James Naugle mission November 12, 1944

12 November 1944: We were on target over Brenner Pass in northern Italy, when we were hit by a lot of flak. I was hit in my upper right arm while I was in the upper gun turret. We also lost one of our engines over the target and had to drop out of our formation on the way back. While we were coming back over the Adriatic Sea we started, losing power on another engine.

My arm had lost its feeling and was still numb when I came down to the flight deck. The pilot handed me a note telling me to send out an SOS with our location to the air-sea-rescue group. Since I was afraid that we would have to ditch in the Adriatic it didn't take me long to get that done. We did manage to get to Foggia and the pilot made a safe landing.

Another B-24 in our Squadron also landed with us. Their co-pilot had been hit in his right hand, arm and chest. We were both put in an ambulance together and taken to a hospital. He was in really bad condition compared to me. I was treated at the hospital and released while he went to surgery.

Our plane was in bad shape, so we all flew back that night in the other B-24 that had landed with us, I can still remember the co-pilot's blood in the cockpit and on the flight deck.

After that episode I was really scared on every mission. Especially when we turned onto the I.P. and flew our bomb run with flak hitting our plane and blowing up others in the formation.