Understanding heroes: A flight through time on a B-24 Liberator

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.times-standard.com/Storie...437008,00.html


Understanding heroes: A flight through time on a B-24 Liberator

By James Faulk The Times-Standard


REDDING -- Looking down the barrel of a .50-caliber machine gun, pressed against the hot, thin skin of a B-24 Liberator as it gained altitude over mile after mile of evergreen forest, I found understanding.

Understanding -- and a new kinship -- for the 10-man crews crammed between flat green aluminum walls of similar bombers that dropped explosives and fought off enemy fighter planes during World War II.

More than 18,000 B-24s were manufactured to answer wartime needs. Now, only one remains flying. On a day where the thermometer easily topped a century, I boarded that survivor on Tuesday for a trip from Redding to Eureka.

Both the B-24 Liberator, restored as the "Dragon and his Tail," and its companion, the B-17 "Nine-O-Nine," were restored to flight condition by the Collings Foundation, a group dedicated to helping people understand historical heritage through direct experience.

Darryl Trott, a 61-year-old Australian artist touring with the planes, said the aircraft allow people to understand heroes of the past.

"You feel the history," he said. "You feel the people that have been there. It's no longer in black and white ... . You feel to some extent the way they did and you understand what it was like for thousands and thousands of airmen."

The journey

I had flown to Redding earlier Tuesday on a Cessna 182. The day at that point was brilliant but hazy. Visibility was limited by a light pall that hung in the sky just enough to turn the Trinity Alps and other sights into surprises that loomed suddenly from a blurred horizon.

We arrived at the Redding airport at just after 10 a.m., and were immediately told we had four hours until both the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-24 Liberator would be taking off for Rohnerville airport, the next stop in the tour.

We were free to have lunch, tour the parked planes and wait.

I began with a look at the B-17. Inside, I moved along slender walking planks from front to back, examining old equipment and signs made for young servicemen of the past. Perhaps reliving war games from my childhood, I squeezed the trigger of the .50-caliber machine gun in the rear gun turret.

I stood on tiptoes and looked out over the top of the plane through another turret, sweating more bullets than I shot as the day grew stifling. My solitary tour continued in much the same way for the next 45 minutes as I sat in various chairs and pretended to assume different roles on the flight crew.

The exercise was just that, however -- a game of pretend; the reality of what happened on thousands of those planes over the years of the war eluded me.

As I prepared to leave the B-17 and cross a short distance of tarmac to the B-24, it began to sink in.

Toward the end of the Flying Fortress, a man who appeared to be in his late 70s or early 80s was taking the tour with another man who could have been his son.

Somber in his appreciation of the aircraft, and deliberate in where he set his hands, I felt he had an understanding that I lacked because of what I assumed was his direct experience.

While my journalistic instinct was to run over with pad in hand and ask if the man was a veteran flyer, with the ultimate goal of prying into his memories for story fodder, I was halted by a sense of compassion. I left him alone to perhaps reconnect with his past, and his son.

Tour flight coordinator Jim Harley said that when he started his time with the aircraft a year ago, it was about the planes. Now it's about the veterans.

"They made these airplanes what they are," he said.

Veterans board the planes and experience again the sensations of being in what many had feared would be their coffins -- and they find closure.

He spoke of one Georgia veteran who toured the planes with his daughter. He hadn't spoken of his war experiences in more than 50 years, but upon entering the plane and reliving the old sensations "he just opened up -- it was like a floodgate," Harley said.

The planes have become a bridge to help younger generations access the experiences of their parents and grandparents, and understand some of what they went through during a dangerous and bloody time in American history.

Flak and enemy fire were constant companions as the bombers made thousands upon thousands of runs toward enemy targets.

"There was not much between you and God," Harley said.

In the yonder

As the B-24 prepared for flight, I buckled up on what amounted to little more than a shallow bench. With yellow ear plugs wedged deep in my ears, the blasting engines became a dull roar. The plane hurtled down the runway and reluctantly lifted its heavy frame off the ground.

With camera in hand and seat belt freshly unbuckled, I made my way along skinny planks to various ends of the plane -- the rear gun turret, the nose turret, the entrance to the cockpit and the center section behind two large gun windows on either side of the plane's hull.

Every several minutes, the plane was buffeted by wind and would jerk and sway. The floor dropped with no notice, making it difficult to walk. A stiff breeze tore through all ends of the plane, pulling at hair and clothing.

The muffled engines, combined with the wind and the lurching floor, made for a journey that transcended the physical nature of the flight. For a moment, the efforts of our grandparents during the war became clear in a way that textbooks and tales could never realize.

Theirs was obviously a more harrowing experience, but for once I could at least begin to understand their ordeal.

One tour volunteer, Rick Ziel of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said veterans could never hear when the plane had been struck by enemy fire. Instead, daylight simply pierced the plane's shell. Once light began to pour in through sundry rifts in the aluminum, airmen checked themselves for wounds.

As the plane neared the end of its flight Tuesday, approaching Rohnerville airport and the crowd gathered there, I had an urge to check myself for injuries suffered in understanding.

At 27 years of age, and having led what has been mostly a safe and secure life, I felt I finally understood the experience that left many of our common American ancestors killed or scarred. The realization left me shaken, breathless and proud.

The planes will remain at Rohnerville Airport until noon today. For more information, call Dan Freitas at 443-8138.

[Jerry D]

some of my favorite planes are the B24 and B17 , this was a great article on them