HUTCHINSON, Kan. — At the request of Bruce Carey, Hutch Post is commemorating the events of March 6, 1944, when American pilots battled the Luftwaffe over Berlin in what the Germans would later call Bloody Monday.
Merle Carey was one of the crew of the lead bomber for the mission. The retired farmer from Sterling spoke to Hutchinson News reporter Roger Verdon for a 1984 story.
Carey was 32 years old and manned the top turret gun on the B-17 bomber, stationed in Bassingbourne, England. He was the oldest of the ten men on the flight. The youngest was 18.
All of them were in their final five missions, as it took 25 missions to be rotated back home to the United States.
Carey told Verdon that the crew wore electric suits, that work like electric blankets, to stay warm aloft in the unheated plane.
The crew normally worked on a plane they called Blue Dreams, but were given an alternate plane, simply called 504, for the March 6, 1944 mission.
Carey said in the 1984 story that the flak over Berlin was so close that he could have reached out of the top turret of the bomber and grabbed it.
The candy bar that had been given to Carey along with the rest of the crew so they could keep up their energy during the flight froze before he could eat it.
The fate of Blue Dreams was different. Carey was told that plane crashed elsewhere. He didn't know what happened to that crew.
Most people who are part of war history don't necessarily know it at the time and men who live to tell about it are even more rare.
This was especially the case for Black Monday, as according to a paper from J. David Rogers, America lost 69 heavy bombers, equaling the greatest single day losses to that point, which translated to 700 Americans lost on that day alone.
The sacrfices made by American airmen to allow for victory in World War II, especially in that March week in 1944, cannot be overstated. Again, according to Rogers, 26,000 Americans paid the supreme price in that week alone.
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