—–Original Message—–
From: I <beamb@aol.com>
To: beamb@aol.com
Sent: Wed, Mar 16, 2011 5:54 pm
Subject: Booger Red

The Last Mission of „Booger Red II“
By Joe Stevens

Booger Red II before its last flight.
Kneeling: George J. Urban, Crew Chief and
Charles B. „Jack“ Skipper (original pilot)

As was the tradition, newly arrived first pilots were assigned to the copilot seat for their first missions. Thus, I was in the right seat for a mission on 23 December 1944. Theron Blackwell was in the left seat and we were flying Booger Red II. The takeoff was hazardous as the ceiling was low and it was snowing or misting rain. This wasn’t my first mission because I was wellacquainted with flak and its appearance – it was black and at times was so heavy it looked like you could get out and walk on it.

On this mission I was introduced to ‚green‘ flak. We were inside enemy territory and getting pretty heavy flak. I was flying the plane from the right seat and Blackwell was sitting back, taking it easy. All of a sudden I saw these bursts of ‚green‘ flak. At first I thought I was seeing things, but then I found out what it was all about. It was a signal to the German fighters of our position and altitude The flak stopped abruptly and we said hello to ME-109s. I can still picture Theron sitting straight up in his seat, pulling his helmet down firmly on his head, sliding his seat forward and tapping me on the shoulder that he was taking over the controls. He then gave me a demonstration of close formation flying. He stuck the tip of our wing in against the lead ship’s fuselage and I was sure we were going to scrape the paint off of the lead ship’s side. Blackwell was one hell of a good pilot.

I then had the opportunity to watch the ME-1 09s and their pursuit curves. They would climb up 1,000 to 1,500 feet higher than us and fly parallel with us. Then they would bank and dive down on us, go in under the flight and come out and up on the other side. Then they would repeat the maneuver. I remember thinking, My gosh, that’s the way we did it in air-to-air gunnery in training, only then the guns had cameras. This was the real thing! What a feeling of shock that was.

I got introduced to .50 caliber shell casings next. When we were the last ship left in our flight, Theron took us to the next closest flight of airplanes. There were only three of them left, so he slid into the No. 4 slot. The next time the ME1 09s came on us in this flight is when the tail gunner of the lead ship opened fire. His spent casings hit our windshield. I actually ducked and then realized what they were. I had never thought of what happened when the gunners fired the .50 calibers but I found out that day.

With all the shooting going on I know the top turret of a B-26 had a „dead“ switch so the gunner wouldn’t shoot the tail of his own airplane, but I began to wonder about the gunners in the other planes. This caused me to worry.

When we returned from that mission and taxied onto the hardstand, the crew chief motioned for us to not kill the engines. He then came aboard with Captain Norris and they went back through the plane. When they came forward again Norris told us to taxi out to the runway at A-7i that we weren’t using. We parked Booger Red II there and later when we moved from France to Holland, Booger Red II was left behind. Someone said they counted the holes in her and came up with 350. I never bothered to count them, but I know that the I beam that was the catwalk and chief support for the fuselage was blown apart in two places.

Funny, but with all the holes we picked up that day, not one of us got a scratch. I often wondered how many of those 350 holes came from our own .50 caliber guns.

So ended the missions of Booger Red II, a fighting ship that did its duty, brought many crews home safely and added to the destruction of the Germans.

Joseph 0. Stevens went to dentistry school after the war and has been practicing ever since in Orbisonia, PA.