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Those really were a nifty bit of technology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjEf2vpYb9Q
And a big Amen to that.
Imagine the rumble of the propeller engines as they throttle up and then rumble again across the steel. And this was war. You did not know if you were going to come back.
My uncle piloted 43 missions in a B-24 Liberator before his brother was killed in flight training and he was sent home for the funeral. Instead of sending him back they made him an instructor at Wright Patterson. I wonder what the difference between a B-24 and a B25 is besides 1.
A quick search indicates that the B-24 was longer range and the B-25 had more bombing capacity.
The B-24 Liberator was a 4-engine heavy bomber. The B-25 Mitchell was a two-engine medium bomber.
The B-24 carried a heavier bomb load than the more-famous B-17 and had a reputation for getting it’s crews home alive even after taking heavy damage.
The B-25 was the bomber used by Jimmy Doolittle in the raid on Tokyo, launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet.
This steel matting went by the name Marston Matting based on the fact that it was first used at an Army Air Forces base near the town of Marston, NC in 1941.
Thank you all for the additional information on the bombers.
True, the 24 did have a greater bomb capacity. I’ve read the 17 could and did take more damage. The 24’s construction had some vulnerabilities the 17 did not have. Though I believe they manufactured more B24s.
Good training for his role in The Great Escape.
I remember steel matting being used to replace route 12, which had been washed out by a hurricane, on Hatteras Island , circa 1967. Miles and miles of steel matting humming under the wheels of my father’s Chevy station wagon.
Good story.
Here’s one I was told back in 1987, about 32 years after the events. One time as a second lieutenant I was in the Officer’s Club at El Toro at some odd hour when it wasn’t crowded, it must have been lunch time. Two men sitting at the bar next to me were there and we started talking (we didn’t have iphones, so people were still social back then).
They both served in WWII, and one of them told me this story.
He was in the navy on an LST during the war. He said they regularly had a contingent of Marines on board as they were a landing ship. Sometime in 1944 they got a new skipper who tried his best to accommodate the Marines. When they did their drills for General Quarters, for example, he would announce that it was just a drill and the Marines could continue as normal as long as they didn’t get in the way. The Marines appreciated such courtesies, and several of them struck up a friendship with my new acquaintance.
Also on board the ship as ship’s company was a navy lieutenant that was a bit of a martinet that the navy guys didn’t like. There’s almost always one such person in any command. This guy went out of his way to make life miserable for the sailors aboard.
Then the time came when they were to disgorge their load of Marines and equipment for an amphibious assault. I think it was either Iwo Jima or Okinawa, but it’s been a long time, so it could be another. It was late in the war and these Marines were all pretty well experienced.
The day before the landing, a few of the Marines came to this sailor and thanked him for being such a good guy and treating them so well. They told him they want to return the favor. They were about to land and a lot of them wouldn’t be surviving the landing, so it was nothing to them to take care of the lieutenant. No one would know what happened to him, and they would be happy to do it.
The sailor and his buddies assured the Marines that they really liked that lieutenant and please don’t kill him.
That story hit me hard. War really can change people.
Clavius, your father was one heck of a writer and story teller. Without the abilities these fighting men had and their willingness to sacrifice all for our nation, who knows? (Wir könnten alle Deutsch sprechen.)
Thank you for sharing his story.
My Grandfather was also one of his camp mates, appearing at the gates in July of 1944. My Grandfather (a B-17 pilot) HATED the B-24, claiming the fuel system leaked like a sieve. He also like beautiful things, so I’m sure some of the dislike came from “design by committee” styling of the B-24, which looked like a flying boxcar compared to the elegant lines of the B-17. You are correct they were liberated by the Russians, but they were saved by the United States. The Russians wanted the prisoners to turn around and march to Russia, but the Air Force sent in transports and even bombers to evacuate the liberated prisoners West.
Yes, I recall my Dad talking about the priority of getting to non-Soviet liberated territory and that it happened pretty quickly.
Great story.
During war, a person like that lieutenant can go from being a pain in the ass to being someone who commands a slew of people to do unnecessary tasks that get many of them unnecessarily killed.
Marines probably had a lot less tolerance for someone like that. I suspect if that martinet had wiped out a contingent of their fellows, the Navy personnel would not have been so tolerant.