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''Whiskey 7'' back to Normday C-47
hotshoot
Member Posts: 4,227
http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-news/douglas-c-47-whiskey-7-normandy-france-june-2014.html
The NWM will honor the members of the Greatest Generation who served their country during the Second World War by returning its flagship Douglas C-47 to the most storied place in her 70-year history; the skies over Normandy. The aircraft, affectionately known by her distinctive squadron marking, Whiskey 7, was the lead ship of the 37th Troop Carrier Squadron, dropping elements of the 82nd Airborne Division near St. Mere Eglise, France in the early hours of June 6th, 1944. Whiskey 7 will participate in the 70th anniversary commemorations by dropping members of the Liberty Jump Team over the original D-Day drop zones.
The plane will fly to France by way of Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland and Germany, each leg 5 A? to 7 hours. Vitale compared it to trying to drive a 70-year-old car across the country without a breakdown. "It's going to be a huge challenge."
Among the 21 men it carried in 1944 was 20-year-old Leslie Palmer Cruise Jr., who also will make the return trip to France, his fifth, and be reunited with the craft - once it's on the ground. He is flying commercially from his Horsham, Pa., home outside Philadelphia.
"With me, it's almost, sometimes, like yesterday," Cruise, now 89, said by phone, recalling his first combat mission. "It really never leaves you."
Although the C-47 looks much the same today as it did on June 6, 1944, it looked very different when it arrived at the museum as a donation eight years ago. It had been converted to a corporate passenger plane.
"We had to take an executive interior out," said the museum's president, W. Austin Wadsworth. "It had a dry bar, lounge seats, a table with a nice map of the Bahamas in there. It was beautiful."
The museum's restoration of the historic plane to its original condition has been a roughly $180,000 project so far. Most of the money went toward two rebuilt engines and the rest to parts, equipment and service. The museum is trying to raise a total of $250,000 for the restoration and return to Normandy.
One upgrade it did allow was the installation of two GPS systems to keep the aircraft on course.
"The avionics in the airplane are modern. We're not going to go with what they had in 1943," Wadsworth said. "They would have had probably a radio beacon receiver and a lot of dead reckoning."
There is still no autopilot, said Wadsworth's daughter, Naomi, who will be among five pilots - one including her brother, Craig - taking turns at the controls on the way to Europe. That's fine with her, she said.
"It's history. It's real flying," she said. "With a lot of the computerized, mechanized things that you see in the airliners today, the airplane basically flies itself. ... This is not a situation where you can be asleep at the wheel. You really have to pay attention."
Said her father, also a pilot: "You don't just grab something and push it. There's a kind of feel to everything you do in these old birds. It doesn't have a soul obviously, but you don't just tell it what to do. You ask it."
Cruise still remembers being squashed between other paratroopers seated on pan seats as the plane left England's Cottesmore Airdrome. He was weighed down with probably 100 pounds of gear, including an M-1 rifle that was carried in three pieces, 30-caliber rifle ammo, a first-aid pack, grenade, K-rations and his New Testament in his left pocket, over his heart.
"We could hear the louder roar as each plane following the leader accelerated down the runway and lifted into the air," he wrote in an account of the mission. "Our turn came and the quivering craft gathered momentum along the path right behind the plane in front."
The airplane's engines were so loud he had to shout even to talk with the paratrooper next to him, he said, and the scenery through its square windows looked like shadows in the dark. Over the English Channel, a colonel pointed downward.
"In the partial darkness below we could make out silhouetted shapes of ships and there must have been thousands of them all sizes and kinds," Cruise wrote. "If we had any doubts before about the certainty of the invasion, they were dispelled now."
Read more at http://www.ksl.com/?nid=157&sid=29175222#pUrBQO4Y48FfTMOv.99
The NWM will honor the members of the Greatest Generation who served their country during the Second World War by returning its flagship Douglas C-47 to the most storied place in her 70-year history; the skies over Normandy. The aircraft, affectionately known by her distinctive squadron marking, Whiskey 7, was the lead ship of the 37th Troop Carrier Squadron, dropping elements of the 82nd Airborne Division near St. Mere Eglise, France in the early hours of June 6th, 1944. Whiskey 7 will participate in the 70th anniversary commemorations by dropping members of the Liberty Jump Team over the original D-Day drop zones.
The plane will fly to France by way of Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland and Germany, each leg 5 A? to 7 hours. Vitale compared it to trying to drive a 70-year-old car across the country without a breakdown. "It's going to be a huge challenge."
Among the 21 men it carried in 1944 was 20-year-old Leslie Palmer Cruise Jr., who also will make the return trip to France, his fifth, and be reunited with the craft - once it's on the ground. He is flying commercially from his Horsham, Pa., home outside Philadelphia.
"With me, it's almost, sometimes, like yesterday," Cruise, now 89, said by phone, recalling his first combat mission. "It really never leaves you."
Although the C-47 looks much the same today as it did on June 6, 1944, it looked very different when it arrived at the museum as a donation eight years ago. It had been converted to a corporate passenger plane.
"We had to take an executive interior out," said the museum's president, W. Austin Wadsworth. "It had a dry bar, lounge seats, a table with a nice map of the Bahamas in there. It was beautiful."
The museum's restoration of the historic plane to its original condition has been a roughly $180,000 project so far. Most of the money went toward two rebuilt engines and the rest to parts, equipment and service. The museum is trying to raise a total of $250,000 for the restoration and return to Normandy.
One upgrade it did allow was the installation of two GPS systems to keep the aircraft on course.
"The avionics in the airplane are modern. We're not going to go with what they had in 1943," Wadsworth said. "They would have had probably a radio beacon receiver and a lot of dead reckoning."
There is still no autopilot, said Wadsworth's daughter, Naomi, who will be among five pilots - one including her brother, Craig - taking turns at the controls on the way to Europe. That's fine with her, she said.
"It's history. It's real flying," she said. "With a lot of the computerized, mechanized things that you see in the airliners today, the airplane basically flies itself. ... This is not a situation where you can be asleep at the wheel. You really have to pay attention."
Said her father, also a pilot: "You don't just grab something and push it. There's a kind of feel to everything you do in these old birds. It doesn't have a soul obviously, but you don't just tell it what to do. You ask it."
Cruise still remembers being squashed between other paratroopers seated on pan seats as the plane left England's Cottesmore Airdrome. He was weighed down with probably 100 pounds of gear, including an M-1 rifle that was carried in three pieces, 30-caliber rifle ammo, a first-aid pack, grenade, K-rations and his New Testament in his left pocket, over his heart.
"We could hear the louder roar as each plane following the leader accelerated down the runway and lifted into the air," he wrote in an account of the mission. "Our turn came and the quivering craft gathered momentum along the path right behind the plane in front."
The airplane's engines were so loud he had to shout even to talk with the paratrooper next to him, he said, and the scenery through its square windows looked like shadows in the dark. Over the English Channel, a colonel pointed downward.
"In the partial darkness below we could make out silhouetted shapes of ships and there must have been thousands of them all sizes and kinds," Cruise wrote. "If we had any doubts before about the certainty of the invasion, they were dispelled now."
Read more at http://www.ksl.com/?nid=157&sid=29175222#pUrBQO4Y48FfTMOv.99
Comments
The 1st time was in 1984. We reenacted the scaling of Point Du Hoc for President Reagan. Then I got to listen to his speech which sealed the deal with me. He was a great talker. I also got to shake his hand.
I am somewhere in that mess.
The 2nd time I jumped with elements of the 82nd I think it was in 95.