Think Memphis Belle was the first plane with 25 missions in ww2?

Recce21 said:
Pretty sure that the Luftwaffe had racked up FAR MORE than 25 missions/plane by the time Memphis Belle showed up
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Luftwaffe pilots and aircrew flew until they were killed or in the end, had nothing left to fly. And even then many fought as infantry. I think Adolf Galland, famous German ace was shot down seven or eight times.
 
That's only the first US planes to do it.

I suspect the first allied bomber to comlete a tour would probably have been either a Wellington, Hampden or maybe even a Whitley.
 
I'll have to look up the exact number when I get home, but Wing Commander Hughie Edwards, VC, flew something like 94 daylight sorties in Blenheim bombers in 1940/41/42. Many orders of magnitude more difficult than surviving 25 hops in a B17.
 
American deal. Think they started with 25 and later bumped it up to 50, when the Germans killed crews faster than they could replace them. Found this book recently, tells the tale from a Bombardier's perspective. Aborted a mission on his 50 trip and crash landed back at base. Odds weren't that good and he was seriously worried he might have to make another run. ;)

Target Ploesti Leroy W. Newby

Grizz
 
ill look it up ,thanks ,love ww2 stuff

it would have been pretty darn terrifying being in an allied bomber over germany ....brit,canuck or yankee....a hell of alot of guts to fly 2 missions(first one would be fun ,lol) let alone 25 ...... theres one luftwaffa night fighter pilot that i think shot down 9 lancaster in a single night ......seen his tail wing with his victories at london war museum a long time ago ...near the fuesalge of the same type (me 110 i think )of plane hess flew to england to attempt a personel peace deal with the empire. Pretty neat .... lots of stuff there to see from the wars ...including a V2 rocket ...ironic

aside from a kamikaze pilot i think zee german u boats were more dangerous to be in ...... 75% loss ...ouch ..... and extra super terrifying to be in one of those if you went down and didnt die asap ....at least in a plane you could believe in your parachute saving your butt

speaking of bomber pilots and mission ....top dog would have to go to hans rudel or something like that ...read up on him ...... hes fricken insane ....... stuka pilot ....most combat missions ever!!! like 2500 or so i think ..... most decorated soldier/airman etc period at least on german side ...... 519 tanks (like a soviet tank army or something ) ,a battleship,a destroyer maybe also a cruiser too , 6 fighter planes , and the list goes on and on......shot down like 6 times from russian flak , wounded bad eventually ,specially modified stuka / controls for his busted legs or so ....survived ....just unbelievable

also that movie about memphis belle is awesome ....... i love that joke the belly gunner tells .......nein we zinks your zying to escape !!!!!!
 
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WWII is not the only time. SMELLIE and I are acquainted with a fine and extraordinary Gentleman who lives in San Diego, California, who completed a tour in Korea. He flew as a Bombardier/Navigator in a WWII A-26, low level, at night, in the Mountains of Korea, attacking enemy transports, trains, ships, buildings and railroads. Over 80% of the original members of his Squadron did not return from Korea.

When the North Koreans started hiding their trains in tunnels, he started skipping 500 pound bombs with delayed action fuses into the tunnel. There is a VERY small margin of error in this practice because too high or too far left or right and the bomb hit the mountain. Too low, and the bomb bounced back up and hit the aircraft. AND, these old WWII bombs and fuses, supposedly delayed action, sometimes went off instantly when they missed the tunnel and hit the solid rock. Not very conductive to longevity if you are dropping one.

When the North Koreans started putting Flak Guns around the tunnels, a second aircraft accompanied the first one to try to suppress the anti-aircraft fire. Attacking anti-aircraft guns at night, with mountains all around, is not a healthy lifestyle either.
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My dad flew 30 missions as an RCAF tail gunner in a Halifax. As I grew older and came to fully realize what that meant in terms of beating the odds, my respect for him increased immensely. He was one of the guys who had the distinction of being a survivor of the farthest sea rescue mission of the war. They went down in the North Sea after being shot up by flak over Oslo fijord and the air/sea rescue launch that eventually picked them up ran out of fuel getting back to England. Fuel drums were dropped by air to the launch to get it back to England. Wild, eh?
 
I have a number of books about the RCAF in WW2 - chief among them is Murry Peden's story, 'A thousand shall fall'. Like most of them, it will break your heart to read it.

I look after a group of RCAF graves in our local area. There are, I'm sad to say, many.

