MKopack
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Posts posted by MKopack
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Great article, the Beaufighter was a brutish aircraft and its incredible in how many missions it served for an aircraft that was developed to drop torpedoes. It's good to see that there, I believe a couple of restorations ongoing - including at least one to flying condition.
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I'll bite. The point of primary and secondary education is to provide a baseline level of skills in order to exist as a contributing member of society.
Exposure to the arts (even performing arts) is not a bad thing and fits well into that concept. At the same time though, it shouldn't exist at the expense of athletics, phys ed, etc (even more fatasses would be a bad tradeoff). If there is enough money in the pot to pay for all of it, then include the arts.
No, nothing wrong with the arts at all. Hell, I played the saxophone back in the middle school band - played it so badly I realized that my talent must lie elsewhere.
I was just a little surprised at the range of choices. If my stepson can take chorus that is led by a dude who pranced across the stage to his piano, somebody's daughter should be able to learn how to run a table saw by one of those nine-fingered IA teachers we all seemed to have...
I do promise though, if my eleven-year old and his friends have to take 'dance', I'll tape it and post it.
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Sorry for the rant...
Went to my stepson’s 5th Grade Field Trip to the Middle School this morning - sort of a preview for next year. They explained that each student has to pick two half-year electives out of the following options: Computer Technology, Art, Band, Orchestra, Life Skills (cooking, sewing, parenting, etc. - they called it Home Ec when I went to school) Theatre, Chorus and Dance. Should have seen the look on the kids faces, especially after the chorus sang.Ok, I might get a little politically incorrect here, but bear with me. He’s already said that he doesn't want to play an instrument - and that’s fine - so band and orchestra are out. They said many get the computer course, but I’ll bet he’s going to be hoping for art - and trust me, he's not artistic... Does anyone else think that the choices may be a bit skewed by the fact that 90+% of the teachers are female, or something?
Are they seriously thinking that 6th grade boys would be excited about most of these other choices? If the spaces fill before his name is entered, my stepson could seriously be taking "chorus" or "dance" as a for credit class? Oh yeah, I can just see that. That’s preparation for the future... Now I'm all for a well-rounded education, but come on, when I went to school I had to take Home Ec and all the girls had to take Industrial Arts. Were we all good at everything? No, and we learned that we weren't. I stuck a needle through my finger and one of the girls started a fire with the spot welder. No harm, no foul, but you can be damned sure you wouldn't have caught me taking 'dance'.
While we were in the auditorium during the presentation there was a typical middle school 'scuffle' out in the hallway that caused quite a commotion amongst the staff - they were running everywhere - just two kids yelling at each other and shoving. Who'd have ever thought there might be some aggression in the school? Both the boys probably spend an hour a day, five days a week, being graded on their singing of 'show tunes' or dancing.
What is this some sort of sick "Glee" nightmare? Why don’t they just hand out rainbow flags
to everyone walking in the door?After the 8th grade chorus sang I leaned over to my wife and whispered, "Look, those are the kids that are going to get beaten up by the football team next year..."
</rant>
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FWIW I was 21; single; lots of cash; on the loose, on the ROK, in A-Town. Juicy girl honcho!
Ahhh your father's Air Force was lots of fun! Reflecto belts in their proper place, no one cared if you even were wearing socks & Maintianers ate with filthy hands as God intended.
Edited to praise Dad, maintainers and sockless individuals.
I would have never thought that much Moly-B on my food would have been good for me - good thing the massive quantities of booze must have flushed it out... and that included my '90-91 deployment to Qatar. When they banned the alcohol, we just considered that a challenge!
'84? I was 16 and just about decided to give Big Blue a try after high school.
<== Former sockless crew chief.
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This thread is amazing! Great work by all
It never ceases to amaze me how great the Greatest Generation really was. It is too bad there are so many emo pussies out there. Imagine today the country asking a large percentage of fresh high school graduates to drop everything and fight a war. While there are truly brave kids out there who have answered the call, it is too bad there is such a growing movement to denounce those brave kids back home.
And in a lot of cases, although there was a draft, it wasn't even a question of the country asking - so many young people saw what was happening in the world and volunteered on their own. There was a job to do and they set out to do it. My Dad's father had four brothers in the coal country in Northeastern PA, all five of them served:
Andrew Kopack U.S. Marine Corps
George Kopack U.S. Army - Field Medic, landed on Utah Beach on D-Day.
Joseph Kopack U.S. Navy
Michael C. Kopack U.S. Army - Killed in France
Paul E. Kopack U.S. Army - my Grandfather
And that's not unusual - I can remember my Grandfather talking about it while sitting on the porch after I enlisted, pointing to house by house going up and down the street and naming all the guys who served in WWII, or with him later in the reserves.
This is my Grandfather's unit, the Headquarters battery of the 11th Field Artillery at Schofield Barracks in the Hawaiian Territory, Christmas 1933.
...and 'in the field', with my Grandfather to the left, either in Hawaii or the Canal Zone during the 1930's.
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In honor of some awesome "chemtrails"!
"Copy Tempelhof Control. Yes, I've been to Berlin before. But last time we didn't stop..."
