Elmer E Browning

Military

#11 mission, May 28,1944, Desseau. Made take off, expecting an easy mission. Heavy flak all the way to the target. German Fighters hit us before we got to the target and planes were going down all around, our tail gunner got hit in back of the head, but he will be ok. I got my first plane, ME109 and ME210. . #15: Caen, June 6, '44 D-Day, firt blow of the invasion. Opened the beachhead for the landing craft. Returned to base tired from lack of sleef but happy to get in on the first blow of the big push. #18: Le Bourge, June 14-44. Largest force of Heavy bombers in the history of the 8th AAF to take off on a ingle mision. Hit heavy flak around the target area an back to thecoast. Two planes lost from our squadron. Our plane came back untouched, received 2nd /olc. #25: Leipzig, 7 July '44, called early after a nice rest period. A rough mission where I narrowly escaped a vicious piece of flak that came up and hit ball turret. This was my closest call in this tour. Finished today and glad to be through. Received the DFC. #30: Munich, 31 July '44. Once again we took off to bomb PFF. A the IP our #3 Engine went out, we salvod our bombs and left the formation and started back alone. No 3 engine and #4 was vibration after the supercharger run away. The pilot called me out of the turret to drop the ball. The radio operator positioned himself behind me holding onto my parachute harness, as the bal dropped. I almost got sucked out. The rest of the crew was busy throwing everythink else out to make the plane as light as possible. We stood by to bail out. Finally made it back to England where we landed at a P-51 base on the coast. Later a plane was sent from our base to pick up up and brought us back. One mission to Berlin, when I called down into the ball turret. I heard the most beautiful harp music I had ever heard. The radio operaor came on and said Berlin was socked in and we were to hit our seconday target, at that very instant, the harp music stopped. I believe had we gone on to berlin, it would have been our last. Another mission I went back down into the turret to get rid of my ammunition and did not hook my harness, the sight window had been blown out, and I almost got sucked out, the radio operator was trying to pull me back in, but I was being sucked out when I felt this giant hand push my buttocks back into the plane. I believe it was the hand of God. I have written a book, 'Elmer's Tune' ith the help of my wife from a small diary that I kept which ha all our missions and our ten man crew. the name of our crew was 'Elmer's Tune', We went through 7 planes to make our 32 missions.



DFC; Air Medal

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Units served with

A pathfinder B-17 Flying Fortress (serial number 44-8258) of the 401st Bomb Group. Image by Robert Astrella. Written on slide casing: '48258 14 A, Mount Farm.'
  • Unit Hierarchy: Group
  • Air Force: Eighth Air Force
  • Type Category: Bombardment

Events

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Born

Danville, Illinois

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