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Thanks to Internet, I came into contact with Wade HULL, living in Portland (Oregon, USA,) who participated in the raid on Biarritz as gunner. He very kindly agreed to answer my questions and to tell me his memories.
Its astonishing testimony, you will see, gives a new lighting to what occurred on March 27, 1944.
He even had the kindness to record it so you may hear it of his own voice
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“ Thanks you so much for the nice letter. I really appreciate hearing from someone who had been in the area of the war that we were concerned with. And I am so happy that you survived the terrible bombing that took place all over the continent. I realize that we caused tremendous hurt and damage to the people and towns of France and the other countries involved, but It was necessary at the time. We had to defeat Hitler and his bunch of heathens.
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"Yes, I was in the 466th bomb group and was on that mission to the airfield of Biarritz, on the 27th of March.
My squadron was the 787th. Our group put up 24 planes that day but we lost 2 during formation.It meant that we had 22 in the air over the target.
We were the lead group followed by many other groups that went on that raid.
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Luckily we survived and managed to return to our base in Attlebridge, just out of Norwich.
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We got damaged at the instant we dropped our bombs as we were hit with a barrage of flak at the instant we let our bombs drop. One of the bombs was detonated by the flak less that 100 feet under the ship and it really tore us up.
I was hit in the left arm and spent two months in the hospital before being able to return to the base and get back to flying. Actually it was a piece of our bomb that hit me. It entered the left elbow and came out in the left shoulder
Quite a trip for that piece of shrapnel.
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This mission happened to be the first one for my crew, but it was the second for me as I flew on a mission to Metz as a replacement for another man who was injured previously. And I never saw any of my crew again, for when I got back to the base from the hospital I found that they were in Switzerland for the duration. They had flown three more missions and then received flak damage and managed to make it into Switzerland for a safe landing.
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