Crash B26 on 11.April 1945 near Cologne

[RSwank]

Manni,

I have made it though the Mission report and uploaded a "first pass" of the complete Mission Transcription on the Google Drive.

It was only the 3rd Fight of Box 2 that flew off course on the return, 5 planes. The sixth plane had engine problems on the flight in and had returned early, it never made it to Aschersleben. The remaining 5 planes led by Kent as lead pilot and Libby as navigator made three passes over the target and did not drop. (The planes in a flight were to "drop on the leader", i.e., only the lead plane was using a bombsight. When the leader dropped his bombs the other planes in the flight (in this case the remaining 4 planes) were to drop.) Smoke and haze obscured the target on every pass. Kent/Libby then went to a "casual" target (or target of opportunity) to try and bomb a railroad "choke-point" at Guston rD670630. On the bomb run the PDI (Pilot Direction Indicator*) went out so the bombardier could not direct the pilot to steer the plane correctly. The 5 planes in the flight started home, all still carrying 8 bombs each. This flight went off course on the return and flew over/near the flak site . Hopkins was shot down and the remaining 4 planes all returned to the base with their bombs.

Upon return, they reported Weak (not very much), Accurate, LFF (Light Flak Fire) which struck Hopkins plane. They watched Hopkins go down. At this point, I would say that Hopkins released his bombs before he crash landed.

A couple of comments in the mission reports for the 4 returning planes are interesting. One man thought that it was friendly fire that had downed Hopkins. Another commented that "More navigation instruction needed for flight leads." "More" was underlined four times. This last comment was included again in the final page of the mission report.



*The PDI was connected to the bombsight and as the bombardier adjusted the sight to hit the target, the bombsight moved a needle on the dial of the pilot's PDI to indicate which way the pilot was to turn the plane (either left or right). In heavy bombers (B-17s and B-24s), the bombsight was connected to the auto-pilot so the bombardier actually "flew" the plane on the bomb run. In medium bombers, it was found to be better if the pilot flew the plane on the bomb run. One reason was that medium bomber flew very short bomb runs, the final straight and level run was for 30 seconds. (Even prior to the final "run", medium bombers typically changed course every 30 seconds, to throw off radar directed flak.) Medium bombers did not respond quickly enough to the autopilot corrections. (Heavy bomber bomb runs lasted for many minutes so the bombsight/autopilot system worked well for them.)