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Ok, after a little more searching, you're going to want to contact Celia Hayes (http://www.celiahayes.com/) She describes herself as "Writer and memoirist, dreamer and adventurer, storyteller and gardener, mother and military veteran, who lives in San Antonio, Texas."
This is a little long, but I believe interesting enough to post. It's from: http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=43818
Old Pictures and Wartime MemoriesBy Celia D. Hayes
Part one, of the story of the "Polecat Crew"
A certain picture hung in a black frame, in the back bedroom of Granny Jessie’s house in Pasadena for many years, a black and white photo of four graves piled high with flowers. Only recently did my mother realize, upon looking closely at it, that the flowers were carefully tended hot-house chrysanthemums, and even more fabulously expensive in 1943 as they are now. The grave markers in the picture are plain wooden crosses, painted white and the names just barely visible, for the picture was taken in haste and surreptitiously, smuggled out of Occupied France during World War Two.
“James Menaud” is one of two names which can be clearly read; a misspelling of “James Menaul” who was my mother’s older brother, “Jimmy Junior” who was a tail gunner on a B-17 and died in the war. There was a badly-tinted portrait-photo in Granny Jessie’s living room, a young man awkward in a hastily fitted set of woolen class-A’s, smirking uncomfortably at the camera, frozen forever at 19. Our curiosity about him was never rewarded. Mom had been only thirteen at the time. Fifteen years ago, when my father found a picture of Jimmy Juniors’ crew— ten young men on the tarmac in front of a B-17, awkwardly solemn or cocky and smiling— everything had faded from memory except for the name of the aircraft commander, Lt. Sherman Dodge. We knew that only because his grave was next to Jimmy-Juniors’ in an unknown cemetery somewhere in France. The rest of what we knew fitted into one sentence: Sgt. James Menaul, Jr. was killed in action in the fall of 1943 on one of the raids on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factories, and some of the other crewmen had survived and escaped into Switzerland. Dad finally asked me, as a persistent and inventive snoop, if I could find out their names and whereabouts, and what had happened to them.
I started with my uncle’s service number and unit of assignment, the 331st Squadron, 94th Bomb Group, Bury St. Edmunds. It was one of the units that had formed an association (since dissolved due to the age and infirmity of many of the members), and they replied promptly to my first letter of enquiry, confirming that Jimmy-Junior’s B-17, the “Lonesome Polecat II” was one of those lost on Black Thursday, October 14th, 1943.
60 8th Air Force B-17s, each with a crew of ten were lost in a single day, attacking the ball-bearing factories in two waves at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, running a gauntlet of German air defenses to and from the target. A report on the status of various missing crewman, sent from the Army Mortuary Affairs Office contained some riveting extracts: ” …Flights of enemy aircraft stood of at 1,500 yards on both sides and tail of the formation to “lob” rockets or heavy cannon projectiles into the formation, while others attacked from the nose and top and bottom… Several enemy aircraft would dive through the formation from all angles, at times coming within four to six hundred yards… many that went down were hit by rockets or heavy cannon… whenever a Fortress was hit…it either exploded or fell apart… This aircraft was last heard on the ‘command channel’ and there were no eyewitnesses… This report showed no further information; the plane was simply missing from the formation…A total of 80 parachutes were seen in the vicinity of the target…the survivors were so busy avoiding enemy aircraft they were unable to observe what happened… Of the eighteen planes from this particular group which went on this mission, three aborted, thirteen failed to return and two completed the mission….Last seen at 1400 hours, just before it reached the target…Lost as a result of enemy aircraft.”
Crew Pictures and Old LettersBy Celia D. Hayes
Part two of the story of the 'Polecat Crew'
The ten men in this picture assembled in May of 1943 at Eprata Army Air Base, Washington, a place of which Jimmy-Junior wrote in disgust, “They have me living in a tent, out in somebody’s cow pasture. When we get into a crew, we move into hutments that are bigger than a doghouse, but smaller than a garage. I am the official “sound-the-alarm-er” in case of rain. There is a rip in the canvas over my head, so I will be the first to know… it’s getting dark now and somebody forgot to put electric lights in this tent so I guess this is all I can write.” Two weeks later, he wrote, “As of this morning I am head armorer-gunner of crew #30. Crew #30 isn’t much to get excited about though, as all we have besides myself are the second armorer-gunner and the bombardier. I’m going to insist on a pilot before I do much.” A week later: “Our crew is changed around considerable. We lost everyone we had, but now we have a pilot, copilot and myself, which is much more practical than before… We fly today for the first time. Didn’t do much of anything but land and take off. After the third time I lost interest and slept most of the time.”
