<text id=00he0611><title>US Fighters in Europe</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>US Fighters in Europe</hdr><body>
<p>Eleven Spitfire Vs, then equipping the 31st Fighter Group based at Atcham and High Ercall for training, were flown across the Channel on a practice run. The 31st, formerly equipped with Bell P-39A Airacobra fighters, had left them in the US and had gone to England by sea. They normally would have flown across the North Atlantic, ferrying their own aircraft to war and being shepherded there by B-17 'mother hens'. But a series of checkerboard moves jumped bomber units around to the West Coast and to the Far East, and the 'mother hens' were unavailable.
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<p>The pilots of the 31st FG were inexperienced in the ways of combat, and in the theater environment; they needed more than a few hours of local flying. They started training on 26 June under the watchful eyes of experienced RAF personnel, and were declared operational in mid-August and assigned to RAF No. 11 Group.
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<p>The very first tactical aircraft flown to the United Kingdom by an American crew arrived on 1 July. It was a B-17E, and it was the total heavy bomber strength in the USAAF in Europe for a short while. By 27 July, the 97th Bomb Group, back from the West Coast and first of the heavies to arrive in the ETO, was available but hardly ready for operations. It had been sent from the US as soon as the crews were ready to make the ferry flight, and before their training had been completed.
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<p>The list of deficiencies was appalling. Crews were inexperienced in high-altitude flying and in formation flight, the basis of the bomber attack. The radio operators could neither send nor receive Morse code well. Most of the gunners had never shot at a towed target, let alone an enemy fighter, and some of them had never operated the B-17 turrets in the air.
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<p>They trained at a fast pace, and were alerted on 9 August. The weather cancelled the first alert, and did not let up until 16 April, when the forecast for the next day promised clear skies. The target for the 17 August mission was the huge railroad yard at Rouen-Sottevilles in northern France. A dozen B-17s from the 340th, 342nd and 414th Bomb Squadrons were the strike force, and another six were to fly a diversionary sweep along the coast of France.
