Marvin J. Miller, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Luke Kelly, June 11, 2001: Saving the legacy tape no. 242

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Marvin J. Miller ~J u n 1 I , 2 0 0 1 m1 i n that didn't come back. I gu ss you might call it a prem niti n. I k k.ne\\ )111dhing wa going to happen. I don't know whether he sur d, or n t. But, all I kn \\ i that the flight that he was on didn't come back that day. And this morning that we went down for our 20'h mission th r wa thi erge nt, and boy he scarfed up eggs for breakfast. He ate two or three breakfasts. nd w w r kidding him about it. And he says, "Well, it might be a long time before I get another bite to eat." And, of course, you know, to think about anything like that is quit distnal. But, anyway, we proceeded on our mission. It was supposed to be just another milk run. It was the 24th of August 1944. That 1noming in briefing they told us that the Russians had just captured Ploesti, so no more raids over Ploesti. And we all breathed a sigh of reli f. We went up to Czechoslovakia and dropped our bombs and were on our way back. And as we got back in the Vie1ma area, because of the shortage of fuel , the Gennans had concentrated their aircraft-their fighter planes-in specific areas and this was one of those areas. We were in that particular area when fmiy aircraft cmne through our formation. They just came through in a wave and went right through our formation. They knocked down everyone in our box except us. We were the tail-end Charlie and the lead aircraft in our box. o, four out of the six bmnbers in our box were knocked down. They went right through the formation. Now, our fighter escorts were up at the head of the formation. And when they heard about it they came back. And the reports were that they took care of the fighters because there was just this one pass. Well, during this pass, an aircraft had cmne up under us and the ball gunner had been hit and they'd !mocked out one of our engines. We were losing altitude and 19