An observant young man with an unexpectedly sardonic sense of humor, born and raised in Pasadena, he had gone to trade school and left a job in the lithography department of the Los Angeles Times. Firmly convinced of all the then-fourty-eight states there was only one good one, he was pleased that two other Californians were assigned to Crew #30: Lt. John Chandler, the co-pilot, was from Vallejo, and waist-gunner Sgt. Robert Thomas from Burbank. Both were married, and Mrs. Chandler was expecting a baby. True to the movie cliché, though, the rest of the crew was from all over: pilot and A/C commander, Lt. Sherman Dodge— also newly married— from Boston; bombardier Lt. James Becker from Kennet Square, Pennsylvania; flight engineer SSgt. James Festa, from Brooklyn; Sgt Louis Buonarobo, the ball-turret gunner (notably shorter than the other crewmembers) from the Bronx; navigator Lt. Frank Francis of El Paso, Texas; radioman SSgt Douglas McLendon from Greenville Mississippi, and waist-gunner Sgt. Warren Butterfield from Salmon, Idaho.
By mid-June they had accumulated fifteen flying hours. “Yesterday we made what they call ‘dry runs’—that is, going thru the motions of bombing something and don’t: that way, we bombed the city of Wenatchee, blew up the school in Quincy, a couple of dams, bridges and just about everything else in sight… got a letter from George— he had his first airplane ride and wished now he was flying. He could have had my place the other day when we went up to 30,000 feet, It got down to 40 below and I had to forget my flying boots! We just got up there and then an oil line broke so we had to come down, which couldn’t have happened at a better time. My nose was running under my oxygen mask and freezing on my lip. Very annoying. We had a gunnery mission today; I had the tail guns. I think they are mine permanently. At least I hope so, as I like it… we shot at targets on the ground….”
In July they moved to Geiger Field, near Spokane, for continuing training and a series of long flights all over the northwest; “We are supposed to be very observing of everything we see in the way of military objectives, especially trains and railway yards. Then we get questioned all about it, just as if we were over Germany or some place. I guess I will have to give up sleeping on future flights… the navigator is getting me a set of maps so I can be able to tell where we are at. He claims in the tail I have the best view— not that anyone is depending on me, but he wants two of us…”
In late fall, they were assigned a new B-17F, promptly christened the “Lonesome Polecat” by Lt. Dodge. Following another month of training flights, they ferried it to England, where the aircraft went to the replacement depot, and the crew to Rougham airfield, near Bury St. Edmunds, where they were assigned to an aircraft there. They promptly re-christened it “Lonesome Polecat II” but James Festa lamented during one of our conversations, they didn’t have it long enough to paint an emblem on the nose. Jimmy-Junior sent a telegram on arrival to let the family know they had arrived safely. Four V-mail letters followed, the last dated the day before his first combat mission: He couldn’t make sense of the coinage, there wasn’t much to buy that wasn’t rationed, he was making money faster than he could spend it. He hoped to visit London, and he had bought a bicycle to get around the field.
Black ThursdayBy Celia D. Hayes
Part three of the story of the 'Polecat Crew' - their first and last mission
My first letter to the 94th Bomb Group memorial association received a response which a telephone number and address for James Becker, who was an active member at that time. Later I located James Festa simply by calling the information operator for Brooklyn and asking of there were a listing for that name. From those gentlemen - the only then-living survivors of Crew #30 - a stack several inches thick of reports from various government archives, contemporary letters, and interviews with an assortment of special experts , I was able to trace what had happened to the Lonesome Polecat II.
In the second wave of bombers over the ball-bearing factories, they made the target, dropping incendiaries onto the wreckage, when they were hit by anti-aircraft fire. With an engine on fire, they dropped out of the protective formation heading west, and were attacked by German fighters. They were last seen by those who returned to Bury St. Edmunds about sixty miles southwest of Schweinfurt, still heading west under power, still fighting. But in a very short space— about fifteen or twenty minutes, they ran out of luck, ammunition and time.
Sgt. Buonarobo ran out of ammunition first, but refused an order to leave the now-useless ball turret, swinging empty guns to bear on attacking fighters. Lt. Dodge took the “Lonesome Polecat” down to the minimum altitude for a safe parachute dump, trying to discourage fighter attacks from below. Sgt Butterfield was killed at his position at the waist gun, and Jimmy-Junior disabled by a stomach wound, crawled back into the tail compartment and returned fire until struck again, probably mortally. Sgt McLendon and Lt. Dodge were also wounded, to a lesser degree. Flight engineer James Festa, in the top turret with an excellent view all the way around, would only tell me that the aircraft was terribly damaged: the tail section was in shreds and a wing well on fire. Sgt. Thomas, the surviving waist gunner, and SSgt. Mclendon then reported taking Sgt. Buonarobo out of the ball turret, also dead.
The intercom knocked out as well, James Festa never heard an order to jump until Lt. Chandler came back and told him directly to bale out of the crippled aircraft. Lt. Francis went to destroy the “G” box, a receiver which allowed a target to be identified when two beams intersected over it. James Festa, going towards the bomb bay to jump out, was blown out through it by an explosion on or near the craft. To the day I spoke to him he still didn’t know why he wasn’t killed by it. The other survivors jumped, the two pilots Dodge and Chandler together at the last, Dodge saying tersely “So long,” leaving the aircraft to crash two kilometers south of the village of Essey-et-Maiserais, near a country road at about four o’clock in the afternoon. Part of it caught fire. The Germans came at once and kept the curious away, while they gathered up the remaining ammunition and guns, and the bodies of the three gunners.
