P-47 squadron on a combat mission in the war; nice footage

About 30-years ago, I visited with a very genial sales manager in a real estate office. Noticing a beautiful print of a P-38 behind him, I naturally asked.

Turns out, he led the first squadron of P-38's across the Atlantic during the war, the one that got caught short and had to land on the Greenland ice cap.

"We didn't know whether the surface was solid enough to land, but we had to land somewhere. So I went in first and the others saw that I was fine. The rest followed me in, then the B-17 that flew with us landed.

"We huddled in the B-17 for several days until the Navy was able to rescue us."

This fellow later wrote a book and gave talks about the experience.

Regards,

"Does anybody know what was later built at one of the factories that produced Jugs?"

IHC Garands.

CDD

He flew B26s. Late in the war or just after, he was ferrying them from the Glen Martin factory, I think in Kansas up to a scrap yard by the great lakes. Brand new just off the assembly line planes-first and last flight to the scrap yard. He did this until that contract with Martin was completed. Probably because they would have had a hell of a time selling them given their bad reputation. Actually they were fine safe airplanes that had the highest survival rate of any twin engined bomber of the war. I think a few went to the French in Indochina but after that it was A-20s and A-26s. Imagine just throwing away brand new planes.

That sucks to hear about those B-26's getting scrapped new.
The problem with their bad reputation is they were difficult planes to learn and if you weren't familiar with them they would bite you terminally.

Once they realized what was up with all the crashes, they had to change their training program to incorporate the specific permissible flight envelopes and from then on it worked pretty darn good.

I remember way back in my younger days in the 60's going by a huge boneyard they had outside of Goodyear AZ where they were grinding up all those old birds, even as a kid it broke my heart. Just another democrat benefit!!
Used to be that you could buy those planes right out of the bone yard, that is until that friggin criminal LBJ put a quick end to that program in 1963 "for our own good" I guess :(

Dan

Thanks for posting the P-47 vid.
My dad crew chiefed for thme and mentioned some of the pilots he remebered a few times.
I got to see a P-47 a couple years back at the Reading,PA WII days.
While my dad is still with us he wasnt able to make the trip.
I ll have to dig out some of his photos