Charlie L. , thanks for posting this. There are more readers than posters, plus it seems some do not want to post anything beyond technical data, but yours adds some spice to the mix.

I talked years ago with a TBF radioman retired in Seattle. As is usual – “I wish i had asked more questions, and stayed in contact”. But while in the working cohort, our main focus has to

be on earning the daily bread. This man ( name eludes me now, but will come to me later ) told me about going out to the plane on the deck and using the ARB to listen to ‘Tokyo Rose’,

as a diversion. Life on a carrier in wartime was really not as continually exhilarating an experience as we vicariously may assume. This same gentleman flew off the ‘Gambier Bay’, one of

the planes that launched before the carrier was sunk. He told me the pilot even tho the plane was not armed flew attack patterns on Japanese ships, all kinds of caliber weapons firing at

the plane, to just try to divert Japanese fire away from American ships. In recent years i tried to look up this gentleman, but it seems his trail disappears after an address change to a

nursing home.

Re the B-17 and being trapped while it out of control plummeted: i read a book by a B-17 crewman who bailed out and was captured. This book was recommended by a member of this

email group and ? may possibly have been written by a relative of his. The person who recommended the book will recall. Well worth reading, and i found especially interesting the

POW’s account of the forced march, in winter, with the retreating Germans. While in the camp, he heard from a fellow who had ridden down to the ground in the broken off tail section of a

B-17. Truly one of those miraculous survivals. But guess what, no one in the Stalag  cared to hear his story ! Everyone in the camp had their own unique account, front and center, and no

one was keen to hear yet another.

-Hue Miller