Berlin, the R.A.F. had been there many times on there night raids, but as February of 1944 drew to a close the mighty Eighth had yet to venture to the "BIG D". Berlin was full of important legitimate targets, but more than that it was Hitler's home, the leader of the armies causing so much pain and death across Europe.The Eighth had to go to Berlin, and as the calendar rolled over to March 44, the time had come.
  In reality it was just the same as other missions for the bombers,except the targets were a bit different and further away. The fighting was going to be fierce, as the Luftwaffe had to defend the centre of their homeland, come hell or high water, or even Mustangs.
Leonard "Kit" Carson recalls the anticipation of flying a long mission to Berlin:
"When the smell of the first all out mission to Berlin was in the air around the end of February, we were ready. By then I had 666 flying hours, 435 in first line fighters, and 32 hours in the P-51B. The status of our training was superb. The weather in England varies between poor and rotten for 240 days out of the year. The winter of 44/45 was the worst that Europe had seen for thirty years. Our runways and Nissan huts were floating in a sea of mud. As we went from mission briefing in group ops, to the squadron pilot's room on the flight line, one could feel the weight of the leaden grey overcast above. A few snow flakes would expire in the mud at our feet. How high would we have to climb today to get on top of it- 20,000-30,000 feet? Only yesterday I took my flight to 36,000 feet before we broke into sunlight and then the mission was recalled. back down through it again and grope your way back to England thirty feet above the North sea for 120 miles, with no horizon for reference because the fog dissolves into the water and your environment is just one grey mass of weather, it has no dividing line between sea and sky" This would occur on many missions to come.
On the 4th March a Bomber Force again set out to attempt to reach Berlin, about 800 bombers had got up through the murk,and about the same in fighters. The B-17s pressed on for about two hours when they had a recall, many headed home, but it was thought to this day to be a hoax message from the Germans. Some bombers elected to go on 1 Sqn from the 100th Bomb Group and 3 of the 95th, a total of 29 B-17s to bomb Berlin for the first time. They arrived in the Berlin area without being attacked by German fighters, they thought they were probably alone as the fighters would have returned on the recall. Only they were pleasantly surprised when 4 Sqns of Mustangs turned up, like Calvary in a western, just as the German fighters arrived. 1 Sqn from the 4th Fighter Group and 3 Sqns from the 357th, these 8 Sqns of Bombers and Fighters were the first to carry out a U.S.attack on the City of Berlin.
For a fighter group that had been totally innocent of air combat in the skies over Europe only a few weeks ago, the 357th were now, in the month of March, embroiled in combat nearly every day. During this month alone over fifty victory claims were made for enemy aircraft destroyed, and many others that were hit but not claimed as destroyed.Unfortunately there had been  losses for the group, sixteen pilots were reported missing, many of them would not return. In March alone the Luftwaffe had lost approximately 400 aircraft and close to 300 pilots.

    Throughout the missions during the months of February and March the P-51, although a great aircraft, it's engine and armament layout continued to frustrate the pilots and the maintenance crews. The abort rate was high for a variety of mechanical reasons, mission reports and combat reports would be full of references to gun jamming and guns that would fail to fire at all. During the Spring months a lot of effort went in at all levels to sort out the problems, most of the mechanical glitches were overcome but it was a slow process.
Flight line ground crews throughout the Eighth air force were responsible for many important and innovative improvements on aircraft and equipment, and their hard work and dedication is often not recorded. A 357th Armament NCO came up with the idea of taping and shellacking the gun firing solenoids, this would stop them freezing.Later in the year armament men would design a new mount for the K-14 gunsight, this was used by many units in the Eighth.  In the middle of March, all P-51 groups received urgent instructions to correct a serious situation. In his diary for March 14th Joe DeShay (Crew Chief) wrote " Pulled all engine mounting bolts last night" Several P-51's had been lost when the engine broke away in hard pullouts, although none were from the 357th. Replacing all the bolts would have been a day and night job, and took 7 days to do all the groups aircraft.
Up to the end of March, all the Mustangs of the 357th were all in a dull olive drab and grey colour scheme, this was getting rather ropey as much of it would come off when the shipping tape was removed. They all had white noses and white bands on the wings and tail sufaces, of course this poor appearance had no effect on their performance as a fighting machine, but the colours were to soon change. The final days of March saw the beginnings of what would result in the most colourful fighter force in all of aviation history. The white bands on wings and tail, and the white noses, had been introduced when the P-47's arrived a year earlier, it was hoped that it would make the P-47 look less like a Fw 190, this was used on the P-51, also because it looked very similar to the Me 109. In February 44, Col Hub Zemke the Commander of the 56th Fighter Group was given permission from the VIII Fighter Command to paint the noses of their P-47's in Squadron colours. Fighter Command was then awash with requests from other groups to do the same. On the 13th March General Kepner ordered a system to use nose colours for identification, and there started the very coluorful Eighth Air Force. The 357th were assigned to the 66th fighter wing, and under the new nose colour scheme all of the 5 groups in the 66th would have a checkerboard design on the nose, the 357th were to be the well known red and yellow. Although there are no surviving documents to verify the fact, it is thought that the 357th were to do more Stripping, painting and alterations to their aircraft colour scheme's than other groups. All the early P-51's were OD and grey, but some time in the spring they began to come through from the depot's in bare metal.
The 357th paint sprayers went to work on the new aircraft in two ways, one scheme was to paint the upper surfaces (Wing,tail and top of fusalage down to the canopy rim) in Olive Drab, leaving the fusalage sides in bare metal. Undersurfaces were painted grey or left again in bare metal. Then the other scheme was to paint the overall aircraft probably RAF green, with grey undersurfaces. After the invasion bare metal aircraft began to be predominate,partly to make them less visable against the Winter snow on the ground in Europe. Almost all 357th aircraft had names, sometimes on both sides, but usually on the left only, these would come from the pilot and occasinally from the ground crews that serviced the plane. Kill markings were normally painted on the left, forward of and under the cockpit, there was no set design for kill markings and they often differed from Sqn to Sqn. In the fall of 1944 the 363rd and 364th Sqns began to paint the rudder on their Mustangs, Red for 363rd, and Yellow for the 364th. The 362nd however, never used their White on rudders, as the aircraft were bare metal by then and the white would not have shown up.

History IIII

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