The Magic 1,000-foot Circle

The various aspects of Mission No. 113 impressed the author while he was in USAAF/EFTC flight training and via press releases and the December 1943 issue of Impact, a wartime informational magazine distributed to the squadrons. Subsequently, he flew 400 hours in B-17Gs, including 208 hours in the AF Form 5 combat category. Eighty per cent of the latter was logged in Column 22, Acting Command Pilot, with the lead crew section of the 486th Bomb Group, 4th Combat Bomb Wing, 3rd Air Division, Eighth Air Force, as 833rd Bomb Squadron air leader. Between combat missions, he flew pre-mission weather recce, training missions for formation familiarization, instrument check rides, miscellaneous flight tests, taught ground school in B-17 cruise control, ditching and short-field landing technique, and studied mission strike photos. While leading the 486th Bomb Group over Germany on Eighth Air Force Mission No. 928, on 5 April 1945, he was fated to be involved with one of the most accurate high altitude (above 18,000 feet) strikes carried out by a unit of the Eighth Air Force, when his lead bombardier, Captain J. J. Kane, placed 78 per cent of the group's bombs within 1,000 feet of his briefed AP from 24,500 feet altitude-while in intense flak and using an intervalometer setting in the Norden bombsight. This pickle-barrel drop produced a CEP of 677 feet, a SE of 574 feet and a MRE of 719 feet on the Fürth Geschütz (Ordnance) Depot.