Mott was told to test fire his 50-caliber machine gun from his waist gunner position. He noticed through a break in the clouds that the aircraft had left the coast of England. The deafening roar of the massive bomber squadron intensified as it formed into combat wings over enemy territory near Kiel, Germany.
The date: April 11, 1944. Mott prayed that he would do his job and not let down his nine other crewmen. Fear seeped into his mind.
And for good reason. The crew’s first combat mission would be its final one. The pilot again interrupted Mott’s thoughts with an alert over the intercom: Nazi Germany fighters could be somewhere under the dense cloud layer.
At that moment, all hell broke loose in the aircraft. Flak bursts filled the sky. Jagged shrapnel punctured the thin skin of the “Flying Fortress” plane and the crew members’ bodies.
Mott was hit by something near his right eye. The aircraft was hit again by flak, knocking out two port-side engines, forcing the left wing to suddenly dip. The plane veered out of formation and directly into fate.
The pilot, Ben Totushek, was badly wounded and unconscious, slumping forward over the control stick. The copilot, Bill Kleine, struggled to regain control of the aircraft. The engineer, Billy Tidwell, managed to get the pilot’s body off the controls.
The crew frantically tossed out anything to lighten the load of the doomed aircraft. Mott rushed to pull the emergency handle and kick the waist door off the plane. Seconds l.