617Dambusters

Guy's i had a real fun and interesting afternoon. I finally got my uncle to talk some about his tour as a top turret gunner in a b -17. Found out the name of his plane was blackbetty but the crew called her heavenlysent. he said that the next flight after his tour was over the pllane had a midair with another 17 with only 1 surviving. Also told mea bit about his kills too, siad he believed he had 8 a mix of 109's and 190's. Told me about 1 kill where the 109 was coming in from the starboard side and he was shooting him in short burst's, said he was so close he could see the pilot's face as his rounds tore thru his windscreen blowing his upper body to hell.

Scarry! -- What a mental Picture. I bet, you was all Ears. That means he actually saw, the enemy he was killing. uooo

wow when i was back in rotc ( way back in the day lol) for mamorial day we went around and did some color gaurd things. and we went to the retierment home and before they began the ppl were coming into the room to sit down and one guy had a b17 hat on. so i started to talk to him and asked hom what he did, and it turned out he was the pilot. when i talked to hi all i could think about was what he all saw and went through. i was speachless

give ur uncle a big S! for me

no wonder why many vets don't want to talk about it... He must have seen that face in his dreams many times during the years after the war...

Hey Ben do you think he'd be interested in a free trip to Texas next spring?

A B-17 gunner would make a hell of a popular speaker at RatCon!


BTW did I ever tell you guys that my grandad flew Fw-190s?

TZ wrote:BTW did I ever tell you guys that my grandad flew Fw-190s?

No crap? Wild!
My Dad was lined up for the Hungarian Airforce, would have possibly gotten into 109s or 190s, if he hadn't really, really, really pissed the Gestapo off first.

No aviation buffs in my family but my grandfather who is still alive and kicking, well walking nowadays.

landed on Sword Beach on D-Day, Normandy 63 years this coming wednesday. He doesnt like talking about it at all.

Pegasusbelgar wrote:No aviation buffs in my family but my grandfather who is still alive and kicking, well walking nowadays.

landed on Sword Beach on D-Day, Normandy 63 years this coming wednesday. He doesnt like talking about it at all.

Get him a pint from me, and say thanks for the effort!

Ben, I have a story for you to tell your Grandad about my Grandad and his last flight....

Near the end of the war, grandad was one of those kids pressed into service as the older pilots got killed.

He was assigned to fly Fw-190 A-5s (I think) and basically told "Just stick tight to your flight lead and don't do anything stupid."
He said he had about 40 hours flight time when he was first sent into combat.

They were mostly sent up for bomber intercepts when they had the fuel.
The war was nearly over and they all knew it, so the flight lead tended to be very careful about keeping everyone alive.

On his last flight the 6 planes in his kette had missed their intercept and were turning for home when the flight went through a cloud.
When grandad came out of the cloud, he looked around and discovered that he was alone.
Being a sensible sort (as he said) he checked his compass and headed back towards his airfield.
So he thought. Unfortunately for him he was flying a reciprocal course, 180 degrees from the direction he thought he was going.
He said he was getting a bit worried when he spotted the English channel ahead of him.
As he was making his turn to go back the other way, he said he looked down and spotted a smoke trail that turned out to be coming from a B-17 straggler.
Being a hotshot fighter jock (and never having gotten a shot off), he decided here was his chance.
He said he slid up behind the fortress, lining up his shot.... and the tail gunner opened up on him.
He heard three hard bangs, a horrendous grinding noise and the prop stopped dead.

He jumped over the channel and was picked up after floating around for a couple of hours.

Eventually he wound up in a POW camp in Michigan.
(we seem to have had a number of them here)
Prisoners were usually let out to work on the local farms, and grandad met grandma picking apples.
When the war was over, the Russians owned the old homestead so he decided to stay here.
Some years later he found out that he was the only survivor of his flight, most of the rest had been captured by the Russians...

He always said that that tailgunner had done him the greatest favor of his life.......

That must be one of the best stories ever... Lost in tzhe clouds - picked up from the channel - picking apples and meeting grandma... You should sell the story to Hollywood.

And another think; I really wish we had more natural clouds. Imagine us in a formation passing clouds; Reddog in lead thinking of himself; main4ce having everything under control; me way ahead and Ben bitching about his AoA.... It would be nice to have real clouds - to navigate by instruments only. I often do that to kick up the fun - never look out of my window, of course I find myself away from the formation...

Wow TZ..great story...Do you know where in Germany your granddad was from?

Awesome TZ <S>

Wow tz cool story!! I have always said i was born too late!! i would have loved to have been on a bomber in ww2. As far as him going to the mini.con LOL well i don't think hed be too keen on that. Like i said i finnaly got him to talk about it a bit after 30 yrs of digging. Guess it was just too hard for him.

Main4ce wrote:Wow TZ..great story...Do you know where in Germany your granddad was from?

Not from Germany, He came from some little town in Slovakia.
That is to say the Slovakian part of Czechoslovakia.
His name was Josef Mallinger

Grandmas family came from Romania in around 1900. That whole side of the family came from central Europe.


Someday I'd like to go there...