My father and his brothers were all in the U.S.A.A.F., on Monday the 8th of December, 1941, they piled into my dad's '37 Chevy and drove to Detroit and enlisted. Four years later, thankfully they all came home, a B-17/B-29 pilot, a P-61 radar operator, a check pilot at Willow Run for B-24's and a Mustang pilot.
After the war, they turned the family farm into an airfield, it was grass but had N/S and E/W runways, several hangars, overnight accommodations and a licensed repair shop. We lived right next door to the west of the north end of the N/S runway, from my bedroom window on the second floor I could see everything. I basically was hooked from birth.
In about 1967-8, Raytheon Corp. came around and rented hangar space for testing some new equipment, they had a glistening B-25 that would make about a 50 mile circuit and then roared right over our house at one of the hangars. God did those engines sound FANTASTIC! I mean he came in LOW, just above the tree tops, more than once the copilot gave a cool wave to the goofy kid jumping up and down with an ear to ear grin in our backyard... whoever he was...
Sorry for the long winded post, just felt like writing today, anyway, my dad and his brothers were 10 feet tall in my eyes, however I got very few "war stories", the ones I did get were the humorous type.