Wings of Freedom Tour goes to Pensacola

Pensacola, FLORIDA – The public can tour and — for a price — even fly in some historic World War II-era aircraft from March 5-7.

The Wings of Freedom Tour will be at the Pensacola Aviation Center at Pensacola International Airport.

The aircraft that will be on display are the Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress,” Consolidated B-24 Liberator, and North American P-51 Mustang.

The national tour, now in its 23rd year, is sponsored by the Collings Foundation, a nonprofit educational group that supports “living history” exhibits. The tour usually visits 110 cities each year.

The cost to tour the aircraft is $12 regular admission and $6 for children 11 and younger. Tour hours are 2 to 5 p.m. on March 5; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on March 6; and 9 a.m. through noon on March 7.

A 30-minute flight aboard the B-17 or the B-24 is $425. A 30-minute flight aboard the P-51 Mustang is $2,200.

-pnj.com

Recovered remains of WWII airmen buried at Arlington

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) – Even for Arlington National Cemetery, Wednesday’s burial service was extraordinary: remains from nine World War II airmen shot down and killed after a successful bombing run in Papua New Guinea in 1943.

The remains, excavated from the crash site in 2001, were in a single casket because most of them could not be conclusively linked to any one airman, despite extensive testing by the Army.

It had been 68 years since Leonard Gionet’s father was shot down, and he did not expect Wednesday’s burial service to be especially emotional. After all, he was only 6 months old when his father died. But he found himself wiping tears from his eyes as he sat next to his 90-year-old mother, thinking about his childhood and how he had tried to piece together what his dad was like from family conversations.

“I had kind of buried it all. I was surprised by all the emotions that surfaced,” he said after the ceremony.

Wednesday’s burial brings a close to the remarkable story of the Naughty but Nice, a B-17 Flying Fortress that was shot down in 1943 and earned its nickname from a painting of a scantily clad woman on its side. Nine of the 10 airmen on board were killed and buried in unmarked graves. The lone survivor, Lt. Jose Holguin, was taken as a Japanese prisoner of war but made it his mission after the war to find his lost colleagues.

“I don’t want to call it survivor’s guilt. I would call it a survivor’s mission,” said Holguin’s son, Curt Holguin, who attended Wednesday’s service. “He returned home and they didn’t. His mission became to get them home.”

The elder Holguin traveled back to Papua New Guinea several times in the 1980s and found parts of the B-17 plane. In 1985, the Army exhumed remains that had been buried as “unknown” at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu after they were recovered from Papua New Guinea after the war.

Tests done at the time positively identified remains from five of the nine who were killed: 2nd Lt. Herman H. Knott, 2nd Lt. Francis G. Peattie, Staff Sgt. Henry Garcia, Staff Sgt. Robert E. Griebel and Staff Sgt. Pace P. Payne.

The Army did further excavations near the crash site in 2001 and found additional human remains. More advanced tests were done, but did not conclusively link those remains to any of the remaining four from the Naughty but Nice: Tech Sgt. Robert L. Christopherson, Tech Sgt. Leonard A. Gionet, 1st Lt. William Sarsfield and 2nd Lt. Charles E. Trimingham.

But the Army is confident that the remains belong to the nine dead airmen, in part based on where they were found and other tests that were done.

Those remains were buried Wednesday in a single casket at Arlington, during a service with full military honors. Relatives of the four who had not previously been identified were presented with U.S. flags.

“After nearly 70 years, these men haven’t been forgotten and their mission is getting its due respect,” said L. Edward Johnson of Pebble Beach, Calif., who accepted the flag for his family on behalf of his uncle, co-pilot Charles Trimingham.

Gionet, 68, who lives in Portland, Ore., said it was about a year ago that he learned his father’s remains had been recovered. Somewhat amazingly, he said he received a knock on the door from an Army colonel and sergeant just after he had finished watching a movie called “The Messenger” where the main character is an officer assigned to notify family members when their loved ones have been killed in action.

The news came as a shock – Gionet said he had been unaware of the excavations that had recovered his father’s remains.

“I think it’s something where I’ll be able to close that chapter of my life,” Gionet said of the ceremony.

Gionet’s mother, Della Edwards, who became a widow at age 22 when the elder Gionet was shot down, traveled from Sacramento for the ceremony.

She recalled the years where she held hope after her husband was declared missing that he was still alive, and remembered her husband as an eternal optimist.

“He changed me from being a pessimist to an optimist. By the time he left (for the Pacific theater) he had convinced me that nothing bad would happen to him,” Edwards said. “He told me, `A bad penny always comes back.”‘

At the end of World War II, the U.S. government was unable to recover and identify approximately 79,000 Americans. More than 73,000 remain unaccounted for.

 

-bakersfieldnow.com

A new flight for old times’ sake

FORT WAYNE – The average age of the residents at Coventry Commons, an assisted-living community on Covington Road, is 88.

So when you sit down for lunch at one of the tables in the dining room, you really have no idea what sort of life story the person across the table might have to tell.

Carl Hornberger discovered that just a few days ago. Hornberger’s father, Richard, 87, moved into Coventry Commons a little more than a week ago, so his son decided to have lunch with him to see how he was adjusting.

Carl Hornberger also had a surprise for his dad. A World War II era B-17, a Flying Fortress, is flying into Kendallville on Sept. 2, so he’d bought a couple of tickets and was going to take his dad, who was a bombardier in WWII, for a ride on it.

During the conversation, Hornberger looked at another man sharing their table and asked him if he’d ever been in the service. Sure, Frank Peterson said. He was in the Army Air Corps and flew 37 missions, some as a tail gunner and some as a nose gunner.

As they say, who’d ’a thunk it? Two World War II fliers who’d been in bombers sitting at the same table?

When you think of it, though, that’s not that unusual. When you start looking at people in their late 80s or early 90s, particularly men, there are few who weren’t in the military in WWII, so one shouldn’t be too surprised that a couple of old fliers ended up at the same table.

Many of them have stories that are seldom told. Like Hornberger, who was stationed at bases all over the United States and taught to fly fighters before finally being made a bombardier. The war ended before he was shipped overseas, but he was still a flier.

Then there’s Peterson, who started out as a tail gunner in B-17s and B-24s before being switched to the nose, a job that paid about $25 a week.

“It’s a good place to sit,” Peterson said. “You see everything first.”

Peterson has some souvenirs from the war, too. He’s still got the telegram sent to his mother that reads, “The secretary of war desires me to express his deep regret that your son Staff Sergeant Frank W. Peterson has been reported missing in action.”

Peterson’s bomber had been shot down on the Russian border. He was rescued by Russian forces, who he says treated him like a king.

The coincidence gave Carl Hornberger an idea. He and his brother-in-law, who had also bought a ticket to take a flight on the plane, would split the cost and buy Peterson a ticket, too.

Next Friday, the two old fliers could take one more trip after 65 years.

Are they excited? Sure, Peterson said.

“I’m 87,” Hornberger said. “I’m not excited about anything any more.”

But you know he has to be looking forward to it.

Speaking of coincidences, the visit by a B-17 is one of just two that will take place in early September.

On Sept. 6-7, another B-17 will visit DeKalb County Airport in Auburn and will offer rides, too.

The trips aren’t cheap. Tickets are $465 each if you want to fly, but that’s a lot less than the price some people paid to fly in the planes 66 years ago.

Frank Peterson (left) and Richard Hornberger (right), both bombardiers during World War II

-journalgazette.net