Post by Freehol Resident on Jun 8, 2007 15:15:25 GMT -5
Local pilots delivered on D-Day
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Star Ledger
By JUSTO BAUTISTA
STAFF WRITER
Cliff McDonald stood at the rear door of a transport plane over Normandy, France, just after midnight on June 6, 1944, doing his best to cheer up paratroopers about to jump into the teeth of World War II.
Flak from German antiaircraft batteries and red tracers from small-arms fire burst around the plane as it approached the town of St. Mere Eglise.
A paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne Division asked McDonald, a sergeant and the crew chief of the C-47 Skytrain, if he wanted to jump with them.
"No, thank you," McDonald, 86, of Fair Lawn, said he replied. "They were young and tense. ... I wished them well."
The role of men such as McDonald, who flew the soldiers in unarmed transport planes and gliders to the coast of France for the D-Day invasion, has been largely ignored in World War II lore, according to historians.
"The public never grasped on to them," said archivist Brett Stolle of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.
Their D-Day missions were vital -- and many never made it back to base -- but the stories about the crew chiefs and pilots seemingly paled in comparison to the derring-do tales about paratroopers, and fighter and bomber pilots.
"There is not a lot of information on them," said Jimmie Hallis, a researcher at the 82nd Airborne's War Memorial Museum at Fort Bragg, N.C.
"They've almost been neglected," Hallis said. "It's unfortunate, because we're losing them left and right. It breaks our heart."
McDonald, who retired from the Postal Service in 1977, isn't bothered by the lack of public recognition.
"Those poor guys [paratroopers] jumped into the middle of hell," he said. "My heart went out to those guys."
The priority that day, he said, was teamwork, not glory.
"There were a lot of people who never got a whole lot of recognition," said Tipton Randolph, 84, of Freehold, a glider pilot during the invasion. "We weren't by ourselves in that area."
Randolph piloted a British Horsa glider, carrying a Jeep, a howitzer, and the cannon's five-man crew, landing on the outskirts of St. Mere Eglise on the "next to last mission flown" on June 6.
Faulty intelligence and the close fighting among American and German troops contributed to the chaos on D-Day.
"As far as the hedgerows, they said there would be nothing over 12 to 15 feet high," Randolph said. "We were flying through the top of them at 80 feet. There is rifle fire all around you. You don't know whose it is."
Because they were on "one-way" trips, glider pilots fought as infantrymen after landing.
"You don't hear too much about air evacuation -- there was a lot of it," said Randolph, a retired construction equipment salesman and secretary of the National World War II Glider Pilots Association.
McDonald, whose unit flew 118 sorties on June 5, 6, and 7, said he never told his children about the "bloody part" of D-Day -- the soldiers with missing limbs that were evacuated or the transport planes that managed to return to base with large chunks of their fuselage shot out.
"I'm glad to be out of that hell," a wounded soldier told McDonald.
His unit also evacuated German POWs from the front.
"Some spoke broken English, but they all knew 'danke,' the German word for thank you," McDonald said.
The invasion, codenamed "Operation Overlord," is still the largest seaborne assault -- 7,000 ships landed 150,000 troops, and the second largest airborne assault -- 1,000 planes delivered 15,000 paratroopers -- in military history.
The effort cost 10,000 lives, but was the beginning of the end for Hitler's Third Reich.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Star Ledger
By JUSTO BAUTISTA
STAFF WRITER
Cliff McDonald stood at the rear door of a transport plane over Normandy, France, just after midnight on June 6, 1944, doing his best to cheer up paratroopers about to jump into the teeth of World War II.
Flak from German antiaircraft batteries and red tracers from small-arms fire burst around the plane as it approached the town of St. Mere Eglise.
A paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne Division asked McDonald, a sergeant and the crew chief of the C-47 Skytrain, if he wanted to jump with them.
"No, thank you," McDonald, 86, of Fair Lawn, said he replied. "They were young and tense. ... I wished them well."
The role of men such as McDonald, who flew the soldiers in unarmed transport planes and gliders to the coast of France for the D-Day invasion, has been largely ignored in World War II lore, according to historians.
"The public never grasped on to them," said archivist Brett Stolle of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.
Their D-Day missions were vital -- and many never made it back to base -- but the stories about the crew chiefs and pilots seemingly paled in comparison to the derring-do tales about paratroopers, and fighter and bomber pilots.
"There is not a lot of information on them," said Jimmie Hallis, a researcher at the 82nd Airborne's War Memorial Museum at Fort Bragg, N.C.
"They've almost been neglected," Hallis said. "It's unfortunate, because we're losing them left and right. It breaks our heart."
McDonald, who retired from the Postal Service in 1977, isn't bothered by the lack of public recognition.
"Those poor guys [paratroopers] jumped into the middle of hell," he said. "My heart went out to those guys."
The priority that day, he said, was teamwork, not glory.
"There were a lot of people who never got a whole lot of recognition," said Tipton Randolph, 84, of Freehold, a glider pilot during the invasion. "We weren't by ourselves in that area."
Randolph piloted a British Horsa glider, carrying a Jeep, a howitzer, and the cannon's five-man crew, landing on the outskirts of St. Mere Eglise on the "next to last mission flown" on June 6.
Faulty intelligence and the close fighting among American and German troops contributed to the chaos on D-Day.
"As far as the hedgerows, they said there would be nothing over 12 to 15 feet high," Randolph said. "We were flying through the top of them at 80 feet. There is rifle fire all around you. You don't know whose it is."
Because they were on "one-way" trips, glider pilots fought as infantrymen after landing.
"You don't hear too much about air evacuation -- there was a lot of it," said Randolph, a retired construction equipment salesman and secretary of the National World War II Glider Pilots Association.
McDonald, whose unit flew 118 sorties on June 5, 6, and 7, said he never told his children about the "bloody part" of D-Day -- the soldiers with missing limbs that were evacuated or the transport planes that managed to return to base with large chunks of their fuselage shot out.
"I'm glad to be out of that hell," a wounded soldier told McDonald.
His unit also evacuated German POWs from the front.
"Some spoke broken English, but they all knew 'danke,' the German word for thank you," McDonald said.
The invasion, codenamed "Operation Overlord," is still the largest seaborne assault -- 7,000 ships landed 150,000 troops, and the second largest airborne assault -- 1,000 planes delivered 15,000 paratroopers -- in military history.
The effort cost 10,000 lives, but was the beginning of the end for Hitler's Third Reich.