Photo Man

I stood at the airport fence at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, looking at a vintage Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber; one that had, in fact, been used in the Hollywood movie "Memphis Belle". It was painted a flat green which was chipped and flaked behind the propellers. It looked as if it was about to head off for another mission. It looked as if it had flown a dozen already.

A state policeman announced to the twenty or so of us gathered at the fence that a second vintage bomber was about to land. I looked up into a brilliant blue sky as the ancient warplane banked steeply into a left turn, lining up for its final approach to the shimmering runway. I shaded my eyes as the bright afternoon sun glinted off its polished steel skin and its distinctive twin oval tail fins. It was a Consolidated B-24 Liberator which had been used in both the Pacific and European theaters of the war.

As I watched it pass over our heads, it was easy to picture what it must have been like almost a half century ago at air fields all over Italy and England. I could imagine the waiting ground crews scanning the skies, anxiously waiting for their metal babies to return, much like nervous parents waiting for their oldest daughter to return safely from her first date.

The plane leveled out just above the rooftops of the buildings that lined the street that bordered the edge of the runway and skimmed smoothly over the airport fence, floating soft as a feather down to the waiting tarmac just a few feet below.

It was then, as I looked along the fence, averting my eyes from the wash of the Liberator's four huge engines, that I saw him standing there. He was a wiry man in his late sixties or early seventies and he couldn't have weighed more than 135 pounds. His face was firm yet, at the same time, it was etched with a fine network of lines that suggested a lifetime of working outdoors. Perhaps he was a farmer or maybe he had worked for the Department of Public Works. He could have been anybody's grandfather. He no doubt was. And here he stood, peering through an airport fence, revisiting, for the moment, the ghosts of a bygone era.

He wore his old Army Air Force fatigues, perfectly laundered and looking like it was still 1944. His staff sergeant's stripes sat astride the razor sharp crease that ran down his sleeve. A patch on his shoulder read "Fifteenth Air Force". For a moment I felt as if I had been transported back to the opening scenes of "Twelve O'Clock High", when Dean Jagger pays a post-war visit to the now-abandoned airbase that had served as a witness to both the zenith and the nadir of his life. I knew I would have to talk to this man. For unlike me, who was born after the conclusion of World War II, it was instantly clear that this man and this plane were spiritually linked.

"Excuse me, sir," I asked, "but did you fly a B-24?"

He turned to me. "I flew five missions with the 450th Bombardment group of the Fifteenth Air Force. Out of Italy." He shook his head. "And I took my first parachute jump from a B-24."

I found myself looking back and forth from the man to the airplane. Suddenly this fifty year old curiosity, this ancient flying machine that I had seen so often in textbooks and old movies, began to take on new meaning. This abstract weapon of war had been the airborne home of ten, very frightened, very human crewmen--like him.

The plane looked so big. It must have presented quite a target to the German fighter pilots. It was parked perhaps fifty feet away from where I stood. I had the impression as I stared at it, that the image in front of me was probably much like what the German pilots saw when the scrambled to meet them. I turned to the man but he seemed lost in his reverie.

The plane fills the windscreen, growing larger and larger in the gunsights. The fighter closes in from behind. Four engines loom in the canopy windscreen until they reduce to two. The twin tail fins grow bigger. Twinkling white lights erupt from the tail guns. Turbulence. Fear. Excitement. Squeeze the trigger. Gun vibration. Plane shakes. Evasive action. Hard right rudder. Dive. Full power. Reverse. Try again.

Hard to miss.The Liberator was over 67 feet long and it had a 110 foot wingspan. It was slightly over 18 feet high and weighed 36,500 pounds empty; 65,000 pounds fully loaded. The B-24 flew at a maximum speed of 290 m.p.h. and could fly at 28,000 feet where the air was over 60 degrees below zero. Up there, a man could die from frostbite instead of bullets. It was one of the most advanced planes of it's time, yet to those who flew inside it, the bomber suddenly seemed so small, and so vulnerable. The metal skin seemed too thin to offer any protection from the machine guns and cannons of the German fighter planes and it seemed too small to hold it's 10 man crew.

