Letter from my friend Ken.
Hi Art,
When the air crews first arrived in England they really had it rough. We didn't:t have a fighter that could escourt the bombers all the way in and back on a mission. The Germans had plenty of fighters and shot down so many of our bombers that the life of a crew was not very long. If they got 25 in it was quite a feat. The P-51 changed the odds a lot and the number of missions was raised to 30 and then to 35. If you stop and analize the fact that there were at least 10 men on each plane and at least 8 planes in each sqdn., 4 sqdns in each bomb gp, so a gp. could have as many as 32 to 40 planes flying a mission. A bomb gp. in the early days of the war had only one plane return, so multiply this by 10 and this is why the Air Force had such a high loss.
I am so glad I got over there when I did. We had those beautiful P-51s with us all the way. The flak was still rough, but at least our chances were much better than the early crews.
Thanks for the forward about the 453rd memorial at Old Buckingham
Art