The following are the combined personal diaries of the last World
War II combat flight crew of the Boeing B-17-F Flying Fortress
named "Out House Mouse." Each of these diaries has been transcribed
from the original or from a first generation copy of the original
provided to me by the crewmember or his immediate family.
My father was 1Lt. E.J. ("Joe") Harvey, the pilot on this crew and
it was the transcription of his diary that began this project. Lt.
Harvey's notes were hand-printed in block capital letters and an
effort has been made to retain that personality in this
transcription. For each combat mission, Lt. Harvey also included
carefully cut and folded newspaper accounts, which have also been
transcribed and where possible, the source newspaper identified. An
effort has been made to duplicate the newsprint type, column size
and position as much as possible to retain the look of his original
diary.
From his diary, I learned the names of the other members of his
crew and their hometown at that time. Using that information, I've
been able to locate all the members of the crew or their family.
Six others have provided me with copies of their diary for which I
am most grateful and I have included transcriptions of these
diaries in this combined record. Because Lt. Harvey provided an
entry for every day, even when not flying, and because his diary
covers the greatest period of time, from the first of January
through the middle of June 1945, his diary provides the date stamp
and serves as the basis for all of the other records.
This combined chronological record includes the seven available
records of all 9 members of this last combat crew of the "Out House
Mouse."Thus, this record includes the diary of 2Lt. Phil Darby, the
co-pilot, provided by Mr. Darby; the diary of 2Lt. Marty Raber, the
bombardier who actually sent me his original diary and his
scrapbook for my use in preparing this book; the diary of 2Lt. Paul
Katz, the navigator for the crew, provided by his wife, Joan Katz;
the diary of S/Sgt Niel C. Jorgenson, the crew's flight engineer,
which has been provided by his daughter, Ms. Susan Lunt who also
provided the computer scans of the photographs of the flight crew
and their signatures at the beginning of this book. The remaining
records are the "Mission Sheets" of the ball turret gunner, S/Sgt
George H. Odenwaller and the diary of the tail-gunner S/Sgt Walter
M. Limberger. Both of these gentlemen provided me with a
hand-written reproduction of their diary. The last record of course
is that of Lt. Harvey from which all of this has grown. Following
the entries of the pilot and co-pilot, the entries from the other
five diaries are arranged in a nose-to-tail order of that
crewmember's position aboard the "Out House Mouse."
Each of these records is separated from the others by a break line
(----) with each contributing member identified. In addition, the
individual contributions also use a different type font. A sincere
effort has been made to replicate the handwriting and format the
diarist used in each of the original records. For example, while
most of the diary authors established a format for reporting the
specific important facts of their missions and recorded these facts
in hand-printed letters, Paul Katz wrote his diary in long-hand
using a narrative style and addressed it to his wife, Joan.
Consequently, for Lt. Katz, I chose ascript font to replicate the
transcription of his diary. "Mission days" are preceded by a small
pilot's wing prior to the diary date and conclude with the
transcription of the newspaper account (or accounts) that Lt.
Harvey had so carefully cut, folded, and pasted into his diary.
Photographs from these articles have been electronically scanned
and reproduced here.
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