There is no way of determining the number of American servicemen whose lives were spared by this system,” Bishop says.Ĭourtesy of Andrew GullifordIn their wedding photograph, Mildred Jellis stands beside her husband, David Gulliford. The photographs could also be scrutinized for enemy troop and weapons concentrations on islands where future invasions were planned. High altitude photography made it possible to create maps of any area within the range of our photo planes. “It is not widely known that the Marines ever had photographic reconnaissance squadrons during World War II. Bishop’s book, Cameras Over the Pacific: Marine Photographic Squadron 254. They needed his photos so he headquartered in the Solomon Islands and Emirau, according to John G. The ground-pounding, island hopping, Marine grunts needed to know what they were getting into. They’d shoot at him or send up the deadly Zeros. He’d fly over Japanese installations and take their photos. 45 automatic in a shoulder holster under his left armpit, but he didn’t have many machine guns. “B-24s were hard to manage even in smooth skies in some tropical tempests, not even the combined strength of pilot and copilot could keep the plane in hand,” Hillenbrand wrote. Hillenbrand writes that in just one month, January 1943, planes that Louie flew had mechanical defects including “two in-flight engine failures, a gas leak, oil-pressure problems and landing gear that locked – fortunately, in the down position.” And that was all in good weather. His B-24 went down as his crew searched for another missing B-24 and its crew. He later endured savage beatings in Japanese concentration camps. “In the air corps, 35,946 personnel died in nonbattle situations, the vast majority of them in accidental crashes.” Unbroken is about Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner whose B-24 plunged into the Pacific. “As planes went, so went men,” wrote Laura Hillenbrand in Unbroken. In the Pacific Ocean Areas Theatre, for every plane lost in combat, six crashed because of accidents. He flew the large, heavy, slow B-24 Liberator bombers that came to be known as aerial death traps. Marines as a pilot to fly photo reconnaissance in the South Pacific. He could not afford college, so he attended flight school, earned his wings, joined the Navy and, when World War II broke out, was recruited into the U.S. He worked night shifts in Ohio steel mills. He walked railroad tracks to pick up loose coal that fell off trains. An illegitimate son, he had to succeed on his own. My dad grew up in the Great Depression and had nothing, not even his father’s name.
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