Then our cockpit exploded with sparks, noise and concussion. Tracers spit out over my head. Luckily, George and I crouched down, making ourselves as small as possible.

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The tracers melted away into the smoke and fire of the refinery. Murphy cut loose in the top gun turret with the twin 50s. I wanted to shoot him–he was ruining our bomb run!

Wham! More bullets through the cockpit! The emergency windows blew open, giving us a 225-mile-per-hour blast of air in the cockpit.

But now we were down to almost ground level, lined up and anxious to go. We came up to the target chimney height and through the smoke, over the other bomb explosions. Then, bombs away! Our plane was suddenly 4,000 pounds lighter.

In front of us, Mooney’s bombs had released beautifully, but he was veering off to the right, and we were supposed to hit the same building! [Captain R.C. Mooney's plane, Hitler's Hearse, had taken several direct hits. Mooney himself had been killed instantly by groundfire.]

Through the smoke, down on the deck we scooted. Mooney and Stan and Sparrier were above us, too high. ‘Come on down, boys,’ I prayed. ‘Fighters can’t dive on you when you’re on the deck.’ We hang right below them, with ol’ Heimie’s plane so close, he was sticking his right wing through my waist window.

Then we noticed Bob’s engine was feathered, but then he started it windmilling to fool any fighters looking for cripples. Sure enough, there was a Me-110 circling over us. He had already shot down two 24s, but for some reason he didn’t close with our tight-flying ‘Purple Heart Squadron.’ Neither did any of the other fighters. We knew we’d never be able to re-form with the main group, and we were afraid to break radio silence for fear of drawing fighters, so we followed Bob as he headed home, sticking close together, to protect us against fighters.

Three minutes after ‘bombs away,’ the boys told me we had been hit pretty hard and that Van was bleeding badly. An anti-aircraft cannon shell had hit his knee as he was turning the automatic camera. Miller, in the tin-can, tail-turret, called to say that the bombs we dropped had exploded and our target was flattened and burning fiercely.

Finally, Mooney’s No. 2 engine was feathered, but his bomb bay doors wouldn’t close, so the boys began tossing out everything that wasn’t permanently nailed down. They had to get rid of all excess weight in order to keep the big bird flying. They even tossed out most of their .50-caliber machine guns and ammo. It was the only way they could keep flying and save gas. It would be a long haul to any safe haven and they knew it, but at least we were sticking together and that must have cheered them some.

James broke radio silence after about 10 minutes and told me he wouldn’t have enough gas to get home so I told him to head for the nearest neutral landing spot.

He was afraid to mention places over the radio, so I asked him if he wanted to go to ‘gobble gobble land.’ I dropped back and flew on his wing so he could save gas. He was so slowed down that the other three crates were almost out of sight.

While this was going on, navigators on both planes were busy making our courses for Turkey. We realized that Mooney was making for Turkey, too. So I told James to pour on the coal and catch up with them.

This was when James’ plane started doing acrobatics. I didn’t know what was up, but I followed him and all of a sudden I saw a lot of flak puffs. We were passing over Bucharest inadvertently, and they [the enemy anti-aircraft artillerymen on the ground] had blood in their eyes.

We didn’t get hit as we continued our chase after the other three. Van was being cared for with morphine and tourniquets. All he said was, ‘Here’s where I get one medal you guys won’t get.’

He was right. No one else did get hit except the old Vagabond itself. After about 45 minutes we were back in formation heading for Turkey in a strange procession. Fighters were our huge worry. We expected them every mile of the way, and we had climbed high enough, to about 8,000 feet, to be duck soup. But no fighters came. Finally we hit the Sea of Marmara, and since the country was neutral from then on, we decided it was best to let the others do as they please.

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