"The Liberator was made in Long Beach, California, wasn't it?" I asked.

"Some of them were. But ours was made in Michigan. At Ford's River Run plant. They were making bombers there instead of cars." He smiled briefly.

He pointed to the four huge engines. "Those engines there were made right here. By Pratt & Whitney. They turned out 1,200 horses each. They were good engines. They brought me back every time-- except once."

I nodded. He didn't notice.

"Those props were made at Hamilton Standard. You see those machine guns there? Those barrels were made in New Haven."

"What was the name of your plane?"

"Passionate Pirate." A smile grew on his face. He seemed slightly embarrassed. "Well, that's what they called her, anyway -- Passionate Pirate." He chuckled softly.

"What position did you fly?"

"I was a combat photographer." He pointed to the belly of the plane. "See that little window, there?" He pointed to a small opening that looked to be no more than twelve inches square. "That was my position. Used to lie on my belly and take pictures through that hole in the plane."

"You must have been a brave man," I said, imagining this skinny little man with his belly glued to the deck, taking his pictures.

"No. Not brave," he shrugged. "Just stupid. And scared. And young."

Images. He was not a regular member of the crew. He was a stranger in their midst, not assigned to any particular plane. He didn't even know any of their names, except for the pilot and co-pilot. He was a non-combatant, a flying hitchhiker, who documented the sights and sensations of war. And he did it alone in a crowd.

Lying on the freezing floor. Gloves off. Eye glued to the viewfinder. Cold. Bile rising. Fear. Dogfights. Photographs. Bullets. Shrapnel. Flack. Smoke. Sweat. Pictures. Bombs failing like cordwood out of the bomb bays. Detonations. Concussion waves on the ground. Roiling smoke. Fire. Death. Images.

"You said you took your first parachute jump from a Liberator? I take it you were shot down?"

His eyes took on a far away expression. "Yup. Shot down over Innsbruck, Austria on Christmas Day. It was a little after noon. 12:05. I remember looking at my watch. We took three direct hits from a battery of German 88mm flack guns."

Innsbruck, Austria in the winter is a picture perfect village in the Austrian Alps. It is a place where the wealthy and the adventurous come to ski and vacation. But on Christmas Day at 12:05 pm., in 1944, it was a place of fear, death, and destruction. For on that day, B-24 bombers from the 450th Bombardment Group of the Fifteenth Air Force, based in Italy, were wreaking destruction down from the skies where minutes earlier, the strains of "Peace on Earth" had rung out.

Innsbruck's fate was sealed because, being situated at the mouth of the Brenner Pass, it served as a marshalling yard through which the German Army attempted to keep a lifeline open to its remaining troops in Italy. And it was the job of the Fifteenth Air Force to see that the Germans were unsuccessful. That is why American bombers visited the city on Christmas Day.

"Yup, we were shot down by some German 88's."

I imagined the violence, within the limits of my experience and knowledge. But I pictured the terrible scene in rather sanitized generic terms, almost like the difference in resolution that exists between a dot-to-dot coloring book and an artist's canvas. I might have been painting by numbers. I knew what the inside of the plane looked like. But only he had been there, and those images would be forever engraved in his mind.

His voice became softer as he continued his story. July had just become December to him. "The first burst hit underneath the pilot's compartment. It blew him right out of the plane." His face had become a mask of pain. His eyes reflected images of fear and panic, death and luck, as he recalled the carnage that took place in one small sixty-seven foot piece of Austrian sky.

"The second burst hit the right wing over there," he said, pointing to the wing root. "The other one hit between the two starboard engines." My eyes became riveted to the wing, picturing it spinning away from the doomed plane. "Blew most of the wing right off." He shook his head at the memory.

Noise. Pandemonium. Explosions. Panic. Fear. Debris swirling through the crippled ship. Seat cushions flying. Wreckage. Twisted metal everywhere. Carnage. Blood. Twisted bodies. Flame. Smoke. Death. Got to get out. Spinning.

"I'm sorry, "I muttered. "It must have been awful."

