LEADING LADY PREFACE

Fred Arthur Muehler told me these stories in his own words; we went over them mission by mission. 

Part I

By Preston P. Clark. Jr.

PREFACE

These are pages from a gunner’s diary They were written at a U.S. Air Force base in England during the spring, summer and fall of 1944 The story actually began in November, 1943, when ten Americans in their teens and 20’s, trained in various specialties of aerial warfare as practiced on heavy bombers, were brought together as a combat crew for training at Dalhart Army Air Base, Dalhart. Texas.

Unfortunately the diary does not date back to those days at Dalhart. Let it suffice to say that it was snowing cats and dogs when we got there, we were snowbound on Christmas day, and we saw nothing but snow below all the way to Nebraska when we flew away in February.

At the Point of Embarkation, Kearney, Nebraska, they gave us a new crew number — 165 — another clothing check and several more health, security and survival lectures It was blowing up a snow storm when we taxied out and took off from the Kearney strip headed for New England We called at Grenier Field. N.H. and Presque isle, Maine, then hopped up to Goose Bay, Labrador, across to Iceland, and then over to Prestwick. Scotland. 

Fred often rode just behind the pilot and co-pilot seats, and told me that when they took off it was snowing so hard that they took off on instruments, because they could hardly see the runway.   After they got off the ground, air traffic control told them to come back and land, due to the weather, the pilot refused to do so, he would have never found the field, so they went on to Scotland.

We left our airplane at Prestwlck and rode an English train down to a U.S. Air Force staging base. “Somewhere in England ‘The whole crossing from Dalhart to England covered only about a week even with the time lost eating, sleeping and briefing at the various way stations.

The enlisted men were sent from the staging base to The Wash, over on the southeast coast, for a bit of brushing up on 50-caliber machine gun marksmanship. We never did find out what the officers were doing those two weeks, but general consensus was that they were holed up in some swank London boarding house, enjoying their last, fast-fading days as non-combatants.

We finally got a reprieve from The Wash and headed south again, arriving some five hours after at the typical little English town of Bury St Edmunds. The picturesque hamlet got its name from the boy King of East Anglia. Name of the town was switched from Beodericsworth (“full of happiness and prosperity”) to St. Edmund’s Bury where St. Ed was laid to rest there in 987A.D. –

The officers must have grown tired of London, or wherever they’d We found them awaiting our arrival at the base, some six miles or so gut of Bury, at a little wide place In the road called Rougham.

We found that we bad become Crew 69 of the 410th Bombardment Squadron, 94th Bombardment Group (Heavy). We were assigned bunk space In one of the Nissen huts, which looked like giant oil drums cut in half down the middle with the oval side up The 94th was scattered about over some eight or ten square miles of thickly wooded southern England We thought at first we’d landed in the middle of  Sherwood Forest. It was a beautiful place, at its freshest and greenest when we arrived.

We didn’t have much time to enjoy the scenery. They put us right to work. We got there in March, just when the cold days of English winter were fading into the good-flying- weather days of spring We arrived about the time they ‘started sending the heavies over in lots of 800 to 1,000, with an equal number of fighters to go along for protection. Every time the weather was clear enough they were sending out a maximum effort — all the ships they could put into the air.’ Idea was to destroy German resources and to weaken the enemy in every way possible so that the invasion of the Continent, which came four months after our crew reached England, would have the best possible chance for success.

We started out flying an old olive drab colored Fortress named “The Erie Ferry.” It was number 653 Then we flew a couple in number 180, “The Eagle’s Wrath,” before we were assigned an airplane of our own.  They gave us a shiny silver new B-17G. It was the pride of the U.S Air Force (notwithstanding opinions of the average 8-24 crew member to the contrary) and they called it the Flying Fortress because It fairly bristled with 50-caliber machine guns — 12 of them. The Fortress could carry 10 tons of bombs and had a range of better than 3.500 miles. Her wing span was 103 feet 9 inches her height, 19 feet 1 inch and she measured 74 feet 9 inches from nose to tail Loaded; she weighed 65.000 pounds, and empty, approximately 35,000. She got the tremendous power to carry all that weight from four 9- cylinder. 1,200 horsepower Wright Cyclone engines never let an airplane engine be called a motor).  Her top speed was 300 miles per hour; she cruised at about 225 most of the time.

When we started trying to choose a name for the new 17 it was about as big a problem as naming a new baby.  We surveyed the ships around us and noted these names Tuff Eddie. Idiot’s Delight. Airborn Spare. Mighty Warrior (Gagon’s crew), The Gimp (Stopulos’ crew in the 9lth). Dutchess, Frenese I and II, Gremlin, The Shady Lady. Fortress McHenry. Morgan ’s Raiders, My Asam Dragon. The Rebel Queen, Mission Mistress, Flak Buster. Rosie, Joker. St. Christopher’s Kids. Friday 13th, The Latest Rumor (Bavtos’ crew in the 100th), Nick’s Place, Shack Bunny (385th). Puddin, The Better Half and Old Hound Dog.

By the time we got a ship of our own, we had been shifted to another squadron as a Pathfinder (lead) crew.  That’s what really suggested the name we chose lot our new ship, number 668. We christened her the “Leading Lady,” and had the name painted on both sides of her nose in script two feet high. We flew her on a lot of rugged raids and she took a lot of battle damage, but she was still operational when we left England. Last we heard of her they said she’d gotten too old to lead the way so they took the Mickey (radar) equipment out of her and made her a wing ship in the 385th Bomb Group. After the Lady had given up the best flying hours of her life and sustained terrific battle damage, they had to stick her back in the rear end of a strange squadron in a strange group. With “Leading Lady” painted on her nose in letters two feet high.

One more paragraph of preface, and then the diary.  

The members of the crew about which the material was written were:

V. Allan Wertsch, pilot. Delevan, Illinois.

Ralph S. Taylor, co-pilot. Grande Lodge, Michigan.
Richard P. Getz, navigator, San Diego.
Mark J. Counihan, bombardier, Iron River, Michigan.
John S. Stepanski, Jr., Mickey navigator, Detroit.
Fred Arthur Muehler, engineer and top turret gunner, Pacific, Missouri
Cecil R. Mahathey, assistant engineer and left waist gunner, Winston-Salem, NC.
Lloyd Elliott, radio operator-gunner, Bakersfield, California,

 Preston P. Clark. Jr.  Gunner. Abilene, Texas.
In addition to these there was a lad named Alfred Beacon a Bostonian, who was a member of the original crew, from Dalhart until about the time we reached England. He was replaced by a Polish boy named Ted Kosinski. who was with us from Wash days until we became a lead crew Then there was a kid from Staten Island on the original crew whose r.ame was Lawrence Dunn We never called him anything Larry He was the ball turret gunner and stayed with us we became a lead crew arid got the radar hat in place of e bail turret  The diary is reproduced on the following pages,  just as it was first written It is the mission-by-mission account of the  Operational Tour of the “Leading Lady,” a great airplane, and of the crew who flew her, a great bunch of guys.