HELL FROM HEAVEN

Chapter 19

Mission 7 - Frightening - January 28, 1945

By Leonard Streitfeld, Bombardier, 600th Squadron

The entire crew was looking forward to going to London for the weekend. However, it was not to be since we were notified on Friday that we would be scheduled to fly on Sunday, January 28. It was a big disappointment but an order is an order.

Sunday morning we were awakened and our day started. We had breakfast and then went to the briefing room. Everyone sat in rows chatting with each other and wondered what the target for the day would be.

We were relieved that it was going to be Cologne again. The first two times we bombed it, there was very little, if any, flak and we thought it would be another "Milk Run." We got our gear together, loaded it on the truck and were driven to the plane. It was another dismal day and it was snowing. The ground crew was busy clearing the plane of the snow that accumulated on it.

It really didn't put one in the frame of mind to fly with the weather the way it was. It wasn't long, however, before we were set to take off. The guns were checked, oxygen pressure OK, bombs hung on rack properly and I took my place in back of the pilot for take off.

This always gave us some anxious moments while we were taxiing down the runway in the darkness until we were airborne. We thought of the plane that crashed and exploded on Christmas Eve, killing two of the crew.

Once we were assembled, we were on our way towards the coast of England, over the channel and then onto Germany. This was the routine every time our group flew.

As we gained altitude we eventually got above the clouds and the sunny skies looked good. In the early morning hours we were always flying from the West to East so the sun was in our eyes constantly.

One thing we always managed to see were squadrons of British Bombers coming back from a nighttime mission to Germany.

They were never in formation but scattered all over the sky. They bombed by night and we bombed by day, which gave us around the clock bombing.

I had my camera with me that day and was glad that I did because I was able to take some pictures that showed what it was like over Cologne that short period of time before, during and after we dropped our bombs.

Everything went along well until we started the bomb run. As the bombers slowly approached the target we saw flak at 12 o'clock level. This meant that it was directly in front of us and I knew that we were going to fly right thru it.

There was no evasive action and we were about to be plastered. Anytime anyone saw flak they reported as to where it was and this time, I was the one who told the crew the chilling words, Flak, 12 o'clock level. That plus Bandits in the area (Enemy fighters) were the two worst messages we could receive.

This is the part of a mission that is the most terrifying, knowing that there would be thousands of pieces of shrapnel flying around the air and nothing we could do about it. We were always sweating out a direct hit that could happen at any time.

The target was in front of us and the flak got more intense. We were in the thick of it and the shells were exploding all around us. Some of the bursts were so close you could hear the explosions as pieces of flak were hitting the ship.

I wanted to take pictures of this but I had to wait for the bombs to be released and it seemed like forever before I finally saw the lead ship drop it's bombs. I hit the toggle switch instantly and called on the intercom, "Bombs away." The bomb bay doors were closing while the flak was still coming at us furiously. This is the moment I chose to start taking motion pictures.

Although flak was all around us, the bursts in front of us seemed like our plane was being tracked. Every burst was exploding closer and closer and at eye level. I was certain that the next burst would be a direct hit. All I could do was sit and wait it out while taking pictures.

Suddenly a large piece of flak came in, just under where I was sitting, sending splinters of Plexiglas around the nose of the ship. Although Smitty and I were lucky enough to not be wounded by the flak or the Plexiglas, the jolt knocked the camera out of my hand sending it to the floor in front of me. It landed right next to the hole that the flak made and that was the end of picture taking for the time being. I looked down at the point of entry of the flak and thought to myself that if I were sitting any lower, I would have been a soprano.

There were hundreds of bursts of flak that were shot at our squadron. It took four minutes to fly thru it but it seemed like an hour. The flak finally thinned out and soon it stopped.

We took the course back towards England but before we left Germany we ran into another barrage of flak. It was nothing like over Cologne and soon we were out of that area and truly on our way home.

I put on the radio for the crew so we could listen to the BBC and some big band music for the trip back to the base. It did help settle us down.

On many of our missions, when we had the radio on, we would hear Lord Haw Haw. He was a British traitor who would broadcast from Germany and try to break our moral. I could never figure out how he knew so much about the crews that were flying... even the names of some on the mission. One time he even congratulated someone for flying his last mission.

When we arrived at the base and were out of the plane, we inspected it. There were many flak holes, large and small, all over the ship and how none of us were wounded by it is beyond my comprehension.

We got thru this in one piece and were very lucky but I was thinking about the other twenty-eight missions we still had to fly to complete our tour.

Would our luck hold out?

HELL FROM HEAVEN by Leonard Streitfeld, Hammonton, New Jersey. Library of Congress Catalogue card number: 94-092215. HELL FROM HEAVEN is available in the 398th PX.

Personal History Information

Veteran: Leonard Streitfeld
Bombardier, 600th Squadron
Date of Personal History: December 2003 Web Page submission. Excerpted from HELL FROM HEAVEN by Leonard Streitfeld.
Author: Leonard Streitfeld
Submitted to 398th Web Pages by: Leonard Streitfeld