90-Year-Old B-25 Pilot Returns to Scene of WWII Crash

World War II pilot Bernerd Harding, 90, smiles inside the cockpit of a B-25 in Laconia, N.H., Friday, Sept. 25,2009. Harding was a pilot when he was shot down 65-years ago while flying a bombing mission over Germany.(AP Photo/Jim Cole)

By NORMA LOVE, Associated Press Writer Norma Love, Associated Press Writer – Fri Sep 25, 5:19 pm ET
MANCHESTER, N.H. – World War II pilot Bernerd Harding feels he finally has completed his mission — 65 years after his B-24 airplane was shot down over Germany.
Harding, now 90 and being treated for prostate cancer, was a passenger Friday in the Witchcraft — the last B-24 still flying. He sat in the cockpit behind the pilots. The skies were clear during the 30-minute flight from Laconia to Manchester that ended with a safe, smooth landing.
"It was fun. It was worth it. It's history," he said after the flight.
As the four engines rumbled to life, Harding was taken back to another time — back when he was a 25-year-old first lieutenant piloting a bombing run to Bernburgh, Germany. On the way back to his base in England, fighters crippled his plane, forcing him and his crew to bail out with their parachutes.
Harding waited for the others to jump, then turned and saluted a German fighter pilot for not blowing up the plane with the men inside.
"He flew alongside to make sure I jumped out," Harding said.
Harding said he felt that mission — his 14th — was incomplete without one more landing. Friday's was "close enough," he said.
Harding's B-24, nicknamed Georgette, was shot down a month after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, on July 7, 1944. One member of Harding's crew was killed. The others — including Harding — were taken prisoner.
Harding landed in a freshly cut wheat field, barely missing a barbed wire fence. Three farmers, two with pitchforks and one with a gun, captured him and herded him into a cellar in Klein Quenstedt (klyn KWEN' -shted), a village southwest of Berlin. Fearing reprisals from villagers for being a bomber pilot, Harding buried his pilot's wings in the cellar floor.
Two weeks ago, Harding returned to Klein Quenstedt to search for the wings with villagers' help. He didn't find his wings but a resident gave him a silver bracelet recovered from the body of a dead American airman that day. The bracelet belonged to Jack H. Glenn and is being returned to his sister in Anchorage, Alaska. She plans to send it to a museum in Texas where Glenn grew up.
The Collings Foundation, which owns the Witchcraft, presented Harding with a new set of pilot's wings after Friday's flight.
That wasn't Harding's first time inside the Witchcraft. He toured the bomber about 10 years ago with his grandchildren but didn't fly in it, so this time it was a treat.
"He says, 'I'm making my last landing.' In light of the cancer, what a gift," said his wife, Ruth, 84, who rode in the B-24 on Friday.
Harding's only complaint about the flight is that he couldn't see outside the plane much.
"I was watching them in the cockpit," he said.
It took a friendship, bonded across a generation, and a mutual interest in the war to pull off Friday's special flight.
Two years ago, Harding met Bob Korkuc, who was writing a book about his uncle's death aboard a B-17. Korkuc had noticed Harding's POW license plate and asked if Harding was a ball turret gunner, since Harding was short enough to fit into that part of the plane. Harding told Korkuc his story and Korkuc asked if he could research it for another book. Their talks cemented a friendship.
Last October, Korkuc decided to help Harding travel to Germany find his wings and land in a B-24 again. Korkuc called the Collings Foundation and arranged for Friday's flight. Korkuc, 47, of Amherst, also helped arrange Harding's trip to Germany.
Harding of Milford, N.H., was also accompanied on the Friday flight by his son Brian Harding, 53, of Milford, and Korkuc. The Associated Press also was on the flight.
The Witchcraft is in New Hampshire as part of the Collings Foundation's Wings of Freedom Tour. The foundation, based in Stow, Mass., offers tours of military planes as well as flights aboard the aircraft.
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On the net: http://www.collingsfoundation.org/menu.htm
Slideshow:Ex-POW returning to Germany to dig up pilot's wings

Honoring Women Who Served--Lena Mae O'Neal--WAVE

Lena Mae O'Neal in a close-up from a group photo. (Courtesy of Nancy Hart, O'Neal's niece)

A photograph of Peggy O'Neal stands in front of her US Navy WAVE uniform. The immaculate and complete uniform, with cap and leather purse, was donated to me by a colleague Nancy Hart. Peggy was Nancy's aunt.