Lt. Dodge’s body was found later, probably a short distance away. His parachute had not opened. Lt. Chandler himself hit the ground hard, and broke three toes. Lt. Francis’ parachute also failed; he fell into woodlands near Fliry, and his body was not found until six months later. The villagers of Fliry, led by their mayor, defiantly held a funeral mass and buried him in their little cemetery. (After the war, the family wished that he could remain there, where people had been so kind and brave, but the War Department insisted on removal to a military cemetery.)
The survivors were scattered far across Alsace-Lorraine. Sgt. Thomas was captured immediately by the German authorities, but the others were luckier, thanks to Pierre Mathy, the restaurateur and innkeeper of Toul. A week after the crash of the “Lonesome Polecat”, Pierre Mathy received a cryptic message from a local farmer, who had a “bag of carrots” for him. In actuality, Mathy was a Resistant, running an escape line into Switzerland, the farmer was one of his contacts, and the “bag of carrots” was actually SSgt. McClendon, complete with two bullets in his leg. Two doctors in Toul secretly operated to remove them and McClendon was sent down the line to safety. Lt. Chandler crawled westward for three days, finally sheltering in a haystack near a farmhouse. He watched the farmhouse for three days more, waiting to see of Germans or French lived there. Desperation drove him to approach it: again, lucky— the farmer was another of Pierre Mathy’s contacts. Given clothes and false papers, he later wrote his wife that the hardest thing he had to do was cram his broken toes into civilian shoes and not limp as he walked by German soldiers in a small town. James Festa was picked up in the little village of Void, near Nancy, by the local policeman, who gave him clothes and food, and passed him from friend to trustworthy friend, hiding him in the house of a wealthy soap-manufacturer in Verdun, and a houseboat on the river before being smuggled over the border and reunited with the others in Swiss internment.
For months afterwards, stunned and grieving families wrote back and forth, first with dignified condolences, then sharing grief and what information they were able to find out. Mrs. Butterfield wrote stoically, “We can be thankful that they didn’t have to suffer long… we have our oldest boy in New Guinea and another boy in England with the 341st Engineers. So you can see we must carry on and be brave as we know not when we will have to face this sorrow again.” Mrs. Chandler, who had given birth to a daughter, two weeks before the “Lonesome Polecats’” first mission, and Mildred Dodge, Lt. Dodge’s mother, coordinated the letter-writing. First, all the “boys” were reported missing. Weeks later, Lt. Dodge, Sgt. Butterfield and Jimmy-junior were reported killed, and Sgt. Thomas a POW. Lt. Francis and Sgt. Buonarobo remained missing until almost the end of the war, a matter of distress among the letter-writers. The four in Switzerland wrote to their families, who promptly wrote to Mrs. Chandler or Mrs. Dodge, who copied extracts and sent them to other families. A picture of the four internees, showing them safe and well, was circulated. Mrs. Dodge, whose grief in fifty-year-old letters was raw and lacerating, sent Granny Jessie a snapshot of her son and herself, taken on his last leave, and Granny Jessie sent one of Jimmy-Junior. They corresponded for years afterwards.
Old Pictures Smuggled OutBy Celia D. Hayes
The final chapter in the story of the 'Polecat Crew'
Some time later, the original of the picture which hung in Granny Jessie's back bedroom was smuggled out of Occupied France, and circulated among the families; four graves piled lavishly with expensive chrysanthemums, the names of Menaul and Dodge clear, if mis-spelled, Butterfield partially visible on the far left, and “un-known American”— Buonarobo, whose body was not identified for certain until after the war. According to Army records, the German authorities brought the bodies to Toul after the crash, for burial in the military quarter of the cemetery. It was a bitter comfort to the families: one mother wrote to Granny Jessie, “At least it is good to know that our boys had a decent burial. I had often wondered. I have had three close friends lately hit by this wicked war— two killed and one missing. I think that our boys and maybe ourselves are better off than a lot of people, as we know that nothing can hurt our boys again, and we can have what peace we can and not worry any more, but I would give my soul to have my boy come walking in.”
The notations in the Army Mortuary records gave me a clue to the riddle of who had taken the picture of the grave: Granny Jessie had vaguely alluded to the Red Cross, but James Festa had told me it had been smuggled out of France through the Resistance, and that it had been shown to the internees, that it was the first they had heard of what happened to Lt. Dodge. The four crewmen buried in Toul were the only Americans recovered from there by mortuary affairs personnel after the war. Two of the survivors were hidden there. I thought it very likely that somewhere in a medium to small-sized town which had been a node on an escape line, there was someone who whom the crash of an American bomber nearby was a significant and memorable event. Since the picture was smuggled out through a Resistance escape line, and I knew such a line operated in Toul, it seemed a logical assumption that someone involved in the Resistance in Toul must therefore have taken the picture. In the spirit of someone throwing a bottle with a note in it into the sea, I wrote to the Mayor of Toul, enclosing a copy of the picture, and asking if the Mayor’s office knew anything about the burials in 1943.
