On to Metz

This was my 8th mission and the first time we had flown a mission in support of our invading army. The date was November 9th, 1944 and the Allied troops had broken out of Normandy and were now streaking across France toward Germany. General Patton was advancing toward the French town of Metz and had asked for bomber support from the Eighth Air Force. The target was enemy gun and infantry positions near the town of Metz.

The B-17, while able to deftly handle 500 and 1000 pound bombs, was ill equipped to handle the many small 50 pound antipersonnel bombs which were loaded in our bomb bay this day. The B-17 has about six shackles on each side of the bomb bay set one above the other. In order to carry a reasonable load of these 50 pound bombs, the bombs were hung two to a shackle. This may have been the first time bombs had been hung two to a shackle and it certainly was the first time we had encountered such an arrangement since we had been flying.
The mission was flown without incident. The route was mostly over France and friendly territory. The cloud cover this day was about 50% over France and our bomb run was made on schedule and as briefed. Our bombs were released on target.

As was typically the case when the bomb load was dropped, our lumbering plane rose perceptibly, as if sighing at relief of the load it was carrying. This time however, a strange "staccato-like vibration" echoed through the ship as if we had been hit several times in quick succession. I immediately checked the instrument panel for the possibiliy of engine failure suspecting that we had received a hit from some unobserved flak. After that was ruled out I called for a crew check to determine if anyone had observed whether we might have been hit. None of the crew seemed to know what had happened.
It was standard procedure that after the release of our bombs the radio man would check the bomb bay and give an OK by intercom to the bombardier to close the doors. Seconds after my crew check, the radio man screamed excitedly over the intercom "Don't close the doors", "Don't close the doors", "Don't close the doors".

What had happened sent chills through everyone aboard. The radio man explained that one of the two bombs on the bottommost shackle had not come cleanly out of the shackle. All the bombs on the five shackles above had bounced off this one bomb after their release. This was the vibration we had heard a minute earlier. It did not take us long to find that the force of this action had bent the bottom shackle and had firmly locked this 50 pound bomb in our bomb bay. To make matters worse the safety pin on this bomb had been pulled or dislodged by the other passing bombs and this bomb was now activated.

We were now flying with a live 50 pound antipersonnel bomb hanging half out of our bomb bay and in such a position that if the doors had closed the bomb surely would have exploded.
We immediately left the formation, cut the throttle, and dropped down to about 10,000 feet so that we could get off oxygen and have more freedom to decide how to attack the problem. Everyone on the crew felt the danger of the situation as evidenced by the unusual silence that prevailed on our intercom.

Because of the narrowness of the catwalk and the location of the shackle, it would require abandoning ones parachute in order to maneuver into position to work on releasing this errant bomb. Lying on his back in the walkway, with the bomb bay doors open and without his parachute, our flight engineer determined that the standard manual shackle release was inoperative because the shackle had been badly bent and the release mechanism jammed. Our bombardier, (Joel Lester) and our engineer (Ed Peters) worked together in the open bomb bay to unbolt the shackle from the ships frame -- using tools from the planes tool kit.
For more than an hour they carefully worked to release the bomb knowing full well that one slip and it would all be over. The rest of the crew maintained total intercom silence as these two crew members conversed and as the rest of us sat helplessly by. We are not ashamed to say that many prayers were said in this hour.
Suddenly the words we had so patiently waited to hear, "bombs away" came over the intercom from Joel Lester. "You can close the doors". Everyone on the plane breathed a huge sigh of relief and a short prayer of thanks, I'm sure.
Each of the ten men of our crew will forever owe a great debt of gratitude to Edward Peters and Joel Lester for the skill and courage they showed on this occasion.

We returned by ourselves to Glatton Airbase feeling elated that we had been spared a fate that might have ended our tour. Not from enemy flak or fighters but from our own bomb and over friendly territory. The exhuberant banter by the crew on the intercom was music to my ears.
The ironic side to this incident is that, after we returned to our base, I was called to the squadron commanders office to explain to him why we had left the formation and what had happened. After hearing my explanation he severely reprimanded me for dropping this errant bomb on French territory and not holding it till we were over the English Channel where it could be safely dropped.
My rather terse response was "You had to be there, sir". An investigation the following week determined that our bomb had fallen in some farmers pasture and had harmed no one.
So, another mission under our belt. The next will be number nine. Twenty two more to go.