JULY 2018 AH 33OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; ABOVE: AMERICAN AIR MUSEUM IN BRITAIN
350th Bomb Squadron commander Major Bucky
Cleven was shot down over Bremen, and Major
Bucky Egan, CO of the 418th Squadron, was
downed over Munster on October 10 while trying
to exact revenge for his best friend Cleven. The
two commanders found themselves at the same
POW camp. Legend has it that when Egan
arrived, Cleven said, “What the hell took you so
long?” The loss of the two Buckys, seen by the
rank and file as exemplars of everything that a
flier should be, was crushing.
Several days after these disastrous missions, the
100th was able to muster only eight aircraft for a
raid that nearly broke the back of the Eighth Air
Force. October 14, 1943, became known as “Black
Thursday.” On that autumn day, 291 B-17s assem-
bled to make a second raid on the ball-bearing
factories at Schweinfurt. American losses were
appalling: 60 aircraft shot down, 17 written off
and more than 100 others damaged. The loss of
more than a quarter of the aircraft participating in
the raid was clearly unsustainable, both in the eyes
of VIII Bomber Command and, perhaps more
important, the American people.
In a twist of fate that served to highlight the ran-
domness inherent in warfare, the 100th Bomb
Group emerged comparatively unscathed that
dreadful day. All eight B-17s that it contributed to
the mission returned to Thorpe Abbots.T
he October 1943 missions wound up
being among the last bombing raids deep
into German airspace that the Eighth Air
Force flew without end-to-end fighter
escort. Though the bombers bristled with .50-
caliber machine guns (ultimately 13 in the B-17G,
with its added chin turret to counter frontal attacks)
and adhered rigorously to combat box formation
flying to provide mutually supportive defensive
fire, it was obvious that the B-17s in the European
theater were vulnerable to Luftwaffe hunters. In
the end, the primary tool for redressing the imbal-
ance of power between the hunters and the hunted
was to import a newer, more capable long-range
fighter, the North American P-51 Mustang.
Though the fuel burn of aircraft is typically
measured in gallons per hour, it’s also instructive to
think in the traditional earthbound measure of
miles per gallon. The P-51 was a pilot’s dream in
terms of speed and maneuverability, but its real
superiority was that it could eke out twice as many
miles from a gallon of 100-octane avgas as could a
P-47. With the Mustang, Army Air Forces planners
finally had a fighter that could stay with the bomb
groups all the way to Berlin and back.
Commander of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring
had once pompously bragged that Allied bombers
would never be seen in the skies over Germany. By
March 4, 1944, Allied bombers weren’t just flyingTHE LOSS OF
MORE THAN A
QUARTER OF
THE AIRCRAFT
PARTICIPATING
IN THE RAID
WAS CLEARLY
UNSUSTAINABLE.
THORPE ABBOTTS CRACKUP
The original Hang the Expense
fell victim to a takeoff accident
on November 26, 1943. All
aboard, including two Red
Cross nurses, escaped injury.