Humbled again
 

Admitted an 91 yo ex-WWII Lancaster radio operator overnight.

Nice guy.

Always humbled when I meet those guys, esp from the early campaigns when casualty rates were so high. To climb into those Lancasters time after time....knowing what they were headed into.

Wow.

Just.............. wow.

I remember a story from one of them. A new intake came onto one of the bomber bases, back then the tour was 30 trips. One of the newbies asked in the mess how long it took to get the 30 trips up.

Awkward silence.

To that point, no-one had survived 30 sorties.

Incredible guys. Makes me want to spew everytime I hear some-one is a "hero" for winning a football game.

Yea, one of our customers is one of the 2 of a platoon of guys that survived The Battle of the Bulge. He said he woke up in a hospital tent and as they loaded him on a truck to haul him to the rear he saw bodies stacked up in huge groups.

Thats a great story. My late great uncle Ernie was a navigator on a Halifax bomber in WW2, he had many stories, unfortunately I didn't see him much when I was younger and didn't get a chance to really talk to him about his WW2 experiences before he passed away.

Four of my great uncles served in Lancasters. Noel Shanks, featured in this video, is still with us:

The Lancaster Bomber- D-Day's Workhorse - The National - CBC Player

My uncle was a flying sergeant, flying SBDs out of Henderson Field. He made it all the way through. His dairy farm in Wisconsin was something we all looked forward to many summers ago.

I have a great Uncle who was a bombardier on the B-17. He flew several bombing runs during WW2 and reenlisted three times even though his time was up. On the flight back from the last bombing run, his last run for WW2, they encountered German fighters over the English channel. The B17 was shot up and they were forced to set the plane down in the water 20 miles away from the English coast. The weather was inclement and there were 30 foot swells. The B17 had two life rafts, one on each side of the plane and each life raft held four airmen. The life raft on the right was shot up during the attack which left only the one but six crewman survived the crash in the water. Four made it to the raft. The surviving crewmen each wrote their accounts of the incident to our family stating that they saw my Uncle Bill swimming toward the raft when he suddenly stopped and looked in their direction while a large swell came through and obstructed their view of him and the other airmen in the water. When the swell passed my Uncle and the other airman were gone.

I have some old video of my great Uncle along with some of the crew he flew with. These guys were the real deals. Indeed the greatest generation.

I have a buddy who flew something like sixty missions in the Pacific in a navy b25. He always calls it a PBJ. When I told him that PBJ stood for peanut butter and jelly he almost shot a booger out his nose. Cool guy. They don't make them like that now. Still with us and solid.

Larry

I read an article on BBC.com the other day about Lancaster folks. According to the article, the life expectancy was 2 weeks.

VE Day: The last British Dambuster - BBC News

The first few paragraphs
One last bit from the article

Some great stories - thanks guys.

From time to time I'll see an older gent and something about him makes me think he's a WWII vet. Much respect to those unsung warriors.....that's for sure.

There are two air-worthy Lancasters left in the world. One of them lives 10 minutes from here, and we're lucky enough to see (and hear!) it all the time in the summer. The Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum is attached to the airport here, and is an amazing piece of history. I've taken our kids there a few times and always enjoy it.

One of the guides there is an old Scottish gentleman. I was remarking to him how terrifying it must have been to have heard one of the Lancasters overhead during the war. He said it was indeed - he was a young kid in Glasgow and very clearly remembers the sound of them.

http://www.warplane.com/

Link to my Great Uncle Bills info: William J Armour, Second Lieutenant from Utah, World War II Casualty. One of these days I would like to travel to Cambridge where there is a memorial.

I had an unassuming geology instructor I became friends with in the late '60s, when I started college after getting out of the Army. He mentioned one time he had been in the Army during WWII. I didn't think much about it until I saw his name on his mail box: Col. Albert Mcelhoe AUS. When I asked him about it, I found out he had been a bird Colonel who served as G-1 from '43 to '45 on Gen Stilwell's staff. He would frequently fly over "the hump" to consult with the General in Burma. Retired in the early '50s and started life over again. I appreciated him then and remember him fondly. He died in 2000 at the age of 91.

Wow! Did a little further research and found a picture of the plane my uncle was shot down in.
Roger Freeman Collection FRE 1224 | American Air Museum in Britain
The crew in the photo were not part of the crew that went down with my uncle.

And here's the accident report: 42-30866 | American Air Museum in Britain

My father flew Lancasters in WW2 and did 2 tours. My father was not the talker here as my mother did the talking. My father was too modest. Apparently my father was never the same after WW2. I said to my mother why did he do 2 tours and she said if you survived the first one then you were expected to keep on going and do another.

He got the DFC for bringing back the Lanc in one piece after one engine was shot up. He was a heavy smoker and unfortunately passed in 1967 age 52 from cancer.

My father's mother had an atlas where the cities my father bombed were circled. I don't have that anymore. I have crawled up to the cockpit of a Lanc(I think it was in Vulcan Alberta). When you sit in the cockpit from the pilot's point of view and look back the wing is like a big barn door. To imagine piloting one of those aircraft when you were 21 is truly mind bogling. 45,000 aircrew casualties from several nations. And without the US the outcome might not have been the same.

Lest we forget.
Guy

My step father was a mid upper gunner in a Lancaster for all of 1945. He was very lucky and survived without a scratch. My mother often described the position in the plane as "the one directly behind the target" ,referring to the circular marking on British and Canadian planes. He turned 19 on the troop ship on the way over .

"The next morning we departed for Malta about 1,000 miles away. We were leading a vic of three. All went well until we reached a position south of Pantalleria where we were intercepted by six Italian CR. 42s. We went down to sea level and turned south, to lead them farther away from their presumed base. They formed a counterclockwise endless circle behind us and raked our formation with their .5 inch syncronized guns. We could not use our front turrets or even the beam guns in this situation. From the astro hatch I had the best view of all, and I remember the ridiculous thought that "Gee. this is just like Hell's Angels." Biplane fighters and the sparkle of syncronized guns firing through the props. All that was missing was the late Jean Harlow.

Vic Walklyn, our rear gunner, got one, and he turned north emitting heavy smoke. The others continued their attack and a lucky shot knocked out the starboard engine of Sgt. Barlow's Wellington, which was in tight formation on our port side. The prop assembly came off, and Barlow had to ditch almost immediately. We were coming into scattered low cloud at this point, but we were able to circle and see that all six crewmen had got into their dinghy. The remaining Italians broke off at this point, too; probably low on fuel with a long way to go home."

Notes from my father. Nov 13, 1941 They were flying Wellington 1C bombers from Gibraltar to Malta.

Ian