In my account of our 11 December 1944 bombing mission over Vienna, I concluded by saying "There were no purple hearts". That was true, but in the excitement the navigator crapped i n his pants and the upper turret gunner was knocked from his turret by a piece of FLAK. He was lucky that the piece of FLAK broke the steel azimuth ring of his gun station before it struck him in the side of his leather helmet and then penetrated the rubber gasket that held his earphone in place. However, the force was enough to knock him from his position and to bruise his cheek.

I was in my position in the nose and after bombs away, I crawled into the glass nose to check the bombs strike the target . It took a lot of mental effort to stick my nose out into the cauldron of smoke and fire, but I convinced myself to do it. That saved my life, because I had just gotten into viewing position, when I was showered with plexiglass. A piece of shrapnel had entered the nose glass where I had been kneeling and it would have caught me in the chest. Later, I found another piece of shrapnel had entered the nose wheel hub located just behind my position.

In the waist the radio operator was sitting on the floor pushing bundles of chaff through and opening in the plane. (Chaff was a X-mas type tinsel used to confuse the German radar aiming their FLAK guns.) He motioned to the engineer (the other waist gunner) to help him disperse the chaff, so he joined him on the floor and assisted. At the moment he moved from his position on the gun, FLAK tore through the side of the plane and exited the other side. He too, would have been injured or killed if he had been still standing at his gun.

So you can see there were no Purple Hearts that day, but we had some close calls. The navigator did a great job of getting us to Vis Island, but he was a stinking mess until he found some clean clothes and some soap and water.

-RWR- 3 June 1997

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