During WWII, Frank Murphy flew twenty-one daylight combat missions with the Mighty Eighth. The odds of returning safely were three to one against. Below is an excerpt from his memoir, Luck of the Draw, in which Frank recounts the harrowing experience of flying into combat.
On Monday, June 28, 1943, along with seventeen other 100th BG aircrafts, and three other 4th BW groups equipped with Tokyo tanks, Crew No. 31 set out to attack the German submarine pens at Saint-Nazaire, France. Because of the large number of antiaircraft guns ringing the port, it was known as “Flak City.” Out of respect for this formidable array of defensive weaponry, our bombing altitude would be twenty-eight thousand feet, the highest bombing altitude of our combat tour. With our long-range fuel tanks, it was not necessary for us to fly over France; instead, we departed the English coast at Land’s End at the southwestern tip of England, flew entirely over water around the Brest Peninsula, and made our bomb run from the sea over the Bay of Biscay. It was a beautiful sunny day, but as we turned to our bomb run at the IP, I saw antiaircraft fire for the first time.
