Mission 20: July 7, 1944
After posting the mission log book I interviewed my dad. I had a lot of questions about the occurences and the people involved. Dad didn’t enter certain kinds of information in his mission log. He just kept to the facts. On the log I have created hyperlinks to the information below.
“Captain Lucius B. Clay was one of my commanding officers. He was the son of a a famous general and later became a famous general in his own right. He commanded the Air Force during Viet Namn I believe.”
“That day Captain Clay gave me the camera to record the mission. It was a large box camera. I had to lean out the window to take a picture and bring it back in so I could advance the film by turning a large crank.” “I was supposed to take one picture as the bombs were dropped, another while they were exploding,and a final shot when we passed the target on the return route.”
“I almost got killed that day! After the mission I saw two flak holes at my location by the window. The holes were but inches apart. It seems that when I leaned forward to take a picture, one piece of flak just missed across my back. When I pulled back to wind the film, another piece must have whizzed across my front. I thought I felt something brush my jacket at the time when I thought about it later.”
