![[Graphic] Snapshots from the 464th Bombardment Group.](../images/flagd.jpg)
Our War Stories
|
Jinxed
by George W. Carney (778) — as told to Diane Carney
Page 3
|
When the crew heard this they said, "Well, that's our plane!"
I said. "You don't know anything about that. There's no
way in the world you could know about
that."
They looked at me with pity and exasperation.
We ate a quick breakfast and went down to the flight line. We
couldn't find our plane. The crew wasn't surprised. I went to flight operations.
"Where's our plane?" I said.
The Operations Officer said, "Oh, it's in the depot for repairs."
"What repairs?" I asked.
"A fire engine ran into it last night," he said. "Knocked
off the nose along with the bomb site stabilizer. It'll probably be in the depot a few days."
I went back to the crew, gave them the news, and started off
towards my quarters. I could feel them watching me. I was a little ways off when someone said,
"See, we told you."
While the groundcrew fixed the damage done by the fire engine
they also completed the task for which we had flown to Lincoln in the first place. They installed
twin .50 caliber Browning machine guns at the two waist windows of the plane.
The rest of the group departed for their overseas destinations.
Once again, we were alone at the field.
On February 27th, we made the second leg of our trip to Morrison
Field, West Palm Beach, Florida. This would be our last stop in the United States. The crew,
always a little edgy over that jinxed business, was even more so when we were issued .45 caliber
Colt automatic pistols. The reality of what lay ahead was sinking in. Fortunately, we had a good
laugh at each other when we all got our heads shaved. Jinxed or not, we were one ugly crew.
We left the next morning for Trinidad. The manifold gauges and
tachometer were reading erratically but since there were no repair facilities at Borinquin Field,
we had to interpolate their readings.
We stayed overnight in Trinidad then left the next day for Belem,
Brazil, near the mouth of the Amazon River. The weather was horrendous. The visibility was zero,
so we were flying on those fickle instruments. Our aircraft blundered into a thunderstorm. We were
bouncing all over the sky and I could barely maintain directional control. There was so much rain
it was like flying through a barrel of water. Our cockpit was a shower stall, and it didn't do the
gauges much good.
I tried to keep us at about 9,000 feet altitude, but it wasn't easy.
We got into the violent updraft of a thunderhead within a thunderstorm. The altimeter was spinning
so fast I couldn't keep track of our altitude. I'm guessing we were sucked up about 5,000 feet in
less than a minute. My biggest concern was to keep the aircraft in a nose-down attitude so that
we wouldn't stall. That, and I was really worried about the downdraft of equal intensity that was
sure to come on the other side of the thunderhead, and come it did. It pulled us down as fast as
we'd been pulled up. All the way down I worried what attitude I should keep the plane in order to
avoid an induced stall. Fortunately, the artificial horizon was working, so I just tried to keep the
plane as level as possible.
I was so busy fighting the controls that I didn't think of the crew
in the back. Whoever wasn't buckled down was sure to have spent his time bouncing off the ceiling
and everything else. We exited the storm in time to see the mouth of the Amazon River.
<< Back Next >>
From the Dec. '01 issue of the 464th Bomb Group Newsletter.
Published with the permission of Tony Schneider, Sec./NL Ed. (464th, 776)
|
|
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please
contact our webmaster
via email at
464th@zplace2b.com.
All photographic images contained herein are the property of their respective
owners and have been used here with written permission. All of the clipart
images are original works by Little Creek Graphics
unless otherwise stated.
This website was designed and is maintained by Little Creek Web Design.
Copyright © 2004 Little Creek.
All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|