Chapter 23 - Northern Ireland

 Chapter 23 -  Northern Ireland

Our assignment at Langford Lodge (the name of a Royal Air Force Base, not actually what we call a lodge) was what they called a replacement pool for the American groups in England. We didn’t do much flying or even pull much duty at all. We had a lot of time on our hands. We bought bicycles from the guys that were moving out to new assignments and rode all over the Irish countryside. We went into Belfast any chance we got. One night in late November Lt. Davison and I even went to the Grand Opera House in Belfast. It was quite a dramatic event with costumes and wonderful music.

One thing that broke the monotony was kind of funny. We all looked forward to mail call and like everyone else I was always anxious to hear from my fiancé or my family. One day an envelope showed up – from the Man on The Street reporter in Jacksonville, FL! He hadn’t run my story in the paper but he’d sent the picture he took of me to the address at the Avon Park base and it had finally caught up with me! We all had a big laugh over that! There were some amazing things that the Army managed to do during the war.

On the whole, time dragged on so much that some of the crews volunteered to transfer and get checked out in B-17s just to get out of Ireland. One of my best friends, Jack Scarlett and his crew, did just that. However, I stayed with the B-26. Had I known we were going to be there for a total of six months or anticipated another event like the one I am going to tell next, I may have made a different decision.

One day our crew was assigned a training flight. All B-26s were being retrained in medium altitude bombing. Lt. Davison, the Captain, was interested in reading a book, so he told me to take the flight up with the flight engineer in the co-pilot’s seat. He sat in the bomb bay and read his book. Just as we took off and were leaving the ground both props went into flat pitch! It was happening again! Only this time it was both engines at once and I was in the left seat! The engineer and I both pushed the manual overrides while I tried to keep the plane in the air. You had to be pretty strong to control these planes and again we were going down fast!  At the same time I was trying to slow down our descent I doing everything I could to keep us going in a straight direction and restart the engines. Just as we managed to get the props going again and start gaining some altitude we broke through a power line that was located just past the runway area!

The Tower said all they could see was a big flash and they thought we blew up. Somehow it didn’t spark the fuel or electrocute any of us and when the flash cleared they saw the “phoenix” rising into the blue. I made a large turn and got back in line for landing. It was good to have our feet on the ground! When we examined the plane we found a large hole burned into one of the props where we’d hit the power line. The locals weren’t too fond of us after that. I think it took a couple days for them to get their power back.