Africa

From Robert's Field we flew to Dakar, Senegal, which is located on the Western point of Africa. From Dakar we stopped in Tindouf, Algeria in the Sahara Desert. It was too far to follow the coast to Casablanca so we had to fly inland since we could not fly over the Spanish Sahara. I guess they liked Germany too much. From Tindouf we had to fly through the Atlas Mountains which are 18,000 feet high. The B-26 could only fly up to about 15,000 feet and we had to fly through an 11,000 feet high pass. We flew into the pass then changed course again to fly out. We waited about two hours at Tindouf until the weather was clear in the pass so we could fly through it. The Air Force had a radio operator in the pass to notify Tindouf when the weather in the pass was clear.

The runway looked wide enough at Tindouf so we decided to take off in a three ship formation. Everything was going fine until we noticed that the side of the runway we were using was a little short and at the end were some rocks (about 2-3 feet in size). We made a shorter pull up than we normally would have. We thought the tower should have told us about the runway on the left being shorter. I think the tower just wanted to see three bombers take off in a three-ship formation. The weather was clear through the pass. We flew about 350 miles per hour on the down side of the mountains to Marrakech, Algeria. The tower told us to go on to Casablanca, Algeria.(Continued)