Early this morning I had been barely aware of the roaring of engines as the boys took off on another mission. This one was down by Switzerland. We lost one ship hit by flak and down in flames over the target. I was not nearly as affected by this as it was from another squadron and I didn’t know these guys very well, but death sneaks up on you and all the little pains that it inflicts take their toll.

We didn’t fly another mission until April 18. The group went out several times, but we are flight leaders, called lead crews, and we wait out turn to fly. We, in the interim, do fly quite often. We test hop squadron planes and fly slow time flights. These are flights of a couple of hours to break in new engines that have been installed to replace ones that have battle damage.