Astonishingly enough, they sent me the address of a Pierre Mathy, the same Pierre Mathy who had hidden McClendon and Chandler fifty years before! “My name is Pierre Mathy,” he wrote to me, “and I’m the one who took the picture in Toul Cemetery to show that (we) took care of the American graves, against the will of the Germans…. I did not assist in the burial… German soldiers kept people apart while they gathered corpses. I was there at that moment and I started to look for survivors… I had established channel to Switzerland with Ms. Suzanne Kriek (called Regina, her Resistance name). She was murdered by the Germans the day before Liberation… she was a Resistance lieutenant; she owned false papers for the Red Cross so she was able to go everywhere…. She went to Switzerland about three times a month. An acquaintance of mine was in the Resistance, so I decided to join it… I rescued 19 aviators, amongst them 9 Americans, 4 Australians, 4 English and 2 Canadians…”
So there it was, out of a pile of old records and letters, a couple of amazing coincidences, the answer to some niggling little questions, and a window into the past, and some reassurance about the qualities of ordinary people in extraordinary times and circumstances. It is gratifying to know that against the odds, in war and occupation, someone would see to the graves of four young strangers, piled with flowers, and take a snapshot to reassure four unknown families, far away. It is reassuring also to discover the courage and fortitude of ordinary people— no headline heroes, no Hollywood spectacle, just people who did what they felt was right and their duty, unflinchingly in the face of odds: Jimmy-Junior and Louis Buonarobo refusing to leave their gun stations, Sherman Dodge and John Chandler staying to the last, conscientious Frank Francis scrounging another set of charts and seeing to the destruction of the classified “G” box, Pierre Mathy and his friends, feeding, hiding and guiding the survivors to safety, and those families at home, whose concern for each other helped them endure separation and grief. Ordinary people all, best remembered by the ordinary rest of us.
I did all this tracking down of survivors and witnesses nearly fifteen years ago, and wrote the original account shortly afterwards. I worked together sources as various as the collection of letters written by my uncle in 1943, the letters written to my grandmother by relatives of the other crewmen and friends, various official Army Air Corps reports on the loss of the aircraft, the set of questionnaires completed by Lt. Chandler on the circumstances under which he last saw each of the dead or missing crewmen, another set of files from Army Mortuary Affairs, a collection of rips from the Escape and Evasion Society, interviews with James Festa and James Becker, and picking the brains of such varied experts as Colonel (Ret.) Frank Halm of the 94th BG Memorial Association, and a USAF crash investigator who thoroughly briefed me on exactly how a damaged and abandoned B-17 would impact the ground.
Each set of facts, names, and actions fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, and quite often, a tentative supposition that I had made, would be later confirmed by a witness, or by the record. I was never able to contact any other relatives of the Lonesome Polecat crew; there were, for example, no telephone listings for Butterfield in the entire state of Idaho by 1993. Sgt. Thomas, SSgt. McClendon and Lt. Chandler all survived the war, but their Veterans’ Administration files went into inactive status by the late 1970ies. Chandler and his family made a return trip to Toul, and a reunion with Pierre Mathy sometime in the 1960ies. His return was noted by the local newspaper, and Pierre Mathy’s grandson sent me copies of clippings after Mathy himself died in 1995. I transferred to Korea in 1993, loosing touch with James Festa and James Becker at about that time. Neither of them were in good health, and have since dropped from the rolls of the 94th BG association.
My uncle, Lt. Dodge, Sgt. Buonarobo and Sgt. Butterfield are buried in the American cemetery at St. Avold. Lt. Francis’ family had him brought back after the war, and interred in the VA cemetery at Ft. Bliss, since the military wouldn’t let his remains stay in Flirey. Even the original letters and pictures are gone;Jimmy-junior’s woolen uniform jacket and the Purple Heart all burned in the fire four years ago, although I had meticulously transcribed all the letters and rephotographed the pictures.
…..And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters…. (Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald)
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You're welcome - just another reason to be thankful on this upcoming Memorial Day. Here are a couple of other websites with information:
Crash du B-17 Fortress F-45-DL - 42-3338 QE-P "A" "Lonesome Polecat II"
and http://www.b17-france.org/ which is a French website dedicated to the memory of the 8th AF Aircraft downed in France 1942/1945 through the American Memorial Association of Saint-Nazaire.
The American Memorial Association of Saint-Nazaire has been created by Michel Lugez and his friends with a status of non lucrative association which main aim is to pay homage to American Soldiers who twice helped France to recover its Liberty.Alain CHARLES
President
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Pushing on, according to a post on http://forum.armyairforces.com (Could Brick have been any more right on that?!?) 1st Lt. Sherman M. Dodge was lost on October 14th 1943 piloting B-17F-45-DL Serial Number: 42-3338
And on another post:
The aircraft 42-3338 commanded by Lieutenant DODGE crashed in ESSEY et MAIZERAIS in France on October 14, 1943 inLong 05 ° 49 '47 "E
Lat 48 ° 53 '55 "N
There were five dead and five prisoners.
