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Wed Mar 25, 2015 6:26 am
This is my first post, and I understand I have to make a second post pronto or get booted off.
I am a fish out of water here, which is a fitting thing to say, as my military interests are specifically in World War II Pacific naval operations, and in particular submarine warfare. I last flew in a plane in 1984. I don't really expect to be very active here, but who knows where my interests might lead.
I am 62 and semi-retired. That does not mean I drove a truck. Nothing against trucks. I drove a bus and a van once. Some of my previous and varied occupations included public school band director, railroad brakeman, warehouseman, and computer programmer.
What brings me here is that my Dad died two years ago, and about a year before that, out of the blue, he gave me some pictures from World War II that I had never seen before. He had been in the Army Air Corps, and served on Saipan as a weather observer in 1944 and 1945. He was one of the guys who triangulated weather systems using radar with the help of weather observers on other Pacific islands, so they could route the B-29s around the storms to Japan and back. I would be surprised if anybody here was familiar with that, but then, life is full of surprises, so I wouldn't be surprised if I end up being surprised about that.
I just recently posted ten of these photos on Histomil, and three of them were of a single B-29. I've gotten kind of interested in that plane, and am curious about its operational history. Anyway, the Histomil guys found out the plane's serial number (in particular, Sniper1946), which was 42-24688. It was V 29, ex-V-Square-29. So my further research led me to this website where I found a post and photo of the plane. I hope to be able to post my photos of the plane here (which are private never before published photos), as there seemed to be a number of people interested in the plane, including one person several months ago who was working on a family history or something.
I do occasionally read books on the WWII air war. My most recent was A Higher Call. So who knows, maybe I will be visiting here more often than I imagine.