Meet my (assumed- must confirm this with grandparents) great uncle, Paul .S Melia, a Ball gunner of a B-17 bomber that served over Europe in the 401st Bombing Squadron. His first mission was on December/24/1943, in which his crew took to the skies at 12:00 AM. His officer leading the bombing run was Major William .T Seawell. There were no casualties and the Bomber squadron sited and/or bombed a V-1 rocket site near Gorenflos, in Pas de Calais region of France (have not gotten a lot of detail). They returned at 1604 hours or 4:04 pm. I could imagine a joke was gonna be made if they made it back at 4:01. His last and possible luckiest mission was on July/8/1944 which was led by Capt. R.H. Kaufman "E". The clouds made it hard for the Bombers to make out the targets but they still had good hits. An ME-110 was spotted near the group by my great uncle who kept his eyes and dual 50. cals on it. However the German pilot i guess was too chicken to attack and the flak that was firing was terribly in-accurate thanks to the cloud cover. The results were no casualties, only some scratched paint and maybe a thin gash in one of the bomber's lower fuselage. SGT Paul .S Melia was debriefed a few weeks later and was sent home (or so i have been told). I do not know about that because i never really did get allot of detail.
Here is what the Bomber that he served on would have looked like:
