I told him that we would try him out on a test flight but that he would have to be able to communicate perfectly with the crew on the inter-communication system because crew survival in combat depended on teamwork. When I asked why he wanted to leave his safe job with the air police for this dangerous duty, he said that he wanted to do his part in the war. When he approached me the week previously, requesting to be a member of the crew, it took him almost five minutes to make his wishes known. We had our doubts because Rudy had one of the most severe cases of stuttering in my experience. This was Rudy’s first flight with our crew, and it would be a test to see if the crew would accept him as a regular member. Rudy Malkin was replacing our newly grounded G.M. Ward Simonson, our radio operator and medic, was in the hospital, and his replacement was P.J. This time, there were two different faces among the 10 of us.

Most of us had trained together in the States, and this was the 11th time that we would be flying over Fortress Europe. Our crew sat together in one apprehensive clump, drawing reassurance from each other’s presence. Outside the blacked-out buildings, we moved about as if we were in the bottom of a black well, shivering in the damp cold that penetrated through out winter flying clothes.Īt the auditorium, where the briefing was held, our ID cards were checked by the sentry who was stationed at the door we didn’t want any unauthorized persons flying our mission for us. There was little banter and no unnecessary conversation as we washed and dressed unhurriedly breakfast was scheduled for 5 o’clock, and our mission briefing was scheduled for 6 am. The aircrews were awakened at 4 am on February 22, 1944, at our base at Bassingbourne, just south of Cambridge in England. (Read more first-hand accounts from the Second World War inside the pages of WWII History magazine.) Our Singing Crew For some of the crew, it may have seemed like just another mission for me, sitting in the pilot’s seat, most of the 8 hours of flying were filled with unrelieved tension. It is taken from my dairy and from the official Eighth Air Force records of that mission.

The following story describes one of our air raids when I was piloting a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress during World War II.

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