Like many other missions they had undertaken in the summer of 1944, this one had been particularly cold, tough and dangerous for pilot Harry Seip and the crew of B17G Silver Meteor. The First Lieutenant and his men had set out on that morning, 11 July 1944, from a peaceful Framlingham, to undertake another arduous mission to Munich.
With their bomb load dropped the crew headed for home, all of them hoping for an uneventful return - but that quickly changed. Enemy fighters had been in action remorselessly, and the skies over the target were saturated with heavy flak. Their battle-scarred Fortress had been hit more than once, leaving the inner port engine shot out. Now it was smoking badly and they were struggling.

As the rest of the 390th Bomb Group headed back to base in close formation, Silver Meteor had steadily dropped behind the fast-disappearing bomber stream. Things were not looking good for Harry and his crew as the Luftwaffe fighters circled like sharks, closing in for an easy kill. But the enemy pilots were not the only ones who had spotted the ailing Fortress.

Two P-51s of the 357th Fighter Group had also seen the danger and, with their Merlin engines straining at full throttle, came tearing out of the blue sky into the action. The stunned Luftwaffe pilots were quick to sense they were up against two of the best Aces in the Eighth Air Force - ‘Bud’ Anderson and ‘Kit’ Carson - and these battle hardened pilots were just spoiling for a fight. Within minutes the German pilots, realising the game was up, had fled and at last the crew of Silver Meteor could breathe a sigh of relief. With these two P-51 Aces sticking close to guide them home, Harry and his men would survive to fight another day.