In 1947, two years after the end of World War II, the United States Armed Forces created a new branch of the military, the United States Air Force (USAF).

The brave men and women who served in the USAF were not new to service, of course: many of them were veterans of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), whose 2.4 million members helped the Allies win World War II, at considerable sacrifice to themselves. For these soldiers serving in all parts of the world were exposed not only to bullets and bombs, but also to a host of infectious diseases that threatened to end their lives. Among these diseases, according to the U.S. Army Medical Department’s annals, were deadly acute respiratory infections like influenza, typhoid, tropical diseases like malaria and dengue fever, and neurotropic viruses like poliomyelitis and insect-borne encephalopathies.

Dengue (Breakbone fever) occurs in tropical regions, chiefly at the end of the rainy season. Symptoms consist of muscle and joint pains, backache, fever and rash. the mosquito which transmits it bites mostly during the daytime. (Bombardiers Information File, USAAF)

Within weeks of discharge, many USAAF veterans began showing up at Veterans Hospitals with debilitating psychological symptoms that included insomnia, uncontrolled bursts of rage, difficulty concentrating and even flashbacks and hallucinations. It wasn’t until 1978 that this set of symptoms had a name: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Perhaps the greatest risk these soldiers were exposed to, however, was one that would not reveal itself for many decades. Asbestos was a commonly used material in aircraft, as well as USAAF installations, base housing and other administrative buildings.

For thousands of years the fibrous mineral asbestos has been used in a wide variety of industrial applications. Its unique properties which include resistance to flame, heat, sound, electrical impulses and most forms of chemical corrosion, combined with its light weight and tensile strength, made it seem like an ideal insulating and construction material. However, scientists have conclusively linked asbestos exposure to the development of a host of asbestos-related diseases, among them an asbestos cancer called malignant mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma targets the protective membranes lining the thoracic cavity, the peritoneum, the pericardium and the internal reproductive tracts of both women and men. Mesothelioma is characterized by a prolonged latency interval of anywhere between 20 and 50 years: Many mesothelioma veterans are being diagnosed with the disease for the first time right now.

It’s not known for sure how many WWII air force veterans, exposed to asbestos, have subsequently been diagnosed with mesothelioma. But since the 1980s, the USAF has been proactive in asbestos abatement and the Department of Veterans Affairs will provide benefits to asbestos-exposed veterans when asbestos exposure can be clearly documented.

Doug Karr is a Navy veteran of Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield. He now collaborates with the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance as the Veteran Health Advocate and writer for their Veterans Blog.

Douglas’s Bio: http://www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/doug/bio.htm

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Thanks Doug! This links nicely to a fascinating document called the Bombardiers Information File which I found thanks to the armyairforces. com forum. It’s a manual that was provided to USAAF crew members and includes lots of advice, instructions and some great illustrations. I’ve added a couple of pages from the document to my Flickr http://bit.ly/nArwG9

Contributions in this first issue from Vic Walzel and James S. Peters. Thanks to Lisa Niehoff for her suggestions and help.

Click to view or Right-click ‘save as’ to download. File is a PDF.

http://bit.ly/k88h9X

You can copy this freely and share it. You are allowed to remix, tweak, and build upon this work non-commercially, as long as you credit me and license your new creations under the identical terms. Credit as www.happywarriors.co.uk and twitter.com/happywarriors

I thought it high time you received an update from headquarters..

Several years ago I decided to make a film about the U.S Air Force in Britain. My mate Mike and I spent an afternoon driving around East Anglia with camcorders filming American military installations (probably a bad idea). That was a long time ago now. In some ways I’m glad it’s taken me this long because the film I’m making now was not possible back then. I could have cobbled something together but it wouldn’t have been well executed or researched. Having said that I’m aware that I owe a film (and soon) to the 448th Bomb Group veterans that I interviewed back in 2007. I’m putting a trailer together which I’m excited about and is looking good so far. I posted back in March, 2009 about a recording session with St. John’s Cathedral Choir in Norwich. Richard Ridley helped me record a couple of choral pieces one of which I’m using for the trailer. Click below to have a listen.

Call to Remembrance by Richard Farrant

I like it a lot and I’d forgotten it was called ‘Call to Remembrance’ – very apt.

There have been a few other developments too. I’m in talks with a composer about music for the film which is great. I’m going to make him a mix tape of music that has inspired me during production. My friend Ray is helping me raise some funds through kickstarter which I will post about once I’ve got everything ready to go. I’m not looking for thousands of dollars but just enough to satisfy some immediate costs (hundreds) and I’m not sure how successful it will be but fingers crossed.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving.

