HALPRO loos on 29-30 June 1942

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Hello,

During the night of 29-30 June 1942, 13 Allied bombers, including three American Halpro B-24s and 10 RAF bombers, attacked Tobruk harbour. One of the American bombers, the B-24D 41-11624 "Balls of Fire" dit not return from this raid and was lost with its seven crew.

This aircraft seems to have bad luck concerning their covering in books. recent book "A history of the Mediterranean Air War, vol 2" has a typo in the serial (noted 41-1624), and has no serial in "Bomber Losses in the Middle East and Mediterranean". Also in the later book, four crew have shown as being killed and the three other have no fate shown. It will usually mean they survived, but in fact all disappeared this night and are commemorated by the ABMC with a "loss date" of 1 July 1943 (so one year and one day after they went missing: that is usual with missing US airmen and sailors, and is the date their status was changed from "missing" to "finfing of death").

As for the cause of the loss, Hptm Paul Semrau claimed two bombers this night, a Halifax and a Wellington, and the MAW book says one was this B-24. But this bomber was also reported to have been downed by Flak, and many American sources on the Net say it was a victime of friendly fire, either AA fire, Beauforts (!!!) or Spitfires (!!!!) shooting it down. I guess this should have started from somewhere, maybe a rumour, and have let a trace in documents.

In MAW vol 2, we can see that Sgt R. L. Baker of 73 Sqn RAF claimed a Ju 88 damaged 6 miles east of Fuka at 0145 hrs on 30 June 1942. There is no loss shown on the German side, so is it possible that he in fact attacked the B-24, or was suspected to have done it later ?