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Merseburg July 28, mission fifteen. We got the flashlight in the face very early again. It would be somewhere way over there.There wasn't a whole lot of table talk at breakfast, but the sunny-side eggs were temporary bright spots in the gloom. We'd had a run on the green powder scrambled stuff and were in need of a little diversion. I managed to get three and some not-too-greasy hash browns, powdered milk with just a touch ofcoffee in it-at a little under room temperature-and a lot ofsyrupy canned peaches. At briefing the air was heavy, and there was a dense low overcast of cigarette smoke. Background grumbling blended with the scraping ofchairs on the concrete floor. Someone released the tension a bit with a loud and remarkably protracted belch, which brought on a similar one in answer. There was a lot ofstretching and yawning and scratching, which reminded me ofapprehensive dogs; and the breaking ofwind here and there came with defiant smiles that seemed to say, "Better here than up there in somebody's ox regulator." "Tenn-hut," and in strode Colonel Bowman. ''At ease, gentlemen. Today you will strike a major blow (sounds ominous) against the enemy's ability to fuel his machines of war. The Leiina oil-from-coal plant at Merseburg is their largest and 92 Merseburg most productive. It's been hit and damaged before, but they've got it back in full working order again, all ready for your serious attention. The whole world, as we want it to be, is depending on you. Remember , oil is as important as gunpowder in this war." The curtain had been drawn just as the colonel put us at ease, and I'm sure that no one in the room was able to attain that blessed state. It was a long way across Germany, and the Leipzig-Merseburg area had the reputation ofbeing a snake pit. Diimmer Lake was a checkpoint of turn some seventy miles beyond the Netherlands border. We were there right on the minute and began a slow course change to 160 degrees mag heading to avoid the Hanover flak zone. Lakes were good checkpoints, if there happened to be any along the way, for the simple reason that there were so few. This particular lake was egg shaped with a north-south axis, and it appeared to have smooth beaches on the eastern edge. To the west it seemed marshy with low scrubby woods, and was not at all unlike a large pond in central Wisconsin. A small river called the Hunte ran through a very inconspicuous town with the perfect German name Diepholz and then into Diimmer Lake-all of it way out in the sticks-no one would expect to be bombed there. Maybe kids, refugee kids from the war cities might be there swimming or fishing from the shore. Except for the Nazis, Germany would be an interesting place to go hiking or biking, and my guess was that they made much better beer than they did in Milwaukee. Also, I would have bet that most of the people could have looked you right in the eye and told you that they were against the war and ifthe Nazis had not been able to blame the Versailles treaty, there never would have been this terrible misunderstanding. Our IP at the small city of Muhlhausen lay along that heading. We covered the distance in thirty-eight minutes and turned slightly short for a tighter formation. The bomb run ofsixty-eight miles on a course ofabout 80 degrees gave us an almost direct tailwind, so we were really flying-literally and figuratively. It was quite obvious 93 Return from Berlin that the faster you flew through a box barrage, the better your chances were for survival because they could only fire a set number of shells per minute; and since Merseburg could bring more than a thousand heavy guns to bear, many of them I05 mms, it was wise to plan for a tailwind. The other side of this coin was that bombing accuracy might be somewhat compromised by excessive speed. About forty miles out we could see a sizable smudge of dark smoke at the target area, so it was clear that the group ahead of us had hit something. But God, there they were, the fields of black shell bursts right at our altitude. At twenty miles out we were entering the valley...

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