Bombs Away!

Down in the nose, Jack Mathis was ready. He was a country boy from Texas, slow but sure, not very excitable and yet pretty excited now. This was the biggest daylight raid the Eighth Air Force had ever carried to Hitler.

The target, the U-boat works at Vegesack, near Bremen, was nearly lined up in the bombsight. Topside, Jack's skipper had called for readiness. Suddenly a burst of flak punched the plane on the nose. Jack Mathis was hit in the chest, side and back. The plane shuddered, went right on into the groove. Jack picked himself up, crawled in a widening path of his own blood back to the Norden bombsight, made his final adjustments with his left hand (his right was limp). At the proper moment, he let go.

He tried to say "Bombs away!" All he could get out was "Bombs--." He did not live to see the bombs split the target. He did not live to hear, as the others in the outfit did, of Winston Churchill's message to Major General Ira C. Eaker, calling the raid "a brilliant exploit, the effectiveness of which the photographs have revealed"--nor to hear General Eaker's answering promise: "We will repeat these efforts many times, and on an ever-increasing scale."

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