Just wanted to say thank you to all RC members who have served and protected our great country.

My father was a B-24 bomber pilot in WWII. He was awarded numerous medals including the Silver Star and Purple Heart. During the war the losses to the bomber crews was horrific, often reaching 10% or more for each mission. He was finally shot down on his 25th mission and spent 15 months in Stalag 1, a German prisoner of war camp. On Wikipedia, they have a picture of his plane, The Duchess, in the B-24 article.

My son did a video interview as a class project before he passed away in 2012. Him and all others who have served are my heros.

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Where was he stationed? My dad was at Rougham Airfield, Bury St Edmund, England. They have a replica of the control tower at Wright-Patterson Air Base, in Dayton, Ohio. Surprised me to see that- wish I had known while he was alive.

This is a very good editorial related to this topic. But the server seems to have problems. Sometimes you have to reload the page a few times to get it to load.

[Link: revoltdaily.org]


To the vets, thanks for volunteering, so no one has to do it.

Not sure exactly where he was stationed. I have trunk of all his records . He kept a log of all his missions and flights. I will try to check and get back to you.
Dave

One easy way to tell is by looking into which bomb group he was with. My dad was 8th Air Force, 94th Bomb Group.

Looks like he was in the 93rd Bomb Group, after googling 'The Duchess'. Originally engaged in anti-submarine flights over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean before moving to England, based in Alconbury.

[Link: en.wikipedia.org]

I have mixed feelings about Kurt Vonnegut's work, mostly because I have not read enough to really form my own opinion. But read what he wrote about Veterans' Day in "Breakfast of Champions" --


Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

Our nation is sadly lacking in sacred things.


And "WWII vet returns to the town he fought in to find that he's become a local legend" --


Thanks to all who have served. Be patient with the rest of us who know very little of how you have sacrificed for us, especially those who don't believe it was right for you to do so.

Just wanted to say thank you to all RC members who have served and protected our great country.

You're welcome Ernie.

SGT, USAF
Crew Chief, Republic F-105-G Thunderchief
17th Wild Weasels 1970-1974
YGBSM
If you don't know the story, just Google 17th Wild Weasels.

[Link: militaryhistoryonline.com]

I don't think Ernie is discrediting yours or anyone else's service. I believe the essay he partially quoted is going for a similar point as the article that I linked. Btw, that article was written by a veteran. Most people are quick to tell you thank you for your service, but in truth, theyve never really thought about what they are thanking you for.

Fins, I meant Davet2020 instead of Ernie. I guess I'm the only war veteran here.

Here is an explaination of the YGBSM that appeared on our Squadron patch.

The new Weasel crews were shocked to hear of their new mission, which was nothing short of a suicide mission. One of the new weasels, EWO Captain Jack Donovan, summed up the feelings of all the Weasels about their new mission, when he said, " You want me to fly in the back of a little tiny fighter aircraft with a crazy fighter pilot who thinks he's invincible, home in on a SAM site in North Vietnam, and shoot it before it shoots me, you gotta be shittin me!" Despite the apprehension, the Weasel crews went forward with their suicide mission, and in early November 1965, they deployed to Korat AFB in Thailand to begin their Wild Weasel missions

If you Google :B-24 The Duchess" it will show you a page of images. The one on the far right you can see my dad standing on top of The Duchess, the next one he is the on the far right with the rest of his crew. Believe he was in the 93rd Bomb Group. His plane id was 41-24147.

The plane The Duchess was actually very famous. It had previously been piloted by Ramsay Potts in the Polesti air raid in an attempt to bomb the Romanian oil fields supplying oil for the Nazi war machine. Ramsay Potts was a squadron leader and so a lot of articles and short books were written about him. I once met someone who remembered reading a book as a kid about Potts and Duchess.

Bluesmaker..read your link about the Flying Weasels. It is hard for me to phathom the courage of these men who volunteered for missions where the odds of being killed were greater than in surviving. And then after that mission was done to do it the next day. During WWII if anyone survived 25 missions then they were rotated home to tour the US as war heros. My father made it to the 24th mission before he was shot down.

If anyone wants a real eye-opener, be there when a group of WWII vets see each other for the first time in close to 40 years, most of them having been shot down and thinking that the others were probably dead. My dad was one of the people in the 94th Bomb Group's 'Search & Rescue' and he found some of the guys he was stationed with, so he invited them to the house. One lived in Chicago, I don't remember where another lived, but one lived less than 4 miles from us.

It always amazes me that those in command order people in service to do things that they couldn't have imagined when they were in action. Telling someone to intentionally fly through an area with SAMs so they can be targeted, in hopes that someone else can destroy the SAMs may work, but it definitely makes me think they considered pilots and other service people only as 'inventory', regardless of how often they said they considered them to be valuable.

Thanks for your service.

In times of war every one in the military knows the risk of life and equipment. This is the price they are willing to pay to protect their country and their families from foreign aggression. This is what makes them special.

In the case of the sacrifice faced by the Wild Weasels, the command could either take the chance of losing a B-52 worth millions more than the dated F-105 and most importantly a crew of 8 to 11 on the B-52 versus the 2 crew members of the F-105. Our armed forces commanders from Valley Forge through todays conflicts have had to make hard decisions to complete the mission at hand. I can assure you no harder command is given than to send troops into harms way. We are all brothers in arms no matter which branch we served in and understand the sacrifice we have to make to keep freedom in this country so that even people that have different opinions than ours have the right to have and voice those opinions. In my opinion, the brotherhood stops at any politician that has never served in the military and tries to make military decisions with their power in office with absolutely NO military experience.

Freedom is not free. It is being paid for by these brave people who know the risk. Take a look at the news tonight and consider what the USA would be like if Americans were not brave enough to put lives on the line for everyone in the country, from the homeless heroin addict to the wealthiest business owners. Civilians need to step up and make sacrifices in their own cities and neighborhoods to stop the robberies and street crime, etc., rather than ignore things they see and hide from the reality that is developing in our country.

Off my soap box now. This was not a direct negative response to highfigh or any other person here. Even if you were not military, you are still out there busting your asses to make this a better and productive country and not sitting around on welfare sucking on the Government tit.

Thanks to you civilians for supporting our troops.

I agree completely and meant no disrespect to the Military, just to those in government who lead from an ivory tower and justifying many of their decisions through "risk management". It's called 'service' for a reason and the way the VA has been allowed to treat veterans (through lack of funding and dishonesty in leadership) is disgusting. I don't remember hearing a lot of veterans complain about what they did, although some suffer serious loss that's invisible. I worked for someone who was in the 7th Cav, in Vietnam. He didn't talk much about it, but had definite anger issues. He would talk about it with others who were there, like customers and sales reps- one of whom was sent there in '62, one of the first Americans involved. My dad would never pass anyone in uniform if they were walking along a road without asking if they needed a lift and that's something I have continued.

We have too many people sitting back and expecting someone else to fix the problems we have, in the US. The vast majority of these problems should never exist and could easily disappear, if people would only make the effort or the right decisions.

Thanks again.