Today was the Army AirForce football game. My dad and I decided to root for the AirForce since my grandad served in the RAF during WWII. Talking with my dad I learned a few new things about my grandad. Apparently he wasn't a tail-gunner, which I had always assumed. He was actually a gun and bomb technician. It was his job to adjust the fairing rate on guns and the aiming systems of bombers. This brought up the issue of his capture. After all, how do you get captured if you are a technician? It seems my grandad got board working on bombers, so he volunteered to do some bomb drops. It was on one of these missions that he got shot down. It is nice knowing that my grandad was a brave man. He passed away when I was eleven, so I don’t have very many memories of him. All I do remember is a friendly old man who loved to work in his garden and never stopped smiling. It is nice being able to think of him in a different context: as a soldier signing up for a dangerous mission and as a survivor of the Burmese death camps. Incidentally AirForce beat Army 43-7. I doubt my grandad would have cared, but I was happy.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Missing my Grandad
Today was the Army AirForce football game. My dad and I decided to root for the AirForce since my grandad served in the RAF during WWII. Talking with my dad I learned a few new things about my grandad. Apparently he wasn't a tail-gunner, which I had always assumed. He was actually a gun and bomb technician. It was his job to adjust the fairing rate on guns and the aiming systems of bombers. This brought up the issue of his capture. After all, how do you get captured if you are a technician? It seems my grandad got board working on bombers, so he volunteered to do some bomb drops. It was on one of these missions that he got shot down. It is nice knowing that my grandad was a brave man. He passed away when I was eleven, so I don’t have very many memories of him. All I do remember is a friendly old man who loved to work in his garden and never stopped smiling. It is nice being able to think of him in a different context: as a soldier signing up for a dangerous mission and as a survivor of the Burmese death camps. Incidentally AirForce beat Army 43-7. I doubt my grandad would have cared, but I was happy.
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1 comment:
Man, props to your Grandad for volunteering to go on a bombing run... I remember reading somewhere that the life span of a bomber crew was 3-5 missions.
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