Wings TV!!

[visitor]

Watched a Wings TV show last night, about the
PBYs!! One story was great!

Returning from patrol, just before daylite, a PBY
encountered a flight of Zeros, with Nav. lights on,the PBY fell in at the rear of the flight and followed them to
Wewak, the flight got in the pattern and began to land,
one Zero flashes his lights trying to get the PBY to turn
on his Nav. lights, DUH! On the down wind, the PBY,
instead of turning on final, goes into a shallow dive,
puts in the power, strafes a ship in the harbor, drops
4, 500lb bombs, 2 hits, and get the hell out of there!!
One Zero follows but turns back, most likely low on
fuel!!
The pilot received a letter of warning, a threat of court
marshal and the entire crew received the Silver Star
and a Presidental Citation!!
The PBY was a proto type, the only one with cannons
in the noise!! Good test run!!

Just a nice aviation story for those of you without
Wings TV!

X
Brad

[HawkerTempest5]

Sounds like a good show. I'll have to watch out for that one.
That story reminds me of one I read in a book called "Castles in the Air" about B-17's of the 8th air force. Told by the men who flew the missions.
A plane became seperated near the target area due to very heavy enemy action. Standing orders forbid single aircraft from making the bomb run but because they are so close to target they press on and put all their bombs in the "pickle barrel".
Normally this should have been a court marshal, but it was used as an example of how to hit the target!
Luck bunch of guys and very brave.

[visitor]

Some where I heard, read, a story about
Spitfires running out of ammo and kept
chasing the 109s, they knew the 109s were
limited on fuel and would have to head home,
If they could just keep them busy, It saved
someone else!!!

X
Brad

[HawkerTempest5]

Some where I heard, read, a story about
Spitfires running out of ammo and kept
chasing the 109s, they knew the 109s were
limited on fuel and would have to head home,
If they could just keep them busy, It saved
someone else!!!

X
Brad

I do remember reading, in the same book, how the escort fighters sometimes stayed longer than their fuel would allow. A buch of Spitfires stayed way too long and all had to ditch or crashed because of empty tanks.
Also there is a story of a bunch of P-47's that should have turned back but came back to take on a bunch of 110's moving in to attack the bombers. The three 47's took down all four 110's but one got too close to the bombers chasing an Fw 190 and the bomber shot down both the 190 and the P-47.

[visitor]

Never have so many, owed so much, to so few

[Smoke2much]

I read one fascinating account of how a badly wounded B-17g was separated from it's formation and losing height rapidly.  The turret's were out of ammo and the waist gunners either wounded or tending to other wounded crew.  They are flying over Denmark on the way back from a mission over Germany.

Suddenly from out of nowhere an FW 190 appears about fifty feet from the port wing, he moves in closer and it is clear that he is looking the B-17 over.  The 190 dive underneath and come up on the other side staying about fifty feet away.  A couple of times he closes quickly to within about twenty feet before backing off.  He then returns to the port side and pulls the same stunt.  Finally the pilot has enough and orders one of his men to man the mid upper turret.  The fighter pilot see's this and backs off waggling his wings like a lunatic on the way out.  They see no more of him.

The B-17 made it home, she crossed the English coast about 100 feet above the deck and somehow made it home.

                  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  

In 1982(ish) the pilot of the B-17 is reading a magazine article about the Luftwaffe when he realises that what he is reading is a description of what happened to him and his crew back in '44.  He manages to get in contact with the German pilot and they agree to meet up.

What had happened was that the German pilot had landed back at base after a successful interdiction mission.  He was in the process of taxiing when the tower informed him that the sound of a bomber could be heard passing overhead, he immediately scrambled and flew an intercept.  He broke out of cloud less than 100 feet from the bomber and was literally staggered by how much damage the thing had taken and was still flying.  He could see blood flowing from the bomber as if it was wounded and not the men in it.

Although he had the ammunition and fuel to finish her off he decided that he couldn't bring himself to do it.  In that moment the American crew became Men, not Enemies.  He attempted to turn the bomber first towards a German airfield and then a neutral Swedisih airfield as he felt that she couldn't possibly fly back to England.  When he realised that this would not work he saluted her and flew home.  He made up a story about jammed guns or something to defend himself and spent the next 18 months frightened that someone had seen him because he would have been court-marshalled and at the very least( ) shot.

