked up the record on this mission. The
report showed that the entire spare element joined the high
flight of the high group. This wasn't true. I was the only one
that took that position. Unfortunately, the two ships from the
spare element were both shot down over enemy territory.
Over Central Germany there was another problem. There were some
well-developed cumulus clouds all around us. The wing leader had
to do a lot of turning to avoid flying through them. Naturally
this caused the formation to scatter somewhat. My recollection
was that the primary target was obscured and we were doing a lot
of maneuvering to get to an alternate target and avoid the large
cumulo-nimbus clouds over central Germany.
Some of these maneuvers required the Wing leader to make tighter
turns to avoid the clouds. This scattered the formation somewhat.
At about the worst time, the Wing was attacked by enemy fighters
nose and tail. At one time, my Co-Pilot, "Kelly" Kovachovich,
another "old Co-Pilot," had the controls and we were attacked
from the nose and tail. I looked up to see a "109" making a head-