Carl B. Yerian, Mission April 4, 1944

The next morning we were roused out of bed about 4 am for breakfast and briefing for the day’s mission. This was to be another long day as we were to bomb a railroad marshalling yard in Bucharest, Romania. We took oft' as. it was becoming daylight. Take off was always interesting with a full bomb load and full gas tanks and 30 second intervals between planes. The last bounce before becoming airborne was always on the very end of the runway. On these missions our fighters did not have sufficient range to go all the way q, the target with us and we were attacked by 45-50 enemy aircraft. Ten enemy aircraft were shot down with seven probables while we lost one aircraft to enemy action and one crashed on take off. We had ten crew members missing and 25 seriously wounded. The Aircraft that was lost was flying right above me in the formation when several ME-109s came out of the sun and attacked head on and came down through the formation. I watched as our gunners caused the left wing of the fighter to disintegrate and he crashed into the plane flying above me. There was an explosion and pieces of the planes went over and under our plane. There were no survivors from that collision.