Memories from the Out House Mouse: The Personal Diaries of One B-17 Crew

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 a script 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.

As a small boy, Robert Harvey's interest in the small red leather diary with the brass buckle was usually met with a slap on the hands and the admonishment that he would be told about the book when he was old enough to understand. As stated in his introduction, his father died before Bob was able to learn the facts of the book first hand, but through his research and the collection of the diaries of the other members of his father's B-17 crew, that small book is now available to anyone interested enough to open the cover of this book. Those who do will be able to see and read the combined recollections of this one crew exactly as they were written immediately following their missions over Germany. Born in Boone, Iowa in April 1945, Bob is the second of four children. Following his active duty services in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War, Bob graduated as an electrical engineer and has worked for a major west coast untility company for over 30 years. He currently lives in northern California.