G_93M

THE LONGEST MISSION

by Greg

Maj Combs led flight. Hit Devao 1300 miles from Batchelor and damaged harbor and submarine base there. Flew to Del Monte from Devao landing at 9 pm. Didn’t get anything to eat there. Combat crews started servicing planes as soon as we landed. Serviced, refueled, and loaded with bombs we lay down to get some rest at 12 midnight, but it started to rain, and it ended up that we got no sleep that night.

At 2 am had black coffee and hardtack, corned willy, and pineapple. 2 planes were out of commission out of the original 9 that started so only 7 took off at 2:30 am heading for Linguan Gulf. Had trouble assembling flight because of very bad weather conditions, but finally got them together at 1000 ft. Capt Teats got lost and separated from the flight, and got on the tail of a Jap plane and followed it thinking it was one of his own flight.

Whole mission required 32 hours of actual flying time and covered a total distance of 4000 miles -- longest mission ever flown.

THE FIRST KILLED IN AERIAL COMBAT

S/Sgt Delahaney was first man killed in the 19th group in actual combat. He was engineer on Capt Kelly’s plane, and manned left side gun during the attack. Was killed during the first attack, his head being cut off by machine gun fire.