B-17F-45-DL 42-3338 QE - P 'No Known Name'. Missing Aircrew Report 791. Crew:1st Lt. Sherman M. Dodge. Pilot - KIA.2nd Lt. John T. Chandler. Co-Pilot - POW.2nd Lt. Frank J. Francis. Navigator - KIA.2nd Lt. James K. D. Becker. Bombardier - POW.S/Sgt. James V. Festa. Top Turret Gunner/Engineer - POW.S/Sgt. Douglas McClendon Jr. Radio Operator - POW.Sgt. Louis J. Buonarobo. Ball Turret Gunner - KIA.Sgt. Robert M. Thomas. Left Waist Gunner - POW.Sgt. Warren G. Butterfield. Right Waist Gunner - KIA.Sgt. James Menaul Jr. Tail Gunner - KIA.Dodge: O-797491 from MA Pilot class: BY 43Bphoto taken in Pendleton, Oregon on 20 Aug. '43.REAR: Butterfield (KIA), Festa (EVD), Thomas (POW), Menaul (KIA), Buonarobo (KIA), McClendon (EVD)
FRONT: Francis (KIA), Dodge (KIA), Chandler (EVD), Becker (EVD)
Evadees made it to Switzerland and were interned there. The latest info has 42-3338 QE-P as "Polecat"
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Hope you don't mind me looking, but doing a quick search, I've got Sherman M. Dodge listed at:
Home of Heroes.com, USAAF Silver Star Listing:
Dodge, Sherman M. HQ, 8th Air Force, G.O. No. 533 (1944)
and at:
USAF Incident and Accident Personnel List 1943 at accident report.com They claim to be able to possibly get you a copy of the accident report of the loss. Of course if they can, you could probably do it yourself through the National Archives, AF Museum, etc...
and at:
Sherman M. Dodge, Winchester, Massachusetts
U.S. Army; 1st Lieutenant. A B-17 Pilot Assigned To The 331st Bomb Squadron, 94th Bomb Group, Stationed In Bury St. Edmunds, England. His Aircraft Was One Of The 60 U.S. Aircraft That Was Shot Down On 'Black Thursday' October 14, 1943. He Is Buried At The Lorraine American Cemetery, St. Avold, France, Plot: C Row: 13 Grave: 41
Awards: Silver Star, Purple Heart Awarded The Silver Star And Purple Heart Medals For His Bravery. Submitted by William A. Dodge, III, nephew, and ABMC Cemeteries
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You can also do a search through the American Battle Monuments Commission at: http://www.abmc.gov/home.php
If he was buried overseas he may have a listing, and it's done via a simple name search. I was able to find my Dad's uncle:
Michael C. KopackSergeant, U.S. Army
Service # 32146019
696th Field Artillery Battalion
Entered the Service from: Pennsylvania
Died: 29-Sep-44
Buried at: Plot C Row 26 Grave 94
Lorraine American Cemetery
St. Avold, France
Awards: Silver Star, Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster
As well as the Uncle of a good friend from work:
Peter Donald LambrechtTucson, Arizona
Born December 22, 1912
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps
Service Number 05458
Missing in Action - Presumed Dead
Died August 15, 1952 in Korea
Colonel Lambrecht was a veteran of World War II. In Korea, he was the pilot of a F3D-2 Douglas Skynight fighter with the Marine Night Fighter Squadron 513, Marine Air Group 33, 1st Marine Air Wing. On August 15, 1952, while on a night combat mission over the Yellow Sea about 50 miles west of Pyongyang, North Korea, radio and radar contact was lost. He was listed as Missing in Action and was presumed dead on January 7, 1954. His remains were not recovered. His name is inscribed on the Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial. For his leadership and valor, Colonel Lambrecht was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Service Cross with 2 Gold Stars, the Air Medal with 8 Gold Stars, the Purple Heart, the Combat Action Ribbon, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Presidential Unit Citation, the Republic of Korea War Service Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.
With that info it might be possible to cross reference to information that may not have been lost in the fire, if his in fact was.
Michael P. Kopack
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Very impressive, sounds like he shot five bad guys with five shots at over a mile against moving targets.
I don't even think I could see a bad guy a mile and a half away...
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When will you be back?
I can't tell you that. It's classified. But I understand that if you have trouble hitting your objective, your secondary targets are an accordion factory and a mime school.
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As everyone has said, all bases have their good and their bad, but being a young kid from central New York, I have to admit that all those years ago, I never really found many bad sides of MacDill back in the 56th's days. What a party. Sometimes it's hard to believe that we even survived it.
And then they forced me to leave and go to Torrejon, just outside of Madrid. Who'd have thought that life could have even gotten better?!?
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For everyone who needs a resume...
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You SOB, don't EVER post another picture like that.
Ok, here's the actual photo:
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Amanda Flowers Claims Wii Fit Injury Made Her A Sex Addict
Amanda Flowers, a 24-year-old from Manchester, claims that a Wii Fit injury has turned her into a sex addict.
After falling from her Wii Fit board, Flowers reports that even minor vibrations--such as from a food processor, she says-- "turns her on." She was told by a doctor that she had suffered a damaged nerve that has provoked "persistent sexual arousal syndrome."
