Subject: B-17 Boomerang Barbara, mission 8
From: [email-masked] (Michael Fitch)

B-17 Boomerang Barbara, Mission 8.

        From William J. Watson's diary:

January 5       Eighth raid - Target Bordeaux - Rough, very accurate
                flack but we didn't get hit by it. Fighter hit us
                over target and stayed with us about 30 minutes.
                There were about 50 attacked us - 97 German fighters
                were shot down on the raid. Al and Smitty claimed
                one each. Jim could have if he had known it in time.
                I am fairly sure I shot down the one Smitty claimed.
                Got a 20mm through waist into radio room and into
                Bombay. It missed me about 2 inches. Was not an
                explosive one. Captain Bailey's crew all shot up.
                Lead bombardier killed on bomb run. Roughest raid
                in the last year. Sure was glad to get back.

        From Albert Soriano's memoirs:

Mission No.     8               Date    Jan. 5, 1944
Target          Bordeaux, France
Time            1:47            Trip    8:15 hrs
Altitude        22,700          Temp.   (C) 37 below
Damage          One 20 mm hole thru radio room.
Memo    A 20 MM shell missed our radioman Watson by only four inches. 
        The shell passed kitty corner thru the radioroom. We were under
        heavy fighter attack and lost our left wing man (The ship
        flying next to our left wing.)

        From a local British newspaper:

                Two French Airfields Get Hammering
                        -----------------
Kiel Is Blasted 2nd Straight Day by Forts, Libs; 3,000 Planes Out Tuesday
                        -----------------
        Eighth Air Force heavy bombers, ranging far over occupied
Europe from the Baltic to the Bay of Biscay, struck heavily at German
airfields at Bordeaux and Tours in France yesterday, and for the second
time in two days droned the long 850-mile round trip to Kiel to
hammer vital Nazi shipping.
        The multi-pronged raids--unidentified targets in western 
Germany also were attacked--were the second day's operations in a row
for the American four-motored bombers and their long-range fighter
escorts. Kiel and Munster were attacked in Germany Tuesday in a day
of aerial assault which saw some 3,000 Allied warplanes take part.
        American fighters escorted the bombers on all of yesterday's
missions except the long looping run over the Bay of Biscay to 
Bordeaux. Fortress crews who had to go in there without their usual
P38 and P47 protection returned telling of fierce enemy interceptor
attacks.

                Tougher Than Schweinfurt

        The Bordeaux raid was described by one pilot, Maj. Thomas
Kenny, of Youngstown, O., skipper of the Fortress Fertile Myrtle, as
more difficult than the costly attack on the Schweinfurt ball-
bearing works in Germany last October.
        "I've been on 19 missions, including Schweinfurt," Kenny
said, "and this was the most difficult yet. We were attacked by 50
fighters all the way from the target to the coast."
        Other crewmen reported heavy flak, but said that in spite
of it the airfield was heavily bombed.

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