A freind of mine sent me this letter Hi Again Art When we were flying phase training at Chatham Fld. Sav. Ga. We were training formation flying and hit a weather front , I didn’t see it, but one plane crashed. The only person who got out was the ball turret man. There is no room for a chute so you have to leave it on the deck, now this man climbed out of the ball , got his chute on , saw the guys in the waist pinned by centrifugal force to the side of the plane, and had no idea how or where he left the plane. He was the only person to survive. When we were flying missions we could see the B-17s off to the right or left of our bomber stream and would see them spin in then they might come out of the spin for a minute and you would see some chutes pop out., then it would start to spin again sometimes the rest of the way to the ground. I would imagine some would get out thru the bomb bay, or the waist window , or the back door on the B-17, or the bottom hatch at the back of the B-24. This was a awful feeling seeing these planes going down. We were very lucky that no 262’s hit us, as they would come thru the formation and knock down 2 or 3 planes with one pass. If the Germans would have had more time to build these jet’s it would have made one hell of a difference to the AF. I was 5-8 tall and weighed 150 lbs---a good size for the ball. I think any one taller would have had a hard down there as even with my size it was crowded.
Art : If I may ask what bomb group your friend was from ? and also since he must have seen or been in the prescence of Me 262's then his service must have covered from February 1945 onward correct ? thanks you ~Erich
Art, if you do get a moment, would you please ask him if he is open to this : What were his dates of service with the 453rd and how many missions did he fly... ? This always intrigues me to do a little extra research...... cheers ! ~Erich
The 453rd operated from Old Buckenham , not Buckingham ( easy to confuse for our Allies ! ). Old Buckenham is located between Thetford and Norfolk in East Anglia, and sadly there's little left to see, just a few lengths of perimeter track....
As it happens, I was at Old Buckenham about two months ago doing a parachute jump. As Martin says, there isn't much to suggest it used to house an entire Bomb Group. There is, however, a nice little memorial stone to the men of the 453rd Bombardment Group, giving the details of the Group's war; the squadrons and the dates of service, the no. of missions flown, and the total numbers of aircraft and aircrew lost.
