[For context: During a bombing mission, one B-24 bomber, the Dakota Queen, found that the last of the 500-pound bombs of its arsenal had jammed in the bomb rack. It would be suicidal to attempt to land the plane with the bomb still in the bay, as that would cause an explosion on landing. On their way back to base, they tried in vain to release the bomb over an unpopulated area.]
The Dakota Queen descended to 12,000 feet, several thousand feet below the formation, which was pulling ahead in any case. Then Cooper yelled something “and all of a sudden the plane jumped and I knew the bomb had been cut loose.” They were approaching the Austrian-Italian border. McGovern watched the bomb descend, “a luxury you didn’t have at 25,000 feet. It went down and hit right on a farm in that beautiful, green part of Austria. It was almost like a mushroom, a big, gigantic mushroom. It just withered the house, the barn, the chicken house, the water tank. Everything was just leveled. It couldn’t have come in more perfectly. If we had been trying to hit it we couldn’t have hit it as square. You could see stuff flying through the air and a cloud of black smoke.”
Sergeant Higgins watched the bomb descend. He commented, “It just blew that farm to smithereens. We didn’t mean to do that, we certainly didn’t try to do that.”
McGovern glanced at his watch. It was high noon. He came from South Dakota. He knew what time farmers ate. “I got a sickening feeling. Here was this peaceful area. They thought they were safely out of the war zone. Nothing there, no city, no railyard, nothing. Just a peaceful farmyard. Had nothing to do with the war, just a family eating a noon meal. It made me sick to my stomach.”
Navigator Lt. Ronald Pepin had a similar experience. On a bombing run over Munich, the last bomb in his plane got stuck. “We were on our return, flying over the Alps. The crew chief and the bombardier were successful in releasing the bomb. I viewed it descending and watched in horror as it landed in the center of a small village and destroyed it. It was a Sunday, midmorning, and I could not help but feel the deepest remorse and shameful guilt for the people of the village. Following this mishap, I couldn’t sleep. I was in a stupor and couldn’t get these innocent people out of my mind. I was cracking up and didn’t know it. My pilot, Lieutenant Barnhill, ordered me to drink about half a bottle of whiskey. I passed out and slept for eighteen hours. Other members of the crew felt as I did. We were all getting jumpy and tired. The surgeon ordered us to take ten days off on the Isle of Capri.”
Source:
Ambrose, Stephen E. “Missions Over Austria.” The Wild Blue: The Crews of the B-24. Simon & Schuster, 2002. 231-32. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
McGovern interview, Eisenhower center.
Higgins interview, Eisenhower Center.
Pepin memoirs, Eisenhower Center.
Further Reading:
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