The Mighty Eight in WWII
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HANOVER RAID July 17,1943

On the Mission to Hanover, Germany, the 8th Air Force was led by Major James Griffith of the 92nd. Bomb Group, 407th. Bomb Squadron,as Air Commander. This effort destroyed the tire plant known as the Kontinental Gunniwerke A.G. Waren,Walderstrasse.

While on this mission,an approaching the enemy coast, the crew of Pilot,Lt.Robert Campbell, of the 326th Bomb Squadron, were attacked by a group of FW190's. On their first pass,the Navigator,Lt.Keith Koske thought sure that they had been hit,for there was a terrific explosion overhead,and the ship rocked badly. A second later the top turret gunner S/Sgt.Tyre C.Weaver, fell through the hatch and slumped to the floor at the rear of the nose compartment. When Lt.Koske got to him we saw that his left arm had been blown off at the shoulder and he was a mass of blood. Lt.Koske first tried to inject some morphine, but the needle was bent and could not get it in.

As things turned out it was best that he was not given the morphine. The first thought was to try and stop his loss of blood. We tried to apply a tourniquet, but it was impossible as his arm was off too close to his shoulder. We knew he had to have the right kind of medical treatment as soon as possible, and we had almost four hours of flying time ahead of us, so there was no alternative. I opened the escape hatch and adjusted his chute for him.

After I adjusted his chute and placed the ripcord ring firmly in his right hand, he must have become excited and pulled the cord, opening the pilot chute in the updraft. Lt.Koske managed to gather it together and tuck it under his right arm, got him into a crouched position with his legs through the hatch, made certain again that his good arm was holding the chute folds, and toppled him out into space. I called down to our ball turret gunner,Sgt. James L. Ford, he said that the chute opened okay. We were at 24,500 feet about twenty-five miles due west of Hanover, and our only hope was that he would be found and given medical attention immediately.

The Bombardier, 2nd Lt.Asa J.Irwin,had been busy with the nose guns, and when the Lt.Koske got back up into the nose,he was getting ready to drop the bombs. The target area was a mass of smoke,and we added our contribution. After we dropped our bombs, we were kept busy with the nose guns. However, all our attacks were coming from the tail. I tried to use my interphone several times but could get no answer. The last I remember hearing over it was shortly after the first attack, when someone was complaining about not getting any oxygen. Except for what I thought to be some violent evasive action we seemed to be flying okay.

It was two hours later when we were fifteen minutes out from the enemy coast that Lt.Koske, decided to go up and check with the pilot and have a look around. He found the pilot, Lieutenant Robert Campbell, slumped down in his seat, a mass of blood, the back of his head blown off. This had happened two hours before, on the first attack.

A shell had entered from the right side, crossed in the front of F/O John Morgan, the copilot, and had hit Lt.Campbell in the head. Morgan was flying the plane with one hand, holding the half-dead pilot with the other hand, and he had been doing it for over two hours.
F/O Morgan told me we had to get Lt.Campbell out of his seat, as the plane couldn't be landed from the co-pilot's seat as the glass on that side was shattered so badly you could hardly see out.

F/O Morgan and I struggled for thirty minutes getting the fatally injured pilot out of his seat and down into the rear of the navigator's compartment, where the bombardier held him from slipping out of the open hatch. F/O Morgan was operating the controls with one hand and helping me handle the pilot with the other.

Questioned as to why he had not received help from other crewmen, Lieutenant Koske explained that the men in the rear of the aircraft were unconscious from the lack of oxygen, the air lines having been shattered several hours before. The ship had been undefended, except for the nose and ball turret guns. F/O Morgan's feat had been little short of miraculous. He had kept the ship in formation and, holding the fatally wounded pilot off the controls with one hand, had flown to the target and out again alone and unaided, with no radio, no interphone, and no hydraulic fluid. The ship was brought safely home for an emergency landing on the coast.

The other crew members were T/Sgt John McClure, S/Sgt.John Foley, Sgt.James Ford,Sgt.Reese Walton, and Sgt.Eugene Ponte.

In early December 1943 the War Department awarded now 2nd.Lt.John C.Morgan the Congressional Medal of Honor.
It was later learned that S/Sgt. Tyre Weaver had been picked up by the Germans, and had been hospitalized, and had recovered,and was being repatriated, and returned to his home in Alabama.

The story of this Crew was taken from a book written by Brig Gen J.Kemp McLaughlin, USAFR(Ret) "The Mighty Eight in WWII''

Extracted by, Steve Perri