BRATTLEBORO — On Nov. 25, 1944, 20-year-old Jay Karpin - my father - walked away from his B-17 aircraft, having completed his 35th and final mission as a bombardier in the Eighth Air Force during World War II.
Nearly 73 years later, the 93-year old Brattleboro resident stood on the airfield at the Dillant-Hopkins Airport in Keene, N.H., revisiting two of the military airplanes he flew in during the war.
The occasion was the Wings of Freedom Tour by the Collings Foundation, which brought to Keene the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress “Nine O Nine,” the Consolidated B-24 Liberator “Witchcraft,” plus a North American B-25 Mitchell bomber and a P-51 Mustang fighter plane.
The Collings Foundation makes these historic aircraft available to visitors in numerous locations throughout the country, to allow the public to explore them, learn about World War II history, and to honor the veterans of that conflict.
Their B-17 is one of only eight remaining in flying condition in the United States, while the B-24 is the last one of its type still flying in the world.
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Jay Karpin spent hundreds of hours aboard both these craft during his tour of duty, and he quickly drew a crowd around him at the Keene airport, eager to hear his personal reminiscences during his visit on Sept. 26.
He volunteered for duty in the United States Army Air Corps on June 24, 1942, just one day after he turned 18 and a day after his high school graduation. Although the exam for Aviation Cadets was geared toward students at a second year college level, he passed it. He was sent to a Distribution Center in Houston where he qualified as a bombardier, a navigator and a pilot.
My father graduated from Bombardier-Navigator School in October of 1943 and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant at age 19. He then trained with the B-24 Group in El Paso, Texas. He flew his first combat mission on June 6, 1944 - D-Day - with one of the first crews to fly over Omaha Beach.
He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant in August of 1944, and he would fly 11 more missions in the B-24 Liberator, followed by 23 missions in the B-17 Flying Fortress.
“I must have been shot at 50,000 times,” he remarked, marveling at the exposed glass nose of the B-17, where he sat as a bombardier during flights. Although the B-24 was a faster plane, he explained that they were replaced by B-17s, which were safer when flying in group formation.
A mission was at least 6 hours in the air and sometimes much longer. A “sortie” was a shorter flight that did not count on an airman's record as a mission.
The bombardier commanded a highly secret Norden bombsight, essentially a programmable analog computer, designed to release the bombs on target. It was connected to the craft's automatic pilot and when it was time to drop the bombs, the bombardier took control of the plane.
My father disliked the B-24, which left the bombardier feeling very vulnerable in its large, front, and center glass nose. At least in a B-17, the bombardier had two large M-2 machine guns at either side of him, with which he could defend his position against incoming attacks.
He estimated he spent well over 500 hours in that small seat with the bombsight between his knees. An observer will notice these planes have remarkably tight and cramped interior quarters, which most visitors to the display in Keene found challenging to navigate.
What sorts of memories were brought back by crawling through the aircraft again, after a span of 73 years?
“Fog, clouds... bad coffee! The worst coffee you've had in your life! And grapefruit juice. That's all they gave us to eat or drink. They said, 'You know, you can't poop up there, so it's big cans of grapefruit juice.'”
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Jay Karpin shared several of his memories with the visitors to the Wings of Freedom display, including the time he was on a secret mission at night for General Jimmy Doolittle, and the Germans shot holes in his B-17's gas tank. His crew had to ditch the plane in the English Channel, and he had hypothermia from floating in the cold waters.
He also described a time when the bomb got hung up on its tail hook and didn't drop out of the airplane when it was supposed to do so.
At 25,000 feet, with no oxygen and no parachute on, he had to squeeze sideways over the open bomb bay doors and release the bomb's hook with a special tool. If he had failed, the plane could not have landed without the device exploding. Fortunately, he prevailed.
My father is a highly decorated veteran and he received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal (five times), four Battle Stars, and the European Theater ribbon, the American Defense Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, a personal citation from General Jimmy Doolittle, and a Presidential Citation from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Fifty years after his service, he received the D-Day Memorial Medal. In 2014, he was honored to be chosen as a member of the United States Air Force Veterans in Blue program and invited to be interviewed at the Pentagon. In 2016, he was awarded the French Legion of Honor Medal, presented to him at the French Consulate in Boston, for his role on D-Day and, later this year, he is scheduled to receive the Normandy Jubilee Medal for his part in liberating Normandy, France.
After his combat missions, my father trained new bombardiers on the B-29 and then worked on developing the U.S. Air Force's “pathfinder” radar. When the war ended, he worked for Republic Aviation, helping to develop groundbreaking mid-air refueling capabilities on the F-84 Thunderjet, used in Korea, and the F-105 Thunderchief, used in Vietnam.
In 1958, he moved with his family from Long Island to Vermont. He worked on developing the computer disc memory while at Bryant Computer Products in Springfield, and later, while working at Fellows Gear Shaper, he invented a system to check precision movements on the largest gears in the world.
In the 1960s, he owned a company called Vermont Precision Products, which made parts used by NASA and the U.S. Navy. He later spent many years at Vermont Tap and Die in Lyndonville as a plant engineer.
Today, my father is a very active nonagenarian and stays busy. He is a self-employed safety consultant, helping companies reach OSHA compliance and working on issues from mold remediation to proper chemical storage and water testing.
He marvels at how lucky he was to survive 35 harrowing military missions, those long years ago, when so many of his fellow airmen did not. Half of the U.S. Air Force's casualties during World War II were suffered by the Eighth Air Force -more than 26,000 killed, and around 21,000 wounded.
His group, the 493rd Bomb Group, lost approximately 75 planes and 7,500 men, yet he said he never lost a crew member on any of his missions.
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The Collings Foundation notes that these now-rare airplanes were the backbone of the U.S. war effort from 1942 to 1945. The B-17, in fact, became almost mythical for its ability to sustain heavy damage and still complete the mission. In spite of the anti-aircraft fire, called “flak,” in spite of the attacking enemy fighter planes, the lack of oxygen and sub-zero flying conditions, many fliers in their B-17s did safely bring their crews back home.
After the war, most of these aircraft were scrapped for their raw materials and aluminum.
The scarcity of the airplanes today, and their importance in telling the story of WWII, is what drives the Collings Foundation to continue to fly and display these aircraft to the public.