Papa Takes Them Home

Over the Messerschmitt plant at Brunswick last week, the Flying Fortress Frenesi squared away for her second run at the target. Then the fighters came, twin-engine jobs that slammed rockets into the formation, snub-nosed 190s that whirled through the Fortresses with their guns spitting like alley cats.

Frenesi, with steady Lieut. William Cely of Houston, Tex. in the pilot's seat, got her bombs away all right, but she had been hurt; she was "a mess of holes and ribbons." The fighters hung on. Said Gunner Sergeant Everett Hudson Jr. of West Point, Miss.:

"They queued up on us, a whole mess of them, and I saw our right-wing man go down in smoke, and when I looked out the other waist window our left-wing man was gone, too.

"A 20-mm. shell hit our right horizontal stabilizer. Then some more hit the right wing and made a patchwork out of it. ... By this time . . . flak had knocked out our No. 2 engine.

"We went into a terriffic dive. . . . We went so fast I was being thrown all over the ship. . . . It was like a cyclone inside the ship. God sure was with me.

"I tried three times to make the door, but every time the ship took an evasive action and threw me some place else. I finally got to the waist window and was going to jump when I noticed my chute had ripped open. I was bruised all over and my left shoulder felt as if it were gone.

"Then the plane leveled off a little. I took off my chute and went forward to the pilot's compartment. The radio room was a mess, every loose thing smashed and thrown all over the place.

"I told the pilot I didn't have my chute and he said, 'That's all right; Papa's going to take you home. . . .'"

Back home in England, Frenesi, with Copilot Jabez Churchill of Santa Rosa, Calif. helping Cely in the wrestle with the controls, staggered into an airdrome, landed right side up, stopped. Mechanics appraised her damage with quick professional eyes: most of the tail shot away, one wingtip gone, fuselage and wings holed more times than they could count until they got her in the dispersal station.

Said Gunner Hudson, nodding at Airman Cely: "He's the best damn pilot in the world."

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