On February 22, 1945, the Eighth Air Force put several thousand aircraft in the air to destroy German marshalling yards. The 467th Bomb Group was briefed to fly as low as necessary for a visual bomb run. Our target was the marshalling yard at Hildesheim. We were second squadron lead, and this was my sixteenth mission. The aircraft carried ten 500 pound bombs.

The 467th Bomb Group assembled at the usual altitude of 22,000 feet over splasher 5. We headed toward the European mainland to make it appear that the raid would be on a northern target. When we reached north of Osnabruck, we changed heading from ninety degrees to one hundred eighty degrees, and we headed south at a lower altitude. We were instructed to turn at a geographic coordinate south of Hildesheim. When we reached the coordinate, we banked and made a ninety degree left turn, and then another ninety degree left turn looking for the initial point for the bomb run. Our altitude was 8500 feet with intensive flak off our right wing, where we saw four crewmen parachute from a B-24 as their aircraft went down out of control.

The Nazi anti-aircraft guns were mounted on a railroad flat-car, and they peppered our formation on the bomb run. Two members of another aircraft were wounded. An aerial photograph showed that we hit an ammunition train, and much damage was done to railway cars. This mission took 7 hours and 45 minutes.

We were interrogated by the intelligence officers (G2) immediately after landing, and we gave the coordinates of where the four airmen parachuted, and where the B-24 aircraft went down. The flak map of the Hildesheim area is included in this report.