RAMC181 wrote:
Back to the ground crew photo, taken at the end of January 1945:
Ken wrote:
I just got a reply from Grandpa Jim...
He said the man on the left is M/Sgt C. H. Brown, known as "Brownie" and he was the ground crew chief.
The man who is right center is Corporal C.S. Smith, a member of the ground crew. Jim thinks the man who is left center is Sgt F. Able, member of the ground crew (but is somewhat unsure if he is that person), and could not identify the 4th man.
In addition, a copy of this photo was stuck inside a copy of "Serenade to the Big Bird" that Jim once signed for me as a gift. On the back of the photo he wrote, "After each mission, I taxied off the runway - stopped - and "Brownie" my crew chief would get in - come up to the cockpit and ask 'How the old bird that day fly? (sic)' "
It pains me to think of the stories and experiences that are lost forever when we lose these veterans. Getting him to identify some of the men in the photo is a minor thing but I think it matters.
Checking my ground crew notes I have the following assigned '993:
M/Sgt. Curtis H. Brown (Crew Chief)
Sgt. Felix R. Abel
Sgt. John B. Aloi
Cpl. Claire S. Smith
All the best,
PB
I've just got home from the 401BG reunion in Colorado Springs, and was honoured to have been able to have a number of long chats with the aforementioned Felix Abel who is one of the fittest 90-odd year-olds I've ever met.
He was one of the first guys assigned to the group when it was activated in Montana, and was one of the last to be reassigned when it was deactivated on it's return to the USA, so "did the full life of the group" as he puts it.
One of the things he was most pointed on is that he
isn't in the photo above, as he was on a pass that day.
He is in at least one other photo though, and I'll get that scanned in and posted ASAP.
He was a wealth of information, we even shared the flight to Chicago together so you can imagine how much we were chatting, and it turns out that one of the "Chute 13" ground crew was a former aircrew tail gunner who stepped back from flight duty at the start of 1944 and joined them for the duration. (I believe this particular chap is the guy directly under the nose hatch in the above photo, Cpl. Smith.)
I showed him this thread (Felix still runs the farm he was born on, and other than his WWII service has never left. Computers are a new-fangled thing to him, and the internet is "one of those things other folks talk about in the store"), and the picture of "Chute 13" being cut up, which he was most interested to see.
He said "that's just what she looked like when we drove out of the gate to come home, the war in England was over and we didn't need to patch her up any more".
After her last prang she was dragged over to the salvage dump where she was left.
Felix can be seen in his photo I took of our Veterans on saturday at the reunion, back row, 4th from the left:
Also present was one of "Chute 13"'s other tail gunners, but I'll need to check where he is in the picture.
All the best,
PB
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