Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxite
The last bomber lost in Europe, Germany, April ‘45, Richard Farrington crew, B-24 Liberator.
466th Bomb Group, Based at Attlebridge, East Anglia/Norwich
My Dad, flight engineer/top-turret gunner in the same bomb group, served with and knew this crew. The US Post Office issued this stamp, illustrating that particular B-24 sixty years after the loss.
Ironically, the nose-art and name of the plane: Black Cat
It came-apart from flak. Only two survived.
A book written by a descendant who discovered his deceased uncle’s diary is “Wings of Morning”, tells the story of the days leading up to the mission and the aftermath, and his search for and discovery of the site, including the German treatment of the wreckage site and crew remains. An excellent read.
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Here’s a follow-up: While camping in the Airstream in Colorado Springs I was sitting at the picnic table and saw a man about age 50 walking with his son who was wearing a Boy Scout uniform-shirt. As an “old Scout” I called out to them and said “hello”…which led to a conversation.
The lad went to play with some other kids on the playground …so I offered the “Dad” a beer…which he accepted. His name was Ben Schilling and as we talked the subject came up about visiting England. I told him I’d been there, and enjoyed visiting my Dad’s old air-base “Attlebridge”…and Ben interrupted me….. “Hey, MY Dad was stationed at Attlebridge with the 466th B.G.!”
What chance/coincidence meeting! Good Cheer all around!
THANK YOU GUYS of THE “GREATEST” GENERATION! (We’ve just about lost them all by now. NeXt month I’ll be visiting a flying-club Member who, as an Army Ranger climbed Mount Kehlstein at Berchtesgaden and has given me a photo of him and his platoon sitting on the patio wall of that “Eagles Nest”. I hope to write down for posterity his story of how he talked one of his buddies into pulling a German primary glider with a jeep so he could fly it. (I’ve got a photo of that event.)
He sat in a FW190 cockpit and got it started…but it was low on fuel and he knew it’d be wrong and dangerous to try to fly it…so he ran it up and shut it down.)
A week later his platoon re-traced their steps and upon returning to the same small air-field found OSS had put signs all over the airplanes he’d been sitting in and playing with the previous week….”DO NOT TOUCH - BOOBY-TRAPS”.
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