The two men met up every year until at least 1994 when the book I read was published.

Will

[visitor]

I posted this in the cafe a few weeks age and
thought this was a fitting place to repost!
The letter was a funny thing and has no bearing
on the story, if interested it's under
'yep they're British'  

This is a letter I received from a friend of
mine, who by the way was a tail gunner on
a B-17, in the air on the last day of the war,
was called back and dropped their bombs in
the channel on the way home!!! Saw 2 FW190s
but were told not to fire first, the FWs flew by and
turned toward home!! They had their landing gear
down, and were careful not to point the front of
the plane towards the B-17!!, Just a little story,  
I liked it, John is a super nice guy, 82 years old,
going strong!!!

[Smoke2much]

The weirdest thing about being 29 is the realisation that I would have been an old man to the men who flew these missions.  It is difficult to remember that they were 18-22 years old for the most part.  Scary thought.

Will

[Wing Nut]

I have a book called 'Unexplained mysteries of World War II' and one of the stories in it tells of a Polish pilot in Germany before the outbreak of war.  

It seems this pilot was due to fly out the next day and return with his plane to Poland in preparation for the war they all knew was coming.  The Pilot went out for a pack of smokes before he checked out of his hotel and as he was lighting a cigarette in the hotel doorway, a man came running up to him in a panic repeating 'Gestapo, Gestapo...'  The pilot spoke little German, but understood enough that the Gestapo was hunting this man and the man was begging him to hide him.  Without a thought, the pilot took the man up to his room and hid him.  Several minutes later the Gestapo came in looking for their victim, having been tipped off by someone in the lobby.  

After a thorough search, the officers left and the man came out. As they waited for the furor outside to calm down, the victim managed to convey that he was Jewish and the Gestapo had been looking for him to remove him somewhere (I can't remember).  The man begged for the pilot to take him to the relative safety of Poland and the man agreed.

Risking his own life and that of his passenger(who was a complete stranger), the pilot snuck the man out of the hotel, to the airfield and smuggled him on board his plane and off to Poland.  Had he been caught both of them surely would have been arrested and executed.

Crossing over into Poland, the pilot set the plane down in a field outside of Warsaw and giving his passenger what little money he had and his only map, bid him farewell.  He was long gone before he realized he hadn't even gotten his passenger's name.

A few months passed, and the pilot found himself in England fighting in the Battle of Britain.  He was out on a sortie one day when he was severly injured when his Spitfire was shot down.  Having been taken to the local hospital with severe head trauma, the pilot was set aside by the triage unit because it appeared he was hopeless and going to die.

The next morning, the pilot opened his eyes and found himself in a hospital room, his wounds bandaged and apparently recovering from surgery.  A nurse came in presently and explained that the surgeon had worked on him for eight hours straight trying to save his life and wouldn't give up.

Several hours later the surgeon came in and gave our pilot a quick check over.  'Do you reconize me?'  he asked.  

The pilot responded that he didn't and apologized, to which the surgeon quickly expressed that there was no need.

'I am the passenger you left in that field outside of Warsaw.  I got your name from the map you gave me and I am the brain surgeon who operated on you yesterday'

True Story...

[visitor]

That's like the pilot in the pacific, shot down,
floated three days, all he could see was a
stencil on the life vest, inspected by 347!!
Was recovered, sent home!! His Mom worked
for Goodyear, inspected Lifevests!
Inspector 347!!
This is true, came from Readers Digest!!

X
Brad

[Hogans_Alley]

How about this. During the lenghty battle of the Coral Sea in the Pacific, understandably, many pilots and crews from both sides were doggedly tired. One Japanese pilot flying a Zero was perhaps so tired that he mistook a US aircraft carrier for a Japanese and tried to land. He realized during his approach that he made a boo-boo, bounced off the flight deck and took off. Most of the flight deck crew aboard the US carrier were likewise tired and were resting waiting for the returning US aircraft. One flight deck crewmember however spotted the plane coming in for a landing and could not believe it was a Japanese Zero. Scurrying around looking for a weapon but could'nt find any, he picked up an airplane wheel chock which was laying around, ran across the flight deck and threw it at the Japanese aircraft as it touched down. No damage done of course but there was one scared Japanese pilot and one chuckling US flightdeck crew.

Hogans Alley