"It began as a twinge down below before surging through my body. Sometimes it built up into a trembling orgasm," Flowers says, according to the Daily Star's article "Nintendo Wii Made Me Nympho."
Although Flowers' injury isn't one you see every day, doctors in the UK reported frequently treating patients for Wii-related injuries. According to the Fox News article, "up to ten people a week are being hospitalized with injuries caused by playing Nintendo Wii games."
(perhaps the photo was added later for 'effect'...)
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Have a friend (and Squadron Safety Officer) who "redeployed" a cat from the Middle East back to Europe on his lap in an F-16C. He didn't seem to have a problem with it, not sure about the cat...
I understand that there are pics somewhere...
Mike
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Just ahead of the release of "Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds" is this review from today's Wall Street Journal, by Dan Ford. The book, written by Robin, his daughter Christina, and former F-105 pilot - and noted military aviation author - Ed Rasimus, will be available nationwide tomorrow.
A Man On a MissionA combat pilot remembers Vietnam—the MiGs, the flak, the high jinks and the target limitations.
By DANIEL FORD
We're familiar with photographs of triumphant GI's in World War II, manning a hard-won position in the Solomon Islands or entering a newly liberated French town. From the Vietnam War such photos are few and far between—but they do exist. The dust-jacket of "Fighter Pilot" shows Col. Robin Olds on an airfield in Thailand as he returns from his 100th mission of the war, the one that ends his combat career. (In truth, he had flown 152 missions, but he low-balled the count rather than be grounded before his year-long tour was over.) He is being carried jubilantly to the officers' club on the shoulders of the men who have followed him into battle. He is 45 years old and impossibly handsome, with jutting jaw, half smile, handlebar mustache, crow's feet at the eyes and of course a cigarette between his lips. It's 1967, and the man is a fighter pilot.
When Robin Olds flew his first mission, in World War II, a fighter pilot needed to be young enough to withstand high levels of G-force. It is not unusual in combat for a pilot to be jammed into his seat by six G's—six times the force of gravity—so that he suddenly weighs half a ton. The blood rushes out of his skull and his vision may dim to gray, then black. By the time of the Vietnam War a G-suit, with its inflatable bladders, could substitute for the suppleness of young muscles, and electronics went far to make up for reflexes that were no longer youthful and fast.
So the modern U.S. Air Force is routinely able to put majors and colonels in the cockpit—but it is so dominant at the moment that in the 21st century no American pilot has shot down an enemy aircraft. Who in his right mind would challenge the U.S. in the air? This turn of events makes Robin Olds—107 combat missions as a youngster, 152 missions as a full colonel and 16 aerial victories—one of a kind. His career couldn't have happened in the old days, when middle-age men didn't fly combat missions, and it is unlikely to happen again. The whole fighter-pilot ethos, from the cigarette to the mustache, from the rule-breaking to the red stars on the fuselage (each denoting, in Vietnam, a MiG fighter shot down), is a relict of the past.
In "Fighter Pilot," Robin Olds tells the story in his own words, more or less. He died in 2007, leaving what his daughter Christina calls "multiple boxes of diaries, military documents, films, letters, interviews, articles, and photographs," not to mention the notes that she took during their last hours together. Ms. Olds whipped this material into a first-person tale with the help of Ed Rasimus, himself a veteran of the Vietnam War and the author of "When Thunder Rolled" (2004), one of the best combat memoirs ever written.
There is no need to sanctify the fighter pilot. He isn't an easy man to be around: Robin Olds's marriage to actress Ella Raines (who died of cancer in 1988) was always rocky. They both drank too much, and by his own account he wasn't the most faithful of husbands. Such waywardness is fairly standard for the profession. The fighter pilot's job is to shoot planes out of the sky—with human beings inside them. Doing such work, at the risk of his own life, leaves him drenched with sweat and pumped with adrenaline, which he may exorcise with alcohol and high jinks on a scale that would leave a fraternity boy in awe.
Here is the colonel with his pet monkey, named for a certain 1960s activist: "I'd put Stokley down on the bar and that damned monkey would make one pass down the length, knocking over every glass in his path. Sometimes he'd stop to jam nuts into his mouth or stick his fist way down in a glass and fling beer in all directions. Then he'd jump on the back shelves and make one pass down behind the bottles, screeching the whole way. It was chaos: bottles breaking, guys yelling while protecting their drinks, Thai waitresses screaming, the bar manager shouting a stream of Thai curses, and me laughing. What was their problem?"
Funny, yes, but not what the U.S. Congress had in mind when it commissioned Lt. Robin Olds, in June 1943, as an "officer and gentleman." But then again, what gentleman, more than 20 years later, would willingly fly over and over into North Vietnam? "Missiles streaked past," he writes of one such mission, "flak blackened the sky, tracers laced patterns across my canopy, and then, capping the day, MiGs would suddenly appear—small, sleek sharks, cutting and slashing, braving their own flak, firing missiles, guns." A nearby U.S. plane disappears in an explosion, caught by a surface-to-air missile, "only small pieces of flaming debris marking the end of two young lives, but on we'd go, 20 miles yet to the target." He didn't have to go, remember. Few colonels did.
