A Seafire

With the recent anniversary of D-Day again I start looking at pics...this one caught my attention. The numbers on it make it easy to find flying and at airshows, but what drew me was the thought of the young guys of 19 or 20 yrs flying them back when they were needed. They came forward and did this thing and those that made it went back to try to re-build their lives after. Imagine one day you're doing this, about 454 MPH (Mk 22), and the next you're in college trying to start again. Teachers asking "Where is your mind?" Fellow students trying to haze you by wearing a beany with a propeller on top...just to belong.

One day you're chasing V rockets over the channel and the next...

I'm glad I was young enough to have time to become friends with many of these guys before they left us. I don't recall any that wouldn't open up to me about their experiences. Many things they told me were applied later when I needed them...

My grandfather's generation fought WWI and my father's generation fought WWII. Growing up, I met and learned from men of both generations - an ALH veteran of Beersheba, Diggers who had served in the trenches in France, my twice wounded Highlander grand-dad, teachers who had served in all branches during WWII, my ex-gunner dad, his mates, my ex-RAF Fighter Command godfather who flew Spitfires and Mosquitos, the ex-sailor bloke next door who witnessed D-Day from the deck a destroyer and countless others who role-modeled and molded their sons, my generation and me. Now, well past 60 myself, I truly appreciate what they did and the gifts they gave me growing up, and for making me the man I am.

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Originally Posted by Paul S.

My grandfather's generation fought WWI and my father's generation fought WWII.

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Me too.

Just remember that "The First of the Few" ("Spitfire" in the US) like "The Imitation Game" is not history, it is a movie.

(I am lucky enough to work on the site where they developed those iconic Supermarine fighters.)

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Originally Posted by browningautorifle

Me too.

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Make that three.

Seeing England about to be besieged, my uncle from East Tennessee ran across the border to Canada, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, trained to become a pilot, and transitioned into Spitfires at Hawarden, Flintshire. His papers posting him to the RAF Eagle Squadron were being processed when he was killed in a training accident. The family has kept his medals and the letter from the King.

My father, also a land-locked East Tennessean, vacationed on the Florida coast in 1940 and went out on the dunes at night to watch the explosions from American merchantmen being torpedoed by German subs before any declaration of war. He joined Naval ROTC in high school. Upon graduation, despite wearing glasses, he ingeniously faked his way through the medical sorting system right up to the last screening for Officer Candidate School, trying for Sub training. Once they figured out what he was doing he went on to work at Chicago Naval pier as an enlisted Navy man... and scored at the top of his training regiment at the rifle range.

Bob

I was born between VE Day and VJ Day. I have kept the values taught to me by the Greatest Generation. My uncle was a "Hump" pilot in the CBI theater of the war.
I tried desperately to pass those values on to my children. Only some of them became part of their lives. A failure on my part.
Sending them to college was the biggest mistake value wise.

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Originally Posted by 25-5

A failure on my part.

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You're too hard on yourself. The only person you're in control of thought-wise is yourself...you can only hope the others turn out OK.

Totally different generation thing bloke do not cane yourself, its the way it goes sometimes, whilst our diggers of WWI - WWII fought the common foe they were worlds apart as was the country in both era's as by the second world war us Ausies had learned to duck and not stand up and ask where that shot came from. There was the case of a Turk and Aussie at Gallipoli going at it in a bayonet match between the trenches they did not kill each other and called it a draw or the shooting competitions held between the Turks and us.
I doubt the German soldier in WWII entertained such sportsmanship!

I will never take away what any vet did but picture this 7 crew members an unwieldy bomber with up 8 tonnes of bombs under your seat and your probably only 20-21 and a Captain of the aircraft and there was not any power assisted controls in the Lancaster. And out of that 7 in the rear sat the rear turret gunner at night with at times no Plexiglas or armour plating between him and a night fighter belching 20mm rounds at him and no interlocking fire from the other bombers in the stream and he may have only been 19.....
A WWII fighter pilot said in one of my books I have "In a single seat fighter you can funk it in a bomber with 6 other souls on the plane you could not." but me I take my hat off to them all with eternal thanks.
And talking of head gear a picture in one of my books with K 5054 the first Spitfire flying and in it shows the pilot wearing a Tilby hat.......? :confused:

About that generation. I grew up next door to veteran of Utah. I was too young to care about finding out what else he'd done. I remember two things he told me and they have stuck with me all these years. The first was that Utah was bad, that's all he said to me about it, Utah was bad. Being a kid I asked him if he ever killed anybody. He said, I sure did but most of the time we would just wave at each other from across the field when we were on patrol. I asked him why? He told me why fight if you didn't have to. I wish I had talked more to ol' Dan.

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Originally Posted by 25-5

Sending them to college was the biggest mistake value wise.

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You are in good company.

It seems as though college is no longer a place to be challenged to think for yourself it is a place to be taught what to think.

The problem with our parents/grandparents values is that that road is up hill all the way.
Today it is the easy road. Everybody gets a trophy.

Sad but true,but many a veteran made it through the war but never came home.My uncle Ed lived through Juno and right to the end.He never really came home.War can do some terrible things to a mans mind.I meet him later on in the 60's in a veterans pavilion at one of our provincial hospitals.Peace came to him in 1993.

Same as my dad, he went up Juno and died in '93...couldn't hold on for the 50th of D-Day...but he re-lived it every day. Three landings, Sicily, Italy, Normandy...all the way through Holland, Belgium, France, Germany...

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Originally Posted by mr.e moose

Sad but true,but many a veteran made it through the war but never came home. ...

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That was our family friend, Gordon B. He joined the RAAF, was sent to Canada for flight training as a WAG, commissioned and posted to an RAF Coastal Command squadron in England. Gordon spent the war sub hunting over the North Atlantic. The stress of all it all did its worst to him in the end. Gordon snapped mentally shortly after returning to Australia and being de-mobbed. He spent the rest of his life in and out (mostly short leaves with our family, etc) at Concord Repat.