Flew our first mission today and with no IP, so I went along. It was
strictly a milk run but 8 hours long and that surely gets tiresome sitting
there . The target was Woippy, France which is about 2 miles north of
Metz, France - it was a plant manufacturing aircraft engines and the
target was really plastered. We didn't have a bit of flak or fighters.
Censored mail again tonight and then wrote to Louise. More on the mission - we passed over London on the way out and in and saw hundreds of barrage balloons at about 5000 ft. Saw several really large convoys in the channel with PT boats etc. Passed over the Cherbourg and Brest peninsulas, Chartres and about 20 miles south of Paris. Didn't see any activity on the ground. Saw a lot of smoke, ruins and fires after our bombs hit. We had 12/500 lb. demos and the next squadron had incendiaries. George estimated the smoke to be 8-10000 ft. high.