Peggy's WAVE uniform, looking as new as the day she got it, stands in a place of honor in my small museum. Note her name "L.M. ONEAL" stenciled on the WAVE-issued purse.

The WAVES were the women's arm of the United States Navy during World War Two. Many women served in jobs that would otherwise have been done by men, thus freeing the men to fight in the war effort.

A colleague of mine at work, Nancy Hart, had an aunt named Lena Mae O'Neal. Ms. O'Neal went by Peggy. Peggy served in the WAVES in World War Two as a cook. She was stationed in San Diego, California and in New York. A few years ago, her niece Nancy gave me Peggy's entire WAVE uniform, complete with purse and cap. This set is a priceless artifact and one of the crown jewels of my collection.

Peggy O'Neal was born in 1917 in Springfield, Missouri. In 1939, she went to California. Her brothers and sisters were all involved once the United States entered the war. Her oldest brother, James O'Neal, taught pilots to fly in Oklahoma. Her older sister Betty was a secretary on several different bases. Her brother Frank O'Neal, was injured in the Phillipines. While being transported on a hospital ship, the ship was bombed by the Japanese and Frank was killed. Her brother William O'Neal was in the Marines, and brother Emmitt was in the Coast Guard. Another sister, Dorothy, worked as a 'Rosie the Riveter' for McDonnell Douglas, building aircraft. Of the eight children in the O'Neal family, seven were involved in the war effort in some way.

Peggy passed away a few years ago. Today we honor her service and that of her siblings.

A wartime recruiting poster shows a young WAVE prepared to serve her country.

The United States Navy's history website has the following information on the WAVES:

"After a twenty-three-year absence, women returned to general Navy service in early August 1942, when Mildred McAfee was sworn in as a Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander, the first female commissioned officer in U.S. Navy history, and the first Director of the WAVES, or "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service". In the decades since the last of the Yeomen (F) left active duty, only a relatively small corps of Navy Nurses represented their gender in the Naval service, and they had never had formal officer status. Now, the Navy was preparing to accept not just a large number of enlisted women, as it had done during World War I, but female Commissioned Officers to supervise them. It was a development of lasting significance, notwithstanding the WAVES' name, which indicated that they would only be around during the wartime "Emergency".

Recruiting had to be undertaken (or at least managed, as the number of interested women was vast), training establishments set up, an administrative structure put in place and uniforms designed. The latter effort produced a classic design that still has many elements in use nearly six decades later. Difficulties were overcome with energy and indispensable good humor, and within a year 27,000 women wore the WAVES uniform.

These women served in a far wider range of occupations than had the Yeomen (F). While traditionally female secretarial and clerical jobs took an expected large portion, thousands of WAVES performed previously atypical duties in the aviation community, Judge Advocate General Corps, medical professions, communications, intelligence, science and technology. The wartime Navy's demand for them was intense as it struggled to defeat Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific.

At the end of the conflict, there were well over 8,000 female officers and some ten times that many enlisted WAVES, about 2 ½ percent of the Navy's total strength. In some places WAVES constituted a majority of the uniformed Naval personnel. And many remained in uniform to help get the Navy into, and through, the post-war era.

Remembering Uncle Harold Elston

Harold Elston, Center, with his dad, Ralph Elston, and sister, Patricia Elston, my wife Geri's mom. 1972.

My wife Geri was quite emotionally touched by the Vietnam aircraft at Hill Air Force Base today. Her late mother's brother, Harold Elston, served in Vietnam as a UH-1 Huey chopper pilot. When he returned from the war, he became a recluse and is only heard from occasionally. The war never really ended for him.

Flying the Huey was a dangerous job, and the Huey chopper pilots were heroes to many a soldier stuck in a firefight in the jungles of 'Nam. Uncle Harold Elston, where ever you are, we love you and salute you.

A Huey drops off troops in Vietnam

A welcome sight--A Huey Medevac arrives to airlift a wounded soldier