There were about 1500
planes from England and another 1100 came up from Africa. Someone
erred in the planning of this mission as we crossed at right angles
at the same altitude and we had trouble keeping from flying into each
other. I never saw so many planes in the air at one time and guess
the Germans hadn't either as they didn't send up any fighters! it was
reaching the point where we had more planes than they did and so they
only came up when they had a chance of success. We observed something
unusual on that mission. Some white smoky objects came up from the
ground in a spiral track to about 15,000 feet before they
disappeared. They couldn't reach our altitude and seemed to move
slowly. We reported them upon our return, but no one knew what they
were. On other missions where the Germans didn't send up fighters,
our fellows would be allowed to go down to ground level and shoot
anything they could see.
On this raid our squadron went down and we dove shooting at some
large boats on the Danube River. Every tenth bullet was a tracer that
made a white trail in the sky allowing you to track them. It seemed
strange to set your bullets going down and those from the ships
coming up. I watched my bullets hitting the decks. We flew all the
way back to England Just above the tree tops but never saw a train or
airfield to shoot at. There were flak towers, but they were too
dangerous and we all flew around them.
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