Captain Harry R. Ankeny's Combat Diary
Page 27
I might say just a few words about the 1st shuttle
which was completed just a month before; the 4th Fighter
Group being the escorting group. The final results were
not too good. Several boys were lost in the 4th and
their escorting was poor, thus many bombers were downed.
They didn't stick with the bombers but ran off to grab
themselves some enemy aircraft leaving the bombers un-
protected and splitting up their own fighting force into
meager units. Another tragedy occurred in Russia which
was not the Americans' fault. As far as a fiscal loss
was concerned, it was the greatest since Pearl Harbor.
The field which housed the bombers was not adequately
equipped with flak guns. It was the job of the Russians
to provide an airfield defense. The first night after the
bombers had landed at Poltava, German bombers came over in
numbers and rained down the bombs destroying 52 B-l7's on
the ground and making the field useless for several days
due to the craters and butterfly bombs all over the place.
(Butterfly bombs are anti-personnel bombs which float down
and can cause serious body injury upon touching them. They
are more a nuisance than anything else.) The loss that
night was never made public probably because it would
cause criticism of our allies and would hinder the war
effort. So, all in all, the first mission was quite a
failure and the generals were very anxious for our mission
to be a success.
Now for the mission--the bombers took off quite early
while we started around 8 AM. After the group was formed
we headed up along the Fresian Islands and crossed in Ger-
many just below Helgoland and crossed out again between
Kiel and Lubeck, Germany. Out over the water again until
we sighted the bombers just this side of Danzig. We join-
ed them and they bombed an airfield just north of the
East Prussia capital city and then started for their
Russia base. We stuck right by their sides all the way
to Russia. Nearing the Russo-German lines we did see a
little enemy activity but they didn't stick around long
when they saw the bombers were protected by a good fleet
of Mustangs. No aircraft was shot due to enemy action.
When we were fairly certain we were within the Russian
held territory we let down to about 5000 feet and enjoyed
sight-seeing the remainder of the trip. The land looked
very fertile but the towns were a bit torn up. We could
see smoke far over to our right from Warsaw, which was
the extent of the lines at that time. We flew right on
into the Ukraine over Kiev and on to our respective fields,
the bombers going on to Poltava, while we landed at Pirya-
tin, a small village just 100 miles east of Kiev. part I
Copyright © 1996, Harry R. Ankeny