Early Lessons
ALCONBURY
42-29833 Alconbury
RAF Alconbury (USAAF Station 102) in Cambridgeshire was to become the 95th Bombardment Group’s first home. The Group arrived on April 15, 1943 and was stationed at Alconbury as aircraft were ferried in from the United States. The crews were busy with practice and familiarization flights until May 13th when it flew its first operational mission, attacking an airfield in France. However, tragedy was soon to strike. On May 27th, at approximately 8:30 p.m., ground personnel at Alconbury were arming a B-17 of the 412th Bomb Squadron when a 500-pound bomb detonated.
Captain Clifford Cole recounted:
“On 27 May 1943, the ground crews were loading the planes, checking radios and going over the B17s’ engines prior to tomorrow’s mission. . . .Without warning the bomb load on ship no. 229685 exploded with a horrifying blast. The plane, as such, literally disappeared, taking its ground crew with it. The sky rained debris from the blast. The shock waves traveled hundreds of feet in every direction. Nineteen men were killed, twenty seriously injured, and the grim caprice of the concussion took an erratic toll. GIs picked up an ordnance officer some distance away. He was dead, unmarked by so much as a piece of flying metal. An engineer, standing among other men at another point on the field, dropped to the ground, apparently in a faint. Men ran to aid him. He was gone. Others, feet from him, were untouched. One combat crew was lounging in the afternoon sun near their plane. Nine of the crew members were lying flat on the ground. The navigator, Lieutenant Frank Metzger, was sitting upright. The nine men were not physically hurt by the blast; Lieutenant Metzger was killed by concussion. Their plane was broken in the center with the two sections completely separated. Four other B-17s nearby were crumpled like old paper. Eleven others were written off with damage so severe they wouldn’t fly again for months.
“Here, in one second, went the lives, the efforts, and the careful schooling of some of the Air Corps’ most vital assets, the men on the line. They could get more planes, but dedicated, trained maintenance personnel were irreplaceable. . . .The 95th would fly 321 combat missions without a comparable ground catastrophe, but they were to take their share of good and bad fortune in the air.”
The final toll: 4 B-17s destroyed; 11 others damaged; 18 men killed instantly; 1 more died later. The early practice of loading fused bombs was discontinued.
Source: Paul Bellamy, Archivist (Team Alconbury)
KIEL
During May 1943, the 95th was in the process of moving from Alconbury to RAF Framlingham (USAAF Station 153) in Suffolk. The group had already entered combat with bombing missions to France, Belgium, and even Germany, but it was at Framlingham that the 95th would get its first real taste of the bloody battle raging over Europe. During its short stay at Framlingham, often known as Parham airfield, the 95th experienced its worst day of the war on June 13, 1943—its ninth combat mission and first to the Kiel shipyards.
Navigator Ellis B. Scripture recalled:
“Up to ‘Kiel Day’ the 95th had flown to targets in France and Belgium, relatively close to the English Channel coast. We had also gone to Emden, Germany, which was the deepest penetration to date and we also bombed a refinery in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Then came Kiel. . . .The Kiel mission which we flew from Framlingham on June 13th 1943 I think will have to go down in history as the day the 95th Group became combat ready, and it is probably the one day that many of the original crew members will remember most of all the days of WWII.
“That day under Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest III—the great-grandson of a famous Confederate cavalry general during the American civil war—the 95th would fly in a new formation. Instead of the box formation devised by General Curtis LeMay, which proved difficult for enemy fighters to penetrate, it would fly wingtip-to-wingtip in Forrest’s flatter formation. The target that day was the shipyards at Kiel on the north-west coast of Germany.” “The concentrated attacks persisted during our entire operation over German soil. It was an extremely vicious air battle, and it was unquestionably the longest period of combat we had seen to date.”
Capt. John Miller, pilot of ‘T’Ain’t A Bird’, said:
“We were badly outnumbered by the German fighters and the flak was highly accurate. . . Frightening indeed. . . .The enemy fighters were really boring in, putting it to us.” ‘T’Ain’t A Bird’ waist gunner Sgt. Arlie Arneson said: “I can’t remember much after the bomb run except continual fighter attacks. . . .We had taken a beating, a heavy beating.”
The lead plane, in which General Forrest was flying, went down, killing most on board, including Gen. Forrest. The 95th lost twelve planes and 78 men that day. Pilot Robert Cozens, who pulled his aircraft into the lead position to complete the mission, later wrote:
“Needless to say, the ‘Forrest’ formation was never again flown by the 95th or any other Group.”
Gen. Forrest had also insisted on switching to a different type of oil for the guns to help alleviate jamming at high altitudes. Unfortunately, the new oil had the opposite effect, leaving the Fortresses even more vulnerable as 40% of the guns jammed immediately, preventing the firing of even a single round.
Of the 26 B-17s that set off that day, one failed to take off and one returned early. Of the rest, 10 failed to return, 12 returned badly damaged, and 2 were beyond repair, leaving the 95th with one serviceable aircraft and one crew. The returning men were in shock to have lost so many friends.
Scripture noted:
“The words ‘Remember Kiel’ became our rallying cry for the remaining two long and often bitter years of the air war in Europe.”