Margaret Bourke-White goes bombing
Margaret Bourke-White racked up numerous firsts in her remarkable career as a photojournalist, but her achievement of Jan. 22, 1943 ranks right up there.
That day, Bourke-White became the first woman to fly on a U.S. Army Air Forces combat mission, riding along on a 12th Air Force B-17 on a raid of Tunis. Considering the military’s reluctance to let any journalist accompany a bombing mission, let alone a woman, her ability to make it happen was a credit to her persistence.
Bourke-White had been after the men in charge for months to allow her the opportunity, and Maj. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle finally consented early in 1943.
On the morning of Jan. 22, at an airfield in Algeria, Bourke-White climbed aboard the Flying Fortress “Little Bill,” piloted by 26-year-old Maj. Rudolph “Rudy” Flack of Pasadena, California. As the bomber flew toward its target, the Luftwaffe base at El Aouina Airfield north of Tunis, Bourke-White moved around the B-17 shooting photos from a variety of vantage points.
Her photos from the mission ran across a seven-page spread in the March 1, 1943 issue of Life. A pair of text blocks accompanying the story described Bourke-White’s experience on the raid. The last concludes:
They banked steeply and Miss Bourke-White looked down on great smoke plumes rising from the blasted airfield. The squadron then began dipping and weaving to avoid puffs of flak that suddenly appeared in the air around them. Some fighter planes swooped in and attacked Fortresses in the rear formations. Three Me-109s were shot down.
Two hours later the squadron — with all planes and Miss Bourke-White intact — was back at its desert base. Reconaissance subsequently indicated that 40 German planes had been destroyed by bombs and an equal number by fire. Everyone agreed it was a highly successful raid. Miss Bourke-White said she had been too busy to be frightened. “The sound and movement were so rhythmic,” she said. “It was like music — and so reassuring.”