My father was a B-17 pilot in World War II.

April 9, 1945. For his 19th combat mission, 75 years ago today, my father Elbert Steele was back over Germany, bombing the airport at Munich/Reims.

Here is a description of what it was like on the ground that very day for Franz Stigler, a German fighter pilot who was with his jet fighter unit at the edge of the airfield. This is from the book A Higher Call, pages 309-310:

“Franz waited in his hole next to White 3 [his jet, an ME 262] until he heard a low rumble that he recognized from his time in Sicily—the droning of steel wasps. Franz saw them emerge from the clouds high above. Box after box of silver bombers motored from south to north. They were B-17s, two hundred planes strong.

“The flak guns of the airfield and the city of Munich blasted out, rocketing shells thirty thousand feet up. Some of his comrades ran from the holes, but Franz stayed….When Franz heard the high pitched whine of bombs…he put his thumbs in his ears and opened his mouth….He squeezed his chest to his knees and huddled below ground as the earth shook. The pressure from each blast ripped over his hole and flung dirt down his back. His ear rang. His eyes watered. Each shock wave of pressure hit like an invisible foot on his back. Each blast sucked the breath from his lungs and stomped him deeper. Franz knew from the direction of the fury that the bombers were pounding the terminal and hangars where they expected JV-44 [his fighter unit] to live and operate. He heard glass shattering, fire sizzling, and walls slamming down. A bomber whined and spun toward the earth, but Franz never heard its crash over the chaos.”

“When the earth stopped shaking, Franz looked up from under his arm and saw the bombers turning west for home. He climbed from his hole and wiped his eyes. His comrades emerged, shaking the cobwebs from their heads. Across the airstrip, gray smoke rose from the terminal. The side of the tower had been chopped away and now it teetered. The bombers had dropped firebombs that had burned through the roofs of the hangars, from which black smoke poured. High explosive bombs had pitted the terminal’s concrete parking area and the grass runway, leaving deep, white craters with a perfect dirt ring around each. Along the field’s southern blast pens, jets were burning. When the air raid sirens stopped wailing, others cries could be heard—faint, muted sobs of pain from the south end of the field. There, fifty men and Fighter Dolls [women who operated the anti-aircraft guns] had been wounded. Six men had been killed. Franz saw the survivors limping among the burning jets.”

My dad flew one more combat mission, two food-drop missions over the Netherlands, and two final missions ferrying French prisoners of war back to Paris. He then went back to the States, awaiting reassignment to the invasion of Japan. But the atomic bombs were dropped, the war ended, and his time with war was finished.




None of the Me 262's got off the ground that day.