A/C # 42 31710"THE SAVAGE" MACR #4578.Micro fiche #1627. (Don Riggle to Paul West in Little Rock, AR - 1993: On the 8th of May 44 for two days in a row the 100th sent 32 aircraft to Berlin. On these trips the Group was using a new device called CARPET. A powerful transmitter that operated on the same frequency that the German Range Tracking radar used. If properly used formations could have at least two miles in direction. Lt Riggle's aircraft released their bombs but began to trail behind for some unknown reason; finally disappearing. Two of the crew were KIA and eight survived. (This was all the information recorded until 1993. Here Riggle completes the story...pw) The oxygen system was knocked out just as bombs were released. The only alternative was to descend to 15,000 or below to survive. We were on top and overcast on the Berlin and I intended to stay in the clouds on the way back. After about 20 minutes we ran out of cloud cover and were immediately attacked by a flock of ME-109s. We were pretty well shot up - out of ammunition and on fire in the right wing. The control column went limp after a hit in the tail section - with no control there was nothing we could do except bail out. The two waist gunners, Gil Sandoval and Bob Marbach were dead, so we attached static lines and bailed them out - then the rest of us left the aircraft."