Target Berlin or “God Draws Straight with Crooked Lines”

As the gas tanks of the B-24 were blown open at 22,000 feet over Berlin, Lt. George Lymburn struggled to maintain control of the craft.  Others on the plane had already bailed out, but Lymburn was simply too afraid to jump.  This was the first daylight attack over Berlin, and 69 bombers and 11 escort fighters were lost that day (against 400 Luftwaffe fighters).

In the Sunday, March 11, 1984 edition of the LA Times, I read the story of Lt. Lymburn and the crash landing of his plane.  I saw the German photo of his upside down plane called “God Bless Our Ship.”

When Lymburn thought the crew of seven was safely out, the plane went into a steep spiral, and Lymburn “just froze.”  He screamed, “Oh, God!  I don’t want to die!”  At that moment, at 16,000 feet, he was able to straighten out the plane and bring it to a crash landing.  An answer to prayer?  Read on!

After the craft landed, Lymburn discovered that there was another man on the plane: the tail gunner.  To quote the LA Times (I save articles for a long time!), Lymburn laughed and said his decision to crash-land the plane could have been either fear or wisdom “or God saying, ‘You’ve got a guy in the back seat, chum, who’s gotta go home and have seven children (which [Cittadino did).’”  For the time being, the two were taken to a prison where they were reunited with their crew.  His crew had not been strafed, as had others who had parachuted from destroyed planes.

There’s a Portuguese proverb, attributed to a Bishop in the 13^th century: “God draws straight with crooked lines.”  Lymburn was ashamed for being too afraid to bail out.  Yet if he’d bailed, the tail gunner would not have lived to have seven children.  God drew straight with that crooked line.

Here are a few such “lines” from the bible: King David should not have slept with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed.  Yet after the death of the first child of David and Bathsheba, King Solomon was born, and Christ is descended from Solomon.  Rahab was a prostitute, yet she was the great-great grandmother of King David.  Judah committed a great sin by sleeping with his own daughter-in-law, and Christ is descended from that union, as well.  Although there’s no escape from the consequences of sin, God can use it for good.  God can “draw straight with crooked lines.”  Ephesians 1:11 says that God “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.”

When we look at our own lives with all of our sins and regrets, let’s keep in mind that God is sovereign and His love for us never changes.  He can take all of our crooked lines and make them straight!

See also “Target Berlin: Mission 250: 6 March 1944,” by Ethell & Price for an abbreviated story of the B-24 (page 100).