Someone else's memories

 I spent some time the other day digging through a couple of old boxes of family junk in storage and came across some things that caught my attention and made me wonder a little bit.

C-54 undergoing maintenance.

I've written about my New England grandfather, as I call him, who was in the Army Air Force in World War Two, left  the service after the war but got called back in for the Berlin Airlift and then the Korean War, deciding to stay in and flew B-47s in the Strategic Air Command. Well, I found a bunch of photos in an album from his Berlin Airlift and Korea days.  He flew C-54s in the Airlift and Douglas B-26s (not the Martins) in Korea, where he also was deployed as a Forward Air Controller.

Rhein-Main, I think.

Apparently, the Berlin Airlift was very challenging as the planes had to fly in all weather conditions, fog, rain, snow, icing, making the  primitive GCA landings at maximum gross weight pretty perilous. The crews flew non-stop except for brief breaks to catch some sleep and eat something.  Otherwise it was fly, fly, fly.  Crews also had to fly in strictly enforced air lanes, the enforcement done by the Soviet Air Force, who would shoot you down if you strayed off course.  And there was a lot of traffic in those air lanes and in the pattern at Tempelhof and Rhein Main,  so much so that no go-arounds were permitted. You landed that puppy dog however you could or crashed in the attempt.

Interior of a C-54 loaded with rations for Berliners.

After the Berlin Airlift, my grandfather was stationed in Japan flying the B-26 and when North Korea invaded the south, he flew some of the first bombing missions of the war and was then assigned as a Forward Air Controller.  I'm guessing that he may have gotten that job because he flew P-40s in the Fifth Air Force during the early days of the Pacific War, serving in Australia and New Guinea, a theater in which Major General George Kenney boasted "here the artillery flies!" emphasizing the close cooperation developed between ground and air units.

War on the ground in Korea.

Whatever the case was, he was whisked away from a comparatively plush life flying missions from Japan and going home every night to serving with the ground pounders, calling in air support missions to hammer the oncoming Chinese who vastly outnumbered the American GIs.  It was from this time that, as legend has it, a private asked, "Sarge, how many hordes in a Chinese platoon?"

American air power played a major role in stopping the Chinese onslaught, but at a price.  In the album I found several photos of downed planes.  Here are a couple of a P-51 that was able to belly in on an open spot of land.  You can see

Same plane.

from the bent prop that it was still spinning, the engine producing power, when the plane touched down, and it doesn't look like it was on fire.  Maybe the pilot was wounded and opted to set down near American troops while he could still control the aircraft. Or maybe the cooling system was hit and the engine would stay running for not much longer so the pilot set the plane down while he still had power to choose a suitable spot.
 

Downed P-51. Note bent propeller.

In the album I also found a paper napkin from the officer's mess at Pease AFB, where my grandfather was stationed in the late 1950s, flying, as I said, B-47s. I've written about that a couple of times before.  Looking at it, I wondered why it was so carefully preserved in a photo album.  It must have had some significance, but whatever it was is now lost in time.  Was it a special date?  At a mess hall?  I don't think so.  How about an award ceremony?  Or ....  Well, who knows?  It's a memento of something important from another life and a long gone time.  But here it still is, a fragile bit of ephemera almost 70 years old.

On the album page opposite the napkin was a small American flag, carefully taped to the page. It had 48 stars, so it predates the admission of Alaska as a state in 1959.  Again I wondered why was this flag preserved?  It looks like an inexpensive item such as might be handed out to wave at Fourth of July parades or some other patriotic event.  Did it have some connection to the napkin? I asked my mother and she had no idea. I called my cousin that I had met last summer in Portsmouth, N.H., and he didn't know either, but he did want the album so I am going to mail it off to him along with some other items that belonged to my grandfather that he might like to have.