Subject: Bush flew fighter jets, but never over VIETNAM.
From: ost (Chris Mark)
Date: 7/11/2004 12:20 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

I think Ed said he had 100 and I flew 50. So you still lead the pack. Well
done.

Thanks but I defer to one Paul Dembrowsky, on whose wing I flew on a six
month
deployment to Thailand in 72. He had 479 at the start of the deployment.


Sheeesh. The mind boggles as the blood curles. No one in WW II got nearly
that
many.

One of the more impressive gentlemen I ever met was Max Mortensen. He served
with one of the B-25 groups in the Pacific during WW2--served is putting it
mildly. He joined it as a 2nd Lt. and stayed with the unit through 26 months
of continuous combat, flying iirc some 110 combat missions and rising to the
rank of Lt. Col. He survived everything the enemy could throw at him,
including a direct flak hit in the bomb bay while over Rabaul, which ignited
the WP bomblets, finally being shot down while attacking a frigate, near
Hainan
Island iirc during the closing days of the war, captured by the Japanese,
starved and tortured (one of the thee crewmen who survived the ditching died
under the torture). He was rescued by an OSS team led by John Singlaub, the
same Singlaub who, as commander of UN forces in Korea was fired by Pres.
Carter
in a pretty messy incident.
You may know Mortensen. He was the last commander of the former 344th (by
then renamed something else) when it was based in France in the early 1950s
and
flying Douglas B-26s (nee A-26).


Chris Mark


Interesting stuff. I never knew Mortensen. I was gone by then I left for home
in July 1946. I know the 344th was renamed, but I forgot what. But I did serve
in the A-26's for a while. Nice hot little plene. I liked it a lot better than
the Marauders. Better escape route for the Bombardier.


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer