This is the guy who was too much of a "peacenik" and a hippie to be our president, compared to Nixon:
en.wikipedia.org
"McGovern was assigned to Liberal Army Airfield in Kansas to transition school to learn to fly the B-24 Liberator, an assignment he was pleased with.[27] McGovern recalled later: "Learning how to fly the B-24 was the toughest part of the training. It was a difficult airplane to fly, physically, because in the early part of the war, they didn't have hydraulic controls. If you can imagine driving a Mack truck without any power steering or power brakes, that's about what it was like at the controls. It was the biggest bomber we had at the time."[4] Eleanor was constantly afraid of her husband suffering an accident while training, which claimed a huge toll of airmen during the entire war.[28] This was followed by a stint at Lincoln Army Airfield in Nebraska, where McGovern met his B-24 crew.[29] The traveling around the country and mixing with people from different backgrounds was a broadening experience for McGovern and others of his generation.[29] The USAAF sped up training times for McGovern and others due to the heavy losses that bombing missions were suffering over Europe.[30] Despite, and partly because of, the risk that McGovern might not come back from combat, the McGoverns decided to have a child and Eleanor became pregnant.[31] In June 1944, McGovern's crew received final training at Mountain Home Army Air Field in Idaho.[29] They then shipped out via Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia, where McGovern found history books to fill downtime, and overseas on a slow troopship.[32]
In September 1944, McGovern joined the 741st Squadron of the 455th Bombardment Group of the Fifteenth Air Force, stationed at San Giovanni Airfield nearby Cerignola in the Apulia region of Italy.[33] There he and his crew found a starving, disease-ridden local population wracked by the ill fortunes of war and far worse off than anything they had seen back home during the Depression.[33][34] Starting on November 11, 1944, McGovern flew 35 missions over enemy territory from there, the first five as co-pilot for an experienced crew and the rest as pilot for his own plane, known as the Dakota Queen after his wife Eleanor.[35] His targets were in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and northern, German-controlled Italy, and were often either oil refinery complexes or rail marshalling yards, all as part of the U.S. strategic bombing campaign in Europe. The eight- or nine-hour missions were grueling tests of endurance for pilots, and while German fighter aircraft were a diminished threat by then, his missions often faced heavy anti-aircraft artillery fire that filled the sky with flak bursts.
On McGovern's December 15 mission over Linz, his second as pilot, a piece of shrapnel from flak came through the windshield and missed killing him by only a few inches.[36] The following day on a mission to Brüx he nearly collided with another bomber during close-formation flying in complete cloud cover.[37] The day after that he was recommended for a medal after surviving a blown wheel on the always-dangerous B-24 take-off, completing a mission over Germany, and then landing without further damage to the plane.[38] On a December 20 mission against the Škoda Works at Pilsen, McGovern's plane had one engine out and another in flames after being hit by flak. Unable to return to Italy, McGovern was able to land his plane on a British airfield on Vis, a small island off the Yugoslav coast controlled by Tito's Partisans. The short field, normally used by small fighter planes, killed many of the bomber crews who tried to make emergency landings there, but McGovern successfully landed, saving his crew and earning him the Distinguished Flying Cross.[39][40]
..."April 25 saw McGovern's 35th mission, to fulfill the USAAF limit for combat, against heavily defended Linz. The sky turned black and red with flak – McGovern later said "Hell can't be any worse than that" – the Dakota Queen was hit multiple times (producing 110 holes in its fuselage and wings) and the hydraulic system was knocked out. McGovern's waist gunner was injured and his flight engineer so terrified that he would be hospitalized with battle fatigue, but McGovern managed to bring back the plane safely with the assistance of an improvised landing technique.[40][46]
In May and June 1945, following the end of the European war, McGovern flew food relief flights to northern Italy, then flew back to the United States with his crew.[47] McGovern was discharged from the Army Air Forces in July 1945, with the rank of first lieutenant.[1] He was also awarded the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters,[3] one instance of which was for the safe landing on his final mission.[48]" |
