So there I am, waiting just before 2PM for the 3 girls to show up, I notice 2 older gentlemen hanging out... One fella had a leather jacket on with a B-24 painted on the back, so I assumed he was a former crewmember...
I asked if he flew on the B-24, and he nodded, smiled, and said "10 1/2 missions.."
I said, "10 and a half???"
He said, "Hehe, we made it to Ploesti, but not back...
He was a nose gunner on a ship named DUAL SACK, and flak got them... No 1 engine 1st on fire, then extinguished... Engine 3 just goes BOOM!!! and big fire... The wing starts to disintegrate and the plane rolls.... He told me he never moved so fast as when the Captain called Bail Out...
He was part of the second attack on Ploesti.... He knew that the guys in the first attack got hammered, and he expected his plane to get hit... Said he still remembers the sound of the flak banging off the fuselage...
I asked him about enemy fighters, and he said he saw 2 fw 190's, and they went by so fast, the Captain was yellin Shoot, shoot, and he couldnt even get his gun around fast enough to track em.... That was it... Flak was a bigger threat for them... He also said that in 1943, there were no escorts, the P-47's were going after locomotives with a passion...
I asked him if he ever saw any of the others in his flight go down, and he said he saw his buddys plane, DOWNTOWN, take a hit and ripped the entire tail section off at the waist gunners posistion... The forward part fluttered down like a leaf... He recalled his buddys name and said he always wore this beat up old St' Louis ballcap...
The guy was great and was always smiling...