June was a good month of solid achievement. We ran eight missions: Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Le Mans, Huls, a target of opportunity identified as Norden, Germany, Paris/Villacoublay airdrome, St. Nazaire and Triequeville. The 381st went operational with the Huls-Antwerp missions on the 22nd, when 64 aircraft were assigned and only 5 aborted. We dropped 119 tons of bombs on that one.
The Huls-Antwerp mission was the outstanding job of the month. It was the first mission in which the 381st took part. Our main target was an important synthetic rubber factory in the Ruhr, near Recklinghausen. The attack was made under difficulties; it had to be delivered through broken cloud after a long flight under heavy fighter attack. Although our Wing had only a fleeting glimpse of the target, reconnaissance photographs later showed that the plant had been practically obliterated. Strike photographs showed bombs from our Wing just beginning to walk across the target, so it was a certainty that we had played our part in the excellent results achieved.
Six months later, during the great Russian advance in the East, there were persistent reports of German equipment being equipped with inadequate tires. After the war, we will learn whether this was due in part to the Huls raid. For the present, we like to think that we had something to do with it.
Other missions flown during the month were of routine interest only. The missions of the 25th and 26th were defeated by weather; on the latter, all the aircraft turned back at the IP because of the solid undercast, and the formation dispatched to attack the Klockner Aero Works at Hamburg, was also frustrated by cloud, with our aircraft cruising around over Germany looking for a break. They finally bombed a target of opportunity through a chance hole in the clouds. There was little interest in the results, as the target was not of enough importance to justify the effort expended.
The final record for June was a total of 517 aircraft dispatched by the Combat Wing on operational missions. Of these, 76 returned early and 16 failed to return.