I'm french, excuse me ;-) It is difficult for me to write english
June 7th, 1944, the next day of Day-D, between 7 pm and 9.30 pm, bombers - probably being a part of 75 NZ Squadron US (490th Bomb Group) - bombarded the neighborhood of the trainstation and the bridges on the Loire at Nantes (France).
At the time of leaving his bombs, one of the airmen perceived a child based on the bridge re-putting on shoes. So he waited the child has left the bridge to hit it.
It seems that on the 60th anniversary of the D-DAY, in 2004, this airman narrated this episode for a newspaper. The teenager, saved by this airman, 79-year-old now, would like to find this narrative article and much better find and contact the family of this man who saved him the life down from its bomber.
I was this teenager.
Many thanks,
Yours, Henri Manoury (France)

 

Interesting story that I never heard about.  Here's some info if anybody wants to do some detective work. 

WEDNESDAY, 7 JUNE 1944
STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Eighth Air Force):
In the second mission (Mission 398) in the afternoon, 487 B-17s and 88 B-24s are dispatched; the primary targets for the B-17s are Nantes (190 bomb) and the Kerlin/Bastard Airfield (132 bomb); 23 B-17s hit Niort and 40 hit the Nantes Bridge; the primary target for the B-24s is Tours/La Roche (12 bomb) and 13 hit Pouance, 13 hit Blain, 13 hit Chateaubriand, 25 hit Laval Airfield, 12 hit Vitre and 3 hit Tours; 1 B-17 and 1 B-24 are lost, 1 B-17 and 7 B-24s are damaged beyond repair and 78 B-17s and 96 B-24s are damaged; 21 airmen are KIA, 12 WIA and 12 MIA. Heavy cloud prevents almost 100 others from bombing targets.

HOWEVER ...... I have this story also, about some 490th BG (B-24's ) that hit Nantes that evening :

On the 7th June 1944 two B-24 Liberators of the US 490th Bomb Group based at Eye, suffered a ground collision at RAF Feltwell. I am very grateful to Mr Eric Swain for providing the background information for this story. This account was written in 1998 by Jim Cunningham the Co-pilot in Lt Brown’s aircraft, which had been named "Flying Ginny".
We got back to the base at about noon of the sixth after our D-Day mission. Needless to say, we were dead tired and after putting our equipment away and doing all the various things that must be done after a mission it was about it was about 2:30 PM. Of course we had no sleep the previous night and went to bed as soon as we could and slept clear through until the next morning. We figured we would go on another mission that day but we weren’t sure when. Apparently the staff didn’t know either so we had to go to the briefing room and stand by until the received the battle order from headquarters.
It finally came at about 2:30pm (June 7th). We were briefed on the target for over half an hour and had to take off at 4:00pm. This did not give us much time but we made the take off time OK. The primary target was a railroad bridge at Tours, France and if we could not bomb that then it was to be the bridge at Nantes. We had complete overcast at Tours but there was a hole in the cloud at Nantes and got our bombs off there. They were right on the target. That sure gave us a good feeling, especially after our problems on D-Day. The flak was certainly heavy and accurate around both of those targets. The bottom of our plane looked like a sieve but luckily no severe damage and no injuries. The mission was a success, but it was by no means over for us.

More to the story of the collision, but maybe the above will help someone trace down Henri's story   ( Altho ...... even with a ' picklebarrel ' Norden bombsight, I find it stretching a bit that a bombardier could see a kid on a bridge ... but who knows ?  maybe ducked under the clouds for the bomb run .... weirder things have happened)

SHAEF1944 American Veterans Museum

Henri -
490th BG Historian:
eric.490thbg@btinternet.com
Mike 

Hi Henri
I have not come across this story myself
Without a name there is nothing I can do at present
I can put this request in the 490th BG News Letter but this will take a while as the next edition comes out in Jan 08
I will ask about this incident at the next reunion which is in Nov 07
If you come up with any other infomation  contact me at eric.490thbg@btinternet.com
Bye for now Eric, 490th Bg Historian / Archivist