Evan

P.S

St. Johns Cathedral is Catholic and was built in the 19th Century. Here is a photo of the other Cathedral in Norwich, it’s Protestant and is 1000 years old. Note the 8th Air Force guys to the right and the sign for the air raid shelter to the left. This was taken sometime between 1942 and 1945.

After a group safety briefing the group began removing the top soil with spades and soon enough a large digger moved in to start the heavy lifting. There was a real buzz about the place. The guys had camped the previous night and were making a real weekend of it, sipping a few beers whilst swapping serial numbers of aircraft parts and stories of digs gone by.

The excavation continued and the earth began to reveal its secrets. Gasps of excitement went up from the diggers as yellow oxygen bottles that would have sustained crews flying missions in B-17′s and B-24′s were carried from the hole and stacked wide and high. A steel panel was found and quickly identified as a piece from the last ever B-17F to role out of Boeing’s plant in Seattle.  Something quite special. Next to the oxygen bottles sat an earth-encrusted GI’s helmet and plenty of Hughes flexible ammo tracking was found (pictured).

It’s easy to see why these guys attend digs year after year (since the 70s even). There’s a shared understanding of the value of all this stuff. One man’s rusty metal is another man’s treasure.

I will add a few of the other photos I took to the stills gallery.

I’m still obsessively listening to Josh Winiberg’s music which I hope to use on the film soundtrack.

A new follower of note on Twitter is airfix models (would they help fund my projects?)

Tara Connolly has made another trip to the U.S National Archives and posted yet more 448th mission reports. Tara also pulled a whole load of photographs of various aircraft from the 8th and 15th Air Forces. Mostly crash photos here, both tragic and fascinating, thanks Tara.

More soon.

Robert Saffir 448th BG
John Yatsko 448th BG
Richard Walsh 448th BG
Eugene Pulcipher 448th BG
Joseph Marganski 448th BG
Edward Torossian 446th BG
Harold Dahlberg 494th BG
Leland Walzel 93rd BG
Warren Irvin Knox 452nd BG
Robert Rakos 313th Ftr Sqdn
Richard L. Lapham 55th Ftr Grp
Leroy Borden 449th BG

There are some amazing stories in the list above and I’m learning new stuff all the time. It’s been great to make contact with everyone that has expressed an interest in taking part, from Manhattan to Alaska would you believe. Twitter has definitely helped.

I’m on the lookout for any information or contacts for a B-29 veteran as I am yet to pay tribute to any crew of the Superfortress.

This Sunday is the 10th Seething Air Show and Family Day and I have my camera borrowed and ready to go. I’ll be trying to capture the spirit of the day i suppose; plenty of actuality to show how the control tower and its surrounds still have a lot to give so many years after the end of hostilities.

You may or may not be aware that the Happy Warriors project is now split into two parts. Part I is the documentary film and Part II is a collection of wartime biographies or ‘tributes’.

The plan is to put thirty of these tributes together for inclusion on a DVD release as extra material to read through in your own time. I have about ten people taking part or that have shown interest. Thirty seemed like a nice round number and I didn’t want to give myself too much to do. Also, at one time thirty missions was the length of a tour in the ETO so there’s a nice symmetry there.

The idea is to provide the film’s (future) audience with a way to contribute to the project. It should also give the DVD a unique selling point. So, if you’re reading this and you’d like to contribute or know somebody that might then please, get in touch. I will also be contributing a few tributes of my own so If you have an idea for a tribute but not the inclination then send me some details by all means.

The guidelines for submissions are:

200 words (approx) and a photograph on any man or woman who served in the United States Army Air Forces in any theatre of the war.

My first contribution will be about Leland Walzel. I’ve had some correspondence with his brother Vic. Below is the first email Vic sent me. I had asked a question about fate and chance during wartime on a WWII forum and Vic made contact:

My brother was KIA on his 25th mission on 6 March 1944 over Berlin. According to the navigator, who survived along with the two waist gunners, my brother was not hurt when they took a direct hit from flak. The hit on the inboard engine on the pilot’s side caused the prop to spin back through the cockpit and evidently killed the pilot. The co-pilot said “I’ve got it” and must have given the bail-out call. The navigator, up in the nose with my brother and a nose gunner, bailed out and said when he left the ship, my brother was trying to help the gunner out of the turret.

