Comments on: WWII Flight Crew Pics

By: ER

ER — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:30:52 +0000

Was your dad in the 10th Air Force, or ATC? If so, Maybe the two men knew each other. Stranger things have been known to happen.

By: RobVG

RobVG — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:56:59 +0000

That was another nickname for “The Hump”.

My dad was an instrument tech. He wanted to fly but had false teeth. The Army Air Corp said they could be a potential communications problem if they fell out during aerial combat or rough weather.All I have is his photo ID badge and a few letters he sent home to his mother.

The reason I posted this is I’m ‘so’ drawn to the 1940′s, especially the War Era. I love the music, the styles,and just about everything except the cars. I wouldn’t turn down a Cord roadster though.

Sorry you lost your father at such a young age. I was lucky to have mine until I was 35.

By: ER

ER — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 05:27:19 +0000

He was a mechanic stationed at a remote air field in Burma, servicing aircraft flying over the Himalayas, “The Hump”. He was near a place called Myitkyina. The Allies were airlifting supplies to the Chinese army fighting the Japanese. It kept a large part of the Japanese forces pinned down, and the fighting was desperate, so the Japanese were trying to do everything they could to dislodge us from that part of the world. His airfield was bombed, but the Japanese never hit it. He saw no other action himself.

All I have of him is his uniform patches and insignia and a few documents and photographs. One of them shows him knee-deep in a river, firing a carbine into the water. His fatigues were rolled up and he was wearing no shirt. On the back he had written “Fishing for our dinner”. That was all before I was born. He was a man in his mid-thirties.

My father died when I was 4 years old. I have only two very brief memories of him, I’m not even sure I didn’t dream them. When I die, no one else in the world will remember him. Only that photograph will remain, a GI firing his M1 into the water.