Issue 12.14
My friend and neighbor of 65 years who is now again a neighbor and still a good friend was a World War Two transport pilot. My definition of an “Old Friend” is one that has known you long enough to know of all your faults and is still your friend. He started out during that war in pilot training. He went through all phases of pilot training and after he got his silver wings, he was sent for more training just where he wanted to go. He was checked out as a B-25 pilot. He loved that airplane. The B-25 was a twin engine medium bomber. This is the plane that Jimmy Doolittle’s squadron took off from a carrier deck and bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities and then flew on to all crash land in China and even one landed in Siberia. He loved that “Mitchell” bomber but when he finished his training in B-25’s he and all of his groups finishing then were assigned to be C-47 “Dakota” transport pilots. With some further training, he was ready to pilot his own assigned plane. The C-47 was the World War Two workhorse and thousands of them were built. They were used for many things including ferrying troops, towing gliders, dropping paratroops and hauling freight anywhere needed. Some were fitted as hospital planes to haul the wounded from the front lines to hospitals. My friend many times flew anti Hitler partisans deep into German occupied countries to allow these people to parachute out. Sometimes these partisans were women. Of course these behind the lines fighters needed clothing, medicine and equipment. Sometimes British and American people were also dropped. This was all very secret and if my friend had been shot down and captured you can bet the Germans would use every kind of persuasion to get very valuable information that he surely knew.
The C-47 was also a favorite transportation of the ground generals. My friend with his military work had the chance to see many European countries. He also was in the northern African countries and South America. Unlike my experience, he had the privilege of walking on the ground in many. Once when the German Mediterranean island of Crete was entering the process of surrendering to the Allies, my friend had the privilege of flying the top Allied brass to the island to accept the Germans surrender. While there he had the chance to drive around the island in German limousines. It would seem that flying a transport plane in wartime would be a safe way to fight a war but my friend often flew over enemy territory at very low altitudes at night. I often wondered if he had on board a cracker jack navigator for his flights over enemy territory at night. He had one disadvantage compared to my wartime experiences. When I had completed my required 35 mission, I could go home but he didn’t have that luxury. The reason I spoke of him not by name is that he did not want me to write about him. Perhaps this is about any Transport flyer except that once I was playing golf with him in California and I witnessed him making a hole in one. That was the only hole in one I witnessed in my lifetime and it was his only hole in one. Having said that, he must now realize that I wrote this about him.
Sam Wyrouck can be contacted at 801-707-2666.