Another eyewitness of the event was provided by Dick Quinton, also a pilot with the 731st Bomb Squadron and a good friend of co-pilot William F. Hoffman. Quinton stated: Our group was led by a new man, Major William P. Middleton, a former cadet commandant from Thunderfield Field at Phoenix with no combat experience. Man, what a struggle. Still going in toward the target, we could see ahead towering cumulus clouds above us. As new as we were we wanted to turn aside and get some more altitude, since we were still climbing to reach our assigned bombing altitude. As new crews, we were both at the rear of the whole formation in coffin corner. Bill (Hoffman) in #3 and myself #2 on our element lead ship. Suddenly, the group lead ship made a sharp bank and turn to the left. At the rear, we had to throttle back to keep from overrunning the ships in front of us. At this moment, we went into the cloud bank and zero visibility. I could feel our heavy ship shuddering into a stall and we immediately poured on full emergency power and climbed back straight ahead to avoid all the mass of 36 loaded B-17s in front of us. I know Bill and Emmet had to stall out and roll over on their back and break in two. Bill was a better pilot than Will Emmet, who was rather slow and measured in everything he did, especially in athletics, which we had done a lot of together for months. Of course, we couldn’t see visually, but were so close to it that I know exactly how it happened. We finally broke out on top and there were scattered airplanes everywhere. We hooked onto a ship with a radar box showing and dropped our bombs when they dropped theirs.

ABMC, MACR 12657 / Drawn from the records of the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, Savannah, Georgia