Nice story. Interesting theology though.
Beautiful story. My uncle was a waist gunner in a B-24 in North Africa and Italy during the war. I offered many times to take him up again in a B-24, but he always said he’d pressed his luck enough during the war. He never flew again in any kind of plane—not even a passenger plane.
I love to read stories like this! Thank you for posting.
May God’s Holy Angels escort him to Paradise...
A true hero.
We will not see his like again
Rest in peace World War II veteran Francis Robert "Frank" Royal
My uncle in law flew p38s over Germany, he was a brit. Great plane. Fast as hell and lotsa guns. Germans did not like these planes.
Something similar happened to my dad. He flew a KC-97 Stratofreighter in the Texas Air National Guard. When he visited the USAF museum in Dayton, he realized the plane there was one of the ones he flew back then.
God’s speed warrior. You are now home again. Your brethren airman are there with you. I hope they have whiskey in Heaven.
Interesting story, thanks for posting. My late Father was a bombardier in a B-24 with the 5th Army Air Corps in Papua New Guinea. He would have been 99 years-old this year. He always wanted to go back and visit New Guinea and was planning a trip there when he passed away in 1988.
The P-38 wss my favorite model to build back in the day. I must have assembled half a dozen of those “Black Widows”.
One of the biggest mistakes of World War II, in my opinion, was the decision to transfer the P-38’s to the North African front instead of keeping them for bomber escort duties throughout 1943. Had the P-38 been available for bomber escort duty throughout 1943, we wouldn’t have suffered grievous losses of B-17’s during the Schweinfurt raids.
Humans don't become "angels", when they die.
In Luke Chapter 16:19-31 Jesus describes what happens to men when they die.
My 96 year old dad served in a P38 squadron in Italy. Beautiful planes. Quite different to fly than other fighters, with twin engines and a harness (like a stearing wheel) instead of a stick. The pilots discovered that by revving one engine and cutting back the other they could make the plane turn without banking, so they were flying kind of sideways. That was a big advantage in keeping the guns on target, much tighter than banking the whole plane.
A toast, fellow Freepers. To the Greatest Generation.
RIP.