Saturday, March 31, 1945
Mission #13, AlL 12,500
4- 1,000 pound bomb~
At the ba~e 344th Bomb Group.

Today we bombed a [arget at the town of Elray, We carried four one thou~and pound bomb~ wilh nose and fail fuse~. We were called out at 03:30 A.M. We had briefing at 04:45 A.M. We were to take off at 06:32 according to plan A. But the mi~ion wa~ delayed and we took off at 07:38. We had a Pathftoder mi~sion planned but it lLurned out to be a vi~ual. We could only make one run on the [arget as the ga~ was jusl about enough to get u~ there and back. We had fighter rendezvoua at 09:15 and were acro" the bomb line at 09:30 A.M. We had P-38 e~cort all the way. 16 P-38'~. They really did fly clo~e to u~ all the way too. We made our bomb run on ~e [arget and dropped on our fir~t run. We mi~sed the targel: completely by 125 yarda to the right It really was ro~en bombing in my opinion. We didn't have any oppo~ition at all. A really ea~y run. We came over ~e troop line and I could ace our artillery pounding the German~ in a ~mall town.They were really making ground. We left our escort and I tran~ferred fuel. We landed at 12:30. It was quite a long mission. We had 90 gallon~ ln each [ank left Pretty good. lL waa my 13th mlaslon. Thank God ll was an ea~y one.

The next mission, April 8, 1945 was to Celle, Germany and I have a bomb strike photo for that day so I shall defer starting any description of that mission until the start of page 49. It was an interesting mission---and a bit frightening.

W48-50 P.48