John R. Woodruff, Mission August 10, 1944

Our fifth mission was on Aug. 10, target was oil storage and refineries, at Ploesti, Romania. We were shot down on this mission by anti-aircraft fire.
On this mission we were flying #44, an older B-24 with a tail turret installed in the nose. We were in the left wing of the second element C flight. Our diamond was destroyed. All 4 planes were shot down.

On this mission neither our navigator or ball-turret gunner flew with us. Our navigator had come down with pneumonia and was in the hospital. Our ball turret gunner had dysentery and wasn't able to fly. We were assigned a ball turret gunner from a crew that wasn't scheduled to fry that day. His name was S!Sgt. Arthur R. Pyne. He was from Mass.

We were hit by flak as we came off the target, after dropping our bombs. More flak than we had ever seen before. Plane on our right received direct hit thru bomb bay, but kept on. We got direct hit #2 engine, left wing. Shell passed right thru engine without exploding. We had to shut engine down as it wasn't able to be used. The bomb bay doors were shot up, hydraulic system gone, tail turret hit, rudders full of holes, flak thru waist, shell exploded in front and slightly to the right of us. Piece of flak grazed my right wrist, but I didn't know it until after I was on the ground. We turned right out of the flak. #2. eng. out. #4 prop running away. Other engines not running smoothly. Got order to bailout. Six of us had minor wounds, but we all got out safely. All were captured almost on landing, except our pilot and I. He was the last to leave the plane and landed in a tree. He was out two days before he was captured.

I was flying as nose gunner this mission, as our nose gunner was a big guy and couldn't fit into the tail turret they had in the nose. We exchanged our normal turrets for this mission. I left the plane thru the nose wheel door. After falling clear of the plane and flak I pulled my ripcord and nothing happened. I was wearing a chest pack, so I started pulling it out by hand.

When the chute finally came out, the snap pulled the risers loose from the harness and the pack went above my head. This flipped me up-side down and I landed on my back and shoulder, so I was unable to move from the waist down for three days. After the third day the feeling came back into my legs and I was able to move some. I was able to bury my chute and crawled to some near-by woods.