OFFENSIVE ACTION

Kenneth W. Geishirt, B-17 tail gunner and mechanic, on bombing Guadalcanal:

The first raid we went we were supposed to get a power house at a dam on a river on Guadalcanal. The pilot told the bombardier, he said, “Now, don’t drop unless you’re sure of your target." So we come in, and we went around— oops, he didn’t drop it. Cloud or something drifted across, so we turned around, we come back in, started out again, he didn’t drop. So I don’t know what happened. I called up the pilot, I says, “Hey, listen,” I says, “that damn ack-ack is getting closer.” He says, “Oh my God,” he says, “I forgot all about it.” So then he told the bombardier, he says, “Drop it.” So after that, every first run, zoom, boom, it was gone.

Mass

Thomas J. Cullen, B-24 Gunner, on missions over Japan: The other Air Forces had them, but we got there first, and we were the prime B24 attack force. I believe. I think we had the largest number, and we had fairly good success. We struck the, of course the heavy work on much of the industrial power of Japan was done by those earlier raids, B29’s with massed fleets of two to three hundred B29s going over at a time with those larger bombs and so forth. So, there was a tremendous amount of damage done . . .