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When we were in the nose I could see the pilots feet on the rudder
Pedals. I used to tell him. "Andy when we are over the target area never
take your feet off the rudder pedals, not even to re-arrange your social
equipment or we're going to clean out the nose area because when there
are no feet on the rudders no one is flying the plane."
Our pilot never wore his flak suit. He always sat on it and pulled it up
between his legs over his lap. He got married a couple of weeks before
we left for overseas. He always said "They may hit me but not in the
family jewels."
Scared over the target?????? Hell no.!!!!! After "BOMBS AWAY" I learned
how get down between the two nose gun Ammo boxes and draw clear up
inside my helmet including my knees because I always wanted to join a
chinese acrobat team and since I had a little free time I was
practicing. One time the navigator thought some one had put a turtle in
the nose.
Talking about fears. One almost as bad as flak and fighters. We used to
have a pilot fly our wing quite often and to be as kind as I can I will
say he never learned to master the art of formation flying. He would
contantly over jockey the throttles and then he would fall back and
slide out next thing he'd come roaring back closing in and you never
knew if he was going to back off quick enough keep from hitting us or
not. This would happen all the way to the target and back for seven or
eight hours. It got so bad that the gunners in the waist would ask the
pilot to ask Luxxxxxxxx to back off a little. Sometimes getting over the
target was a relief from our wing man.
In general I think the army air force did a wonderful job of picking first
pilots. All the different ones I flew with seemed to have the temperament
and skill to do a good job and most soon learned to be masters at
formation flying.
By the way have any of you guys ever figured out why they issued 45's to
the officers. I wore that thing under my parachute harness for about
three or four missions and my ribs were so sore I could hardly breath.
Then I had a little talk with myself and ask myself a question. Does
some DoDo in the pentagon think that if I get shot down 700 miles inside
Germany that I'm going to fight the whole damn German Army by myself???
The 45 went under my bunk and stayed there until I checked it in when I
came home. I substituted a small hunting knife I bought at the PX and
taped it to my harness. I had often heard of guys bailing out over water
and the wind would blow them and they couldn't get out of there harness
and would drown. If they could have cut the shroud lines they might have
made it.
Everett Frank - 721st Squadron
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