My Time in The Mighty 8th

The wheels screamed as our mighty B-17 touched down on the runway. I sighed a sigh of relief and anxiety,it was here just a month earlier I heard my cousin died in an explosion after his B-24 crash landed seconds earlier. I have heard the horror story's of this dang air war. I'm starting to wish I was still 10 and not 19 and had been drafted. But now with our super weapon the B-17 we know there is nothing they could do to stop us,but we were just young fools first in the war.

It has been nearly three weeks since then and we now know that ain't true. My bomber crew and me are all from Roanoke,Va. where we grew up. Jim Long: the pilot,George Wington: the co-pilot,Winston Rocker: the bombardier,Rockford Jeep: navigator,Chevy Johnson: radio operator,Mustang Adams: roof bubble gunner,Johnny "John Boy" Ridge: tail gunner,Ty Viper: belly gunner,and finally my best friend Austin Dillard and me Robert Eritl: the two waist gunners. "Lock and load boys,hold your fire till they get close!" Jim stressed over the radio. "Don't worry Jim.Me and Susie intend on getting 3 more than last week." Austin replied. I turned to him and asked "Who's Susie?" That's my gun I named her after our first mission." It was only our second mission and we were still 300 miles out of the reich.

"Here they come boys!" Yelled the lead bomber's pilot. I heard a loud scream and felt the hair on my neck stand up. The first fighter planes screamed by us.It was about an hour to the drop zone and we had to go through all this for what to loose a pay load of a thousand bombs that only half would reach there target because there bomber would be shoot down.

Our .50 cals were slinging links,lead,and casings everywhere and where load enough you could think. "Hold your fire hold your fire the jerrys are leaving!?" Jim said over the radio. "That must mean there either out of gas or we are..." He didn't get to finish before a huge flack shell hit the bomber next to us. "We're in the flack field,hold on and pray we make it!" Was the lead bomber's reply.

"Mayday,mayday were going down" That was the cries we had been hearing for the past hour. Our target was a ship yard on a German river,we were to destroy it.