ArtKramr wrote:

Subject: Aircrew casualities
From: Guy Alcala
Date: 9/18/03 11:53 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

No, I meant the fighters taking evasive action on the run-in, and preparing
to do

Never saw that once. Thyey would drop tgheior inside wing and their nose would
swing in toward us and we hten knew they had started their classic fighter
approach. And once they set up constant bearing, they never swerved, changed
course or took evasive action at all. They just bore in on their heading of
constant bearing firing as they came.

"Evasive action' was a poor choice of words on my part; involuntary flinching
before the breakaway, and doing the breakaway early for fear of collision/gunfire,
was more what I meant.


The USAAF bomber crew didn't have backpack parachutes either for quite a
while (it
seems to have been late in 1943 that they started to come in). Normally it
was a

The USAAF bomber crew didn't have backpack parachutes either for quite a
while (it
seems to have been late in 1943 that they started to come in). Normally it
was a

I wore a chestpack. The tail gunner and the top turrest gunners also had
chestpacks and we wore them in our positions with no problem. We never ever
flew missions with chutes off. And in 1943 both our pilot and copilot flew with
backpacks, the rest of us wore chestpacks and once in the air never took them
of except when I had to enter the bomb bays. I couldn't fit through the bombay
access door with a chestpack on.

Then it must have been 8th AF practice not to wear them, as numerous accounts exist
of crews trying to buckle theirs on in a hurry. The RAF bomber crews didn't
normally wear theirs either, aside from the pilots and the tail gunner.

Guy