SENIOR TIMES - FEBRUARY 2019-3 See PILOT , page 11 By John Wilkens The San Diego Union-Tribune When Capt. Alan Carl- tons B-24 bomber was shot down over Germany during World War II, he felt lucky. Not that lucky _ wound- ed in the right foot, he left a bloody trail in the snow that made him easy to track. The American pilot was captured at gunpoint and spent more than a year in a POW camp. But he was alive, which was more than could be said for three of his crew- men. Now, 75 years later, Carl- ton has another reason to feel lucky about what hap- pened that day. It came via FedEx a few days ago from Eisenach, a city in central Germany. Eberhard Haelbig, a researcher there who is documenting aerial combat during the war, scours crash sites found near his home. Dozens of planes went down there. Scavenged over the years by humans, consumed by the elements, whats left is mostly pieces. But even they tell a story. One plane in particular, a B-24 that crashed in a for- est, caught his attention not long ago. Using records in Germany and the U.S., he igured out which plane it was, and when it had gone down. He learned the names of the 10 Americans who were on board, and found photographs taken shortly after it crashed. With the help of Google and a mili- tary friend in the states, he contacted the pilot, who lives in a senior community in Carmel Valley. Which is how Carlton got two FedEx boxes with remnants of his B-24. With this I would like to say, Thank you, Capt. Carlton, and thank you to the Greatest Generation for your ight against evil and for liberating my country from that, Haelbig said in an email interview with the Union-Tribune. Im a German by birth, but American by heart. What he sent Carl- ton is a pile of junk to a laymans eye. But not to the former pilot. This means a lot to me, Carlton said recently as he looked through the seven pieces of metal and glass. He held up a scrap he thinks was the part of a wing tip called an aileron. I never thought Id see any of my plane again. Im glad to have these. Glad, too, because the package arrived in time for his 100th birthday. What a nice, early present this is, he said. HIS 14TH MISSION They called it Big Week. As 1943 turned into 1944, Allied commanders hatched a plan for a round- the-clock aerial offensive against the Nazis, one of the largest bombing cam- paigns of the war. American B-17s and B- 24s stationed in England and Italy would attack air- plane factories, munitions centers and other targets in Germany during the day. British planes would raid at night. They hoped not only to strike at Germanys in- dustrial heart, but draw its fighter jets into a war of attrition and clear the skies in advance of the piv- otal D-Day land invasion at Normandy planned for later that year. For six days starting on Feb. 20, 1944, hundreds of B-17s and B-24s lew missions into Germany, dropping nearly 10,000 tons of bombs. They paid a hefty price, losing about 250 bombers and fighters. Some 2,500 crew mem- bers were killed, injured, lost or cap- tured. But Germany lost hundreds of planes and pilots, too, and with its factories and air- fields damaged by the bombs, couldnt replace them quickly. The Allieds had shifted air suprem- acy in their favor. Carlton was shot down during Big Week, on Feb. 24, 1944. The De- troit native had enlisted two years earlier, dropping out of medical school at Indiana University to do my part in the war effort, he said. Everybody was joining. Part of the 567th Bomb Squadron based in Hethel, England, Carlton was on his 14th mission when his B-24 D Liberator, built at Consolidated in San Diego, was hit by enemy fire, first over Holland, and then over central Germany. Machine-gun bursts from Luftwaffe fighter planes killed his tail gunner and two waist gunners, and sent the B-24 rolling. Every- body else parachuted out the bomb bay doors, with
WWII PILOT'S SURPRISE
Reunited with pieces of the past
Alan Carlton, who will turn 100-years-old on January 13, 2019 holds a piece of the one of the wings of the World War II era Army Air Corps B-24 bomber he was flying over Germany on February 24, 1944, when it was shot down, for the first time since being shot down. and sent to him via his daughter. He spent about a year and a half in a priso ner- of-war camp. (Howard Lipin/San Diego Union-Tribune/TNS)
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