A ROLL OF THE DICE

A lucky Liberator crew survives

- BY 1ST. LT. RUDOLPH JIM CHERKAUER, USSAAC (RET.) AS TOLD TO AND WRITTEN BY JAMES P. BUSHA

There was always a chance something would go wrong.

The thoughts of multiple, unforeseen problems were kicked around in the heads of the Liberator crews long before takeoff. The best-laid mission plans rarely went off without a hitch, but the brave young men who flew day after day through murderous flak, enemy fighters and long, tedious over-water flights didn't think of themselves as the recipients of the enemy's bullets or flak bursts. Their thoughts were on the other guys next to them in formation as the ones who would get hit today.

Being young and adventuresome helped the crews a little to make it through each mission alive, but the whispered, soft-spoken words of luck, fate, destiny and divine intervention carried much greater weight to a God-fearing crew. Here is a story of one such mission where all these factors came into play in the belly of a B-24 on a mission to Formosa.

The Lucky Dicers

When I joined the 43rd Bomb Group in 1944, I already had several hundred hours of copilot time in B-24s flying patrols from the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador with the 6th Air Force. There was no flak or enemy fighters to deal with. Only long, mostly boring, over-water flights. By the time I was transferred to the 43rd Bomb Group at Nadzab, New Guinea, about the only thing that changed while flying the B-24 was the ever-present flak, and there was always plenty of it!