One pilot stayed up seven
hours and we thought he'd gone down as six hours was the limit. He
had just seen how long he could possibly stay aloft by using the
technique and came happily back to base long after the mission was
over.
They were very strict about talking on the radio from the time you
took off until you were over Germany and even then it was used only
for necessary messages and warning each other when in combat. Any
unnecessary talk might have given away information to the Germans
(even though they had probably picked us up on their radar). The
English bombers always bombed the enemy at night and they continued
to do this throughout the War. They thought that the Americans were
crazy to bomb in broad daylight. The B-17 bombers, however, were
heavily armed and could defend themselves fairly well. The English
bombers, on the other hand, had few guns. When the B-17s first began
flying, the Germans had so many fighter planes that the losses were
terrible. With ten men in each bomber, sometimes five or six hundred
men would be lost in a single mission. The situation reversed itself
when the fighter planes had range enough to escort the bombers all
the way to the target. At the time I was flying, the American
fighters were beginning to outnumber the enemy. Their losses were so
heavy that on some of, our missions we did not see a single enemy
plane.
One time, before we started flying missions we had the opportunity to
visit an English radar station in southern England.
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