There are no words to express how I feel about the personnel of Bomber Command, or of 8AAf. We are surrounded, here in East Anglia, by their legacy - just one small county, Cambridgeshire, had FORTY airfields.

tac
 
LawrenceN said:
My dad flew 30 missions as an RCAF tail gunner in a Halifax. As I grew older and came to fully realize what that meant in terms of beating the odds, my respect for him increased immensely. He was one of the guys who had the distinction of being a survivor of the farthest sea rescue mission of the war. They went down in the North Sea after being shot up by flak over Oslo fijord and the air/sea rescue launch that eventually picked them up ran out of fuel getting back to England. Fuel drums were dropped by air to the launch to get it back to England. Wild, eh?
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Several yrs ago I got the story of a man who had been a Halifax tail gunner for inclusion in a book which I am assisting with to tell the stories of local veterans. He did 33 missions and made it thru being wounded once in the process. He is still hale and hearty at 92 and has become a buddy of mine. It's a small world. It turned out that I knew his navigator who had grown up on the homestead next to ours in SK. The Cdn War Museum has the nose art panel of his Halifax, which they called "Avenging Angel", on display. He visited the CWM several yrs ago at which time they took a photo of him standing beside the panel. He is the sole surviving member of his crew. The CWM was selling coffee mugs and baseball hats with the "Avenging Angel" nose art. I ordered a few and presented him with one for his morning coffee.
 
buffdog said:
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WWII is not the only time. SMELLIE and I are acquainted with a fine and extraordinary Gentleman who lives in San Diego, California, who completed a tour in Korea. He flew as a Bombardier/Navigator in a WWII A-26, low level, at night, in the Mountains of Korea, attacking enemy transports, trains, ships, buildings and railroads. Over 80% of the original members of his Squadron did not return from Korea.

When the North Koreans started hiding their trains in tunnels, he started skipping 500 pound bombs with delayed action fuses into the tunnel. There is a VERY small margin of error in this practice because too high or too far left or right and the bomb hit the mountain. Too low, and the bomb bounced back up and hit the aircraft. AND, these old WWII bombs and fuses, supposedly delayed action, sometimes went off instantly when they missed the tunnel and hit the solid rock. Not very conductive to longevity if you are dropping one.

When the North Koreans started putting Flak Guns around the tunnels, a second aircraft accompanied the first one to try to suppress the anti-aircraft fire. Attacking anti-aircraft guns at night, with mountains all around, is not a healthy lifestyle either.
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Been there, done that. Bomb did not go off (obviously.) Neptune anti-sub bomber attack speed was about 300 kts at 20 feet.
 
tacfoley,

Where are you when you are in Cambridgeshire? I did my basic training at Bassingbourn Barracks in 1983 and was posted there from 1987-90 as an instructor. In the summers we'd get visitors of a certain age and style of dress marking them as Americans, wandering the old airfield from which Memphis Belle and the rest of 91st Bombardment Group flew.
 
tacfoley said:
I have a number of books about the RCAF in WW2 - chief among them is Murry Peden's story, 'A thousand shall fall'. Like most of them, it will break your heart to read it.

I look after a group of RCAF graves in our local area. There are, I'm sad to say, many.

There are no words to express how I feel about the personnel of Bomber Command, or of 8AAf. We are surrounded, here in East Anglia, by their legacy - just one small county, Cambridgeshire, had FORTY airfields.

tac
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For what it's worth, I consider Murray Peden's "A Thousand Shall Fall" the very best of the "best". If you have any interest and you haven't read this book I can't recommend it enough. My copy is a first edition but if you get one of the second editions you might be just a little impressed by the comments of one old chap named Arthur Harris.
 
I too highly recommend Peden's "A Thousand Shall Fall". It's been a long time since I read it but if I remember correctly it follows the author through enlistment in RCAF, the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, to Ops on Stirlings ,then on to Fortresses in 100 Squadron RAF. 100 squadron was an early counter electronics warfare unit. Hope my memory serves me well. It's been 20 yrs since I read the book. Time to do so again.
 
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Correction- done a little research to "refresh" the old mind. Murray Peden flew Fortress's with 214 Squadron -100 Group RAF. I do have to read this book again.
 
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Grandfather flew with the RCAF in WW2. Navigator/Bombardier. Swordfish was the squadron emblem. He still has his flight log book and survival kit (whistle, matches etc, and a highly detailed cloth map of France, Belgium and the Low Countries). The log details include several attacks on e-boats, a Uboat and a mine laying mission around a French Port, Le Harve I think. On the mission over Le Harve he has a short note in quotes in the margin and its in capital letters.

"Flak effective a few VERY CLOSE".
 
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