Wings Over Normandy

By Harry Gael Michaels

This is a story about one young man of Irish immigrant parents growing up in San Francisco and entering the Army shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

During his high school years, he worked at the Fisherman's Wharf on weekends, where he fell in love with the daughter of a fishing boat skipper. This rel

• Language: English
• Publisher: 2020 LITERARY GROUP LLC
• Release date: Feb 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781962868372

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Wings Over Normandy

HARRY GAEL MICHAELS

Wings Over Normandy

Copyright © 2024 by Harry Gael Michaels

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN

978-1-962868-36-5 (Paperback)

978-1-962868-37-2 (eBook)

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Epilogue

Preface

Much has been written about World War II. Tom Brokaw called it the war of the Greatest Generation, and after some thought, he may be right. I first had to consider; however, our own Civil War (1861—1865) because, after all, this very costly conflict may have preserved and perpetuated for its progeny the only civilization dedicated to the ideals of human freedom and dignity and self-rule. On the other hand, the great worldwide confrontation of the late 1930s and early ‘40s quite probably had such global implications as to determine whether these aforementioned ideals would be sealed in and made fast for the color and tenor of generations to come or whether the contentious societies would dominate and control the human experience as vicious, brutal and digressive.

In the middle 1930s, there were portentous events throughout the world that a global holocaust of death and destruction was about to happen. The Second World War finally broke out with the invasion of Adolph Hitler’s military forces into Poland on September 1, 1939, followed by an attack from the Imperial forces of Japan on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Shortly after these momentous events, a young man from San Francisco, of Irish heritage, enlisted in the U.S. Army and eventually came back after the war— while many others did not. His name was Danny Boyle.

Though this is a work of historical fiction, and the characters are unreal, most of the events are factual and the characterizations are close to the reality of what really happened in the U.S. and around the world from September 1, 1939 to September 1, 1945 when the Imperial forces of Japan unconditionally surrendered to General Douglas MacArthur aboard the Battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. To sketch the extent of this massive world confrontation, we can see that after Hitler’s military forces invaded Poland, he then proceeded to invade other sovereign nations such as Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Byelorussia, and Ukraine. Other countries regarded as under control of the Third Reich were Crimea, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Austria. and Czechoslovakia. The Kingdom of Italy had waged a colonial war against the Ethiopian Empire (Abyssinia) between October of 1935 and May of 1936 and gained control of eastern North Africa. In Spain, Italy and Germany lent support for Generalissimo Francisco Franco against the Soviet-supported Republican government leading to the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939. Japan, on the other side of the world, had been fighting the Chinese since 1937 beginning with the attack on Shanghai and then the Rape of Nanking of 1937-1938. Since Japan lacked its own oil and rubber resources to provide for an expanding industrial economy, its leaders sought expansion for these resources in China, the Philippines and Indo-China in brutal and barbaric fashion. The U.S. placed diplomatic and economic restraints on Japan to curb their expansionist policy, however, when General Hideki Tojo became Prime Minister of Japan, and with the consent of Emperor Hirohito and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in perpetrating the bombing of the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in December of 1941, the war in the Pacific had begun and lasted until September 1, 1945.

The B-26 Marauder was a World War II twin-engine medium bomber built by the Glenn L. Martin Co. in 1941.

It was first used in the Pacific Theater in 1942, in the Mediterranean Theater and then in Western Europe during the Normandy Invasion of June 6, 1944. After entering service in the U.S Army Air Corp, it received the reputation of a Widowmaker due to the early models having a high rate of accidents during takeoffs and landings. The Marauder had to be flown by exact airspeeds, particularly on final approach, and when one engine would occasionally go out on takeoff, the aircraft would slow down below critical take-off speed, roll over and crash. Speeds were critical. Speeds of 150 mph on short final approaches to landing were intimidating to pilots who were accustomed to much slower landing speeds and when the pilot would decrease the speed by lowering the flaps and tricycle landing gear, the aircraft would stall and crash. There was a saying at Mac Dill Army Air Base in Florida, One a day in Tampa Bay, because of the high rate of accidents. It was even alleged that young pilots were so fearful to fly this airplane that they refused until modifications were made and volunteers from the WASPS – Women’s Air Service Pilots, showed the men how to fly it safely. These allegations, however, had been refuted by Major General John O. Moench, USAF (Ret.) who, himself, piloted the B-26.

After aerodynamic and design changes were made to increase the wing span and the size of the vertical stabilizer, as well as installing the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp radial engines, the B-26 was determined to be one of the safest aircraft to fly. The Curtiss electric pitch change mechanism, however, required impeccable maintenance and any human error could cause the propeller blades to go to flat pitch resulting in over speed or runaway prop. This condition could cause propeller blades to disintegrate, a situation particularly frightening to air crews. To remedy that situation, hydraulic pitch controls were installed, however, after picking up new airplanes at the Martin Plant near Middle River, just north of Baltimore, Maryland, which was on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, they would have an occasional airplane descend into the bay. Nobody could figure out why the propeller would go to low pitch aborting the climb attitude. Takeoff would occur over the water and while beginning to climb out, the aircraft would start to settle. Power settings and angle of climb, rather than rate of climb, were properly set but the aircraft would just settle into the water. Fortunately, the B-26 was an easy airplane to get out of. After opening the cockpit windows, and while sinking, escape was out through the top. No one could find out what was going wrong so they decided to go back to the original Curtiss Electric operated pitch control system and that worked more reliably but had to be carefully maintained. Another problem that had to be dealt with in 1942 was the belief that this aircraft could not be flown on one engine but highly experienced pilots including the WASPS, mentioned earlier, and Lt, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle disproved this conjecture and with proper training of engine-out procedures the problem was corrected. The Marauder had a maximum air speed of 287 mph at 5,000 feet and cruise speed of 216 mph (the mph calibration was used before air speed indicators were calibrated in knots many years later). The landing speed was 114 mph, the aircraft had a combat radius of 1,150 miles, a ferry range of 2,850 miles, and a service ceiling of 21,000 feet. It was armed with eleven machine guns and a bomb load of 4,000 pounds. Armor was added to protect the pilot and co-pilot. The original specifications in speed and bomb load were reduced to facilitate endurance and