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Diary of Joseph D. Howard November 1, 1942
(Left page) "Sun Nov. 1, 1942 My Darling Wife, You have no idea how close to came to being a widow instead of a wife. I shall start from the beginning: Tues. night (27th) we ran a mission to Rabaul with ships in the Harbor as our target. Searchlights covered us as well as ack-ack but we scored a hit. Got a hole in the ship by no. 2 engine but no damage. We slept a little on Wednesday and that night went out for ships in Tonlia harbor [Tonolei Harbor] in the Solomons.
We took off at 8 pm [bombardier B-17E "Clown House" 41-9235] with a bomb bay tank of gas plus a normal gas load (2100 gals total) and 4 – 500 lb. bombs. At one am Thurs. Oct 29 we had not found our target so dropped our bombs and started..."
(Right page)
"...back to Port Moresby. Our maps were poor and navigator’s watch was broken so we could not use celestial navigation. At about 5 am we were lost at sea. Try as we did to communicate with Port Moresby, Mareeba, and Townsville. We had little success but finally got a heading for Townsville. Knowing that our gas supply could not take us in we told them we were going down at sea hoping that they would be able to find us. At 7 am Major Lindbergh made a remarkably good sea landing and we climbed out of the radio hatch and got our rubber boats out into the water along with some water, flares.." [Read entire diary entry November 1, 1942]
Credit: Joseph D. Howard Date: November 1, 1942
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