The fate part now comes into the picture. There had never been a nose gunner on any of my brother’s previous 24 missions. He manned the guns there himself when necessary. This was an 11th man on the crew that day. The loading list for the mission doesn’t include this man nor do any of the other crews on the list show to have 11 men. He was not even included on the MACR until later. In all likelihood, they had never known each other prior to the day of the mission. I have 17 of the loading lists for my brother’s missions and never saw this man’s name on any of the crews. My brother was flying that day with a crew that he had flown one mission with a couple of days earlier. This was a very experienced crew with 5 or 6 of them on their 25th mission and the rest with more than 20. My brother had missed several missions due to being hospitalized with tonsilitis or he would have already finished his required 25 with his regular crew so he shouldn’t have even been involved that day. The navigator’s testimony, on the MACR, to my sister-in-law in a letter and to me personally on the telephone, was that, in his opinion, my brother would have been able to get out had he not chosen to attempt to save this gunner by helping him out of the turret.

I have always wondered why the man was even on the plane. Eleven man crews were highly unusual unless it was for photographic purposes or some other specific reason, but not as a nose gunner. You can call it fate, circumstances or bad luck, the result was that my brother died that day doing something that makes me very proud, trying to save another man’s life at the cost of his own. Many things could have happened had he been able to get out of the plane and any of them could have ended in his death, but it has always nagged at me that this man was in a place he normally would not have been and it put my brother in the position of making a choice to help him or save his own life. All of these men are heroes in my eyes and I thank God that they did what they did to preserve our freedom. I can only think that it would have turned out differently if that one extra man had not been in the nose that day.

My tribute site is lelandwalzel.150m.com. If you visit it, please sign the guestbook.

Regards,

Vic Walzel

…when we came back from the rest home the same guy that towed that aeroplane out of the mud was like a Philadelphia lawyer and it was rumoured the war was going to end. So he said I’m going down to the flight surgeon and I’m gonna fill his head with some stories that you guys are a nervous wreck, you need more time off. His name was Breedy from Spokane, Washington and sure enough he came back with 4 passes. He said “let’s get the hell out of here because i think the wars gonna end!” So we couldn’t wait to get our bag and run for Norwich to get the train. And we were on the train to London when we got word that the war was over. And when we got to London, man, you’ve seen those pictures of London on VE day climbing all over those double-decker buses and screaming and yelling? And my buddy and i went into a bar. We were sitting at a bar drinking and a couple of fellas down to the right of us drinking and i looked down and…ah it can’t be them…so they went out and i said to my friend “they’re are a couple of guys from my home town in Hastings” i was born in Hastings on Hudson and “they’re a couple of guys i know from Hastings” i said and he said “well go get them!” So i ran out quick, i ran down the street and got them, two friends of mine Billy Newell and Harold Omer and they were in the ground forces. We met and the four of us went in we had a big dinner a nice fancy restaurant i forget where it was but we all had a big dinner got half drunk again.

This is one of two photos I have of Seething airfield celebrating with improvised fireworks, courtesy of Patricia Everson. I’ll find out what it was that they used as fireworks and post in the comments section.

Dan Kanemoto, an award-winning filmmaker and animator posted news of his new release on the armyairforces forums this week. Articles of War is a 12 minute animated short about one pilots experiences flying a B-24 liberator during the Second world war. It looks gorgeous and this cartoon crew photo from the film is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long while. It’s great to see the Liberator and her crews in a film of their own.

You can buy the DVD from him here. At $10 it’s a steal and contains plenty of extras to pour over. In addition Dan has made the film available online here. Smart move.

But these were the days of the German jet fighter, the Me262 that terrorised allied bomber formations as long as the Luftwaffe could find the pilots and the fuel to fly. Armed with 30mm cannons and R4M rockets the Schwalbe could attack at speeds upwards of 500 miles per hour…

Ed Paretti, a gunner on the Torrance crew witnessed the events of April 4th first hand:

We was very, very scared and when the gunnery office said to me you know you’re supposed to start firing at 600 yards. He said “when did you start firing?” “it must have been 3 miles out” I said “I started firing when I assumed he was gonna come towards me and I never let up” he said “Good boy!” that’s all he said. I never let up and as I’m sitting here he came right over and you can see him and he was smoking like hell. Now whether that was smoke from the jet engine I don’t know

Kills claimed by bomb crew gunners could be notoriously difficult to corroborate. At around 20,000 feet in a physically demanding environment and under extreme pressure with several gunners firing at the same targets it was often impossible to be accurate about who hit what.

I don’t remember when I first became aware of this incident and the infamous photo that was taken on that mission but it has gradually taken hold in my imagination and the hope is that it will become an important part of the documentary.