Another letter from my friend Ken

I’m so glad you had a chance to check out the B-24 and B-17. There really wasn’t that much room in the planes and when you had bulky flt. gear on it didn’t help either. After we would sweat out a take off with full load of bombs and full load of gas we would climb up and form on sqd. then sqd would form into our group. There were 4 sqds. in a group, then our group would get into bomber slot and then head for our target. When over the channel the gunners would check fire our guns. At 14,000 ft we would put oxy. mask on. Now you mentioned the cat walk---well this was the time we had to arm the bombs and one of the guys would start from the front of the bomb bay and I would start from the back of the bomb bay. There was very little room to squeeze thru and I weighted 150 lbs, but with flt gear and also a portable oxy. bottle and hanging on for dear life as the plane was trying to stay in formation by going up then down with a little sway thrown in we would pull the arming pins from the bombs. The bombs are live at this time and we had to save the pins in case we didn’t bomb and had to put them back in. This would also be the time the ball turret gunner would climb into his turret. I was so happy we didn’t have them in our group, so I stayed in the waist window. We pretty much stayed back in the waist unless you had to go up front and we would if you wanted to warm up some as there was a little more heat up on the flt deck. I think someone gave you the wrong info about the ball retracting on the B-17. It stayed down all the time, but the B-24 had to have it up in order to land. There was a lite on the inst. panel and it would come on when the ball was lowered. One time here in the states I was in the ball and noticed we were getting lower & lower so I called up to the pilot wanting to know if we were coming in for a landing, he affirmed that the told me to get out and pump the ball up real quick. Seems as tho the lite wasn’t working and man did I ever move like greased lightning getting this done!!

Rethinking the Iwo Jima Myth

Got this letter this week from Jay Ryan:

I'm looking for information on the 10th engineer combat battalion in WWII.

My great uncle served with this unit from Anzio to War's end. Thanks!

Here's the letter I sent back to him:

Hi Jay:

The 10th Engineer Combat Battalion was a part to the 3rd Division and you can try contacting the following person:

10th Combat Engineer Battalion,

3rd Infantry Division

Mr. Howard B. Nickelson

1209 Bryon Circle

Carlsbad, NM 88220

(Newsletter)

(505) 885-5336

You may also want to talk to one of the vets I know, Dick Feitz. This is what he has on his web page:

"...Just to explain my sudden interest in WW II: I dug out all the pictures of the Southern France operation when my daughter was assigned there in 1998. One, in particular, got me doing research--the picture of Wilfred Boucher next to his Piper Cub on the beach. A little research identified him for me. We began corresponding and developed a circle of individuals who had an interest in that invasion. It consists of Dutch Schultz, who wrote about his Piper Cub "Janey", Cap't. Francis A. Even, of the 10th Engineer Combat Battalion, who designed the take-off platforms on LST's that were used to launch observation planes, Wilfred Boucher and myself..."

I will send your letter to him this morning and let you know what I hear back.

(I also sent him all the links for the 3rd Division on my site too)

FREEDOM IS NOT FREE- looking for Interview so you can be remembered...

Hello,

Would you like your war stories to be remembered? Well, my name is Leah Turner and I am in 8th Grade at Preston Junior High School in Fort Collins, Colorado. Every year, my teacher, Scott DeVries, assigns a project in memory of World War II, Vietnam, and Korean War. He has each of his students interview, whether it be through email, phone, whatever, and collect pictures of the person they are interviewing. If you would like to be interviewed and put up on our "Freedom Is Not Free" webpage made by my teacher, I would be more than happy to learn more about you and your past experiences and we would like to keep a record of every veteran we could possibly get. If you are willing to participate in this event, please email me back at this address (Luv2Ski2290@hotmail.com ). Thank you very much for you time and consideration and I feel very honored that you were there to fight for America. If you would like your story to be preserved forever, then keep it remembered by answering questions for a short interview. Pictures are also wanted!!!

Thanks again,

Leah Turner

If you would like to visit the current webpage, it is located at: http://schoolweb.psdschools.org/preston/fnf2/WW2.htm

cadetat6 Art

Another letter from my friend Ken

This happened on one of our missions---The weather was bad over England, so someone thought we should take off and climb to 14 thousand ft. over France. It is hard enough trying to form up in good weather, but this was crazy as hell. We could feel the plane shake from turbulense so you knew other planes were near and hoped you didn’t have a mid-air collision. At 14 thousand ft. we were still in the soup and finally broke out at about 20,000 ft.. In the meantime our nav. Aids went out—the mission was re-called and we didn’t get it.We were lost and circled around—the co-pilot trying to reach some one on the radio when we saw 3 fighters coming at us. The P-47 and FW-190 have the same shape head on so the pilot told us not to fire until we were certain what the plane was---thank god they were our P-47s and they led over to a group of B-17s. there was also another B-24 flying with them. We figured we would go with them , witch we did and dropped our bombs,then fly back to their base,and get a heading back to our base. Well they let down thru the soup knowing where they were going and we lost them. We had to climb up thru this mess and the co-pilot got some one on the emer. Freq. It was an English lass and did she ever sound nice. She made us fly a triangle, then gave us a heading back to England. We let down over the channel and a couple of Spitfires came and checked us out, then we were given a heading back to our base. We landed and got cedit for a mission and so did our group. This was some nerve racking flying and our pilot was glad to get us back on the ground. Now landing we found out 2 of our planes didn’t come back and one of them was a kid from Presque Isle that I had gone to school with. His father was a diary farmer and delivered milk to Dad’s store. I thought I would be writing his parents about Jerry missing and all that stuff. Well the next day both planes came back and the guys were hungover and had loads of booze, as they had landed in France. I told Jerry that was the last time I would worry over him!! They didn’t get credit for a mission either.

If any reply's another will follow this one

papa