Before any deep penetration raids into Germany could be mounted, the Eighth had to build up a reservoir of strength and experience. The first sorties were against targets in France and the Low Countries, and the low losses incurred seemed to suggest that the American strategy was vindicated. In fact it was not so, at least not yet. These shortrange strikes were usually within the operating range of escort fighters, and the Germans did not consider the raids to be a serious enough threat to justify commitment of large numbers of its day fighters to Reichsverteidigung(defense of the Reich) duties. Meanwhile, the British were becoming impatient. As 1943 arrived, Winston Churchill noted pointedly that the USAAF had ‘yet to drop a single bomb’ on Germany. There were calls for the USAAF to retrain for night bombing, but Eaker, using a number of arguments, bought additional time to prove the value of precision bombing.

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By 1943, the Eighth felt confident enough to strike at cities on the German frontier, but these missions proved as useful to the Luftwaffe as to the Americans. Among other things, they enabled the Germans to perfect their daylight, defense operations by gaining experience in plotting bomber-formation speed, strength and probable destination. Thus, the Germans could place every available aircraft in interception position on the bomber route. The effectiveness of this experience became apparent when the Eighth first targeted Schweinfurt ‘as part of a ‘double strike’ mission on August 17, 1943, a year to the day after the first B-17 mission to Rouen. The anniversary was not a happy one-24 Fortresses were lost from the Schweinfurt force and another 36 from the formation assaulting a Messerschmitt complex at Regensburg. American losses totaled 19 percent, but the strategists felt the results gained over Schweinfurt were good enough (hearing production at one major plant was believed to be cut by two-thirds) to justify another mission.

‘Production … dropped by 38 percent,’ Nazi armaments minister Albert Speer said after the war. Had the USAAF not made a ‘crucial mistake’ by dividing up its 376 B-17s between two objectives, he added, damage would have been much worse.

Meanwhile, the losses to the bomb groups continued unabated. During the week prior to Black Thursday, the Eighth Air Force lost nearly 90 bombers on three missions. It was obvious to everyone, including the Germans, that not even America’s vast resources could sustain such losses indefinitely.

As expected, bomber crew morale began to falter as the losses piled up. The situation was aggravated somewhat by the Luftwaffe tactic of targeting one particular bomb group for heavy losses or, if possible, extinction, The 100th Bomb Group (BG) earned the nickname ‘Bloody 100th’ after it lost 12 out of 13 aircraft following an October 10 Munster mission, while the 492nd BG, a B-24 outfit, was nearly wiped out after becoming a ‘marked group’ the following year.

Joseph W. Baggs, 384th BG lead bombardier, recalled that as early as August only eight of the group’s original crews were left. Four days before Mission 115, the 381st BG’s medical officer wrote that ‘morale is the lowest that has yet been observed.’

This was the prevailing mood at Eighth Air Force bomber stations throughout the East Anglian countryside when crewmen were awakened during the pre-dawn darkness of October 14, 1943. Stumbling into briefing rooms, they were soon jolted wide awake when the red target string on the map was stretched-to Schweinfurt. There was some grumbling about the need to hit the town again after the August 17 mission, but pilots and officers could not afford the luxury of griping very long; there was too much planning to be done to ensure that Mission 115 went smoothly. Fear had to be put aside temporarily, while information on weather, fuel consumption, the target, squadron readiness, formations and myriad other details were absorbed and memorized. As the minutes ticked away and tension mounted, men from 16 B-17 bomb groups donned flight suits and performed other preflight duties. They included members of the 91st Bomb Group, based at Bassingbourne; the 92nd, at Alconbury; the 303rd, at Molesworth; the 305th, at Chelveston; the 306th, at Thurleigh; the 351st, at Polebrook; the 379th, at Kimbolton; the 381st, at Ridgewell; and the 384th, at Grafton-Underwood. These groups represented the 1st Bomb Division, and their Fortresses were marked by a white triangle on the vertical fin.

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