I may very well be off on this, but if I recall, the 25 missions and go home was for bomber crews. I'll have to look into my grandfathers (RIP) memoirs (if and when I get the opportunity again), as he flew C47s in the USAAF carrying the 82nd Airborne from Operation Overlord thru to the end of the war. If (it's a BIG if) I can get my dad to open up the crate with his uniform in it, I will take pics, and scan pics of him standing on the horizontal stab of an Me-262 that was captured by one of the fighter squadrons stationed at the same airfield. I recall him saying something about "Hells Highway"? He also spoke of an occasion after France had been liberated, and they were stationed just outside of Paris at that point, and the fog, lack of onboard radar, winds and the like, he had done an instrument check in heavy fog, looked up out the windscreen, and "there was the Eiffel Tower. You'll never see a C47 bank that hard in your lifetime." My grandmother has said he was gone for over 3 years, they got married and off he went, not to come home until the war was over. I know she still has all of his letters, both that she sent him, and he sent her. Well, enough of that for now; I still miss him, he was a wonderful human being.
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10-12-2009, 05:20 PM
Hybrid Mode
