The 306th was assigned a bombing mission to an aircraft assembly and repair works at Oberpfaffenhofen in Southern Germany. Twenty-five B-17s went up as part of the 41st Combat Wing (which also comprised the 92nd Bomb Group and the 305th Bomb Group). On the way to the target after entering continental airspace at Dieppe, France, two planes were lost.

Because of the intense fighter activity and concentration of the crews on the defense of their own aircraft, it is difficult to determine the order in which eight more planes were lost. This ran the group's loss to a record equalling Bremen on April 17, 1943 and Schweinfurt on October 14, 1943. From the standpoint of losses suffered in combat, these were the three roughest missions flown by the 306th during the air war.

Oberpfaffenhofen was much lighter in men killed though, as there were only thirteen fatalities. At Bremen, the toll had been thirty-four and at Schweinfurt thirty-five. One major difference was that three of the lost crews on this mission made their way to Switzerland where one crew member died later while interned.

Ten enemy planes were shot down, but the 306th had traded ten Fortresses of its own; a heavy price for the raid. It was a dispirated group of flyers that climbed out of their planes at 1712 after a long, hard day that had begun with a 0600 wakeup and 0900 takeoff.

Taken from Russell Strong’s book “ First Over Germany”