Mission # 5 March 2, 1945
Our target was a sixty foot single rail railroad bridge at [cannot decipher]. We were bombing pathfinder. Each ship was carrinying four one thousand pounders. We sentu up two boxes, each consisting of eighteen planes.

Since my mission the 24th, I had been pretty nervous. I dreaded to go up again. However, after we were scheduled and I began my preparations for the mission most of my fear left me until we started to cross the bombline. Then I began to get shaky. We had a solid overcast below us. From here on out there’s not much to tell. To my amazement we didn’t see one damn burst of flak. We went in, made the run and just time for the bombs to hit, I was looking down, a break came in the clouds. I saw the bridge just before the bombs got it. The hits we got couldn’t have been better if we had bombed visual. There was nothing left of it. Everything went fine, we hit the bombline, I called the boys and told them to relax, take off their flak suits and smoke a cigarette. We were all happy, a milk run at last. I never expected to see one.

About fifteen minutes from the field “Mac” the tailgunner called and said the left engine was smoking , oil was all over it. I got out of the nose fast. A cylinder was blown off, so Red [feathered?] her and we came on in, I stood behind him and sweated him out all the way in . We got our milk run but we still had to sweat.