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June 19th, Monday

No mission – up at 10, make inventory of my foot locker for storage when we leave for France. Guess our field is already picked out for us. Bad weather over continent and still no missions. Probably get one tomorrow.

June 20th, Tuesday

Lay around all day, down to line and a ball game after supper. I’m posted for a mission at 0900. Everyone’s very mysterious – we’re told to bring along our toothbrushes – At briefing find we’re to take the group up to the 364th Group*, land, stay the night and work out of there tomorrow morning.

I’m tail-end Charlie in Scotty’s flight and as we near Honington (364th) everything is 10/10s so we call for a homing** and tuck in close to go through.  Man we broke out at 350-400ft – so close you would think it was one plane. Siegle called in Flores to our left and after investigation, we’re there. But also about 3 more groups all milling around at 300 ft and almost dark with light rain. We finally got some sort of pattern started and everyone got in OK.  Lots of headaches for the flying control though I’ll bet!  

After parking my plane and meeting my mechanic and a little talk we climbed in a truck and went to Group HQ – No sooner out of truck then who should we meet but Beaumont, McDermont and Hall, they whisked us off to their house – mind you they live in houses!!  Bob, Hancock and I stayed with them and up till 12:30 shooting the breeze talking over old times – Jack McD has a 190*** to his credit.

* The 364th was another P-38 group assigned to the 8th AF.  Sometimes, the 9th AF would augment the 8th AF, sending P-38s to help provide long-range escorts for the heavy bombers. That’s what Dad was doing on this mission. More info on the 364th. 

** ‘Homing’ refers to asking for navigational assistance from controllers. The controllers could ‘home in’ on aircraft radio signals, to tell exactly where they were, then use radar to guide them safely to an airfield.  

*** Refers to the Focke-Wulf 190 (FW-190), one of the top German fighter aircraft.

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