One man flew two combat missions with the crew he had joined several months earlier in the states. He was removed, with the only comment Dad ever made about it being, “he didn’t work out.” However, the man finished his tour with another crew, so something else happened to him in relation to Dad’s crew. I never knew the reason, and oddly enough, I’ve never found anything more about him on the net.

A second man on Dad’s second crew was described as going berserk at his gun on an early mission and was removed from the crew. Again, I’ve found nothing more about him.

A third man, who apparently completed his tour, supposedly went berserk at the base one night and was taken away by the white coats. Dad liked the man but never told that story and my knowledge of it comes from a former gunner on the crew.

A fourth man, a member of another crew, was the only survivor of two aircraft that collided over the base during assembly one day. He parachuted to safety and was so shaken that he never flew again. They shipped him home and he served out his term of service in the states. To this day, he has never had anything to do with any of the reunions.

There is no telling how many stories like these actually took place, since these four touched just one crew…my father’s. There were perhaps 400-500 crews that flew from the base during the months the Group was mobilized. I think it’s reasonable to assume that most of the surviving aviators had a number of memories such as these that came home with them.

Just as I noted in the “Flags of Our Fathers” section, these guys simply wanted to put these things behind them. I have another conversation going on with a daughter of one of my father’s pilots…similar to your experience, although her father went on to a long Air Force career, he never spoke much about WWII.