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

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 headon
attack. I felt he was aiming at me!
Though "Kelly" had the controls at the moment, I didn't have time
to say anything, I pushed right rudder as hard as I could and
caused the ship to skid to the right. The line of fire from the -
109 came down between our number 2 engine and the cabin. We took
a bullet in the number 2 fuel tank and a cannon shell in the left
horizontal stabilizer.
In my Advanced Pilot Training program, I had expressed a desire
to fly light bombardment aircraft. For this I was given training
in a T-6 in aerial gunnery. I fired on air -to-ground targets at
Eglin Field. I never fired a gun in combat but had some knowledge
of aerial gunnery and problems if the airplane wasn't trimmed
right as in a "skid.". This is exactly what I did. I caused the
B-17 to skid to the right. The attacking pilot might not have
noticed this as his fire came down the left side of the fuselage.