Col. Olds makes a point of lamenting the target limitations imposed by Washington. "Haiphong Harbor near Hanoi was the worst insult of all," he writes. "We should have closed it down . . . but we couldn't touch it. Ships came in and went, bringing in supplies, MiGs, trucks, ammunition, food, cement to fix the blown bridges, you name it. The Vietcong troops received their stuff within days—and we were letting it happen!"
In the dust-jacket photo, what can't readily be seen is that the colonel is weeping: "I couldn't stop the tears running down my face." His sorrow comes from the knowledge that he'll no longer be allowed to lead young men to war. With 100 official missions behind him, he will become a brigadier general and a commander of the Air Force Academy, never again to fly an airplane in combat. His memoir is one man's account of war and, in its way, a tribute to a vanished breed of men.
Mr. Ford is the author of, among other books, "Remains: A Story of the Flying Tigers," about young fighter pilots in World War II.
Salute Robin, and thank you to Christina and Ed for helping us to remember this true American leader. This true American Hero.
Mike
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"...Air Combat Command said the planes should have long loiter time and carry sophisticated sensors and encrypted data links as well as bombs, rockets and other weapons."
I thought that's why we are buying so many Predators and Reapers. Aren't they the 'magic bullet' to fix all of our problems?
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...and we think we've got it bad.
Workers strike over ban on drinking at work
Reuters
Thu Apr 8, 1:02 pm ET
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – A few hundred warehouse workers and drivers at Danish brewer Carlsberg halted work for a second day on Thursday to protest a company decision to limit beer drinking at work to lunch breaks.
The strike in Denmark followed the company's April 1 decision to introduce new rules for employees on beer drinking at work, said Jens Bekke, spokesman at the world no.4 brewer.
"There has been free beer, water and soft drinks everywhere," he said. "Yesterday, beers were removed from all refrigerators. The only place you can get a beer in future is in the canteen, at lunch."
Bekke said drivers retained an old right to three beers per day outside lunch hours, and warehouse workers claimed the same right.
"Because of that, the warehouse staff went on strike yesterday, with other staff striking in sympathy," he said.
Bekke said as many as 800 had walked out on Wednesday, with 250 still on strike on Thursday, and the Confederation of Danish Industry and trade union 3F had agreed to look into the dispute.
He said there would be no shipments from Copenhagen on Thursday, and delays in the rest of the country, but said he expected the financial effect of the strike to be minor.
He added that Carlsberg's trucks have alcohol locks so drivers would not be able to drink too much and drive.
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Oh God, my eyes! Must... get... to... De Motivational Poster Contest thread...
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It looks like there's a new member in the Muammar-Qaddafi-Batshit-Crazy-Muslim Club:
Karzai to lawmakers: "I might join the Taliban"
If this isn't a journalistic misquote, I think we need to have a Pred pilot earn a DFC for this idiot.
Would think that a comment like that might be 'the opposite of helpful' (STS). Apparently he repeated it at least a couple of times in a closed door meeting while complaining about 'foreigners' pushing for reforms in his gov't. As Nsplayr said, probably the worst part is, at least in theory he's our guy, and we're pretty much stuck with him.
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Man rams car into parked plane
By Ani Akpan Ani Akpan – Thu Apr 1, 10:35 am ET
CALABAR, Nigeria (Reuters) – A man who claimed to have been sent by Jesus to punish sinners rammed his car into a parked plane at an airport in southeastern Nigeria , an aviation spokesman said Thursday.
No one was hurt in the incident Wednesday and the spokesman said Nigeria had no problem with security.
The United States put Nigeria on a list of countries needing to improve security after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was arrested on suspicion of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner in December using explosives hidden in his underwear.
"There is no problem at all at our airports, no cause for alarm, as we have the necessary security on the ground," said Akin Olukunle, spokesman for the Federal Airport Authority.
He said the driver had broken through two security gates at Calabar international airport and rammed his car into the Arik Air plane before soldiers arrested him.
"...and the spokesman said Nigeria had no problem with security."
Good thing - if there was a 'problem with security', who knows what could happen.
looking for record of relative killed in WW2
in General Discussion
Posted
What? Seriously? I'm meeting my Uncle (or is it cousin?!?) here on BaseOps??? Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Korea? Talk about hitting ALL of the high spots...
I've heard of Andrew, but unfortunately little more than his name and the fact that he was a Marine. I'll have to get more details from you. I just dropped a message in to Uncle George as well, I believe he was USAAF at the same time.
Over Memorial Day we were discussing 'military families' with my Grandfather's daughters. It occurred that people who don't have Veterans in their immediate family, don't tend to have any Vets as relatives. On the other hand, if you can name one, there are usually quite a few more. I'm sure that a sociologist would say that means something, but all I know is it makes me proud to be in a family that has worn a lot of uniforms over the years.
Here's a photo of Michael C. Kopack, who was lost in 1944 while fighting in France.
Mike Jr.
mkopack@infionline.net