Here's an eyewitness account, by Capt. Fred Wesche:

"This is a formation of six airplanes. The Japanese were getting ready to mount
a large expeditionary force to relieve their garrisons on New Guinea, and the
Col. announced [that] it was going to be done in broad daylight, at noontime,
as a matter-of-fact, at low altitude, 5000 feet, over the most heavily
defended target in the Pacific. Most of us went away shaking our heads. Many of
us believed that we wouldn’t come back from it. Granted the importance of
the target was very great. No question about that. …all those ships in the
harbor and that means a major offensive somewhere along the line .
Anyway, we went over the target and all of us got attacked. I was shot up. The
airplane was kind of banged up a little bit. We had to break formation over the
target to bomb individually and then we were supposed to form up immediately
after crossing the target, but no sooner had we dropped our bombs than my tail
gunner says, "Hey, there’s somebody in trouble behind us." So we made a turn
and looked back and here was an airplane, one of our airplanes, going down,
smoking and on fire, not necessarily fire, but smoke anyway, and headed down
and obviously headed for a cloud bank with this whole mob of fighters on top of
him. There must have been fifteen fighters. Of course, they gang up on a
cripple, you know, but he disappeared into a cloud bank and we never saw him
again. It turns out it was Capt. Harl Pease. He got the Congressional Medal of
Honor. The rest of us came up with the Air Medal, which I’m not complaining
about. Anyway, it wasn’t until we got back that I discovered who it was, and
then another airplane, one of the other airplanes, went down also, but they
recovered him finally. That was Capt. Brandeis' crew. He got part way home,
and, I guess, they bailed out and into rubber rafts and they picked him up
later. The results of the raid, I’m not sure what it was, whether it was
successful or not, but it certainly was a most hair-raising experience to go
through. I mean, suddenly, you look ahead of you and see about twenty airplanes
all shooting at you at the same time, and then there was flak, anti-aircraft
fire, like you wouldn't believe. I thought there was a black cloud over the
target but it was smoke from all the flak bursts.
We were credited with, at least partial credit, with having shot down a couple
of airplanes. On the other hand, when you’re in formation like that, it’s
hard to say, everybody shooting at the same airplane, and who actually shot it
down. So sometimes, you get double reports. In other words, it sounds like
there’s more airplanes shot down than actually were. There was many a case
that two guys thought they shot down the different airplanes [and] it was the
same airplane. But, anyway, we got back all right. …"

Definitions of all right, vary. Here's Capt. Wesche's description of the
damage his B-17 received:

"A 40-mm antiaircraft shell hit us. They were flying all around but only one
hit us, fortunately. It came in right next to the cockpit where the wing joins
the fuselage. A few inches farther to the front and it might have taken out the
main wing spar, in which case the wing would have come off, so we were
fortunate. When the shell went off my ears were ringing. I couldn’t hear
anything. The sound from that explosion is tremendous, to say the least. I
turned and looked around. Right behind me is the top turret gunner, and here he
was laying crumpled at the foot of the turret, so I had to wait till we got
clear of the enemy--of course, that was the first item--and I rushed back there
and we got a couple of us to get him out of there. He was peppered with
shrapnel. He didn’t receive mortal wounds, or anything, but it put him in the
hospital.
We were without radio, it knocked our radio out, among other things. The whole
electrical system went out, as a matter-of-fact."

The bombardier was hit with a machinegun bullet from a Zero. The description
of the wound:

"My navigator calls and said, "Hey, Andy has been hit." So as soon as we got
clear of the target and away from enemy fighters I went down into the nose and
Andy was lying on the floor. He had two holes through his jacket. I thought it
was two bullets. Actually, it was the same bullet [that] went in and out. It
didn’t penetrate the pleural cavity, but it did take out the scapula, the
shoulder blade. It tore ligaments out on that and he was in considerable pain,
of course, and so we made him comfortable, gave him a shot of morphine, and got
him home."

The injury left the bombardier permanently disabled. Capt. Wesche himself was
wounded in the foot by a mg bullet that came through the rudder pedal and
struck him in the ball of the foot. It was largely spent so other than a lot
of blood, not much harm was done and he was never taken off flight status,
although he did hobble around for a few days.

FWIW Wesche was the son of a German immigrant, a cabin boy on the White Star
line who jumped ship in Nova Scotia at the outbreak of WW1--he didn't want to
go back to Germany and end up in the Kaiser's army--and made his way to San
Francisco, where Fred was born to an Irish-Italian mother.


Chris Mark