Free Combat Crew by John Comer

long and detailed. Official claims contended that the target was half destroyed. In truth, something like thirty-five percent of the capacity to produce bearings was destroyed.
    The 8th Bomber Command had taken a frightful, shocking loss. Sixty B-17s shot down! Twenty-seven other Fortresses were damaged too severely to be repaired. Another blow dealt us at this time was the incredible failure of Air Force planning to coordinate the facilities in North Africa with a reasonable expectation of the need for repairs. Colonel LeMay found, to his amazement, that the only service he could get would be refueling! 6 There were no available parts, and no mechanics to repair the heavy battle damage his division suffered — which was comparable to our own.
    The combined Schweinfurt-Regensburg casualties were:
60 B-17s shot down — sixteen percent of the total force
27 damaged too much to be repaired
60 B-17s left in North Africa due to no facilities for immediate repairs (what eventually happened to them I do not know)
147 Total Aircraft
    Morning brought a severe letdown in morale. At breakfast very few men showed up. The long rows of empty tables took away my appetite. Only yesterday men were crowding in line waiting for seats. That day there were too many unoccupied seats. The usual chatter and banter was absent. Men ate in silence and left quickly. I found myself looking around for faces that I knew I would never see again. What about the future? Was yesterday a preview of what we could expect? That question hung heavily over Ridgewell Airdrome on the morning of August 18.
    It seemed to me that it would be a week before we could get enough replacements to make up the minimum requirements of a Combat Group. Nevertheless, that evening I made a trip to the base canteen to check out the faces. The people I looked for were there, so that meant nothing was shaping up for the next day, as I read the signs. The men who loaded the bombs were called Armorers. If none of them were at the canteen we knew that bombs were being loaded and made mental preparations for the next morning. Many times last-minute weather changes would make raids possible. Three favorable conditions had to exist simultaneously: Visibility over the target had to be fair, local conditions had to be favorable for takeoff, and visibility had to be assured for landing a large group of planes on the return.
    The Americans and British had a decided advantage over the German weather forecasters, because of the Allied weather stations in Greenland and Iceland. The weather forces that determined what conditions would prevail over Europe developed in the Arctic regions. It was helpful to be able to tie in the long-range forecasts with on-the-scene reports from Allied weather planes sent out over the target areas. Also of great value was the Turing electronic machine. It quickly unscrambled the German military and diplomatic code, and could read the German weather reports broadcast to their military and air units each day.
    The 8th Air Force officially claimed 288 German fighters were shot down on the August 17 Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission. The R.A.F. throughout the war was positive that American claims were grossly inflated. I certainly agreed. There was really no reliable way to determine accurately the number of aircraft shot down. Probably one-third would have been closer to being correct.
    The problem in claiming fighters shot down was that it was rare when only one position fired at a fighter. Sometimes twenty guns were involved and in a few cases as many as fifty. At times several gunners thought they shot down the same fighter and put in claims for it, so the claims ballooned. Also, enemy fighters were so heavily armored that they could shake off heavy hits and keep coming.
    At the command headquarters General Eaker’s staff that morning pondered deep and searching questions. What was the lesson learned at Schweinfurt? Had the R.A.F. been correct in their