Subject: B-17 Boomerang Barbara, mission 7
From: [email-masked] (Michael Fitch)

SUBJECT: B-17 Boomerang Barbara, mission 7.

        From William J. Watson's diary:

December 24     Seventh raid - Target Secret rocket installations near
                Abbeyville, France. Ward hit our target and got a shack.
                No flack or fighters, 12,000 feet.

        From Albert Soriano's memoirs:

Misiion No.     7                       Date    Dec. 24, 1943
Target
Time            11:32 hrs               Trip    5:30 hrs
Altitude        12,300                  Temp.   (C) 27 below
Damage          none
Memo            This was the first raid we made on the rocket installations.
                This raid was we called a milk-run. No enemy fighters
                and no flak, an easy run...

        From a local British newspaper:

                Biggest U.S. Mission Hits 'Rocket Area'
                                ---------
        1,500 Bombers, Fighters Raid France Without A single Loss
                                ---------
        Two thousand Allied warplanes seized air mastery over the invasion
coast of France during the Christmas weekend and hammered targets which
may have been the Nazi's secret rocket gun emplacements.
        The raids, climaxing a five-day assault on installations in the
German-held Pas de Calais area, were carried out Friday by some 1,500
bombers and fighters of the U.S. Air Forces, and more than 500 RAF,
Dominion and Allied fighters and medium and light bombers.
        Not one fighter or bomber was lost from the huge fleet which set
up an air umbrella over a deep beachhead along the closest French coast.
Luftwaffe fighter planes were unable to get past even the outer fringe of
the cordon of Allied fighters surrounding the bombers, and crews in many
instances were able to make two runs over the targets to insure accuracy.
                        1,300 Forts, Libs, Fighters
        A force of more than 1,300 Flying Fortresses, Liberators and
American fighters made up the heavy artilery of the armada. A big
formation of Marauders also went out, while the RAF sent out Mitchells,
Bostons and Typhoons to hit similar targets. RAF, Dominion and Allied
fighters covered the medium and light bombers.
        With good weather favoring the air fleet, crews reported precision
bombing.
        The assault on the invasion coastline targets came only a few hours
after RAF heavy bombers returned from another major raid on Berlin, in which
more than 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the Nazi capital to bring the
total weight of bombs on Germany since last May 23 to 100,000 tons, a
weight equal to the total of all bombs dropped on Germany from 1940 to
spring of this year.
                        Terror Raid, Says Berlin
        Dispatches from Sweden said that the most recent Berlin raid, 
which once again brought from the Nazis charges of "terrorism," had struck
most heavily in the industrial southern portion of the city. Seventeen RAF
planes were reported missing.
        Friday's Allied onslaught on targets in France was rumored as a 
"pre-invasion blitz" in neutral capitals and in unofficial circles in
Washington. Authoritative observers in England discounted such stories.
        Christmas Eve dusk was just falling as the last formations of
bombers returned from the Continent to report the day's targets had been
wiped out. Some group leaders reported the day's work was among the best
jobs of bombing U.S. heavy bombers have yet done in this theater.
        For the Marauders, the raids marked completion of almost 600 sorties
in five days.
        There were no raids on Christmas itself.

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