Air Crew: 25 Missions. The Story of the Memphis Belle - The Memphis Belle.
THE MEMPHIS BELLE
IN September, 1942, a new Flying Fortress was delivered at Bangor, Maine, to a crew of ten eager American lads headed by Robert K. Morgan, a lanky 24-year-old AAF pilot from Asheville, N. C.
Proudly, the boys climbed aboard, flew their ship to Memphis, Tenn., christened her "Memphis Belle" in honor of Morgan's fiancee, Miss Margaret Polk of Memphis, and then headed across the Atlantic to join the U. S. Eighth Air Force in England.
Morgan had told them it was rough where they were going. There would be no room in the Memphis Belle for fellows who couldn't take it. The boys said they were ready.
They took it. Between November 7 and May 17, they flew the Memphis Belle over Hitler's Europe twenty-five times. Bombardier Vincent B. Evans dropped more than 60 tons of bombs on targets in Germany, France and Belgium. They blasted the Focke-Wulf plant at Bremen, locks at St. Nazaire and Brest, docks and shipbuilding installations at Wilhelmshaven, railway yards at Rouen, submarine pens and power houses at Lorient, and airplane works at Antwerp. They shot down eight enemy fighters, probably got five others, and damaged at least a dozen.
The Memphis Belle flew through all the flak that Hitler could send up to them. She slugged it out with Goering's Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. She was riddled by machine gun and cannon fire. Once she returned to base with most of her tail shot away. German guns destroyed a wing and five engines. Her fuselage was shot to pieces. But the Memphis Belle kept going back.
The longest period she was out of commission at any one time was five days, when transportation difficulties delayed a wing change. When the tail was destroyed the Air Service Command had her ready to go again in two days.
Only one member of the crew received an injury. And that, says Staff Sergeant John P. Quinlan, the victim, "was just a pin scratch on the leg."
The Memphis Belle crew has been decorated 51 times. Each of the 10 has received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal and three Oak Leaf Clusters. The 51st award was Sergeant Quinlan's Purple Heart.
The ship's 25 missions follow:
November 7: Brest, France
November 9 : St. Nazaire, France
November 17: St. Nazaire
December 6: Lille, France
December 20: Rommily-Sur-Seine, France
January 3: St. Nazaire
January 13: Lille
January 23: Lorient, France
February 4: Emden, Germany
February 14: Hamm, Germany
February 16: St. Nazaire
February 26: Wilhelmshaven, Germany
February 27: Brest
March 6: Lorient
March 12: Rouen, France
March 13: Abbeville, France
March 22: Wilhelmshaven
March 28: Rouen
April 5: Antwerp, Belgium
April 16: Lorient
April 17: Bremen, Germany
May 1: St. Nazaire
May 4: Antwerp
May 15: Wilhelmshaven
May 17: Lorient
The flight time on these missions ranged from three hours and 50 minutes on December 6 to nine hours and 30 minutes on May 1. The total sortie time for the 25 missions was 148 hours and 50 minutes. Approximately 20,000 combat miles were flown.
Today, the battle-scarred Memphis Belle is back home with her remarkable crew, the same crew to a man that was organized 10 months ago in Maine. The Belle is the first bomber to be retired from active service and flown back from the Eighth Air Force.
Still flying the Memphis Belle, the crew is touring the United States to tell their story to the boys in training establishments. Student bomber pilots, navigators, bombardiers and gunners are learning from the members of this crew the things they picked up the hard way.
The succeeding pages of this booklet tell the stories, in their own words, of the boys of the Memphis Belle. Here is what they saw, learned and did in the world's toughest theater of aerial combat. There are important lessons in these stories. Let us learn and apply them.
