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June 6 - Big day yesterday. We have not been flying for two days.
Our ships have been painted a horrible black and white striped color and
our radios retuned. Then a mission yesterday afternoon. This then, was
the long awaited D day. Our job consisted of close-in escort of the boats
and a tremendous sight it was. As far as the eye could reach the Straits
of Dover were covered by every conceivable type of vessel. From small
landing boats to huge battleships the Invasion Force lay stretched out under
us. I never hope to be priviledged to get a better seat for such a show!
The air support was marvelously worked out, and though from our patrol sector
little was to be seen of it , our ships (airplanes that is) covered thousands
of square miles. To my knowledge, not a single boat out of that vast armada
was lost through German air action. Already we have set up landing strips in
the Cheroburge Peninsula and the boys in the Ninth Air Force are using them as
of noon today. I understand that we have landed 953 air transports of para-
troopers, losing only 15 in the action, those probably or certainly due to
flak. Today our squadron has been doing shuttle runs on the patroling and we
have had a constant force of ships over our assigned area. I must go on
another in an hour and a half. The most opposition will be the weather I
suppose. It looks rather black at the moment. suppose. I ’ll be glad when we can leave
this job and get back to our penetrations for interesting though this is, the
other offers the best hunting.
Just back from another patrol. The thing is really moving now. From our
position we could see the mother ships discharge troops into the landing barges,
watch the barges crawl in an orderly formation for the smoke laden shore and
then finally disappear in the murk of dust , smoke and explosions. All the
while the battleships were pouring in their heavy stuff. We could easily
follow the progress of our troops by watching where the big shells from our
snips hit. God, I would hate to be a German soldier down there! Not one of
his beloved Luftwaffe came up to bother us. It must be terrible for them to
look up into the sky and see thousands and thousands of our planes lazily
patroling back and forth, to see thousands more come over to lay their eggs,
and to feel the blast of the units ground strafing. But the devils have asked
for it and they are certainly getting what they asked for.
June 7, 1944 - Another patrol this morning. Again the same story,
tremendous action on the coast but nothing from the sky. S-2 informs us that
the Luftwaffe is gathering though, but that is to be expected. They can ’t
gather too soon for me. All of us feel that way. The most exciting things
about these patrols is getting out and back again. The weather is really
terrible around our base and the stuff hangs continuously at about 500 feet.
So far we have had no bad luck. One more patrol at 1800. The controller
called in 50 plus bogies approaching us from the Cherbourg Peninsula,
though we had them at last but no, they were a damned group of P-47 ’s. All
the air combat (what little there is) takes place about 50 miles inland ,
far we haven ’t been ordered there - again damn. About 11:30 tonight a couple
of jerry night fighters came over and knocked down three B-24 ’s over our field.