Chapter 156
10/1/2007
Ch 156 The B24 Flying Museum A Walk on the Catwalk
Kathy and I took the opportunity to tour the only operational flying B24 Liberator in existence when it landed here in Schenectady. We wanted to get a feel for what it was like when Dad spent time in it for 30 missions over France and Germany in WW2 in COVERGIRL.
The biggest impression is how tiny and confined you are on-board. Hollywood movies and cameras with wide angle lenses tend to make the space seem large. I guess we are also preconditioned by our experiences in airplanes.
In the above picture we had walked from the waist gunner position behind the camera, now looking forward across the narrow catwalk between the two sets of bomb bay stanchions of hanging 500 pound bombs toward the flight deck. One would climb down into the bombardier and nose gunner positions or up into the Pilots cabin and navigator-radio position and Dad's combo Flight Engineer and top turret gunners position . There is not enough width for your shoulders to clear if you walk straight, you have to angle your body sideways. Now, I'm thinking of the words in Dad's book article, when he returned to base after flak blew holes in their hydraulic fluid and gas lines, spraying it onto this smooth aluminum and rubber surface with the bomb bay doors stuck open he was coming from the front, "...as I started toward the waist the wind was howling at about 150mph and the catwalk was like greased lightning. I got as far as the last bomb stanchion and chickened out." It must have been pitch black and freezing cold with the bombing runs at night and now lights and electrical systems shut down for fear of fire. The catwalk is also the bottom keel of the aircraft so with the bomb bay doors open you step off into the atmosphere.
It was worthwhile to get this tiny little bit of feel for the situation. Some other tourists that day were too afraid to walk the catwalk while we sat safely and firmly on the landing gear only a few feet off the ground. Dad's article covered only one part of this second mission in his tour of duty. The book describes this one Bretigny-Creil mission in foggy terms of: 77 B24s sent, carried four 2000 pounders, 4 shot down blowing up in midair one wing knocked off, 3 wrecked in air crashes, 58 Flak damaged, one flak injured Sgt died later, others injured on landing, some taken as POW, 6 members evaded capture, one navigator hidden by farmers-train to south France-walked over Pyrenees into Spain-Gibraltar-back to London, we went through hell the entire time, cloud covered primary target, diverted to secondary, some didn't get the word went to primary anyway, visual fair, missed target by 1240 feet, bombs blew something skyhigh sending flames and smoke several thousands of feet into the air, lousy bombing, worst mission, ack-ack intense and accurate, poorly led mission, lead planes went low thru the worst of the flak areas of northern France -command pilot being afraid of leaving stragglers, just about all planes hit, we really took a shellacking from Jerry.
nice 10 min ride on board to feel the vibration and hear the deafening roar (took eleven hour flight to cross the Atlantic)
http://www.collingsfoundation.org/menu.htm
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=625941
B24 art, returning home to Halesworth Air Base