He nodded. "It was. You know, funny thing was, they recovered the wing from the Inn River about ten years ago. I keep in touch, you know. I've got a picture of it, home."

"What an amazing story."

"There's more," he said, shifting his gaze back to the little bomber. "The plane started to spin. See that window over there?" He pointed to a window on the starboard side of the fuselage near the waist gunner's position. "I climbed out through there and jumped. They say you have to watch out for those big tails if you jump. But that was about the last thing on my mind."

I could imagine him jumping through a fog of fire, smoke, and whirling debris that tumbled from the dying bomber as he scrambled to get out.

Window. Climb. Grab. Claw. Squeeze. Pray. Jump. Escape. Spiraling bomber. Rip cord. Open canopy. Safe. Enemy territory. Prisoner.

"See this here?" He held up his left arm revealing an ugly scar and a bump on his forearm that shouldn't have been there. "Got that when I jumped out the window."

This plane in front of us had long ago ceased to be a summer's curiosity but was now the source of an excruciating historical drama that had been played out 10,000 feet over Austria on a Christmas Day almost fifty years ago. And now it was being played out again on a tiny piece of grass at Bradley Field.

The man was silent for a time. Remembering it. Reliving it. Then he shook his head as if to clear the terrible scene from his head.

"Only four of us got out, you know. The plane had a crew of ten. As the combat photographer, I was the eleventh man. Only four made it out," he repeated. He pointed to the tail gunner's position. "The guy who was the tail gunner got out, too. I don't know how, but he did. But when he jumped, his chute never opened." His shoulders heaved. He took a deep breath. "I didn't even know his name. But I knew his age. He was the oldest member of the crew. He was twenty-seven. I was only twenty, myself." He shrugged. "I'm glad I didn't have to identify him when I got on the ground. One of the other guys did. Poor guy was quite a mess."

I was silent. I could only nod my head in reply.

"I landed right in the center of Innsbruck, right behind the home of the local Gauleiter." He laughed again. "If I'da landed in his yard I probably would have been shot right where I came down." He looked at me. "Do you know who a Gauleiter was?"

Yes," I replied. "He was the head Nazi, the political leader of a town or area." He nodded his head, satisfied.

"Anyway, I crashed into a brick wall when I landed. I was about three feet from hitting the ground when I hit the darned thing. But I was lucky. Right near me was a German soldier and a German sailor. Both of them were armed and it was a lucky break for me because the town's people wanted to lynch me right on the spot. They probably would have beaten me to death or hanged me right there, but those two soldiers kept guard over me and kept the crowd back until the authorities came for me."

"You were indeed a very lucky man. But you said that your plane was hit by flack."

"That's right." His voice had gone flat.

"I thought that wasn't supposed to happen over the target."

"It's not."

He looked at me for a long time. He seemed to want to say more. He made a quick movement of his head. When he spoke his voice had changed. There was pain in it.

"You know, I guess I am a lucky man after all. I told you that I got shot down on Christmas Day?" I nodded. "Well, seeing as how it was Christmas Eve the day before, there'd been a lot of celebrating going on back at the base. So when we went off on the mission, quite a few of the men were...were... well, you know ...hung over. Then there was some kind of mix up when we got over the target. Some of the guys dropped their bombs and some of them didn't. So the lead pilot decided that we'd go around and try it again."

"Oh, Jeez," I said. "Even I know that's not a healthy thing to do. It's like having to run a gauntlet twice."

"That's about it. It was a dumb thing to do," he continued. "We went around and tried it again. Didn't even change altitudes to confuse the guns. And that's when we got it. We got it over the target on the second pass." He stopped and let of a long breath. "We shouldn't have even been there at that point." He shook his head. "Shoulda been on our way back home instead."

We were both silent for a few moments.

"A lot of good men died in that plane." He looked at me and moved a bit closer. "You know, there was only one plane lost that day-- us. After that, I was a prisoner of war for the next four months. Then it was all over."

I looked at him more closely. This man. At the fence at an airfield almost fifty years after the war had ended. In his perfectly laundered uniform. I knew the war would never be really over for him. Every day is Christmas Day for Photoman.