Captain Harry R. Ankeny's Combat Diary
Page 19
20th June, 1944.
1st Mission.
Flew as element leader in Capt. England's Red flight
with Lt. Sehl on my wing. We were to escort bombers thru
Stettin, Germany where they bombed oil refineries. We
rendezvous with the bomber just before the target quite
near Sweden. In fact Sweden was in gliding distance and
looked very enticing. Our squadron took the lead boxes
thru in target and bombing results were excellent, Very
heavy flak was thrown up over the target. You could see
the flak guns going off below--really blinking away. We
stayed with the big friends until we were past Keil then
headed home. Carson and Martinek strafed an airdrome and
damaged a ME110. They threw up a lot of flak over Heligo-
land but we missed it nicely and got home OK.
20th June, 1944.
2nd Mission
Our mission was to go down near Paris and catch a
convoy on the way to Paris and strafe it. Weather was
very poor and we didn't accomplish this but did do some
strafing. I flew as element leader in Major Gates' Red
flight with Lt. Conlin on my wing. Getting near our area
we let down to 2000 ft. and started look, a very poor alti-
tude to start looking for something. Well, we ran directly
across a light and heavy flak installation and I thought
we had had it. One boy in the group did get hit and had to
make a crash landing. We found a little train in a small
town station and riddled it with 50's. Some of the boys
returned with flak holes.
21st June, 1944.
Berlin mission today. Flew element leader to Capt.
England in Green flight with Lt. Roughgarden on my wing.
R/V on time with the big friends and took them thru the
target. Didn't see any enemy aircraft in the vicinity but
flak was very heavy over Berlin. While passing by a box
of B17's right after they passed by the target I saw two
collide--a terrific sight. A wing come off of one and the
other was sliced right in two, the tail floating down
separately. Don't think anyone got out alive. I was the
closest ship to the crash. We got home OK but I didn't
feel too hot after the mission. 22nd June, 1944.
Copyright © 1996, Harry R. Ankeny