The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Charles W. Anderson and the 15th Air Force - Oct. 8th, 2003

http://www2.gvsu.edu/~vandelej/part1.html ^ | Leslie VanderMeulen

[PhilDragoo]

From zenoswarbirdvideos.com:

From armyairforces.com

B-17G, serial #44-85784 "Sally B"

B-17G, serial #44-85829 "Yankee Lady"

Original tail configuration (left) next to the Cheyenne Tail modification (right)

B-17G, serial #44-85829 "Yankee Lady"

B-17G, serial #44-85740 "Aluminum Overcast"

From Update History of Tony's B-17 Pages

From warbirdsalive.com

From b17warhorse.fws1.com

385TH - Tail Gunner - "DON"

Don shown cleaning glass about his Tail Gunner position. This photo taken in 1944 is on a B-17 of the "F" series model bombers.The small dark rod to the left of the photo is the gun sight for the gunner's two 50 cal. machine guns located in the extream tail end of the airplane located to the left of the photo.

To get a comparable size of this position look at a full size B-17 photo.

The Tail Gunner had an escape hatch just out of sight to the right of the photo. The hatch door was about 20 inches square - just big enought for the Airman to slip through with a parachute.

It would have been impossible for a man with a parachute to get out of the bomber through the window Don is shown in.

The vertical rudder is just above Don's head - and - the smaller part on the lower rear edge of the rudder is a trim tab the pilot used to correct trim of the B-17. Sort of gives you an idea of compartive size of man and machine !

From B-17G Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby

Crowds of revelers flock to Monument Circle to celebrate the end of World War II. Star file photo.

Allison was manufacturing airplane engines. RCA was improving proximity fuses. And at the Naval Avionics center on Arlington Street, one of the most important inventions of the war was in development – the Norden bombsight.

Later on Arlington Street the city would build my high school, Arlington, where I would graduate the same year David Lick-Hitlery's-Boots Letterman graduated Broad Ripple.

My friend Bob's dad worked at Naval Avionics, and he brought home a very neat viewer with a 90-degree prism and crosshairs that fascinated us fourth-graders.

The paper I carried in junior high was the Indianapolis News which Dan Quayle's family owned. He would graduate from Depauw the year I graduated from Wabash (college rivals separated by some twenty miles of two-lane blacktop).

The editor was M. Stanton Evans who wrote the strongest of defenses of Ann Coulter's Treason and whom she acknowledges first in the book as "the world's leading authority on Senator Joseph McCarthy".

I saw Evans debate Dr. Robert Risk president of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union in 1964 with my Young American for Freedom friends. It was an up close and personal look at the rabid bearded Marxists spewing embarrassing cliches--satires of themselves who have morphed into the staff of the New York and Los Angeles Times newspapers.

I see in Coulter's coverage of McCarthy that the man and his work are as different from the leftist myth as Bush is from the DU caricature: in short, a determined campaign of hateful lies has, after fifty years, made one embarrassed to mention the name McCarthy.

But, Venona proved him right: the government was riddled with real Soviet spies, not pink little old ladies, not indiscrete professors, spies.

And he served as a tailgunner on combat missions though he needn't have.

The history of the bomber crews is pure courage: to have gone up where ice forms and oxygen is unknown to carry explosives in aluminum cans vibrating with hellish noise as enemy gunners sent streams of murderous lead to rip open your life like a zipper.

Then to come back to a nation where Edward R. Murrow and Harry Truman would defend Soviet spies and slander the man who sought to remove them from government.

Bulletin: Bush in 2000, Schwarzenegger in 2003, and the rise of the dangerous vast right-wing conspiracy with such websites as Free Republic have come like daybreak for vampires to the Left.

And the Foxhole has America's six.

[SAMWolf]

Evening PhilDragoo.

Great pictures and info on the tailgunner postion.

The history of the bomber crews is pure courage: to have gone up where ice forms and oxygen is unknown to carry explosives in aluminum cans vibrating with hellish noise as enemy gunners sent streams of murderous lead to rip open your life like a zipper.

Excellent commentary. Beautiful description of bomber crews.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!!

[CholeraJoe]

Thanks again Sam and snippy. You know how I love the airpower threads. I was the Deputy Surgeon for 15th AF at one point in my career. cj

[snippy_about_it]

Hey there cj, good to see you, we know you've been busy so thanks for dropping in, glad you liked the thread.

[snippy_about_it]

And the Foxhole has America's six.

Thanks Phil!!

[SAMWolf]

Hi Cholera Joe.

Just finished a thread on a B-24 Group in the 15th AF. Coming soon to a Foxhole near you. :-)

[colorado tanker]

Well, Phil, I'm just in awe of your tribute to B-17 tailgunners and Tailgunner Joe. He was right as was Whittaker Chambers. The left has been spewing lies about "McCarthyism" for fifty years. I was disgusted when Elia Kazan, a great film director, died recently and most of the obits were full of leftist crap dumping on him for testifying truthfully before Congress about commies in Hollywood.

[radu]

Ooooh my! I hate it when this happens! I was going back through "pings" in search of something when I ran across your post. I'm sorry I missed it before. Please accept my apologies.

Love your graphic!

That's one of my favorites, too. I can't remember where I found it but go ahead and snag it from the thread. It's a good one to keep in the "closet" for posting from time to time. That's what I've done.

Pleased to meet you, BTW.

[Samwise]

It's a good one to keep in the "closet" for posting from time to time.

Thanks! Not only did I save it, but I added it to my homepage. Glad to meet you too.

[radu]

Not only did I save it, but I added it to my homepage.

DUUUUUUUH! Now why didn't I think of that? LOL! It's perfect!! On my way to add it to mine, too. It'll fit right in. I really need to spend time on the 'puter in the day time. My brain doesn't seem to function well late at night. LOL! Otherwise, I'd have thought of it sooner.